A Strategy for Building Spiritual Resilience in Marines Using the Twenty-Third Psalm

This ministry focus paper develops a strategy for building spiritual resilience in Marines affected by combat and operational stress. It employs a spiritual discipline training seminar designed to build the resilience attributes of contentment, peace, restoration, security, grace, and joy as illustrated in the twenty-third Psalm. The paper argues that Marines who understand and apply six selected spiritual disciplines will experience a measurable decrease in combat stress symptoms and a measurable increase in spiritual resilience. Furthermore, this spiritual resilience will provide a measure of healing from the destructive effects of current combat stress exposure and protect them against the effects of future exposure to combat stress. The thesis was tested on Marines assigned to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Based on resilience research and a thorough examination of Scripture, this paper presents a theology of spiritual resilience with specific focus on the six spiritual resilience attributes of Psalm 23. These attributes have been paired with specific spiritual disciplines selected to develop the attributes based on theological conclusions drawn from this study. The disciplines include Scripture study for building contentment, meditation for developing peace, confession that leads to restoration, prayer that fosters security, service that inspires grace, and celebration that elicits joy. This strategy has employed these disciplines in a two-day seminar that includes pre-seminar and post-seminar assessments in order to analyze the effects of this approach. This paper concludes that the practice of spiritual disciplines reduces the symptoms of combat and operational stress and increases spiritual resilience. However, additional research may be required to determine the long-term effectiveness of this strategy particularly the preventative aspect of this approach for those in combat. Based on this study, the project has potential for wider application beyond the military community to civilian churches, particularly those who offer ministry to former military members and their families. Content Reader: Dr. Jeff Saville, DMi

PENGARUH USER EXPERIENCE TERHADAP KEPUASAN PENGGUNA APLIKASI ZOOM CLOUD MEETING PADA MAHASISWA SAAT PANDEMI COVID-19

Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mengetahui pengaruh user experience terhadap kepuasan pengguna aplikasi Zoom Cloud Meeting pada mahasiswa saat pandemi COVID-19. Hipotesis pada penelitian ini adalah terdapat pengaruh antara user experience terhadap kepuasan pengguna aplikasi Zoom Cloud Meeting pada mahasiswa saat pandemi COVID-19. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode kuantitatif. Sampel yang digunakan pada penelitian ini berjumlah 305 responden. Sampel dipilih dengan menggunakan teknik nonprobability sampling. Penelitian ini menggunakan skala EUCS dan juga Google HEART Frameworks yang telah melalui validitas isi dengan penilaian ahli psikologi. Teknik analisis data menggunakan uji regresi linear sederhana melalui SPSS 24.0, dengan hasil hipotesis F= 593,199 dan nilai signifikansi p= 0,000 (p < 0,05) yang berarti user experience cukup signifikan dalam mempengaruhi kepuasan para pengguna aplikasi Zoom Cloud Meeting pada mahasiswa di DKI Jakarta. Hasil penelitian ini sesuai dengan hipotesis yang diajukan, dimana user experience yang rendah dapat menurunkan kepuasan pengguna. Hasil dari kategorisasi ordinal menunjukan user experience yang masuk dalam kategori baik dan kepuasan pengguna masuk dalam kategori puas. This study was conducted to determine the effect of user experience on user satisfaction of the Zoom Cloud Meeting application on students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hypothesis in this study is that there is an influence between user experience toward user satisfaction of the Zoom Cloud Meeting application for students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research method used in this study is a quantitative method. The sample used in this study amounted to 305 respondents. The sample was selected using a non-probability sampling technique. This study uses the EUCS scale and also the Google HEART Frameworks which have been through content validity with the assessment of psychologists. The data analysis technique uses a simple linear regression test through SPSS 24.0, with the results of the hypothesis F = 593.199 and a significance value of p = 0.000 (p <0.05) which means that user experience is quite significant in influencing the satisfaction of Zoom Cloud Meeting application users on students in Jakarta. The results of this study are in accordance with the proposed hypothesis, where low level of user experience can reduce user satisfaction. The results of the ordinal categorization show that user experience is in the good category and user satisfaction is in the satisfied category

