Ekoji Buddhist Sangha

Student perspectives on worship services from Instructor Jennifer Garvin-Sanchez\u27s Religious Studies 108 Human Spirituality course at Virginia Commonwealth University

Kierkegaard on Truth

Many philosophers believe in three types of truth and all of them are considered objective: correspondence, coherence and pragmatist. Objective knowledge “can designate a knowledge-claim having, roughly, the status of being fully supported or proven.”i If asked, philosophers often say that they believe in a mixture of two or more of the objective truths because each of the truths has points of weakness. While the objective truths cover much of what is considered to be valid truth, they all leave something out, subjective truth. Subjective truth is “a judgment or belief’ “that is compelling for some rational beings (subjects) but not compelling for others.”ii Soren Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to promote a form of subjective truth. It fills the holes that objective truth cannot cover. While objective truth is the more common belief, objective theories are limited to factual, provable truths and subjective truth is necessary to have a full idea of what counts as traditional and personal truth. This thesis will define objective truth and Kierkegaard’s subjective truth in order to argue that a subjective truth and subjective knowledge are necessary in order to have a complete understanding of knowledge and truth

X-ray scattering studies of compound semiconductors

In this thesis, techniques of high resolution x-ray diffraction, topography and grazing incidence reflectivity have been employed in order to gain information on compound semiconductors. A recent growth technique. Vertical Gradient Freeze (VGF), has been investigated for 2" InP wafers, and been found to produce virtually dislocation- free crystals. In the one wafer where dislocations have been imaged, they have a density of ~200cm(^-2), with Burgers vectors lying in the plane of the wafer. This is in contrast to topographs of Liquid Encapsulated Czochralski (LEG) InP, where a dislocation density of up to 6.10'(^4)cm(^-2) was observed at the wafer periphery. No growth striations were observed in VGF samples, implying a planar solid-melt interface. VGF GaAs wafers are seen to be virtually dislocation free when Si doped, have dislocation densities of 900cm(^-2) when undoped and 1200cm(^-2) when Zn doped. Triple axis diffraction measurements showed a variation in tilts between/samples, but no strain variation. The tilt variation was attributed to the polishing process. Asymmetric scans showed a variation in strain at high tilts. These data have been used to form a model for the crystal surface: mosaic blocks of perfect crystal surrounded by low angle boundaries consisting of rows of edge dislocations. During the polishing process, these blocks are physically rotated, evidence for which is supplied from analysis of the specular part of reflectivity scans. Specular and diffuse reflectivity scans on InP substrates have been simulated using the Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWBA). In all cases a 30Å thick oxide layer was identified on the sample surface. In order to obtain a good simulation for transverse scans at two values of q(_z), it was necessary to include a grading in electron density at the top surface. Epitaxial layers of Hg(_1-x)Mn(_x)Te (MMT) grown by the Interdiffused Multilayer Process (IMP) on GaAs with a CdTe buffer layer have been characterised using double and triple axis diffraction. Although reasonable compositional uniformity was observed across the wafers (from 0.3%mm(^-1)), dynamical simulations of pseudo-triple axis scans showed a grading in composition with depth. It was observed that the crystalline perfection deteriorated with increased Mn fraction. The MMT and CdTe layers were almost fully relaxed, and were found to have dislocation densities of l0(^7)-l0(^9)cm(^-2). In one sample the presence of zinc blende MnTe was established using double axis diffraction. Finally, the high intensity of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) has been exploited in order to topograph highly absorbing materials. The effect of heater failure in the growth of GaAs in space has been shown to produce high levels of strain and twinning. It has also been shown topographically that contact with the crucible during the growth of GaInSb from the melt leads to increased strain, so de-wetting phenomena improve crystalline growth

What We Dreamed To Become

For my honors thesis, I created a documentary film about my experience in India this past summer. What We Dreamed To Become depicts the journey of two people of the same African heritage: Dr. Pashington Obeng, an African Studies Professor at Harvard, and a native of Ghana; and a young Siddi boy named Budhesab Hussein. The Siddis are an Indian ethnic group descended from African slaves. Pash has worked extensively with the Siddis for more than a decade, and hopes to create self-sufficiency within the group. The young Budhesab has severe vision problems, and happens to join Pash on a trip to the eye doctors. In addition to his hope to receive proper medical attention, Budhesab also aspires to be a singer. Despite a disappointing diagnosis at the end of the film, both people are able to achieve their own form of self-actualization

Extracellular electrophysiology with close-packed recording sites: spike sorting and characterization

