Patterns of Speciation and Extinction and the Divine Valuing of Creation

The near-universal concern over the current rate of species extinction must be contextualized, given the occurrence ofprevious mass extinctions during the course of Earth\'s natural history. Current scientific knowledge regarding patterns of speciation and extinction present two challenges to the theologian: 1 ) how to understand God\'s relationship to these patterns; and 2) how to understand God\'s valuation of transient creatures in creation. After reviewing current theories regarding speciation and extinction, the implications for theology are addressed, particularly the need to account for extinction as an undeniable feature of cosmic history

A Finite State and Data-Oriented Method for Grapheme to Phoneme Conversion

A finite-state method, based on leftmost longest-match replacement, is presented for segmenting words into graphemes, and for converting graphemes into phonemes. A small set of hand-crafted conversion rules for Dutch achieves a phoneme accuracy of over 93%. The accuracy of the system is further improved by using transformation-based learning. The phoneme accuracy of the best system (using a large set of rule templates and a `lazy' variant of Brill's algoritm), trained on only 40K words, reaches 99% accuracy.Comment: 8 page

Creation's Persistent Voice: Critiquing the Secondary Status

Christianity struggles with the concept that nature/creation is truly revelatory of God, and not merely confirmatory of theological conclusions derived from special revelation or deduced from rational reflection. The result is a stilted and narrow conversation between theology and the natural sciences, with the contribution of creation to knowledge of God being limited to certain well-worn paths. If theology is willing to hold a full-fledged conversation with the natural sciences, it may just find that new metaphors and conceptions of God arise that illuminate our understanding of God in ways that scripture alone cannot. Such conversations must be characterized (on both sides) as serious and tentative, with conclusions never considered to be final, but always open to further conversation as new paradigms emerge

Constraint-Based Categorial Grammar

We propose a generalization of Categorial Grammar in which lexical categories are defined by means of recursive constraints. In particular, the introduction of relational constraints allows one to capture the effects of (recursive) lexical rules in a computationally attractive manner. We illustrate the linguistic merits of the new approach by showing how it accounts for the syntax of Dutch cross-serial dependencies and the position and scope of adjuncts in such constructions. Delayed evaluation is used to process grammars containing recursive constraints.Comment: 8 pages, LaTe

The Environmental Theology of Aimee Semple McPherson (Chapter 4 of Blood Cries Out : Pentecostals, Ecology, and the Groans of Creation)

Excerpt: My initial investigation into Aimee Semple McPherson—founder of The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel—and ecology was bleak: every word search returned a spiritual metaphor. “Garbage” came back as “garbage can of Satan,” “pollution” came back as “pollution of the soul,” “plants” came back as “plants of faith,” and “dumping” came back as “dumping ground for gossip.” But eventually, persistence paid off. Popular pastor and author Rick McKinley writes, “Margins are those clear spaces along the edge of a page that keep the words from spilling off. Every book has them. You might jot notes in the margins, but for the most part they go unnoticed. They don’t represent the book, and they don’t define its message. They’re simply there.”McKinley’s analogy describes McPherson’s engagement with nature. McPherson made comments, not commentaries, about nature. She had strong opinions—some radical by today’s standards—yet most remained underdeveloped. Moreover, her theology was largely anthropocentric. People, not the environment, occupied the center of her doctrine.While nature, theologically, occupied the margins for McPherson, politically, it took center stage, especially during her anti-war expositions. Thus, environmental concern ultimately found expression in her patriotism

AN OVERVIEW OF WHOLESALING RESEARCH IN THE TRANSPORTATION AND FACILITIES RESEARCH DIVISION OF ARS

Summarizes the current status of the many USDA studies in this area.Agribusiness,

Convergence rates of the DPG method with reduced test space degree

This paper presents a duality theorem of the Aubin-Nitsche type for discontinuous Petrov Galerkin (DPG) methods. This explains the numerically observed higher convergence rates in weaker norms. Considering the specific example of the mild-weak (or primal) DPG method for the Laplace equation, two further results are obtained. First, the DPG method continues to be solvable even when the test space degree is reduced, provided it is odd. Second, a non-conforming method of analysis is developed to explain the numerically observed convergence rates for a test space of reduced degree

Alternating copolyesteramides based on mixtures of 1,4-butyleneterephthalamide and -isophthalamide and ethanediol (4NT/I2)

Alternating copolyesteramides (APEA's) consisting of mixtures of 1,4-butyleneterephthalamide ester (N,N′-bis(p-carbomethoxybenzoyl) diaminobutane) and 1,4-butyleneisophthalamide ester (N,N′-bis(m-carbomethoxybenzoyl) diaminobutane) polymerized with ethanediol were synthesised in an ethanediol solution. The bisesterdiamides were prepared from 1,4-butanediamine and dimethyl terephthalate or dimethylisophthalate respectively. They were analyzed by 1H n.m.r., differential scanning calorimetry (d.s.c.) and high pressure liquid chromatography (h.p.l.c.). The melting behaviour of the copolyesteramides was studied by d.s.c. The dynamic mechanical properties were investigated on injection moulded bars using dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA). The melting temperature decreased with increasing 1,4-butyleneisophthalamide ester content. The crystallisation rate, the modulus above the glass transition temperature and the glass transition temperature hardly changed. The APEA of 1,4-butyleneisophthalamide ester and ethanediol was amorphous. The lowering of the melting temperature of the copolymers was probably caused by a decrease in lamellar size. The high crystallisation rate and the high physical crosslink density of the copolymers must be ascribed to the presence of 1,4-butyleneterephthalamide ester units which are able to crystallise fast and to form strong crystallites

Characterization of polyacrylonitrile ultrafiltration membranes

Various methods have been used to characterize ultrafiltration membranes, such as gas flux measurements, (field emission) scanning electron microscopy, permporometry and liquid-liquid displacement. Significant differences in the pore size distributions determined from permporometry and liquid-liquid displacement were found

The impact of voluntary environmental protection instruments on company environmental performance

In the last decade there has been increasing emphasis on the use of voluntary environmental protection tools such as corporate environmental reporting (CER) and environmental management systems (EMSs). There has been relatively little research, however, on the impact of these tools on the actual environmental performance of companies. This paper presents the findings of a survey of 40 companies operating in Western Australia to determine the extent to which the implementation of two voluntary instruments has influenced company environmental performance. The research considered four questions: To what extent have CER and EMSs influenced the environmental performance of companies operating in Western Australia? What are the characteristics of these influences? How does the influence of EMSs on environmental performance compare to that of CER? Have other external factors concurrently influenced environmental performance? In general, most respondents indicated that EMSs had influenced environmental management practices to some extent. On the other hand, CER was seen more as a public relations exercise and had less impact on company practices compared with EMSs. Other factors that influenced environmental performance included pressure from clients, senior management, the public and regulators; corporate culture; and cost savings