The role of institutions as actors influencing Uganda’s cassava sector

We aim at mapping out a detailed framework that reveals the proportionate flow of cassava and its products along the value chain (VC). Furthermore, we aim at establishing the role of institutions and the linkages between institutions and other VC actors that influence the cassava VC in Uganda. We use both primary and secondary data obtained from four regions in Uganda. Results show that farmers, processors, transporters, traders, consumers and institutions are the major actors. There are four categories of institutions, viz, government, non-government, community based organisations and international agencies. Roles performed by institutions include: development and enforcement of policies, Research and Development (RD), capacity building, and creation of market access linkages for cassava and its products. Findings reveal that there is no clear nexus and no coordination among farmers/producers, processors, traders, transporters and consumers. However, institutions are well coordinated and play various roles along the VC to influence the dynamics of actors. Policy-wise it is important to establish strong private-public partnerships to bridge the impaired linkages between the actors (farmers/producers, processors, traders, transporters, and consumers) and institutions. Strong partnerships are envisaged to reduce the associated transaction costs amongst the actors

Pedestrian risk perception of marked and unmarked crosswalks in Kumasi, Ghana

Pedestrians constitute the majority of all urban road crashes in Ghana, yet there is inadequate supply of pedestrian facilities, and road-user behaviours have been cited as a major contributing factor to the high crash rates. This study seeks to investigate how pedestrians perceive risk at different crosswalks. The study adopted a mixed-method approach, where secondary crash data for 30 selected crosswalks was correlated with corresponding primary data that consisted of pedestrian surveys. The crash data from 2011 through 2014 was obtained from the database of the Building and Road Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-BRRI) in Kumasi, and supplemented with a survey of 900 pedestrians. The results revealed that pedestrians perceived marked crosswalks to be safer than unmarked crosswalks, but this is contrary to the crash records. Also, most of the crashes were registered for crosswalks located across multilane highways. In light of these results, it is recommended that the safety features of crosswalks be re-examined, while restricting indiscriminate crossing by channelling pedestrians to designated protected crossing points, installing traffic control devices and other speed-calming devices at identified high-risk crosswalks, and signalising crosswalks that are located on multilane roads. It is also recommended to intensify road safety campaigns and public education on safe road-crossing practices, while enforcing traffic safety laws to influence road-user behaviours

The State of Global Giving by U.S. Foundations: 2022 Edition

For 25 years, the Council on Foundations and Candid have partnered on studies of globally focused giving by U.S. foundations. The new edition of The State of Global Giving by U.S. Foundations dives into 2016-2019 data to provide the latest perspective on how the nation's foundations are supporting critical efforts to improve health outcomes, address climate change, offer access to education, ensure human rights, and engage with a wide array of other global priorities. Through interviews with a selection of global funders, Global Giving also offers insights on how foundations are addressing the critical challenges of our time and where they see signs of optimism and opportunity going forward.Key Report FindingsU.S. private and community foundations included in Candid's Foundation 1000 dataset awarded globally focused grants totaling $8 billion in 2019—close to four times the approximately$2.2 billion awarded in 2002.Health accounted for 49 percent of global grant dollars.The largest shares of funding focused on the Sub-Saharan Africa (25.1%) and Asia & Pacific (17.7%) regions.Among the many issue areas supported by foundations, human rights has realized the fastest growth in global support in recent years. In the 2016-2019 period, human rights reached 11 percent of global foundation grant dollars, up from less than 7 percent in the 2011-2015 period.Roughly 13 percent of U.S. foundations' global grant dollars went directly to organizations based in the country where programs were implemented in the 2016-2019 period, up marginally from approximately 12 percent in the 2011-2015 period.Funding by Foundation 1000 foundations for efforts to counter or mitigate the impact of climate change in the United States and globally totaled nearly $1.8 billion in the 2016-2019 period, up from$1.3 billion in the 2011-2015 period.The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation accounted for 44% of global giving by U.S. foundations from 2016 to 2019

The Use of Interferon Gamma Inducible Protein 10 as a Potential Biomarker in the Diagnosis of Latent Tuberculosis Infection in Uganda.

