220 research outputs found
\u3ci\u3eFaits Accomplis\u3c/i\u3e in the Shadow of Shifting Power
No full textThe military fait accompli is so understudied a phenomenon in the international relations literature that even its definition is not widely known. A fait accompli is a unilateral revision to the status quo in an ongoing dispute over some distribution of benefits. Though recent work has demonstrated that faits accomplis are relatively common events in international history and current international relations, the subject remains undertheorized and empirically underexplored. This dissertation seeks to open up the conversation about faits accomplis in two complementary ways. First, it advances an original formal model of faits accomplis in the shadow of power shifts, interacting the effects of dynamic power on a rising state’s decision to use faits accomplis to revise the status quo in an ongoing territorial dispute. Second, it tests the predictions of the theoretical model against the evidence amassed in two cases of territorial disputes, China’s maritime territorial disputes with its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea, and those with Japan in the East China Sea.
The dissertation aims contribute to the international relations literature at three levels of generality: China’s security strategies, the security dynamics of East and Southeast Asia, and the growing body of work on faits accomplis in security studies. I offer and apply a coherent structural explanation of China’s behavior in the South China Sea while also providing insight into when and where we might expect faits accomplis in other contexts, and under what conditions such faits accomplis may give rise to war
New Under the Sun? Reframing the Gray Zone in International Security
No full textInterstate war has been on the decline since the end of the Second World War. After the Cold War ended without a grand conflagration, civil conflicts and the war on terrorism have appeared to displace interstate war as the most pressing loci of security studies. Interstate aggression has become untenable, some have argued. Cooperative grievance resolution and the powerful incentives of economic interdependence have produced a decline in the outbreak of war. Revered scholars of international security have even asked whether we should bother studying the phenomenon anymore. Intrastate conflicts, it seems, are the order of the day. We argue that the contraction of interstate war is more a function of the weight we have accorded 20th century warfare in our conceptualization of interstate war than a real decrease in states’ willingness to employ force to achieve foreign policy ends. A broader approach to interstate war is needed to capture a more consistent conceptualization of the phenomenon. We suggest a framework under which gray zone strategies represent not an emergent phenomenon but a longstanding set of tools within the broader phenomenon of interstate conflict
Typology-aware neural dependency parsing : challenges and directions
No full textThis electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February, 2020Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 39-41).This thesis explores the task of leveraging typology in the context of cross-lingual dependency parsing. While this linguistic information has shown great promise in pre-neural parsing, results for neural architectures have been mixed. The aim of the investigation put forth in this thesis is to better understand this state-of-the-art. Our main findings are as follows: 1) The benefit of typological information is derived from coarsely grouping languages into syntactically-homogeneous clusters rather than from learning to leverage variations along individual typological dimensions in a compositional manner; 2) Typology consistent with the actual corpus statistics yields better transfer performance; 3) Typological similarity is only a rough proxy of cross-lingual transferability with respect to parsing. Code for the work in this thesis is available at https://github.com/ajfisch/TypologyParser.by Adam Fisch.S.M.S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Scienc
Finding human origins from biblical theology 1-6
No full textA loosely organised 6-part blog series in which I develop a biblical theology, based largely on the work of John Sailhamer and Seth Postell. In this theology the existence of human beings alongside and before Adam is suggested to have been assumed by the inspired author(s). The work is designed to develop the Genealogical Adam Theory proposed by Joshua Swamidass as being a plausible understanding of the text as originally intended, rather than as an "accommodationist" hypothesis to assimilate Scripture to present scientific understanding
Biblical motives from the Book of Joshua and Book of Judges in the Hours about the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary
