Fonned and Refonned: What God Effects through the Liturgical Assembly of Christians

(Excerpt) It is a privilege to be invited to offer a keynote address to the Institute of Liturgical Studies, where so much serious reflection and energy for the renewal and study of Christian worship has been generated. As will become clear to you almost immediately, keynote today does not mean key in the sense of offering the key concept that is needed to unlock all subsequent deliberation on the important topic of forming Christians. In my case, key refers more frankly and realistically to the indispensable need to start somewhere by opening the door to subsequent work in the institute-with its speakers, its group sessions and workshops, and its liturgies. In a real sense what is needed at this year\u27s institute is not so much a key but a whole ring of keys. We who gather build on the two previous years\u27 work on worship, culture, and catholicity. Having explored the tensions between worship and culture in 1997, and the eschatological dimensions of those relationships in 1998, the institute this year turns to a moment of advocacy for the indispensable task of forming Christians

Transformed and Transforming: What God Effects through the Presence of Christians in the World

(Excerpt) On the model of mystagogy: remember your experience last night at the vigil, please, and recall these words from the eucharistic prayer: God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength; for pardon only and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ that we may worthily serve the world in his name.\u27 And from Welcome to Christ: Dear Christian friends: Baptized into the priesthood of Christ, we are all called by the Holy Spirit to offer ourselves to the Lord of all creation in thanksgiving for all that God has done and continues to do fur us. It is our privilege to affirm those who are endeavoring to carry out their vocation as Christians in the world.

Problems with Characterizing the Protostome-Deuterostome Ancestor

Since Darwin’s time, the origins and relationships of the bilaterian animals have remained unsolved problems in historical biology (Conway Morris 2000). One of the central difficulties is characterizing the common ancestor of the protostomes and deuterostomes. We argue that an unresolved conceptual puzzle has plagued the many attempts to describe this Urbilaterian, or, in Erwin and Davidson’s (2002) terminology, the protostome-deuterostome ancestor (PDA). Any organism sophisticated enough to be a realistic candidate for the PDA, with such characters as an anterior-posterior axis, gut, and sensory organs, must itself have been constructed by a developmental process, or by what we term an ontogenetic network (Ross and Nelson 2002). But the more biologically plausible the PDA becomes, as a functioning organism within a population of other such organisms, the more it will tend to “pull” (in its characters) towards one or another of the known bilaterian groups. As this happens, and the organism loses its descriptive generality, it will cease to be a good candidate Urbilaterian

Extended Water Quality Monitoring of the Lincoln Lake Watershed

For seven years, the Lincoln Lake (Moores Creek and Beatty Branch) watershed was monitored for improvements in water quality resulting from agricultural best management practices (BMP) implemented to reduce nutrient transport. During the first three years of monitoring (1991 to 1994), nitrogen transport declined significantly (Edwards et al., 1994, 1996, and 1997) under both base and storm flow conditions. This decline in nitrogen transport was again observed in the three-year period following 1994 (Vendrell et al. 1998). This monitoring effort has demonstrated that water quality bas improved in the Lincoln Lake watershed. However, since the nitrogen transport continued to decline and there was some indication that phosphorus may begin to decline, monitoring was extended for another year (1998)

Impact of work values and ethics on citizenship and task performance in local and foreign invested firms: a test in a developing country context

This study examines the impact of work values and individual characteristics on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and task performance (TP). A theoretical foundation was developed in order to use work values and ethics as antecedents of OCB. Using five work related values orientations and 416 responses from Sri Lankan manufacturing sector employees, it is found that gender, employment category, and level of education influence citizenship performance. Importantly, the impact of work values on OCB is found to be more significant than that of demographic factors, with three dimensions (work norms, work ethics, and intrinsic values) found to be significant in influencing OCB. Differences between foreign invested firms and local firms are also found with regard to the impact of demographic factors and work values on OCB. Overall, the study contributes to theories and application of work values and OCB

Synthesis and characterisation of an N-heterocyclic carbene with spatially-defined steric impact

The synthesis and co-ordination chemistry of a new ‘bulky yet flexible’ N-heterocyclic carbene (“IPaul”) is reported. This carbene has spatially-defined steric impact; steric maps show that two quadrants are very bulky while the other two are quite open. The electronic properties of this carbene are very similar to those of other 1,3-diarylimidazol-2-ylidenes. Copper, silver, iridium, and nickel complexes of the new ligand have been prepared. In solution, the ligand adopts two different conformations, while X-ray crystallographic analyses of the transition metal complexes suggest that the syn-conformer is preferred in the solid state due to intermolecular interactions. The copper complex of this new ligand has been shown to be highly-active in the hydrosilylation of carbonyl compounds, when compared to the analogous IPr, IMes, IPr* and IPr*OMe complexes

Comparative growth and static allometry in the genus Chlorocebus

Characterizing variation in growth across populations is critical to understanding multiple aspects of development in primates, including within-taxon developmental plasticity and the evolution of life history patterns. Growth in wild primates has often been reported and directly compared across larger taxonomic groups and within social groups, but comparisons are rarely investigated across widely dispersed populations of a single taxon. With the Vervet Phenome-Genome Project and the International Vervet Research Consortium, we trapped 936 vervet monkeys of all ages representing three populations (Kenyan pygerythrus, South African pygerythrus, and sabaeus from St. Kitts & Nevis). We gathered 10 different body measurements from each including mass, body breadth and length, segmental limb lengths, and chest circumference. To gain a better understanding of how ontogenetic patterns vary in these populations, we calculated bivariate allometry coefficients, derived using PCA on log-transformed and z-standardized trait values, and compared them to isometric vector coefficients. Within all population samples, around weaning age most traits showed a negative allometric relationship to body length. As each population ages, however, distinct patterns emerge, showing population differences in onset and intensity of growth among traits. In concordance with other analyses on growth in these populations, our results suggest that there exist relative differences in patterns of growth between Chlorocebus populations, further suggesting selection for unique developmental pathways in each

Curvature as an external field in mechanical antiferromagnets

A puckered sheet is a freestanding crystalline membrane with an embedded array of bistable buckled units. Recent work has shown that the bistable units behave like spins in a two-dimensional compressible Ising antiferromagnet with, however, a coupling to flexural phonons. At finite temperature, this purely mechanical system displays Ising-like phase transitions, which drive anomalous thermal expansion. Here, we show that geometry can be used to control phase behavior: curvature produces a radius-dependent "external field" that encourages alignment between neighboring "spins," disrupting the ordered checkerboard ground state of anti-aligned neighbors. The effective field strength scales as the inverse of the radius of curvature. We identify this effective field theoretically with both a discrete real space model and a nonlinear continuum elastic model. We then present molecular dynamics simulations of puckered sheets in cylindrical geometries at zero and finite temperature, probing the influence of curvature on the stability of configurations and phase transitions. Our work demonstrates how curvature and temperature can be used to design and operate a responsive and tunable metamaterial at either the macroscale or nanoscale.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure

Greening the Grassroots: Rethinking African Conserva-tion Funding

The purpose of this report is to document these issues around existing funding practices in the conservation field in Africa, focusing on both challenges and emerging solutions. Through collecting feedback and insights from both African civil society organizations (CSOs) and funders, the report seeks to shed light on the key barriers and challenges that both groups face and to develop recommendations for ways to improve funding practices. The report thus provides greater empirical evidence for getting more and better funding into local hands at the point of impact