Environmental Migrants: Considerations for the U.S. Government

Climate change threatens to force population displacement on a scale never seen before. Unfortunately, many governments, international organizations, and institutions are currently ill-prepared and unequipped to respond to this challenge. To buffer the United States from these potentially seismic shifts, it is advisable that the plight of environmental migrants receive serious consideration and advanced planning

Lake Titicaca: Legend, Myth and Science

Lake Titicaca and the vast region surrounding this deep body of water contain mysteries that we are just beginning to unravel. The area surrounding the world’s highest navigable lake was home to some of the greatest civilizations in the ancient world. These civilizations were created by the ancestors of the Aymara and Quechua peoples who continue to live and work in Peru and Bolivia along the shores of this ancient body of water. This lavishly illustrated book provides a state-of-the-art description and explanation of the great cultures that inhabited this land from the first migrants ten millennia ago to the people who thrive here today. We will also discover the world of myth and legend that has grown up around this mysterious place, including the lost continent of Mu, the land of Paititi, El Dorado and the many mystic ruins of Titicaca. We then explore the results of a century of scientific research that provide an even more fabulous tale than the legends and myths combined. This book is an indispensable guide for any visitor who has an interest in archaeology, history and culture. It is likewise an excellent introduction for the interested reader who yearns to know more about this fascinating place.Series: World Heritage and Monument

Gospel Encounter With Subaltern India

This work examines the role of religio-cultural resources in enabling the transformation of a broken community and people. In the context of nineteenth and twentieth century British India, an oppressed community in India set out to explore the possibility of challenging and re-defining their own destiny. This oppressed section of Indians who lived in the margins of Indian caste defined society were considered socially and ritually polluting people and were subservient to various socio-economic and religio-cultural biases. The daily life routine of this oppressed community, called the Sambavars (Pariahs) of the Malayalam speaking princely State of Travancore in South India, involved a despair and inferiority instilling encounter against hegemonic and fearful social and religio-cultural forces. However, in the churning socio-political period of twentieth century British India, a group of Malayalee Sambavars driven by their own critical consciousness took the initiative of approaching and inviting Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod missionaries working among their Tamil speaking kinsmen in Nagercoil on the southern tip of India. The ensuing chain of events ultimately culminated in the formation of the India Evangelical Lutheran Church in the state of Kerala, along the southwestern coast of India. By looking into the mission phase of the India Evangelical Lutheran Church (called Missiouri Evangelical Lutheran India Mission [MELIM] at that time) through the lens of gospel-culture interaction, this dissertation attempts to unveil the mission story from the perspective of the oppressed people who initiated and formed the majority converts in the mission. This dissertation argues that the MELIM period saw an interesting cross-cultural interaction between the American Lutheran missionaries and the native converts. In the midst of enthusiasm, mis-understandings, disillusionment and suffering on both sides; the gospel was preached and the Lutheran Church established in the Malayalam lands. More importantly, this gospel-culture engagement triggered a latent native Lutheran theological reflection that resourcefully spoke to the concerns of native believers, providing them with hope and strength for a meaningful present and a blessed future

Virtual Laboratory for Flexural Beam Testing

The goal of this project is to be able to extend and build off of a curricular tool created to support the Valparaiso University Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. It will specifically focus on various data sets, both numerical and graphical and interact with images from various flexural beam tests. This project will extend on the work done before on multiple prototypes and continue to build off of designs and requirements of past projects. This provides a multi-generational experience for the Computing and Information Sciences (CIS) team and illustrates many challenges. This web-based project has multiple features that help interpret data efficiently and allows for changing the displayed data with ease. This application was designed using the agile approach and environment. A combination of languages are used including PHP/CSS, which provides this application to be web-based, JavaScript, which allows various functions to control the webpage, SQL, which is a database management tool used to make managing large databases simple, and MatLab, which is used for image processing. Our project has features to upload new data to the application and it is then able to be analyzed and create a chart with that given information

Participation of adults with mental retardation in a voluntary physical activity program

This study compared the effect of two sources of instruction and verbal encouragement on the participation of individuals with mental retardation (MR) in a 10-week physical activity program. Participants were 17 adult employees of a sheltered workshop (5 females, 12 males) ranging in age from 30 to 65 years. The program was offered at work 3 days per week and involved aerobic dance activities. Group engagement in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) was systematically observed and was compared using a reversal design. Condition A involved an exercise leader plus an exercise video to deliver instructional cues and verbal promotion of participation. Condition B used an exercise video as the only source of instruction and verbal promotion. The exercise videos were designed specifically for the participant group to address the low fitness levels and limited ability to make activity transitions. Data indicated that, on average, a higher percentage of the group was engaged in MVPA when the leader-plus-video condition (A) was applied. However, the difference was not practically meaningful when the administrative ease and cost-effectiveness of videos are considered. Further, a considerable overlap of data points in the graphical analyses indicated that withdrawing the leader did not control exercise behavior. Program attendance was variable but remained high over the course of the study. Group engagement levels were higher during the sessions with fewer participants, which suggested that a small group of highly compliant participants were more consistently on-task. Work performance was not negatively impacted when employees took time out of their workday to participate in physical activity. It is of importance that several participants continued to participate in the exercise program over the 4-week maintenance phase. This study provided a convenient, inexpensive method for adults with MR to independently participate in physical activity