Honoring God and Developing People: ServiceMaster, Bill Pollard and the Heart of the Corporation

This study examines the model of faith-business integration developed at ServiceMaster, and relatedly Bill Pollard’s role in developing and implementing it. My argument is that ServiceMaster’s celebrated 4 corporate goals functioned both as a mission statement defining the core of the business, but at the same time also as “philosophy of Christian ministry” infusing their core business with the Christian faith. As used, the 4 goals functioned as a faith-business integration model in its own right, deserving a place alongside other models and thereby deserving reflective analysis and evaluation. To that end, this study examines how the model came to be and how it functioned. Further, attention is drawn to how well within the model the two dimensions (Christian faith and business mission) coinhere under the real-world business pressures encountered at ServiceMaster. Particularly here the study will mention the strategic business choices made by Pollard’s predecessors, Pollard himself, and to a lesser degree, the board. My purpose with the study is to show the model’s promises and potential shortcomings to assist students and Christians in business seeking ways to integrate their faith with their business

A Hybrid Atomistic-Continuum Model for Liquid-Vapor Phase Change

Boiling, evaporation, and liquid-vapor phase change are inherently multiscale processes. Current continuum-based numerical models fail to capture the atomistic nature of the local density fluctuations that lead to vapor nucleation. Atomistic methods, such as molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, are capable of fully resolving the effects of individual atomic interactions and nanoscale surface structure on the incipience of liquid-vapor phase change. Macroscopic problems, however, are still well beyond the reach of MD simulations due to the prohibitively large computational expense of modeling discrete particles. Hybrid atomistic-continuum (HAC) models offer a solution. HAC models limit the use of MD simulations to only a small region where atomistic-level resolution is necessary, such as near a wall or heater surface, and use continuum methods away from this region. In this work a fully parallelized hybrid atomistic-continuum model is developed to resolve nanoscale features of liquid-vapor phase change. The domain is decomposed into an atomistic domain, where individual atomic interactions are computed, and a continuum domain, where the Navier-Stokes equations are solved. The two domains are coupled through an overlap region in which the solutions in both domains are consistent. The accuracy of the HAC model is demonstrated through the simulation of sudden start Couette flow, unsteady heat transfer, and the bulk flow of a liquid-vapor interface. The new HAC model is used to model vapor nucleation at a heater surface and compares well to analytic solutions for evaporation. Unlike continuum-only methods, the new HAC model is able to nucleate vapor from liquid naturally, given the correct thermodynamic conditions, without any assumptions on the nucleation location or frequency. The new highly-parallelized HAC model is shown to reduce computation time by a factor of five for Couette flow in a 78 nm channel as compared to a fully-atomistic simulation. This speedup is expected to become even greater for larger systems. A general discussion on the performance of the new HAC model is included along with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages, specific to HAC models, of the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method used to track interfaces within the continuum domain

Research Software Engineers: Career Entry Points and Training Gaps

As software has become more essential to research across disciplines, and as the recognition of this fact has grown, the importance of professionalizing the development and maintenance of this software has also increased. The community of software professionals who work on this software have come together under the title Research Software Engineer (RSE) over the last decade. This has led to the formalization of RSE roles and organized RSE groups in universities, national labs, and industry. This, in turn, has created the need to understand how RSEs come into this profession and into these groups, how to further promote this career path to potential members, as well as the need to understand what training gaps need to be filled for RSEs coming from different entry points. We have categorized three main classifications of entry paths into the RSE profession and identified key elements, both advantages and disadvantages, that should be acknowledged and addressed by the broader research community in order to attract and retain a talented and diverse pool of future RSEs.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE): Special Issue on the Future of Research Software Engineers in the U

The heavenly good of earthly work : the nature of work in its instrumental, relational and ontological dimensions

