Biblical Storytelling and Preaching

This Major Applied Project seeks to clarify the relationship between a Biblical text of Scripture being read or told and how that connects to the sermon preached on that text. It is believed that in many worship settings there is often a disconnect between the lectionary read (Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel readings) and the sermon text selected from one of those readings. By the time the preacher begins his sermon the hearer has often forgotten the Scripture read earlier. The use of Biblical storytelling can assist the listener in hearing, understanding, remembering and connecting the text of Scripture with the sermon preached. To evaluate the effective use of Biblical storytelling, surveys were conducted on four Sundays among sample group of congregation members. On each of the four Sundays, the sermon text (selected from the day\u27s lectionary) was read in one service and told in the other. Participants in the survey groups completed a survey following each of the worship services noting the impact the Scripture read or told had on their hearing, understanding, remembering and connecting that Scripture with the sermon. The results of the participants supported the theory that when the sermon text is presented as a storytelling rather than a reading there is a stronger remembrance and connection of the Scripture with the sermon. After hearing the sermon text told (rather than simply read) the hearer is more aware of that Scripture and familiar with it which in turn benefits his reception of the sermon. While the use of Biblical storytelling may not be something that a preacher wishes to use every week, it can have a significant effect upon the hearer\u27s ability to connect the text to the sermon

Why do Movie Studios Produce R-rated Films?

R-rated films are correlated with lower box office revenues. Using sex and nudity content as an instrument to predict R-ratings, we show that R-ratings themselves are not the cause of lower revenues. Instead, R-rated films contain traits that lower revenues and the ratings act as a signal of those traits. Why do film producers include those traits and seek R-ratings? We show that R-ratings alter the shape of the distribution of critical reviews, shifting the distribution to the right. Moreover, even after controlling for other influences, R-ratings improve critical reviews, suggesting that producers not only seek box office revenues, but also critical acclaim

The Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory (AST/RO)

AST/RO, a 1.7 m diameter telescope for astronomy and aeronomy studies at wavelengths between 200 and 2000 microns, was installed at the South Pole during the 1994-1995 Austral summer. The telescope operates continuously through the Austral winter, and is being used primarily for spectroscopic studies of neutral atomic carbon and carbon monoxide in the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. The South Pole environment is unique among observatory sites for unusually low wind speeds, low absolute humidity, and the consistent clarity of the submillimeter sky. Four heterodyne receivers, an array receiver, three acousto-optical spectrometers, and an array spectrometer are installed. A Fabry-Perot spectrometer using a bolometric array and a Terahertz receiver are in development. Telescope pointing, focus, and calibration methods as well as the unique working environment and logistical requirements of the South Pole are described.Comment: 57 pages, 15 figures. Submitted to PAS

Selected data fron continental scientific drilling core holes VC-1 and VC-2a, Valles Caldera, New Mexico

This report presents geochemical and isotopic data on rocks and water and wellbore geophysical data from the Continental Scientific Drilling Program core holes VC-1 and VC-2a, Valles Caldera, New Mexico. These core holes were drilled as a portion of a broader program that seeks to answer fundamental questions about magma, water/rock interactions, ore deposits, and volcanology. The data in this report will assist the interpretation of the hydrothermal system in the Jemez Mountains and will stimulate further research in magmatic processes, hydrothermal alteration, ore deposits, hydrology, structural geology, and hydrothermal solution chemistry. 37 refs., 36 figs., 28 tabs

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

BLOC-1 and BLOC-3 regulate VAMP7 cycling to and from melanosomes via distinct tubular transport carriers.

Endomembrane organelle maturation requires cargo delivery via fusion with membrane transport intermediates and recycling of fusion factors to their sites of origin. Melanosomes and other lysosome-related organelles obtain cargoes from early endosomes, but the fusion machinery involved and its recycling pathway are unknown. Here, we show that the v-SNARE VAMP7 mediates fusion of melanosomes with tubular transport carriers that also carry the cargo protein TYRP1 and that require BLOC-1 for their formation. Using live-cell imaging, we identify a pathway for VAMP7 recycling from melanosomes that employs distinct tubular carriers. The recycling carriers also harbor the VAMP7-binding scaffold protein VARP and the tissue-restricted Rab GTPase RAB38. Recycling carrier formation is dependent on the RAB38 exchange factor BLOC-3. Our data suggest that VAMP7 mediates fusion of BLOC-1-dependent transport carriers with melanosomes, illuminate SNARE recycling from melanosomes as a critical BLOC-3-dependent step, and likely explain the distinct hypopigmentation phenotypes associated with BLOC-1 and BLOC-3 deficiency in Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome variants.This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute (R01 EY015625, to M.S. Marks and G.  Raposo), National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (R01 AR048155, to M.S. Marks, and F32 AR062476, to M.K. Dennis), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01 GM108807, to M.S. Marks); Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (to T.  Galli); the UK Medical Research Council (G0900113, to J.P. Luzio); and the Wellcome Trust (108429, to E.V. Sviderskaya and D.C. Bennett). This work was also supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship (to G.G.  Hesketh) and a Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale grant from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Institut Curie, and Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (DEQ20140329491 Team label, to G. Raposo).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Rockefeller University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.20160509

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Struggling for space and finding my place: An interactionist perspective on everyday use of biomedical information

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110642/1/asi23178.pd

Sequential approach to joint flow-seismic inversion for improved characterization of fractured media

Seismic interpretation of subsurface structures is traditionally performed without any account of flow behavior. Here we present a methodology for characterizing fractured geologic reservoirs by integrating flow and seismic data. The key element of the proposed approach is the identification—within the inversion—of the intimate relation between fracture compliance and fracture transmissivity, which determine the acoustic and flow responses of a fractured reservoir, respectively. Owing to the strong (but highly uncertain) dependence of fracture transmissivity on fracture compliance, the modeled flow response in a fractured reservoir is highly sensitive to the geophysical interpretation. By means of synthetic models, we show that by incorporating flow data (well pressures and tracer breakthrough curves) into the inversion workflow, we can simultaneously reduce the error in the seismic interpretation and improve predictions of the reservoir flow dynamics. While the inversion results are robust with respect to noise in the data for this synthetic example, the applicability of the methodology remains to be tested for more complex synthetic models and field cases.Eni-MIT Energy Initiative Founding Member ProgramKorea (South). Ministry of Land, Transportation and Maritime Affairs (15AWMP-B066761-03