This thesis is a study in the Christology of Alexander of Hales. I chose Alexander as a subject simply because I wanted to become acquainted with a theology not of my own tradition and there is no better period to choose for this purpose than the thirteenth century, the century of the scholastic giants. Having chosen the period the next question to be asked was "who could I study besides Thomas Aquinas"? The fact that there were good new texts available of Alexander's main works and the fact that he was a man of some stature in his own day together with the fact that most Protestants have never heard of him seemed a good reason to discover the source of his great reputation. There were problems about the text of the Summa in that there were doubts as to its genuineness but I hoped that these problems would be solved as I proceeded. However, this was not to be so. Because of the doubts about the genuineness of the Summa this thesis has become a study in the Christology of Alexander which appears in the Glossa on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Together with this there are discussions of the views of the Quaestiones at the end of each topic in this thesis.

Thesis advisor: Jean-Luc Solère / This dissertation examines the noetics of several early thirteenth-century Latin Augustinian thinkers, who first received Aristotle's noetic from the Arabs, examining in detail the early Latin reception of Aristotelian proposal that human thought is caused by the `agent intellect'. I argue that the early Latin-Augustinian reactions to the Arab noetics reveal an abiding Latin commitment to a concept of selfhood in natural thought. For different reasons, these early 13th century Latin thinkers explicitly locate the principle of natural thought within the individual's soul, thus conceiving the individual as the spontaneous origin of the activity of his or her thinking. I propose that there is a progressively more refined development of this concept within the interpretation of the Peripatetic noetic proposed within the early 13th century Franciscan school. I trace this development through John of La Rochelle to the anonymous author of the Summa Fratris Alexandri Book 2 to Bonaventure's early thought. At the same time, I analyze this Franciscan development relative to William of Auvergne's well-conceived opposition to all interpretations of the Aristotelian noetic. I make the case that William's critique sets the standard for the noetic of the individual to which these Franciscans adhere, even in their adoption of the Aristotelian noetic. I then argue that to adhere to William's standard, these Franciscans drew on Averroes' account of the agent intellect as found in Averroes' Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima Libros. Finally, I argue that within the early 13th century's development of the noetic of the individual, there is an important, self-conscious development of the historico-philosophical concept of the Western self. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This dissertation explores the uses for data collected at broadband seismic stations to investigate upper mantle structures. In the Barents Sea region, we use seismic waveform modeling on data collected from arrays in Norway and Finland to investigate the nature of the Hales discontinuity in this area. We find that the unusually high velocities required by the move-out of the diffracted first arrival requires a discontinuity below the Moho, which we believe is probably caused by a phase transition from spinel to garnet peridotite. In Chile and Argentina, we use data collected during the Chile Argentina Geophysical Experiment to perform a regional travel time tomography in order to investigate the nature of the mantle above this unusual subduction zone. The northern half of the study area (between 30° and 33°S) is characterized by the central Chilean flat slab segment, where the descending Nazca slab dives to 100 km depth and then flattens, traveling horizontally for hundreds of kilometers before resuming its descent into the mantle. The Nazca plate in the southern half of the study area has a relatively constant dip of about 30°. The southern half exhibits normal arc volcanism roughly above the 100 - 125 km contours of the downgoing slab. The northern half has had no active volcanism in the past 2 Ma, and underwent an eastward displacement of arc volcanism beginning ~10 Ma. The northern half is also remarkable for the basement-cored uplifts of the Sierras Pampeanas. Our study of the upper mantle above the southern half indicates low P wave velocities, low S wave velocities, and high Vp/Vs ratios below the arc, consistent with partial melt. Above the flat slab segment we find low Vp, high Vs, and low Vp/Vs ratios. While the nature of the material responsible for these velocities cannot be uniquely determined, the velocities indicate it must be dry, cold, and depleted. In the transition from flat to normal subduction geometries, we find velocities consistent with frozen asthenosphere, which may have been displaced by the advancing flat slab during the Miocene.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / In the life of Christ—from his humble birth to his horrific death—Francis of Assisi saw nothing less than the full revelation of God. In this dissertation I study how Francis’s impulse toward the historical dimension of the incarnation finds theological expression among Paris’s first generation of Franciscan theologians as represented in their Summa halensis. I argue that the Franciscans’ attention to the historical character of the incarnation facilitates a christology that unites and integrates speculative and practical theological concerns. Speculatively, the Summa halensis prioritizes the full integrity of Christ’s humanity without compromising the existential dependence of that humanity on the Word who assumes it; practically, the Summa halensis grounds the salvific efficacy of Christian penitential practices in the salvific quality of the entire trajectory, and not just the final moments, of Christ’s life. This study, then, offers grounds for a reappraisal of the Summa halensis as a hitherto unrecognized inflection point for the development of scholastic christology, as an early instance of scholastic theology’s tendency to integrate the speculative with the practical. