Oration 30 (Or. 30) has been commonly used in scholarship as positive affirmation of religious violence and temple destruction in late Antique Syria. This view of widespread violence in late 4th century Syria was previously supported by scholarship on temple destruction and conversion, which tended to argue that temple destruction and conversion was a widespread phenomenon in the 4th and 5th centuries. Recent archaeological scholarship, however, argues against this perspective, in favour of temple destruction and conversion being a rather exceptional and late phenomenon. The question must therefore be asked, to what extent can Libanius’ Or. 30 be used as a source of temple destruction in the Antiochene countryside in Late Antiquity? This question is explored through three chapters which examine: the text and context of Or. 30, the use and application of Roman law in Or. 30, and the archeological evidence for temple destruction and conversion in the Antiochene countryside. This research has revealed that Libanius tends to use similar arguments in his ‘reform speeches,’ that there was no legal basis for temple destruction in the late 4th century, and that there is no archaeological evidence for widespread temple destruction occurring around the composition of Or. 30. Thus, the evidence shows that Libanius’ claim of widespread violence must be seen as an exaggeration. Meaning that Or. 30 cannot be used to support the idea of widespread destruction and religious violence in the Antiochene countryside at the end of the 4th century or, for that matter, Late Antiquity in general.

Understanding the determinants of employment growth is important in light of the concentration of population and employment in urban centres. As economic activity concentrates, smaller urban centres, and rural areas and towns find themselves at a growing disadvantage. Yet not all small urban or rural towns share the same experience. Moreover, not all urban centres grow significantly. It is thus of academic interest to discover more precisely what the employment growth determinants are.<p>Another aspect of employment growth is the particular source of employment change. Employment growth is not single-dimensional, but it has four components (growth from firm births and business expansions; and decreases from firm deaths and business declines), each of which may have unique determinants. Thus, in investigating the determinants of employment change, it is important to recognize the businesses life cycle and test whether the key influences vary over that life cycle. <p>This study empirically estimates the determinants of employment growth and assesses their role and relative importance in a communitys job growth. The major determinants include industrial composition, human capital, spatial variables and policy variables. The study is carried out at two levels: sub-provincial and provincial and covers the years 1983-1999. Two econometric methods of estimation are applied, random effects and fixed effects. <p>An important finding is that there are significant differences among the four components of employment change. This implies that when we simply examine overall employment growth we are masking very different effects that the determinants of employment change have among the four components of job growth. At the community level industrial diversification assists the growth of expanding firms and boosts employment due to the establishment of new businesses. On the other side, communities that have high industrial concentration experience lower employment losses from declining and exiting firms. Regions with a higher share of population that has received some post secondary education have, ceteris paribus, higher job growth rates. Another finding is that the farther away a community is situated from a large Census Metropolitan Area, the less employment growth it has. These results offer significant refinements to undifferentiated employment change findings.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province enacted its Heritage Act in 1975. The Ontario Heritage Act enables municipalities to conserve built heritage in a number of ways, including instituting heritage conservation districts. Heritage districts recognize and conserve built heritage that extend beyond the special architectural qualities of individual buildings. Port Dalhousie is a quaint community located on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and inextricably linked to the first three Welland Canals. Now a part of the City of St. Catharines, it was designated a heritage conservation district in 2003. However, after the designation an ambitious and controversial re-development plan was proposed for the community’s historic commercial core. The re-development aimed to revitalize the area, but in doing so also threatened to destroy the heritage. This case study used historical research, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires to investigate the cycle of heritage commodification, the effectiveness of public participation and the exercise of power as the various stakeholders in the community of Port Dalhousie deliberated over the future of its built heritage. Findings from this study reveal that sound governance and effective planning policies promoted public participation. The results also confirm that active civic involvement from local residents plays an integral role in heritage conservation, and influences developments that threaten heritage. This study recommends that heritage planning should be more proactive in municipal land use planning, and heritage guidelines for conservation areas should be part of broader heritage management programs where power sharing, participation, and decision making reflect social equity. The findings and recommendations from this study are intended to assist communities, managers and planners in future efforts to conserve built heritage.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province enacted its Heritage Act in 1975. The Ontario Heritage Act enables municipalities to conserve built heritage in a number of ways, including instituting heritage conservation districts. Heritage districts recognize and conserve built heritage that extend beyond the special architectural qualities of individual buildings. Port Dalhousie is a quaint community located on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and inextricably linked to the first three Welland Canals. Now a part of the City of St. Catharines, it was designated a heritage conservation district in 2003. However, after the designation an ambitious and controversial re-development plan was proposed for the community’s historic commercial core. The re-development aimed to revitalize the area, but in doing so also threatened to destroy the heritage. This case study used historical research, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires to investigate the cycle of heritage commodification, the effectiveness of public participation and the exercise of power as the various stakeholders in the community of Port Dalhousie deliberated over the future of its built heritage. Findings from this study reveal that sound governance and effective planning policies promoted public participation. The results also confirm that active civic involvement from local residents plays an integral role in heritage conservation, and influences developments that threaten heritage. This study recommends that heritage planning should be more proactive in municipal land use planning, and heritage guidelines for conservation areas should be part of broader heritage management programs where power sharing, participation, and decision making reflect social equity. The findings and recommendations from this study are intended to assist communities, managers and planners in future efforts to conserve built heritage.

