VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Metaphysics as an Aristotelian science

The dissertation's primary task is to discern to what extent the investigations contained in Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' conform to the model of science (<math> <f> <a><ac><g>3</g></ac><ac>&d13;</ac></a><g>p</g><g>s</g><g>t</g> <a><ac><g>h</g></ac><ac>&d12;</ac></a><g>m</g><g>h</g></f> </math>) developed in the 'Posterior Analytics'. It concludes that the 'Metaphysics' substantially follows the model of the ' Analytics' in studying the causes and attributes of a specific nature, although it makes significant departures especially in its conception of the principles of being and substance. Two introductory chapters discuss respectively Aristotle's conception of science in the 'Analytics' and the problems one is likely to face in attempting to apply this conception to the 'Metaphysics '. Chapter 3 clarifies the meaning of the phrase "science of being qua being" by reference to the 'Posterior Analytics', and introduces the concept of <math> <f> <g>p</g><g>r</g><a><ac>o</ac><ac>&d13;</ac></a><g>v</g><hsp sp="0.265"> <a><ac><g>3</g></ac><ac>&d3;</ac></a><g>n</g></f> </math> equivocity. Chapter 4 considers the role of dialectic in metaphysics with particular reference to the principle of noncontradiction. Chapter 5 argues that the second part of 'Meta'. 4.2 introduces a demonstrative science of the per se attributes of being and unity. Chapter 6 introduces the investigation into the principles and causes of being ('Meta' 6.1)and reviews the aporias about the principles ('Meta'. 3.3-6). Chapter 7 offers a hypothesis to explain Aristotle's identification of the science of being with first philosophy. The last two chapters (8 and 9) argue that Aristotle is pursuing this investigation in the central books of 'Melaphysics', but his pursuit of the investigation there is incomplete. This interpretation provides an alternative to those of T. H. Irwin and Walter Leszl, who argue that metaphysics is a second-order discipline and not a science after the model of the 'Analytics'. It finds explicit support in recent work by Robert Bolton and Alan Code, while widening the range of issues to include the attributes of being and the importance of first philosophy for understanding the nature of being. It supports many of the conclusions of Joseph Owens's, Urbain Dhondt's, and Frede and Patzig's work on the object of metaphysics. There are also substantial discussions of the contributions of G. E. L. Owen, J. G. Stevenson, Theodore Scaltsas, and John Thorp.
Feminine alienation in education, seeking a redressing of the status quo

Jane Roland Martin demonstrated how women are educated into the male cognitive perspective. To be female and educated means the alienation from the feminine. This thesis looks at the underlying forces that allow the existence and perpetuation of feminine alienation. An understanding of the nature of group membership is essential in comprehending domination and oppression. The relationship between domination and oppression maintains what Isis Marion Young labels "cultural imperialism". The norms of the dominant group (of which the masculine has membership) then are the norms of society and thus feminine alienation results. The Ethic of Care seeks a way to overcome what Young labels cultural imperialism and Martin entitles the male cognitive perspective. Nel Noddings' theory of care serves as the benchmark. Noddings' theory falls short and Martin's ' Schoolhome' moves further towards an answer to oppression and feminine alienation. However, a clear-cut solution is found in the future development of Martin's theory and the acceptance of Young's group relation theory.
Goodness of fit tests in logistic regression

The statistical analysis of dichotomous outcome variables is often interpreted with the use of logistic regression methods. After fitting a model to the observed data, one of the next essential steps is to investigate how well the proposed model fits the observed data. One method which is used to determine the suitability of the fitted logistic model is a goodness of fit test statistic. Theoretical background, advantages and disadvantages of 6 selected goodness of fit statistics will be examined in detail in this thesis. The logistic regression goodness of fit tests will be examined by performing logistic regression on several randomly generated data sets. This thesis will attempt to determine the different characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of the goodness of fit statistics.
Prooftext as pretext, the strategem of scriptural and midrashic citation in Maimonides' Guide of the perplexed