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Geóloga / El yacimiento Mina Ministro Hales (MMH) es un depósito tipo pórfido cuprífero con mineralización de Cu y Mo. En la porción superior desarrolló un sistema de alta sulfidización con la formación de brechas hidrotermales vetiformes con mineralización de Cu, Ag e impurezas de As. Este es un sistema en el cual está preservado el techo de alteración fílica a argílica avanzada que continúa en profundidad a un ambiente de núcleo potásico con superposición clorita-sericita. Este yacimiento está ubicado al norte de la ciudad de Calama en la II Región de Antofagasta, bajo una cubierta de gravas aluviales miocenas. Se encuentra en el lado occidental de la Falla Oeste que forma parte del Sistema de Falla Domeyko. MMH pertenece a la División Ministro Hales (DMH) de Codelco Norte. La mineralización principal y de mayor valor económico se encuentra en la parte central de MMH. El plan de explotación actual comprende la extracción de mineral de la porción superior de MMH Central mediante rajo abierto. Este trabajo se enfoca en la parte inferior de MMH Central, para un posterior plan de extracción más profundo, dejando fuera de este estudio el sistema de alta sulfidización y brechización comprendido en la porción superior. La determinación de la ocurrencia y distribución espacial de molibdenita, esfalerita y galena se realizo mediante análisis mineralógico calcográfico y de leyes de molibdeno, zinc y plomo. Para el estudio de distribución de leyes se incluyen análisis estadísticos y un modelamiento espacial para cada elemento en secciones de control. La integración de los estudios mineralógicos y distribución y modelo de leyes indica que la mineralización de Zn y Pb fue introducida en las etapas tempranas de evolución del yacimiento, depositándose esfalerita y galena en y muy cerca del núcleo potásico, esto bordeando externamente la mineralización de molibdenita. Esto es contrario a lo que ocurre en otros yacimientos, donde la mineralización de Zn y Pb tiende a depositarse en zonas más periféricas y alejadas del núcleo potásico. En la evolución temprana del yacimiento existen evidencias de eventos de alteración y mineralización asociados con varios pulsos, esto de acuerdo a dataciones en molibdenita. Según el estudio mineralógico realizado se lograron distinguir al menos dos eventos, uno sobreimpuesto al otro, bajo distintos ambientes de sulfidización. Estos pulsos se asociaron a la intrusión de distintos pórfidos que han sido mapeados y descritos previamente en el yacimiento. La determinación de diferentes eventos de mineralización de Mo, con asociaciones de ganga distintos, tiene dos potenciales implicancias, uno genético y otro geometalúrgico. En una perspectiva genética y de exploraciones, se sugiere el sistema pudiera representar un nivel telescopeado, con potencial para exploraciones en profundidad. En una perspectiva geometalúrgica se sugieren dos tipos de mineralización de molibdenita distintos, con asociaciones minerales de ganga diferentes. Esto puede tener implicancias en la recuperación de molibdeno en planta. Estas hipótesis requieren estudios de mayor detalle para su evaluación.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / Many vaunt the Summa halensis, conceived but not drafted entirely by Alexander of Hales, for its aesthetics. Few, however, read the text’s aesthetics theologically—as a teaching about God. This dissertation argues that Alexander’s aesthetics are deeply and inexorably theological. It takes as its keystone a passage in which Alexander identifies beauty with the “sacred order of the divine persons.” If beauty be a trinitarian structure instead of a divine attribute, then we should find beauty where we find Trinity. This dissertation trawls the massive Summa halensis for trinitarian beauty. And it finds beauty nearly everywhere. The result is a study of Alexander’s aesthetics that appreciates beauty beyond the constricted limits and categories of modern aesthetics. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the leading causes of disability world-wide. It affects 12% of all Americans ages 25-74 [1]. One of the challenges with OA, is that there are currently no clinically viable methods to measure the health of the cartilage before cartilage loss. There are no ways to replace or heal the cartilage after it has been lost. It is known that the early stages of OA involve a decrease in the amount of glycosaminoglycans (GAG), one of the main molecules in cartilage. This decrease in GAG leads to a change in the fixed charge density of the cartilage and a higher water content with higher diffusivity. The development of techniques to measure the PG content in the cartilage could lead to early diagnosis and the development of effective preventative treatments.One of the suggested methods for measuring the PG content is through quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI is a non-invasive medical imaging technique known for it's ability to image soft tissue. MRI measures the reaction of the nuclear spin in a magnetic field to a radio frequency (RF) pulse. These spins, and the signal they produce, are sensitive to magnetic fields. This makes it possible to measure small changes in anatomical structure, like a decrease in PG content, because the magnetic spins are sensitive to the local magnetic environment. There are several MRI techniques that are able to measure the PG content in the cartilage.The behavior of the MR signal can be affected by changes in the molecular environment. This effect can by measured through changes in the MR signal parameters T1r and T2. More complex MRI techniques such as chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) can be used to directly measure the amount of GAG by taking advantage of the transfer of proton magnetization between the GAG molecules and the surrounding fluids. There are even MRI techniques such as balanced steady state free precession (bSSFP) which makes it possible to measure high resolution morphological images, making it easier to interpret the quantitative scans.This thesis will describe methods employed to improve MRI imaging of cartilage. One method is the developing and testing a new technique for creating maps of the local magnetic field. These field maps can help scans that are particularly sensitive to non-homogeneities in the field. Another method is improving the parameter estimation algorithms which make it easier to more accurately predict values of signal parameters like T1r and T2. This thesis will also describe ongoing efforts to create, and optimize a clinically viable whole-joint cartilage imaging protocol that can be used for early OA detection and diagnosis.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2002. / Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-166).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2002. / Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-166).

Thesis--Catholic University of America. / Bibliography: p. 239-246.