Leadership Factors That Influence Church Growth for Western North Carolina Churches of God

The purpose of this project is to identify and describe the essential leadership factors required to stimulate and sustain church growth for Church of God churches operating in Western North Carolina. This will be accomplished using a grounded theory research approach. Sample (N = 30) analysis of statistics provided by the Western North Carolina State Offices of the Church of God showed 3% of the churches in this region to have recorded significant overall growth in attendance and membership (=\u3e10% per year) from April 1, 2014 to April 30, 2016. Few of the sampled churches recorded benchmark conversion growth for the same time interval (=\u3e10% per year). The aim of this project is to develop a substantive theory from grounded data, identifying and describing the common leadership traits, aptitudes, and strategies utilized by successful regional pastors to promote church growth. A constructivist grounded theory qualitative approach will be utilized to collect and analyze data. Data will be collected through recorded personal interviews of senior pastors practicing ministry within the Western North Carolina region of the United States. ATLAS.ti data analysis software will be used to code, analyze, and categorize data until similarities, differences, incidents, and causal relationships are identified between emerging categories. Data collection will continue until theoretical saturation has been achieved. The results of this thesis project will provide Church of God pastors experiencing growth stagnation with insight into how their successful colleagues and contemporaries are presently stimulating and maintaining church growth in the Western region of North Carolina

Thinking with data visualisations: cognitive processing and spatial inferences when communicating climate change

Data visualisations can be effective for communicating scientific data, but only if they are understood. Such visualisations (i.e. scientific figures) are used within assessment reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, IPCC figures have been criticised for being inaccessible to non-experts. This thesis presents a thematic analysis of interviews with IPCC authors, finding that a requirement to uphold scientific accuracy results in complex figures that are difficult for non-experts to comprehend, and which therefore require expert explanation. Evidence is subsequently presented showing that figures with greater visual complexity are associated with greater perceived comprehension difficulty among non-experts. Comprehension of complex data visualisations may require readers to make spatial inferences. When interpreting a time-series graph of climate data, it was found that non-experts did not always readily identify the long-term trend. Two experiments then show that linguistic information in the form of warnings can support spatial representations for trends in memory by directing visual attention during encoding (measured using eyetracking). This thesis also considers spatial inferences when forming expectations about future data, finding that expectations were sensitive to patterns in past data. Further, features that act on bottom-up perceptual processes were largely ineffective in supporting spatial inferences. Conversely, replacing spatial inferences by explicitly representing information moderated future expectations. However, replacing spatial inferences might not always be desirable in real-world contexts. The evidence indicates that when information is not explicitly represented in a data visualisation, providing top-down knowledge may be more effective in supporting spatial inferences than providing visual cues acting on bottom-up perceptual processes. This thesis further provides evidence-based guidelines drawn from the cognitive and psychological sciences to support climate change researchers in enhancing the ease of comprehension of their data visualisations, and so enable future IPCC outputs to be more accessible

On the foreskin question: circumcision and psychoanalysis

Male circumcision is a potent receptacle for fantasy. Whatever its medical benefits or harms, the significance of the practice has always extended to questions beyond the purely organic. By placing specific moments in the history of circumcision into dialogue with psychoanalytic theory, this dissertation demonstrates how circumcision is an inherently ambivalent procedure that enables multitudinous and contradictory responses to the constitutive encounter with lack to be played out on the site of the penis. Through circumcision – whether actual or spectral – the penis is put into relation with the symbolic phallus, allowing the organ to function as an image upon which fundamental questions of subjectivity may be posed. The dissertation begins with an introduction to the relevant psychoanalytic theory on castration, sexual difference, and the phallus, and then examines the extant historical, critical, and psychoanalytic literature relating to circumcision. Subsequently, three case studies are explored, over the course of four chapters: First, St. Paul’s abrogation of Jewish circumcision and its undertheorized role in debates surrounding “Pauline” universalism, considered from the divergent perspectives of Alain Badiou and Daniel Boyarin. Second, the nineteenth-century Anglo-American medicalization of circumcision (promoted as a cure for nervous illness), and the relationship between the “talking cure” and the “circumcision cure.” Finally, the libidinal undertones of contemporary political discourse, activism, and popular sentiment on circumcision. In each case, stances and controversies surrounding circumcision reveal a preoccupation with the question of phallic mastery in the face of lack. Circumcision figures either as an attempt to consolidate mastery – denying or repudiating castration – that at the same time reveals the inherent impossibility of such an enterprise, or, it foregrounds castration, often provoking defensive responses

Communication of IPCC visuals: IPCC authors’ views and assessments of visual complexity

Scientific figures, i.e. visuals such as graphs and diagrams, are an important component of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that support communication and policy-making. It is therefore imperative that figures are robust representations of the science and are accessible to target audiences. We interviewed IPCC authors (n = 18) to understand the development of figures in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1 (WG1) Summary for Policy-Makers (SPM). Authors expressed the view that the need to maintain scientific accuracy constrained making figures more accessible, with the consequence that figures retained complexity and often required specialists to explain the figures to others. Using sort tasks with IPCC authors and with a group of non-specialists (undergraduate students; n = 38), we found that IPCC authors generally had good awareness of which figures non-specialists perceived as being most difficult to understand. Further, by evaluating the visual complexity of the AR5 WG1 SPM figures using a computational measure, we found that greater visual complexity (i.e. high quantity of information, use of multiple colours and densely packed visual elements) is associated with greater perceived comprehension difficulty. Developing and integrating computational approaches to assess figures alongside user testing could help inform how to overcome visual complexity while maintaining scientific rigour and so enhance communication of IPCC figures and scientific visuals

Distinct ligand binding sites in integrin alpha3beta1 regulate matrix adhesion and cell-cell contact.

The integrin alpha3beta1 mediates cellular adhesion to the matrix ligand laminin-5. A second integrin ligand, the urokinase receptor (uPAR), associates with alpha3beta1 via a surface loop within the alpha3 beta-propeller (residues 242-246) but outside the laminin binding region, suggesting that uPAR-integrin interactions could signal differently from matrix engagement. To explore this, alpha3-/- epithelial cells were reconstituted with wild-type (wt) alpha3 or alpha3 with Ala mutations within the uPAR-interacting loop (H245A or R244A). Wt or mutant-bearing cells showed comparable expression and adhesion to laminin-5. Cells expressing wt alpha3 and uPAR dissociated in culture, with increased Src activity, up-regulation of SLUG, and down-regulation of E-cadherin and gamma-catenin. Src kinase inhibition or expression of Src 1-251 restored the epithelial phenotype. The H245A and R244A mutants were unaffected by coexpression of uPAR. We conclude that alpha3beta1 regulates both cell-cell contact and matrix adhesion, but through distinct protein interaction sites within its beta-propeller. These studies reveal an integrin- and Src-dependent pathway for SLUG expression and mesenchymal transition

Cops & No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff Is Harming Students

This report examines data provided by the U.S. Department of Education\u27s Office of Civil Rights to better understand the prevalence of school-based mental health (SBMH) professionals in schools. Asserting that access to emotional, behavioral, and mental health supports are part of accessing a Free and Appropriate Education and are a civil right, Dr. Mann and her collaborators at the ACLU examine the impact of a lack of appropriate SBMH supports in schools. The report authors also examine the consequences of hardening of schools including the proliferation of law enforcement in schools