Codex Sinaiticus as a Window into Early Christian Worship

Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest and most complete New Testament in Greek known to exist. Its two colophons at the end of 2 Esdras and Esther indicate a possible connection with Pamphilus’ famous library at Caesarea in Palestine. Origen was head of a school for catechumens during his days in Alexandria in Egypt and later began a similar school in Caesarea. Pamphilus was Origen’s star pupil and later directed his school in Caesarea. These colophons may connect Sinaiticus with an ancient tradition of early Christian worship and instruction of new converts, possibly exhibited in particular scribal features. These scribal features are primarily located at “two-ways” lists of “virtue and vice” in the New Testament, which were popular methods of instructing the essentials of the faith and are found throughout early Christian literature. These areas in the New Testament (and in the epistle of Barnabas) were emphasized through paragraph ‘lists’ by the scribes of Sinaiticus. These ‘lists’ were most likely recited by the ancient reader in a distinctive way for the audience. It is possible that the audience interacted with the reader as the text was recited. This paper surveys the ancient practice of the public reading of scripture during Christian gatherings and the use of punctuation and lectional marking in manuscripts to aid readers in their task. A possible connection with earlier manuscripts is explored by a cursory examination of a similarity in formatting between Sinaiticus and P46, a second century copy of Paul’s epistles. When taken collectively, though sparse and fragmentary, the evidence suggests that Sinaiticus preserves an ancient practice of Christian instruction located in the unique paragraph ‘lists’ of the “two-ways” theme

What Can Laboratory Experiments Teach Us About Emissions Permit Market Design?

The laboratory provides a test bed to inform many design choices for emissions permit markets. Experiments are sometimes strongly motivated and structured by specific theoretical models and predictions, but in other cases the experiment itself can be the model of the market and regulatory environment. We review specific experimental applications that address design issues for permit auction rules, permit expiration dates and banking, liability rules, and regulatory enforcement.cap-and-trade, auctions, liability, regulation, compliance, banking, Environmental Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Constructing a Virtual Training Laboratory Using Intelligent Agents

This paper reports on the results and experiences of the Trilogy project; a collaborative project concerned with the development of a virtual research laboratory using intelligence agents. This laboratory is designed to support the training of research students in telecommunications traffic engineering. Training research students involves a number of basic activities. They may seek guidance from, or exchange ideas with, more experienced colleagues. High quality academic papers, books and research reports provide a sound basis for developing and maintaining a good understanding of an area of research. Experimental tools enable new ideas to be evaluated, and hypotheses tested. These three components-collaboration, information and experimentation- are central to any research activity, and a good training environment for research should integrate them in a seamless fashion. To this end, we describe the design and implementation of an agent-based virtual laboratory

The black-white education-scaled test-score gap in grades k-7

We measure the black-white achievement gap from kindergarten through seventh grade on an interval scale created by tying each grade/test score combination to average eventual education. After correcting for various sources of test measurement error, some of which are unique to forward-looking scales, we find no racial component in the evolution of the achievement gap through the first eight years of schooling. Further, most, if not all, of the gap can be explained by socioeconomic differences. Our results suggest that the rising racial test gap in previous studies probably reflects excessive measurement error in testing in the early grades.Accepted manuscrip

Obliquities of Kepler Stars: Comparison of Single- and Multiple-Transit Systems

The stellar obliquity of a transiting planetary system can be constrained by combining measurements of the star's rotation period, radius, and projected rotational velocity. Here we present a hierarchical Bayesian technique for recovering the obliquity distribution of a population of transiting planetary systems, and apply it to a sample of 70 Kepler Objects of Interest. With ~95% confidence we find that the obliquities of stars with only a single detected transiting planet are systematically larger than those with multiple detected transiting planets. This suggests that a substantial fraction of Kepler's single-transiting systems represent dynamically hotter, less orderly systems than the "pancake-flat" multiple-transiting systems.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap

Quantum differential operators on the quantum plane

The universal enveloping algebra U(g) of a Lie algebra g acts on its representation ring R through D(R), the ring of differential operators on R. A quantised universal enveloping algebra (or "quantum group") is a deformation of a universal enveloping algebra and acts not through the differential operators of its representation ring but through the quantised differential operators of its representation ring. We present this situation for the quantum group of sl_2.Comment: 18 pages, references added, address change