A Matriz Filosófica do Presbiterianismo no Brasil

Os missionários protestantes presbiterianos que vieram para o Brasil no início da segunda metade do século XIX trouxeram uma interpretação calvinista da bíblia, pois permaneceram fieis à formação princetoniana que efetivou uma síntese entre ortodoxia calvinista e pietismo. Estes pricetonianos tinham como base epistemológica a filosofia de Thomas Reid, conhecida como o Realismo do Senso Comum. Essa filosofia é utilizada como uma epistemologia reformada, ou calvinista. Ela é compreendida em sua formação escocesa e consequentemente americana, via Princeton, como a Epistemologia Providencial. Desta forma, quando ela é assimilada pelos brasileiros por meio da pregação e da formação teológica, a mesma se torna parte do perfil presbiteriano brasileiro como doutrina filosófica. A Filosofia do Senso Comum se gesta como crítica à filosofia empirista de David Hume que, para Reid, convergiria para um possível aniquilamento da religião e para uma visão pessimista da ciência, afetando o empirismo, por conseguinte, causando uma nova formulação mais próxima do ceticismo. Por isso, Reid formulou a filosofia que para ele contrapõe-se a Locke e Berkeley e depois a David Hume, afirmando que a realidade é independente de nossa apreensão. Ou seja, na percepção do mundo exterior não há interferência do sujeito cognoscente sobre o objeto do conhecimento. A nossa relação com os objetos é direta e não deve ser desvirtuada por intermediações. Na implantação do protestantismo no Brasil, via missionários de Princeton, não houve uma defesa intransigente dos princípios calvinistas por parte de missionários como Fletcher e Simonton e sim uma continuidade da leitura das escrituras sagradas pelo viés calvinista, como era feito no Seminário de Princeton. Não havia uma ênfase acentuada na defesa da ortodoxia porque o tema do liberalismo teológico, ou do conflito entre modernismo e fundamentalismo não se fazia necessário na conjuntura local, onde predominava a preocupação pela evangelização em termos práticos. O conceitos da Filosofia do Senso Comum eram próximos do empirismo mitigado de Silvestre Pinheiro e do Ecletismo de Victor Cousin. Por isso, no Brasil, o local em que mais se vê a utilização da filosofia do Senso Comum é nos debates entre intelectuais, em três pontos interessantes: 1ª) O Senso Comum ficou restrito ao espaço acadêmico, na formação de novos pastores, sendo que as obras de Charles Hodge e A. A. Hodge são as principais fontes de implantação desta mentalidade ratificadora da experiência religiosa e, desta forma, delineiam o rosto do protestantismo entre presbiterianos, uma das principais denominações protestantes do final do século XIX; 2ª) Nos debates entre clérigos católicos e protestantes em polêmicas teológicas;. 3º) No aproveitamento utilitarista da assimilação cultural estrangeira pelos protestantes nacionais, não por último, facilitada pela simpatia dos liberais brasileiros pelo protestantismo, ao mesmo tempo que mantinham uma linha filosófica mais próxima do empirismo mitigado e do ecletismo. Assim, nossa hipótese pretende demonstrar que os protestantes trouxeram em seu bojo as formulações epistemológicas que foram passadas para um grupo de intelectuais, que formaram o quadro dos primeiros pastores presbiterianos da história desta denominação. Eles foram convertidos e assimilaram melhor as novas doutrinas por meio de mais do que simples pregações, mas pela sua forma filosófica de encarar os objetos estudados, e que tais informações vêm por meio da base epistemológica do Realismo do Senso Comum, que encontra espaço nos ideais republicanos brasileiros do século XIX.

Managing uncertainty in integrated environmental modelling:the UncertWeb framework

Web-based distributed modelling architectures are gaining increasing recognition as potentially useful tools to build holistic environmental models, combining individual components in complex workflows. However, existing web-based modelling frameworks currently offer no support for managing uncertainty. On the other hand, the rich array of modelling frameworks and simulation tools which support uncertainty propagation in complex and chained models typically lack the benefits of web based solutions such as ready publication, discoverability and easy access. In this article we describe the developments within the UncertWeb project which are designed to provide uncertainty support in the context of the proposed ‘Model Web’. We give an overview of uncertainty in modelling, review uncertainty management in existing modelling frameworks and consider the semantic and interoperability issues raised by integrated modelling. We describe the scope and architecture required to support uncertainty management as developed in UncertWeb. This includes tools which support elicitation, aggregation/disaggregation, visualisation and uncertainty/sensitivity analysis. We conclude by highlighting areas that require further research and development in UncertWeb, such as model calibration and inference within complex environmental models.

