Initial Sketch Research Articles

The Uneasy Case for the Priority of Secured Credit: A Minskian Sequel

The last 30-or-so years have witnessed several rounds of debate on the desirability (in terms of efficiency or otherwise) of secured credit and the priority that usually goes with it in the debtor’s bankruptcy. Much to the disappointment of those seeking policy lessons from the debate, its outcomes were inconclusive at best. At worst, to the extent that they convincingly suggested that secured credit might be causing inefficiencies at least in some circumstances (mostly where security is granted under circumstances that prevent other creditors from adjusting the terms of their lending) they were widely inconsistent with the across-the-board practical consensus that security (and the priority it affords to the secured lender) is a key factor in the development of credit markets. In addition to being inconclusive, the debate has thus far been conducted exclusively in microeconomic terms. However, recent contributions to our understanding of the role that credit plays in the economy, based on the ideas of the late economist Hyman Minsky, suggest that the micro view, while certainly enlightening, might not be the only, or indeed the most important vantage point from which legal theory could and should inform its views of secured credit and its social benefits and costs. The purpose of this article is to make some initial sketches of this possible research program and posit some arguments why secured credit, and in particular certain of its forms, might exacerbate the harmful role that (certain types of) credit seem to play in the economy. Using examples from the harmonized law of the EU, the article suggests that, disturbingly, European law has thus far mainly lent support to socially harmful forms of secured credit.

О системе развивающих занятий по деятельности «Выразительная пластика» (лепка) для детей дошкольного и младшего школьного возраста

At the center of the research are specifics of cognitive development and creative abilities of preschoolers in the process of acquisition of symbolic means for solving creative tasks with "high uncertainty factor". These means are the "author’s symbol" and the "visual model" in the art of sculpting. The " visual model" refers to a form of mediation through graphically designed planning and creating initial sketch of the future design. The “author's art symbol” represents the author's individualized outlook on his surroundings that has an emotionally subjective imprint. The experiment showed that the implementation of symbolic means to solve tasks in expressive modeling contributes to the development of creative abilities of children, formation of the emotional reflection, and the enrichment of creative product. The “author's symbol” in sculpture is one of the communication and meta- communication means, “visual metaphor” which is the “author’s message”, expressing a subjective attitude towards himself and the world.

Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer – A Flying Hebridean in Disguise?

Several scholars have drawn attention both to the many Scottish references in Richard Wagner’s initial sketches of The Flying Dutchman and to the close links between the opera and the composer’s own disastrous Nordic sea journey, but discussions tend to centre on the opera’s libretto. What appear to be musical reminiscences of Hebridean songs in the opera’s core thematic material have not been alluded to since Marjory Kennedy-Fraser pointed them out at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having a long-standing interest in Wagner’s oeuvre, she associated various themes and tunes she had collected in the Outer Hebrides with the German composer, and among her extant field recordings – now at Edinburgh University Library – there are indeed snippets of music that closely resemble Wagnerian leitmotifs and airs, in particular Senta’s ballad in Der fliegende Holländer. Drawing on a paper Kennedy-Fraser read to the Musical Association in London in 1918, various scattered references, and letters from Sir Granville Bantock and John Lorne Campbell, my article discusses the potential links between Hebridean songs and, in particular, Senta’s ballad.

Hybrid interface of a two-dimensional cubic Hermite curve oversketch and a three-dimensional spatial oversketch for the conceptual body design of a car

A spatial modelling system with a new interface which is optimized for automotive design is proposed in the conceptual modelling phase. In the initial sketch stage to set the volume and the ratio of the car, the automotive styling is created using a two-dimensional plane sketch with an accurate input and a designer-friendly interface. The character lines, which have important implications in the design of the car, are drawn with a curve-based oversketch. The shape of the car is modified using area-based modification. A completed two-dimensional model consists of converting the character lines to a three-dimensional car model. In the three-dimensional spatial oversketch stage, the edge and mesh on the surface are deformed by viewing the three-dimensional shape of the vehicle with various views using a spatial input device and stereoscopic display. Edge-based deformation modifies single or multiple edges while maintaining continuity between the surfaces. A sculpting technique is applied to execute special shapes such as the accent lines and the strake lines. A sketch system which can be used by designers to perform three-dimensional spatial modelling is proposed.

