Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953) was a Harley Street doctor, an analytical psychologist trained by C. G. Jung (1875-1961), and a student of the independent 'spiritual' teachers G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) and P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947). In his later years he became a mystical philosopher, a biblical exegete, and leader of his own groups of students. Early in his life he rejected his natal Christian religion associated with his father, Sir William Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923), eminent litterateur and Free Church of Scotland minister. Vindication of this rejection came to Maurice Nicoll through a mystical experience: a 'moment of insight' which propelled him into a life-long search to discover what 'really mattered'. I will argue that although this apparently involved a journey away from his natal Christian practice, Nicoll came to understand that he was working towards a 'truer' form of it. Nicoll's oeuvre as a whole - published works as well as archival sources, including a large amount of recently discovered original material - will be analysed to show the development of his thinking on what he came to call 'esoteric Christianity'. After a biographical 'portrait' the start of Nicoll's journey will be presented as a reaction against the religious stance of his father. Maurice Nicoll's early 'moment of insight' is described and analysed in the light of the ideas of William James (1842-1910) on mystical experience. Following this Nicoll's first book, Dream Psychology (1917), an interpretation of the views of Jung which demonstrates clearly the early formative influence of Jung on Nicoll is treated. I then turn to Living Time (1931), in which Nicoll integrates Ouspenksy's ideas on time and higher dimensions into his own psychological system. Following the influence of Jung and early Ouspensky, Nicoll's next work reveals the influence of the system of ideas and practices known as 'the Work' taught by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, which Nicoll encountered at first hand in Gurdjieff's colony near Paris and subsequently at Ouspensky's classes in London. The Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky (1957) was compiled from notes used by Nicoll in teaching his groups his own version of 'the Work' from 1931. However, the completion of Nicoll's quest for an understanding of 'esoteric Christianity', it will be argued, is documented in his two mature texts, The New Man (1950) and The Mark (1954). These books analyse New Testament writings in the light of influences partly absorbed from Jung, but most centrally from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. In these books Nicoll interprets the narrative theology of the New-Testament texts in terms of a form of 'esoteric psychology', encapsulating his vision of how 'the Kingdom of Heaven' is really to be understood: not in terms of a life after death, or a millennial restoration of Christ's Kingdom, but as the psychological development and fulfilment of the individual in this life. It is argued that this 'esoteric psychology' is Nicoll's version of the psychology he saw as underlying the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky system, but given an explicitly Christian locus and interpretation. In conclusion some reflections are made on the significance of understanding Nicoll's writings as 'esoteric Christianity' and their implications for contemporary religious thought.

The goal of the QPACE project is to build a novel cost-efficient massive parallel supercomputer optimized for LQCD (Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics) applications. Unlike previous projects which use custom ASICs, this is accomplished by using the general purpose multi-core CPU PowerXCell 8i processor tightly coupled with a custom network processor implemented on a modern FPGA. The heterogeneous architecture of the PowerXCell 8i processor and its core-independent OS-bypassing access to the custom network hardware and application-oriented 3D torus topology pose interesting challenges for the implementation of the applications. This work will describe and evaluate the implementation possibilities of message passing APIs: the more general MPI, and the more QCD-oriented QMP, and their performance in PPE centric or SPE centric scenarios. These results will then be employed to optimize HPL for the QPACE architecture. Finally, the developed approaches and concepts will be briefly discussed regarding their applicability to heterogeneous node/network architectures as is the case in the "High-speed Network Interface with Collective Operation Support for Cell BE (NICOLL)" project.

William Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923) founded the British Weekly in 1886 to exploit the need for a Liberal Nonconformist newspaper. Nicoll became the most important editor of a Free Church journal in the Edwardian period. The British Weekly provided a regular focus for political Nonconformity and Nicoll was a primary raiser of the Nonconformist consciousness and shaper of the collective conscience. This thesis considers the role of newspapers as conduits of political thought. As distributors of information, newspapers had a definite role in setting the political agenda and this work considers the programme which Nicoll pressed at the British Weekly. The newspaper is also considered as a nexus of religious and financial considerations. The analysis provides an examination of the British Weekly from its foundation in 1885, placing it in political context and setting down the editorial agenda. Nonconformist concerns were threatened both by the political preponderance of Irish interests and by the extension of the franchise to working class voters more concerned with social than religious equality. This thesis therefore looks at Nicoll's alignment with the Liberal Imperialists because they would rid the party of its commitment to Home Rule and (less importantly) because they appeared to respond to the needs of the working class. In 1902 the British Weekly misplaced its national efficiency agenda and became prominent in the Passive Resistance campaign against the Education Act. The thesis examines the way in which the protest was used to energise political Nonconformity. The campaign brought Nicoll into contact with Lloyd George and this work explores the mutual benefits of this relationship and also the way in which Nicoll was compromised as a lobbyist by the association. This is the first comprehensive examination of the political nature of the British Weekly. It highlights the increasing complexity of reconciling religion and politics in the twentieth century as pressing social issues could not be repaired by Victorian moral crusades.

The goal of the QPACE project is to build a novel cost-efficient massive parallel supercomputer optimized for LQCD (Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics) applications. Unlike previous projects which use custom ASICs, this is accomplished by using the general purpose multi-core CPU PowerXCell 8i processor tightly coupled with a custom network processor implemented on a modern FPGA. The heterogeneous architecture of the PowerXCell 8i processor and its core-independent OS-bypassing access to the custom network hardware and application-oriented 3D torus topology pose interesting challenges for the implementation of the applications. This work will describe and evaluate the implementation possibilities of message passing APIs: the more general MPI, and the more QCD-oriented QMP, and their performance in PPE centric or SPE centric scenarios. These results will then be employed to optimize HPL for the QPACE architecture. Finally, the developed approaches and concepts will be briefly discussed regarding their applicability to heterogeneous node/network architectures as is the case in the "High-speed Network Interface with Collective Operation Support for Cell BE (NICOLL)" project.

This dissertation examines the political origins of Loyalism in New York City between 1768 and 1778. Anchored by an analysis of political mobilization, this dissertation is structured into two parts. Part I has two chapters. Using a variety of private and public sources, the first chapter analyses how 9,338 mostly white male Loyalists in New York City and the counties of Kings, Queens, Suffolk and Westchester were mobilized. Chapter 1 argues that elites and British forces played a fundamental role in the broad-based mobilization of Loyalists in the province of New York. It also recognises that colonists signed Loyalist documents for many different reasons. The second chapter of Part I is a large-scale prosopographical analysis of the 9,338 identified Loyalists. This analysis was based on a diverse range of sources. This analysis shows that a majority of the province’s Loyalist population were artisans aged between 22 and 56 years of age. Part II of this dissertation examines political mobilization in New York City between 1768 and 1775. In three chapters, Part II illustrates how elite and non-elite white male New Yorkers coalesced into two distinct groups. Chapter 3 concentrates on the emergence of the DeLanceys as a political force in New York, Chapter 4 on their mobilization and coalescence into ‘the Friends to Liberty and Trade’, or ‘the Club’, and Chapter 5 examines the political origins of what became Loyalism by studying the social networks of three members of ‘the Club’. By incorporating an interdisciplinary methodology, Part II illustrates that members of ‘the Club’ developed ties with one another that transcended their political origins. It argues that the partisanship of New York City led members of ‘the Club’ to adopt inward-looking characteristics that affected who they interacted with on an everyday basis. A large proportion of ‘the Club’’s members became Loyalists in the American Revolution. This dissertation argues that it was the partisanship that they developed during the late 1760s and early 1770s that defined their allegiance.