This study examined marginalia and colophons in South Slavic manuscripts to establish their value as primary historical source documents. The evidence of a "history from below" was compared with other primary sources to provide an understanding about the lives of Bulgarian Christian Slavs during the Ottoman period and a history of their language, scripts, and book production. The Ottoman Empire invaded Bulgaria in 1393, to remain in power there until 1878. During that time, scribes preserved Bulgarian literary heritage by copying manuscripts. They also recorded in the margins of the manuscripts their thoughts and perceptions, formal transactions of the church, and interactions between the church and its community. While the first marginalia were prayers for forgiveness, later marginalia became a somewhat hidden repository of the marginalized voices of the Ottoman Empire: clergy, readers, students, teachers, poets, and artists who repeatedly started with "Da se znae" (Let it be known). This study analyzed the 146 manuscripts in the Historical and Archival Church Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria (HACI) that contain marginalia and colophons. Content analysis of the corpus yielded 20 categories that clustered into six thematic groups: religious texts; marginalia related to book history and production; interactions between the readers and the book; interaction between the Church and the religious community; to historical events; the cosmos and natural history. This study employed a triangulation of methods, including traditional historical and the New History "grass-roots" methods, deconstruction, critical theory, codicology, diplomatics and linguistic analysis to understand the deeper meanings of marginalia and colophons. This inter-disciplinary study can be considered the first comprehensive, systematic study of South Slavic marginalia and colophons of any magnitude to be made available to Western scholars, and the first substantiated "history from below" of the Ottoman Empire. / text

The Straits of Florida has been noted as a potential location for extraction of the kydrokinetic energy of the Florida Current, in view of the strength of the current and its proximity to the shore. ... This research explores the Florida Current as a potential renewable energy source. By utilizing historical data, in situ observations of the Florida Current, and computer model data, the hydrokinetic resource of the Florida Current is characterized both spatially and temporally. Subsequently, based on the geographic variability of the hydrokinetic power and other factors that impact the economy of a hydrokinetic turbine array installation, the ideal locations for turbine array installation within the Florida Current are identified.... Additionally, an interactive tool has been developed in which array parameters are input - including installation location, turbine diameter, turbine cut-in speed, etc. - and array extraction estimates, ideal installation position, and water depth at the installation points are output. As ocean model data is prominently used in this research, a discussion about the limitations of the ocean model data and a method for overcoming these limitations are described. Globally, the distribution of hydrokinetic power intensity is evaluated to identify other currents that have a high hydrokinetic resource. / by Alana E. Smentek-Duerr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

This thesis deals with the financing of the reconstruction of a family house. A proposal for a possible reconstruction will be made. Based on this proposal, a budget will be drawn from which the amount of funding needed will be developed. The aim of this work is to introduce possible options for financing the reconstruction of a family house and to determine the optimal solution.

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Ce projet consiste en la compréhension et la reproduction de systèmes électrodynamiques, ou plus spécifiquement électromagnétiques, pouvant potentiellement offrir un coefficient de performance supérieur à 1. Le système plus spécifiquement étudié ici est le MEG (Motionless Electromagnetic Generator).Ce dernier est étudié et analysé en détail dans le but de comprendre et d'expliquer son fonctionnement. Cette analyse consiste principalement en l'identification et l'explication des principaux phénomènes, théories et effets impliqués dans le fonctionnement du MEG. Celle-ci comprend également une analyse d'un prototype construit selon les spécifications de l'inventeur original. Une caractérisation des modèles théoriques et d'un modèle physique ont été faite afin de pousser l'analyse et de pouvoir comparer les résultats attendus, basé sur les théories électrodynamiques traditionnelles, et les résultats réels. Tel que présenté dans le titre, la reproduction du MEG n'a pas donnée les résultats prévus par les concepteurs. Plusieurs explications sont proposées afin d'expliquer pourquoi il en est ainsi.

Many settlements in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) lack access to electricity which is a necessary resource for development. Given the geography and population patterns in the region, extending national grids is economically unviable for many of the un-electrified settlements. Meanwhile the region is endowed with renewable resources which can be exploited in off-grid mode for electricity generation. This thesis examines the importance of off-grid technologies for onward electrification in the SSA region. The exercise inspires an electricity planning problem that can be analytically specified but is computationally intensive and impractical for real sized problems. Heuristic methods must therefore be used. We develop two new heuristic solution methods which draw on standard algorithms i.e. lexicographic algorithm and genetic algorithm to solve the problem. The new solution methods together with two existing heuristic algorithms in the literature are applied to a case study of Ghana. We find that the electrification schemes yielded by all four solution methods/algorithms suggest off-grid technologies, especially solar, are important for onward electrification in SSA. Locations that were assigned off-grid technologies in the algorithms mentioned above are typically rural where livelihoods are based on small scale farming. Currently, adoption of renewable resource technologies is low in these locations. We therefore develop a dynamic stochastic farm household model to examine the extent to which market failures impact self-funded investment in solar panels by farmers in rural SSA. We find that credit restrictions and risk affect solar panel investment to varying degrees. Using simulations of the policy functions, we find that the expected investment cycle for a credit constrained household in a stochastic farm income environment is 30 years if investment in solar panels is irreversible. In a reversible investment scenario, the expected investment cycle is 5 years only. Reversibility is therefore a major determinant of solar panel adoption among poor farmers.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Physics / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Physics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Parmi les premières chroniques sur les civilisations préhispaniques, à l’importance fondamentale mais au destin souvent funeste, c’est de l’une des plus intéressantes et des plus énigmatiques, la Chronique X, dont il est question dans cette thèse. Ecrite en nahuatl et abondamment illustrée, il s’agit, et de loin, de la source la plus détaillée dont disposent les mexicanistes sur l’histoire des Aztèques, depuis leurs origines mythiques jusqu’à la Conquête espagnole. Actuellement considérée comme perdue, elle nous est toutefois partiellement parvenue à travers deux adaptations en espagnol du dernier quart du XVIe siècle, réalisées respectivement par un religieux dominicain d’origine espagnole, Diego Durán, et par l’un des petits-fils de Montezuma II, l’historien indien Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc.

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