Preacher\u27s Magazine Volume 32 Number 12

Cover — William E. Biederwolf The Conduct of a Pastor, Gregory the Great Studying in Advance, E. E. Wordsworth Editorial, The Scope of Our Evangelistic Task (I) The Preaching of William E. Biederwolf, James McGraw The Christmas Message, Robert Benson What Does It Mean to Be Saved? Kenneth Dodge Judges or Counselors? Bill Flygare The Nazarene Ministry, Milton Harrington Pastors Are Gregarious, David A. Dawson Gleanings from the Greek New Testament, Ralph Earle In the Sickroom, E. E. Wordsworth Evangelism, V. H. Lewis A Holy Ghost Crusade Through Bible-centered Preaching (I), C. E. Stanley Sermon Workshop, Nelson Mink Book Briefs Indexhttps://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/cotn_pm/1363/thumbnail.jp

Preacher\u27s Magazine Volume 32 Number 12

Cover — William E. Biederwolf The Conduct of a Pastor, Gregory the Great Studying in Advance, E. E. Wordsworth Editorial, The Scope of Our Evangelistic Task (I) The Preaching of William E. Biederwolf, James McGraw The Christmas Message, Robert Benson What Does It Mean to Be Saved? Kenneth Dodge Judges or Counselors? Bill Flygare The Nazarene Ministry, Milton Harrington Pastors Are Gregarious, David A. Dawson Gleanings from the Greek New Testament, Ralph Earle In the Sickroom, E. E. Wordsworth Evangelism, V. H. Lewis A Holy Ghost Crusade Through Bible-centered Preaching (I), C. E. Stanley Sermon Workshop, Nelson Mink Book Briefs Indexhttps://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/cotn_pm/1363/thumbnail.jp

Editorial Board

Editor-in Chief Matthew B. Thiel (Summer 1993) Swithin S. McGrath (Winter 1993) Associate Editor Swithin S. McGrath (Summer 1993) Matthew B. Thiel (Winter 1993) Inside Articles Editor Margaret K. Bentwood Technical Editor Robert Cameron Outside Articles Editor Corbit Harrington Citations Editor Laura D. Hayes Business Manager Shane A. Vanattta Staff Michael Page Carroccia James E. Conwell Patrick N. Dringham David A. Duke Margaret R. Gallagher Timothy S. Hamill Alice J. Hinshaw Ann. M. Monafhan Cynthia K. Staley Faculty Advisor Robert Natelso

ACUTA THE ASSOCIATION FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONALS IN HIGHER EDUCATIONS PRESIDENTS

PATRICIA A. SEARLES 1993-1994 RANDAL R. COLLETT 1994-1995 DAVID E. O’NEILL 1995-1996 DR. JAMES S. CROSS 1996-1997 MARGARET L. MILONE 1997-1998 ANTHONY R. TANZI 2000-2001 MAUREEN D. TRIMM 2001-2002 JEANNE JANSENIUS 2002-2003 WALTER L. CZERNIAK 2003-2004 TAMARA J. CLOSS 2004-2005 PATRICIA H. TODUS 2005-2006 CARMINE R. PISCOPO 2006-2007 WALTER MAGNUSSEN 2007-2008 CORINNE HOCH 2008-2009 HARVEY L. BUCHANAN 2009-2010 MATTHEW ARTHUR 2010-2011 JOSEPH HARRINGTON 2011-201

TRANSACTIONS OFTHE NEBRASKA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES: Volume 27, 2001 Table of Contents

Table of Contents Editorial Contents Nebraska Academy of Sciences Officers, Policy Committee.....................ii Editorial Board.....................iv Membership Objectives and Friends of the Academy.....................v Nebraska Association of Teachers of Science.....................vi Preparation of manuscripts.....................inside back cover Papers Physics scores as predictors of the Medical College Admissions Test (Isabelle D. Cherney and Michael G. Cherney).....................1 The terrestrial isopods of Nebraska (Crustacea: Isopoda)(William F. Rapp).....................9 Results of the first anuran calling survey in Nebraska (David S. McLeod, John T. Vaughan, Kevin E. Church, and Daylan Figgs).....................13 Influence of androstenedione on sedentary female rats (Janet E. Steele).....................17 Pumpkinseed population characteristics in Nebraska Sandhills lakes (Pisces, Centrarchidae: Lepomis gibbosus) (Jennifer C. Harrington, Craig P. Paukert, and David W. Willis).....................25 Comparative floristic diversity of Spring Creek and Nine-Mile prairies, Nebraska (Kay Lynn Kottas).....................3

