David taunting Goliath: divine judgment and messianic expectation

This thesis examines the use of the taunting language used by David and Goliath against each other in 1 Samuel 17 and its usefulness in understanding both the David and Goliath narrative and 1 Samuel as a whole, particularly as it pertains to the themes of messiah and king. The research examines such language in order to test the Christo-centric reading of the narrative. In the content of a literarily fascinating verbal onslaught, one finds a set of threats involving non-burial and carrion-eating animals that is linguistically, syntactically, and thematically similar to numerous threats throughout the Hebrew canon. When examined, one finds these judgement scenes to have both a common purpose of judgement and a common eschatological force. Further, when one examines, the taunting language of the David and Goliath narrative against Ancient Near Eastern literature, various linguistic and narrative parallels are found which appear to share a very similar rhetorical function to the taunting language of 1 Samuel 17:43-47. In light of the shared function of the Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern analogues to both the taunting language of 1 Samuel 17 and the David and Goliath narrative as a whole, one rightly reads the latter as a purposeful text designed with a particular function related to divine judgement, authority, and eschatological force - ideas that are brought together in the themes of messiah and king thus supporting a Christo-centric reading. This function of the David and Goliath narrative provides a clue to the potential purpose of its broader context. Indeed, when one situates 1 Samuel 17 in the broader narrative one finds that it is not an anomaly in how it functions but ties in with the narrative of 1 Samuel as a whole

A FIELD INVESTIGATION OF COMPOSITE MUD BRICK COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH

It has been highlighted in numerous publications that in the field of earth construction there is a strong disconnect between experimental work in the laboratory and its application in the field. The current study attempts to help bridge this gap with a field test conducted in Nampula, Mozambique. Mud bricks were made with a simple hand mold and reinforced with bamboo and straw fibers. Fibers were cut into lengths of 3 cm and 6 cm while being mixed in fractions of 0.125%, 0.25% and 0.50% by weight and compressive strength was measured using an application of the 3-point bending test. It was found that neither straw nor bamboo increased the composite brick’s strength and in fact a decrease of strength was recorded. An increase in brick strain energy density was observed with increasing fiber fraction

The asymptotic equivalence of fixed heat flux and fixed temperature thermal boundary conditions for rapidly rotating convection

The influence of fixed temperature and fixed heat flux thermal boundary conditions on rapidly rotating convection in the plane layer geometry is investigated for the case of stress-free mechanical boundary conditions. It is shown that whereas the leading order system satisfies fixed temperature boundary conditions implicitly, a double boundary layer structure is necessary to satisfy the fixed heat flux thermal boundary conditions. The boundary layers consist of a classical Ekman layer adjacent to the solid boundaries that adjust viscous stresses to zero, and a layer in thermal wind balance just outside the Ekman layers adjusts the temperature such that the fixed heat flux thermal boundary conditions are satisfied. The influence of these boundary layers on the interior geostrophically balanced convection is shown to be asymptotically weak, however. Upon defining a simple rescaling of the thermal variables, the leading order reduced system of governing equations are therefore equivalent for both boundary conditions. These results imply that any horizontal thermal variation along the boundaries that varies on the scale of the convection has no leading order influence on the interior convection

Metals AM Design for Manufacturing

We are looking to improve upon the current post processing techniques for metal additive manufacturing (AM). This project, sponsored by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), will investigate ways to improve the design of stainless steel 316 parts made by AM, and how these designs will help with post processing techniques. We hope that the findings regarding stainless steel will apply to to improve the AM and post processing handshake in general. In particular, the project will focus on including different features in different basic part design shapes to aid in fixturing and post-processing of the part made by AM. This will largely focus on including features for kinematic mounting that can be used to fixture the part in a machine for post processing or for inspection. Kinematic mounts will be added to parts that are to be milled and extension will be added to parts processed by the mill. This type of mounting can improve the accuracy of the part orientation in the machines as well as making positioning of the part more easily repeatable. Various ways of incorporating these mounts into the part design will be tested with post-processing to determine the most beneficial configuration. The information gathered will be used to create a design guide for LLNL to use with their AM processes when determining which type of mounting system would be the most useful in each situation

Does acute exercise affect the performance of whole-body, psychomotor skills in an inverted-U fashion?:a meta-analytic investigation

The primary purpose of this study was to examine, using meta-analytical measures, whether research into the performance of whole-body, psychomotor tasks following moderate and heavy exercise demonstrates an inverted-U effect. A secondary purpose was to compare the effects of acute exercise on tasks requiring static maintenance of posture versus dynamic, ballistic skills. Moderate intensity exercise was determined as being between 40% and 79% maximum power output (ẆMAX) or equivalent, while ≥ 80% ẆMAX was considered to be heavy. There was a significant difference (Zdiff = 4.29, p = 0.001, R2 = 0.42) between the mean effect size for moderate intensity exercise (g = 0.15) and that for heavy exercise size (g = − 0.86). These data suggest a catastrophe effect during heavy exercise. Mean effect size for static tasks (g = − 1.24) was significantly different (Zdiff = 3.24, p = 0.001, R2 = 0.90) to those for dynamic/ballistic tasks (g = − 0.30). The result for the static versus dynamic tasks moderating variables point to perception being more of an issue than peripheral fatigue for maintenance of static posture. The difference between this result and those found in meta-analyses examining the effects of acute exercise on cognition shows that, when perception and action are combined, the complexity of the interaction induces different effects to when cognition is detached from motor performance

Welcome? Investigating the reception of new contributors to organizational-communal open source software projects

The way new contributors are received by the established contributors in an open source project is a factor in whether they will become more regular contributors. This research examines the reception of new contributors in three open source projects to discover whether there are differences in how established contributors respond to new contributors, and if so, what those differences are. Through statistical analysis of time to first response and sentiment analysis of that response to a new contributor’s issue, we found that there is a difference in both the speed and content of responses to new contributors’ issues as opposed to those of established contributors. This difference suggests that the open source projects we observed are attentive to whether an issue was created by a new contributor and may make an effort to respond in a welcoming manner