Low-Power Tracking Image Sensor Based on Biological Models of Attention

This paper presents implementation of a low-power tracking CMOS image sensor based on biological models of attention. The presented imager allows tracking of up to N salient targets in the field of view. Employing "smart" image sensor architecture, where all image processing is implemented on the sensor focal plane, the proposed imager allows reduction of the amount of data transmitted from the sensor array to external processing units and thus provides real time operation. The imager operation and architecture are based on the models taken from biological systems, where data sensed by many millions of receptors should be transmitted and processed in real time. The imager architecture is optimized to achieve low-power dissipation both in acquisition and tracking modes of operation. The tracking concept is presented, the system architecture is shown and the circuits description is discussed.

Semantic reasoning for autonomic IT systems

Autonomic systems are required to adapt continually to changing environments and user goals. This process involves the real-Time update of the system's knowledge base, which should therefore be stored in a machine-readable format and automatically checked for consistency. OWL ontologies meet both requirements, as they represent collections of knowl- edge expressed in FIrst order logic, and feature embedded reasoners. To take advantage of these OWL ontology char- acteristics, this PhD project will devise a framework com- prising a theoretical foundation, tools and methods for de- veloping knowledge-centric autonomic systems. Within this framework, the knowledge storage and maintenance roles will be fulfilled by a specialised class of OWL ontologies. ©2014 ACM.

Adaptive sending rate over wireless mesh networks using SNR

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have emerged as a key technology for the next generation of wireless networking. Instead of being another type of ad-hoc networking, WMNs diversify the capabilities of ad-hoc networks. Several protocols that work over WMNs include IEEE 802.11a/b/g, 802.15, 802.16 and LTE-Advanced. To bring about a high throughput under varying conditions, these protocols have to adapt their transmission rate. This paper proposes a scheme to improve channel conditions by performing rate adaptation along with multiple packet transmission using packet loss and physical layer condition. Dynamic monitoring, multiple packet transmission and adaptation to changes in channel quality by adjusting the packet transmission rates according to certain optimization criteria provided greater throughput. The key feature of the proposed method is the combination of the following two factors: 1) detection of intrinsic channel conditions by measuring the fluctuation of noise to signal ratio via the standard deviation, and 2) the detection of packet loss induced through congestion. The authors show that the use of such techniques in a WMN can significantly improve performance in terms of the packet sending rate. The effectiveness of the proposed method was demonstrated in a simulated wireless network testbed via packet-level simulation.

Alberto Girri, or poetry as hermeneutic reason

One of the main factors that makes the poetry of the Argentine Alberto Girri (1919–1991) a whole world of its own is my argument that in a fragmentary world like the present, poets search for a formal integrity which in the act of reading creates not only their own inner world but also the readers'. It is important to insist on this turning point in which most of the Symbolist work is circumscribed. Later, this would be of capital importance for the avant-garde as well as for the post-avant-garde: Mallarmé's Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard would make poetry something absolutely modern. An original distribution of the white and black opened a new space for the text, shifting the then dominant phonocentrism. My close reading of this author as well as the given theoretical frame avoids the failure into an instrumental use either of the page or of the writing but ignoring physical reciprocity. What follows is, that this “shift” privileged heightened vision over audition of the “musical score”. Thus, an intense materialization of the language is achieved that increases the anonymity of the text. ^ Following this new arrangement of words, so to speak, Girri's poetic work now drives deeply inside words in order to lend them dignity from meaning. I conclude that the best way to “render” this poetry with religious aim (L. “re-ligare” to bind the fragmented) is by way of the philosophy of language. I also propose that Girri's task as a translator, mainly from English poetry, represented—with Jorge Luis Borges—a paradigmatic shift in the Spanish American horizon which had been under “logocentric” French rule since the time of Independence. This seismic change of perspective in late Modernism and post-Modernism is represented by a radical screening of Romance rhetoric, it was a shift not only over the inherited mother tongue but over his own work which was increasingly moving towards transcendent and/or metaphysical poetry. ^ Therefore, I did find that Girri's poem was constructed as a mirror closely related to that which was represented in the angelological tradition. ^

Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection

Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection With additional works from the collection of The Wolfsonian--Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida The exhibition is organized by the Neue Galerie New York and curated by Christian Witt-Dörring and Janis Staggs. Exhibition on view at The Wolfsonian--FIU November 15, 2012--March 31, 2013 The Wolfsonian's presentation was curated by Silvia Barisione and designed by Richard Miltner.