Advances in recording technologies now allow us to record populations of neurons simultaneously, data necessary to understand the network dynamics of the brain. Extracellular probes are fabricated with ever greater numbers of recording sites to capture the activity of increasing numbers of neurons. However, the utility of this extracellular data is limited by an initial analysis step, spike sorting, that extracts the activity patterns of individual neurons from the extracellular traces. Commonly used spike sorting methods require manual processing that limits their scalability, and errors can bias downstream analyses. Leveraging the replication of the activity from a single neuron on nearby recording sites, we designed a spike sorting method consisting of three primary steps: (1) a blind source separation algorithm to estimate the underlying source components, (2) a spike detection algorithm to find the set of spikes from each component best separated from background activity and (3) a classifier to evaluate if a set of spikes came from one individual neuron. To assess the accuracy of our method, we simulated multi-electrode array data that encompass many of the realistic variations and the sources of noise in in vivo neural data. Our method was able to extract individual simulated neurons in an automated fashion without any errors in spike assignment. Further, the number of neurons extracted increased as we increased recording site count and density. To evaluate our method in vivo, we performed both extracellular recording with our close-packed probes and a co-localized patch clamp recording, directly measuring one neuron’s ground truth set of spikes. Using this in vivo data we found that when our spike sorting method extracted the patched neuron, the spike assignment error rates were at the low end of reported error rates, and that our errors were frequently the result of failed spike detection during bursts where spike amplitude decreased into the noise. We used our in vivo data to characterize the extracellular recordings of burst activity and more generally what an extracellular electrode records. With this knowledge, we updated our spike detector to capture more burst spikes and improved our classifier based on our characterizations

Patient Experience Rounds (PER): Real-time feedback to improve the patient experience and quality of care

While patient feedback is critical to improving the patient experience and clinical care, we are currently limited in our ability to collect feedback in real-time from hospitalized patients. This paper describes our experience and outcomes implementing Patient Experience Rounds (PER). Our model uses trained former patients or family members as volunteers to collect feedback in real-time. Through this feedback, we were able to identify areas for improvement, make adjustments in the moment, and provide targeted feedback to providers. A total of 321 patient encounters were recorded by eight PER advisors. Nursing staff received the highest percentage of positive comments. 49% of patients offered a special mention to recognize a staff member. 33% of patients offered a comment in response to the question, “What is one thing that would improve your experience.” In 16% of encounters, the advisor identified an issue or concern that required near-term follow up. This work has the potential to improve the patient experience and may be beneficial to hospitals seeking novel methods for rapidly improving the patient experience. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Patient, Family & Community Engagement lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens

Great Big Hairy Bees! Regulating the European Bumblebee, Bombus Terrestris L. What does it say about the Precautionary Principle?

The previous Commonwealth Minister for the Environment, Mr Garrett, recently rejected a request to allow the importation of live bumblebees (Bombus terrestris L.) to mainland Australia. New South Wales and Victoria had already listed the introduction of bumblebees as, respectively, a key threatening process and a potentially threatening process. The Commonwealth, however, had previously declined an application to list the introduction of bumblebees as a key threatening process, although its Threatened Species Scientific Committee urged ‘that extreme caution be shown in considering any proposal to introduce this species to the mainland.’ The potential threat from bumblebees would appear to beg the questions posed by the precautionary principle. Would the presence of bumblebees to mainland Australia pose a threat of serious or irreversible environmental damage? Should a lack of full scientific certainty be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation? This paper considers the role of the precautionary principle in regulatory approaches to the bumblebee. It seeks to establish the application of the precautionary principle to this particular potential environmental threat, including its relationship to the principle of conservation of biological diversity. It concludes that, despite widespread adoption of the precautionary principle in policy, legislation and case law in Australia, its impact on regulating bumblebees has not been consistent

Great Big Hairy Bees! Regulating the European Bumblebee, Bombus Terrestris L. What does it say about the Precautionary Principle?

The previous Commonwealth Minister for the Environment, Mr Garrett, recently rejected a request to allow the importation of live bumblebees (Bombus terrestris L.) to mainland Australia. New South Wales and Victoria had already listed the introduction of bumblebees as, respectively, a key threatening process and a potentially threatening process. The Commonwealth, however, had previously declined an application to list the introduction of bumblebees as a key threatening process, although its Threatened Species Scientific Committee urged ‘that extreme caution be shown in considering any proposal to introduce this species to the mainland.’ The potential threat from bumblebees would appear to beg the questions posed by the precautionary principle. Would the presence of bumblebees to mainland Australia pose a threat of serious or irreversible environmental damage? Should a lack of full scientific certainty be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation? This paper considers the role of the precautionary principle in regulatory approaches to the bumblebee. It seeks to establish the application of the precautionary principle to this particular potential environmental threat, including its relationship to the principle of conservation of biological diversity. It concludes that, despite widespread adoption of the precautionary principle in policy, legislation and case law in Australia, its impact on regulating bumblebees has not been consistent