Faith in development : what difference does faith make for Christian NGOs working in Bangladesh? : a research thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Development at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Religious organisations are the oldest social service networks known to humankind. However, the underlying topic of religion and development has been mostly ignored in development literature until more recently. Rapprochement between proponents of secular development and supporters of religious-based social transformation is called for. Some writers claim faith-based organisations (FBOs), of which Christian NGOs (CNGOs) are significant actors, add value, make distinctive contributions and offer comparative advantages over secular NGOs. Seven motivational, organisational and institutional advantages claimed are that FBOs: reach and are valued by the poorest, have a long-term presence and low costs, offer an alternative to secular development theory, and motivate voluntarism and civil-society advocacy. Three spiritual advantages claimed are that FBOs: offer spiritual / religious teaching; hope, meaning and purpose; and transcendent power (prayer). In contrast, two possible disadvantages claimed are that: religion is part of the problem for development and churches are difficult to work with. Other writers claim a lack of evidence regarding these claims. My research investigated six CNGOs in Bangladesh, with the research question being: ‘How do Christian NGOs working in Bangladesh, a Muslim majority country, perceive that their faith identity influences their operating characteristics, making them distinctive from secular NGOs?’ This sought to determine if the operating characteristics that the literature claims attribute to FBOs, were applicable to the CNGOs. The research method was primarily deductive, using the CNGO research data to test existing literature definitions, typology and claims. With much FBO literature seemingly sourced from broadly Christian cultural contexts, this research expands on this by researching CNGOs in a Muslim majority country, home to a very small Christian minority. CNGO representatives were interviewed using a structured questionnaire including qualitative and quantitative questions. The research findings conclude that the Bangladesh CNGOs’ faith identity critical to their vision and mission, results in some perceived differences compared with secular NGOs. These are found in the CNGOs’ operating characteristics including distinctive contributions (to various degrees) in the seven motivational, organisational and institutional ways and three spiritual ways, along with one of the two possible disadvantages, claimed in literature. However, claiming advantages (or disadvantages) for FBOs over secular NGOs, without better evidence, is subjective and prone to bias, reflecting the claimant’s positionality. The question of comparative advantage between NGOs of various types (faith-based or secular), requires a universal evaluation methodology able to assess and score any NGO operating in any project context. Until this exists, I suggest the literature claims of FBOs having comparative advantages (or disadvantages) should be reframed as distinctive operating characteristics

Age Perceptions, Knowledge, and Preventive Behaviors Regarding Cervical Cancer: Analysis from the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS).

Cervical cancer is considered to be the third most common type of cancer in women, and the second largest cause of deaths in women. Its toll is greatest in population that lack screening programs to detect precursor lesions (Roden, 2006). Almost all cervical cancer is caused by HPV (Human Papillomavirus), a common virus that is spread through sexual intercourse (Roden, 2006). It is widely believed among experts that most women who are diagnosed with cervical cancer today have not had regular pap smears or they have not followed up on abnormal Pap smear results. But the question is how knowledgeable are women regarding this deadly disease which is curable when detected early. We used a national representative sample of women in an exploratory analysis to shed light on how age differences characterize the perceptions, knowledge and prevention behaviors of cervical cancer. The five classes of women we investigated were women ages 18 – 34; 35 – 49; 50 – 64; 64 – 74; and 75+. The results indicate that women ages 50 – 64 were the most opinionated regarding the characteristics of cervical cancer

Promissory Note, 7 February 1831

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aldrichcorr_a/1057/thumbnail.jp

Dataset associated with 'Magnetohydrodynamic simulations of mechanical stellar feedback in a sheet-like molecular cloud'

Paper abstract: We have used the AMR hydrodynamic code, MG, to perform 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations with self-gravity of stellar feedback in a sheet-like molecular cloud formed through the action of the thermal instability. We simulate the interaction of the mechanical energy input from a 15 solar mass star and a 40 solar mass star into a 100 parsec-diameter 17000 solar mass cloud with a corrugated sheet morphology that in projection appears filamentary. The stellar winds are introduced using appropriate Geneva stellar evolution models. In the 15 solar mass star case, the wind forms a narrow bipolar cavity with minimal effect on the parent cloud. In the 40 solar mass star case, the more powerful stellar wind creates a large cylindrical cavity through the centre of the cloud. After 12.5 million years and 4.97 million years respectively, the massive stars explode as supernovae (SNe). In the 15 solar mass star case, the SN material and energy is primarily deposited into the molecular cloud surroundings over 100,000 years before the SN remnant escapes the cloud. In the 40 solar mass star case, a significant fraction of the SN material and energy rapidly escapes the molecular cloud along the wind cavity in a few tens of kiloyears. Both SN events compress the molecular cloud material around them to higher densities (so may trigger further star formation), and strengthen the magnetic field, typically by factors of 2-3 but up to a factor of 10. Our simulations are relevant to observations of bubbles in flattened ring-like molecular clouds and bipolar HII regions. Data repository: This repository contains the raw data accompanying each figure in this publication