‘Has anyone here seen Amos?’ – re-establishing ‘prophetic imagination’ at the centre of religious education and formation

In 1989 Australian author and illustrator Bob Graham published a children’s book entitled Has anyone here seen William? This article seeks to construct a parallel narrative in relation to the category of the prophet, with a particular focus on the need to engage in prophetic imagination within the twin contexts of religious education (hereafter R.E.) and formation. In doing so it also makes reference to one of the archetypical biblical prophets - Amos. The article’s primary interlocutor is scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann (1982, 2002a, 2002b) who has written on topics as diverse as scripture exegesis and the theology of pain and homecoming. He has also written prominently on prophetic imagination, understood as the capacity to stand outside the dominant discourse or power structure of one’s day and critique it. As we will demonstrate throughout the article, Brueggemann’s scholarship in this area is complemented and refined through contact with the African-American philosopher Cornel West’s (1999) approach to prophetic critique, along with other commentators. Held together, both thinkers impel us to consider why teaching ‘about prophets’ needs to be complemented by an explicit cultivation of prophetic imagination, and how this might be seeded in crucial contexts such as religious education and formation. Following a brief introduction (part one) the second part explores the nature of the prophetic challenge. Part three focuses on recovery of the prophetic imagination, while part four examines ways to cultivate the prophetic imagination today. The final section considers conclusions and future directions in relation to topics raised throughout the paper

A common distributed language approach to software integration

An important objective in software integration is the development of techniques to allow programs written in different languages to function together. Several approaches are discussed toward achieving this objective and the Common Distributed Language Approach is presented as the approach of choice

Perioperative hazards in myotonic dystrophy

A 32-year-old man with myotonic dystrophy underwent a thoracotomy for removal of a mediastinal thymoma. Pre-operative examination revealed features of myotonic dystrophy, the only other abnormality was mild restrictive pulmonary disease. Anaesthesia was induced with thiopentone and maintained with enflurane, nitrous oxide, oxygen and curare. Following surgery, the patient was mechanically ventilated for several hours and remained intubated for 9 hours. The anaesthesia and surgery were tolerated well; however, postoperative complications included refractory dysrhythmias, hypoxia, pneumoccocal pneumonia and pulmonary emboli. More intensive preoperative pulmonary evaluation and physiotherapy coupled with more aggressive postoperative pulmonary care might have resulted in a smoother recovery phase.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75595/1/j.1365-2044.1980.tb03827.x.pd

Altered dietary salt intake for people with chronic kidney disease (Review)

Backgroun

Redistribution of cytoplasmic VEGF to the basolateral aspect of renal tubular cells in ischemia-reperfusion injury

Redistribution of cytoplasmic VEGF to the basolateral aspect of renal tubular cells in ischemia-reperfusion injury.BackgroundVascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) mRNA and protein expression are increased by hypoxia in a variety of cell types and organs. In the kidney, however, chronic hypoxia does not up-regulate VEGF mRNA. This suggests that VEGF may be regulated by unique mechanisms in the kidney.MethodsUnilateral ischemia was induced in rats by vascular cross-clamping (40 min) followed by reperfusion (0, 20, 40, and 80 min). The distribution of VEGF protein was determined by immunohistochemical staining and Western blotting. mRNA was detected by Northern blotting and semiquantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Immunohistochemical staining for VEGF was verified using two VEGF antibodies. To further substantiate the immunohistochemical findings, laser scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy was used to demonstrate the distribution of VEGF protein in rat renal tubular epithelial cells (NRK52-E) subjected to hypoxia (40 min) and re-oxygenation (0, 5, 20, 40 and 80 min).ResultsNormal kidneys showed diffuse immunohistochemical staining for VEGF in all tubules of the renal cortex and medulla. Following ischemia, staining demonstrated a prominent shift of cytoplasmic VEGF to the basolateral aspect of tubular cells with both VEGF antibodies. The distribution of cytoplasmic VEGF returned to normal following 40 and 80 minutes of reperfusion. Western blots of cytoplasmic samples from ischemic kidneys reperfused for 0 and 20 minutes showed decreased levels of VEGF164 compared with normal (P < 0.01). VEGF164 and VEGF188 levels in the membrane fraction showed no change. Northern blots and semiquantitative RT-PCR showed no significant up-regulation of VEGF mRNA or change in the splice pattern. NRK52-E cells subjected to hypoxia and re-oxygenation for 0 and 5 minutes showed increased staining for VEGF compared with normal, with prominent VEGF staining at the periphery of the cell, similar to the appearance in ischemic kidneys. VEGF staining became more diffuse with further re-oxygenation.ConclusionAlthough synthesis of VEGF mRNA and protein is not increased during ischemia reperfusion injury, pre-existing VEGF in the tubular cell cytoplasm redistributes to the basolateral aspect of the cells. These data suggest that the kidney may have evolved unique patterns of VEGF regulation to cope with acute hypoxia

Power scalable TEM(oo) CW Nd: YAG laser with thermal lens compensation

We present finite-element analyzes and experimental results to validate our approach for building high-power single-mode Nd:YAG lasers. We show that the thermooptical and thermomechanical properties of a slab laser can be controlled. This is essential for the use of the proposed unstable resonator. We include demonstration of an efficient subscale laser operating at 20 W TEM00.D. Mudge, M. Ostermeyer, P. J. Veitch, J. Munch, B. Middlemiss, D. J. Ottaway and M. W. Hamilto

Improving GENCODE reference gene annotation using a high-stringency proteogenomics workflow.

Complete annotation of the human genome is indispensable for medical research. The GENCODE consortium strives to provide this, augmenting computational and experimental evidence with manual annotation. The rapidly developing field of proteogenomics provides evidence for the translation of genes into proteins and can be used to discover and refine gene models. However, for both the proteomics and annotation groups, there is a lack of guidelines for integrating this data. Here we report a stringent workflow for the interpretation of proteogenomic data that could be used by the annotation community to interpret novel proteogenomic evidence. Based on reprocessing of three large-scale publicly available human data sets, we show that a conservative approach, using stringent filtering is required to generate valid identifications. Evidence has been found supporting 16 novel protein-coding genes being added to GENCODE. Despite this many peptide identifications in pseudogenes cannot be annotated due to the absence of orthogonal supporting evidence

Proper milking practices

1 online resource (PDF, 2 pages)This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information available from the University of Minnesota Extension: https://www.extension.umn.edu