Incarnational Reality as an approach to missional theological education and training

The purpose of this thesis, using a Living Theory methodology, was to confirm if my own approach of Incarnational Reality to missional theological education and training results in transformative learning for my students. This approach has come out of my own experience which I define as ‘God in loving union with us, the embodiment of spiritual reality enfleshed through our lives, empowered by the Holy Spirit in our participation and engagement with God in the world’. I present this as a Pentecostal pastor and missionary, with a belief that God can be encountered in the immediate world, and human beings can encounter God. My experience, background and training influenced my approach of Incarnational Reality, and the compilation of my holistic, integrated curriculum within the dichotomies and varying perspectives presented by different denominations, Christian communities and cultures. During my missionary service of over 35 years, I have been involved in training mission workers among the poor and marginalised wherever I have been located. I have endeavoured to impart Incarnational Reality through the Holy Given International School of Missions which I direct in various nations. The literature review provides insight into trends and developments in missional theological education and training since the first age of Christian history. It draws broadly on wide-ranging literature in missional theological education and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the church’s approach to missional theological education and training. Key themes and principles which informed the development of my own Incarnational Reality approach to missional theological education and training have been identified and discussed. I have drawn insights from a range of methodologies and theories, and have woven together hermeneutics, phenomenology, ethnography, narrative disciplines and transformative learning perspectives in a Living Theory methodology, which has allowed me to draw from my own mission experience in confirming my Incarnational Reality approach to missional theological education and training. The value and contribution of Incarnational Reality as an approach to missional theological education and training has been confirmed as students described transformative learning experiences and understanding of concepts taught through the Holy Given curriculum, community living, worship (including communal, participative, spontaneous and indigenous worship), and outreach. The results of this research highlighted that the pedagogical role and ministry of the Holy Spirit is the epistemological key in facilitating transformative learning (John 20:21-2). This does not happen in isolation, but in relationship – human with the divine, and humans with one another. This study also identified areas for improvement and development of my own practice and that of my teaching staff. This research is a rich picture of my own mission context and practice and has allowed me to make assertions and knowledge claims regarding the transfer of my practice, values and beliefs to generations of future mission workers

A study of factors related to over-achievers and under-achievers of average ability at the elementary level.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Ethnicity, gender, social class and citizenship: comparative views from England and Sweden

Please note. What follows is a summary of the second stage of ongoing research comparing the experiences of students and teachers of Citizenship Education in Sweden and England. A more complete and detailed version is expected to appear in a leading refereed journal later in the year, and a book proposal relating to all stages of the research is currently under consideration. While we await confirmation of the submitted proposals we cannot identify the journal or the prospective book publisher, but it is in those sources that more detailed and nuanced analysis and explanation will be located. Introduction The National Curriculum provision for Citizenship Education in England clearly requires that the subject must be taught throughout KS 3 and KS 4, with content indicated and a public examination available at KS4; until recently, there was also an A level. In Sweden - where Citizenship Education is not a separate subject - the content is vague and teachers’ interpretations of the assignment differ distinctively between the different schools and programmes. This contrasting provision between two countries which have both prided themselves on their welfare provision and policies of inclusive citizenship was considered ideal to examine the extent to which different approaches produce more or less aware, articulate and active citizens

TBI Contusion Segmentation from MRI using Convolutional Neural Networks

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is caused by a sudden trauma to the head that may result in hematomas and contusions and can lead to stroke or chronic disability. An accurate quantification of the lesion volumes and their locations is essential to understand the pathophysiology of TBI and its progression. In this paper, we propose a fully convolutional neural network (CNN) model to segment contusions and lesions from brain magnetic resonance (MR) images of patients with TBI. The CNN architecture proposed here was based on a state of the art CNN architecture from Google, called Inception. Using a 3-layer Inception network, lesions are segmented from multi-contrast MR images. When compared with two recent TBI lesion segmentation methods, one based on CNN (called DeepMedic) and another based on random forests, the proposed algorithm showed improved segmentation accuracy on images of 18 patients with mild to severe TBI. Using a leave-one-out cross validation, the proposed model achieved a median Dice of 0.75, which was significantly better (p<0.01) than the two competing methods.Comment: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8363545/, IEEE 15th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2018

