The cyber challenge: a robotics project to enthuse

Robotics is a key theme in many of the degrees offered in Systems Engineering. The topic has proved useful in attracting students to the University, and it also provides the basis of much practical and project work throughout the degrees. This paper focuses on one aspect, a Part 2 project in which students doing various degrees work together to develop a mobile robot which is controlled remotely to navigate an environment and perform specific tasks. In addition to providing practical experience of relevant academic topics, this project helps to contribute to key teaching and learning priorities including problem based learning, motivation and important employability skills.

Anti-Slavic imagery in German radical nationalist discourse at the turn of the twentieth century: a prelude to Nazi ideology?

By applying methods of cognitive metaphor theory, Jaworska examines metaphorical scenarios employed in the discourse of anti-Slavism, which featured prominently in radical nationalist propaganda in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. She does so by analysing metaphorical expressions used to refer to the Polish population living in the eastern provinces of Prussia, in the so-called Ostmark. Her article is based on an analysis of a range of pamphlets and newspaper articles written by some of the leading figures of two nationalist organizations: the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband) and the Eastern Marches Society(Ostmarkenverein). The main research questions it addresses are: What kind of metaphoric scenarios were used to depict the Polish minority, and to what extent were the metaphorical patterns of anti-Slavic imagery similar to those employed in the antisemitic propaganda of the Nazi era? Is there a discursive continuity between the radical nationalism of imperial Germany and the National Socialism of the Third Reich at the level of metaphorical scenarios? Ultimately, Jaworska attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying radical and essentially racist attitudes.

The political economy of bovine tuberculosis in Great Britain

A brief history of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and its control in Great Britain is presented. Numerous diverse policies to control the disease in man, cattle and wildlife have been pursued over the last 100 years and many millions of pounds have been spent. After notable success in reducing the incidence and prevalence of bTB in cattle in GB from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, the number of cattle slaughtered has increased with increased geographical spread continually since that time with a high point of bTB incidence in 2008. This increase appeared to coincide with changing policy regarding the control of the disease in badgers with a more humane approach adopted and with strengthened protection for badgers through legislation. Indeed, much controversy has been involved in the debate on the role of badgers in disease transmission to cattle and the need for their control as vectors of the disease with various commissioned research projects, trials, public consultations and media attention. The findings of two social science investigations presented as examples showed that citizens generally believed that bTB in cattle is an important issue that needs to be tackled but objected to badgers being killed, whilst cattle farmers were willing to pay around £17/animal/year for a bTB cattle vaccine. It is noted that successes regarding the control of bTB in other countries have combined both cattle and wildlife controls and had strong involvement from industry working with government.

Mutualism from the inside: coordinated development of plant and insect in an active pollinating fig wasp

Recent studies on the obligate interaction between fig trees and their pollinating agaonid wasps have focused on population aspects and wasp-seed exploitation at the level of the inflorescence. Detailed studies on larval and gall development are required to more fully understand how resources are exploited and adaptations fine-tuned by each partner in nursery pollination mutualisms. We studied the larval development of the active pollinating fig wasp, Pegoscapus sp., and the galling process of individual flowers within the figs of its monoecious host, Ficus citrifolia, in Brazil. The pollinator development is strongly dependent on flower pollination. Figs entered by pollen-free wasps were in general more likely to abort. Retained, unpollinated figs had both higher larval mortality and a lower number of wasps. Pegoscapus sp. larvae are adapted to plant development, with two contrasting larval feeding strategies proceeding alongside gall development. The first two larval stages behave as ovary parasites. Later larval stages feed on hypertrophied endosperm. This indicates that a successful galling process relies on endosperm, and also reveals why pollination would be a prerequisite for the production of high-quality galls for this Pegoscapus species.

Sachbuch und Film im 'Dritten Reich' /// Arbeitsblätter für die Sachbuchforschung ; 24

Dieser Aufsatz setzt sich mit dem Medienverbund Sachbuch und Film im Kontext des ‚Dritten Reiches‘ auseinander. Dabei wird berücksichtigt, dass es sich bei dem Begriff Sachbuch in diesem Kontext um ein anachronistisches Konzept handelt, da dieser Begriff erst im Zuge von Debatten in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren überhaupt benutzt wurde. Der Sachbuch-Begriff wird verwendet um eine Reihe von Büchern zu beschreiben, die im Verbund mit dem dokumentarischen Filmgenre Kulturfilm, und dabei insbesondere dem Subgenre des Kolonial- und Expeditionsfilms entstanden. Anhand dieser und einiger weiterer Beispiele wird aufgezeigt, wie das Zusammenspiel der unterschiedlichen Medien funktioniert und eruiert welche Eigenschaften diese Sachbücher aufweisen. Letztendlich wird eine nähere Subgenre-Bestimmung für diese Sachbücher vorgeschlagen.

