Free Methodists in colonial Christchurch : the church, community and commercial lives of some immigrants from Sunderland : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University

This thesis tells the story of a small group of immigrants to Canterbury from Sunderland, England in 1858 and follows their lives and the events in their community up to the time of the First World War. John Thompson Brown and his fellow-settlers belonged to an off-shoot of the Wesleyan Methodist Church – the Free Methodists. Their commitment to this denomination and its ethos and the influence of religion on their lives is a central theme in their story. Life in pioneer society was hard. The environment made it so as much as anything and there were many privations. The sacrifices made by the early settlers and the generation of colonials that followed them were invariably perceived from the perspective of both material conditions and social values. A new community cannot be built without a vision of what that community should be like. This blend of the visionary and the pragmatic co-existed in the beliefs and actions of the early settlers and the colonials, and probably to the generations beyond. The values of the Free Methodists emphasised self-improvement and self-reliance and were supportive of the development of New Zealand as a Christian community As with other denominations their church was a central part of their community which they fostered both spiritually and materially - a considerable commitment of heart and mind in the demanding colonial environment. [FROM INTRODUCTION

High Speed Solid State Circuit Breaker

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Fort Monmouth, NJ, has developed and is installing two 3.3 MW high speed solid state circuit breakers at the Army's Pulse Power Center. These circuit breakers will interrupt 4160V three phase power mains in no more than 300 microseconds, two orders of magnitude faster than conventional mechanical contact type circuit breakers. These circuit breakers utilize Gate Turnoff Thyristors (GTO's) and are currently utility type devices using air cooling in an air conditioned enclosure. Future refinements include liquid cooling, either water or two phase organic coolant, and more advanced semiconductors. Each of these refinements promises a more compact, more reliable unit

CEO Succession: an Urgent Challenge for Nonprofits

Results of a survey of CEOs and board chairs from nonprofit organizations in Monroe County, NY. They responded to questions about current executive leadership and turnover, what kind of help they need, and important leadership characteristics. Includes links to national studies on the subject of leadership

A Mathematical Approach to Comply with Ethical Constraints in Compassionate Use Treatments

Patients who are seriously ill may ask doctors to treat them with unapproved medication, about which not much is known, or else with known medication in a high dosage. Apart from strict legal constraints such cases may involve difficult ethical questions as e.g. how long a series of treatments of different patients should be continued. Similar questions also arise in less serious situations. A physician trusts that a certain combination of freely available drugs are efficient against a specific disease and tries to help patients and to follow at the same time the primum-non-nocere principle. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the research on such questions in the form of mathematical models. Arguing in a step-to-step approach, we will show that certain sequential optimisation problems comply in a natural way with the true spirit of major ethical principles in medicine. We then suggest protocols and associate algorithms to find optimal, or approximately optimal, treatment strategies. Although the contribution may sometimes be difficult to apply in medical practice, the author thinks that the rational behind the approach offers a valuable alternative for finding decision support and should attract attention.Comment: 16 page