6,747 research outputs found
The cult of St Nicholas in medieval Italy
No full textSt Nicholas was one of the most popular saints in medieval Italy. His cult attracted the attention
of popes, kings and emperors, and his shrine at Bari became an important international pilgrimage
destination. This thesis asks how the cult of St Nicholas came to be so widespread and popular in
Italy, and why the saint attracted the attention of diverse groups and individuals.
This thesis is structured around four chapters. The first demonstrates that through a
process of Latinisation the cult of St Nicholas became integrated within Italian literary traditions
and within a new spiritual era. Chapter Two reveals that this Latinisation also occurred within the
saint’s iconography. Chapters Three and Four are case studies of the cult in Puglia and Venice,
locations which claimed possession of the saint’s relics. These case studies show that the general
developments that the cult of St Nicholas underwent in Italy, identified in Chapters One and Two,
did not apply universally. Instead, the presence of the saint’s relics resulted in a different profile
of the saint in Bari and Venice. Through the process of Latinisation, the cult of St Nicholas
became updated and remained relevant for its new Italian audience; Chapters Three and Four
show alternative ways that the cult of St Nicholas gained widespread popularity.
This thesis presents for the first time an iconographical study of St Nicholas in Italian art,
which develops existing research of the saint’s Byzantine iconography. Chapter Four presents a
profile of the cult of St Nicholas in Venice in the Middle Ages, which is a significant oversight in
the literature. The thesis uses a variety of visual and textual sources, in particular fresco and
altarpiece representations, archival documents from Venice and Rome (including the Apostolic
Visitations), and under-exploited contemporary and antiquarian Venetian sources
External interventions and the duration of civil wars
No full textThe authors combine an empirical model of external intervention, with a theoretical model of civil war duration. Their empirical model of intervention allows them to analyze civil war duration, using"expected"rather than"actual"external intervention as an explanatory variable in the duration model. Unlike previous studies, they find that external intervention is positively associated with the duration of civil war. They distinguish partial third-party interventions that extend the length of war, from multilateral"peace"operations, which have a mandate to restore peace without taking sides - and which typically take place at war's end, or at least when both sides have agreed to a cease-fire. In a future paper, the authors will examine whether partial third-party interventions - whatever their effect on a war's duration - increase the risk of war's recurrence. If that proves true, then even if interventions reduce the length of civil war, they may do so at the cost of further destabilizing the political system, and sowing the seeds of future rebellion.Children and Youth,Peace&Peacekeeping,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Post Conflict Reconstruction,International Affairs,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Social Conflict and Violence,Peace&Peacekeeping,Post Conflict Reconstruction,International Affairs
The Instability of Power Sharing
No full textThree models are presented in which two players agree to share power in a particular ratio, but either player may subsequently “fire” at the other, as in a duel, to try to eliminate it. The players have positive probabilities of eliminating each other by firing. If neither is successful, the agreement stays in place; if one is successful, that player obtains all the power; if each eliminates the other, both players get nothing. In Model I, the game is played once, and in Model II it is repeated, with discounting of future payoffs. Although there are conditions under which each player would prefer not to shoot, satisfying these conditions for one player precludes satisfying them for the other, so at least one player will always have an incentive to shoot. In anticipation, its rival would prefer to shoot, too, so there will be a race to preempt. In Model III, a damage factor caused by shooting, whether successful or not, is introduced into Model II. This mitigates the incentive to shoot but does not eliminate it entirely. The application of the models to conflicts, especially civil wars, is discussed.power sharing, repeated game, duel, civil wars
In Search of Shambhala? Nicholas Roerich’s 1934–5 Inner Mongolian Expedition
No full textDuring the 1920s and 1930s, Western visitors to Inner Mongolia came for a variety of reasons. Some came for the purpose of scholarship, others passed through on their way to visit the new ‘independent’ nation of Manchukuo, often at the invitation of the Japanese authorities. Among these visitors was Nicholas Roerich, the purpose of whose visit is still the subject of debate. Roerich’s journey through Inner Mongolia has attracted some scholarly attention, but there are still many unanswered questions about what it was that Roerich actually did while he was there, or what he hoped to achieve. This article draws on earlier studies, but analyses the available reports from the US State Department in China together with contemporary news reports, to place Roerich’s journey within the geopolitical context of the time
Talmudic Quotations in Nicholas of Lyra's Postilla Literalis
No full textThe Postilla literalis super totam Bibliam, written by Nicholas of Lyra (France, 1270- 1349) is remarkable for the extensive use of texts and oral traditions of Jewish origin made by its author. This paper deals with the place of the Talmud among the Jewish sources cited in the Postilla. For Nicholas the Talmud was a new doctrine invented by the Jews sometime in their past but believed to be divine and to be given to Moses in Sinai. When reading Nicholas' Postilla, one finds many citations from medieval Jewish sources, but very few excerpts from the Talmud except as polemic with the purpose of ridiculing and disproving them. It appears that Nicholas avoided direct Talmudic citations within the Postilla, likely due to the hostile attitudes prevalent specifically toward the Talmud within the Christian world he inhabited
Content-aware power saving multimedia adaptation for mobile learning