The Little Metropolis: Religion, Politics, & Spolia

There have been numerous councils throughout the Catholic Church?s history. From the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE to Vatican II in 1962, only a few centuries have passed without any major church doctrinal change. Following hand in hand with changes in doctrine came the bifurcation of the Christian Church into the Roman CatholicChurch and the Orthodox Church. The first split came in 325 CE with Arianism. Arius of Alexandria and his followers did not agree with the Catholic Church?s viewpoint that the son, Jesus, should be on equal footing with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Constantine the Great brought the Arianism debate to the First Council of Nicaea,which declared Arianism a heretical religion. The following Catholic council?s decisions separated the two Churches even more, eventually creating the formal separation of the Church during the East-West Schism in the middle of the 11th century. Although the twoChurches constantly tried to unite, the Churches hit speed bumps along the way. Eventually, the 1274 Second Council of Lyons officially united the two Churches, even if only for an ephemeral time. At first glance, it might not seem that much resulted from the 1274 Second Council of Lyons. Almost immediately after the council?s ruling, the two Churches split again. Little is known as to why the 1274 Second Council of Lyons ultimately failed in its unification attempt. In this thesis, I will examine the churches of the Little Metropolis at Athens, Merbaka in the Argolid, and Agioi Theodoroi in Athens. In detailing the architectural features of these buildings, I will reconstruct the church building program in association with the 1274 Second Council of Lyons. I will also compare these churchesusing historical sources to keep the sociological, religious, political, and historical context accurate.

Public Drinking in the Early Modern World: Voices from the Tavern, 1500-1800

Until recently the role of the public drinking house has been approached from elitist, folkloric and anecdotal perspectives. The work of a new generation of social historians, however, has raised the tavern’s profile in the academic consciousness and confirmed its position within the mainstream of social and cultural history. It is now recognized that an understanding of the centrality of public drinking to the development of both elite and popular culture is vital to studies of social behaviour. The study of taverns has also been at the forefront of emerging interest in the history of consumption and material culture, and has contributed to a richer understanding of economic history. Constructions of gender and identity are also visible through research into the patterns of behaviour and discourse in and around the public house. This four-volume reset edition presents a wide-ranging collection of primary sources which uncover the language and behaviour of local and state authorities, of peasants and town-dwellers, and of drinking companions and irate wives. The documents are translated and set in their social and historical context, providing a multidisciplinary collection that will be of great importance to scholars of all areas of social and cultural history of the early modern period. The vast majority of this material is published here for the first time, ensuring that the collection will open up new avenues of research. Volume 1 draws heavily from the Parisian police archives and includes inspectors’ reports, complaints by the general public and details of court cases to build a picture of drinking in early modern France. Volumes 2 and 3 address public drinking in the Holy Roman Empire through a variety of chronicles, civic ordinances, court records, travel reports and surveys of public houses. Volume 4 locates taverns within a broader analysis of America’s public houses, drawing on visual material as well as journal entries, business reports and newspaper articles. Each volume is accompanied by editorial introductions and is annotated to provide readers with a high-quality resource of scholarly material.

PANEL DISCUSSION: "Medical Ethics, Eugenics, and the Holocaust"

A panel discussion moderated by Dr. Thomas R. Cole, McGovern Chair in Medical Humanities and Director of the John P. McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Panelists include: Rabbi Samuel E. Karff, Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel and Associate Director of the John P. McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics and Visiting Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at the Texas Medical Center. Cardinal DiNardo, the second Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and the first cardinal archbishop from a diocese in the Southern United States. Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld, Clinical Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, and is a Fellow in both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Endocrinology. Dr. Rubenfeld has taught "Healing by Killing: Medicine During the Third Reich" for three years and "Jewish Medical Ethics" for seven years at Baylor College of Medicine. He created a six-month program about Medicine and the Holocaust at Holocaust Museum Houston, including an exhibit entitled How Healing Becomes Killing: Eugenics, Euthanasia, Extermination and a series of lectures by distinguished speakers entitled "The Michael E. DeBakey Medical Ethics Lecture Series".

