Exploring the role of college women in ministry leadership through a qualitative analysis of passion conferences

This paper identifies the tension between college women in leadership positions in ministry and the leadership positions they can cannot hold after graduation. Through personal narrative, this tension is initially identified and described. This paper uses the Passion Conferences as a case study for trends in greater college ministry environments. By analyzing the history of women in the Evangelical church, it is concluded that women are put in positions in college that they cannot hold after graduation. This tension is perpetuated by continual complementarian messaging that underlies an outwardly egalitarian-based ministry. It is discovered and discussed that women are aware of the limitations placed on their leadership positions, though the transparency of organizations is not consistent, and the intentionality behind the limitations is poorly documented. The results are paired with the results of surveying college ministries on my local campus, and the results are reaffirmed through these surveys

Investing in regional equality:four English examples

Some international cities have innovated to successfully overcome significant social and economic inequalities in recent years. City-REDI, University of Birmingham, in partnership with CIPFA, has sought to understand whether English local authorities could emulate this success.Using the nine key success factors identified in a previous report, "Investing in regional equality: lessons from four cities", we examined the experiences of four different areas in England: Dudley, Enfield, South Yorkshire and Tees Valley. We wanted to know which of the nine success factors were applicable in the English context, whether they were being used to their full potential and what barriers local authorities were facing.All nine success factors identified from international experience are in evidence in England. We found examples of innovative practice across all four areas. We also identified a tenth success factor that appears to be important in England: Transferable learning and knowledge exchange.Despite these good examples, implementation of some success factors has been more challenging in England than in the international city-regions explored in previous work. In particular, local areas have struggled to invest for the long term and to conduct effective monitoring and evaluation

Investing in regional equality:four English examples

Some international cities have innovated to successfully overcome significant social and economic inequalities in recent years. City-REDI, University of Birmingham, in partnership with CIPFA, has sought to understand whether English local authorities could emulate this success.Using the nine key success factors identified in a previous report, "Investing in regional equality: lessons from four cities", we examined the experiences of four different areas in England: Dudley, Enfield, South Yorkshire and Tees Valley. We wanted to know which of the nine success factors were applicable in the English context, whether they were being used to their full potential and what barriers local authorities were facing.All nine success factors identified from international experience are in evidence in England. We found examples of innovative practice across all four areas. We also identified a tenth success factor that appears to be important in England: Transferable learning and knowledge exchange.Despite these good examples, implementation of some success factors has been more challenging in England than in the international city-regions explored in previous work. In particular, local areas have struggled to invest for the long term and to conduct effective monitoring and evaluation

Ocular accommodation and wavelength: The effect of longitudinal chromatic aberration on the stimulus-response curve.

The longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA) of the eye creates a chromatic blur on the retina that is an important cue for accommodation. Although this mechanism can work optimally in broadband illuminants such as daylight, it is not clear how the system responds to the narrowband illuminants used by many modern displays. Here, we measured pupil and accommodative responses as well as visual acuity under narrowband light-emitting diode (LED) illuminants of different peak wavelengths. Observers were able to accommodate under narrowband light and compensate for the LCA of the eye, with no difference in the variability of the steady-state accommodation response between narrowband and broadband illuminants. Intriguingly, our subjects compensated more fully for LCA at nearer distances. That is, the difference in accommodation to different wavelengths became larger when the object was placed nearer the observer, causing the slope of the accommodation response curve to become shallower for shorter wavelengths and steeper for longer ones. Within the accommodative range of observers, accommodative errors were small and visual acuity normal. When comparing between illuminants, when accommodation was accurate, visual acuity was worst for blue narrowband light. This cannot be due to the sparser spacing for S-cones, as our stimuli had equal luminance and thus activated LM-cones roughly equally. It is likely because ocular LCA changes more rapidly at shorter wavelength and so the finite spectral bandwidth of LEDs corresponds to a greater dioptric range at shorter wavelengths. This effect disappears for larger accommodative errors, due to the increased depth of focus of the eye

One-step immortalization of primary human airway epithelial cells capable of oncogenic transformation

