7424 research outputs found
Sort by
Balzac, Literary Sociologist (book review)
Get PDFA review of Balzac, Literary Sociologist by Allan H. Pasco is presented
Doubt
Get PDFThis memoir chronicles a journey of faith. The narrator focuses on fundamental questions of existence while tackling the everyday difficulties of growing up. A fundamentalist Christian upbringing leaves little room for doubt. However, questions arise that the narrator cannot answer simply by opening her Bible. When she leaves her small town in Iowa for college, tiny cracks in her faith that she once easily stepped over become impassable canyons. She must face the reality that her worldview might be wrong. When she decides to follow the line of questioning her doubts have pulled her towards, she discovers a meaningful life apart from the fundamentalist Christianity of her childhood
Between the Phases of the Moon
Get PDFThis is a novel about a young boy on the cusp of puberty who discovers that his parents are part of a cult of witches. He runs away to escape both the implications of this discovery and, because of his prejudices toward magic, the power growing inside of him
Sacred Dictators: A Wholly Unholy Relationship between Dictatorships and Religious Leaders
Get PDFHow a single party and personal dictatorship survive has been a question of much debate among scholars. Geddes (1999, 2003) creates a model to determine which survives the longest. Within her model, she finds that a single party dictatorship – one with a party apparatus – survives longer than a personal dictatorship – one where a single person has sole policymaking ability. She argues that the fundamental difference between the two is how each treats the opposition. The party apparatus allows a single party dictatorship the means to silence the opposition by coopting it into the party structure whereas a personal dictatorship must rely on the wealthy and military to keep any opposition at bay. With a single party dictatorship being able to coalesce the opposition, this dictatorship is more stable and survives longer. I agree with Geddes’ reasoning and seek to clarify how this situation works in Sub-Saharan Africa. I argue that a single party dictatorship can silence and use religious leaders in the opposition to gain support from the religious leaders’ followers. This additional support from the religious leaders and the followers makes single party dictatorships survive longer than personal dictatorships in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this research, I explain the importance of religion as a variable for dictatorship survival research in Sub-Saharan Africa. I show that religious leaders have a certain level of control over followers and if coopted by a dictatorship, religious leaders’ control garners support among followers. I further explain how religious leaders are in the opposition and therefore can only be coopted by a single party dictatorship. I conclude by showing that religious leaders increase a single party dictatorship’s survival likelihood
Automating the Detection of Precipitation and Wind Characteristics in Navy Ocean Acoustic Data
Get PDFA challenge in Underwater Acoustics is identifying the independent variables associated with an environment’s ambient noise. A strict definition of ambient noise would focus on non-transient signatures and exclude transient impacts from marine mammals, pelagic fish species, man-made sources, or weather events such as precipitation or wind speeds. Recognizing transient signatures in acoustic spectra is an essential element for providing environmental intelligence to the U.S. Navy, specifically the acoustic signatures from meteorological events. While weather event detection in acoustic spectra has been shown in previous studies, leveraging these concepts via U.S. Navy assets is largely an unknown. Environmental intelligence collection can be improved by detecting precipitation events and establishing wind velocities with acoustic signatures. This will further improve meteorological models by enabling validation from both manned and unmanned sub-surface assets
In Response to Totalitarianism: The Hawkish Cold War Foreign Diplomacy of the Europeans Kissinger and Brzezinski during American Détente
Get PDFDespite historians describing the 1970s as a time of détente, both National Security Advisors that dominated America’s foreign policy pursued harsh stances against the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski sabotaged peace talks in order help the United States keep its edge against the other world superpower. Most historians point to the similarities between these two men, but what is most often left out of the narrative is that both men witnessed persecution at the hands of totalitarian governments: Kissinger by the Nazis and Brzezinski by both the Nazis and the Soviets. This influence is strong in their first works written at Harvard University, where they met Dr. Carl J. Friedrich and Hannah Arendt, both German émigrés. This paper will explore how European intellectuals, as well as their own European heritage, predisposed both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski in their hawkish stances against the Soviet Union
The Power of Leaving: Black Agency and the Great Migration in Louisiana, 1890 - 1939
Get PDFThe Great Migration is the largest self-initiated movement of Black Americans in United States history. By leaving behind the rural areas which were familiar but offered little or no opportunities for advancement out of poverty and journeying to major urban centers, Blacks were able to exercise their individual and collective agency. Many thousands of Black Southerners chose to remain below the Mason-Dixon line: the populations of Atlanta, Houston, and New Orleans swelled during the 1910s and through the 1930s, due largely to an influx of Blacks from other areas of the South. These stories often get lost among the millions of other records about migration to the North. New Orleans offered an enticing compromise between remaining in rural poverty and relocating thousands of miles from home: Black Louisianans could stay relatively close to loved ones while gaining new opportunities for employment and economic stability. Furthermore, the city’s vibrancy and reputation for Black solidarity and community support helped draw those who sought to escape the race-based violence of the Jim Crow countryside. Lastly, New Orleans’ Black neighborhoods had always been and continued to act as hotbeds of cultural evolution, and in areas such as the Tremé and Central City, it was easy to find others who shared similar backgrounds and values. Louisiana’s Great Migration helped stimulate Black culture within New Orleans and across the nation
Study of Magnetization Switching in Coupled Magnetic Nanostructured Systems using a Tunnel Diode Oscillator
Get PDFStatic techniques to measure different magnetic properties of coupled magnetic nanostructured systems is researched and documented with an extensive analysis of the tunnel diode oscillator (TDO). The VSM was used to obtain the major hysteresis loop for the samples and the TDO was used to measure the magnetic susceptibility. The magnetic susceptibility was employed to conceive the static critical curve.
The thesis describes both equipments, VSM and TDO, that were used to obtain data for our experiments. Albeit a more comprehensive outlook on the TDO is provided. The theoretical functionality of TDO, previous successful applications for experiments, and the physical setup in the laboratory is explored. The novel addition of the double Helmholtz coil in this setup is described. The viability of replacement of the big electromagnet and the advantages of the Helmholtz coil are discussed.
Magnetization dynamics in a series of FeCoB/Ru/FeCoB synthetic antiferromagnetic samples were investigated via reversible susceptibility measurements acquired through the TDO. The major hysteresis loop generated by the VSM were used to calculate the coercivity and magnetic saturation of the sample.
The VSM and TDO were subsequently used to explore the magnetization switching in a di_erent coupled magnetic system, the exchange bias samples. A range of NiFe/FeMn samples were studied with varying thickness of the antiferromagnetic layer
Comparing Monarchical Use of Religion and Popular Responses in England and Russia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Get PDFThis thesis compares the use of religion by Russian and English monarchies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the response of the public in each country. It examines official religion in each state, as well as the kinds of toleration each extended to other religions. In both cases, the outlook of the monarchy changed over the course of the period under study; while both monarchies clearly understood the key role religion played in the lives of their subjects and the power it afforded the state and its sovereigns, the “official” use of religion continued in Russia and ultimately dwindled in England in the eighteenth century. The fate of competing religious tendencies in each society also contrasted during these key centuries.
Drawing on scholarly literature on religion and politics in Russia and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this essay argues that the two cases can be usefully contrasted. One country, Russia, focused on changing religious forms of practice, while the other, England, focused more on changing the substance of the religion itself. The Russian monarchy explicitly sought to use religion as a tool, preserving its position in society and the people’s beliefs. The monarchy in England sought to make substantive changes in religious belief and worship, clearing the way for the rise of other popular religions