http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/4076 2013-06-20T07:30:14Z http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/107777 La Obra De Santa Teresa: La Vida Y Las Moradas - Una Perspectiva Taoísta, Confucionista Y Budista Yang, Lucia Jin Yun This dissertation presents a selective study of the works of Santa Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582), a Doctor of the Catholic Church since 1970, and regarded as a "great contemporary spiritual teacher" by the Church. She was born in the most glorious epoch of Spanish Empire during the reign of Felipe II, which is the period that produced the most Christian Saints. Not only is Santa Teresa the first but also one of the most representative female mystics in the history of Spain. This analysis focuses on the mystical religious, and cultural aspects of her writings as expressed in the Book of Life and The Mansions or Interior Castle. The project first analyzes Santa Teresa's Christian background of the time and then analyzes her works from Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist perspectives. My aim is to reveal a parallel between both the mystical and the religious cultural worlds of the Spaniards and the Chinese. In the spiritual world, this parallel overlaps with an intimate energy that is recognized among all mystics. Christians call it the "Union with God", Taoists and Confucians label it the "Union with Heaven or Tien" and Buddhists refer to it as "Nirvana," "Satori" or "Enlightenment". Looked at in this interdisciplinary way Santa Teresa can be explained and understood without difficulty, despite the difference among faiths, cultures and traditions. I was raised in a Buddhist, multi-lingual (Japanese, Chinese, Hakka and Taiwanese) family and was educated in a Catholic Foreign Language School, studying exclusively Spanish and English. Coming from this multicultural background, I perceived peace and harmony within every cultural encounter. Therefore, I wish to give this tremendous Spanish woman and mystic special recognition in this globalized century. Although Santa Teresa is already a famous spiritual figure for mystical and religious studies, the inclusion of her in the oriental perspective of culture, will provide a positive encounter, a tolerant awareness, to the dark night of the Christian culture of guilt. I also attempt to reveal that Christian contemplation is not only a balance between physical and spiritual achievement, but also a path to a union with God. 2009-04-10T07:42:34Z http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/107776 Modelling The Text: Iurii Lotman's Information-Theoretic Approach Revisited Cretu, Andrei Ionut The interdisciplinary effervescence of the 1960's-1970's resulted in the adoption of terms like "information," "entropy" and "code" into linguistic and literary analysis; one of the schools that contributed to this tendency was the Soviet semiotics school, represented by scholars like Iurii Lotman, Boris Uspenskii, Viacheslav Vs. Ivanov. This dissertation offers a critical examination of the controversial aspects of the interdisciplinary connection between information theory and semiotics, concentrating on Iurii Lotman's works on the theory of the text. In order to address the question of the applicability and relevance of information-theoretic principles to text analysis, this dissertation proposes (a) to offer an understanding of how "structure" in the linguistic sense can be related to the concepts of information theory; (b) to evaluate Lotman's use of information-theoretic terminology against the scientific "standard"; (c) to develop an understanding of what, in information theory, could be relevant to the analysis of texts. The central claims that emerge from my theoretical investigation are (a) that the formalism of information theory is not compatible with Iurii Lotman's theory of the text and that the attached terminology has been used in ways unrelated to the assumptions and results of information theory; (b) that the formalism of information theory does provide the basic elements for an approach to structure in the most general sense and that these elements can be made relevant to both linguistic description and text analysis; (c) that it is possible to formulate a coherent approach to the text as an informational object by taking into account the distributional properties of the variables that can be defined in the text at various structural levels; (d) that it is possible to use these properties to characterize the specifics of the language of a text and its relationships to other texts, and therefore to guide, and add coherence to, the application of traditional approaches to the text. The second part of my dissertation is dedicated to applying the theoretical considerations to the analysis of texts from 20-th century Russian literature, including G. Ivanov�€™s Raspad Atoma, M. Bulgakov�€™s Master i Margarita, I. Bunin�€™s Grammatika liubvi. 