This research study focuses on promoting historical, religious, and cultural knowledge among transnational Druze. The Druze are a relatively small, tightly knit religious community from the Middle East who practice endogamy and accept no converts. In the diaspora, Druze have often established their own communities based on their collective ancestral and familial ties and through the establishment of groups such as the American Druze Society. This study works to allow individuals to discuss their Druze identity, identify the community's social problems, and recommend possible approaches or solutions. My research experience as an insider doing ethnography among fellow Druze has in many cases worked to my favor while studying a group whose religious tenets have been considered secret since their inception a thousand years ago. The extensive participant observation, combined with a thorough review of Druze history and literature, works to illustrate the unique position of North American Druze and how they have evolved from a small fraternity of immigrants into a growing and close-knit and well organized community. As well, survey responses and semi-structured interviews have given voice to individuals allowing them to explain how they perceive the community and its circumstances. Triangulating these methods I have found that many Druze identify a number of problems that include concerns about the community's future as well as a general dissatisfaction with their own lack of religious knowledge.

With the inception of cinema in the late 1890s, discussions relating to the preservation of film emerged in countries around the globe. Early motion picture collectors, enthusiasts, critics, scholars, and producers justified film preservation by appealing to cinema’s role as art or artifact or through the medium’s capacity to document historical events. In the mid to late twentieth century, however, film preservation advocates increasingly validated their work by defining and celebrating cinema as cultural heritage. This dissertation investigates the emergence and growth of the film preservation movement throughout the twentieth century on all levels of the film archiving network, from the international and national to the infra-national. Using a wide range of archival documents and organizational records, this project creates a more complete discursive history of key institutions involved in the film preservation movement. Moreover, the project examines the ramifications of this movement upon what constitutes “American” film heritage for the scholar, practitioner, and global audience. This dissertation illustrates that moving image archives have not merely preserved movie history, but have, instead, actively produced cinematic heritage. / text

Heart transplantation is, for certain types of cardiovascular disease, the only form of treatment resulting in patient survival. Its clinical application is, however, limited by the shortage of donor organs. This shortage is largely due to the inability to consistently preserve adequate myocardial function over prolonged ischemic periods. It is the goal of this research to provide information which may contribute to techniques for heart preservation, thus improving graft survival following preservation and transplantation. Current methods for myocardial preservation generally involve the arrest and immersion of the heart in cold cardioplegic solution, the composition of which is designed to provide for the reduced metabolic demands of the cold, arrested muscle. These methods have extended the preservation period to approximately 6 hours; however, hearts cannot be held longer than this period because, although metabolism has been slowed by hypothermia, alterations take place which compromise functional recovery upon reperfusion. A variety of perfusates and perfusion techniques have been developed to protect the myocardium from the damage thought to occur as a consequence of ischemic storage of the isolated heart. However, a consistently successful technique for long-term preservation of the heart remains undefined. A growing body of knowledge has led to the hypothesis that injury to the microcirculation may result in myocardial ischemia during preservation and decreased contractile function following preservation. To test this hypothesis, standard Langendorff techniques for the measurement of left ventricular function were combined with biochemical, histological and morphological techniques to determine: (1) whether loss of microvascular function occurs in isolated hearts hypothermically perfused with an oxygenated solution; (2) the impact of microvascular dysfunction during the preservation period on the functional recovery of hearts; and (3) which mechanisms contribute to decreased microvascular function during preservation. This experimental approach will allow for characterization of the role of the microvasculature in decreased contractility of preserved hearts and will provide information regarding the contribution of specific mechanisms to the compromised contractility of preserved hearts. Systematic evaluation of mechanisms thought to be responsible for decreased contractility of isolated hearts could contribute to improved myocardial preservation techniques that can be applied to clinical transplantation.

A premier distinction of liberal democracy is its praise of novelty and change, in the form of technological innovations and new expressions of personal liberty. To understand and critique our dedication to innovation, I study classical, medieval and early modern views on what the most important changes are for human beings—the changes of political regime and the changes of the soul. The philosophers from Plato to Machiavelli studied the desirability and possibility of political preservation, the effects of conversion and its relationship to notions of divine providence, and the changes brought by new religious institutions of a quasi-political character. The classical philosophers emphasize the importance and the difficulty of political preservation. In the Republic, Plato shows that a defensive conservatism results in political change. In the Symposium, while making human desire a major cause of change, he shows the human longing for preservation, as well. The attempt to make a lasting city is an effort to resist the tide of change which overtakes all things. In the fifth book of his Politics, Aristotle shows his expectation that political change will always occur, and that its many different causes make it difficult to master. The Christian revelation praises newness as the quality of conversion, whose difficult political consequences emerge at the beginning of Augustine’s City of God. His initial deprecation of political preservation in favor of conversion gives way to an insistence on preservation’s importance once conversion is widespread. Because the agent of conversion is the Church, a quasi-political institution, Marsilius in his Defender of the Peace revises Aristotle’s account of political change. Machiavelli challenges the possibility of genuine political endurance through a critique of its basis in dubious stories about the past. His praise of the innovating prince considers men’s ambivalent attitudes toward novelty in a way that our casual embrace of innovation does not. By appearing everywhere, innovation has now gone into eclipse. The praise of newness obscures the changes human beings once thought were the most important. / Government