Professors of German Universities (e.g. Cologne, Heidelberg) in Italy (1400-1550) and the Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (RAG)

The RAG’s task is to collect biographical and social data on those Theologians, Jurists, Physicians, and Masters of Arts, who studied at a university between 1250 and 1550. The information is entered into a prosopographic database that will finally cover the entire territory of the Holy Roman Empire. Non-graduated noble visitors of universities are also taken into account. The RAG, which in the end will be a “who is who” of the scholars of the Old Empire, offers divers new and interdisciplinary perspectives due to its vast collection of data. Qualitative and quantitative statements on the intellectual elite of the Empire, their European networks, as well as institutional and territorial comparisons will be possible. Thus the scholars' role in pre-modern society can be described on a firm empirical basis and explained within the framework of modern educational research, with special reference to social, cultural, and scientific history. Up to 50,000 scholars are to be expected.

Urbanism and dictatorship: perspectives of the field of urban studies

In 1933 public letter to Wilhelm Furtwängler, Joseph Goebbels synthesized the official understanding of the link between politics, art and society in the early steps of the Third Reich. By assuming the ethos of art, politics acquired a plastic agency to mold its objects —population and the state— as a unified entity in the form of a ‘national-popular community’ (Volksgemeinschaft); in turn, by infusing art with a political valence, it became part of a wider governmental apparatus that reshaped aesthetic discourses and practices. Similar remarks could be made about the ordering of cities and territories in this period. Dictatorial imaginations mobilized urbanism —including urban theory, urban design and planning— as a fundamental tool for social organization. Under their aegis the production of space became a moment in a wider production of society. Many authors suggest that this political-spatial nexus is intrinsic to modernity itself, beyond dictatorial regimes. In this light, I propose to use dictatorial urbanisms as an analytical opportunity to delve into some concealed features of modern urban design and planning. This chapter explores some of these aspects from a theoretical standpoint, focusing on the development of dictatorial planning mentalities and spatial rationalities and drawing links to other historical episodes in order to inscribe the former in a broader genealogy of urbanism. Needless to say, I don’t suggest that we use dictatorships as mere templates to understand modern productions of space. Instead, these cases provide a crude version of some fundamental drives in the operationalization of urbanism as an instrument of social regulation, showing how far the modern imagination of sociospatial orderings can go. Dictatorial urbanisms constituted a set of experiences where many dreams and aspirations of modern planning went to die. But not, as the conventional account would have it, because the former were the antithesis of the latter, but rather because they worked as the excess of a particular orientation of modern spatial governmentalities — namely, their focus on calculation, social engineering and disciplinary spatialities, and their attempt to subsume a wide range of everyday practices under institutional structuration by means of spatial mediations. In my opinion the interest of dictatorial urbanisms lies in their role as key regulatory episodes in a longer history of our urban present. They stand as a threshold between the advent of planning in the late 19th and early 20th century, and its final consolidation as a crucial state instrument after World War II. We need, therefore, to pay attention to these experiences vis-à-vis the alleged ‘normal’ development of the field in contemporary democratic countries in order to develop a full comprehension thereof.

BALAÃO – O QUE OUVE AS PALAVRAS DE EL, TEM O CONHECIMENTO DE ELYON E VÊ A VISÃO DE SHADDAI: UM ESTUDO DE NÚMEROS 22-24

A presente pesquisa busca avaliar exegeticamente o texto que se encontra na Bíblia, especificamente no livro de Números capítulos 22-24 que relata sobre um personagem conhecido como Balaão. A pesquisa tem também como objeto o estudo sobre o panteão de divindades relatado no mesmo texto, assim como também o estudo dos textos descobertos em Deir Alla, na Jordânia, que apresentam um personagem designado como Balaão, possivelmente o mesmo personagem de Nm 22-24. A motivação que levou ao desenvolvimento dessa pesquisa foi o fato de se ter deparado com os conceitos dos diversos nomes divinos exibidos no texto, além da questão do profetismo fora de Israel, assim como as possibilidades hermenêuticas que se abrem para a leitura desse texto bíblico. O conceito geral sempre foi o de que Israel era a única nação onde existiam “verdadeiros” profetas e uma adoração a um único Deus, o “monoteísmo”. O que despertou interesse foi perceber, especialmente por meio da leitura dos livros bíblicos, que o profetismo não se restringiu somente a Israel. Ele antecede à formação do antigo Israel e já existia no âmbito das terras do antigo Oriente Médio, e que Israel ainda demorou muito tempo para ser monoteísta. Quem é esse Balaão, filho de Beor? Estudaremos sobre sua pessoa e sua missão. Examinaremos os textos de Deir Alla sobre Balaão e sua natureza de personagem mediador entre o divino e o humano. Esse personagem é apresentado como um grande profeta e que era famoso como intérprete de presságios divinos. Analisaremos a importante questão sobre o panteão de deuses que são apresentados na narrativa de Balaão nomeados como: El, Elyon Elohim e Shaddai, além de Yahweh. Entendemos, a princípio, que o texto possui uma conexão com a sociedade na qual foi criado e usando da metodologia exegética, faremos uma análise da narrativa em questão, buscando compreender o sentido do texto, dentro de seu cenário histórico e social. Cenário este, que nos apresentou esse profeta, não israelita, que profere bênçãos dos deuses sobre Israel e que, além disso, pronuncia maldições sobre os inimigos desse mesmo Israel. Percebemos que, parte do texto pesquisado é apresentado sob a ótica de Israel sobre as outras nações. A pesquisa defende, portanto, que o texto de Nm 22-24, além de nos apresentar um profeta fora de Israel igual aos profetas da Bíblia, defende que, o panteão de divindades também era adorado por Israel e que tais nomes são epítetos de uma mesma divindade, no caso YHWH. Defende, também, um delineamento de um projeto de domínio político e militar de Israel sobre as nações circunvizinhas.