La modernidad de los "Versos libres" de Jose Marti

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the collection of poems Versos libres written by José Martí, as a cycle of literary expression closely connected with the origins and development of the modernist movement, as well as to the emergence of what has been later termed the modernism of Hispanic-American literature. ^ The poetics of Versos libres is based on the liberating function attributed to them by their author, who was determined to reach with this cycle a level of expression where literary modernism and radical Americanism would be fully integrated, in order to enrich the communicative capabilities of poetic language, making it penetrate deep and complex realities: Man's conscience, psyche and creative effort, nature and history. ^ This study of the Versos libres as a cycle, allows us to characterize the contribution of such a work to Hispanic-American poetry as a result of a literary praxis whose tone makes Versos libres a piece of work that, in its best-realized moments, surpasses the limits of the turn-of-the-century Hispanic-American poetry; thus laying a bridge towards modern poetry in the Spanish language. ^ The dissertation is based on the direct and complete transcription of Martí's own handwritings of the Versos libres, included in his Poesía completa. Edición Crítica (1985), edited by Cintio Vitier, Fina García Marruz and the present author. ^

Links across the Gulfstream: The Florida /Bahamas zone, 1780–1900

The links created between Florida and the Bahamas from 1780 to 1900 constituted a major influence in the evolution of a unique society. This dissertation adds to the understanding of this topic by using primary sources and architecture to follow the odyssey of the people who shaped this region. Building on the historiography which examined each area separately, this work focused on the ties forged in the interactions between Florida and the Bahamas. Following the immigrants who shaped Florida and the Bahamas, this work examines cultural holdovers which influenced this region during times of demographic flux. Aesthetic preferences stood out as one way that people maintained connections to their past. The use of architecture as a lens to view this process provides a concrete example of this phenomenon. The societies of Florida and the Bahamas remained intertwined during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Forced migrations shaped the trajectory of the evolution of a distinctive culture in these areas bordered by the Gulfstream. This dissertation proves that the links forged between these societies reinforced the patterns which endured throughout the maturation of this area.

Hispanic orientalism: The literary development of a cultural paradigm, from medieval Spain to modern Latin America

This dissertation offers a novel approach to Hispanic Orientalism, developing a dynamic paradigm from its origins in medieval and Renaissance Iberia during the process of the Christian Reconquest, to its transatlantic migration and establishment in the early years of the Colony, from where it changed in late colonial and post-Independence Latin America, and onto modernity. ^ The study argues that Hispanic Orientalism does not necessarily imply a negative depiction of the Other, a quality associated with the traditional critique of Saidian Orientalism. Neither, does it entirely comply with the positivist approach suggested in the theoretical research of Said’s opponents, like Julia Kushigian. This dissertation also argues that sociopolitical changes and the shift in the discourse of powers, from imperial to non-imperial, had a significant impact of the development of Hispanic Orientalism, shaping the relationship with the Other. The methodology involves close reading of representative texts depicting the interactions of the dominant and dominated societies from each of the four historic periods that coincided with significant sociopolitical transformations in Hispanic society. Through an intercultural approach to literary studies, social history, and religious studies, this project develops an original paradigm of Hispanic Orientalism, derived from the image of the reinvented Semitic Other portrayed in the literary works depicting the relationship between the hegemonic and the subaltern cultures during the Reconquest period in Spain. Then, it traces the turn of the original paradigm towards reinterpretation during its transatlantic migration to Latin America through the analysis of the chronicles and travelogs of the first colonizers and explorers. During the transitional late colonial and early Independence periods Latin America sees a significant change in the discourse of powers, and Hispanic Orientalism reflects this oscillation between the past and the present therough the works of the Latin American authors from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Finally, once the non-imperial discourse of power established itself in the former Colony, a new modern stage in the development of Hispanic Orientalist paradigm takes place. It is marked by the desire to differentiate itself from the O(o)thers, as manifested in the works of the representatives of Modernism and the Boom.^