Chemokines in depression in health and in inflammatory illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Inflammatory illness is associated with depression. Preclinical work has shown that chemokines are linked with peripheral–central crosstalk and may be important in mediating depressive behaviours. We sought to establish what evidence exists that differences in blood or cerebrospinal fluid chemokine concentration discriminate between individuals with depression and those without. Following PRISMA guidelines, we systematically searched Embase, PsycINFO and Medline databases. We included participants with physical illness for subgroup analysis, and excluded participants with comorbid psychiatric diagnoses. Seventy-three studies met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. Individuals with depression had higher levels of blood CXCL4 and CXCL7 and lower levels of blood CCL4. Sensitivity analysis of studies with only physically healthy participants identified higher blood levels of CCL2, CCL3, CCL11, CXCL7 and CXCL8 and lower blood levels of CCL4. All other chemokines examined did not reveal significant differences (blood CCL5, CCL7, CXCL9, CXCL10 and cerebrospinal fluid CXCL8 and CXCL10). Analysis of the clinical utility of the effect size of plasma CXCL8 in healthy individuals found a negative predictive value 93.5%, given the population prevalence of depression of 10%. Overall, our meta-analysis finds evidence linking abnormalities of blood chemokines with depression in humans. Furthermore, we have demonstrated the possibility of classifying individuals with depression based on their inflammatory biomarker profile. Future research should explore putative mechanisms underlying this association, attempt to replicate existing findings in larger populations and aim to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies

Letter from Emma L. Leighton, Shelburne, New Hampshire, to Anne Whitney, Boston, Massachusetts, 1912 February 20

https://repository.wellesley.edu/whitney_correspondence/2695/thumbnail.jp

Mean lifetimes of V-particles and heavy mesons

A maximum-likelihood procedure for determining mean lifetimes of V-particles from cloud-chamber data is applied to samples taken from a group of 134 neutral V-particle decays. For 74 events which were consistent with a decay into a proton and a negative π-meson, a lifetime of (2.5±0.7)×10-10 sec is obtained. Dividing the data into "low Q" and "high Q" groups on the basis of the calculated energy release in the decay, a value of τL=(2.9±0.8)×10-10 sec is found for those cases with 0<~Q<~50 Mev and a value of τH=(1.6±0.5)×10-10 sec is found for those cases with 50<Q<~150 Mev. While no significant difference exists between these two values, the difference is greater than for other plausible division schemes which are considered. A qualitative discussion of lifetimes is given for the case of 23 charged V-particle decays. For the charged V-particles these data suggest either a lifetime less than that of the neutral V-particles, provided the sample is homogeneous, or, more likely, an apparent average lifetime less than that of the neutral V-particles, if the sample is a mixture of two or more types of particles. The possibility that κ- and/or χ-mesons make up a part of these decays is considered

A first step in determining appropriate amounts of obstetric anesthesia work

Abstract Ginosar, et al. describe a new performance indicator, the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index, to represent the current amount of obstetric anesthesia work done daily at each of 25 Israeli hospitals. The authors claim, correctly, that this index is a closer reflection of the anesthetic workload than simply looking at the number of deliveries at each hospital. However, the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index could easily be refined to reflect more closely the actual obstetric anesthesia workload by using the average cesarean delivery time for each hospital rather than one value for all hospitals. Although the authors state that they developed the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index out of concern for inadequate obstetric anesthesia manpower in Israel, they have not compared the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index with the size of the patient population or any measure of patient satisfaction or patient safety. In its current form, the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index describes the current work situation but does not evaluate the extent of the unmet need for additional anesthesia providers. Despite these shortcomings, the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index is an important first step in developing a tool to assess unmet obstetric anesthesia needs.</p

A pest of dairy salts.

The claims of superiority set forth by the different manufacturers of dairy salts, led the Dairy Department of this station to make a test of several of the leading brands of dairy salt with regard to their effect on the keeping qualities of butter. The matter of shrinkage, in working also came in incidentally. The butter for this test was churned Oct. 11th from the cream separated from 9316 pounds of milk, by the Danish Westsn and Alpha separators, The cream was ripened over night and put in the churns the next morning about 7:30. Each churn contained 80 gallons of about 25 per cent fat cream at a temperature of 53°, free from taint or foreign odor and showing an acidity of 33 by Mann’s Acid Test. Both churns were started at the same time, but one had to run about five minutes longer than the other in order that the butter granules should be of the same size in eaeh