BACKGROUND: The ability to transform normal human cells into cancer cells with the introduction of defined genetic alterations is a valuable method for understanding the mechanisms of oncogenesis. Easy establishment of immortalized but non-transformed human cells from various tissues would facilitate these genetic analyses. RESULTS: We report here a simple, one-step immortalization method that involves retroviral vector mediated co-expression of the human telomerase protein and a shRNA targeting the CDKN2A gene locus. We demonstrate that this method could successfully immortalize human small airway epithelial cells while maintaining their chromosomal stability. We further showed that these cells retain p53 activity and can be transformed by the KRAS oncogene. CONCLUSIONS: Our method simplifies the immortalization process and is broadly applicable for establishing immortalized epithelial cell lines from primary human tissues for cancer research

The Astropy Problem

The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots, self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the sustainability of general purpose astronomical software

Hotspot SF3B1 mutations induce metabolic reprogramming and vulnerability to serine deprivation.

Cancer-associated mutations in the spliceosome gene SF3B1 create a neomorphic protein that produces aberrant mRNA splicing in hundreds of genes, but the ensuing biologic and therapeutic consequences of this missplicing are not well understood. Here we have provided evidence that aberrant splicing by mutant SF3B1 altered the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome of human cells, leading to missplicing-associated downregulation of metabolic genes, decreased mitochondrial respiration, and suppression of the serine synthesis pathway. We also found that mutant SF3B1 induces vulnerability to deprivation of the nonessential amino acid serine, which was mediated by missplicing-associated downregulation of the serine synthesis pathway enzyme PHGDH. This vulnerability was manifest both in vitro and in vivo, as dietary restriction of serine and glycine in mice was able to inhibit the growth of SF3B1MUT xenografts. These findings describe a role for SF3B1 mutations in altered energy metabolism, and they offer a new therapeutic strategy against SF3B1MUT cancers

Speaker Sex Perception from Spontaneous and Volitional Nonverbal Vocalizations.

In two experiments, we explore how speaker sex recognition is affected by vocal flexibility, introduced by volitional and spontaneous vocalizations. In Experiment 1, participants judged speaker sex from two spontaneous vocalizations, laughter and crying, and volitionally produced vowels. Striking effects of speaker sex emerged: For male vocalizations, listeners' performance was significantly impaired for spontaneous vocalizations (laughter and crying) compared to a volitional baseline (repeated vowels), a pattern that was also reflected in longer reaction times for spontaneous vocalizations. Further, performance was less accurate for laughter than crying. For female vocalizations, a different pattern emerged. In Experiment 2, we largely replicated the findings of Experiment 1 using spontaneous laughter, volitional laughter and (volitional) vowels: here, performance for male vocalizations was impaired for spontaneous laughter compared to both volitional laughter and vowels, providing further evidence that differences in volitional control over vocal production may modulate our ability to accurately perceive speaker sex from vocal signals. For both experiments, acoustic analyses showed relationships between stimulus fundamental frequency (F0) and the participants' responses. The higher the F0 of a vocal signal, the more likely listeners were to perceive a vocalization as being produced by a female speaker, an effect that was more pronounced for vocalizations produced by males. We discuss the results in terms of the availability of salient acoustic cues across different vocalizations

Germline bias dictates cross-serotype reactivity in a common dengue-virus-specific CD8(+) T cell response.

Adaptive immune responses protect against infection with dengue virus (DENV), yet cross-reactivity with distinct serotypes can precipitate life-threatening clinical disease. We found that clonotypes expressing the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) β-chain variable region 11 (TRBV11-2) were 'preferentially' activated and mobilized within immunodominant human-leukocyte-antigen-(HLA)-A*11:01-restricted CD8(+) T cell populations specific for variants of the nonstructural protein epitope NS3133 that characterize the serotypes DENV1, DENV3 and DENV4. In contrast, the NS3133-DENV2-specific repertoire was largely devoid of such TCRs. Structural analysis of a representative TRBV11-2(+) TCR demonstrated that cross-serotype reactivity was governed by unique interplay between the variable antigenic determinant and germline-encoded residues in the second β-chain complementarity-determining region (CDR2β). Extensive mutagenesis studies of three distinct TRBV11-2(+) TCRs further confirmed that antigen recognition was dependent on key contacts between the serotype-defined peptide and discrete residues in the CDR2β loop. Collectively, these data reveal an innate-like mode of epitope recognition with potential implications for the outcome of sequential exposure to heterologous DENVs