Reviving a Dying Church: The Role of Leadership

A pastor known for his church planting skills was brought into a declining/dying church in Maryland, USA, and with his leadership team, turned the church around in three-and-a-half years. A case study method was used to explore this pastor and congregation’s willingness to “pay the cost” to bring new people into the church. They focused on children’s ministry, evangelism, discipleship, prayer, small groups, meals, and vision—knowing why they engaged in each ministry

Analysis and improvement of an ultrasonic sonar system on an autonomous mobile robot

This research addresses the problems experienced by the autonomous mobile robot, Yamabico- 11, with its ultrasonic sonar system. It explains the basics of acoustic theory as related to Yamabico- 11 and explains the sources of limitations imposed on Yamabico- 11 by the physical nature of the problem. This paper documents the basic characteristics of the sonar hardware and examines causes of sonar range errors. Finally, this research leads to improvements of the current sonar system to provide better directional coverage through a new sonar configurationhttp://archive.org/details/analysisimprovem00lochLieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Hurricanes and hashtags: Characterizing online collective attention for natural disasters

We study collective attention paid towards hurricanes through the lens of $n$-grams on Twitter, a social media platform with global reach. Using hurricane name mentions as a proxy for awareness, we find that the exogenous temporal dynamics are remarkably similar across storms, but that overall collective attention varies widely even among storms causing comparable deaths and damage. We construct `hurricane attention maps' and observe that hurricanes causing deaths on (or economic damage to) the continental United States generate substantially more attention in English language tweets than those that do not. We find that a hurricane's Saffir-Simpson wind scale category assignment is strongly associated with the amount of attention it receives. Higher category storms receive higher proportional increases of attention per proportional increases in number of deaths or dollars of damage, than lower category storms. The most damaging and deadly storms of the 2010s, Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, generated the most attention and were remembered the longest, respectively. On average, a category 5 storm receives 4.6 times more attention than a category 1 storm causing the same number of deaths and economic damage.Comment: 31 pages (14 main, 17 Supplemental), 19 figures (5 main, 14 appendix

Befriending (White) women faculty in higher education

In this essay Thayer-Bacon explores the issue of a chilly climate in higher education that is generated by some women, in particular White women, and the destructive behavior they bring to higher education that damages their programs, as well as their working relationships with colleagues and students. The author seeks to find ways to befriend women in higher education, her sisters of color as well as her White sisters. Thayer-Bacon's focus here is on White women. Her approach is to use stories from the field to illustrate problems that are analyzed, using a narrative style of philosophical argument. Key words: white women faculty, higher education, horizontal violence, women of color, befriending girls and women, Susan Laird, Jane Roland Martin, and Paulo Freire Introduction As a little girl, I started first grade when I was 5 ½ years old, two weeks after my peers' first day of school, as my parents were on leave when school started. I remember my first grade teacher well, Mrs. Rogers, as I was terrified of her. Mrs. Rogers gave me some ditto sheets to do when I arrived in her class, without giving me any explanation of what I was supposed to do. Since I could not read, I could not read the instructions. I stared and stared at that paper, hoping to make sense of the pictures when a little boy sitting cate-corner behind me offered to help. He told me what to do and I followed his directions, completed the assignment, and turned in the work. I had it returned to me that same day with red lines through what was wrong, and figured out from the corrections what I was supposed to have done, which was not what my new-found friend had directed me to do. I was mortified! That day probably marks the beginning of my mistrust of teaching assistance from that little boy, although it certainly didn't cause me to lose interest in him as a friend. As I think back on this scenario today, I remember that there were several little girls sitting around me, three, I believe, and not one of them offered to help. Even if my male neighbor's assistance turned out to be less than helpful, at least he tuned in to my distress and tried to help