Reconsidering philosophical questions and neuroscientific answers: Two pillars of inquiry

Abstract I propose the next steps in the neuropragmatic approach to philosophy that has been advocated by Solymosi and Shook (2013). My focus is the initial process of inquiry implicit in addressing philosophical questions of cognition and mind by utilizing the tools of neuroscientific research. I combine John Dewey’s pattern of inquiry with Charles Peirce’s three forms of inference in order to outline a methodological schema for neuropragmatic inquiry. My goal is to establish ignorance and guessing as well-defined pillars of methodology upon which to build a neuropragmatic approach to inquiry. First, I outline Dewey’s pattern of inquiry, highlighting the initial problematic phase in which recognized ignorance provides the basis upon which to frame a philosophical problem and initiate the trajectory by which philosophical questions may be addressed with the assistance of neuroscientific evidence. Second, I provide an outline of Peirce’s three forms of inference, focusing upon the first phase of abduction: guessing. Third, I explain the transition between ignorance and guessing, urging the benefit of attending to these two aspects of inquiry. Finally, I provide an initial sketch indicating the next steps concerning a pragmatic reconstruction of neurophilosophy, pointing towards the need for a more thorough examination of scientific methodology within and following analyses of philosophical problems and neuroscientific evidence.

Terrain generation using procedural models based on hydrology

We present a framework that allows quick and intuitive modeling of terrains using concepts inspired by hydrology. The terrain is generated from a simple initial sketch, and its generation is controlled by a few parameters. Our terrain representation is both analytic and continuous and can be rendered by using varying levels of detail. The terrain data are stored in a novel data structure: a construction tree whose internal nodes define a combination of operations, and whose leaves represent terrain features. The framework uses rivers as modeling elements, and it first creates a hierarchical drainage network that is represented as a geometric graph over a given input domain. The network is then analyzed to construct watersheds and to characterize the different types and trajectories of rivers. The terrain is finally generated by combining procedural terrain and river patches with blending and carving operators.

Extracting 3D model feature lines based on conditional random fields

We propose a 3D model feature line extraction method using templates for guidance. The 3D model is first projected into a depth map, and a set of candidate feature points are extracted. Then, a conditional random fields (CRF) model is established to match the sketch points and the candidate feature points. Using sketch strokes, the candidate feature points can then be connected to obtain the feature lines, and using a CRF-matching model, the 2D image shape similarity features and 3D model geometric features can be effectively integrated. Finally, a relational metric based on shape and topological similarity is proposed to evaluate the matching results, and an iterative matching process is applied to obtain the globally optimized model feature lines. Experimental results showed that the proposed method can extract sound 3D model feature lines which correspond to the initial sketch template.

Towards Security Assurance in Round-Trip Engineering: A Type-Based Approach

Security assurance is a property that ensures that the application code behaves consistently with the access control policy specified at the design level. Security assurance proofs are valid as long as software engineers do not modify the generated code. This assumption does not hold in Round-Trip Engineering, since programmers may modify the generated code and the models are automatically re-generated. This paper proposes a round-trip engineering approach for access control that preserves security assurance both when generating code from models and vice versa. The approach is to extend programming languagesʼ typing mechanisms with additional rules that ensure consistency between models and code, even when code is arbitrarily modified by programmers. This paper presents a formal description of the solution and an initial sketch of the required proofs of correctness. Ongoing work is the development of a prototype to automate most of the process and its validation in a case study.

Two Types of Civic Friendship

Among the tasks of modern political philosophy is to develop a favored conception of the relations among modern citizens, among people who can know little or nothing of one another individually and yet are deeply reciprocally dependent. One might think of this as developing a favored conception of civic friendship. In this essay I sketch two candidate conceptions. The first derives from the Kantian tradition, the second from the 1844 Marx. I present the two conceptions and then describe similarities and differences. My approach is both taxonomic and programmatic. My taxonomic goal is to provide an initial sketch of the conceptual territory. My programmatic goal is to provide reasons to think that the conception derived from Marx is both appealing and feasible.

Identifying design development factors in Australian PPP projects using an AHP framework

In Australia consortiums will come together and create an initial design concept or sketch design at the public–private partnership (PPP) bid stage. If the bid is successful this initial design is then developed further. However, a winning bid may have been evaluated on financial criteria alone and the consortium’s capability to develop the design through to project delivery may not have been thoroughly evaluated. In theory, design is a key process in PPP projects and the aim of the research was to understand what capabilities are important in the development of a design through this process. To clarify these issues, a range of activities and organizational factors linked to design development are proposed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. This method was chosen in order to see which design development factors were ranked more highly by experts. In this research the hierarchy was designed employing the categories of exploratory and exploitative design development. Below each of these overarching categories, there were four design development functional distinctions: the two exploratory distinctions were Design (D) and Design Management (DM). The two exploitative distinctions were Design Support (DS) and Design Infrastructure (DI). A further list of 36 design development sub-criteria was developed under the above categories. These sub-criteria formed the basis of a survey of respondents drawn from a database of industry sources in the public domain as well as a list gathered from a large developer involved in PPP projects. It included relatively senior managers, PPP project managers and architects. Survey respondents identified a recent PPP project that they had worked on. From the 36 responses it can be seen that the exploratory Design (D) and Design Management (DM) activities were ranked more highly than the exploitative activities of Design Support (DS) and Design Infrastructure (DI) associated with a PPP project organization. This suggests that PPP frameworks should account for these exploratory factors as well as the exploitative factors associated with compliance, quality systems and project team infrastructure. This indicates that in PPP projects design development through the effective management of an initial design is a critical factor.

