Rituals and Sacraments

Christians, like their Islamic brothers and sisters, pray to God regularly. Much like Islam, the most important Christian prayer is praise and thanksgiving given to God. Christians pray morning and evening, either alone or with others, and at meals. But among the most important Christian prayers are the community ritual celebrations known as The Sacraments [from Latin, meaning signs ]. Christians also celebrate seasons and festival days [see Feasts and Seasons]. Download full text to read more.https://ir.stthomas.edu/encounteringislam/1027/thumbnail.jp

A Web Based Water Resources Analysis Portal For Occoquan Watershed

In most of the developed world, water resources data, including both water quality and quantity, has been collected for decades. Such datasets are often used to calibrate water resources models that in turn are capable of producing large amounts of data useful for activities such as forecasting and risk analysis. Like many other domains (e.g., finance, marketing, etc.), significant education, extension, and policy making benefits may be had by building data analytics tools to derive knowledge from these datasets. The knowledge thus available may be turned into intelligence by policy makers and may also be used to enhance environmental education among an area’s stakeholders. Modern information technology infrastructure and development in GIS have eliminated several hindrances that have plagued such endeavors in the past. Using web-GIS based methods we have developed a portal that may be used to visualize and derive knowledge from some of the dataset collected for the Occoquan Reservoir and its tributary watershed in Northern Virginia, USA. The portal is interactive and may be useful for local stakeholders to retrieve near real time data from several sampling stations in the region. At the same time, the design also allows for environmental education of the user. In addition, the portal enables data curation, collects data from several sources in a single database, and provide tools to analyze data irregularities in massive real-time datasets, essential for data managers

Extending Occoquan Reservoir Water Quality Model For Stakeholder Involvement

There has been a paradigm change in water resource management as control of major point sources has improved, and recognition has grown of the importance of diffused pollution. Newer approaches, exemplified by watershed-scale management, emphasize stakeholder involvement to achieve better decision making through negotiation and compromise; and ultimately, better acceptance of final management solutions. Stakeholder participatory involvement in using complex water quality models to understand management scenarios and their impacts is, however, limited. Advanced receiving waterbody and watershed WQ models are complicated and require significant technical expertise in their understanding and use, which is a deterrent to non-expert stakeholder involvement. This situation creates a conundrum where the very tools necessary to provide management decision support are too complex for key stakeholders to use and understand. This paper describes an Environmental Decision Support System (EDSS) designed for the Occoquan Reservoir and its Watershed (1.47x109 m2), which is located in the northern Virginia surburbs of the US National Capital Region. The web-based EDSS allows users to modify land use in the watershed by directly delineating changes to the current base condition. Changes in water quality due to land use modifications may then be analyzed, at various geographical scales, by executing the Occoquan system model through the EDSS. The EDSS enables users to share land use modification scenarios, and supports grouping land use modifications to aid in comparison of simulated water quality results. A local-network server cluster was also designed and implemented to enable execution of the Occoquan system models simultaneously on machines with disparate capabilities

Learning shapes cortical dynamics to enhance integration of relevant sensory input

Adaptive sensory behavior is thought to depend on processing in recurrent cortical circuits, but how dynamics in these circuits shapes the integration and transmission of sensory information is not well understood. Here, we study neural coding in recurrently connected networks of neurons driven by sensory input. We show analytically how information available in the network output varies with the alignment between feedforward input and the integrating modes of the circuit dynamics. In light of this theory, we analyzed neural population activity in the visual cortex of mice that learned to discriminate visual features. We found that over learning, slow patterns of network dynamics realigned to better integrate input relevant to the discrimination task. This realignment of network dynamics could be explained by changes in excitatory-inhibitory connectivity among neurons tuned to relevant features. These results suggest that learning tunes the temporal dynamics of cortical circuits to optimally integrate relevant sensory input

Finite Element Analysis of Manufacturing Deformation in Polymer Matrix Composites

This paper introduces a unique finite element analysis (FEA) technique designed to predict elastic response in polymer matrix composites (PMCs). Extensive research has been conducted to model the manufacturing process of multiple ‘L’-shaped components, fabricated from SPRINTTM materials (GLP 43 and GLP 96) at two thicknesses (15 mm and 25 mm). Three distinct FEA methodologies were utilised to determine the impact of thermal loads and rigid fixtures. An error deviation of 3.23% was recorded when comparing simulation results to experimental data, thereby validating the effectiveness of the FEA methodology

