Religious Rite and Ceremony in Milton\u27s Poetry

Milton, the arch-Puritan and outspoken critic of the stereotyped rituals of the established churches, has been regarded by most scholars as a writer who is unlikely to have employed liturgical materials in his poetry. Thomas B. Stroup shows to the contrary that Milton made extensive use of Christian liturgy not only as material within the body of his poems but also as a force in shaping them. In a survey of both Milton’s major works and his minor poems, prayers of thanksgiving, the General Confession, similarities to hymns, echoes from canticles, and many other rites and ceremonies of the church are noted. But what is even more significant is the way in which these liturgical forms are used by the poet, for their appearance is not incidental to the works but contributes to their structural development. The reflections of the rites and ceremonies and the allusions to them seem to have been chosen deliberately as a means of heightening the poems’ action and deepening their meaning. Thomas B. Stroup is professor of English at the University of Kentucky.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/1052/thumbnail.jp

The Humanities and the Understanding of Reality

In their concern with the perennial controversy between the two great areas in which men seek knowledge, three eminent literary scholars and a distinguished journalist in these essays address themselves to the question, “Do the humanities provide a form of understanding of reality that the sciences do not?” Monroe C. Beardsley maintains that the humanities considered as contributors to knowledge must deal with the same subject matter as the sciences, but literature and the arts can enlarge our powers of understanding human nature, although not in the way the sciences do (under empirically or logically verifiable laws). Northrop Frye, while acknowledging the difference in methodology and mental attitude, asserts that the humanities, on the other hand, express man’s concern for this world most clearly in the myths by which man realizes his involvement in mankind and his responsibility for his own destiny. Frank Kermode argues that to follow the ways of sciences in searching out repetitions such as make myths is to lose sight of the unique, particular, and concrete expressions which underlie personal participation and sharpen the sensibilities. And this experience, he maintains, is the peculiar contribution of the humanities. In the final essay, Barry Bingham, editor and publisher of the Louisville Courier-Joumal, calls for a vigorous cultivation of the liberal arts in American life. Thomas B. Stroup is professor of English at the University of Kentucky.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_higher_education/1006/thumbnail.jp

Geologic investigations in the Cayman Trough and the nature of the plutonic foundation of the oceanic crust

A survey of the literature that deals with the gabbroic rocks believed to comprise the foundation of the oceanic crust indicates that the overwhelming majority of these rocks are recovered from escarpments associated with transform faults. The wide range of mineral and chemical compositions characterizing oceanic gabbroic rocks suggests that the lower oceanic crust is much more heterogeneous in nature than was previously suggested by the results of geophysical investigations. The examination of gabbroic rocks recovered in situ from the walls of the Mid-Cayman Rise rift valley by the submersible ALVIN not only supports the notion that oceanic gabbroic rocks are heterogeneous in nature but also that widely varying gabbroic rock types are found distributed heterogeneously on the walls at a scale of tens of meters. Observations that the largest escarpments on the walls of the Rise have only several hundreds of meters of vertical offset, and that gabbroic rocks were recovered to within roughly 100 meters of the tops of the rift valley walls, indicate that the shallow intrusive and extrusive carapace of the oceanic crust here must be anomalously thin. It has been suggested that thin oceanic crust characterizes slowly-slipping. ridge-transform intersections elsewhere; the thin crust of the Mid-Cayman Rise may be attributable to the presence of the two long transform faults that bound the 110 km long Rise segment. The two transforms may also have an instantaneous effect on the structural evolution of the Rise creating the well-defined tectonic grain that strikes at a high angle to the axis of the rift valley

The University in the American Future

In these four notable essays based on Centennial lectures, four eminent scholars analyze the tensions affecting university education today and the forces which will shape the American university of the future. Kenneth D. Benne, director of the Human Relations Center of Boston University, describes the fragmentation which has come to characterize the university in 1965 in three divergent philosophies of university education and calls for the universities to undertake a radical change of their social organization. For, he says, only by restoring the community of learning can the universities exercise their proper leadership in resolving the conflicts and tensions of modern society. The place of the university as a clearing house of ideas and as the training center for new professions and services is set forth by Sir Charles Morris, vice chancellor of the University of Leeds, and by Henry Steele Commager, professor of American Studies at Amherst College. Finally, Gunnar Myrdal of the Institute of International Economic Studies in the University of Stockholm, looking at the probable social and economic trends of the future, sees the expansion of professional, practical, and research training, but warns that the social and moral implications of knowledge cannot be ignored, especially in view of the increasing demands of the developing countries upon the affluent nations. Thomas B. Stroup is professor of English at the University of Kentucky.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_higher_education/1007/thumbnail.jp

ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL VARIABILITY USING PROC MIXED

Many data sets in agricultural research have spatially correlated observations. Examples include field trials conducted on heterogeneous plots for which blocking is inadequate, soil fertility surveys, ground water resource research, etc. Such data sets may be intended for treatment comparisons or for characterization. In either case, linear models with correlated errors are typically used. Geostatistical models such as those used in kriging are often used to estimate the error structure . SAS PROC MIXED allows the estimation of the parameters of mixed linear models with correlated errors. Fixed and random effects are estimated by generalized least squares. Variance and covariance components are estimated by restricted maximum likelihood (REML) . The purpose of this presentation is to show how PROC MIXED can be used to work with spatial data. Several examples will be presented to illustrate how various analyses could be approached and some of the pitfalls users may encounter

