The Church\u27s Approach to Death and the Funeral

This paper, therefore, will attempt to point out the approach which the church should take regarding the various cultural practices prevalent in the American funeral rite. After a brief historical perspective, it will examine the theological concepts of the body, death and the resurrection, and the psychological concepts of grief and mourning. With this as a basis for analysis, some of the cultural practices of the American funeral rite will be considered

Persuasion in the Art of Preaching for the Church

Throughout the following pages three major themes will be interwoven with the aspects of the preaching ministry mentioned above. The themes are pastoral in nature and have been formulated over many years in the parish ministry. In some ways, they are similar to the themes indicated in an isogogical study of a Scriptural text, as one studies (1) the addressees, (2) the content of the message, and (3) the approach or style of the writer. In a similar way, this paper will study the proclamation of the Word in relation to (1) the hearers, (2) the content of the message, and (3) the approach or manner of communication. These three areas of study, which are also the three goals of this paper, can be summarized in the following manner

The social embeddedness of academic online groups as a norm generating structure: A test of the Coleman model on norm emergence

This paper analyzes two questions. First, under which conditions does a norm emerge in academic online groups that prescribes members to help others during group discussions? Second, what effects does such a norm, and other social conditions, have on the contributing behavior of researchers during online discussions? It is argued that the Coleman model (1990) on the emergence of norms points to an important condition that facilitates the realization of such a norm. According to the Coleman model (1990) a dense network among members of a group tends to strengthen a group norm. The paper makes a distinction between different kinds of academic online groups. The criterion of the distinction is the extent to which within the membership a highly integrated research community exists. An online group with a highly integrated research community is called to have a high degree of social embeddedness of its online communication in offline networks. It is hypothesized that a high degree of embeddedness has a number of effects. A higher degree of embeddedness leads to a stronger help-prescribing norm. The stronger the norm the more researchers send online answers to questions of their co-members during public online discussions. Furthermore, a high degree of embeddedness increases the answering behavior of researchers directly because it provides opportunities to gain reputation within the academic community through contributing to the discussion. The study makes use of data that consist of a combination of survey data and observed data of the communication behavior of researchers in about 50 international academic emailing lists. The results provide evidence for the expected effect of embeddedness on the strength of the norm and for the effect of embeddedness on the answering behavior of researchers. The strength of the help-prescribing norm indirectly influences the answering behavior

Differential Equations and Finite Groups

This note is devoted to linear differential equations with finite Galois groups. It is a famous conjecture due to A. Grothendieck that the finiteness of the differential Galois group should be equivalent to the triviality of the p-curvature for almost all p. The p-curvature is just the first integrability obstruction for the reduced differential equation in characteristic p. In the case all such integrability obstructions vanish in characteristic p we obtain a so-called iterative differential equation or iterative differential module, respectively. For these a nice Picard-Vessiot theory has been developed by M. van der Put and the author. In particular, the differential Galois groups are linear algebraic groups and there is a Galois correspondence. Thus a natural question arises, wether there exists a reasonable reduction theory preserving Galois groups etc. The corresponding objects in characteristic zero are iterative differential modules over iterative differential rings. The latter are suitable Dedekind subrings of algebraic function fields over number fields, here called global differential rings. These and the corresponding global differential modules are studied in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 presents the construction of global Picard-Vessiot rings (PV-rings) over global differential rings and proves that such PV-rings are generated by globally bounded power series as introduced by G. Christol. In Chapter 3 the reduction of global differential modules and their PV-rings is studied. The main result is that a global PV-ring in characteristic zero is algebraic if and only if for almost all primes p the reduced PV-ring is algebraic. Moreover, for almost all p the reduced PV-ring and the PV-ring of the modulo p reduced global differential module coincide. According to Grothendieck's p-curvature conjecture all global PV-rings are algebraic. Using the result above, this fact might be proven directly. This would already imply a nice algebraicity criterion for formal power series over number fields used by G. Eisenstein and could become a significant step towards the proof of Grothendieck's conjecture

From Frobenius Structures to Differential Equations

Frobenius structures are omnipresent in arithmetic geometry. In this note we show that over suitable rings, Frobenius endomorphisms define differential structures and vice versa. This includes, for example, differential rings in positive characteristic and complete non-archimedean differential rings in characteristic zero. Further, in the global case, the existence of sufficiently many Frobenius rings is related to algebraicity properties. These results apply, for example, to t-motives as well as to p-adic and arithmetic differential equations

Iterative Differential Equations and Finite Groups

It is an old question to characterize those differential equations or differential modules, respectively, whose solution spaces consist of functions which are algebraic over the base field. The most famous conjecture in this context is due to A. Gorthendieck and relates the algebraicity property with the p-curvature which apprears as the first integrability obstruction in characteristic p. Here we prove a variant of Grothendieck's conjecture for differential modules with vanishing higher integrability obstructions modulo p - these are iterative differential modules - and give some applications

Article implace means journal impact

These days there is a lot of misunderstanding of scientometrics and we often see a confusion of the research with its indicators. Science ministries and university administrators try to push their country's or institution's "research impact" by telling researchers to increase numeric figures that were invented as proxies for later assessment. In obvious juxtaposition to common sense this even leads to direct orders to postdocs "to only publish in high impact journals" and not to engage in other important activities scientists of well-rounded stature will routinely perform, like publication in medium impact journals of their immediate field, in startup journals, in conference proceedings, of book chapters, as grey literature or intended for dissemination to the general public, reviewing, editing, writing blogs etc

Social media integration for the purpose of self-regulated learning

In this study, design based research in a teacher design team is performed. Teachers who intend to use social media to extend their school class teaching, are confronted with a lack of clear guidelines that inform them how to utilize them effectively. In this study, we aim at formulating such guidelines and testing their usefulness. First, opportunities to facilitate self-regulated learning (SRL) in higher education through the use of social media are elaborated in a literature study. Second, these opportunities are translated into teacher education to search for stimulating and limiting factors within the design, resulting in guidelines for effective social media integration

The adoption of information and communication technologies in the desing sector and their impact on firm performance : evidence from the Dutch Design sector

This paper analyzes processes and effects of ICT enabled innovation in the Dutch design sector. Although the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is considered as vital in the design sector, little is known about whether and how ICTs affect the firm performance of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in the industry. In introducing a conceptual distinction between ICT supporting the information processing and communication, the paper first examines the determinants of ICT adoption. Next, we analyze the effects of ICT adoption on product and process innovation as well as on firm performance, focusing on the mediating role of the innovation processes. The analyses rest on survey data of a sample of 189 Dutch companies in the Web, Graphic, and Industrial Design Sector in the Netherlands. The results indicate that information processing role of ICT supports the exploitation and communication role facilitates the exploration in organizational learning. The exploitation enables process innovation while exploration enables product innovation. Lastly, Information processing technologies and product innovation are important determinants of superior firm performance