The Resurrection Motif in Hosea 5:8-6:6: an Exegetical Study

This study investigates Hos 5:8-6:6 in an attempt to discover the mode and function of the resurrection motif. Chapter 1 surveys the interpretation of Hos 5:8-6:6 since the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Previous discussion of this passage, notwithstanding a few careful exegetical and pointed treatments, is in the main cursory, not comprehensive and detailed, or engages in alteration of the MT. The studies reviewed support either a healing, historical/political, or resurrection viewpoint of Hos 6:1-3. These conclusions are for the most part not buttressed by a detailed and close scrutiny of each verse and similar contexts in Hosea, and often do not assume general reliability of the Hebrew text of Hos 5:8-6:6. The review of literature shows the need for a multifaceted-exegetical approach. Chapter 2 deals with preliminary exegetical considerations. These cover limitation, translation, historical context, form, thematic patterns, and lexical data. The main focus of this chapter is on the lexical survey of certain significant terms assigned to sickness-healing and death resurrection categories. Chapter 3 treats the exegesis proper. It is apparent that the two divine speeches in Hos 5:8-15 and 6:4-6 tell of judgment of sickness and death leveled on Israel and Judah. The response in 6:1-3 reveals that the people expected both healing from sickness and resurrection from death. It is shown in greater detail that the twin parallel terms sk30 and sk30 in Hos 6:2 and in the remainder of the OT without exception speak of the resurrection hope, either physical or metaphorical. The death and resurrection concepts in Hos 5:8-6:6 reappear in the concluding chapters in Hos 13-14. We conclude that the resurrection motif exists in Hos 5:8-6:6. However, its use is metaphorical referring to the restoration of the exiled and abandoned people. Thus, the resurrection theme functions to bring hope to a desperate people punished for their faithlessness. The metaphorical use of the resurrection concept by Hosea implies its existence prior to his time in the second half of the eighth century B.C

Factors affecting environmental attitudes and volunteering in England and Wales

This paper investigates the demographic, social, political and religious factors that affect people’s attitudes to the environment and their involvement in environmental volunteering in England and Wales, using data from four waves of the Home Office Citizenship Survey between 2003 and 2009. Approximately 14,000 people were included in each wave of the survey, with around 85%-90% of people having a positive attitude to the environment, while 7%-8% were involved in volunteering. The data were analysed using logistic regression models. Covariates included sex, ethnicity, age, income, education, religion and region. We found that positive attitude and volunteering increased up to the age of 65 before decreasing sharply. People on middling incomes between £20k and £60k were the most likely to have positive environmental attitude and activity. We found no evidence of behavioural change—the results on both environmental attitudes and volunteering remained stable across all four waves of the survey

The Resurrection Motif in Hosea 5:8-6:6: an Exegetical Study

This study investigates Hos 5:8-6:6 in an attempt to discover the mode and function of the resurrection motif. Chapter 1 surveys the interpretation of Hos 5:8-6:6 since the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Previous discussion of this passage, notwithstanding a few careful exegetical and pointed treatments, is in the main cursory, not comprehensive and detailed, or engages in alteration of the MT. The studies reviewed support either a healing, historical/political, or resurrection viewpoint of Hos 6:1-3. These conclusions are for the most part not buttressed by a detailed and close scrutiny of each verse and similar contexts in Hosea, and often do not assume general reliability of the Hebrew text of Hos 5:8-6:6. The review of literature shows the need for a multifaceted-exegetical approach. Chapter 2 deals with preliminary exegetical considerations. These cover limitation, translation, historical context, form, thematic patterns, and lexical data. The main focus of this chapter is on the lexical survey of certain significant terms assigned to sickness-healing and death resurrection categories. Chapter 3 treats the exegesis proper. It is apparent that the two divine speeches in Hos 5:8-15 and 6:4-6 tell of judgment of sickness and death leveled on Israel and Judah. The response in 6:1-3 reveals that the people expected both healing from sickness and resurrection from death. It is shown in greater detail that the twin parallel terms sk30 and sk30 in Hos 6:2 and in the remainder of the OT without exception speak of the resurrection hope, either physical or metaphorical. The death and resurrection concepts in Hos 5:8-6:6 reappear in the concluding chapters in Hos 13-14. We conclude that the resurrection motif exists in Hos 5:8-6:6. However, its use is metaphorical referring to the restoration of the exiled and abandoned people. Thus, the resurrection theme functions to bring hope to a desperate people punished for their faithlessness. The metaphorical use of the resurrection concept by Hosea implies its existence prior to his time in the second half of the eighth century B.C

The Classical Relativistic Quark Model in the Rest-Frame Wigner-Covariant Coulomb Gauge

