Constants In Context

"Mission is handicapped without a sound biblical theology of mission and an understanding of the history of mission leading up to our current context. Constants in Context offers both of these elements. It is mission theology in historical perspective and/or a history of mission that is grounded theologically. The authors describe it as a systematic theology with mission at its core, and a church history shaped by the constant but always contextual Christian traditions. Furthermore it is a constructive contribution to how mission theology needs to be practical and lived out through today's church and in our world. Written collaboratively by Roman Catholic writers Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder, both Missionaries of the Divine Word (SVDs). It is a particularly insightful in regard to the history and the various streams of Catholic mission but it also addresses and learns from the other traditions of the church. In fact, one of the book's strengths is its attention to neglected aspects and hidden stories of church and mission history. As a result it is gratifying to be inspired by non-European mission, women in mission and various forgotten or often ignored branches of the church. The book is in three sections: first, there is a framework for cultural contexts and theological constants; second, an in-depth exploration of historical stages and different models for mission; and third, a presentation of theological frameworks for mission. The third section concludes with a case for 'mission as prophetic dialogue' being the most appropriate model for 21st century mission." -- Amazon.com.

This book features extended versions of selected papers that were presented and discussed at the 8th International Doctoral Symposium on Applied Computation and Security Systems (ACSS 2021), held in Kolkata, India, on April 9–10, 2021. Organized by the Departments of Computer Science & Engineering and A. K. Choudhury School of Information Technology at the University of Calcutta, the symposium’s international partners were Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and Bialystok University of Technology, Poland. The topics covered include biometrics, image processing, pattern recognition, algorithms, cloud computing, wireless sensor networks, and security systems, reflecting the various symposium sessions.

This monograph focuses on optimal flow analysis of sequential and parallel programs. It studies algorithmic properties of various versions of the well-known constant-propagation problem, combining techniques from such diverse areas as linear algebra, computable ring theory, abstract interpretation, program verification and complexity theory. This combination of techniques is the key to further progress in automatic analysis and constant-propagation illustrates this point in a theoretical study.

First published in 1997, this volume constitutes an attempt to resolve certain misunderstandings and ignorance concerning the constants of Nature. Its purpose is to look closely at the philosophical arguments made to support the customary conventional view of measurement, particularly with regard to constants. Peter Johnson argues that historic accounts provide only a partial understanding of the nature of constants, and that the conventionalism that rises relates only to the numerical representations used to quantify the measurement of quantities.

Benjamin Constant is widely regarded as a founding father of modern liberalism. This book presents a collection of interpretive essays on the major aspects of his life and work by a panel of international scholars.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Erice, Italy, May 2-12, 1987

This volume includes a selection of papers that address a wide range of acquisition phenomena from different Romance languages and all share a common theoretical approach based on the Principles and Parameters theory. They favour, discuss and sometimes challenge traditional explanations of first and second language acquisition in terms of maturation of general principles universal to all languages. They all depart from the view that language acquisition can be explained in terms of learning language specific rules, constraints or structures. The different parts into which this volume is organized reflect different approaches that current research has offered, which deal with issues of development of reflexive pronouns, determiners, clitics, verbs, auxiliaries, Inflection, wh-movement, rssumptive pronouns, topic and focus, mood, the syntax/discourse interface, topic and focus, and null arguments.

The object of this NATO Advanced Study Institute was to pre sent a tutorial 'introduction both to the basic physics of recent spectacular advances achieved in the field of metrology and to the determination of fundamental physical constants. When humans began to qualify their description of natural phenomena, metrology, the science of measurement, developed along side geometry and mathematics. However, flam antiquity to modern times, the role of metrology was mostly restricted to the need of commercial, social or scientific transactions of local or at most national scope. Beginning with the Renaissance, and particularly in western Europe during the last century, metrology rapidly developed an international character as a result of growing needs for more accurate measurements and common standards in the emerging indus trial society. Although the concerns of metrology are deeply rooted to fundamental sciences, it was, until recently, perceived by much of the scientific community as mostly custodial in character.

First published in 1975, A Constant Burden was a truly ground-breaking text in the field of medical sociology and has since become an undisputed classic. Over thirty years later this revised edition gives new life to this important work. It contains the same seminal study of families with a disabled child, based on an analysis of interviews with parents about the effects of their child's disability on their family life. Whereas much of the contemporary research assumed that the presence of such a child must constitute a problem, and attempted to read parents' responses as indicators of the family's psychological and social adjustment to this 'reality', Voysey Paun's analysis takes a radically different stance. She shows that what parents say should rather be understood as socially constructed accounts of 'normal parenting' which induce others to identify them as properly fulfilling their responsibilities as good parents. Voysey Paun's approach to the analysis and interpretation of interview responses has become a much more central theme for sociological research, instrumental in changing theories about the nature of disability and the family as expressed by sociologists, social workers and other agencies. The revised edition contains a new introduction which puts the study in its intellectual context. It will be essential reading in the sociology of health and illness, and will also be of interest to social workers and other professionals concerned with disability and family life.

Frequently paradoxical developments of themes and situations from the opening chapters are traced in detail in a analysis that emphasizes the novel's intricate writing as well as its historical and intellectual significance.

This book is a research monograph summarizing recent advances related to the molecular structure of water and ice, and it is based on the latest spectroscopic data available. A special focus is given to radio- and microwave frequency regions. Within the five interconnected chapters, the author reviews the electromagnetic waves interaction with water, ice, and moist substances, discussing the microscopic mechanisms behind the dielectric responses. Well-established classic views concerning the structure of water and ice are considered along with new approaches related to atomic and molecular dynamics. Particular attention is given to nanofluidics, atmospheric science, and electrochemistry. The mathematical apparatus, based on diverse approaches employed in condensed matter physics, is widely used and allows the reader to quantitatively describe the electrodynamic response of water and ice in both bulk and confined states. This book is intended for a wide audience covering physicists, electrochemists, geophysicists, engineers, biophysicists, and general scientists who work on the electromagnetic radiation interaction with water and moist substances.

This book addresses the question how run-time reconfigurable constant multipliers (RCMs) can be efficiently implemented on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). RCMs calculate the multiplication of an input number by one out of several constants which can be selected during run-time. This is important as constant multiplication is an essential operation in digital signalprocessing (DSP) applications. The evaluation of RCMs is done by considering reconfiguration using reconfigurable look-up tables (LUTs),reconfiguration using multiplexers (MUXs) and Partial Reconfiguration (PR). This book contributes two new methods to generate RCMs using the first two reconfiguration principles. First, a LUT-based constant multiplier is extended to be reconfigurable. Second, optimized constant multipliers without reconfiguration are fused using MUXs. Moreover, a general post-optimization for MUX-based RCMs is proposed. Finally, the design space produced in this way is analyzed using synthesis experiments. The contributed methods provide important trade-off points in the design space of RCMs on FPGAs.

The question of a possible temporal variation of the fundamental constants was raised by Paul Dirac in his "large number hypothesis" in 1937. Today it appears in the context of the search for a unified theory of the fundamental interactions. It touches both fundamental and applied physics, as the postulate of the unalterability of the constants is the foundation for modern metrology. The book presents reviews written by leading experts in the field. Focussing on the question of variations of the fundamental "constants" in time or space, the chapters cover the theoretical framework in which variations are expected and the search for variations of quantities like the fine-structure constant, the electron/proton mass ratio, g-factors of proton and neutron etc. in astrophysical and geophysical observations and in precision experiments with atomic clocks and frequency standards.

