Overview of Pastoral Counseling

In his editorial preface to a volume titled An Introduction to Pastoral Counseling, Wayne Oates makes the observation: The pastor, regardless of his training, does not enjoy the privilege of electing whether or not he will counsel with his people. … His choice is not between counseling or not counseling, but between counseling in a disciplined and skilled way and counseling in an undisciplined and unskilled way. Recent studies have also made it very clear that pastors hold a central and strategic position as counselors in today\u27s society. Clinebell succinctly phrases the challenge: It is obvious that clergymen are on the front lines in the struggle to lift the loads of troubled persons! Pastoral counseling then is a vital part of the pastoral care task of every minister of the Gospel. It is an area in which continual growth is essential to understanding people and the development of meaningful skills in serving their needs

Efficient simulation of Bayesian logistic regression models

In this paper we highlight a data augmentation approach to inference in the Bayesian logistic regression model. We demonstrate that the resulting conditional likelihood of the regression coefficients is multivariate normal, equivalent to a standard Bayesian linear regression, which allows for efficient simulation using a block Gibbs sampler. We illustrate that the method is particularly suited to problems in covariate set uncertainty and random effects models

Supernova explosions and the birth of neutron stars

We report here on recent progress in understanding the birth conditions of neutron stars and the way how supernovae explode. More sophisticated numerical models have led to the discovery of new phenomena in the supernova core, for example a generic hydrodynamic instability of the stagnant supernova shock against low-mode nonradial deformation and the excitation of gravity-wave activity in the surface and core of the nascent neutron star. Both can have supportive or decisive influence on the inauguration of the explosion, the former by improving the conditions for energy deposition by neutrino heating in the postshock gas, the latter by supplying the developing blast with a flux of acoustic power that adds to the energy transfer by neutrinos. While recent two-dimensional models suggest that the neutrino-driven mechanism may be viable for stars from about 8 solar masses to at least 15 solar masses, acoustic energy input has been advocated as an alternative if neutrino heating fails. Magnetohydrodynamic effects constitute another way to trigger explosions in connection with the collapse of sufficiently rapidly rotating stellar cores, perhaps linked to the birth of magnetars. The global explosion asymmetries seen in the recent simulations offer an explanation of even the highest measured kick velocities of young neutron stars.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 19 ps files; to be published in Proc. of Conf. "40 Years of Pulsars: Millisecond Pulsars, Magnetars, and More", August 12-17, 2007, McGill Univ., Montreal, Canada; high-resolution images can be obtained upon request; incorrect panel in fig.8 replace

Zika virus infection in the returning traveller: what every neurologist should know

Zika virus has been associated with a wide range of neurological complications. Neurologists in areas without current active transmission of the virus may be confronted with Zika-associated neurological disease, as a large number of returning travellers with Zika virus infection have been reported and the virus continues to spread to previously unaffected regions. This review provides an overview of Zika virus-associated neurological disease and aims to support neurologists who may encounter patients returning from endemic areas

Combining evidence from clinical trials in conditional or accelerated approval

Conditional (European Medicines Agency) or accelerated (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval of drugs allows earlier access to promising new treatments that address unmet medical needs. Certain post‐marketing requirements must typically be met in order to obtain full approval, such as conducting a new post‐market clinical trial. We study the applicability of the recently developed harmonic mean ‐test to this conditional or accelerated approval framework. The proposed approach can be used both to support the design of the post‐market trial and the analysis of the combined evidence provided by both trials. Other methods considered are the two‐trials rule, Fisher's criterion and Stouffer's method. In contrast to some of the traditional methods, the harmonic mean ‐test always requires a post‐market clinical trial. If the ‐value from the pre‐market clinical trial is , a smaller sample size for the post‐market clinical trial is needed than with the two‐trials rule. For illustration, we apply the harmonic mean ‐test to a drug which received conditional (and later full) market licensing by the EMA. A simulation study is conducted to study the operating characteristics of the harmonic mean ‐test and two‐trials rule in more detail. We finally investigate the applicability of these two methods to compute the power at interim of an ongoing post‐market trial. These results are expected to aid in the design and assessment of the required post‐market studies in terms of the level of evidence required for full approval

