Evaluating and Enhancing the Personal Prayer Life of the Members of the Standifer Gap Seventh-day Adventist Church

Problem. Daily, disciplined personal prayer is one of the most difficult, yet important exercises the Christian can undertake. Many Christians today talk about prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. Even many pastors, including myself, have been frustrated about their prayer experience. I discovered very few of my church members or leaders spent much time in prayer on a daily basis. Method. A ten-month sermon series and curriculum was formed and delivered during 2009. Its purpose was spiritual enhancement. It included ten sermons on the prayer life of Jesus and the early church, and ten interactive discussion periods geared to challenge the participants into a more knowledgeable, active, and effective prayer experience. The success of this journey was measured by a questionnaire given during the first afternoon seminar and again at the last afternoon seminar. Comparison of results yielded some interesting insights. Results. Twenty people voluntarily attended the first afternoon seminar and eight the final session. A comparison of the results of the questionnaires from the first afternoon session and the last session showed that an increase in time in personal prayer was associated with an increase in feelings of satisfaction in personal prayer. The increase of time in prayer was also linked to an increase in confidence in one’s relationship with God. Overall those in the final group spent considerable more time with God on a daily basis, which created a deeper desire to spend even more time with Him! Conclusions. The combination of time, learning, and practice seems to have contributed to an increase in satisfaction with personal prayer. It seems clear that the real benefit to the participants was not my expertise, but their willingness to explore, experiment, and wrestle with the challenges of prayer. This journey contributed to their growing closer and more confident in their relationship with God

Descriptive Complexity of Deterministic Polylogarithmic Time and Space

We propose logical characterizations of problems solvable in deterministic polylogarithmic time (PolylogTime) and polylogarithmic space (PolylogSpace). We introduce a novel two-sorted logic that separates the elements of the input domain from the bit positions needed to address these elements. We prove that the inflationary and partial fixed point vartiants of this logic capture PolylogTime and PolylogSpace, respectively. In the course of proving that our logic indeed captures PolylogTime on finite ordered structures, we introduce a variant of random-access Turing machines that can access the relations and functions of a structure directly. We investigate whether an explicit predicate for the ordering of the domain is needed in our PolylogTime logic. Finally, we present the open problem of finding an exact characterization of order-invariant queries in PolylogTime.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Computer and System Science

Terrigenous Fe input and biogenic sedimentation in the glacial and interglacial equatorial Pacific Ocean

Many ocean regions important to the global carbon budget, including the equatorial Pacific Ocean, have low chlorophyll concentrations despite high levels of conventional nutrients. Iron may instead be the limiting nutrient, and elevated input of terrigenous Fe during windy glacial episodes has been hypothesized to stimulate oceanic productivity through time and thus regulate the oceanic and atmospheric CO2 balance. To test whether particulate Fe input is related to the accumulation of biogenic matter in one important low chlorophyll‐high nutrient area, that is, the equatorial Pacific Ocean, we present results from a suite of sediment cores that collectively record biogenic deposition through the last six glacial‐interglacial cycles (∼600,000 years). Our data set includes new chemical data on total Fe, terrigenous, and biogenic components in three cores as well as previously published mineralogic records of eolian input to the region. Chemical, spectral, and stratigraphic analysis indicates that (1) terrigenous input to the region shows no consistent pattern of either glacial or interglacial maxima, (2) the accumulation of particulate Fe is closely related to the accumulation of terrigenous matter (linear r2 = 0.81–0.98), (3) there are no coherent spectral relationships between Fe input and glacial periodicity (i.e., δ18O) in any of the orbital frequency bands, (4) the linear and cross‐spectral correlations between Fe or eolian input and CaCO3 concentration are most commonly the strongest observed relationships between Fe and any biogenic component, yet indicate a largely inverse pattern, with higher Fe being associated with low CaCO3, (5) there is no consistent linear r2 correlation or spectral coherence between the accumulation of Fe and that of CaCO3, Corg, or opal. Thus in total there is no relationship between terrigenous Fe input and sedimentary sequestering of carbon. Additionally, although we cannot specifically address the potential for changes in solubility of the terrigenous fraction that may be driven by a terrigenous compositional change, the Fe/Ti ratio (which monitors first‐order mineralogic changes) records only slight variations that also are linearly and spectrally unrelated to glacial periodicity, the bulk Fe flux, and the accumulation of any biogenic component. Finally, we find that the paleoceanographic flux of Fe is several order‐of‐magnitudes larger than modern observations of eolian Fe input, suggesting that the long‐term importance of Fe input by dust storms (which deliver Fe on the order of the sedimentary burial) may be underestimated. The removal of particulate terrigenous Fe from the recently discovered source within the Equatorial Undercurrent, however, remains unquantified and may also prove significant

Climate response to the 8.2 ka event in coastal California

A fast-growing stalagmite from the central California coast provides a high-resolution record of climatic changes synchronous with global perturbations resulting from the catastrophic drainage of proglacial Lake Agassiz at ca. 8.2 ka. High frequency, large amplitude variations in carbon isotopes during the 8.2 ka event, coupled with pulsed increases in phosphorus concentrations, indicate more frequent or intense winter storms on the California coast. Decreased magnesium-calcium ratios point toward a sustained increase in effective moisture during the event, however the magnitude of change in Mg/Ca suggests this event was not as pronounced on the western North American coast as anomalies seen in the high northern latitudes and monsoon-influenced areas. Nevertheless, shifts in the White Moon Cave record that are synchronous within age uncertainties with cooling of Greenland, and changes in global monsoon systems, suggest rapid changes in atmospheric circulation occurred in response to freshwater input and associated cooling in the North Atlantic region. Our record is consistent with intensification of the Pacific winter storm track in response to North Atlantic freshwater forcing, a mechanism suggested by simulations of the last deglaciation, and indicates this intensification led to increases in precipitation and infiltration along the California coast during the Holocene

PD-0283: 4D dose accumulation for dose painting by numbers for lung cancer

In conventional radiotherapy of locally advanced lung cancer (LALC) doses levels are homogeneously delivered to the entire PTV, whereat dose escalation is restricted by normal tissue toxicity. Several studies have shown the geometrical correlation between high FDG uptake in a PET scan and tumour recurrence. This is the rationale for FDG-based local dose escalation, e.g. by dose prescription on the voxel values of a PET scan – dose painting by numbers (DPBN). The aim of this study is to investigate the robustness of the DPBN plans against tumour motio

Plasmas and Controlled Nuclear Fusion

Contains reports on three research projects.U. S. Atomic Energy Commission (Contract AT(30-1)-3980

Data report : spectral reflectance observations from recovered sediments

Sediment spectral reflectance measurements were generated aboard the JOIDES Resolution during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 162 shipboard operations. The large size of the raw data set (over 1.3 gigabytes) and limited computer hard disk storage space precluded detailed analysis of the data at sea, although broad band averages were used as aids in developing splices and determining lithologic boundaries. This data report describes the methods used to collect these data and their shipboard and postcruise processing. These initial results provide the basis for further postcruise research

Environmental control of living symbiotic and asymbiotic foraminifera of the California Current

Plankton tows from the northern California Current constrain biological and physical influences on living planktonic foraminifera. In this region, the dominant factors controlling the size and distribution of symbiotic and asymbiotic species are light and food. Food decreases offshore. Light, needed for symbiont photosynthesis, increases offshore as water turbidity lessens. Asymbiotic foraminifera (e.g., right-coiling Neogloboquadrina pachyderma, Globigerina quinqueloba, and Globigerina bulloides), which survive by grazing, dominate the coastal fauna. The most abundant of these species, right-coiling Neogloboquadrina pachyderma, did not change in size in response to increasing food. Species that benefit from symbiont photosynthesis (Orbulina universa, Neogloboquadrina dutertrei, Globigerinoides ruber, and Globigerinita glutinata) dominate the offshore fauna. Individuals of these species are rare and have smaller shells in turbid waters where light is limited. G. ruber, which is near its thermal tolerance limit of ≈14°C, is the only species to demonstrate a clear temperature response. Although temperature may control a foramimferal species distribution near the limits of its thermal tolerance, food and light appear to provide the primary control under more favorable thermal conditions. We infer that gradients in food and light can result in quantifiable sedimentary patterns related to oceanic productivity through changes in plankton biomass and turbidity.Copyright 1995 by the American Geophysical Union