Optimal kernel development for real-time communications

The purpose of this research is to develop an optimal kernel which would be used in a real-time engineering and communications system. Since the application is a real-time system, relevant real-time issues are studied in conjunction with kernel related issues. The emphasis of the research is the development of a kernel which would not only adhere to the criteria of a real-time environment, namely determinism and performance, but also provide the flexibility and portability associated with non-real-time environments. The essence of the research is to study how the features found in non-real-time systems could be applied to the real-time system in order to generate an optimal kernel which would provide flexibility and architecture independence while maintaining the performance needed by most of the engineering applications. Traditionally, development of real-time kernels has been done using assembly language. By utilizing the powerful constructs of the C language, a real-time kernel was developed which addressed the goals of flexibility and portability while still meeting the real-time criteria. The implementation of the kernel is carried out using the powerful 68010/20/30/40 microprocessor based systems.

Ficción Extrema: Deslizamientos en la Realidad a Través de la Relación Entre Arte y Literatura (Max Aub, Leonora Carrington y Enrique Vila-Matas)

Si el siglo XX creó una extendida conciencia sobre las variantes de la intertextualidad en la ficción literaria, hoy enfrentamos transformaciones en la naturaleza de la ficción y sus relaciones con otras formas discursivas y/o creativas como el arte, y con la misma realidad, que es posible designar con el concepto de ficción extrema. Desde “Don Quijote” o “Las meninas” hay incursiones en la metaficción y/o autorrefecividad. Pero a partir de las vanguardias modernistas y de modo creciente en los estertores de la postmodernidad nos abocamos a un singular tipo de hipertextualidad que desbordando lo literario se apropia de prácticas artísticas (o lo contrario) como recurso para la transposición de sus ficciones, no sólo de uno a otro campo, sino para su inserción en la realidad: la ficción extrema. Max Aub (España 1903-México 1973), Leonora Carrington (Inglaterra 1917-México 2011) y Enrique Vila-Matas (España 1958), radicalizaron este tránsito o filtración de los imaginarios artísticos y literarios subvirtiendo las delimitaciones entre —pintor catalán Jusep Torres Campalans, junto con sus obras pictóricas, creadas como sombra o doble de Picasso. Así insertó su existencia en ciertos dominios del cubismo como un modo de meta-crítica artística. Carrington asumió un doble animal que transitó entre cuentos y cuadros y se inscribió en la memoria del surrealismo. Vila-Matas narró su “Historia abreviada de la literatura portátil” como un doble del espectro Marcel Duchamp —a su vez asaltado por otros— que reescribe la memoria del dadaísmo de tal modo que ha llegado a ser confundida con un ensayo. La revisión de las estrategias de la ficción extrema en estos autores junto con las de otros contemplados en el epilogo —Mario Bellatín, y los artistas Liliana Porter, Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, Ana Tisconia, Rubén Torres Llorca y Carlos Amorales— arroja nueva luz sobre sus obras, enriquece los estudios transatlánticos y revela la movilidad y multiplicación de la identidad y los deslizamientos de la ficción en la realidad como signos de tránsito a la altermodernidad.

Repercussão da integração de conteúdos das disciplinas nos trabalhos finais de graduação de CAU-UFRN (2003 a 2010)