The method of esotericism, is particularly crucial for deciphering the writings of the medieval Jewish philosopher and jurist Moses Maimonides (1135-204). The obscurity of the material is compounded by his explicitly admitted use of devices such as contradiction, so that only those possessed of a high degree of philosophical sophistication will have the qualifications to decode the text. Scant scholarly attention has been paid to the manner in which rabbinic midrash and scriptural citations are utilized to convey those positions meant for the appropriately targeted reader. Through a series of studies, this thesis undertakes a comprehensive analysis of Maimonides' use of rabbinic and scriptural sources adduced as prooftexts with a view to demonstrating that, far from being mere prooftexts, they are really vehicles for the accomplishment of Maimonides' esoteric enterprise. The context of the original source material; parallel treatment of identical sources in different compositions, both legal and philosophical; traditional understanding of those sources prior to Maimonides; incongruity of prooftext to text; and contemporary literary theory are some of the tools by which the thesis shall be proven. Without a close reading of all biblical and rabbinic citations in the 'Guide' its multilayered structure cannot be penetrated to arrive at its core meaning. At the same time one of the goals of this thesis is to distinguish Maimonides as a uniquely Jewish thinker as opposed to a mere expositor of the Aristotelian tradition. The series of studies through which this thesis is demonstrated focus on the following: (1) Passages from 'Midrash Rabbah ' cited in the Introduction reflecting on the parabolic method of midrash and scripture. (2) Retrieval of the secret submerged in the prophetic parable of Jacob's ladder via various scriptural prooftexts and midrashic citations interspersed throughout the Guide, to reveal a heterodox view of divine providence. (3) A complex weave of text and Scriptural prooftext dealing exhaustively with the term "trial" ('nisayon') which transforms the chapter into an esoteric link between the sections on providence and those on the rationale for the commandments.
Participation, gender and politics in institutions of rural reform, a comparative study in northern Nigeria

Since the 1980s, major rural institutional reforms have been implemented in Northern Nigeria. These include the Better Life for Rural Women Program, the Directorate of Food, Road, and Rural Infrastructure and the North East Arid Zone Development Program (NEAZDP). The first two programs are funded by the Nigerian Government while the third is funded mainly through a loan and grant of the European union. These programs have commitment to grassroots development and expansion of local public spaces. This is a comparison of the implementation strategies of the three institutions in two communities of Dagona and Machina. The thesis demonstrates that comparatively, NEAZDP, more than the other institutions, has succeeded in achieving its objectives. However, NEAZDP's success is demonstrated more in Dagona than Machina. I explain the variations in the performances of the three institutions and the two communities from an institutional-contextual perspective. The institutional variables are autonomy, strategy and resources while the contextual variables are historical-political pattern, socio-economic inequality and identity politics. NEAZDP has more resources, a bottom-up strategy and enjoys greater autonomy while the other two institutions are almost opposite of NEAZDP. On the other hand, Dagona is more egalitarian, has a more recent history and has less contentious ethnic and partisan politics. Machina is almost opposite of Dagona. However, in both women we subordinated.
The role of diet in regulating reproductive success and contaminant accumulation in Great Lakes herring gulls (Larus argentatus)

The Canadian Wildlife Service's Great Lakes Herring Gull Monitoring Program has been extremely successful in documenting contaminant sources, effects, and temporal trends. However, it has also allowed us to evaluate the impact of other environmental stressors on the Great Lakes ecosystem. In this study, the role of diet quality in regulating the success of Great Lakes herring gull populations was examined. Lake Superior birds were found to have a lower proportion of fish in their diet than birds on Lakes Erie and Ontario. Stable nitrogen and carbon isotope analysis verified inter-colony dietary differences and identified temporal changes in diet composition. These spatial and temporal differences in diet likely reflected differences in fish availability to the gull. When fish were available, gulls consumed them preferentially, when they were not, other food items were substituted. Amino acid analysis of herring gull blood plasma revealed that protein was less available on the Lake Superior colonies than on colonies located on the lower Great Lakes. An index of plasma amino acid concentrations was correlated with colony-wide estimates of reproductive endpoints indicating that foods replacing fish may have been of inferior quality. Productivity in Great Lakes herring gulls is an important factor regulating the viability of populations. A number of diet-related endpoints (adult body condition, clutch volume and intra-clutch variation in egg volume) were examined as indicators of productivity. Body condition was found to be relatively insensitive while both egg volume endpoints were correlated with colony-wide estimates of reproductive success. Herring gull productivity at some Great Lakes colonies appears to be limited by the availability of high-quality food. The Herring Gull Monitoring Program has been instrumental in evaluating temporal declines in contaminant levels. However, further research is required to improve our understanding of the factors that regulate annual perturbations in contaminant concentrations so that we can accurately assess our progress in eliminating environmental contaminants from the Great Lakes. In this study, biotic (diet, migration) and abiotic (weather) factors were found to be important in regulating contaminant concentrations in Great Lakes herring gull eggs.
Dante's Life of Dante, the Divine Comedy as autobiography

