Kostenberger, Bock, and Chatraw\u27s Truth Matters: Confident Faith in a Confusing World (Book Review)

A Review of Truth Matters: Confident Faith in a Confusing World, by Andreas Köstenberger, Darrell Bock, and Josh Chatraw. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2014. 188 pp. $9.00. ISBN 978143368226

Can you hear me now? Creating a Library Class in an LMS to Reach Out to Students

In the Fall of 2016, SWBTS (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) Libraries designed a Library Blackboard course into which all students would be enrolled. The course was not a class for which students were physically present and received a grade. This class served as an online resource for assisting students in building research skills as well as a place that students could discover library services. This essay covers the design and layout of this course as well as how it has impacted library services

Nettles\u27 Living by Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Book Review)

A Review of Living by Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, by Tom Nettles. Ross-shire, Scotland: Mentor Imprint, 2013. 683 pp., $40.00. ISBN: 178191122

Synergistic degradation of lignocellulose by fungi and bacteria in boreal forest soil

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015Boreal forests contain an estimated 28% of the world's soil carbon, and currently act as a significant global carbon sink. Plant-derived lignocellulose is a major component of soil carbon, and its decomposition is dependent on soil bacteria and fungi. In order to predict the fate of this soil carbon and its potential feedbacks to climate change, the identities, activity, and interactions of soil microbial decomposer communities must be better understood. This study used stable isotope probing (SIP) with ¹³C-labeled lignocellulose and two of its constituents, cellulose and vanillin, to identify microbes responsible for the processing of lignocellulose-derived carbon and examine the specific roles that they perform. Results indicate that multiple taxa are involved in lignocellulose processing, and that certain taxa target specific portions of the lignocellulose macromolecule; specifically, fungi dominate the degradation of lignocellulose and cellulose macromolecules, while bacteria scavenge aromatic lignocellulose monomers. Major fungal taxa involved in lignocellulose degradation include Ceratobasidium, Geomyces, and Sebacina, among others. Bacterial taxa processing lignocellulose and cellulose included Cellvibrio and Mesorhizobium in high abundance relative to other taxa, although Burkholderia were the primary vanillin consumers. These results elucidate some of the major players in lignocellulose decomposition and their specific roles in boreal forest soil. This information provides knowledge of small-scale microbial processes that dictate ecosystem-level carbon cycling, and can assist in predictions of the fate of boreal forest carbon stocks

Using Library Events and Programs to Reach Out to Patrons

In the 2014-2015 academic year, Southwestern Libraries had significant changes in faculty and staff. We decided that our librarians would take the initiative to reach out to the students in order for the library to be more welcoming. Our ultimate goal was try to get students to see the library as a place of learning and community, and not just a place to pick up books

Student effort and educational attainment: Using the England football team to identify the education production function.

We use a sharp, exogenous and repeated change in the value of leisure to identify the impact of student effort on educational achievement. The treatment arises from the partial overlap of the world’s major international football tournaments with the exam period in England. Our data enable a clean difference-in-difference design. Performance is measured using the high-stakes tests that all students take at the end of compulsory schooling. We find a strongly significant effect: the average impact of a fall in effort is 0.12 SDs of student performance, significantly larger for male and disadvantaged students, as high as many educational policies.student effort, educational achievement, schools