No full textThe aim of the article is better understanding of the Hours concerning the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. Following motives from the books of Joshua and Judges were taken into consideration: The light from Gabaon (Joshua 10, 10–13), Gedeon’s fleece (Judges 6, 36–40), Samson’s honeycomb (Judges 14, 1–11). After the discussion of the above mentioned three texts we may ascertain that the author of Hours about the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary with accurate aim refers the texts to the Most Holy Virgin Mary. Mary is the light from Gabaon, which showed people that he, whose mother she is, will make a salvation, the real victory that had been expected since Adam and Eve’s times. Moreover, she is the fleece of Gedeon because God made her a wonderful exception as among people only she was not stained by a sin. Furthermore, she is Samson’s honeycomb as inside her the one who is our Savior and our best food was born
Needs Salt
No full textResearcher Joshua Lang investigates the development of the Eden narrative in western culture. Near the beginning of the book of Genesis, the Eden narrative provides a lens to culturally significant elements of early Hebrew culture. Genesis illustrates early Hebrew culture’s relationship with the natural world, sex, sin, judgment, and death. Similarly, John Milton’s retelling of the narrative in Paradise Lost divulges information about the culture that Milton lived in, as well as a great deal about the author himself. Milton’s blindness, and his opinions on heteronormative marriage, Protestantism, sin, judgment, and death are evident in the text. In Paradise Lost, Milton expands and develops the Edenic plot and characters. Milton’s Adam and Eve both have dreams. These dreams serve several literary functions, and have been the topic of intense scholarship. Lang uses the Edenic couple’s dreams, staged as a dream ballet, to make commentary on his relationship with sin and judgment. Lang argues that vices may not be our downfall, but can have redemptive qualities, offering joy and identity to the sinner’s life
Autonomous ground-based robotic navigation for an agricultural row crop environment
No full textThe research presented in this thesis is focused on the navigation technique for an
autonomous ground-based robotic system for use in an agricultural row crop environment. The
performance of the navigational system was evaluated by measuring the offset of the robot’s path
to a predetermined path. It is found through a total of ten field tests that utilizing highly accurate
GPS systems results in the greatest navigation accuracy, with an average offset of 3.56-inches.
During the agricultural growing season, many row crops produce a canopy that restricts the
ability to observe and measure the various atmospheric and biological processes that take place
beneath the canopy, affect the various growth stages of the plant, and ultimately alter the crop
yield. The increasing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for agricultural purposes has
increased our ability to monitor crop growth. Mainly due to cost limitations, however, most
studies on the interaction of environmental factors on plant growth are focused on end-point
measurements. Ground-based robotic technologies provide a new method for obtaining
measurements that give insight into the effect of environmental factors that affect plants during
many different stages of a plant’s growth cycle. Furthermore, much more frequent analysis and
modeling of the crops can be obtained using a ground-based robotic approach. This allows for
more accurate yield estimations as the great number of varying conditions make yield
estimations derived from fewer measurements much more difficult and complex.
One of the greatest drawbacks to using a UAV approach to monitor and estimate crop
growth and yield is the lack of sensing in the sub-canopy environment. Other drawbacks include
the necessity for high-cost localization hardware used to facilitate navigation. In order to
overcome the limitations of aerial-based sensing, this work proposes a low-cost ground-based
solution for sub-canopy monitoring. This research focuses specifically on the rover navigation
technique, which is a main aspect in the foundation of the proposed project.
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The navigation method employed in this study was evaluated in both laboratory and
agricultural settings. This was, in part, an effort to help simulate the various terrain and
environmental conditions that may be experienced in a real life setting. Utilizing various types of
navigation methods, the ability of each method to successfully navigate through the rows of a
field was quantified by analyzing the deviation from the ideal path, or a straight line, as
commonly seen in row crop settings.
A total of ten straight-line tests were conducted, each with slightly different navigational
parameters and configurations. GPS waypoints were used to instruct the robot to drive in a
straight line for 10-meter segments.