The thesis argues that human work is a transformative activity which essentially consists of three dynamically interrelated dimensions: the instrumental, relational, and ontological dimensions. By these, along with work being an end in itself, the worker's and others' needs are providentially met; believers' sanctification is occasioned; and workers express, explore and develop their humanness while building up their natural, social and cultural environments to both protect and produce the order of this world and of the one to come. The first part shows that past and present theological evaluations of work are best understood according to this threefold description. Work's threefold nature is shown to correspond with Scripture (although here the instrumental is mainly discussed); the Patristic understanding opens up reflection toward work's ontology; and the Reformation particularly develops further the relational and ontological dimensions. In the modern Roman Catholic understanding, work's threefold nature does appear, although as seen in Laborem Exercens, the relational is given hierarchical priority over the instrumental. As modern Protestants revise old and explore new approaches, work's threefold understanding also emerges. However, the dimensions need further interrelated development, and the ontological needs to be more adequately expounded. The second part of the thesis develops work's ontology. A teleological framework is first established in dialogue with Alasdair MacIntyre and Oliver O'Donovan showing that eschatological and protological purposes and ends are essential for understanding a thing's nature (constitutionally and ethically). This builds toward a theological anthropology where an interpretive survey and interaction with Colin Gunton's anthropology highlights the necessity of relational and functional concepts. The ontology of work is further developed in dialogue with Jürgen Moltmann's anthropology. Work is shown to be a fundamental facet of created human existence, initially a part of God's creation, and in the resurrection a fundamental part of God's coming new creation. Finally, the overall proposal, a definition of work, redraws the boundaries for a theology of work, and functions as a dynamic model for ethically evaluating work

Ten Simple Rules for Catalyzing Collaborations and Building Bridges between Research Software Engineers and Software Engineering Researchers

In the evolving landscape of scientific and scholarly research, effective collaboration between Research Software Engineers (RSEs) and Software Engineering Researchers (SERs) is pivotal for advancing innovation and ensuring the integrity of computational methodologies. This paper presents ten strategic guidelines aimed at fostering productive partnerships between these two distinct yet complementary communities. The guidelines emphasize the importance of recognizing and respecting the cultural and operational differences between RSEs and SERs, proactively initiating and nurturing collaborations, and engaging within each other’s professional environments. They advocate for identifying shared challenges, maintaining openness to emerging problems, ensuring mutual benefits, and serving as advocates for one another. Additionally, the guidelines highlight the necessity of vigilance in monitoring collaboration dynamics, securing institutional support, and defining clear, shared objectives. By adhering to these principles, RSEs and SERs can build synergistic relationships that enhance the quality and impact of research outcomes.</p

Intergenerational Transmission of Attachment in Abused and Neglected Mothers: The Role of Trauma-Specific Reflective Functioning

There are still important gaps in our knowledge regarding the intergenerational transmission of attachment from mother to child, especially in mothers with childhood histories of abuse and neglect (CA&N). This study examined the contributions of reflective function concerning general attachment relationships, and specifically concerning trauma, as well as those of maternal attachment states of mind to the prediction of infant attachment disorganization in a sample of mothers with CA&N and their infants, using a 20-month follow-up design. Attachment and reflective functioning were assessed during pregnancy with the Adult Attachment Interview. Infant attachment was evaluated with the Strange Situation Procedure. The majority (83%) of infants of abused and neglected mothers were classified as insecure, and a significant proportion (44%) manifested attachment disorganization. There was a strong concordance between mother and child attachment, indicative of intergenerational transmission of attachment in parents with CA&N and their infants. Both unresolved trauma and trauma-specific reflective function made significant contributions to explaining variance in infant attachment disorganization. The findings of this study highlight the importance of trauma-specific mentalization in the intergenerational transmission of attachment by mothers with a history of childhood maltreatment, and provide new evidence of the importance of the absence of mentalization regarding trauma for infant attachment

The Research Software Encyclopedia: a community framework to define research software

The Research Software Encyclopedia is a community driven, open source strategy to define the term “research software” in different contexts. It consists of several elements: a base library to manage a database of software, criteria and taxonomy items that can be used to answer questions about the software in the database, and several ways for an interested party to interact. A community database is stored in version control (GitHub), and by way of providing and updating this database, the Research Software Encyclopedia takes a strategy of small contributions over time to grow a valuable resource. Using a community-driven open source approach offers a number of advantages over attempting to derive a single, holistic definition for research software. First, it takes into account the context under which the definition is considered. Second, community and scoped contributions to specific components of the task are easy. Third, it provides a resource that can be extended to other use cases. Finally, this initiative creates a solution that requires no grants or other funding to maintain, increasing its ability to grow, adapt, and evolve over time