The Never ripe Mutant Provides Evidence That Tumor-Induced Ethylene Controls the Morphogenesis of Agrobacterium tumefaciens-Induced Crown Galls on Tomato Stems12

We confirm the hypothesis that Agrobacterium tumefaciens-induced galls produce ethylene that controls vessel differentiation in the host stem of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.). Using an ethylene-insensitive mutant, Never ripe (Nr), and its isogenic wild-type parent we show that infection by A. tumefaciens results in high rates of ethylene evolution from the developing crown galls. Ethylene evolution from isolated internodes carrying galls was up to 50-fold greater than from isolated internodes of control plants when measured 21 and 28 d after infection. Tumor-induced ethylene substantially decreased vessel diameter in the host tissues beside the tumor in wild-type stems but had a very limited effect in the Nr stems. Ethylene promoted the typical unorganized callus shape of the gall, which maximized the tumor surface in wild-type stems, whereas the galls on the Nr stems had a smooth surface. The combination of decreased vessel diameter in the host and increased tumor surface ensured water-supply priority to the growing gall over the host shoot. These results indicate that in addition to the well-defined roles of auxin and cytokinin, there is a critical role for ethylene in determining crown-gall morphogenesis.

"Another Way": The Pneumatology of Deleuzean Minoritarian Communal Interpretation in Scripture, the 16th Century Radical Reformation, and Alternative 21st Century Anabaptist Community

This dissertation proposes a constructive theology of the Holy Spirit called the "pneumatology of minoritarian communal interpretation," the alternative creation of meaning within an oppressive majority context. It illustrates the convergence of Deleuzean philosophy with Anabaptist pneumatology and media communal interpretation theory in three particular locations: 1) selected mentions of the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament; 2) the 16th century Radical Reformation; and 3) "Another Way," a 21st century alternative Anabaptist group focused around the spiritual discussion of art and popular media. Chapter One outlines the three theories. Chapter Two examines the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible, particularly 1 Samuel 8, the book of Ezekiel, and the Gospel narratives. Chapter Three examines the pneumatological writings of the Radical Reformers, concentrating particularly on their theologies of the intersection between church and the surrounding majoritarian culture. Chapter Four outlines my original field research with Another Way, and examines the tension between minoritarian communal interpretation and the 21st century semiotic regime. Chapter Five then summarizes the conversations between theory and illustration to propose the pneumatology of minoritarian communal interpretation for Christian theology.

Antonio Maura y el papel del II Reich en las negociaciones hispano-francesas sobre Marruecos de 1903-1904

En la primera parte del artículo se aborda el problema que ha de afrontar el estadista Antonio Maura al convertirse en el jefe del gobierno español, a finales de 1903 y consistente en concluir el proceso de negociación sobre Marruecos entablado con Francia desde 1901. Se resalta el carácter continuista del ideario colonial de Maura con respecto al del anterior líder conservador, Silvela, y la preponderancia de cuestiones como la seguridad nacional como motivadoras de dicho ideario. En la segunda parte, se explica la apelación del gobierno maurista a una ayuda por parte de Alemania, en función de movimientos previos de la diplomacia germana que se había interesado por controlar una parte del Marruecos español, o por conseguir compensaciones en Fernando Po. Finalmente se analiza el intento de Berlín de instrumentalizar al gobierno Maura en el curso de las conversaciones hispano-francesas sobre el Imperio jerifiano.