In Our Village

While in the village of Banjar Wani I had the opportunity to meet Kedek and his father Pak Sura. They took me into their home and showed me what an average Balinese house for someone in the Sudra caste looks like. The Sudra is considered to be the lowest classification in the Hindu Caste system. People classified as a Sudra are typically farmers and Pak Sura owns a rice patty. I asked Kedek to show me into his house and below is a drawing of an overview of the house. Kedek walked me into the house through the gate that is used to keep evil spirits away. Every Balinese person has a gate in front of their home that is meant to protect the family. [excerpt

Harput, Turkey to Massachusetts: Immigration of Jacobite Christians

This essay falls into the category of rendering visible a community, the Jacobite Assyrians of Massachusetts, who have remained virtually unknown in the larger context of Middle Eastern Diaspora studies and American ethnic and cultural history. This brief study of the immigration of the Jacobite Christians originally from Harput, Turkey who settled in New England, shows a variety of distinct method(s) of identity preservation and transmission to subsequent generations, expecially in regard to personal and group identity structures. These people, sometimes referred to as “Jacobite Syrians” by early Western travelers and missionaries, identified themselves as the “sons of Asshur” in 1842 (Southgate 1856:87). This paper is a narrative of the community’s tribulations in their country of origin during the first half of the twentieth century, internal religious politics espoused by the church, as well as their life and establishment in American society

Ethno-cultural and Religious Identity of Syrian Orthodox Christians

Many Middle Eastern Christian groups identify or have been identified with pre­Islamic peoples in the Middle East: the Copts with Ancient Egypt, the Nestorians with Assyria, the Maronites with Phoenicians and some RumOrthodoxand other Christians with pre­Islamic Arab tribes. The concern of this study is the Syrian Orthodox Christians or Jacobite(s)(named after the 6th century Monophysite Christian bishop Yacoub Burd‘ono or Jacob Baradaeus of Urfa/Osrohene/Edessa), specifically those whose ancestry stems from the Tur Abdin region of Turkey, Diyarbekir, Mardin, Urfa, and Harput/Elazig. The introduction of the Ottoman milletsystem had divided the Middle East into ethno­religious communities, the Eastern Christian minorities being a classic example. Of the various groups, the Syrian Orthodox Christians (Suryaniler, Suryani Kadim, Asuriler) are a case in point to identity issues including creation, evolution, fabrication, denial, and assimilation caused by both internal and external influences. The identity of this community is a major point of contention among the laity and the clergy, as well as among non­Syrian Orthodox scholars of Middle Eastern Studies

Recovery of nutrients from piggery wastewater using Scenedesmus spp. photobioreactors

