An Examination of Contemporary Christian Music Success Within Mainstream Rock and Country Billboard Charts

Ranging from inspirational songs void of theological language to worship music imbued with overt religious messages, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) has a long history of being ill-defined. Due to the genre’s flexible nature, many Christian artists over the years have used vague imagery and secular lyrical content to find favor among mainstream outlets. This study examined the most recent ten-year period of CCM to determine its ability to cross over into the mainstream music scene, while also assessing the impact of its lyrical content and genre on the probability of reaching such mainstream success. For the years 2008-2018, Billboard data were collected for every Christian song on the Hot 100, Hot Rock Songs, or Hot Country Songs in order to detect any noticeable trend regarding the rise or fall of CCM; each song then was coded for theological language. No obvious trend emerged regarding the mainstream success of CCM as a whole, but the genre of Rock was found to possess the greatest degree of mainstream success. Rock also, however, was shown to have a very low tolerance for theological language, contrasted with the high tolerance of Country. As such, it is reasonable to question whether Mainstream Christian Rock is even really Christian at all.

A Transnational Perspective on Extending NEPA: The Convention on Environmental Impact on Assessment in a Transboundary Context

Introduction In recent years, the potential adverse impacts of transboundary pollution have received heightened attention both domestically and abroad. 1 International pollution may detrimentally affect outer space, the atmosphere, the oceans, the weather, and possibly the climate, freshwater bodies, groundwater aquifers, farmland, cultural heritage, and life forms. 2 Specific pollution threats include acid deposition, nuclear contamination, debris in outer space, stratospheric ozone depletion, and toxic petroleum spills. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, on April 26, 1986, raised the world\u27s consciousness about the potentially devastating effects of transboundary nuclear pollution. 3 Given this backdrop and the emerging interdependence of nations, particularly within the European Economic Community, it is not surprising that the United States, later joined by twenty-five other countries, signed the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context (hereinafter the Convention ) at Espoo, Finland on February 25, 1991. 4 Among its provisions, the Convention establishes legal procedures for bilateral and multilateral protests against future sources of transboundary pollution. 5 The Convention also establishes a transboundary environmental impact assessment process similar to the process implemented under the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which is the first national environmental impact assessment law passed by the U.S. government. 6 However, three years have passed since the United States signed the Convention, and it still has not been formally adopted. 7 Consequently, questions about its legal basis remain. This Article examines issues relating to the implementation and enforceability of the Convention in the United States ..

Regulation of Medical Waste in the United States

When wash-ups of syringes and medical vials closed northeastern beaches, public outcry galvanized Congress to pass the Medical Waste Treatment Act (MWTA). Congress directed the U.S. EPA to investigate whether medical waste should be treated as hazardous or solid waste, and whether a federal regulatory scheme is warranted. In the following article, the author explores varied laws and policies governing the treatment, handling and disposal of medical waste in the United States, the ongoing debate about risks associated with exposure to medical waste, and the ramifications of our current fragmented regulatory approach

A Mobilidade Acadêmico como processo de internacionalização. O Modelo da Universidade Federal de Alfenas – MG

