Was there such a thing as "orthodoxy" in earliest Christianity? That was the question raised by Walter Bauer in his classic monograph, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Chrsitianity. Bauer argued that the traditional Eusebian reconstruction of the primitive church was markedly defected, and against that reconstruction, he contended that heretical movements of the second century had as good a claim to apostolic traditions as did the catholic movement. Although I agree with Bauer that the traditional reconstruction of the early church is unsound, I do not find that Bauer has offered a reconstruction engendering any firmer confidence. I challenge Bauer at two points. First, in chapter three, I attempt to determine whether Bauer's reconstruction makes sense of all the evidence. Then, I analyze the process by which groups come to self-consciousness. That is a two-sided matter. One is the fixing of a pool of acceptable diversity in which a group relates itself to the larger world of diversity (chapter four). The second is the process by which a group excludes various other diverse positions (chapter 5). Attention to these matters makes possible a more sensitive evaluation of the complexities that confronted the Christian community as it sought to define itself. Having confined my investigation to the most significant area of the Christian mission at the turn of the century, my work provides a fresh reconstruction of the primitive church in western Asia Minor at a time when the process of self-definition was becoming the controlling issue. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

As one of the most popular gods in the Greek and Roman world, Dionysos inspired artists of virtually every medium. This resulted in a rich iconographic tradition that stretches over eleven centuries. Dionysos' continuous popularity in both public and private life, however, cannot be traced in all media. The mosaics of Greece and the coast of Asia Minor are at the present time the only medium in Greece and around the Mediterranean which allows us to trace Dionysiac imagery for over nine centuries. This thesis collects forty-three mosaics from Greece and the coast of Asia Minor, and analyzes their iconography, compositional schemata, and architectural context. By following the long history of Dionysiac mosaics in the Greek world, by examining their iconographic and stylistic characteristics, and by comparing them to similar representations in other media and on mosaics from different regions, we are able to trace the development of the iconography of Dionysos and his followers. But we are also able to address questions which are central to the overall mosaic tradition in Greece, such as for example the role that Greece played in the development of mosaics in the ancient world; methods and problems of chronology; controversies relating to suggestions of an unbroken Hellenistic tradition that lasted well into the imperial period; influences from developments in the West; and outside cultural influences in the Roman imperial period. Furthermore, the Dionysiac mosaics of Greece and the coast of Asia Minor raise questions which are important for mosaics from all regions of the ancient world, such as the method of transmission of motifs and the tendency of modem scholarship to assign specific non-residential uses for buildings which contain more than one Dionysiac mosaic . / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The E1b transforming region of Adenovirus type 5 encodes minor products of 93R and 156R in addition to the more abundant proteins 178R, 496R, and 84R. The goal of this study was to elucidate the function of 93R and 156R to gain a better understanding of their role in oncogenic transformation and productive infection. Mutant viruses were constructed, whose normal splicing pattern was disrupted by point mutations in the 3' acceptor sites for the 1.26 and 1.31Kb mRNAs, which code for the 156R and 93R products, respectively. In the construction of these mutations, it was necessary to ensure that they did not affect the coding region for 496R. These mutants produced transformed foci in primary rat kidney cells with wild type efficiencies in DNA-mediated transformation assays. In the mutant designed to eliminate 156R, although the two wild type 156R species were absent, two new species running slightly faster on SDS-PAGE were detected. These proteins were recognized by sera specific to both the N- and C-termini of 496R, suggesting there utilization of an in-frame cryptic splice acceptor site. Use of this site probably resulted in the production of a mRNA encoding a modified 156R. These mutant proteins also seemed to be produced at the expense of 496R. The mutant designed to eliminate 93R grew with titres equivalent to wild type dl309, yet it was not clear whether a modified protein was produced in this case as well. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