Compromise, Democracy and Territory

Territorial rights come with both costs (war, inequality and oppression) and benefits (political participation, coordinated use of resources). The immense importance of these normative aspects of territorial rights solidifies our need for a principled theory of territory. With globalisation and transnational interactions, a cosmopolitan account of territorial rights is required – it should justify territorial authority generally. This generalised justification must also provide an account of the special, normative relationship that certain groups have with certain lands and resources, providing groups with special claims to particular lands. Since democratic theory values territoriality for its necessary relationship to equality and individual autonomy, a comprehensive democratic account of territorial rights presents a real possibility for explaining territorial claims from cosmopolitan ideals. Unfortunately, democratic accounts of territoriality suffer a serious drawback; they cannot give a comprehensive account of self-determination rights over particular land and resources. On the contrary, democratic theory addresses only persons – how they should be treated and how their associations should be organised. The first half of this article explains how democratic accounts of self-determination are wanting in specific ways. The second half presents an alternative account of the right of self-determination and territorial rights as a feature of compromise. Because compromise is an essential element of democracy and an important element of justice, it can be used to explain the unique connection that democracies have with a particular territory. Through this theory of compromise, we can explain the scope, longevity and breadth of a democracy's territorial rights from cosmopolitan ideals. However, this account has acute limitations. As merely an initial sketch of theoretical connections between democracy and territory, it does not yet offer an account of the complicated territorial issues of transnational democratic associations. In fact, the theory from compromise reveals a vital obstacle for the establishment of borders, especially in cases of possible secession.

In the Shade of the Oaks of Mamre: Hospitality as a Framework for Political Engagement between Christians and Muslims

This essay is the initial sketch of a theological framework for political dialogue based on traditions of hospitality. This essay is intended to further a normative commitment to pluralism by creating a space for Christians and Muslims to engage in political dialogue on issues of governance. Using the story of Abraham and the three strangers, the essay analyzes hospitality as a possible model for interreligious political dialogue. The essay follows the narrative of the story recounted in Genesis 18 and Surah 51 of the Qur'an focusing on Abraham's greeting of the strangers as expressing a "duty of hospitality"; the "sharing of a meal" as an act of mutual vulnerability; and the gift of Isaac as exemplary of hospitality's possibility for grace and transformation. The goal is to show that a shared theological tradition could be the basis for political dialogue.

La historia de la enseñanza de la historia: un saber escolar inestable

La historia de la enseñanza de la historia en Colombia, tradicionalmente ha estado articulada a la trayectoria que ha marcado la formalización de la historia como disciplina académica universitaria, configurando su enseñanza como un ejercicio dependiente, subordinado y siempre deficitario de los avances logrados desde su investigación. La reciente emergencia del campo investigativo de la historia de los saberes escolares en Colombia, se ha venido constituyendo en una posibilidad de indagar por la historia de la enseñanza de la historia, desde otros referentes teóricos y metodológicos, que además, de potenciar la categoría de “saber pedagógico”, permite la exploración de otros discursos que han configurado históricamente este saber, asociados a la formación de docentes, a las políticas públicas, a los textos escolares y a la investigación sobre este campo. El presente artículo, aprovechando la coyuntura de los Bicentenarios, intenta mostrar esta perspectiva teórica y algunos esbozos iniciales sobre las formas que ha tomado la enseñanza de la historia a lo largo del siglo XX y la primera década del siglo XXI.

O talento jovem, a internet e o mercado de trabalho da "economia criativa"

Cada vez mais jovens fazem sucesso no mundo "real" a partir da exposição de seus talentos na Internet. Este é um fenômeno inédito do qual o presente artigo oferece uma análise inicial. Tendo em vista que encarar tais sucessos exclusivamente como iniciativas individuais bem-sucedidas não é suficiente para explicar seu crescente número, torna-se necessária outra abordagem. Neste artigo é proposto o esboço de uma integração teórica que envolve áreas tradicionalmente distintas em cuja interseção o novo fenômeno se insere: as da economia de mercado, da criatividade e das tecnologias digitais. Nesse esboço, a concepção de economia criativa atua como o elemento articulador dessas três áreas, dado que atribui à criatividade o papel de sua força motriz e às tecnologias digitais, principalmente à Internet, o status de sua condição de emergência bem como de sua infraestrutura. Alguns casos de sucesso são apresentados e interpretados à luz dessa integração teórica preliminar.