Algal-bacteria process is a low-cost and environmentally friendly alternative process for wastewater treatment. Currently, Algae biomass as biofuels and high value-added compounds have attention to be produced with wastewater treatments. The macromolecular composition of this biomass grown in wastewater treatment photobioreactors is a key information in order to select alternatives of valorization. The presence of bacteria and the wastewater components such as high concentration of carbon, nitrogen and heavy metals or the environmental conditions influence remarkably the algal biomass compositions. In this study, we set up a photobioreactors system and studied the evolution of algae-biomass, and the efficiency of wastewater treatment. We aimed to clarify the fluctuations of biomass based on green algae Scenedesmus spp. grown in non-sterilized piggery wastewater (PWW) and in synthetic water. Results from small 3L laboratory scale indoor photobioreactors were compared with 360L outdoor pilot plant thin layer (TL) photobioreactors and closed tubular (TB) reactor located in Almeria using also Scenedesmus species. Four laboratory experiments, 3L small open photobioreactors (15.8 cm depth, 15.5 cm internal diameter) were designed and performed with high repeatability. They were placed inside a water bath under artificial lights, 1053±32 μmol m-2 sec-1, 12h light: 12h dark. Scenedesmus sp. was used as inoculum and two reactors were fed with Modified Bristol medium (MBM) and other two with PWW. Feeding rate was set 500 mL d-1 (Hydraulic retention time; HRT 6 day), and pH 8 was maintained in the photobioreactors by supplying CO2. The removal rate of COD and TN were 83.6 % and 74.5%, respectively, in reactors treating PWW. The dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration in PWW resulted 0 mg L-1 while DO 14.8-17.1 mg L-1 were determined in MBM condition. This process did not require oxygen supply to remove pollutants by bacteria. It is thought that low-cost operation was possible due to the presence of bacteria for algae based wastewater treatment. The results showed high protein productivity on algae-bacteria biomass grown in PWW, related with high growth rate of microalgae. TSS during steady state achieved values of around 0.5 L-1 with synthetic medium and 1.8 g L-1 with PWW, respectively. Biomass compositions analysis showed similar values between MBM and PWW in laboratory reactors. In PWW feed photobioreactors, biomass with 54.6 % of proteins and 14.7 % of lipids was obtained. In MBM feed photobioreactors, biomass with 51.6 % of proteins and 14.2 % of lipids was obtained. Combining biomass growth and composition, protein productivities of 0.97 g L-1 were obtained from non-sterilized PWW and 0.27 g L-1 from MBM. However, biomass from TL and BL photobioreactor achieved 4 high carbohydrate content 43.5%, 43.0% of proteins contents, 9.6% of lipids contents, probably because the different light precedence and intensity. The pigments contents in PWW were lower than medium substrate (MBM, BM) in both of reactors. Chl-a, Chl-b, Carotenoids were 9.4%, 3.2%, 2.6% in MBM and 1.5%, 0.8%, 0.3% in PWW in laboratory reactors. The presence of heavy metals in PWW probably worked as the oxidative stress. Oxidative stress can degrade protein and lipids such as pigments. But these results were required further research. The extracted protein contents by enzymatic hydrolysis were maximum 12% with Protamax, 90 min of retention time in PWW biomass from TL photobioreactor. Lipids contents showed similar values before the extraction. Therefore, the all of extraction methods were not enough for the algae samples in PWW.Departamento de Ingeniería Química y Tecnología del Medio AmbienteMáster en Ingeniería Ambienta

The Use of Marginalia to Inform Patron Needs

This is a presentation of my research in marginalia of students and faculty in a large urban academic library. More than 300 individual examples was collected and then analyzed to determine patron need

QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF MECHANICAL ANKLE LAXITY AND RELATIONSHIP WITH TALOCRURAL AND SUBTALAR JOINT RANGE OF MOTION IN STANCE PHASE OF WALKING

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between ankle joint laxity and talocrural and subtalar joint kinematics in healthy people. We obtained lateral fluoroscopic images from 6 healthy male volunteers during walking stance phase and three-dimensional bone positions were determined using 3D-2D model image registration technique. Ankle laxity was measured using instrumented arthrometry. The arthrometry mesurements of anteroposterior displacement and eversion had strong correlation with the range of motion of subtalar eversion/inversion. The quantitative measurement by ankle arthrometry is important to understanding the nature. Further research is needed to examine the linkage of joint laxity and abnormal kinematics for chronic ankle instability

The Ecclesiological Function of a Critic: Exploring the Ecclesiological Contributions of Søren Kierkegaard in His ‘Attack’ on “Christendom”

Traditionally, Søren Kierkegaard has not been associated with the field of ecclesiology. Some simply do not see any ecclesiological merits to Kierkegaard’s perspective, while others, who perhaps acknowledge Kierkegaard’s connection to ecclesiology, view it as having a negating function. Additionally, growing disenfranchisement with the church has caused a renewed interest in Kierkegaard’s ‘attack’; however, this renewed interest often fails to account for the context into which Kierkegaard wrote. This paper will explore Kierkegaard’s ‘attack’ on “Christendom” in context. It also engages the perspectives of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who show ecclesial implications for Kierkegaard’s ‘attack’ in both agreement and disagreement. In the end, several important functions are shown for Kierkegaard’s ecclesiological perspective