Experimental observation and characterization of the magnetorotational instability

Differential rotation occurs in conducting flows in accretion disks and planetary cores. In such systems, the magnetorotational instability can arise from coupling Lorentz and centrifugal forces to cause large radial angular momentum fluxes. We present the first experimental observation of the magnetorotational instability. Our system consists of liquid sodium between differentially rotating spheres, with an imposed coaxial magnetic field. We characterize the observed patterns, dynamics and torque increases, and establish that this instability can occur from a hydrodynamic turbulent background.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Final version, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Checkpoint inhibitors in cancer immunotherapy: Cross reactivity of a CTLA-4 antibody and IDO-inhibitor L-1MT in pigs

Blockade of checkpoint inhibitors has recently shown very convincing results in the treatment of cancer. One key target is CTLA-4, which has been demonstrated to be a potent negative regulator of lymphocyte activation. The treatment with the FDA-approved fully human CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody Ipilimumab increases anticancer T-cell reactivity and overall survival of metastatic cancer patients. Indole-amine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is another checkpoint inhibitor which suppresses T-cell immunity by the depletion of tryptophan in the T-cell microenvironment, and also inhibition of IDO by L-1-Methyltryptophan (L-1MT) has shown promising results in clinical phase I/II studies of human cancer such as epithelial ovarian cancer.Pre-clinical immune therapeutic studies are usually performed with mice, but Ipilimumab is not reactive with mouse cells. Recent studies indicate that the pig may be a more suitable animal model for studies of immune reactivity due to higher similarity of the immunome between pig and man. This study is part of the CANVACPIG project “Accelerating development of vaccines against cancer with pigs as a large animal model” and investigates the reactivity of a fully human monoclonal anti CTLA-4 antibody and L-1MT on porcine immune cells.At the genome level, the homology between human and pig CTLA-4 and IDO is 86% and 73%, respectively, while the homology to the mouse is 75% and 63%. Our preliminary in vitro studies indicate that the monoclonal anti CTLA-4 antibody induces a non-specific activation of porcine T cells. This will be further investigated to provide the basis for in vivo studies investigating checkpoint inhibitor blockade in combination with other cancer immunotherapies. Eventually our goal is to establish pigs as an alternative large animal model for development and formulation of new human cancer vaccines.<br/

Supervised treatment in outpatients for schizophrenia plus (STOPS+): protocol for a cluster randomised trial of a community-based intervention to improve treatment adherence and reduce the treatment gap for schizophrenia in Pakistan

Introduction There is a significant treatment gap, with only a few community-based services for people with schizophrenia in low-income and middle-income countries. Poor treatment adherence in schizophrenia is associated with poorer health outcomes, suicide attempts and death. We previously reported the effectiveness of supervised treatment in outpatients for schizophrenia (STOPS) for improving treatment adherence in patients with schizophrenia. However, STOPS was evaluated in a tertiary care setting with no primary care involvement, limiting its generalisability to the wider at-risk population. We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of STOPS+ in scaling up the primary care treatment of schizophrenia to a real-world setting. Methods and analysis The effectiveness of the STOPS+ intervention in improving the level of functioning and medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia in Pakistan will be evaluated using a cluster randomised controlled trial design. We aim to recruit 526 participants from 24 primary healthcare centres randomly allocated in 1:1 ratio to STOPS+ intervention and enhanced treatment as usual arms. Participants will be followed-up for 12 months postrecruitment. The sample size is estimated for two outcomes (1) the primary clinical outcome is level of functioning, measured using the Global Assessment of Functioning scale and (2) the primary process outcome is adherence to treatment regimen measured using a validated measure. An intention-to-treat approach will be used for the primary analysis. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been obtained from Keele University Ethical Review Panel (ref: MH-190017) and Khyber Medical University Ethical Review Board (ref: DIR-KMU-EB/ST/000648). The results of the STOPS+ trial will be reported in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences and disseminated to local stakeholders and policymakers