In the thick of it: interpreting children's play

This article offers a narrative account of a research enquiry focused on children's play in one London primary school playground. The central question addressed by the article is that of how to determine what meanings the children give to their play activities. The initial sketch of the methods used in the research is followed by a series of reflections on the process of attributing meaning to the play observed and primarily documented through the use of video camcorders. Emphasising that the interpretive attribution of meaning is always also an engagement with the participants’ own pre-interpretations, the article draws attention to the particular difficulties faced in attempting to articulate and confirm the meanings produced by young children. Using a variety of examples drawn from the video records, the article traces the complexities – especially in terms of gender, age and institutional relations – of pursuing and seeking to fix the meanings of transient, highly ephemeral, events. The immediacy, affective intensity and speed of the children's play constitute a serious challenge to adult approaches privileging commentary, reflection and explanation for non-participant others.

Joy in the Act of Drawing: Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts

Joy in the Act of Drawing: Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts focuses on Bernard Maybeck's working drawings for the surviving fragment of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Because it was originally designed as a temporary structure, it has been dismissed by some critics as the roughly detailed product of a speedy production process. However, Alexander Ortenberg shows that the working drawings were carefully produced in accordance with the professional standards of American Beaux-Arts architecture. What appear to be crude details were the product of thoughtful study, in which the charcoal of the earlier sketches was translated into the hard ink line of working drawings. Exploiting the liveliness of the drawing medium, Maybeck invented architectural details that preserved the freshness of his initial sketches and helped to define the theatrical character of the building.

Misunderstanding Faith: When ‘Capital’ does not fit the ‘Spiritual’

In the past decade, UK government policy and academic research have inserted faith based organisations (FBOs) within the discourse of community cohesion and regeneration. This has been articulated primarily within a social capital framework which understands FBOs as ‘repositories’ of resources to tap into (Home Office 2004). The present paper outlines a critique of social capital as framework for the understanding of FBOs, and of the emerging concept of spiritual capital as the ‘social capital of faith organisations’ (Stark and Finke 2000). The paper will also sketch an alternative theoretical framework inspired by the work of Georg Simmel on religion. Robert Putnam’s version of social capital has been spectacularly successful; yet it has been shown to be utopian and fraught with inconsistencies. This paper argues that social capital has become a highly moralised notion and, as such, it cannot be applied productively. Further, I shall maintain that the economic analogy, made by the terminology of capital, is particularly ill-suited to faith organisations, and that the resulting concept of ‘spiritual capital’ leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of what is distinctive of faith. Drawing on Georg Simmel’s sociology of religion, the paper will provide an initial sketch of an alternative conceptualisation of faith for a deeper understanding of individual religiosity and the relationship between the individual and the community. Simmel’s insights on the relational nature of religiosity shed light onto the distinctiveness of religiosity offering better grounding for researching faith communities.

Constitutional Movements: An Example from China, 1894-1924

From 1894 to 1949 Chinese reformers, radicals, political theorists and party leaders pushed for the creation of a constitutional order in China. To that end, they borrowed (and often modified) constitutional principles, doctrines, and even history from other countries, using those tools first to craft different models of constitutions and then to persuade others to support their goals. The result was a complex, and international, exchange, one that involved the development of ideas and the deployment of social movements. My current research explores that history with the intent of tracing out the intellectual and social exchanges that occurred while the Chinese around the world debated their constitutional order. As I unpack China's rich constitutional history, I hope to add to our general understanding of how constitutional movements arise and function. This paper is an initial sketch of the project and my methodology.

A Conceptual Study for a Feasible Fusion Energy Utilization Plant

Considering fast occurring of global warming, fusion energy realization is on demand at the earliest possible base. But present progress of fusion energy realization is very much limited in terms of technical gains, which meet the condition for pure fusion power plant, and socio-economic recognition from the public and economic sectors. To boost a rapid progress of fusion energy realization a possible scheme for the quickest ’Utilization’ of fusion fast neutron is proposed by adopting a possible fusion neutron production condition from a presumed further to be developed tokamak, which could be operated by a reliable operation mode. With feasible blanket design along with material development, a possible energy plant, which could be used either for electricity generation or for fissile fuel breeding via hybrid blanket, might be a feasible option as an intermediate step towards fusion era. An initial sketch of system design requirement study and future possible implementation scheme is presented.

Mapping eParticipation Research: Four Central Challenges

The emerging research area of eParticipation can be characterized as the study of technology-facilitated citizen participation in (democratic) deliberation and decision-making. Using conventional literature study techniques, we identify 105 articles that are considered to be highly relevant to eParticipation. We develop a definitional schema that suggests different ways of understanding an emerging socio-technical research area and use this schema to map the research contributions identified. This allows us make an initial sketch of the scientific character of the area and its central concerns, theories, and methods. We extend the analysis to define four central research challenges for the field: understanding technology and participation; the strategic challenge; the design challenge; and the evaluation challenge. This article thus contributes to a developing account of eParticipation, which will help future researchers both to navigate the research area and to focus their research agendas.