The use of photogrammetry and film in fostering understanding of early medieval history

The recent arrival of a growing body of freely available photogrammetric 3D models of early medieval stone sculptures gives the opportunity for educators to use them as virtual primary sources, either directly as navigable objects or through the medium of film. The research investigates their potential role in schools following the current national curriculum in England. The curriculum requirements are reviewed and their implementation investigated through a study of school websites and Ofsted reports in an English shire county. A search is made for suitable stone sculptures with 3D models, new ones are made where necessary, and the academic literature on the sculptures is reviewed. Lesson plans and resources are created and trialed in three primary schools in a method closely resembling cyclic Lesson Study methodology. The conclusion is that the process has demonstrated the potential for the use of 3D models to serve as the focus of engaging and challenging lessons

Those who heard it first: The political implications of the sermon on the mount to Jesus’ Jewish audience

This dissertation examines the Sermon on the Mount (in the Gospel of Matthew) from the perspective of politics and peace. It investigates not what Jesus meant, but what his audience heard and were likely to have understood. It does this in order to ascertain the novelty or otherwise of Jesus’ teachings on peace with regard to Jewish thought and political understandings of his time. His audience was primarily Jewish, and the political implications they drew from Jesus’ teachings would have been influenced by established Jewish thought on ethics and governance. This dissertation researches specifically this: how would Jesus’ Jewish listeners have interpreted the peace sayings of the Sermon on the Mount? This dissertation finds that the Jewish intellectual framework within which Jesus’ first audience heard the Sermon on the Mount contained many specific sayings found in Pirkei Avot, and also a history of practice of non-violent action found in Jewish tradition, and that the oral law and the Sermon on the Mount both reflect Jewish ethical ideologies of non-violent resistance. This dissertation argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, a very Jewish Jesus – a man true to the religio-political views of his day – reaffirms a Jewish ethical form of non-violent resistance. The most important evidence available is the Gospel of Matthew itself, Jewish ethical writings such as Pirkei Avot, other Mishna writings, and writings on the lex talionis. The evidence points to an audience that would have perceived Jesus as teaching non-violence in a context of resistance rather than completely passive submission. The overall finding of this dissertation will be that the writer of Matthew depicts a Jesus who, in style, form, and content, builds on a Jewish ethical foundation to promote non-violent assertion of equality and human dignity in the widely known and oft-cited Sermon on the Mount

Discrete random media techniques for microwave modeling of vegetated terrain

Microwave remote sensing models of vegetated terrain are investigated. The problem is to determine canopy characteristics such as biomass, canopy height, and the moisture of the underlying soil. The report describes a discrete scatter model which has been employed to model backscatter in the active (radar) case and to model brightness temperature in the passive (radiometric) case. The acquisition of ground truth data is discussed, as well as the comparison of theory and experiment. The overall conclusion of the work has been that the discrete scatter model in conjunction with efficient scatter algorithms and the distorted Born approximation is a most appropriate methodology to use for modeling purposes in the microwave region

Coherence Effects in L-Band Active and Passive Remote Sensing of Quasi-Periodic Corn Canopies

Due to their highly random nature, vegetation canopies can be modeled using the incoherent transport theory for active and passive remote sensing applications. Agricultural vegetation canopies however are generally more structured than natural vegetation. The inherent row structure in agricultural canopies induces coherence effects disregarded by the transport theory. The objective of this study is to demonstrate, via Monte-Carlo simulations, these coherence effects on L-band scattering and thermal emission from corn canopies consisting of only stalks

Spectral Study of Soil-Pile-Structure Interaction Based on Observed Data

Spectral analysis and system identification algorithm are used to analyze a set of acceleration response records obtained from a shaking table test. The method is based on the linear discrete time systems theory, and the soil-pile system can be represented as a linear filter of a finite order with time-varying coefficients. The recorded ground motion at the pile tip is the input, and the motion at the different level along the pile and the structure is the output of the filter. Knowing the input and output, the time varying parameters of the filter can be determined by using the system identification method. Once the filter parameters are known, the transfer function, and the kinematic interaction between the soil-pile-structure can be determined

Metric stability of trees and tight spans

We prove optimal extension results for roughly isometric relations between metric ( $${\mathbb{R}}$$ R -)trees and injective metric spaces. This yields sharp stability estimates, in terms of the Gromov-Hausdorff (GH) distance, for certain metric spanning constructions: the GH distance of two metric trees spanned by some subsets is smaller than or equal to the GH distance of these sets. The GH distance of the injective hulls, or tight spans, of two metric spaces is at most twice the GH distance between themselve

Caching and Visualizing Statistical Analyses

We present the cacher and CodeDepends packages for R, which provide tools for (1) caching and analyzing the code for statistical analyses and (2) distributing these analyses to others in an efficient manner over the web. The cacher package takes objects created by evaluating R expressions and stores them in key-value databases. These databases of cached objects can subsequently be assembled into “cache packages” for distribution over the web. The cacher package also provides tools to help readers examine the data and code in a statistical analysis and reproduce, modify, or improve upon the results. In addition, readers can easily conduct alternate analyses of the data. The CodeDepends package provides complementary tools for analyzing and visualizing the code for a statistical analysis and this functionality has been integrated into the cacher package. In this chapter we describe the cacher and CodeDepends packages and provide examples of how they can be used for reproducible research

The Nation Is Burdened

https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/engineering_news/1004/thumbnail.jp

Albrecht After ARCO: Maximum Resale Price Fixing Moves Toward the Rule of Reason

For some time, both economic and legal commentators have recognized the economic irrationality of the Supreme Court\u27s ruling in Albrecht v. Herald Co. which prohibited the imposition of maximum resale prices by a supplier on its resellers. Ordinarily, unwise decisions receive critical reviews and eventually lose their force as they are over-ruled explicitly or by implication in subsequent decisions. In order for this evolution to occur, however, the Court must be presented with an opportunity to alter its earlier rulings. Recently, the Supreme Court had just such an opportunity to revisit the Albrecht rule in Atlantic Richfield Co. v. USA Petroleum (ARCO). Although the Court\u27s reasoning in ARCO severely restricts some private suits, the Court refused to overturn Albrecht directly and left standing the shell of the per se doctrine.\u27 This is unfortunate because the Albrecht precedent remains on the books even though it is at odds with the promotion of consumer welfare. Two undesirable consequences follow. First, businesses avoid some procompetitive business arrangements for fear of antitrust liability. Given that the purpose of the antitrust laws is to promote competition, this is particularly perverse. Second, the lower courts are forced to rely on standing rules as a means of rejecting claims presented by undeserving plaintiffs. In this Article we assess the implications of ARCO for the future vitality of Albrecht. In Part II we review the development and economic consequences of the Albrecht rule. In Part III we examine the judicial hostility that has developed in the lower courts toward the anticompetitive nature of the Albrecht rule. In Part IV we analyze the ARCO decision with respect to substantive antitrust policy and antitrust injury