2009-04-10T07:42:21Z http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/107775 Production Of Galacto-Oligosaccharides From Lactose By Immobilized B-Galactosidase And Posterior Chromatographic Separation Sanz-Valero, Juan Ignacio Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) are non-digestible sugars containing two to five molecules of galactose and one molecule of glucose connected through glycosidic bonds. They are classified as prebiotic food because they can selectively stimulate the growth of bifidobacteria and lactobacilli in the lower intestine. The addition of GOS as a functional food ingredient has great potential to improve the quality of many foods. GOS can be produced from lactose, which is abundant in cheese whey, by enzymatic transgalactosylation with ß-galactosidase present in either free or immobilized form. The goal of this research was to evaluate the feasibility of using various microbial lactases immobilized on cotton cloth for GOS production from lactose and posterior purification by chromatographic technique using a commercial cation exchange resin Dowex 50W. The production of GOS from lactose was first studied with lactases from Aspergillus oryzae, Bacillus circulans, and Kluveromyces lactis. The total amount, types, and size of GOS produced were affected by the enzyme type and the initial lactose concentration in the reaction media. In general, more GOS can be produced when the initial lactose concentration was higher. With 400 g/L of lactose solution, a maximum GOS content of 40% (w/w) was achieved with B. circulans lactase, followed by K. lactis with 31% GOS and A. oryzae with 27% GOS. The addition of galactose inhibited the enzyme, reducing both GOS yield and the reaction rate. The method of immobilizing enzyme on cotton cloth via adsorption with the binding support of polyethyleneimine (PEI) and cross linking with glutaraldehyde (GA) was developed for ß-galactosidase from B. circulans and A. oryzae. A high enzyme loading of 250 mg/g support with 35% and 90% activity yield was achieved for B. circulans and A. oryzae lactase, respectively. Thermal stability of B. circulans and A. oryzae lactase increased by 12 and 25-fold, respectively, upon immobilization on the cotton cloth. The immobilized enzyme showed the same GOS formation kinetics as that of the free enzyme, indicating that there was no diffusion limitation in the catalytic cotton cloth for the reaction. Continuous production of GOS with immobilized enzyme in packed-bed reactors was studied. A high volumetric productivity of 4300 g/L/h was attained at 50% conversion with A. oryzae lactase and 180 g/L/h at 60% conversion with B. circulans lactase. Higher overall GOS productivity and conversion can be achieved with two enzyme reactors in sequence, with the first one containing A. oryzae lactase and second one containing B. circulans lactase. Commercial gel-type cation exchange resins (Dowex 50W) with different salt forms (Na+, K+, and Ca++) and degrees of cross-linking (2%, 4%, and 8%) were evaluated for the separation of GOS from the multicomponent sugar mixture. Among all the factors studied, the degree of cross linking had the most significant effect on sugar adsorption capacity and selectivity, with 4% cross linking being the optimal. Other factors such as temperature and counter ion showed minimal effect. A high degree of removal of monosaccharides (95%) from the GOS mixture was achieved using an elution chromatographic column packed with Dowex 50W resins of 4% cross linking and in the Na+ form at room temperature. 2009-04-10T07:42:09Z http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/107774 Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's United Russia: The How and Why of Russia's New Party of Power Sell, Daniel James This paper serves to study the new ‘party of power,’ United Russia, that has emerged in the Russian Federation with Vladimir Vladimorovich Putin as the head of this party. It will look at what exactly a party of power is, and how Putin was able to solidify power in the country in the office of the president and transfer this power to United Russia. This paper looks at factors, such as the fact that Russia has a hybrid regime in place, which made it possible for the party of power to emerge, thus providing a small roadmap on how to create a party of power. Finally, this paper shows areas where Putin and his party of power could lose strength and what might possibly happen in regards to the political situation in the country if this were to happen. 2009-04-10T07:41:56Z