The results of this study indicate that a Real Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS system provides
the greatest accuracy and ability for row crop navigation, with an average offset from the desired
path of 3.56-inches. This solution also provides an opportunity for applying ground-based
navigational solutions for various projects that may require frequent and detailed measurements
obtained by on-board sensors. This research is important to researchers because it provides a
low-cost autonomous robotic navigational system that can be used in a wide range of projects,
such as the continuous monitoring of the sub-canopy environment of a row crop field.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2017-12-01The student, Adam Burns, accepted the attached license on 2015-12-02 at 19:07.The student, Adam Burns, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2015-12-02 at 19:10.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2015-12-03 at 11:15.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #8914 on 2016-03-02 at 14:07:43Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-02T20:24:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
BURNS-THESIS-2015.pdf: 1712235 bytes, checksum: ab315e4e5fbdca0cd24cf50dd9ae78a6 (MD5)
LICENSE.txt: 4207 bytes, checksum: 5b1c6e2f76d3852501ea57aabcba33ea (MD5)
Previous issue date: 2015-12-03Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 91344
Lift date: 2018-03-02T20:24:31Z
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The Role of Hell in Various Universalistic Theologies with Special Reference to the Theology of George MacDonald
No full textDegree Awarded: Ph.D. Systematic Theology. The Catholic University of AmericaA significant tension exists regarding the existence and purpose of hell between the majority Christian tradition and the Universalist tradition within Christianity. Seeking a resolution of that tension, this dissertation examines the use of hell in three main types of Christian Universalism and evaluates this usage using five criteria: Consonance of the use of hell with paradigmatic elements of scripture, the permanence of hell, impetus for evangelization in light of the use of hell, hell's discontinuity with creation, and the possibility of hell for persons other than Christ. The three models evaluated are the Pedagogical Model characterized by Origen, the Christocentric Model characterized by Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the Moral Impetus Model characterized by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Raymund Schwager. These three models are demonstrated to each be strong in some areas of evaluation, but weak in other areas.In response to the weaknesses of each of the models examined, the author begins to explore the theology of the nineteenth century author and preacher George MacDonald, who believed that Christ would save all people. A chapter is dedicated to exploring MacDonald's theology of revelation as well as his theological anthropology. These two aspects of his theology are then followed by a description of his understanding of hell which answers many of the problems which exist in other models of hell. He is shown to be strong in the criteria of consonance with scripture, impetus for evangelization, hell's discontinuity with creation, and the possibility of hell for those other than Christ.To address possible questions of permanence in MacDonald's theology of hell, and to work forward to bring MacDonald's theology into dialog with contemporary discussions of universalism and eschatology, the final chapter takes as its point of departure the ancient image of the eschatological community of God going out to see the punishments of the damned and to rejoice over them. A theory of revelation as persons is put forward in continuity with MacDonald's revelatory anthropology as a way to address problems of identity in the community of the blessed and the reality of hell. Drawing on Johannine and Pauline descriptions of identity change, the author demonstrates a permanence of final condemnation of the "old Adam" in the permanent presence of the blessed community
Symmetry principles and magnetic symmetry in solid state physics
No full textGroup theory and symmetry are important concepts in solid state physics, but are not widely taught because of the mathematical complexities involved. This book aims to remedy this by using a practical approach which bypasses most of the abstruse detail of formal group theory. The subject is usually developed using abstract entities, but here the author uses concrete examples to aid understanding in his development of the basics of the subject. This makes the book an ideal text for senior undergraduate and graduate students. The book is divided into two parts. Part one introduces the reader to group theoretical techniques and applications via the extensive use of character tables. All topics required for a complete understanding of group theory in the context of solid state physics are covered. The author demonstrates clearly how symmetry arguments can be applied to give detailed insights into the physical properties of crystals. This part ends with a selection of applications which will prove useful to solid state physicists/chemists and materials scientists. Each chapter includes a set of problems with hints and solutions. Part two is self-contained and deals with applications of group theory to the study of the symmetry properties of strongly magnetic crystals. This is a topic usually omitted from group theory texts at this level. Symmetry Principles and Magnetic Symmetry in Solid State Physics is a comprehensive introduction to the subject. It will be of great use to all students of condensed matter and materials science
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