BACKGROUND: In the absence of a gold standard for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI), the current tests available for the diagnosis of LTBI are limited by their inability to differentiate between LTBI and active TB disease. We investigated IP-10 as a potential biomarker for LTBI among household contacts exposed to sputum positive active TB cases. METHODS: Active TB cases and contacts were recruited into a cohort with six months' follow-up. Contacts were tested for LTBI using QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube (QFN) assay and the tuberculin skin test (TST). Baseline supernatants from the QFN assay of 237 contacts and 102 active TB cases were analysed for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) specific and mitogen specific IP-10 responses. RESULTS: Contacts with LTBI (QFN+TST+) had the highest MTB specific IP-10 responses at baseline, compared to uninfected contacts (QFN-TST-) p<0.0001; and active cases, p = 0.01. Using a cut-off of 8,239 pg/ml, MTB specific IP-10 was able to diagnose LTBI with a sensitivity of 87.1% (95% CI, 76.2-94.3) and specificity of 90.9% (95% CI, 81.3-96.6). MTB specific to mitogen specific IP-10 ratio was higher in HIV negative active TB cases, compared to HIV negative latently infected contacts, p = 0.0004. Concentrations of MTB specific IP-10 were higher in contacts with TST conversion (negative at baseline, positive at 6-months) than in those that were persistently TST negative, p = 0.001. CONCLUSION: IP-10 performed well in differentiating contacts with either latent or active TB from those who were uninfected but was not able to differentiate LTBI from active disease except when MTB specific to mitogen specific ratios were used in HIV negative adults. In addition, IP-10 had the potential to diagnose 'recent TB infection' in persons classified as having LTBI using the TST. Such individuals with strong IP-10 responses would likely benefit from chemoprophylaxis

Determining the Completeness of the Nimbus Meteorological Data Archive

NASA launched the Nimbus series of meteorological satellites in the 1960s and 70s. These satellites carried instruments for making observations of the Earth in the visible, infrared, ultraviolet, and microwave wavelengths. The original data archive consisted of a combination of digital data written to 7-track computer tapes and on various film media. Many of these data sets are now being migrated from the old media to the GES DISC modern online archive. The process involves recovering the digital data files from tape as well as scanning images of the data from film strips. Some of the challenges of archiving the Nimbus data include the lack of any metadata from these old data sets. Metadata standards and self-describing data files did not exist at that time, and files were written on now obsolete hardware systems and outdated file formats. This requires creating metadata by reading the contents of the old data files. Some digital data files were corrupted over time, or were possibly improperly copied at the time of creation. Thus there are data gaps in the collections. The film strips were stored in boxes and are now being scanned as JPEG-2000 images. The only information describing these images is what was written on them when they were originally created, and sometimes this information is incomplete or missing. We have the ability to cross-reference the scanned images against the digital data files to determine which of these best represents the data set from the various missions, or to see how complete the data sets are. In this presentation we compared data files and scanned images from the Nimbus-2 High-Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) for September 1966 to determine whether the data and images are properly archived with correct metadata

Effect of isoniazid preventive therapy on immune responses to mycobacterium tuberculosis: an open label randomised, controlled, exploratory study.

BACKGROUND: With the renewed emphasis to implement isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) in Sub-Saharan Africa, we investigated the effect of IPT on immunological profiles among household contacts with latent tuberculosis. METHODS: Household contacts of confirmed tuberculosis patients were tested for latent tuberculosis using the QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube (QFN) assay and tuberculin skin test (TST). HIV negative contacts aged above 5 years, positive to both QFN and TST, were randomly assigned to IPT and monthly visits or monthly visits only. QFN culture supernatants from enrolment and six months' follow-up were analysed for M.tb-specific Th1, Th2, Th17, and regulatory cytokines by Luminex assay, and for M.tb-specific IgG antibody concentrations by ELISA. Effects of IPT were assessed as the net cytokine and antibody production at the end of six months. RESULTS: Sixteen percent of contacts investigated (47/291) were randomised to IPT (n = 24) or no IPT (n = 23). After adjusting for baseline cytokine or antibody responses, and for presence of a BCG scar, IPT (compared to no IPT) resulted in a relative decline in M.tb-specific production of IFN gamma (adjusted mean difference at the end of six months (bootstrap 95% confidence interval (CI), p-value) -1488.6 pg/ml ((-2682.5, -294.8), p = 0.01), and IL- 2 (-213.1 pg/ml (-419.2, -7.0), p = 0.04). A similar decline was found in anti-CFP-10 antibody levels (adjusted geometric mean ratio (bootstrap 95% CI), p-value) 0.58 ((0.35, 0.98), p = 0.04). We found no effect on M.tb-specific Th2 or regulatory or Th17 cytokine responses, or on antibody concentrations to PPD and ESAT-6. CONCLUSIONS: IPT led to a decrease in Th1 cytokine production, and also in the anti CFP-10 antibody concentration. This could be secondary to a reduction in mycobacterial burden or as a possible direct effect of isoniazid induced T cell apoptosis, and may have implications for protective immunity following IPT in tuberculosis-endemic countries. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN registry, ISRCTN15705625. Registered on 30(th) September 2015