This thesis examines the evidence for Jewish communities in Asia Minor from the third century BCE through to the third century CE and beyond. The study begins with a discussion of the founding of the Jewish communities in Asia Minor, the nature of Roman support for these communities, and their religious concerns as they are revealed by the literary sources available to us. Chapters 2 to 4 present and analyse the evidence for five particular communities - those at Sardis, Priene, Acmonia, Eumeneia and Apamea. The evidence from archaeology, inscriptions, numismatics and literary sources is discussed in an attempt to draw together the material into a coherent account of the nature of Jewish communal life in these cities. Chapters 5 to 9 are thematic studies. The prominence accorded to women in some Jewish communities and in the cities of Asia Minor is discussed in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6 the use of the title(^a)'T'taro? for Yahweh and for pagan deities is analysed, along with the supposed link between Jewish communities and Sabazios. The existence of a number of "God-worshippers" in the synagogues of Asia Minor is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 discusses the provision of water sources in the synagogues of Asia Minor and relates this to Jewish purity concerns. Chapter 9 addresses the issue of Jewish communities and local and Roman citizenship and discusses the evidence which suggests that in some places Jewish communities were well integrated into city life.Concluding remarks draw out some of the implications of this study for our view of Diaspora Jewish communities. It seems clear that in Asia Minor Jewish communities were involved in and a part of the cities in which they lived whilst also retaining their identity as Jews. We can also recognise a significant diversity of Jewish life in Asia Minor, with local factors providing a strong formative influence on these communities. Yet they all saw themselves as worthy and legitimate heirs of Old Testament faith.I confirm that no part of the material offered has previously been submitted by me for a degree in this or in any other University.

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We analyzed data from the first year of a survey for Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that we are carrying out with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4 m Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. We implanted synthetic NEOs into the data stream to derive our nightly detection efficiency as a function of magnitude and rate of motion. Using these measured efficiencies and the solar system absolute magnitudes derived by the Minor Planet Center for the 1377. measurements of 235. unique NEOs detected, we directly derive, for the first time from a single observational data set, the NEO size distribution from 1. km down to 10 m. We find that there are 106.6 NEOs larger than 10 m. This result implies a factor of 10 fewer small NEOs than some previous results, though our derived size distribution is in good agreement with several other estimates.

Robertson and Seymour proved that graphs are well-quasi-ordered by the minor relation. In other words, given infinitely many graphs, one graph contains another as a minor. An application of this theorem is that every property that is closed under deleting vertices, edges, and contracting edges can be characterized by finitely many graphs, and hence can be decided in polynomial time. In this thesis we are concerned with the topological minor relation. We say that a graph G contains another graph H as a topological minor if H can be obtained from a subgraph of G by repeatedly deleting a vertex of degree two and adding an edge incident with the neighbors of the deleted vertex. Unlike the relation of minor, the topological minor relation does not well-quasi-order graphs in general. However, Robertson conjectured in the late 1980's that for every positive integer k, the topological minor relation well-quasi-orders graphs that do not contain a topological minor isomorphic to the path of length k with each edge duplicated. This thesis consists of two main results. The first one is a structure theorem for excluding a fixed graph as a topological minor, which is analogous to a cornerstone result of Robertson and Seymour, who gave such a structure for graphs that exclude a fixed minor. Results for topological minors were previously obtained by Grohe and Marx and by Dvorak, but we push one of the bounds in their theorems to the optimal value. This improvement is needed for the next theorem. The second main result is a proof of Robertson's conjecture. As a corollary, properties on certain graphs closed under deleting vertices, edges, and "suppressing" vertices of degree two can be characterized by finitely many graphs, and hence can be decided in polynomial time.

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No description available.

The asteroid (16) Psyche is of scientific interest because it contains similar to 1% of the total mass of the asteroid belt and is thought to be the remnant metallic core of a protoplanet. Radar observations have indicated the significant presence of metal on the surface with a small percentage of silicates. Prior ground-based observations showed rotational variations in the near-infrared (NIR) spectra and radar albedo of this asteroid. However, no comprehensive study that combines multi-wavelength data has been conducted so far. Here we present rotationally resolved NIR spectra (0.7-2.5 mu m) of (16) Psyche obtained with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. These data have been combined with shape models of the asteroid for each rotation phase. Spectral band parameters extracted from the NIR spectra show that the pyroxene band center varies from similar to 0.92 to 0.94 mu m. Band center values were used to calculate the pyroxene chemistry of the asteroid, whose average value was found to be Fs(30)En(65)Wo(5). Variations in the band depth (BD) were also observed, with values ranging from 1.0% to 1.5%. Using a new laboratory spectral calibration method, we estimated an average orthopyroxene content of 6% +/- 1%. The mass-deficit region of Psyche, which exhibits the highest radar albedo, also shows the highest value for the spectral slope and the minimum BD. The spectral characteristics of Psyche suggest that its parent body did not have the typical structure expected for a differentiated body or that the sequence of events that led to its current state was more complex than previously thought.