The changes in the teaching of Architecture in Brazilian Universities, from the 1990s onwards, with the upgrading of the Architecture project as an object of research and scientific knowledge and more specifically, the adoption by the Architecture and Urbanism Course (CAU) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) of the principle of content integration of the disciplines, aroused the interest in research on issues related to the Design process and the teaching of design in this context. After 20 years of its implementation and recognized as being a major step forward in teaching the teaching/learning process, the integration is the central focus of this research, which will seek to identify changes in the teaching design and its refutation in projects developed by students at the end of their course. In general, it is understood that the need to integrate knowledge from diverse areas of Architect’s professional activity, who seeks through an exercise of summary, identify solutions to the issues involved in a project. On the assumption that the integration of content of disciplines fosters the teaching/learning of Architecture project, which can be evident in the Final Course Assignment (FCA), it becomes necessary to understand, in the light of theories of education, such as the principles of curriculum organization, such as interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and transversality are related to the term integration, is more understood and disseminated among the professors of the Architecture courses. The object of this study is consequently the relationship between the integration of subject content and Architecture projects developed by students from CAU-UFRN, in the context of Final Graduation projects (FCAs) completed in the period of duration of the Teaching Project A5-from 2003. The study has the main objective of investigating to what extent the integration of disciplinary content affects the development of the Final Assignment of UFRN, from the analysis of drawings and texts of the projects of the learners and the testimonies of teachers and undergraduate students. From a methodological point of view, the research “Architecture, Project and Knowledge Production: Academic Production – FCAs, Thesis and dissertations in PA/Brazil” carried out by the PROJETAR/UFRN team has been adopted as the basis for the construction of the analytical instruments. In order to identify aspects of their experience by various actors which were not recorded in FCA, electronic forms were applied between teachers and students, through the internet. The integration of subject content based Teaching Project of CAU-UFRN institutionalises the interdisciplinarity, organizing the curriculum by thematic semesters, in which the disciplines work the same focus and at the same site. The integrated work which derives from there tries to articulate the content of each discipline of the period and represents a general practice and has been evaluated by teachers and students, and considered as a facilitator of the teaching/learning process. The analysis of the data collected from the textual content and graphic of the sample of FCAs of CAU-UFRN suggests that the content of the various areas of knowledge are assimilated by the student and used as a resource for the design and development of Architecture projects. In other words, there is in the end product of the students record of the integration of content, whether in speech or in drawing, reaffirming the importance of the convergence of various knowledge in the Architectonic project. However, the integration of content from the point of view of their articulation and operationalization, which involves teachers and students in the same period, has as a condition sine qua non for the success of this educational principle, the provision of these to work as part of a team, for the dialogic practice, which creates areas of intersection not only between disciplines, but between the knowledge of each of the participants.

O teatro de Elias Canetti em diálogo com a pós-modernidade

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the dramaturgic work of the Bulgarian author Elias Canetti, composed by the plays The Wedding, Comedy of Vanity and Their Days are Numbered, seeking to comprehend how the contemporary critic theories act on his trilogy, making a dialogue with theoretical references which may justify its approaching to the postmodernism. In this perspective, the theories by Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jürgen Habermas contribute for a better comprehension of the postmodernity phenomenon. Undertaking Canetti’s notes and theatre with the philosophical concepts of Adorno’s negative aesthetics, we realise there is a space to reflect upon the theories which befell, like Foucault’s power relations in Micro-physics of Power and the discourses of resistance and deterritorialisation developed by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateau and Anti-Oedipus. Even though Canetti’s plays were written between 1932 and 1956, all of them show a strong critic against modernism, and their characteristics did not help their recognition by the critics, which resulted in a rediscovery of Canetti’s plays after the author won the Nobel Prize in 1981.

Reframing Chinese animation: from classicism to postmodernism in post-1949 non-commercial Chinese animated films

This thesis focuses on Chinese non-commercial animated films produced from 1949 to date, with the aim of remapping and reframing Chinese animation in the light of existing theories, critiques, and frameworks drawn from studies in animation, film, and screen media. I suggest that Chinese animation has experienced three aesthetic transformations since 1949, primarily influenced by traditional Chinese culture, by Western modernist art and literature and, most recently, by postmodernism, respectively. Thus, the research traces and thoroughly investigates these three distinctive phases of Chinese animation in chronological order, from the classical period (1950s– 1980s) to modernism (1980s–2000s) and postmodernism (after 2000s). More in detail, I first rethink and re-evaluate the success of classical Chinese animation and the Chinese school of animation and, at the same time, I explore the influence of the political situation of the time on Chinese animation. Through careful analysis of A Da (1934–87) and other Chinese animators’ practices and theory, then, I argue that a remarkable modernist transformation took place in Chinese animation between the 1980s and 2000s, mainly driven by Western modernism and the Chinese “cultural fever” movement. Finally, through a discussion of the latest non-commercial animations produced after 2005, and especially those of Bu Hua (1973– ), for the first time I classify and theorize contemporary Chinese animations within a postmodern framework. By reframing existing views and broadening the scope of the analysis to encompass new areas and frameworks, this thesis aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive and systematic understanding of post-1949 Chinese animation and to offer an original contribute to scholarship, also working as a starting point for further research in this area.