Una acción política realista y sensata hacia España: Franco, el régimen y la oposición en la correspondencia diplomática norteamericana, 1944-1947

Este texto se articula en torno a la correspondencia oficial mantenida entre el Departamento de Estado y la Embajada de los EE. UU. en Madrid durante la segunda mitad de los años cuarenta –de manera particular entre septiembre de 1944 y diciembre de 1947- preservada en el NARA de College Park, Maryland. A partir del estudio de este rico y abundante material, creemos que se ha logrado elaborar una explicación más completa y más matizada que la hasta ahora existente acerca de las razones que llevaron a Washington a virar en su actitud inicial de hostilidad hacia Franco, para acabar estableciendo con la dictadura española un marco cada vez más normalizado de cooperación. De hecho, a tenor de la lectura de los despachos remitidos a Washington por la Embajada desde el mes de septiembre de 1944 hasta diciembre de 1947, se podría afirmar que fue un lugar común a los cinco máximos responsables de la Misión norteamericana en Madrid la premisa de que la única opción viable y sensata para promover en España un régimen de representación y de libertades, pasaba necesariamente por partir de la legalidad impuesta por los vencedores en la Guerra Civil, no por la restauración de la que había sido conculcada de manera violenta por éstos en 1936. Se sostiene que, en lo sustancial, dicha posición quedó prefigurada muy pronto, antes incluso de que concluyera la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y que en su adopción fueron decisivos los resultados negativos que arrojaron los constantes chequeos de salud de los que fueron objetos los grupos de la oposición democrática a la dictadura durante estos años.

Dimensionality reduction for k-distance applied to persistent homology

Given a set P of n points and a constant k, we are interested in computing the persistent homology of the Čech filtration of P for the k-distance, and investigate the effectiveness of dimensionality reduction for this problem, answering an open question of Sheehy (The persistent homology of distance functions under random projection. In Cheng, Devillers (eds), 30th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, SOCG’14, Kyoto, Japan, June 08–11, p 328, ACM, 2014). We show that any linear transformation that preserves pairwise distances up to a $$(1\pm {\varepsilon })$$ ( 1 ± ε ) multiplicative factor, must preserve the persistent homology of the Čech filtration up to a factor of $$(1-{\varepsilon })^{-1}$$ ( 1 - ε ) - 1 . Our results also show that the Vietoris-Rips and Delaunay filtrations for the k-distance, as well as the Čech filtration for the approximate k-distance of Buchet et al. [J Comput Geom, 58:70–96, 2016] are preserved up to a $$(1\pm {\varepsilon })$$ ( 1 ± ε ) factor. We also prove extensions of our main theorem, for point sets (i) lying in a region of bounded Gaussian width or (ii) on a low-dimensional submanifold, obtaining embeddings having the dimension bounds of Lotz (Proc R Soc A Math Phys Eng Sci, 475(2230):20190081, 2019) and Clarkson (Tighter bounds for random projections of manifolds. In Teillaud (ed) Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Computational Geom- etry, College Park, MD, USA, June 9–11, pp 39–48, ACM, 2008) respectively. Our results also work in the terminal dimensionality reduction setting, where the distance of any point in the original ambient space, to any point in P, needs to be approximately preserved.

A somewhat random walk through nuclear and particle physics

These notes are an outgrowth of an advanced undergraduate course taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. They are intended as an introduction to various aspects of particle and nuclear physics with an emphasis on the role of symmetry. The basic philosophy is to introduce many of the fundamental ideas in nuclear and particle physics using relatively sophisticated mathematical tools -- but to do so in as a simplified a context to explain the underlying ideas. Thus, for example, the Higgs mechanism is discussed in terms of an Abelian Higgs model. The emphasis is largely, but not entirely theoretical in orientation. The goal is for readers to develop an understanding of many of the underlying issues in a relatively sophisticated way.