No full textDue to the tremendous enhancements in the capabilities of mobile devices in recent years and accessibility to higher bandwidth mobile internet, the use of online multimedia learning resources on mobile devices is increasingly becoming popular. Improvements in battery capacity have not matched the same advancements compared to other features of mobile devices. Limited Battery power is introducing a significant challenge in making better use of online educational multimedia resources. Online Multimedia Resources drains more battery power as a result of higher amount of wireless data transfer and therefore limiting learning opportunities on the move. Many power saving multimedia adaptation techniques have been suggested. Majority of these techniques achieve battery efficiency while reducing multimedia quality. So far, however, to the best of our knowledge no previous effort has considered the factor of learning efficacy in multimedia adaptation process. Existing adaptation techniques are susceptible to information loss as a result of quality of reduction. Such loss affects the learning content efficacy and jeopardizes the learning process. In this paper, we recommend a novel power save educational multimedia adaptation approach that considers the learning aspect of multimedia in the adaptation process. Our technique enables learning for extended duration by battery power saving without putting the learning process at risk. Efficacy of entire learning resources is managed by not allowing any part of the learning multimedia to be delivered in a quality that will negatively affect the learning outcome. We also present a framework that guides the implementation of our approach followed by description of our prototype application that uses educational multimedia metadata implemented in semantic web technologies
Author(s): Ezra Brown and Nicholas Loehr Source
No full textJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Why is PSL(2, 7) = GL(3, 2)? Mathematical Association of America Ezra Brown and Nicholas Loehr 1. INTRODUCTION. The groups of invertible matrices over finite fields are among the first groups we meet in a beginning course in modern algebra. Eventually, we find out about simple groups and that the unique simple group of order 168 has two representations as a group of matrices. And this is where we learn that the group of 2x2 unimodular matrices over a seven-element field, with / and -/ identified, is isomorphic to the group of invertible 3x3 matrices over a 2-element field. In short, it is a fact that PSL(2, 7) = GL(3, 2). Many of us are surprised by this fact: why should a group of 2 x 2 matrices with mod-7 integer entries be isomorphic to a group of 3 x 3 binary matrices? There are a number of proofs of this remarkable theorem. Dickson [1, p. 303] gives a proof based on his general theorem giving uniform sets of generators and relations for the family of groups SL(2, q), where q is any prime power. One checks that the relations appearing in Dickson's presentation of PSL(2, 7) are satisfied by certain generators of GL(3, 2), implying that these groups have the same presentations and are therefore isomorphic. Dummit and Foote [2, show that every simple group of order 168 is necessarily isomorphic to the automorphism group Aut(.F) of the Fano plane T. They then show that Aut(^) = GL(3, 2) and that PSL(2, 7) is a simple group of order 168; the isomorphism theorem follows. Rotman gives the result as an exercise [5, Exercise 9.26, p. 281]. A hint is to begin with a simple group G of order 168 and use the seven conjugates of a Sylow 2-subgroup P of G to construct a sevenpoint projective plane; the proof is similar to Dummit and Foote's proof. Jeurissen [4] proves the result by showing that both PSL(2, 7) and GL(3, 2) are subgroups of index 2 of the automorphism group of a Coxeter graph. Elkies The aim of this paper is to give a proof that PSL(2, 7) = GL(3, 2) that is elementary in the sense that it uses neither simplicity, nor projective geometry, nor block designs. We will not prove the fact that any two simple groups of order 168 are isomorphic, nor will we use this fact in our proof. What makes our proof work is that: (a) we can identify GL(3, 2) with the set of invertible F2-linear transformations on the finite field with eight elements; (b) 7 = 23 -1; (c) the nonzero squares mod 7 are precisely the powers of 2 mod 7; (d) squaring mod 2 is additive (the Freshman's Dream); and (e) the mapping k h+ -i/k mod 7 translates to a bit-switch mod 2 -which is linear. We begin by giving functional descriptions for both groups, determining their sizes
Cooperative virtual power plant formation using scoring rules
No full textVirtual Power Plants (VPPs) are fast emerging as a suitable means of integrating small and distributed energy resources (DERs), like wind and solar, into the electricity supply network (Grid). VPPs are formed via the aggregation of a large number of such DERs, so that they exhibit the characteristics of a traditional generator in terms of predictability and robustness. In this work, we promote the formation of such "cooperative" VPPs (CVPPs) using multi-agent technology. In particular, we design a payment mechanism that encourages DERs to join CVPPs with large overall production. Our method is based on strictly proper scoring rules and incentivises the provision of accurate predictions from the CVPPs---and in turn, the member DERs---which aids in the planning of the supply schedule at the Grid. We empirically evaluate our approach using the real-world setting of 16 commercial wind farms in the UK. We show that our mechanism incentivises real DERs to form CVPPs, and outperforms the current state of the art payment mechanism developed for this problem
Field trials and development of a hydrostatic pressure machine
No full textHydrostatic Pressure Machines (HPM), are a class of hydropower energy converter designed to operate at sites with heads below 3 meters; sites receiving increasing interest as the demand for power from renewable energy sources grows.The HPM is a ‘Pressure machine’, applying the pressure produced by differing water levels at a site, directly to the blades of the device to extract power. Prior to the current research, these machines had only existing as laboratory models.This thesis describes the design, construction and testing of a 5 kW prototype HPM installed at a re-activated mill site in Bavaria. Observations and performance test results from this full scale unit are then compared with the results of scale model tests carried out in the laboratory.New theory is developed to account for the geometry of the prototype machine and the variations in water levels encountered during operation. This is found to give very good agreement with performance measurements from both prototype and model tests, with no scale effects identified between the scales over the normal operating range of the machine.Several alternative rotor designs are tested at model scale, which demonstrate useful performance gains compared with the prototype machine.Direct blade force and cell pressure measurements are also obtained during model operation which has increased our understanding of the energy exchanges taking place between rotor and fluid within the machine. This in turn helps to identify the key machine geometries which impact performance
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