Paul\u27s Poetic License: Philippians 2:6-11 as a Hellenistic Hymn

In this paper, I use the scholarship surrounding Philippians 2:6-11 to identify it as a pre-Pauline hymn influenced by Greek culture. I use Dr. Arnold Levin’s essay “Paul’s Victory Song” as a springboard, investigating his arguments as well as other more well-known scholarship covering the passage. Dr. Levin argues that Philippians 2:6-11 is a Greek ode in the Aeolic style written in imitation of Pindar, with a clearly established meter. Although I disagree with Dr. Levin\u27s methods and conclusion, I do not completely reject all of his argument. Philippians 2:6-11 does not have a clear meter as one might find in Pindar; nevertheless, this does not eliminate the possibility of metrical influences. In addition to an in-depth analysis of the passage itself, I include background on Paul, Philippians, and the historical and geographical context. In this way, I ensure a thorough investigation of not only the passage, but also the author and the audience. As a final segment of my paper, I discuss the theological implications of my conclusions. The character of Jesus’ divinity takes on a different cast when one acknowledges that the growing Christian church was also competing with the Greco-Roman gods, and that both Jews and Gentiles lived and were educated in an environment steeped in ancient Greek culture and theology. In this way, my paper both supports Philippians 2:6-11 as a hymn and provides a more complete picture of its context

The Evolution of Federal Courts’ Healthcare Antitrust Analysis: Does the PPACA Spell the End to Hospital Mergers?

Traditionally, hospital mergers were seen as a benefit to consumers. That is no longer the case. After years of nonprofit hospitals engaging in price inflation and misreporting charity care, new hospital mergers will be more heavily scrutinized. Specifically, the United States government has implemented policies that are intended to shrink the relevant market, separate hospital services into individual lines, and require more than a good faith standard for evidence of proposed efficiencies. These policies were created as a response to the findings in antitrust court cases that hospital executives were increasing prices as a monopolist. These cases have worked to discredit previous studies supporting the notion that nonprofit hospitals exhibit a lower association between market share and price. The resurgence of hospital merger cases in the federal courts combined with the PPACA provisions—namely, ACO implementation and redefined charity-care standards—will subject mergers to heightened scrutiny. Some damage has already been done in the hospital merger setting, but it is certain that, going forward, nonprofit hospitals no longer enjoy the same deference as before

Junior Recital: Jonathan Groebe, Baritone Sharon Baker, Piano

Kemp Recital Hall March 30, 2019 Saturday Afternoon 3:00p.m

Flux Variability in Gamma-Ray Blazars

Blazars, among the most luminous objects in the sky, are extreme members of the class of active galactic nuclei featuring powerful outflows of relativistic particles in the form of jets pointed towards the observer. They display strong flux variability in all observed wavebands and on all observed timescales, with significant changes in flux observed in some sources over periods of as short as minutes. These remarkable observations have led to open questions regarding the nature of particle acceleration in the jets, location of the radiating particles along the jet, and the connection between jet emission and rate of accretion onto the black hole within the galactic nucleus. Recently, astronomers have devoted significant attention to the potential for these sources to show periodic variation in their fluxes, with numerous papers published annually claiming a significant finding in blazar fluxes across all energy bands. The potential for these periodicities to result from binary black hole orbits within active galaxies is frequently invoked. This thesis addresses these questions of flux variability and periodic variation in a flux-limited sample of blazar light curves in the gamma-ray band from the Fermi Large Area Telescope. A commonly applied time series model is extended and used to characterize the flux variability of our sample. Marginal distributions of the fluxes are fit to a lognormal distribution. These results are analyzed and compared to the physical parameters of the sources. The time series model is then used as a null model, against which a novel method of significance testing for periodic variability is developed and applied. We find that the variability properties of the sources in our study agree with the predictions from standard leptonic scenarios of blazar emission, with some interesting implications for overlap between different source classes. Further, while we find that many claims of flux periodicities in the sources of our sample do not hold up to scrutiny, we see hints of flux oscillations in two sources, with two broad timescales. These are compared to the scenarios for blazar flux periodicities, and the potential explanations assessed. We conclude by discussing how this work could be expanded, as well as what other directions for research may be fruitful in understanding the particle acceleration and cooling in relativistic jets

Streamlining Homogeneous Glycoprotein Production for Biophysical and Structural Applications by Targeted Cell Line Development

Studying the biophysical characteristics of glycosylated proteins and solving their three-dimensional structures requires homogeneous recombinant protein of high quality.We introduce here a new approach to produce glycoproteins in homogenous form with the well-established, glycosylation mutant CHO Lec3.2.8.1 cells. Using preparative cell sorting, stable, high-expressing GFP ‘master’ cell lines were generated that can be converted fast and reliably by targeted integration via Flp recombinase-mediated cassette exchange (RMCE) to produce any glycoprotein. Small-scale transient transfection of HEK293 cells was used to identify genetically engineered constructs suitable for constructing stable cell lines. Stable cell lines expressing 10 different proteins were established. The system was validated by expression, purification, deglycosylation and crystallization of the heavily glycosylated luminal domains of lysosome-associated membrane proteins (LAMP)

Quantitative principles of cis-translational control by general mRNA sequence features in eukaryotes.

BackgroundGeneral translational cis-elements are present in the mRNAs of all genes and affect the recruitment, assembly, and progress of preinitiation complexes and the ribosome under many physiological states. These elements include mRNA folding, upstream open reading frames, specific nucleotides flanking the initiating AUG codon, protein coding sequence length, and codon usage. The quantitative contributions of these sequence features and how and why they coordinate to control translation rates are not well understood.ResultsHere, we show that these sequence features specify 42-81% of the variance in translation rates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Arabidopsis thaliana, Mus musculus, and Homo sapiens. We establish that control by RNA secondary structure is chiefly mediated by highly folded 25-60 nucleotide segments within mRNA 5' regions, that changes in tri-nucleotide frequencies between highly and poorly translated 5' regions are correlated between all species, and that control by distinct biochemical processes is extensively correlated as is regulation by a single process acting in different parts of the same mRNA.ConclusionsOur work shows that general features control a much larger fraction of the variance in translation rates than previously realized. We provide a more detailed and accurate understanding of the aspects of RNA structure that directs translation in diverse eukaryotes. In addition, we note that the strongly correlated regulation between and within cis-control features will cause more even densities of translational complexes along each mRNA and therefore more efficient use of the translation machinery by the cell