Prophetic Imagination in the Light of Narratology and Disability Studies in Isaiah 40–48

Analyzes Isaiah 40–48 as a single literary work through levels of speakers (frame and subordinate) with implications for its construction of divine potency and communication

A Kingdom of Priests and Its Earthen Altars in Exodus 19–24

Argues that, reversing the trope of subjects visiting the magnificent, the Elohistic history has Yahweh interested in the simplest, flimsiest altars only, which he will visit when and where he is invited to do so. The implication rules out temple-altars and temples for their royal sponsorship

Heat Kernel for Open Manifolds

In a 1991 paper by Buttig and Eichhorn, the existence and uniqueness of a differential forms heat kernel on open manifolds of bounded geometry was proven. In that paper, it was shown that the heat kernel obeyed certain properties, one of which was a relationship between the derivative of heat kernel of different degrees. We will give a proof of this condition for complete manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded below, and then use it to give an integral representation of the heat kernel of degree $k$

Nodal inequalities on surfaces

Given a Laplace eigenfunction on a surface, we study the distribution of its extrema on the nodal domains. It is classically known that the absolute value of the eigenfunction is asymptotically bounded by the 4-th root of the eigenvalue. It turns out that the number of nodal domains where the eigenfunction has an extremum of such order, remains bounded as the eigenvalue tends to infinity. We also observe that certain restrictions on the distribution of nodal extrema and a version of the Courant nodal domain theorem are valid for a rather wide class of functions on surfaces. These restrictions follow from a bound in the spirit of Kronrod and Yomdin on the average number of connected components of level sets.Comment: 14 pages, added a discussion of a connection with the Alexandrov-Backelman-Pucci inequalit

The Face of God and the Etiquette of Eye-Contact: Visitation, Pilgrimage, and Prophetic Vision in Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Imagination

Uses social poetics to analyze talk in the Bible of looking at Yahweh's fac

"Oracular Novellae" and Biblical Historiography: Through the Lens of Law and Narrative

Theoretical discussion of law and narrative and their interaction in biblical historiography

The Second Passover, Pilgrimage, and the Centralized Cult

Literary and historical analysis of the passage at Num 9:1–1

Construction and Detailing Methods of Horizontally Curved Steel I-Girder Bridges

The present research extends the state-of-the-art in understanding the important physical phenomena that impact the constructability and behavior of horizontally curved steel I-girder bridges. The steel erection procedure of a horizontally curved and skewed steel I-girder bridge is examined through the use of a nonlinear finite element model. The behavior of the structure is studied for each stage of steel erection by observations of girder stresses, displacements and reactions. The eccentric application of gravity load resulting from horizontal curvature results in torsional forces being applied to the girder sections of a horizontally curved bridge. Due to the relative torsional flexibility of the steel I-girders, these forces can result in a marked girder rotation quantified in this work as web out-of-plumbness. The present research quantifies the effect and importance of girder web out-of-plumbness on primary member stress response in steel I-girders, both individually and as part of an assembly. Girder flange stresses and vertical and lateral displacements are presented for single straight and curved beam models and a curved two-girder system model all subject to up to 5 degrees of out-of-plumbness. Through a parametric study the effects of changes to radius or horizontal curvature, girder spacing, cross frame spacing, and web depth on the behavior of the curved two-girder system having initially out-of-plumb webs are investigated. The effects of "inconsistent detailing" - an approach to designing bridge cross frames to mitigate girder web out-of-plumbness - are presented. Specifically, the structural behavior in terms of resulting "locked-in" girder flange stresses and displacements are discussed. The research work reported herein is primarily analytical in nature, employing detailed non linear finite element models to investigate the steel erection and web-plumbness issues associated with horizontally curved steel I-girder bridges.Based on the analytical studies conducted, it is proposed that the effects of web out-of-plumbness need to be specifically considered for the effects on flange stresses in design, as an alternative to the practice of inconsistent detailing. Consideration of these effects during design and conventionally detailing girders and cross frames for the web-plumb position at no-load, in lieu of specifying inconsistent detailing to control web out-of-plumbness, will reduce construction problems that typically result from the practice of inconsistent detailing. However, if inconsistent detailing is employed to mitigate web out-of-plumbness, it must be recognized by bridge designers that this approach has complex effects on "locked-in" stresses and constructability of curved I-girder bridges. These "locked-in" stresses and constructability issues need to be considered by bridge designers and steel erectors, respectively

On Ptolemaic metric simplicial complexes

We show that under certain mild conditions, a metric simplicial complex which satisfies the Ptolemy inequality is a CAT(0) space. Ptolemy's inequality is closely related to inversions of metric spaces. For a large class of metric simplicial complexes, we characterize those which are isometric to Euclidean space in terms of metric inversions.Comment: 13 page