Leadershift: Equipping Transformational Leadership at Summit Avenue Presbyterian Church

The goal of this project was to design a training manual for the purpose of equipping leaders of the local church to move from upholding the status quo to leading transformational change. The project was grounded in a theology of transformation and the principle that personal renewal of leaders precedes corporate renewal of churches. The thesis was tested at Summit Avenue Presbyterian Church. Through an examination of Scripture and the Reformed tradition, this paper develops a theology of change. This study also explores eight principles of leading change as identified by Harvard Business professor John Kotter, asserting that these principles can be seen throughout the biblical narrative. To test this hypothesis, a series of stories from the Old and New Testaments were presented to four groups of leaders and church members over a six-week period. Principles of leading change from Kotter’s book were studied alongside these stories. Participants explored connections between the biblical narrative, principles of leading change, and their own ministry context at Summit. This study concludes that the study of change events in Scripture and the principles of leading change increased participants’ confidence in their knowledge of leaders in the Bible and their own capacity for leading change. However, due to the limited size of the test sample and test period, these findings will require further research before a definite conclusion can be made. The training manual offered in this project will nevertheless provide a valuable resource for beginning the dialogue of leading change in the local church

Under a Confirmed Chapter 11 Plan a Liquidating Trustee May Have Sole Authority to Review and Object to Claims

(Excerpt) A liquidating trust is one that is organized for the primary purpose of liquidating and distributing the assets transferred to it. When a plan under chapter 11 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) is confirmed and establishes a liquidating trust, the trust is treated as a distinct entity. The liquidating trust terminates the debtor in possession’s status and conveys the estate’s rights and assets to a “liquidating trustee.” The confirmed plan does not simply substitute the trustee for the debtor-in-possession, but rather it creates a separate and distinct trust, holding certain property of the estate and giving the liquidating trustee control of this property. When a plan, vesting a liquidating trustee with the exclusive ability to object to claims, is confirmed, the plan acts as a binding contract. Despite the binding nature of a confirmed plan, individual creditors may still attempt to object to proofs of claim before a court enters its actual confirmation order. Since the confirmed plan binds all parties, courts will respect the overall binding nature of the confirmed plan and will accordingly uphold the terms of the plan that govern who may object to claims. Even without considering the binding nature of a confirmed plan, courts also cite both long-recognized bankruptcy practice and sound policy concerns that drive the general line of authority respecting the exclusive authority of the liquidating trustee to object to claims. Courts consider the binding effect of confirmed plans and how a confirmed plan can alter the rights of creditors to object to claims. Courts also consider the general line of authority among bankruptcy courts respecting the primacy of the trustee in the liquidation process. This memorandum examines these considerations in the context of a chapter 11 plan’s establishment of a liquidating trust and appointment of a liquidating trustee. These considerations in this context were effectively analyzed in the Kansas bankruptcy court’s decision in In re Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas. Part I discusses the binding effect of a confirmed plan’s establishment of a liquidating trust and trustee on creditors. Part II discusses the courts’ recognition of the exclusive authority of the liquidating trustee to object to claims, which furthers sound public policy by ending litigation through the quick resolution of disputes and by promoting the expeditious administration of estates

Spectroscopic Interpretation: The High Vibrations of CDBrClF

We extract the dynamics implicit in an algebraic fitted model Hamiltonian for the deuterium chromophore's vibrational motion in the molecule CDBrClF. The original model has 4 degrees of freedom, three positions and one representing interbond couplings. A conserved polyad allows in a semiclassical approach the reduction to 3 degrees of freedom. For most quantum states we can identify the underlying motion that when quantized gives the said state. Most of the classifications, identifications and assignments are done by visual inspection of the already available wave function semiclassically transformed from the number representation to a representation on the reduced dimension toroidal configuration space corresponding to the classical action and angle variables. The concentration of the wave function density to lower dimensional subsets centered on idealized simple lower dimensional organizing structures and the behavior of the phase along such organizing centers already reveals the atomic motion. Extremely little computational work is needed.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in J. Chem. Phy

