Community Relational Soul Care: A Transformational Paradigm for Restoring God\u27s People to Spiritual Vitality

This ministry project is a transformational paradigm for relational soul care in a community that partners with mentors to restore God’s children to spiritual vitality for the fulfillment of His plan. The reason for this topic is that after counseling, people still need continued soul care; without continued soul care, they falter, get frustrated, and fall back into unhealthy behaviors. In this research approach, the care seeker is placed with a mentor and a community fellowship group until they flourish in their time. The research method will be a twenty-question Likert Scale Interview for two fellowship groups: men and women. The focus of this thesis is believers who conjoin relational dimensions in cultivating God’s work in community with spiritual fellowship and bond together through the trials of life as image-bearing disciples. The potential value for this research is to ascertain whether community relational soul care transforms Christians to spiritual vitality. In this project, the spiritual layers unfold through the Epistles of John and discover the factors for restoration in spiritual areas of soul care and development for spiritual vitality in relationships with God, others, and God-centered self in community relational soul care

Accelerating delayed-acceptance Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms

Delayed-acceptance Markov chain Monte Carlo (DA-MCMC) samples from a probability distribution via a two-stages version of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, by combining the target distribution with a "surrogate" (i.e. an approximate and computationally cheaper version) of said distribution. DA-MCMC accelerates MCMC sampling in complex applications, while still targeting the exact distribution. We design a computationally faster, albeit approximate, DA-MCMC algorithm. We consider parameter inference in a Bayesian setting where a surrogate likelihood function is introduced in the delayed-acceptance scheme. When the evaluation of the likelihood function is computationally intensive, our scheme produces a 2-4 times speed-up, compared to standard DA-MCMC. However, the acceleration is highly problem dependent. Inference results for the standard delayed-acceptance algorithm and our approximated version are similar, indicating that our algorithm can return reliable Bayesian inference. As a computationally intensive case study, we introduce a novel stochastic differential equation model for protein folding data.Comment: 40 pages, 21 figures, 10 table

Effects of Aerobic Exercise Modality on Cognition and Fitness in Breast Cancer Survivors

International Journal of Exercise Science 12(3): 1023-1033, 2019. Although cognitive dysfunction is a common occurrence among breast cancer survivors, there is no widely recognized intervention for this debilitating condition. The purpose of this study was to determine whether floor/step aerobics (FSA) and/or treadmill walking (TMW) interventions can improve outcomes when compared to standard care (STC). Recent breast cancer survivors participated in 12 weeks of FSA (n=8), TMW (n=7), or STC (n=10) with pre/post assessments of cognition and fitness. Interaction effects between group and time were assessed with repeated measures ANOVA. Throughout the extent of cognitive and fitness assessments, there were found to be no statistically significant interactions between group and time. Because of the small sample size, these results should not be taken to mean that exercise cannot improve cognition in recent breast cancer survivors, but this study should be used as a baseline for designing similar studies with a longer intervention, more intense exercise program, or another alteration that might increase effectiveness of the intervention. More research is needed in this area, but until more specific study results are available, healthcare providers should continue to encourage breast cancer survivors to regularly participate in aerobic exercise to maintain physical function

Local Spectral Optimisation for Robin Problems with Negative Boundary Parameter on Quadrilaterals

We investigate the Robin eigenvalue problem for the Laplacian with negative boundary parameter on quadrilateral domains of fixed area. In this paper, we prove that the square is a local maximiser of the first eigenvalue with respect to the Hausdorff metric. We also provide asymptotic results relating to the optimality of the square for extreme values of the Robin parameter.Comment: 32 pages, 2 figure

The Rolling Stock Recovery Problem

DSB S-tog (S-tog) operates on the double tracked, suburban network surrounding Copenhagen, Denmark. S-tog is the sole operator on the network. The network is owned and controlled by the infrastructure manager BaneDanmark. During the last years there has been an increased focus on developing tools to aid the planning process in railway transportation. The tools are computer software, which can fully or partly automate some part of the planning process. As in other industries the initial focus has been on strategic, tactical and operational planning. Only lately focus has turned to the area of short term and real time planning. This paper concentrates on the area of rolling stock real time planning. In practice rolling stock dispatchers monitor the operation of the rolling stock plan and the depot plans. When the rolling stock plan is disrupted, the rolling stock dispatcher makes real time decisions on the re-assignments of train units to train tasks. This process is called recovery. An automated tool will improve the recovery process, help supplying sufficient seat capacity for passengers and reduce the operating cost

The Living Archive and the Sublime Nature of the Anthropocene

At the 2015 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris France, 195 nations reached a decision to commit to decrease the severe effects of climate change on the planet. As we embark what some call the Anthropocene Era, we bare witness to how civilization has impacted the Earth’s ecosystem, diminishing its resources and threatening its biodiversity. With this shift in our ecosystem, a new pedagogical model for a graduate architecture studio responded to the Anthropocene through a technologically sublime intervention: The Living Archive, a new architectural type capturing the magnitude of Earth’s inevitable transformation. This archive is conceived as the anti-thesis to sustainability and optimization that consumes much of our built world. The ‘living archive’ program is not meant to be a stable, secure vessel but uses technological invention to bracket what is being invaded by human existence. Through the invention of an ‘archiving machine’, the studio used technological speculation to question what nature can or will become. The aim was to use ‘living archive’ as a physical commentary or critique on our current relationship to the environment. The paper describes three projects that speculate on the inevitable future of various biomes. Through environmental analysis, technological research, and formal aspirations, each project embodies a potential reality and potential future of the Anthropocene