This thesis proposes a comprehensive autobiographical reading of Dante's ' Divina Commedia.' The first chapter considers the notion of self and the narratology of life-writing in the Middle Ages, concluding that the ' Commedia' is Dante's story, or more precisely Dante's stor' ies.' The second chapter looks at the 'Vita nuova' as Dante's first attempt at autobiography. The use of religious imagery, the evocation of biblical analogy, and the adoption of classical literary devices within the context of a lyric work are examined as is the framework Dante creates with the "Book of Memory" to tell the story of his love for Beatrice. The third chapter, therefore, looks at Dante's political work, the ' Convivio' in its relationship to the 'Vita nuova' and examines how the 'Convivio' revises the earlier effort. Here Dante rethinks Beatrice's role and considers the effects of exile. We see Dante's first attempt to reconcile the personal and social aspects of his life. The 'Convivio,' however, remained unfinished and the reconciliation was not resolved satisfactorily. Chapters 4 and 5 look at how Dante's love story and political story are expressed in the 'Commedia.' Chapter 4 examines how Dante uses the 'Commedia' to rewrite the 'Vita nuova' and to present a revised version of his love story. The chapter considers the role of the framing metaphor, the journey, in effecting the revision Dante first attempted in the 'Convivio.' Similarly, Chapter 5 looks at the political story introduced in the 'Convivio' and its absorption and revision by the 'Commedia.' It considers as well, how the intersection of Dante's own particular story and its universal significance effects the reconciliation of both aspects of his life within a greater cosmic scheme. The thesis shows that the 'Commedia' picks up where the ' Vita nuova' and the 'Convivio' left off and represents the culmination of Dante's life-long project of self-examination while presenting not only Dante's vision of world history but of his own. In the 'Commedia ' Dante critiques the lives of others and his own life as well. The ' Commedia' is a self-portrait intended for public display and, therefore, may legitimately be considered as autobiography.
Thermal desorption of hydrogen with phase transition, statistical rate theory approach

A method is presented for predicting the values of temperature and surface coverage at which a surface phase formed by homogeneously adsorbed atoms become an unstable phase. It is shown that a necessary condition for the intrinsic stability of such a phase can be expressed in terms of the partial derivative of the chemical potential of the atoms in the adsorbed phase. To construct the expression for this function, the canonical partition function is obtained for an atomically adsorbed system. It is found that the adatoms can be approximated as three dimensional harmonic oscillators with coverage dependent frequencies and potential. To determine the coverage dependent functions appearing in the chemical potential expression, the measured isotherms are used. To examine the procedure quantitatively, it is applied to examine H 2-Ni(100) and H2-Ni(110). It is predicted that the former does not undergo phase transitions as a result of adsorption, but that the latter can. These predictions are in agreement with the available, qualitative experimental evidence. To examine these predictions, the expression for the chemical potential has been used in the statistical rate theory (SRT) approach and an expression for the net rate of adsorption developed. This rate expression was then used in a procedure to predict the temperature programmed desorption (TPD) spectrua. Certain features of the TPD spectrum can be predicted and these may be critically compared with the measurements. In particular, it was found that the phase transition in the H2-Ni(110) system produces a sharp change in dependence of the maximal temperature on initial coverage. Previously this change had been attributed to a change in the "order" of the kinetics, but in SRT procedure no such empirical parameter enters theory. The developed approach is used for the H2-W(100) system. A method is presented to estimate the coverage dependence of the potential for this system by using one TPD spectrum. When this function is used in the expression for the chemical potential, a first order phase transition on the surface at coverages above 1.1 is predicted. The SRT equations are used to obtain the TPD spectra for this system. Two distinguishable peaks in the TPD spectra are predicted. The maximal temperature for the first peak is found to be independent of the initial coverage after a certain value. Both predictions are in agreement with the experimental results.
Characterization of epitope-tagged dopamine D¦4 receptors

The dopamine D4 receptor is a polymorphic G protein-coupled receptor with a high affinity for antipsychotics. This thesis describes the characterization of several wildtype and mutant forms of the D4 receptor. A tagged D4 containing an amino-terminal FLAG or HA epitope sequence had unaltered ligand binding and functional coupling compared with untagged receptors. HA-tagged D4 was also shown to couple to the MAPK cascade, which represents a previously undescribed signalling pathway for this receptor. Western blotting detected the presence of glycosylated and unglycosylated forms of the tagged receptors. Three receptors with mutations in the third cytoplasmic loop were also studied. Two receptors with deletions in the third intracellular loop had normal ligand binding, but both were functionally impaired. Deletion of residues 221–337 (Δ221–337) from D4.4 completely abolished the inhibition of forskolin-stimulated cAMP by the receptor, while Δ221–315 retained coupling but was less effective than full-length D4. A third mutant containing a point mutation (M345A) near the sixth trans-membrane domain of D4.4 had defective ligand binding.
Automatic compilation of field programmable custom compute accelerators