The Resonant Exchange Qubit

We introduce a solid-state qubit in which exchange interactions among confined electrons provide both the static longitudinal field and the oscillatory transverse field, allowing rapid and full qubit control via rf gate-voltage pulses. We demonstrate two-axis control at a detuning sweet-spot, where leakage due to hyperfine coupling is suppressed by the large exchange gap. A {\pi}/2-gate time of 2.5 ns and a coherence time of 19 {\mu}s, using multi-pulse echo, are also demonstrated. Model calculations that include effects of hyperfine noise are in excellent quantitative agreement with experiment

Self-Consistent Measurement and State Tomography of an Exchange-Only Spin Qubit

We report initialization, complete electrical control, and single-shot readout of an exchange-only spin qubit. Full control via the exchange interaction is fast, yielding a demonstrated 75 qubit rotations in under 2 ns. Measurement and state tomography are performed using a maximum-likelihood estimator method, allowing decoherence, leakage out of the qubit state space, and measurement fidelity to be quantified. The methods developed here are generally applicable to systems with state leakage, noisy measurements, and non-orthogonal control axes.Comment: contains Supplementary Informatio

Sub-100 femtosecond pulses from a SESAM modelocked thin disk laser

We present the first passively modelocked thin disk laser (TDL) with sub-100-fs pulse duration using the broadband sesquioxide gain material Yb:LuScO3 and an optimized SEmiconductor Saturable Absorber Mirror (SESAM). In this proof-of-principle experiment, we obtained 5.1W of average power at a repetition rate of 77.5MHz and a pulse duration of 96fs. We carefully explored and optimized the different parameters on the soliton pulse formation process for the generation of short pulses. In particular, SESAMs combining fast recovery time, high modulation depth and low nonsaturable losses proved crucial to achieve this result even though they are expected to only play a minor role in soliton modelocking. To our knowledge, these are the shortest pulses ever obtained with a modelocked TDL, reaching for the first time the sub-100-fs milestone. This result opens the door to sub-100-fs oscillators with substantially higher power levels in the near futur

The good, the bad and the ugly: pandemic priority decisions and triage.

In this analysis we discuss the change in criteria for triage of patients during three different phases of a pandemic like COVID-19, seen from the critical care point of view. Availability of critical care beds has become a hot topic, and in many countries, we have seen a huge increase in the provision of temporary intensive care bed capacity. However, there is a limit where the hospitals may run out of resources to provide critical care, which is heavily dependent on trained staff, just-in-time supply chains for clinical consumables and drugs and advanced equipment. In the first (good) phase, we can still do clinical prioritisation and decision-making as usual, based on the need for intensive care and prognostication: what are the odds for a good result with regard to survival and quality of life. In the next (bad phase), the resources are mostly available, but the system is stressed by many patients arriving over a short time period and auxiliary beds in different places in the hospital being used. We may have to abandon admittance of patients with doubtful prognosis. In the last (ugly) phase, usual medical triage and priority setting may not be sufficient to decrease inflow and there may not be enough intensive care unit beds available. In this phase different criteria must be applied using a utilitarian approach for triage. We argue that this is an important transition where society, and not physicians, must provide guidance to support triage that is no longer based on medical priorities alone

Повышение энергоэффективности Республики Марий Эл путем внедрения АСКУЭ

Plasma-treated polymers typically show changes of surface morphology as well as modifications in their chemical composition. Both effects are known to have an influence on deposition and adhesion of metal coatings, although the exact mechanisms are not yet understood. Besides high- energy electrons and chemically active species, the generated UV radiation is one major component of plasma surface modification. The energy of ultraviolet photons is sufficiently high to induce bond scissions in polymeric materials, which result in subsequent chemical reactions. In this study, excimer radiation from lasers (e.g. KrF, 248nm) or lamps (e.g. KrCI, 222nm) was used for the formation of polar functional groups on the surface. The treatment was carried out at atmospheric pressure, mostly in air. The chemical and physical properties of the irradiated surface are different compared with untreated areas. The resulting functional groups allow for a spontaneous deposition of molecular thin films from aqueous solutions. In particular, these can be complexes from noble metals. Noble metals catalyze deposition in electroless metallization baths. A process for selective metal deposition on polymers has been developed based on this principle. After deposition, the main issue is the adhesion that can be achieved in the polymer-metal interface. It is determined by chemical or physical interaction between the polymer surface and the adjacent layer, as well as by typographical features