Gift of Grace

I am submitting a sculpture entitled “Gift of Grace.” It is shaped like a cinder block, made out of a light colored wood, whose dimensions are 13” x 13” x 26,” exactly double the size of an actual cinder block. The 8 inner corners are rounded, so that there are no sharp crevices. The wood is not stained, but is finished with polyurethane. It is incredibly smooth and sanded, without a singular sharp edge. It was created as a narrative piece, as it reflects a personal story of the Lord’s power. Whilst on a mission trip with my church, I was struck on the head with a cinder block from two stories above me, and escaped unscathed besides a few stitches, and did not experience any pain from this injury. At a time in my life when I was doubting, the Lord revealed to me his faithfulness in a very physical way. And thus I created this physical, larger-than-life testament to his power and providence. The Lord took this rough building material (a block used to build homes) and perfected it for his purposes: causing me to grow in my love and knowledge of him. Therefore, “Gift of Grace,” though large and heavy, is smoothed and finished so as to reflect how carefully crafted the plans of the Lord are. Though the sufferings the Lord places in our path may first appear to be destructive when they fall on us, they are truly beautiful, intentional, and worthy of gratitude as they sanctify us

African American Spirituals of the Civil Rights Movement

African American spirituals are a distinctly crucial American genre of song. The anthems often provided comfort and eased the boredom of daily tasks. They were an expression of spiritual devotion and a yearning for freedom from the bondage that they experienced, but they were also a means of releasing suppressed emotions and expressing sorrow and loss. Even removed from slavery, certain denominations of evangelists expressed their praise through powerful songs of worship. There are few figures more influential for this genre during this time than Hall Johnson, Harry Burleigh, and Roland Hayes. They held a very influential yet distinct roles in the direction of choral and solo vocal music in America during the Civil Rights Movement. In this performance presentation, I will describe the impact of these figures and preform a spiritual from each of them

ACCIDENT with CodeQL

Cryptography is an important tool in the security of our software systems. However, mistakes are often made by developers who do not implement cryptography correctly in their projects. As JavaScript becomes more popular as a language for full-stack development, vulnerabilities in JavaScript due to misuses of the cryptographic APIs and incorrect practices have increased as well. Our project focuses on developing CodeQL queries to find vulnerabilities in JavaScript code due to misuses of cryptography. We are designing and implementing several queries that find some of these misuses and will submit them to GitHub for review with the hope of having them accepted as official queries included on the public repo. This will allow developers all over the world to improve the security of their codebases by automatically scanning them with CodeQL, and therefore with our queries

Sing to Him a New Song: Early Christians in the Midst of Myths of Competing Culture

Alexandria in Northern Egypt during the second century of the Christian era was a thriving multicultural metropolis not unlike many urban centers of today. Second only in size to Rome itself, it attracted many races, practices, and philosophies, all facilitated by the Pax Romana. In particular, many cultured Greeks came to study in Alexandria’s famous library. One such Greek, who came to be known simply as Clement of Alexandria, arrived around AD 150 as a convert to Christianity. With the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180, a period of relative peace began for Christians. Clement found a nearly ideal platform for spreading the good news of Christ. As a cultured Greek himself, Clement directed much of his teaching to his fellow Greeks. His goal, like the author of Hebrews, was to unveil the superiority of Christ to the religious background of Greek mythology. One of his most famous comparisons was of Christ to Orpheus, a mythological demi-god who was able to tame wild animals and conquer death by singing and by playing his magical lyre. In his first writing, the Protreptikos, loosely translated as Exhortation to the Gentiles, Clement argues that at best Orpheus’s song is but music of the old creation, an old song, and does not have the ultimate power of salvation that can overcome man’s fallen condition. But Christ as the New Song is powerful and able to save man both from himself and the destiny of the fall. The New Song proclaims the victory of Christ’s redemption, purchasing men from every tribe and tongue, making them a kingdom to God, and who will reign on the earth (Rev. 5:9-10). This paper examines the main points of comparison of Orpheus with Christ in the Protreptikos. It then explores the legitimacy of such methodology by comparing Clement’s practice to that of Paul in Acts, when he took the opportunity of revealing to the Athenian’s exactly who was the “unknown god” that the Greeks worshipped (Acts 17:23). Are there points in Clement’s approach that should give us pause as Christians, or is this a model for us today

Design and Fabrication of Quasi-Zero Stiffness Mount Prototypes

In the mounting of mechanical systems, vibration isolation may be helpful to enhance the durability and/or comfort of nearby people. Isolation results from low-stiffness mounting, which may have the undesirable byproduct of large-amplitude motion. This project proposes physical prototyping of a nonlinear mount concept which obtains excellent vibration isolation through quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) mounts while maintaining resistance to large motion. The operating principle of these mounts involves large deflections, so candidate 3D printable rubber-like elastomers were selected. Material characterization tests were conducted to provide nonlinear material properties to the finite element (FE) models used in mount design and analysis which predict the desired multi-regime stiffness profile. Physical mount prototypes were then printed and subjected to static and dynamic stiffness testing. Design success criteria include relatively high stiffness under no preload, very low stiffness under a specified preload value, and a smooth force-deflection behavior. Additional features such as an overload stopper were also considered. The prototype mount performance successfully achieved the desired stiffness profile, and additional issues were uncovered related to the effects of damping. More advanced designs and a more thorough investigation of damping are suggested for future work