The system of N scalar particles with Grassmann-valued color charges plus the color SU(3) Yang-Mills field is reformulated on spacelike hypersurfaces. The Dirac observables are found and the physical invariant mass of the system in the Wigner-covariant rest-frame instant form of dynamics (covariant Coulomb gauge) is given. From the reduced Hamilton equations we extract the second order equations of motion both for the reduced transverse color field and the particles. Then, we study this relativistic scalar quark model, deduced from the classical QCD Lagrangian and with the color field present, in the N=2 (meson) case. A special form of the requirement of having only color singlets, suited for a field-independent quark model, produces a ``pseudoclassical asymptotic freedom" and a regularization of the quark self-energy.Comment: 81 pages, RevTe

Women on Boards: Progress following the 2012 Corporate Governance Code

This report monitors and recounts progress to date against the Financial Reporting Council's 2012 amendment to the Corporate Governance Code, considering inclusion of diversity reporting within annual reports. From this and from measuring the reality of the statistics on women in leadership and board positions across the top FTSE 350 companies, the report comments on the extent to which gender diversity is becoming an integral part of corporate strategy

Stability and Quasinormal Modes of Black holes in Tensor-Vector-Scalar theory: Scalar Field Perturbations

The imminent detection of gravitational waves will trigger precision tests of gravity through observations of quasinormal ringing of black holes. While General Relativity predicts just two polarizations of gravitational waves, the so-called plus and cross polarizations, numerous alternative theories of gravity predict up to six different polarizations which will potentially be observed in current and future generations of gravitational wave detectors. Bekenstein's Tensor-Vector-Scalar (TeVeS) theory and its generalization fall into one such class of theory that predict the full gamut of six polarizations of gravitational waves. In this paper we begin the study of quasinormal modes (QNMs) in TeVeS by studying perturbations of the scalar field in a spherically symmetric background. We show that, at least in the case where superluminal propagation of perturbations is not present, black holes are generically stable to this kind of perturbation. We also make a unique prediction that, as the limit of the various coupling parameters of the theory tend to zero, the QNM spectrum tends to $1/\sqrt{2}$ times the QNM spectrum induced by scalar perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole in General Relativity due to the intrinsic presence of the background vector field. We further show that the QNM spectrum does not vary significantly from this value for small values of the theory's coupling parameters, however can vary by as much as a few percent for larger, but still physically relevant parameters.Comment: Published in Physical Review

The Female FTSE Board Report 2015

This year we have seen significant progress on FTSE 100 boards. All-male boards have totally disappeared with Glencore, the last, appointing a woman to its board. The percentage of women on FTSE 100 boards is 23.5%, almost exactly where we predicted in last year's report. This puts us on track to hit the 25% target by the end of 2015. The percentage of women in executive directorships on FTSE 100 boards is at an all time high of 8.6% with 24 women holding such roles

Quantile regression of tobacco tax pass-through in the UK 2013–2019. How have manufacturers passed through tax changes for different tobacco products?

Background: The effectiveness of tax increases relies heavily on the tobacco industry passing on such increases to smokers (also referred to as ‘pass-through’). Previous research has found heterogeneous levels of tax pass-through across the market segments of tobacco products available to smokers. This study uses retail sales data to assess the extent to which recent tax changes have been passed on to smokers and whether this varies across the price distribution. Methods: We use panel data quantile regression analysis on Nielsen commercial data of tobacco price and sales in the UK from January 2013 to March 2019 combined with official UK tax rates and inflation to calculate the rate of tax pass-through for factory made (FM) cigarettes and roll your own (RYO) tobacco. Results: Following increases in the specific tax payable on tobacco, we find evidence of overshifting across the price distribution for both FM and RYO. The rate of the overshift in tax increased the more expensive the products were. This was consistent for FM and RYO. Additionally, our findings suggest that the introduction of standardised packaging was not followed by changes in how the tobacco industry responded to tax increases. Conclusions: Following the repeated introduction of increases in specific tobacco tax as well as standardised packaging, we show that the tobacco industry applies techniques to keep the cheapest tobacco cheaper relative to the more expensive products when passing on tax increases to: smokers

Environmental Clustering of New Zealand Dairy Herds

Previous studies have found that milk yield (a proxy for feeding level) and temperature-humidity index (THI) are important factors in explaining genotype x environment (G x E) interactions, indicating differences between the abilities of genotypes to forage or consume concentrates effectively or to cope with thermal stress (Ravagnolo and Misztal, 2000; Zwald et al., 2003). The objective of this study was to quantify and cluster (CL) herd environments within New Zealand (NZ) based on production levels, a summer heat load index (HLI) and geographical location

The Kepler equation for inspiralling compact binaries

Compact binaries consisting of neutron stars / black holes on eccentric orbit undergo a perturbed Keplerian motion. The perturbations are either of relativistic origin or are related to the spin, mass quadrupole and magnetic dipole moments of the binary components. The post-Newtonian motion of such systems decouples into radial and angular parts. We present here for the first time the radial motion of such a binary encoded in a generalized Kepler equation, with the inclusion of all above-mentioned contributions, up to linear order in the perturbations. Together with suitably introduced parametrizations, the radial motion is solved completely