Man's freedom and bondage in the thought of Martin Luther and James Arminius

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University.The purpose of this dissertation is to compare the concepts of human freedom and bondage and the interrelationship of God's grace and man's free will in regeneration and salvation in the writings of Martin Luther and James Arminius. Luther seems to deny all free will to man in his salvation and insists that salvation comes by grace alone. Arminius affirms man's free will to accept or reject God's grace and believes that salvation is the product of God's grace and man's free will cooperating. Luther and Arminius agree that all men sin and become bound in sin in such a way that they are unable to obtain salvation without grace. Both agree that sinful man lacks spiritual freedom to do good which will merit salvation. Both allow that man enjoys some freedom coram deo. However Arminius clearly affirms man's freedom to accept or reject God's grace, while Luther makes room for such freedom through the paradox of grace, although he denies that man has a free will coram deo. The problem of man's freedom and bondage is traced through the history of Christian thought. The anthropologies of Luther and Arminius are then compared. Luther's principles of Sola Gratia et Soli Deo Gloria are explored. They make God and His Spirit the active agent in salvation and man becomes but the passive recipient of God's work in him. Arminius with his principle of man's free will affirms that there are two active agents in man's salvation, God's grace and man's free will. Then an attempt is made to resolve these apparent differences by comparing the monergistic idea of a paradox of grace with the synergistic argument for free will. Finally, problems posed by these two views are summarized and criticised and a reconstruction of Luther's teaching of the will in bondage is attempted. [TRUNCATED

Thermoelectric Generator Using Passive Cooling

This chapter presents an analysis of a point-of-use thermoelectric generator that is patented by one of the authors. The design, implementation and performance of the generator for powering electronic monitoring devices and charging batteries is discussed. This passive generator has no moving parts and relies on ambient air cooling. In one iteration it produces 6.9 W of steady state power using six Laird thermoelectric modules (Laird PB23 Series, HT8, 12) when placed on a 160°C steam pipe with a 30°C ambient environment ( Δ T of 130°C). The generator produced 31.2 volts (V) open circuit and 0.89 amperes (A) short circuit. It successfully powered two microcontroller-based security cameras, one with a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) and another with cellular connectivity. In another scenario, the generator produced approximately 6 W with a steam pipe temperature of 140°C and an ambient of 25°C ( Δ T of 115°C). This second system powered LED lights, a cellular-interfaced video surveillance system, and monitoring robots, while simultaneously trickle charging batteries. A third installation totally powered a stand-alone 3G web security camera system

The Non-existence of the Labor Demand/Supply Diagram, and Other Theorems of Institutional Economics

The most famous and influential diagram in modern (neoclassical) labor economics is the model of wage determination by supply and demand. Using concepts and ideas from institutional economics, I argue that the theory of a perfectly competitive labor market is logically contradictory and, hence, the demand/supply diagram cannot exist on the plane of pure theory. Four other fundamental theorems concerning labor markets are also derived, as are implications about the theoretical foundation of the field of industrial relations and the economic evaluation of labor and employment policy. In this article I accomplish four things of significance. The first is to demonstrate that the core diagram of neoclassical labor economics - the diagram of wage determination by demand and supply (D/S) - does not have logical coherence and thus has no existence on the plane of pure theory. The second is to deduce this conclusion using a core concept of institutional economics (i.e., transaction cost), thus demonstrating that the institutional approach to labor economics has theoretical explanatory power. The third is to use the transaction cost idea to also deduce four fundamental theorems concerning labor markets and wage determination. The fourth is to identify the core theoretical foundation of the field of industrial relations. This discussion also yields important implications for the economic evaluation of labor and employment policy, as well as interesting insights on the history of thought in labor economics. Working Paper 07-2

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Tracker Operation and Performance at the Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge

During summer 2006 a fraction of the CMS silicon strip tracker was operated in a comprehensive slice test called the Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge (MTCC). At the MTCC, cosmic rays detected in the muon chambers were used to trigger the readout of all CMS sub-detectors in the general data acquisition system and in the presence of the 4 T magnetic field produced by the CMS superconducting solenoid. This document describes the operation of the Tracker hardware and software prior, during and after data taking. The performance of the detector as resulting from the MTCC data analysis is also presented

Carbon-sensitive pedotransfer functions for plant available water

Currently accepted pedotransfer functions show negligible effect of management-induced changes to soil organic carbon (SOC) on plant available water holding capacity (θAWHC), while some studies show the ability to substantially increase θAWHC through management. The Soil Health Institute\u27s North America Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements measured water content at field capacity using intact soil cores across 124 long-term research sites that contained increases in SOC as a result of management treatments such as reduced tillage and cover cropping. Pedotransfer functions were created for volumetric water content at field capacity (θFC) and permanent wilting point (θPWP). New pedotransfer functions had predictions of θAWHC that were similarly accurate compared with Saxton and Rawls when tested on samples from the National Soil Characterization database. Further, the new pedotransfer functions showed substantial effects of soil calcareousness and SOC on θAWHC. For an increase in SOC of 10 g kg–1 (1%) in noncalcareous soils, an average increase in θAWHC of 3.0 mm 100 mm–1 soil (0.03 m3 m–3) on average across all soil texture classes was found. This SOC related increase in θAWHC is about double previous estimates. Calcareous soils had an increase in θAWHC of 1.2 mm 100 mm–1 soil associated with a 10 g kg–1 increase in SOC, across all soil texture classes. New equations can aid in quantifying benefits of soil management practices that increase SOC and can be used to model the effect of changes in management on drought resilience

Linking soil microbial community structure to potential carbon mineralization: A continental scale assessment of reduced tillage

Potential carbon mineralization (Cmin) is a commonly used indicator of soil health, with greater Cmin values interpreted as healthier soil. While Cmin values are typically greater in agricultural soils managed with minimal physical disturbance, the mechanisms driving the increases remain poorly understood. This study assessed bacterial and archaeal community structure and potential microbial drivers of Cmin in soils maintained under various degrees of physical disturbance. Potential carbon mineralization, 16S rRNA sequences, and soil characterization data were collected as part of the North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements (NAPESHM). Results showed that type of cropping system, intensity of physical disturbance, and soil pH influenced microbial sensitivity to physical disturbance. Furthermore, 28% of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), which were important in modeling Cmin, were enriched under soils managed with minimal physical disturbance. Sequences identified as enriched under minimal disturbance and important for modeling Cmin, were linked to organisms which could produce extracellular polymeric substances and contained metabolic strategies suited for tolerating environmental stressors. Understanding how physical disturbance shapes microbial communities across climates and inherent soil properties and drives changes in Cmin provides the context necessary to evaluate management impacts on standardized measures of soil microbial activity

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Natural Disaster Shocks and Macroeconomic Growth in Asia: Evidence for Typhoons and Droughts

Climate-related natural disaster shocks are expected to rise as the earth is getting warmer, which will adversely affect growth prospects globally. Current robust estimates of the effects of typhoons and droughts point to both short- and long-term declines in national incomes compared to predisaster trends and economic effects likely to persist up to 2 decades. Using the typhoon landfalls and damage in Asia, we analyze the wind-damage relationship and find damages to gross domestic product increase by 2.3% for an increase in maximum wind speed. The extreme projected temperature rise in Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 will result in higher damage by more than 50% in 2100. Vulnerable developing Asian economies could expect dampened growth with significant impacts on agriculture and tourism, a concern that may roll back years of development gains and exacerbate inequality. To cope with increasing disaster risks, both short-term adaptation strategies like relocation, government transfers, and other social safety nets, as well as long-term strategies like disaster insurance or similar ex ante mechanisms are needed