Understanding the determinants of employment growth is important in light of the concentration of population and employment in urban centres. As economic activity concentrates, smaller urban centres, and rural areas and towns find themselves at a growing disadvantage. Yet not all small urban or rural towns share the same experience. Moreover, not all urban centres grow significantly. It is thus of academic interest to discover more precisely what the employment growth determinants are.<p>Another aspect of employment growth is the particular source of employment change. Employment growth is not single-dimensional, but it has four components (growth from firm births and business expansions; and decreases from firm deaths and business declines), each of which may have unique determinants. Thus, in investigating the determinants of employment change, it is important to recognize the businesses life cycle and test whether the key influences vary over that life cycle. <p>This study empirically estimates the determinants of employment growth and assesses their role and relative importance in a communitys job growth. The major determinants include industrial composition, human capital, spatial variables and policy variables. The study is carried out at two levels: sub-provincial and provincial and covers the years 1983-1999. Two econometric methods of estimation are applied, random effects and fixed effects. <p>An important finding is that there are significant differences among the four components of employment change. This implies that when we simply examine overall employment growth we are masking very different effects that the determinants of employment change have among the four components of job growth. At the community level industrial diversification assists the growth of expanding firms and boosts employment due to the establishment of new businesses. On the other side, communities that have high industrial concentration experience lower employment losses from declining and exiting firms. Regions with a higher share of population that has received some post secondary education have, ceteris paribus, higher job growth rates. Another finding is that the farther away a community is situated from a large Census Metropolitan Area, the less employment growth it has. These results offer significant refinements to undifferentiated employment change findings.

Thesis (M.S. in Applied Physics)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Xavier Maruyama. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-77, 79-81). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Richard M. Howard, Vladimir N. Dobrokhodov. Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-100). Also available online.

Industrial flaring can have negative impacts on regional air quality and recent studies have shown that flares are often operated at low combustion efficiency, which exacerbates these air quality impacts. This thesis examines industrial flaring with the objectives of (1) assessing the air quality impacts of flares operating at a variety of conditions, (2) examining the extent to which improvements in flare operations could reduce emissions, (3) identifying opportunities for recycling flared gases in fuel gas networks, and (4) identifying opportunities for reducing the generation of flared gases, using the improved control of catalytic cracking operations as a case study. The work presented in this thesis demonstrates that flares operating at low combustion efficiency can increase localized ambient ozone concentrations by more than 15 ppb under some conditions. The impact of flares on air quality depends most strongly on combustion efficiency, the flow rates to the flares and the chemical composition (photochemical reactivity) of the emissions. Products of incomplete combustion and nitrogen oxides emissions from flaring generally had a smaller impact on air quality than unburned flare gases. The combustion efficiency at which a flare can operate can be constrained by the flare’s design. In a case study of an air-assisted flare, it was demonstrated that choices in blower configurations could lead to emissions that were orders of magnitude greater or less than those predicted using an assumed combustion efficiency of 98%. Designing flares with air-assist rates that can be finely tuned can significantly reduce emissions. Similarly, flaring can be reduced by integrating sources of waste gases into fuel gas networks. Analyses for a petroleum refinery indicated that this integration can often be accomplished with little net cost by expanding boiler capacities. Finally, flared gases can be reduced at their source. A case study of a fluid catalytic cracking indicated that using better temperature control could significantly minimize flared gases. / text

Abstract: This thesis is a comparative analysis of the apocalypse as a theme in four novels, two American and two Quebecois. Originally a biblical myth, apocalyptic tales are comprised of three narrative aspects defined Bertrand Gervais as Crisis, Time, Meaning / Sense. The four novels are analyzed individually according to these three elements. The American novels correspond to the more traditional pattern of the myth in which the world faces mass destruction followed by the survival of of the chosen-ones who will experience redemption. Contrarily, the two others demonstrate the conceptualization and representation of the traditional myth of the apocalypse towards a modern analogy of transformation of individuals within a profane world; one in which the mythical becomes farcical.||Résumé : Cette étude porte sur l’analyse comparée du thème de 1’apocalypse dans quatre romans, deux Américains et deux Québécois. Mythe biblique a 1’origine, le récit de I ’Apocalypse comporte trois éléments narratifs bien définis par Bertrand Gervais soient la Crise, le Temps et le Sens. Les quatre romans sont envisages, l’un a la suite de l’autre, en fonction de ces trois éléments. II en ressort que deux d’entre eux correspondent au schéma plus traditionnel du mythe avec sa destruction massive du monde suivi du choix d’élus qui auront la chance de connaitre la rédemption. Les deux autres, par contre, démontrent 1’evolution du mythe traditionnel de l’Apocalypse vers une analogie moderne de la transformation des individus dans un monde profane, ou le mythique devient même risible.

Oration 30 (Or. 30) has been commonly used in scholarship as positive affirmation of religious violence and temple destruction in late Antique Syria. This view of widespread violence in late 4th century Syria was previously supported by scholarship on temple destruction and conversion, which tended to argue that temple destruction and conversion was a widespread phenomenon in the 4th and 5th centuries. Recent archaeological scholarship, however, argues against this perspective, in favour of temple destruction and conversion being a rather exceptional and late phenomenon. The question must therefore be asked, to what extent can Libanius’ Or. 30 be used as a source of temple destruction in the Antiochene countryside in Late Antiquity? This question is explored through three chapters which examine: the text and context of Or. 30, the use and application of Roman law in Or. 30, and the archeological evidence for temple destruction and conversion in the Antiochene countryside. This research has revealed that Libanius tends to use similar arguments in his ‘reform speeches,’ that there was no legal basis for temple destruction in the late 4th century, and that there is no archaeological evidence for widespread temple destruction occurring around the composition of Or. 30. Thus, the evidence shows that Libanius’ claim of widespread violence must be seen as an exaggeration. Meaning that Or. 30 cannot be used to support the idea of widespread destruction and religious violence in the Antiochene countryside at the end of the 4th century or, for that matter, Late Antiquity in general.