High performance can be obtained on field-programmable custom computers for applications by implementing computational kernels in hardware. Significant speedups can be obtained by mapping time critical computations in the source program in hard-wired logic, and creating multiple specialized functional units in FPGAs to exploit parallelism in the program. However, design of these machines is an expensive and time consuming task and must be performed once for each given application. This dissertation describes a compiler, 'PECompiler', that generates both hardware and control software for field-programmable compute accelerators. The first goal of our compiler is to automate the design process of implementing a specialized computer for each given application. The second goal of the compiler is to exploit intrinsic parallelism in the source program that contains irregular patterns of computations. To attain these goals, we introduced a new design methodology for configurable custom computers, and created a parameterized architecture for modeling hardware features of accelerators. Through compiling the source code of an application together with part of its input, 'PECompiler' can determine the specialized processing units required by an application program, create design descriptions, expose hidden parallelism by analyzing data dependencies in the source code, and produce instruction sequences to run on the customized accelerator. Partial evaluation is the key technique that enables the compiler to optimize source code using part of the program's input. In order to generate the instructions for each application, we developed a heuristic algorithm to determine an optimized sequence for the computations to execute on the accelerator. We also developed a new algorithm to handle register allocations during the process of scheduling operations to run on the accelerator. We used 'PECompiler' to generate designs of customized accelerators for two applications, and compared the performance of each program running on the accelerator with the program running on the general-purpose computer. The results of the experiments showed that significant speedups were achieved for both applications. To provide the insight for designers for implementing the accelerators on an FCCM, we also studied several architectural issues in the accelerators, and demonstrated the impact to the performance caused by these issues.
An analysis of some inference procedures derived via relative surprise

This thesis is concerned with the concept of relative surprise as a technique for deriving inferences. Further refinements in the development of relative surprise are made beyond those presented in Evans (1997). Relative surprise is applied to the normal location-scale model and the properties of the inferences derived are studied. Similarly relative surprise is applied to the one factor random effects model and inferences are derived for the intraclass correlation coefficient. The thesis develops a technique for using the distribution of the cross-validational observed relative surprise under all possible splits for model checking, hyperparameter estimation and model selection inferences.
The Saint-Vaast Bible, politics and theology in eleventh-century Capetian France

Arras BM MS 559 (435) is a three-volume Bible of grand dimensions produced during the first half of the eleventh century at the monastery of Saint-Vaast, in the city of Arras in Northern France. It includes an elaborate programme of twenty-four figural scenes illustrating many parts of the Old and New Testaments. There is no precedent for a work of this kind surviving from the earlier, Carolingian scriptorium of Saint-Vaast, and no contemporary Bible from Northern Europe offers as complex a programme. This thesis is the first contextual study of the programme as a whole. The Saint-Vaast Bible is the first of a series of Bibles produced in Northern France in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries within monasteries connected to the reform of Richard of Saint-Vanne. All of these Bibles lack the Gospels and Psalter, and several include evidence that they were created specifically for the newly revived practice of choir and refectory reading in reformed monasteries. The Saint-Vaast Bible's pictorial programme reflects another aspect of Richard of Saint-Vanne's monastic reform, his willingness to submit his monasteries to the authority of the local bishop, through its depiction of a glorified bishop before the Book of Jeremiah. Much of the Bible's cycle of images parallels the writings associated with Bishop Gerard of Cambrai, particularly the 'Acta Synodi Atrebatensis ' and the 'Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensium'. Both texts encapsulate Gerard's belief in the divine origin of the offices of king and bishop, an ideology then under attack with the rise of feudalism. The artists of the Saint-Vaast Bible's pictorial programme used the images of prototypical Old and New Testament leaders to visualize this belief by investing these figures with Christological attributes and anachronistic regalia. The Arras Bible also includes a series of images of Old Testament women who embodied the virtues of an idealised queen, according to Carolingian and contemporary Capetian beliefs. Using biblical women who were interpreted as types of 'Ecclesia' in biblical exegesis and writings on queenship, the artists attempted to underline the appropriate duties of a queen as the wife of the king, himself a type of Christ.