The social aspects of foreign missions, by William Herbert Perry Faunce.

http://www.archive.org/details/socialaspectsoff013484mbp

Christian missions and social progress : a sociological study of foreign missions (vol. 2)

http://www.archive.org/details/socialprogress02dennuoft/

A proposal for the better supplying of churches in our foreign plantations, and for converting the savage Americans to Christianity, by a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda.

http://www.archive.org/details/proposalforbette00berkrich

First ten annual reports of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions : with other documents of the Board.

http://www.archive.org/details/firsttenannualre00amerrich

Missionary survey as an aid to intelligent co-operation in foreign missions, by Roland Allen, and Thomas Cochrane.

http://www.archive.org/details/missionarysurvey13360gut

Foreign missions after a century / by James S. Dennis

http://www.archive.org/details/foreignmissionsa008429mbp

Memorial volume of the first fifty years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

http://www.archive.org/details/memorialvolumeof00andeiala

Seventy-five years in the Madura Mission : a history of the mission in South India under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. / by John S. Chandler.

http://www.archive.org/details/75yearsmadurami00chanuoft

A new world a new American foreign policy: the Carter administration, Nicaragua, and the legacy of the Vietnam War, 1977-1981

The impact of the Vietnam War conditioned the Carter administration’s response to the Nicaraguan revolution in ways that reduced US engagement with both sides of the conflict. It made the countries of Latin America counter the US approach and find their own solution to the crisis, and allowed Cuba to play a greater role in guiding the overthrow of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. This thesis re-evaluates Carter’s policy through the legacy of the Vietnam War, because US executive anxieties about military intervention, Congress’s increasing influence, and US public concerns about the nation’s global responsibilities, shaped the Carter approach to Nicaragua. Following a background chapter, the Carter administration’s policy towards Nicaragua is evaluated, before and after the fall of Somoza in July 1979. The extent of the Vietnam influence on US-Nicaraguan relations is developed by researching government documents on the formation of US policy, including material from the Jimmy Carter Library, the Library of Congress, the National Security Archive, the National Archives and Records Administration, and other government and media sources from the United Nations Archives, New York University, the New York Public Library, the Hoover Institution Archives, Tulane University and the Organization of American States. The thesis establishes that the Vietnam legacy played a key role in the Carter administration’s approach to Nicaragua. Before the overthrow of Somoza, the Carter administration limited their influence in Nicaragua because they felt there was no immediate threat from communism. The US feared that an active role in Nicaragua, without an established threat from Cuba or the Soviet Union, could jeopardise congressional support for other foreign policy goals deemed more important. The Carter administration, as a result, pursued a policy of non-intervention towards the Central American country. After the fall of Somoza, and the establishment of a new government with a left wing element represented by the Sandinistas, the Carter administration emphasised non-intervention in a military sense, but actively engaged with the new Nicaraguan leadership to contain the potential communist influence that could spread across Central America in the wake of the Nicaraguan revolution.

Investment funds: What next?

Investment funds provide a low cost method of sharing in the rewards from capitalism. Recently “alternative investments” such as hedge funds have grown rapidly and the trading strategies open to hedge funds are now becoming available to mutual funds and even to ordinary retail investors. In this paper we analyze problems in assessing fund performance and the prospects for investment fund sectors. Choosing genuine outperformers among top funds requires a careful assessment of non-normality, order statistics and the possibility of false discoveries. The risk adjusted performance of the average hedge fund over the last 10-15 is actually not that impressive, although the “top” funds do appear to have statistically significant positive alphas.

Investment incentives and valuation of power sector infrastructure assets with increasing interconnection, intermittency and decarbonisation

This dissertation applies a variety of quantitative methods to electricity and carbon market data, utility company accounts data, capital and operating costs to analyse some of the challenges associated with investment in energy assets. In particular, three distinct research topics are analysed within this general theme: the efficiency of interconnector trading, the optimal sizing of intermittent wind facilities and the impact of carbon pricing on the cost of capital for investors are researched in successive sections.

Literatur verstehen und inszenieren: Foreign language literature through drama, a research project

Based on the experience that today's students find it more difficult than students of previous decades to relate to literature and appreciate its high cultural value, this paper argues that too little is known about the actual teaching and learning processes which take place in literature courses and that, in order to ensure the survival of literary studies in German curricula, future research needs to elucidate for students, the wider public and, most importantly, educational policy makers, why the study of literature should continue to have an important place in modern language curricula. Contending that students' willingness to engage with literature will, in the future, depend to a great extent on the use of imaginative methodology on the part of the teacher, we give a detailed account of an action research project carried out at University College Cork from October to December 2002 which set out to explore the potential of a drama in education approach to the teaching and learning of foreign language literature. We give concrete examples of how this approach works in practice, situate our approach within the subject debate surrounding Drama and the Language Arts and evaluate in detail the learning processes which are typical of performance-based literature learning. Based on converging evidence from different data sources and overall very positive feedback from students, we conclude by recommending that modern language departments introduce courses which offer a hands-on experience of literature that is different from that encountered in lectures and teacher-directed seminars.