Over the course of American political history, political elites and organizations have often updated their political communications strategies in order to achieve longstanding political communication goals in more efficient or effective ways. But why do successful innovations occur when they do, and what motivates political actors to make choices about how to innovate their communication tactics? Covering over 300 years of political communication innovations, Ben Epstein shows how this process of change happens and why. To do this, Epstein, following an interdisciplinary approach, proposes a new model called "the political communication cycle" that accounts for the technological, behavioral, and political factors that lead to revolutionary political communication changes over time. These changes (at least the successful ones) have been far from gradual, as long periods of relatively stable political communication activities have been disrupted by brief periods of dramatic and permanent transformation. These transformations are driven by political actors and organizations, and tend to follow predictable patterns. Epstein moves beyond the technological determinism that characterizes communication history scholarship and the medium-specific focus of much political communication work. The book identifies the political communication revolutions that have, in the United States, led to four, relatively stable political communication orders over history: the elite, mass, broadcast, and (the current) information orders. It identifies and tests three phases of each revolutionary cycle, ultimately sketching possible paths for the future. The Only Constant is Change offers readers and scholars a model and vocabulary to compare political communication changes across time and between different types of political organizations. This provides greater understanding of where we are currently in the recurring political communication cycle, and where we might be headed.

Whereas conventional maps can be expressed as outward-expanding formulae with well-defined central features and relatively poorly defined edges, Constant Scale Natural Boundary (CSNB) maps have well-defined boundaries that result from natural processes and thus allow spatial and dynamic relationships to be observed in a new way useful to understanding these processes. CSNB mapping presents a new approach to visualization that produces maps markedly different from those produced by conventional cartographic methods. In this approach, any body can be represented by a 3D coordinate system. For a regular body, with its surface relatively smooth on the scale of its size, locations of features can be represented by definite geographic grid (latitude and longitude) and elevation, or deviation from the triaxial ellipsoid defined surface. A continuous surface on this body can be segmented, its distinctive regional terranes enclosed, and their inter-relationships defined, by using selected morphologically identifiable relief features (e.g., continental divides, plate boundaries, river or current systems). In this way, regions of distinction on a large, essentially spherical body can be mapped as two-dimensional ‘facets’ with their boundaries representing regional to global-scale asymmetries (e.g., continental crust, continental and oceanic crust on the Earth, farside original thicker crust and nearside thinner impact punctuated crust on the Moon). In an analogous manner, an irregular object such as an asteroid, with a surface that is rough on the scale of its size, would be logically segmented along edges of its impact-generated faces. Bounded faces are imagined with hinges at occasional points along boundaries, resulting in a foldable ‘shape model.’ Thus, bounded faces grow organically out of the most compelling natural features. Obvious boundaries control the map’s extremities, and peripheral regions are not dismembered or grossly distorted as in conventional map projections. 2D maps and 3D models grow out of an object’s most obvious face or terrane ‘edges,’ instead of arbitrarily by imposing a regular grid system or using regularly shaped facets to represent an irregular surface.

A practical introduction to the development of proofs and certified programs using Coq. An invaluable tool for researchers, students, and engineers interested in formal methods and the development of zero-fault software.

Piecewise constant systems exist in widely expanded areas such as engineering, physics, and mathematics. Extraordinary and complex characteristics of piecewise constant systems have been reported in recent years. This book provides the methodologies for analyzing and assessing nonlinear piecewise constant systems on a theoretically and practically sound basis. Recently developed approaches for theoretically analyzing and numerically solving the nonlinear piecewise constant dynamic systems are reviewed. A new greatest integer argument with a piecewise constant function is utilized for nonlinear dynamic analyses and for establishing a novel criterion in diagnosing irregular and chaotic solutions from the regular solutions of a nonlinear dynamic system. The newly established piecewise constantization methodology and its implementation in analytically solving for nonlinear dynamic problems are also presented.

Eloquent, urgent, and inspiring, The Constant Fire tackles the acrimonious debate between science and religion, taking us beyond its stagnant parameters into the wider domain of human spiritual experience. From a Neolithic archaeological site in Ireland to modern theories of star formation, Adam Frank traverses a wide terrain, broadening our sights and allowing us to imagine an alternative perspective. Drawing from his experience as a practicing astrophysicist and from the writings of the great scholars of religion, philosophy, and mythology, Frank locates the connective tissue linking science and religion—their commonality as sacred pursuits—and finds their shared aspiration in pursuit of "the True and the Real." Taking us from the burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600 to Einstein and on to today's pressing issues of global warming and resource depletion, The Constant Fire shows us how to move beyond this stale debate into a more profound experience of the world as sacred—a world that embraces science without renouncing human spirituality.