O CONGRESSO DE INTERNACIONALIZAÇÃO DA EDUCAÇÃO SUPERIOR – CIES 2019 é um evento in- ternacional, que reúne professores, pesquisadores e estudantes de graduação e pós-graduação para divulgar a produção científica no campo da Internacionalização do Ensino Superior e fortalecer a cooperação internacional entre diferentes instituições de ensino e grupos de pesquisa no âmbito do MERCOSUL. A iniciativa é fruto de uma parceria entre pesquisadores da Universidade Federal da Integra- ção Latino-Americana (UNILA - Brasil), a Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL - Argentina), a Uni- versidad Nacional de Asunción (UNA - Paraguay) e a Universidad de la República (UDeLaR - Uru- guay), que atuam em projetos vinculados ao Setor Educacional do MERCOSUL, no Núcleo de Estudos e Investigações em Educação Superior. O evento será realizado nos dias 4, 5 e 6 de Setembro de 2019 no campus PTI da UNILA, dentro do Parque Tecnológico da Usina Hidrelétrica de Itaipu, na cidade de Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brasil. A UNILA, sede do evento, é uma universidade temática criada em 2010 pelo governo federal do Brasil com a missão institucional de formar recursos humanos aptos a contribuir com a integra- ção latino-americana, com o desenvolvimento regional e com o intercâmbio cultural, científico e educacional da América Latina, especialmente no MERCOSUL. Sua finalidade, portanto, é conver- ter-se em um espaço de encontros, de trocas e de aprendizagem mútua, que reforçam o compro- misso em prol da pertinência, da excelência e da construção sustentável de um mundo melhor.A Internacionalização no ensino superior é tão antiga, quanto a própria universidade. Primeiras ideias sobre esse processo, teve início em Salamanca, Reino da Espanha, no século XII. No início, era algo particular, no qual dependia muito do interesse de cada docente, sua ligação, direta ou não com Vaticano. A medida que o pensamento universitário foi se desenvolvendo, cada área começou a demostrar um viés mais favorável a essas manifestações. Muitos estudantes, oriundos da pequena nobreza ou burguesia, querendo alcançar patamares sociais mais elevados, estudavam nesses centros, tendo contatos com pensadores muçulmanos, cristãos e judeus, que ajudaram a fortalecer o pensamento científico, principalmente no século XVIII. No Brasil, apesar da ideia de Universidade ter nascido no século XIX, foi na década de 1930, durante Período Vargas, com a criação da Universidade de São Paulo, que esse processo tem uma mudança efetiva. Com a falta de profissionais qualificados, Vargas convidou professores estrangeiros, sua maioria franceses, para ministrar aulas nos cursos criados na USP. História, por exemplo, foi um desses cursos, que contou com a presença de Fernand Braudel que, anos mais tarde, seria diretor da EHESS , École des Hautes Études em Sciences Sociales.Núcleo de Estudios e Investigaciones en Educación Superior del Mercosur - NUCLEO Grupo Interdisciplinar de Pesquisa em Educação na América Latina – EducAL/UNILA Instituto Mercosul de Estudos Avançados – IMEA/UNILA Pró-Reitoria de Relações Institucionais e Internacionais – PROINT/UNIL

Discontinuous information in the worst case and randomized settings

We believe that discontinuous linear information is never more powerful than continuous linear information for approximating continuous operators. We prove such a result in the worst case setting. In the randomized setting we consider compact linear operators defined between Hilbert spaces. In this case, the use of discontinuous linear information in the randomized setting cannot be much more powerful than continuous linear information in the worst case setting. These results can be applied when function evaluations are used even if function values are defined only almost everywhere

Bayesian Conditional Transformation Models

Recent developments in statistical regression methodology establish flexible relationships between all parameters of the response distribution and the covariates. This shift away from pure mean regression is just one example and is further intensified by conditional transformation models (CTMs). They aim to infer the entire conditional distribution directly by applying a transformation function that transforms the response conditionally on a set of covariates towards a simple log-concave reference distribution. Thus, CTMs allow not only variance, kurtosis and skewness but the complete conditional distribution function to depend on the explanatory variables. In this article, we propose a Bayesian notion of conditional transformation models (BCTM) for discrete and continuous responses in the presence of random censoring. Rather than relying on simple polynomials, we implement a spline-based parametrization for monotonic effects that are supplemented with smoothness penalties. Furthermore, we are able to benefit from the Bayesian paradigm directly via easily obtainable credible intervals and other quantities without relying on large sample approximations. A simulation study demonstrates the competitiveness of our approach against its likelihood-based counterpart, most likely transformations (MLTs) and Bayesian additive models of location, scale and shape (BAMLSS). Three applications illustrate the versatility of the BCTMs in problems involving real world data