Ford, Carter and Cambodia: US foreign policy and the Khmer Rouge

This thesis is an investigation into the US response to the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1974 and 1981. It argues that the US experience in the Vietnam War acted as a causal factor in the formulation of its Cambodian policy during the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. From taking power in April 1975 to their removal by the Vietnamese in January 1979, the Khmer Rouge initiated a revolution unrivalled in the 20th Century for its brutality and for the total eradication of modern society. This thesis demonstrates that the Ford administration viewed Cambodia only as it pertained to their strategy in Vietnam and, following US disengagement from Indochina all but ignored the atrocities occurring there as they instead pursued informal relations with the Khmer Rouge as a means of punishing the Vietnamese. The Carter administration formulated a foreign policy based on human rights yet failed to adequately address the genocide that occurred in Cambodia due to its temporal and regional proximity to Vietnam. Instead, this collective reluctance to reengage with the region and the resulting anti-Vietnamese attitude reinforced Brzezinski’s broader global strategy that allied the US with China in support of an independent Cambodia to further isolate Hanoi. Thus this thesis argues that the distorting impact of the Vietnam War, as well as global Cold War calculations, undermined any appreciation of the Cambodian conflict and caused both administrations to pursue policies in Cambodia that ultimately supported the Khmer Rouge regime. This project incorporates declassified material from the Ford and Carter Presidential Libraries, supplemented by the material from the National Archives and Library of Congress, and relevant newspapers and periodicals. It demonstrates that the limitations placed upon US foreign policy by their experience in the Vietnam War may be used to reveal unexplored elements in US-Cambodian relations.

CD4+ CD25+ regulatory T cells control T helper cell type 1 responses to foreign antigens induced by mature dendritic cells in vivo.

Recent evidence suggests that in addition to their well known stimulatory properties, dendritic cells (DCs) may play a major role in peripheral tolerance. It is still unclear whether a distinct subtype or activation status of DC exists that promotes the differentiation of suppressor rather than effector T cells from naive precursors. In this work, we tested whether the naturally occurring CD4+ CD25+ regulatory T cells (Treg) may control immune responses induced by DCs in vivo. We characterized the immune response induced by adoptive transfer of antigen-pulsed mature DCs into mice depleted or not of CD25+ cells. We found that the development of major histocompatibility complex class I and II-restricted interferon gamma-producing cells was consistently enhanced in the absence of Treg. By contrast, T helper cell (Th)2 priming was down-regulated in the same conditions. This regulation was independent of interleukin 10 production by DCs. Of note, splenic DCs incubated in vitro with Toll-like receptor ligands (lipopolysaccharide or CpG) activated immune responses that remained sensitive to Treg function. Our data further show that mature DCs induced higher cytotoxic activity in CD25-depleted recipients as compared with untreated hosts. We conclude that Treg naturally exert a negative feedback mechanism on Th1-type responses induced by mature DCs in vivo.

Essays on Vietnam’s Financial Reforms: Foreign Exchange Statistics and Evidence of Long-Run Equilibrium

In this paper, we examine exchange rates in Vietnam’s transitional economy. Evidence of long-run equilibrium are established in most cases through a single co-integrating vector among endogenous variables that determine the real exchange rates. This supports relative PPP in which ECT of the system can be combined linearly into a stationary process, reducing deviation from PPP in the long run. Restricted coefficient vectors ß’ = (1, 1, -1) for real exchange rates of currencies in question are not rejected. This empirics of relative PPP adds to found evidences by many researchers, including Flre et al. (1999), Lee (1999), Johnson (1990), Culver and Papell (1999), Cuddington and Liang (2001). Instead of testing for different time series on a common base currency, we use different base currencies (USD, GBP, JPY and EUR). By doing so we want to know the whether theory may posit significant differences against one currency? We have found consensus, given inevitable technical differences, even with smallerdata sample for EUR. Speeds of convergence to PPP and adjustment are faster compared to results from other researches for developed economies, using both observed and bootstrapped HL measures. Perhaps, a better explanation is the adjustment from hyperinflation period, after which the theory indicates that adjusting process actually accelerates. We observe that deviation appears to have been large in early stages of the reform, mostly overvaluation. Over time, its correction took place leading significant deviations to gradually disappear.