Project (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-268).

No description available.

Thesis advisor: O. Ernesto Valiente / Thesis advisor: M. Shawn Copeland / The process of peace and reconciliation after conflict is based on developing a spiritual disposition of compassion that is informed by God’s grace and expressed through virtues of faith, hope and charity. Empowered by God’s grace individuals and communities can be transformed and enabled to work in solidarity with victims of violence in ways that seek to change social structures of sin and suffering. Compassionate understanding can shape and inform individuals and communities toward practices of truth-telling, justice, forgiveness and reconciliation. Solidarity and compassion underlie a Christian discipleship that nurtures healing of memories, rehabilitation of victim and perpetrators in order to reintegrate them in society. This encounter has a transformative potential for participants as they begin to share a common story and envision a reconciled future. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

archives@tulane.edu / 0 / Marjorie Rawle

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisor: Byron D. Tapley. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

As technological advances throughout the field of satellite geodesy improve the accuracy of satellite measurements, numerical methods and algorithms must be able to keep pace. This becomes increasingly important for high precision applications, such as high degree/order gravity field recovery. Currently, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment's (GRACE) dual one-way microwave ranging system can determine changes in inter-satellite range to a precision of a few microns; however, with the advent of laser measurement systems nanometer precision ranging is a realistic possibility. With this increase in measurement accuracy, a reevaluation of the accuracy inherent in the numerical integration algorithms is necessary. This study attempts to quantify and minimize these numerical errors in an effort to improve the accuracy of modeling and propagation of various orbital perturbations; helping to provide further insight into the behavior and evolution of the Earth's gravity field from the more capable gravity missions in the future. The numerical integration errors are examined for a variety of satellite accelerations. The propagation of orbits similar to those of the GRACE satellites using a gravitational model that assumes the Earth is a perfect sphere show integration errors, using double precision numerical representations, on the order of 1 micron in inter-satellite range and 0.1 nanometers per second in inter-satellite range-rate. In addition, when the Earth's gravitational field is formulated in spherical harmonics these numerical integration errors begin to contaminate signals to due harmonics approximately above degree 220, for an orbit at GRACE altitudes. Also, when examining the effect of mass anomalies on the Earth's surface, simulated as point masses, it is apparent that numerical integration methods are easily capable of resolving point mass anomalies as small as 0.05 gigatonnes. Finally, a numerical integration procedure is determined to accurately simulate the effect of numerous, small step accelerations applied to the satellite's center of mass due to misalignment and misfiring of the attitude thrusters. Future studies can then use this procedure as a metric to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of an accelerometer in reproducing these non-gravitational forces and how these errors might affect gravity field recovery. / text

Several groups produce estimates of the Earth's time-varying gravitational field with data provided by the NASA/DLR Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. These unprecedented highly accurate global data sets track the time-variable transport of mass across and underneath the surface of the Earth and give insight into secular, seasonal, and sub seasonal variations in the global water supply. Knowledge gained from these products can inform and be incorporated into ocean and hydrological models and advise environmental policy planning. Therefore, a complete understanding of the accuracy and variations between these different fields is necessary, and the most accurate possible solutions desired. While the various gravity fields are similar, differences in processing strategies and tuning parameters result in solutions with regionally specific variations and error patterns. This study analyzed the spatial, temporal, and spectral variations between four different gravity field products. The knowledge gained in this analysis was used to develop an ensemble solution that harnesses the best characteristics of each individual field to create an optimal model. Multiple methods were used to combine and analyze the individual and ensemble solutions. First a simple mean model was created; then the different solutions were weighted based on the formal error estimates as well as the monthly deviation from the arithmetic mean ensemble. These ensemble models as well as the four individual data center solutions were analyzed for bias, long term trend, and regional variations between the solutions, evaluated statistically to assess the noise and scatter within the solutions, and compared to independent hydrological models. Therefore, the form and cause of the deviations between the models, as well as the impact of these variations, is characterized. The three ensemble solutions constructed in this analysis were all effective at reducing noise in the models and better correlate to hydrological processes than any individual solution. However, the scale of these improvements is constrained by the relative variation between the individual solutions as the deviation of these individual data products from the hydrological model output is much larger than the variations between the individual and ensemble solutions. / text

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) project has two primary goals: to determine the Earth’s mean gravitational field over the lifetime of the mission and to observe the time-variable nature of the gravitational field. The Center for Space Research's (CSR) Release 4 (RL04) GRACE solutions are currently created via a least-squares process that assimilates data collected over a month using a simple boxcar window and determines a spherical harmonic representation of the monthly gravitational field. The nature of this technique obscures the time-variable gravity field on time scales shorter than one month and spatial scales shorter than a few hundred kilometers. A computational algorithm is developed here that allows increased temporal resolution of the GRACE gravity information, thus allowing the Earth's time-variable gravity to be more clearly observed. The primary technique used is a sliding-window algorithm attached to a weighted version of batch least squares estimation. A number of different temporal windowing functions are evaluated. Their results are investigated via both spectral and spatial analyses, and globally as well as in localized regions. In addition to being compared to each other, the solutions are also compared to external models and data sets, as well as to other high-frequency GRACE solutions made outside CSR. The results demonstrate that a GRACE solution made from at least eight days of data will provide a well-conditioned solution. A series of solutions made with windows of at least that length is capable of observing the expected near-annual signal. The results also indicate that the signals at frequencies greater than 3 cycles/year are often smaller than the GRACE errors, making detection unreliable. Altering the windowing technique does not noticeably improve the resolution, since the spectra of the expected errors and the expected non-annual signals are very similar, leading any window to affect them in the same manner. / text

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-104).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2005. / Supervisor: Graeme MacQueen. Also available online.