Tribes and Tribalism in the Modern Middle East: Introduction

This roundtable is the product of a conference on tribalism in the Modern Middle East held at the University of Maryland in College Park in early May 2019. In two days of scholarly exchange, the participants addressed questions on the reality of tribal life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and its impact on politics and society. Most of the specialists who participated in the conference are also contributors in this forum. To keep the discussion concise, the case studies focus on the Arab East – Syria, Jordan, and Iraq – as well as Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Building on the findings and reflections shared in College Park, the contributors responded to the following prompt as a point of departure for their essays: For cultural, intellectual, political, and arguably even most social historians, tribes remain an enigma. As an ideal-type, the tribe seems to be all that the modern state is not: it defies positive law, rational administrative structures, equal citizenship based on individual rights and duties, and, still, in some cases, sovereignty based on fixed territorial boundaries. As a non-state, the tribe seems to be, on the other hand, the most enduring socio-political structure of human history. It is a kind of substrate, or a hetero-stratum of social organization at least in Middle Eastern societies. Its position as such seems even more pronounced in today's period of state disintegration and instability. What is the place of tribes in modern society, how do they relate to the modern state? How can what is seemingly an atavism of pre-modern times still have currency in today's world?The responses share the perception that tribes are not the antithesis of the modern state or of progress in the region. Researchers and politicians alike should take them into account in their analyses of modernization processes. They offer meaningful identities and forms of organization across the region and enjoy influence and power.

Spanning the archive and the museum : Timothy O'Sullivan's King Survey photographs

Originally created as documents of the government surveys in the 1860s-1870s, Timothy O'Sullivan's photographs were rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century by museum curators, artists and scholars, many of whom argued for O'Sullivan's artistic genius, uniqueness and his proto-modernist compositions. His early champions were the artist Ansel Adams and curator Beaumont Newhall, but others argued for the aesthetic importance of his work at the end of the century, including scholars Joel Snyder, Robin Kelsey, and Museum of Modern Art curator Peter Galassi. In the early 1980s, Rosalind Krauss argued against the notion that O'Sullivan should be included in the photographic art canon in her 1982 article, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View" in Art Journal. This thesis focuses on the changing reception and the functions of O'Sullivan's photographs by an examination of different examples of one photograph, O'Sullivan's "Sioux Hot Springs", held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York), the National Archives Still Picture Unit (College Park, Maryland), and the George Eastman House (Rochester, New York).

Spanning the archive and the museum : Timothy O'Sullivan's King Survey photographs

Originally created as documents of the government surveys in the 1860s-1870s, Timothy O'Sullivan's photographs were rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century by museum curators, artists and scholars, many of whom argued for O'Sullivan's artistic genius, uniqueness and his proto-modernist compositions. His early champions were the artist Ansel Adams and curator Beaumont Newhall, but others argued for the aesthetic importance of his work at the end of the century, including scholars Joel Snyder, Robin Kelsey, and Museum of Modern Art curator Peter Galassi. In the early 1980s, Rosalind Krauss argued against the notion that O'Sullivan should be included in the photographic art canon in her 1982 article, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View" in Art Journal. This thesis focuses on the changing reception and the functions of O'Sullivan's photographs by an examination of different examples of one photograph, O'Sullivan's "Sioux Hot Springs", held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York), the National Archives Still Picture Unit (College Park, Maryland), and the George Eastman House (Rochester, New York).

Breaking Down Barriers Through the Creation of an International Digital Library for Children

A research project, begun in the fall of 2002, expects to tap the potential of the Internet for breaking down barriers and building tolerance and understanding through access to exemplary children’s books from all over the world. The creation of the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) is the focus of a five-year project being conducted by the University of Maryland/College Park and the Internet Archive with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). This paper describes the project, discusses initial research findings and outlines the direction of ongoing research. Jessica Anthony, and Brewster Kahle

Comments on the paper: Liu X., Zheng X., and Balachandran B., COVID-19: Data-driven dynamics, statistical and distributed delay models, and observations, Nonlinear Dynamics, 2020. //doi.org/10.1007/s11071-020-05863-5.

It is a welcome surprise when mechanicians and mechanical engineers have relevant and important comments on the global spread of the COVID-19 virus. The above paper of Professor Bala Balachandran of the University of Maryland, College Park, MD and his group represents just one of these relevant comments to the global community.