PenQuest Volume 2, Number 1

Table of Contents for this Volume: Untitled by Janet Collins Untitled by Judy Gozdur Last Hour of Light by Susan Reed Untitled by Judy Godzur Untitled by Rick Wagner Untitled by Carol Groover Untitled by R. Wagner Only in the Portico by Linda Banicki Untitled by Helen Hagadorn Private Place, Pubic Place by David Reed Untitled by Tammy Hutchinson Untitled by Tammy Hutchinson Madison Knights by Susan Reed Untitled by Sissy Crabtree The Price by Sandra Coleman Untitled by Ann Harrington Invasion of Privacy by Mark Touchton Untitled by Bruce Warner Untitled by Tom Schifanella Untitled by Tammy Hutchinson Bloodwork by Laura Jo Last Untitled by David Whitsett Burial Instructions by Bill Slaughter Untitled by S. Trevett PenQuest Interview: Joe Haldeman by David Reed Her Name Came from the Sea by Richard L. Ewart Untitled by V. Williams In the Woodshed by R. E. Mallery Untitled by Modesta Matthews Untitled by David Olson Illumination by E. Allen Tilley Untitled by Joseph Avanzini Everywoman by Laura Jo Last Untitled by Beth Goeckel Believe Me by Donna Kaluzniak Untitled by Judy Gozdur Untitled by Judy Gozdur Unicorn by David Reed Untitled by Susan Reed untitled by Paul Cramer Unititled by Lucinda Halsema The Violin by Richard L. Ewart Untitled by Maria Barry Untitled by Roger Whitt Jr. Haiku by Lori Nasrallah Rhymer’s Revolt by R. E. Mallery Untitled by Valerie William

nsolvency Experience, Risk-Based Capital, and Prompt Corrective Action in Property-Liability Insurance

In December 1992, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) adopted a life-health insurer risk-based capital (RBC) formula and model law that became effective with the 1993 annual statement filed in March 1994. In principle, well-designed RBC requirements can help achieve an efficient reduction in the expected costs of insolvencies. They can provide incentives for insurers to operate safely in cases where market incentives are weak due to government mandated guarantees of insurer obligations or asymmetries regarding solvency between insurers and buyers. RBC requirements also may facilitate or encourage prompt corrective action by solvency regulators by helping regulators to identify weak insurers and giving regulators legal authority to intervene when capital falls below specified levels. RBC requirements may force regulators to act in amore timely manner when confronted with external pressure to delay action. However, RBC capital requirements have a number ofpotential limitations. Unavoidable imperfections in any meaningful RBC system will likely distort some insurer decisions in undesirable and unintended ways. RBC requirements by themselves will do little or nothing to help regulators determine when an insurer s reported capital (surplus) is overstated due to understatement of liabilities or overstatement of assets. A well-designed RBC system should minimize costs associated with misclassification of insurers. The system should be able to identify a high proportion of troubled companies early enough to permit regulators to take prompt corrective action and should identify as troubled only a minimal proportion of financially sound insurers. This study analyzes data on solvent and insolvent property-liability insurers to determine whether modifications in the NAIC s RBC formula can improve its ability to predict firms that subsequently fail without substantially increasing the proportion of surviving insurers that are incorrectly predicted to fail. It uses logistic regression models to investigate whether changes in the weight for the major components in the RBC formula and incorporation of information on company size and organizational form improve the tradeoff between Type I error rates (the percentage of insurers that later failed that are incorrectly predicted not to fail) and the Type II error rates (the percentage of surviving insurers that are incorrectly predicted to fail). The data analyzed were for 1989-91 for firms that subsequently failed and for firms that survived through the first nine months of 1993. The authors make four main conclusions. First, less than half of the companies that later failed had RBC ratios within the proposed ranges for regulatory and company action. Second, total and component RBC ratios generally are significantly different for failed and surviving firms based on univariate tests. Third, estimation of multiple logistic regression models of insolvency risk indicated that allowing the weights of the RBC component to vary and including firm size and organizational form variables generally produce a material improvement in the tradeoff between sample Type I and Type II error rates. And, fourth,the RBC models are noticeably less successful in predicting large firm insolvencies than in predicting smaller insolvencies. Regarding the estimated weights in the logistic regression models, a major conclusion is the reserve component of the NAIC risk-based capital formula, which accounts for half of industry risk-based capital, has virtually no predictive power in any of the tests conducted. Given the high costs associated with large failures and the inferior performance of the models in predicting large insolvencies, a higher payoff in terms of reduced insolvency costs is likely to be achieved by developing models that perform better for large firms.

The Quality of Emergency Medical Services

Although Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is a crucial part of the health care system, there is relatively little research on the quality of those services. EMS agencies often measure their performance using criteria such as response time or total prehospital time. But larger scale studies that cross counties and providers are rare. This Issue Brief summarizes two studies that use comprehensive, longitudinal data from one state to assess the demographic, geographic, and professional factors that affect EMS performance

Geometric combinatorics and computational molecular biology: branching polytopes for RNA sequences

Questions in computational molecular biology generate various discrete optimization problems, such as DNA sequence alignment and RNA secondary structure prediction. However, the optimal solutions are fundamentally dependent on the parameters used in the objective functions. The goal of a parametric analysis is to elucidate such dependencies, especially as they pertain to the accuracy and robustness of the optimal solutions. Techniques from geometric combinatorics, including polytopes and their normal fans, have been used previously to give parametric analyses of simple models for DNA sequence alignment and RNA branching configurations. Here, we present a new computational framework, and proof-of-principle results, which give the first complete parametric analysis of the branching portion of the nearest neighbor thermodynamic model for secondary structure prediction for real RNA sequences.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure