From manuscript catalogues to a handbook of Syriac literature: Modeling an infrastructure for Syriaca.org

Despite increasing interest in Syriac studies and growing digital availability of Syriac texts, there is currently no up-to-date infrastructure for discovering, identifying, classifying, and referencing works of Syriac literature. The standard reference work (Baumstark's Geschichte) is over ninety years old, and the perhaps 20,000 Syriac manuscripts extant worldwide can be accessed only through disparate catalogues and databases. The present article proposes a tentative data model for Syriaca.org's New Handbook of Syriac Literature, an open-access digital publication that will serve as both an authority file for Syriac works and a guide to accessing their manuscript representations, editions, and translations. The authors hope that by publishing a draft data model they can receive feedback and incorporate suggestions into the next stage of the project.Comment: Part of special issue: Computer-Aided Processing of Intertextuality in Ancient Languages. 15 pages, 4 figure

Solving a fluid-plate interaction problem using finite element methods with domain decomposition strategies

This thesis studies numerically a fluid-plate interaction problem which models the coupled vibration between an acoustic field and an elastic thin plate. Since the thickness of the plate is negligible, the plate serves a dual role in the model. It is the solid medium and at the same time it is the interface between the acoustic field and the solid. Mathematically, the interaction problem is described by the acoustic wave equation in the fluid and the fourth order plate vibration equation on the plate. The pressure in the fluid and the vertical displacement of the plate are the primary variables to be solved numerically. The objectives of the thesis are to propose and to implement on computers a numerical scheme for computing the solution of the interaction problem. In the scheme, the finite element method is used for the spatial discretization, and the finite difference method is employed for the temporal discretization. The fully discrete finite element equations are then solved by using a parallelizable domain decomposition algorithm. A computer code is developed, and its efficiency and accuracy are tested on the specific examples

Knowledge Collaboration among Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims in the Abbasid Near East

This thematic section unearths several ways professionals from a variety of religious communities in the Near East collaborated with one another during the medieval period. Modern scholars of intellectual history have often attempted to trace connections in medieval texts across the religious spectrum, but it has been difficult to pin down the interpersonal circumstances behind these and other interactions. This is at least in part because scientific, philosophical, and theological treatises rarely refer to these personal relationships explicitly, leaving researchers to turn to other kinds of works for such details: biographies, chronicles, hagiographies, and documentary sources. But it then remains to come to terms with the historiographical perspectives of the authors of these works. For example, the authors of Arabic biographical dictionaries (ṭabaqāt literature) have provided some of the richest sources for person-to-person exchange in Near Eastern intellectual history, but they filter and taxonomize their subjects to focus on individuals, overwhelmingly men, who can be seen as formative for particular classes or categories (ṭabaqāt) of society. Disciplinary segmentation has made it especially difficult to answer questions such as how much »neutral« space there was in interreligious knowledge exchange in the Near East, or whether fields such as medicine became »Islamicized« through the exclusion of non-Muslims in the teaching, study, or practice of the field. The authors of the research articles here (contributors to a virtual forum hosted by the BMBF-funded »Communities of Knowledge« project) take various approaches to these problems of explicating silent sources, interpreting historiographical constructions, and bridging disciplinary segmentation. Some put particular texts under the microscope, pointing out new evidence of specific interactions on the basis of close readings or the examination of texts in a palimpsested manuscript. Some zoom out slightly on these interactions by making fresh comparisons between sources in differing genres or languages. All focus on the interreligious dimensions of exchange and, wherever possible, on the interpersonal engagements that brought these about. Reports from two research projects complement these by taking macro-level approaches that involve multiple languages, several genres, and broad regions. Overall, this thematic collection highlights the interpersonal and collaborative aspects of work by Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims during the Abbasid caliphate (132-656 AH/750-1258 CE) with the aim of stimulating new research approaches that overcome previous genre limitations and disciplinary boundaries

On the stability of the Discrete Generalized Multigroup method

This paper investigates the stability of the recondensation procedure of the Discrete Generalized Multigroup method and proposes alternatives to improve stability of the original formulation. Instabilities are shown to happen when employing a simple Picard fixed point iteration and an ill-informed group mapping scheme. This work presents a mapping procedure that improves stability of the original method for fine group calculations. Additionally, a relaxation scheme, Krasnoselskij iteration, is introduced to the fixed point iteration to further improve the stability characteristics and remove the need for fine group flux updates. Both improvements are applied on heterogeneous problems using the SHEM361 and the NG2042 group structures. The results indicate improved stability from a well-informed group mapping and demonstrate the possibility of eliminating the need for fine group flux updates.United States. Dept. of Energy. Naval Reactors Divisio

Modeling a Body of Literature in TEI: The New Handbook of Syriac Literature

The New Handbook of Syriac Literature (NHSL) is a born-digital TEI-encoded reference work for the study of Syriac literature. The first volume, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica, was published by Syriaca.org in 2016 using a simple TEI schema to describe a single genre (hagiography) (Saint-Laurent et al. 2016; see also Saint-Laurent 2016, Zanetti 2016). Past TEI-encoding practice has focused on describing specific manuscripts or creating editions of works. By contrast, the NHSL seeks to describe abstract or conceptual works (including unpublished ones) and to relate them to people, places, and other works, as well as to the manuscripts, editions, and translations that embody them. Two key features of this encoding model include using for description of works and fully leveraging @source for scholarly citations. In preparation for expanding the NHSL to include other genres, Syriaca.org is revising the TEI schema used for hagiographic works. Among other revisions, the new model will employ RDF classes and properties as @type and @ref values, respectively, in order to aid RDF serialization. The authors actively seek feedback, suggestions, and criticism concerning this revised schema

Inquiring of ‘Beelzebub’

This study juxtaposes the concerns of Catholios Timothy I (r. 780–823), leader of the Church of the East, with those of al-Jāḥiẓ (about 776–868/9), a popular Muslim writer, regarding the dangers for each community when Christians appear as plaintiffs or defendants in Islamic courts. Timothy’s Canons attempt to obviate some of the reasons Christians might voluntarily appeal to Islamic courts rather than resolving disputes within the church, and Canon 12 in particular uses a biblical turn of language to condemn this practice. By contrast, cases involving a Muslim disputant had to be tried in Islamic courts, and al-Jāḥiẓ argues that judges who mete out sentences favorable to Christians in such cases jeopardize the rightful social order of Muslims in regard to ahl al-dhimma (protected people)

Thinking in ⅃TЯ: Reorienting the Directional Assumptions of Global Digital Scholarship

Almost nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to the direction of a text—not over the course of the previous five millennia and not in today’s digital world. Texts may mix languages. Languages may mix or change writing systems. Writing systems themselves may use idiosyncratic directional practices, and writers may be rule breakers. Thus, writing direction is not inextricably bound to a text, a language, or a writing system. Ironically, in an era when technology has freed writing from many of its physical constraints, many of the digital tools for encoding and displaying text nevertheless carry a number of problematic assumptions. For example, they sometimes assume • that each input system has an inherent direction, • that right-to-left or multi-directional text is an edge case, • that code should always be written from left to right, and • that arrow keys or buttons mean “forward” and “back” rather than “left” and “right.” These assumptions about text direction ripple across entire systems, influencing infrastructure, abstract conceptions, interfaces, typography, animation, and image production. In this presentation, I will discuss some examples of technical standards for right-to-left and multi-directional texts—standards, which, to a large extent allow developers and scholars to represent such texts in suitable formats. However, when it comes to the relevant tools for inputting and presenting these texts, implementation has lagged behind these standards. In light of this mismatch between standards and implementation, I will address the question of how humanists can work with developers to achieve directionally resilient systems

Resonance treatment using the Discrete Generalized Multigroup method

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-81).In reactor physics calculations for reactor design and operations, today's methods rely on approximate models to account for resonance self-shielding effects. A multi-level approach, which includes several levels of calculations where complexity in energy is decreased as spatial complexity is increased, is employed to model nuclear reactors. However, this approach breaks down when alternate materials and reactor designs are considered. Thus, in order to simulate behavior in an unconventional system, higher fidelity methods are desired. Continuous energy or ultrafine multigroup nuclear data allows this high fidelity to be achieved but is associated with a high computational expense. This thesis proposes that the Discrete Generalized Multigroup (DGM) method is a possible means of approximating the high fidelity results associated with an ultrafine energy mesh without the high degree of computational expense. DGM maps the ultrafine group energy mesh to a coarser energy mesh, where transport calculations are performed, through a discrete expansion. Additional data-moments of the expansion-are retained to unfold an approximate ultrafine energy spectrum. A recondensation procedure is used, where the method is applied in succession, allowing details from the coarse group calculation to influence the collapse of the coarse group data. In applying DGM to an ultrafine energy mesh, prohibitive computational expense is seen to exist in the computation of moments of the scattering matrix and in the flux updates used to maintain stability. Means of reducing the computational expense associated with the scattering matrix are suggested, but left to future work. Flux updates are removed by introducing Krasnoselskij iteration and a group mapping algorithm to the DGM recondensation procedure. Krasnoselskij iteration allows recondensation to become convergent by using a portion of the previous iterate when updating the solution vector. The group mapping algorithm places coarse group boundaries where large disparities in fine group cross sections are present, enhancing the stability characteristics of recondensation. These algorithmic changes do not negatively impact the accuracy of the procedure and remove a large computational expense from the method. Ultimately, the method is deemed to be an attractive option for approximating a high fidelity solution.by Nathan A. Gibson.S.M