Orwell often treats liberal and radical figures sympathetically and explores his own political position through them. He discriminates between types of liberalism and strongly prefers nineteenth-century liberalism and radicalism to contemporary liberalism. His patriotism, and its distinction from nationalism, are influenced by G.K. Chesterton and by the 'Little England' section of the late nineteenth-century Liberal Party. Many of Orwell's other values, freedom of expression, privacy, and individual autonomy, are part of liberalism. He attacks Marxist forms of socialism which threaten liberal values, and becomes committed to socialism where it promises to protect or fulfil them, although such a form of socialism remains only a possibility. He is best described as a liberal committed to socialism. Orwell was dissatisfied with the exclusion of historical considerations from most contemporary literary criticism. Marxism was an exception to this. He is influenced by Marxist criticism in his treatment of proletarian literature, and in his critical method of analysing a writer's work in terms of its political tendency and the writer's position in society. His knowledge of passages of Marx's work itself can be traced to The Adelphi. Orwell argues that the writer must be a liberal, and that prose literature is associated with liberalism, yet also admits the Marxist case that liberalism is a product of capitalism. He then doubts whether the culture of liberalism will continue to exist if capitalism is replaced by socialism, and finds it definitely incompatible with the growth of totalitarianism. An uneasy resolution of these dilemmas is reached in the distinction between a man as a writer and as a citizen, the preservation of the writer's liberal mind in a separate compartment from his activity as a man in an increasingly non-liberal society. The witness-narrator of Orwell's reportage of the 1930s can be compared to the autonomous self preferred by liberalism. These works were not directly influenced by the contemporary documentary movement. Orwell's tendency to appeal to common sense and to argue from observation and experience can be connected with liberalism, as can his view of language as an instrument, and the validation of personal identity by sensation and memory in his work. The distance of the observing subject of his reportage from the observed person can disrupt attempts at empathy and run counter to his expressed socialism. A sequence of composition is established for the essays in Inside the Whale.

This study is intended to investigate the concept of pleasure as developed by Nasir-i Khusraw, a prominent Isma'ili philosopher and theologian of the fifth century hijrah. This concept seems to be one of the central themes of Nasir's thought system. / From Nasir's works, it appears that according to him the concept of pleasure is not simply an ethical problem but a cosmic principle active and functional on all the existential levels. Every being experiences pleasure in its specific way by performing the function assigned to it. Through this function or activity every being perpetuates its existence and preserves its well-being. On the sub-human levels i.e. mineral, vegetative and animal, the principle of pleasure is a driving force which enables these levels to preserve their respective well-being. However, from the human level till the level of the Universal Soul this principle gains an increasingly epistemological character as it is connected with the soul's activity of acquiring knowledge. / Nasir has extensively quoted and criticised Muhammad-i Zakariyya-yi Raji's views on pleasure. This situation has called for a comparative study of their concepts of pleasure in their respective metaphysical and historical contexts. This comparative study reveals that Nasir and Razi's concepts of pleasure are ultimately grounded in their metaphysical principles, and their interpretations of pleasure are influenced by Aristotelian and Platonic interpretations respectively, as these models suited their respective metaphysical world-views.

Thesis (M.A.)--Columbia Graduate School of Bible and Missions, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-100).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-56).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-87). Also available in electronic version.

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[pt] Com o aumento da complexidade das aplicações de banco de dados a tarefa de sintonizar os sistemas de banco de dados para melhorar os tempos de resposta das consultas submetidas tem se tornado mais difícil. O uso de visões materializadas é uma forma de melhorar o desempenho do acesso aos dados. Trata-se de um objeto de um banco de dados relacional que armazena um conjunto de dados pré-calculados resultante de uma consulta. Esta dissertação propõe a criação automática de visões materializadas. Para tal utiliza uma arquitetura de auto-sintonia não-intrusiva, isto é, sem modificar o código do SGBD. São propostas métricas para estimar os custos envolvendo visões materializadas permitindo que se determine seu benefício efetivo. São apresentadas heurísticas para a tomada de decisão automática quanto à criação de visões materializadas em função de uma determinada carga de trabalho. São apresentados testes e simulações com o benchmark TPC-H na presença do SGBD MS SQL Server 2008. / [en] As database applications become more complex, tuning database systems in order to improve query response times also become harder. One could consider materialized views, a relational database object that stores data resulting from specific queries, to obtain better performances. This dissertation proposes the automatic creation of materialized views. A non-intrusive architecture is used in order to keep DBMS source codes unchanged. There is a need to estimate the creation cost and the benefits obtained from the presence of the materialized views. Heuristics are proposed to help with the automatic decision upon creation of these materialized views for a given workload. Simulation tests for TPC-H benchmark and MS SQL Server DBMS are presented.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University

In traditional university higher education the normal expectation is that academic staff will undertake teaching and research. There is an implicit assumption that active researchers provide a high quality learning experience, with research-informed teaching at its core. The research presented in this thesis explores aspects of the teaching-research nexus in university and college-based higher education. As there is not traditionally a research culture within college-based higher education it may be assumed that the learning experience may be of a lesser quality. This research considered four aspects of provision. It considered institutional and lecturer views on the nexus before examining what students experienced and how engaged they were in their lecturers' research. Comparisons between the types of institution showed an expected cultural pattern between universities and colleges stance on the nexus, where CBHE focused on teaching, post-1992 universities on research-informed teaching, and the pre-1992 universities highlighting their research reputations. The student experience is shown to diverge from this pattern. The CBHE psychology students had a more research-rich experience than those at universities, with varying levels of engagement with lecturers' research. The evidence form this study suggests that research, in its traditional form, may not be necessary to enhance learning. It indicates that there needs to be further exploration about the role of scholarship within higher education to develop a better understanding of the role of CBHE in the higher education sector, and what it may contribute to the teaching-research nexus. This may have implications for the status of CBHE in the higher education landscape, as has been suggested by the first TEF outcomes.

abstract: ABSTRACT Much of teacher feedback research is conducted in the L1 and L2 contexts. There is a paucity of research about feedback in the Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) context. Particularly, little is known about teachers' feedback practices and student views of teacher feedback. The present study was undertaken to fill the research gap by focusing on teachers'written feedback. Student data from surveying 38 students was interpreted with teacher data gained from interviewing three teachers. The findings indicate that teacher written feedback, which occurred in a multiple-draft writing cycle, generally accorded with recommended feedback principles. Students responded favorably to teacher written feedback. The results also reveal discrepancies between teachers' feedback practices and student perceptions of and preferences regarding teacher feedback. The results show that students wanted more written comments from teachers, though most teachers didn't prioritize written comments. Despite teachers' practices and their inclination toward offering coded indirect error correction, students in the study expressed their preferences for direct error correction. Most students are interested in receiving teacher feedback that addresses all aspects of writing rather than primarily focusing on language accuracy. The reasons that may account for the disjuncture are also discussed in the study. The study concludes that it is important for teachers to be aware of student attitudes and expectations regarding teacher feedback. Teachers should be flexible enough to provide individualized feedback. Pedagogical implications are included in the paper in the hope of shedding light on the development of effective and helpful teacher feedback. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Asian Languages and Civilizations 2012