Suchergebnisse

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) was founded in 1990 as the first NGO devoted to advancing LGBT human rights worldwide. How, this book asks, is that mission translated into practice? What do transnational LGBT human rights advocates do on a day-to-day basis and for whom? Understanding LGBT human rights claims is impossible, Ryan R. Thoreson contends, without knowing the answers to these questions. In Transnational LGBT Activism, Thoreson argues that the idea of LGBT human rights is not predetermined but instead is defined by international activists who establi

AbstractThis article examines evidence for community among immigrants in ancient Transtiberim (modern Trastevere), a section of Rome that was both socially and spatially distinctive for much of the city's history. The only part of Rome located on the west bank of the Tiber River, Transtiberim was the heart of Rome's Jewish and Syrian communities. These immigrants and their descendants maintained certain traditions, languages and customs from home; participated in civic institutions that helped foster community at the local level; and laboured in institutions that were vital to the capital's urban economy. Though marginal in some ways, Transtiberim was also a neighbourhood where immigrants and their descendants found community and made vital contributions to the life of the imperial city.

American railway stations stand tall among other buildings for reasons other than their physical size. These stations were born out of the monumental school that commanded buildings to serve higher purposes, to represent the ideals and aspirations of the people who built them. To accomplish this grand vision stations were built to artful extremes; bell towers, Doric columns, and waiting rooms the size of football fields were not uncommon features. Due to their elaborate forms, these stations have not weathered the tests of time as have smaller, simpler buildings. After a few tumultuous decades of reckless destruction, planners today have begun to embrace the power of urban renewal, and railway stations have been their laboratories. The following research concludes that stations are ideal specimens for modern-day reuse when they are unable to fulfill their original purposes. I attempt to uncover which environmental conditions are most hospitable to renewal, and find that collective action and institutional advocacy are the most important factors keeping these icons alive.

How does gaining an empire change the conqueror? Why is the assimilation of new populations, goods, and ideas sometimes seen as a marker of a people's greatness, and at other times as a dangerous threat from within? This project analyzes immigration to three capital cities: Athens (5th-4th centuries BCE), Rome (1st-4th centuries CE), and Chang'an, capital of Tang dynasty China (7th-10th centuries CE). It analyzes ancient textual and archaeological evidence through the lens of borderland theory to argue that the boundaries surrounding immigrant neighborhoods transformed each of these iconic cities into urban borderlands where ideas of social otherness had physical analogues. It was in these urban borderlands that the problem of how to accommodate new populations into existing structures of imperial domination was worked out. In their respective heydays, Athens, Rome, and Chang'an functioned as centers of government, economic powerhouses, global schools, sites of religious pilgrimage, and tourist attractions. Many of the diverse immigrants they attracted settled in the neighborhoods at the center of this analysis: Athens' port of Piraeus, Rome's Trans Tiberim district, and Northwest Chang'an. These communities stood out as "small worlds" within their cities at large, where ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences overlapped with physical boundaries such as rivers, roads, and walls. Residents carved out places for themselves in their new homes by learning how to skillfully navigate these boundaries. Whether by traversing the urban landscape during their daily commute, participating in civic or religious ceremonies, or attending festivals and entertainments, newcomers came into contact with locals on a daily basis. These interactions blurred lines between "us" and "them" in ways that called into question the limits of national identity and, depending on the circumstances, could either fan the flames of xenophobia or nurture new cultural syntheses. In this sense, life at the center of the Athenian, Roman, and Tang empires resembled that on their outer frontiers, where "civilized" insiders and "barbarian" outsiders lived poised between intimate coexistence and violent rejection. Assessing these imperial capitals as urban borderlands allows us see that this tension was not an aberration or strictly a regional phenomenon. It was quite literally built into the heart of all three empires.

This dissertation has three contributions in the area of path planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Search And Track (SAT) missions. These contributions are: (a) the study of a novel metric, G, used to quantify the value of the target information gained during a search and track mission, (b) an optimal planning horizon that minimizes time-error of a planning horizon when interrupted by Poisson random events, and (c) a modified Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for search missions that uses the prior target distribution in the generation of paths rather than just in the evaluation of them. UAV route planning is an important topic with many applications. Of these, military applications are the best known. This dissertation focuses on route planning for SAT missions that jointly optimize the conflicting objectives of detecting new targets and monitoring previously detected targets. The information theoretic approach proposed here is different from and is superior to existing approaches. One of the main differences is that G quantifies the value of the target information rather than the information itself. Several examples are provided to highlight G's desirable properties. Another important component of path planning is the selection of a planning horizon, which specifies the amount of time to include in a plan. Unfortunately, little research is available to aid in the selection of a planning horizon. The proposed planning horizon is derived in the context of plan updates triggered by Poisson random events. To our knowledge, it is the only theoretically derived horizon available making it an important contribution. While the proposed horizon is optimal in minimizing planning time errors, simulation results show that it is also near optimal in minimizing the average time needed to capture an evasive target. The final contribution is the modified PSO. Our modification is based on the idea that PSO should be provided with the target distribution for path generation. This allows the algorithm to create candidate path plans in target rich regions. The modified PSO is studied using a search mission and is used in the study of G.