The design of mixed-use virtual auditory displays: Recent findings with a dual-task paradigm

Presented at the 10th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2004)In the third of an ongoing series of exploratory sound information display studies, we augmented a dual task with a mixed-use auditory display designed to provide relevant alert information for each task. The tasks entail a continuous tracking activity and a series of intermittent classification decisions that, in the present study, were presented on separate monitors that were roughly 90\,^{\circ} apart. Using a 2-by-3 design that manipulated both the use of sound in each task and where sounds for the decision task were positioned, the following principal questions were addressed: Can tracking performance be improved with a varying auditory alert tied to error? To what degree do listeners use virtual auditory deixis as a cue for improving decision reaction times? Can a previous finding involving participants' use of sound offsets (cessations) be repeated? And, last, are there performance consequences when auditory displays for separate tasks are combined? Respectively, we found that: Tracking performance as measured by RMS error was not improved and was apparently negatively affected by the use of our auditory design. Listener's use of even limited virtual auditory deixis is robust, but it is probably also sensitive to the degree it is coincident with the location of corresponding visual stimuli in the task environment. On the basis of manually collected head movement data, listeners do make opportunistic use of sound offsets. And, finally, a significant interaction, as measured by average participant reaction time, was observed between the auditory display used for one task and the manipulation of the degree of auditory deixis encoded in the auditory display used for the other task in our paradigm

Spatial variation in western corn rootworm (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) susceptibility to Cry3 toxins in Nebraska

Repeated use of field corn (Zea mays L.) hybrids expressing the Cry3Bb1 and mCry3A traits in Nebraska has selected for field-evolved resistance in some western corn rootworm (WCR; Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte) populations. Therefore, this study was conducted to characterize spatial variation in local WCR susceptibility to Cry3Bb1 and mCry3A traits in Keith and Buffalo counties, Nebraska, and determine the relationship between past management practices and current WCR susceptibility. Adult WCR populations were collected from sampling grids during 2015 and 2016 and single-plant larval bioassays conducted with F1 progeny documented significant variation in WCR susceptibility to Cry3Bb1 and mCry3A on different spatial scales in both sampling grids. At the local level, results revealed that neighboring cornfields may support WCR populations with very different susceptibility levels, indicating that gene flow of resistant alleles from high trait survival sites is not inundating large areas. A field history index, comprised of additive and weighted variables including past WCR management tactics and agronomic practices, was developed to quantify relative selection pressure in individual fields. The field history index-Cry3 trait survivorship relationship from year 1 data was highly predictive of year 2 Cry3 trait survivorship when year 2 field history indices were inserted into the year 1 base model. Sensitivity analyses indicated years of trait use and associated selection pressure at the local level were the key drivers of WCR susceptibility to Cry3 traits in this system. Retrospective case histories from this study will inform development of optimal resistance management programs and increase understanding of plant-insect interactions that may occur when transgenic corn is deployed in the landscape. Results from this study also support current recommendations to slow or mitigate the evolution of resistance by using a multi-tactic approach to manage WCR densities in individual fields within an integrated pest management framework

Military spending and economic growth in China: a regime-switching analysis

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.This article investigates the impact of military spending changes on economic growth in China over the period 1953 to 2010. Using two-state Markov-switching specifications, the results suggest that the relationship between military spending changes and economic growth is state dependent. Specifically, the results show that military spending changes affect the economic growth negatively during a slower growth-higher variance state, while positively within a faster growth-lower variance one. It is also demonstrated that military spending changes contain information about the growth transition probabilities. As a policy tool, the results indicate that increases in military spending can be detrimental to growth during slower growth-higher growth volatility periods. © 2014 © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis

Posterior-based proposals for speeding up Markov chain Monte Carlo

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is widely used for Bayesian inference in models of complex systems. Performance, however, is often unsatisfactory in models with many latent variables due to so-called poor mixing, necessitating development of application specific implementations. This paper introduces "posterior-based proposals" (PBPs), a new type of MCMC update applicable to a huge class of statistical models (whose conditional dependence structures are represented by directed acyclic graphs). PBPs generates large joint updates in parameter and latent variable space, whilst retaining good acceptance rates (typically 33%). Evaluation against other approaches (from standard Gibbs / random walk updates to state-of-the-art Hamiltonian and particle MCMC methods) was carried out for widely varying model types: an individual-based model for disease diagnostic test data, a financial stochastic volatility model, a mixed model used in statistical genetics and a population model used in ecology. Whilst different methods worked better or worse in different scenarios, PBPs were found to be either near to the fastest or significantly faster than the next best approach (by up to a factor of 10). PBPs therefore represent an additional general purpose technique that can be usefully applied in a wide variety of contexts.Comment: 54 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

Influence of Energy Intake During Lactation on Subsequent Gestation, Lactation and Postweaning Performance of Sows

Forty-four second parity crossbred sows were used to determine (1) the effect of energy intake during their first lactation (Lac 1) on subsequent reproductive performance from re-breeding to farrowing and (2) the effect of energy intake during two successive lactations on performance during the second lactation (Lac 2) and post-weaning periods. Sows received 8 (Lo) or 16 (Hi) Meal of metabolizable energy (ME)/d during Lac 1 and 5.4 Mcal of ME/d during the subsequent gestation