OpenCourseWare is an innovative and bold idea. It aims to support learning and teaching programme significantly. Learning material contained in an OCW provides learners an opportunity to gain knowledge beyond their routine classroom environments. These are in the digital form which can be accessed online, thus breaking the barriers of time and distance. Indian academics can play a significant role in creating OCW materials for the students to propagate the teaching and learning process diluting the limitations of traditional educational setup and begin a new culture of "Learning Beyond Classroom". The present study aims to sensitize the teachers and learners about the potentials of the OCWs. It presents a proposal for creating an "Indian OCW Consortium" at different levels. Also discusses the challenges and issues in establishing such an OCW project.

Βασικό ζητούμενο στον τομέα των δικτύων υψηλής ταχύτητας είναι αυτό της “διατήρησης της διαπερατότητας”. Η προσπάθεια επίτευξης του ζητούμενου αυτού στην περίπτωση παραδοσιακών δικτύων που χρησιμοποιούν προτυποποιημένα πρωτόκολλα μπορεί να γίνει μόνο στην κατεύθυνση του σχεδιασμού και της υλοποίησης του συστήματος επεξεργασίας που εκτελεί τα πρωτόκολλα αφού οι μηχανισμοί και η σύνταξη των ίδιων των πρωτοκόλλων είναι ήδη καθορισμένα. Στην παρούσα εργασία διερευνώνται τρόποι επίτευξης του ζητούμενου αυτού για το πιο βασικό από τα δικτυακά υποσυστήματα, του προσαρμογέα δικτύου. Οι σχεδιαστικές αποφάσεις που αφορούν την αρχιτεκτονική ενός network adapter παίζουν καταλυτικό ρόλο στην απόδοσή του. Στις επόμενες παραγράφους θα παρουσιαστεί η αρχιτεκτονική ενός απλού δομικά αλλά και στην σύλληψή του προσαρμογέα και στην συνέχεια θα διερευνηθούν διάφορες αρχιτεκτονικές παρεμβάσεις που στόχο θα έχουν την βελτίωση της απόδοσης αυτού. Με την βοήθεια της βιβλιοθήκης εξομοίωσης CSIM της Mesquite οι αρχιτεκτονικές που θα προκύψουν μοντελοποιούνται και δίνοντας στα χαρακτηριστικά τους τιμές προϊόντων που διατίθενται αυτή την στιγμή στην αγορά υπολογίζεται η βελτίωση που επιφέρουν. / One of the main challenges in high-throughput networking is the “throughput preservation problem”. The effort to address this problem in the case of standardized protocols should be focused in the design and implementation of the protocol processing systems, for the mechanisms and syntax are already well defined in a standardized protocol. This paper explores the ways of preserving the throughput of network adapters, the most basic of communication systems. Design and architectural issues of network adapters affect their performance characteristics. In the following sections the architecture of a simple structurally and conceptually network adapter will be presented. Next, several architectural modifications will be imposed in order to ameliorate its performance. By using Mesquite's CSIM modeling and simulating tool, models of the produced network adapter configurations will be implemented and their performance will be measured. These measurements will be produced by giving in the models' characteristics values of currently available in market products.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

In recent decades the canon of environmental aesthetics has expanded beyond its primary concern of understanding what is beautiful in the fine arts to the appreciation of natural and cultural landscapes. Corresponding with society's growing interest in conservation, environmental aesthetics has emerged as relevant to many conservation discussions. The preservation and interpretation of cultural landscapes is complicated by resources that are in a constant state of change. Traditional cultural landscape preservation practices have had mixed results. A focus on interpretation rather than preservation is generally considered a strategy for improving cultural landscape practices. Applying theories developed in the field of environmental aesthetics to cultural landscapes may lead to principles helpful to their preservation and interpretation. In this study, an environmental aesthetic framework is developed and applied to the Canoa Ranch, a historic property south of Tucson, Arizona, to evaluate the potential of using environmental aesthetics in appreciation of cultural landscapes.