The Pastor as Bearer of Hope

Lutheran Life Lecture, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, November 4 1993

THE DEMAND FOR WHOLESALE BEEF CUTS BY SEASON AND TREND

This study estimates demand during the 1980-90 period for wholesale beef cuts by season and by trend. A data set containing monthly nominal prices for wholesale cuts and average choice boxed beef from January 1980 to December 1990 was collected from multiple sources. The approach expressed the change in demand for wholesale cuts as the change in the price ratio of individual cuts relative to the price of boxed beef. This approach shows changes in amount by season and over time relative to the average wholesale cut. Brisket, Armbone Chuck, Bottom Gooseneck, and Knuckle showed the strongest demand in winter and lowest in summer. Top (Inside) Round had a clear downward trend in demand, but the seasonal pattern was less pronounced and more erratic than the lower-priced cuts. Top Sirloin Butt had its highest demand in spring and summer with November-December being the lowest period. Strip Loin had the strongest warm season demand during the period which contains Memorial Day. Ribeye experienced a seasonal demand highest in November-December and lowest in January to April. Full Tenderloin was the most expensive wholesale beef cut analyzed in the study, and its demand was highest in November-December. The study clearly showed that a change in seasonal demand was responsible for the major part of price ratio fluctuations for individual wholesale cuts.Demand and Price Analysis,

Jesus the village psychiatrist: A summary

This paper was a response to a panel discussion on the author’s book, Jesus the village psychiatrist, published by Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2008 which formed part of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Psychology and Biblical Studies Section, 21–24 November 2009, New Orleans, LA. The response consisted of an explanation of somatoform disorders, a summary of the book and the following case studies: the case of Fraulein Elisabeth, the case of paralytics, the case of blind persons, the demon-possessed boy, the case of the woman with a haemorrhage, the healings of lepers and the woman who cared for Jesus. The paper concluded with a discussion on words and their power to cure. It illustrated how symptomatology had changed from paralysis in the 19th century to chronic fatigue in the first half of the 20th century to stress today

DETERMINANTS OF WHOLESALE BEEF-CUT PRICES

Key determinants of monthly wholesale prices for 12 beef cuts include the quantity of the specific cut, stickiness in prices, marketing costs, quantities of pork and chicken, and seasonality. Seasonal patterns across the respective cuts are very different. Relative to the price in December, prices at the wholesale level in other months can be as much as 6 percent lower to as much as 21 percent higher.Wholesale prices, Beef cuts, Seasonality, Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas

Discusses key demographic trends, economic factors, and public policy issues associated with immigrants in Arkansas, which has the fourth-fastest-growing immigrant population in the nation

The Amazon Echo: Usability Evaluation

Background: The Amazon Echo is a home assistant device which allows people to interact verbally with online software tools or smart home devices and electronics. The purpose of this study was to test the usability of the device by conducting a variety of user-centered analyses. Method: Researchers performed a usability heuristics evaluation to gain an understanding of the system’s features and functions from a top-down perspective. An Out of Box Experience (OOBE) was conducted to capture users’ attitude of the device. Next, several tasks were performed which represent users\u27 everyday interactions with these devices. Participants then completed the system usability scale (SUS) to rate their experience. Results: Time on task was measured to analyze quantitative data and participants were asked to rate the difficulty of each task. Preliminary results indicate a setup time of approximately five minutes. Microsoft product reaction cards were used to capture initial and post-trial reactions to the device. Easy to use and efficient are two common terms appearing in the participant\u27s explanation of their feeling towards using the device. Conclusions: By collecting this information, our research team can paint an entire picture explaining benefits and flaws encountered by users and experts alike

An Optoelectronic Adaptive Resonance Unit

The authors demonstrate a hardware implementation of the adaptive resonance theory ART 1 neural network architecture. The optoelectronic ART1 unit, is a novel application of an old device. This device-the 4-f or Van der Lugt correlator-has historically been used as a fast pattern classifier. Usually the correlation operation is employed as a matched filter, so that a maximum correlation peak corresponds to a well-matched pattern. The device described also uses the large peaks, but takes specific advantage of the fact that a zero-shift correlation is mathematically equivalent to a two-dimensional inner product. The authors describe a promising method for emulating an ART1 unit in optics. They review ART1 from an algorithmic point of view, which shows that inner products are a critical part of ART1. They then discuss its implementation, and show some experimental results. The device works by performing the most computationally intensive parts of the algorithm in optical hardware, and thus offers a suitable marriage of the strengths of electronics and optics

Invertebrate Biomass and Richness in Various Food Plot Types in East Texas

As northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) chicks are dependent on invertebrates for food, land managers often use spring/summer food plots to meet these needs. We examined invertebrate production in native vegetation and 6 different food plot types (i.e., fallow disking only; fallow disking and fertilizing; or disking, fertilizing, and planting a single species [browntop millet, iron and clay peas, or sorghum] or a multi-species mix [browntop millet, catjang peas, iron and clay peas, Japanese millet, and pearl millet]) in the Pineywoods of east Texas. Invertebrates were collected weekly during the summers of 1997 and 1999 and for 5 weekly sampling periods during summer, 1998. For each food plot type, invertebrates were separated from debris, air dried, and weighed as a group. Bi-weekly, a 100-invertebrate sub-sample was randomly selected from each sample and sorted to order with weight and number of individuals recorded. When spring precipitation was sufficient, multi-species food plots produced greater (P \u3c 0.05) invertebrate biomass than fallow or native vegetation plots, and all cultivated plots had more (P \u3c 0.05) biomass than native vegetation. Likewise, all cultivated plots had more (P \u3c 0.05) biomass than fallow plots in early summer but not in mid- and late summer. A combination of multi-species (with legumes) food plots and fallow disking should provide bobwhite chicks with invertebrates throughout most summers

A Neural Architecture for Unsupervised Learning with Shift, Scale and Rotation Invariance, Efficient Software Simulation Heuristics, and Optoelectronic Implementation

A simple modification of the adaptive resonance theory (ART) neural network allows shift, scale and rotation invariant learning. The authors point out that this can be accomplished as a neural architecture by modifying the standard ART with hardwired interconnects that perform a Fourier-Mellin transform, and show how to modify the heuristics for efficient simulation of ART architectures to accomplish the additional innovation. Finally, they discuss the implementation of this in optoelectronic hardware, using a modification of the Van der Lugt optical correlato

An Optoelectronic Implementation of the Adaptive Resonance Neural Network

A solution to the problem of implementation of the adaptive resonance theory (ART) of neural networks that uses an optical correlator which allows the large body of correlator research to be leveraged in the implementation of ART is presented. The implementation takes advantage of the fact that one ART-based architecture, known as ART1, can be broken into several parts, some of which are better to implement in parallel. The control structure of ART, often regarded as its most complex part, is actually not very time consuming and can be done in electronics. The bottom-up and top-down gated pathways, however, are very time consuming to simulate and are difficult to implement directly in electronics due to the high number of interconnections. In addition to the design, the authors present experiments with a laboratory prototype to illustrate its feasibility and to discuss implementation details that arise in practice. This device can potentially outperform alternative implementations of ART1 by as much as two to three orders of magnitude in problems requiring especially large input field