Protestantism and Education: Reading (the Bible) and other Skills

During industrialization, Protestants were more literate than Catholics. This paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of Protestants to read the bible and whether other education motives were involved as well. We employ a historical data set from Switzerland which allows us to differentiate between different cognitive skills: reading, numeracy, essay writing and Swiss history. We develop an estimation strategy to examine whether the impact of religious denomination was particularly large with respect to reading capabilities. We find support for this hypothesis. However, Protestants’ education motives went beyond reading the bible.cognitive skills, education, reading capability, religious denomination, protestant reformation

PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF SUPERCHARGED NUCLEAR RAMJET PROPULSION SYSTEM

A preliminary analysis has been made to compare the performance.of a ceramic ramjet reactor powerplant, such as described in General Electric Report No. XDC-56-5-81, with that of such a powerplant supercharged by a metallic-vapor-cycle compressor jet. Performance at sea level, Mach 2.5 is ·reported for the vapor-cycle compressor jet alone, for the ramjet alone, and for the compressor jet - ramjet combination. Results indicate that adding the compressor-jet as a supercharger for the ramjet provides an increase in specific thrust of about 20 percent over that of the ramjet alone, with an attendant increase in thermal efficiency of about 20 percent over that of the ramjet alone

Interferometric differentiation between resonant Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering and nonresonant four-wave-mixing processes

A major impediment of using Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering to identify biological molecules is that the illumination levels required to produce a measurable signal often also produce significant nonresonant background from the medium, especially from water, that is not specific to the resonance being investigated. We present a method of using nonlinear interferometry to measure the temporal shape of the anti-Stokes signal to differentiate which components are resonant and nonresonant. This method is easily adaptable to most existing pulsed CARS illumination methods and should allow for distinguishing resonant CARS when using higher energy pulses. By examining the differences between signals produced by acetone and water, we show that the resonant and nonresonant signals can be clearly differentiated.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Qualifying Religion: The Role of Plural Identities for Educational Production

This paper examines the role of religious denomination for human capital formation. We employ a unique data set which covers, inter alia, information on numerous measures of school inputs in 169 Swiss districts for the years 1871/72, 1881/82 and 1894/95, marks from pedagogical examinations of conscripts (1875-1903), and results from political referenda to capture conservative or progressive values in addition to the cultural characteristics language and religion. Catholic districts show on average significantly lower educational performance than Protestant districts. However, accounting for other sociocultural characteristics qualifies the role of religion for educational production. The evidence suggests that Catholicism is harmful only in a conservative milieu. We also exploit information on absenteeism of pupils from school to separate provision of schooling from use of schooling.culture, educational production, plural identity, religious denomination, school inputs

Magnetomotive Molecular Nanoprobes

Tremendous developments in the field of biomedical imaging in the past two decades have resulted in the transformation of anatomical imaging to molecular-specific imaging. The main approaches towards imaging at a molecular level are the development of high resolution imaging modalities with high penetration depths and increased sensitivity, and the development of molecular probes with high specificity. The development of novel molecular contrast agents and their success in molecular optical imaging modalities have lead to the emergence of molecular optical imaging as a more versatile and capable technique for providing morphological, spatial, and functional information at the molecular level with high sensitivity and precision, compared to other imaging modalities. In this review, we discuss a new class of dynamic contrast agents called magnetomotive molecular nanoprobes for molecular-specific imaging. Magnetomotive agents are superparamagnetic nanoparticles, typically iron-oxide, that are physically displaced by the application of a small modulating external magnetic field. Dynamic phase-sensitive position measurements are performed using any high resolution imaging modality, including optical coherence tomography (OCT), ultrasonography, or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The dynamics of the magnetomotive agents can be used to extract the biomechanical tissue properties in which the nanoparticles are bound, and the agents can be used to deliver therapy via magnetomotive displacements to modulate or disrupt cell function, or hyperthermia to kill cells. These agents can be targeted via conjugation to antibodies, and in vivo targeted imaging has been shown in a carcinogeninduced rat mammary tumor model. The iron-oxide nanoparticles also exhibit negative T2 contrast in MRI, and modulations can produce ultrasound imaging contrast for multimodal imaging application

Contrast enhanced spectroscopic optical coherence tomography

A method of forming an image of a sample includes performing SOCT on a sample. The sample may include a contrast agent, which may include an absorbing agent and/or a scattering agent. A method of forming an image of tissue may include selecting a contrast agent, delivering the contrast agent to the tissue, acquiring SOCT data from the tissue, and converting the SOCT data into an image. The contributions to the SOCT data of an absorbing agent and a scattering agent in a sample may be quantified separately

Distinguishing non-resonant four-wave-mixing noise in coherent stokes and anti-stokes Raman scattering

A method of examining a sample comprises exposing the sample to a pump pulse of electromagnetic radiation for a first period of time, exposing the sample to a stimulant pulse of electromagnetic radiation for a second period of time which overlaps in time with at least a portion of the first exposing, to produce a signal pulse of electromagnetic radiation for a third period of time, and interfering the signal pulse with a reference pulse of electromagnetic radiation, to determine which portions of the signal pulse were produced during the exposing of the sample to the stimulant pulse. The first and third periods of time are each greater than the second period of time