Adaptive optics testbed for pre- and post-compensation of earth-to-geo optical communication: downlink results

Optical communication between optical ground stations (OGS) and geostationary (GEO) satellites is a promising technology for future high-speed data transfer between Earth and space. However, such optical communication links suffer from distortions caused by atmospheric turbulence. To explore adaptive optics mitigation of this effect both in the uplink and the downlink beam, we have developed an adaptive optics testbed. In an earlier publication [1], we reported on the results of uplink compensation. In this contribution, we wish to elaborate more on the efficiency of downlink compensation. Further, we will highlight the differences between uplink and downlink compensation

A Bayesian Model for Spatial Disease Prevalence Data

The analysis of the geographical distribution of disease on the scale of geographic areas such as administrative boundaries plays an important role in veterinary epidemiology. Prevalence estimates of wildlife population surveys are often based on regional count data generated by sampling animals shot by hunters. The observed disease rate per spatial unit is not a useful estimate of the underlying disease prevalence due to different sample sizes and spatial dependencies between neighbouring areas. Therefore, it is necessary to account for extra-sample variation and and spatial correlation in the data to produce more accurate maps of disease incidence. For this purpose a hierarchical Bayesian model in which structured and un-structured overdispersion is modelled explicitly in terms of spatial and non-spatial components was implemented by Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. The model was empirically compared with the results of the non-spatial beta-binomial model using surveillance data of Pseudorabies virus infections of wildboars in the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany

Error assessment of biogeochemical models by lower bound methods (NOMMA-1.0)

Biogeochemical models, capturing the major feedbacks of the pelagic ecosystem of the world ocean, are today often embedded into Earth system models which are increasingly used for decision making regarding climate policies. These models contain poorly constrained parameters (e.g., maximum phytoplankton growth rate), which are typically adjusted until the model shows reasonable behavior. Systematic approaches determine these parameters by minimizing the misfit between the model and observational data. In most common model approaches, however, the underlying functions mimicking the biogeochemical processes are nonlinear and non-convex. Thus, systematic optimization algorithms are likely to get trapped in local minima and might lead to non-optimal results. To judge the quality of an obtained parameter estimate, we propose determining a preferably large lower bound for the global optimum that is relatively easy to obtain and that will help to assess the quality of an optimum, generated by an optimization algorithm. Due to the unavoidable noise component in all observations, such a lower bound is typically larger than zero. We suggest deriving such lower bounds based on typical properties of biogeochemical models (e.g., a limited number of extremes and a bounded time derivative). We illustrate the applicability of the method with two real-world examples. The first example uses real-world observations of the Baltic Sea in a box model setup. The second example considers a three-dimensional coupled ocean circulation model in combination with satellite chlorophyll a

Ab initio kinetics predictions for H-atom abstraction from diethoxymethane by hydrogen, methyl, and ethyl radicals and the subsequent unimolecular reactions

Diethoxymethane (DEM) is a promising oxygenated fuel and fuel additive, which has similar positive combustion characteristics as dimethoxymethane. DEM contains C-C bonds and can form ethylene via beta-scission, which potentially increases its sooting tendency. Since DEM is rarely studied, however, kinetic modeling attempts are forced to rely on rate constant analogies. Therefore, we employ high level CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pV(T+D)Z//B2PLYPD3BJ/6-311++(d,p) theory along with transition state theory to predict reaction rate constants for H-abstraction by H and CH3 and the subsequent unimolecular reactions. We further prove that the DLPNO approximation to CCSD(T) leads to a deviation of less than 0.25 k/mol in barrier heights for the presently studied open-shell electronic structures and use it for the prediction of reaction rate constants for H-abstraction by C2H5 radicals. We find that H-abstraction by ethyl radicals might denote a significant pathway, which should not be neglected in kinetic modeling studies of DEM. It is also shown that reaction pathways leading to ethylene formation are of minor importance and give thereby a first insight into the fate of the C-C bonds. To the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first high-level ab-initio study of DEM, which makes the reaction kinetics and thermochemistry data provided by this study vital for future comprehensive kinetic modeling of DEM. (C) 2018 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe