An Analysis of a Special Cheese Promotion Program: Houston, Texas

Report for American Dairy Association of AMPICheese, Promotion, Houston, Texas, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

Pastoral Leadership for the Small, Rural Church: the Second Career Pastor

Due to financial and demographic factors plus a shortage of qualified candidates, small, rural churches often struggle to secure and retain pastoral leadership. An examination of these problems from the perspective of the church and that of pastoral candidates reveals the remoteness of location among small, rural churches creates an inability to attract candidates. Faced with college loan indebtedness, young growing families, and the need for full employment for spouses, candidates feel unable to accept a call from a small, rural church. The dissertation reviews the origins of the church, the historical prevalence of the small, rural church, and the experience of the American church. The characteristics of small, rural churches are outlined and contrasted with those of large, urban churches. Then, the expectations small, rural churches have for pastoral leadership are considered. To illustrate the components of the problem, the pastoral leadership challenges of the fictitious Augusta Freedom Church are described throughout the paper. This church is a composite of several churches the author has known and observed. The contention expressed in the dissertation is that second career candidates, retired early from previous work, inspired and able to serve, can provide stable full-time pastoral leadership for small, rural churches. The paper examines other options used by small, rural churches, especially the bi-vocational pastor. What becomes clear is that small, rural churches can choose some form of part-time pastoral leadership or call a young Bible college or seminary graduate and pay these recent graduates what is actually a part-time wage. Both approaches tend to exacerbate the short tenure many small, rural churches currently face. xii How can small, rural churches recruit and retain strong pastoral leadership? The intention of the paper addresses this question and offers a solution to reduce the number of unfilled pastoral leadership vacancies among small, rural churches

Method and apparatus for power plant simulation and optimization

A system for simulating and optimizing a powerhouse designed to furnish electrical power to a process plant which incorporates a plurality of units for simulating operation of the individual components of the powerhouse, and for calculating the cost of operation of the system as a whole, including the cost of fuel for the powerhouse components and the cost of purchased power needed to satisfy the power demand of the process plant beyond the capacity of the powerhouse. An adaptive search routine varies all of the operative parameters of the powerhouse, on a random basis, and repeats the simulation in order to identify a combination of parameters which represents a lower cost solution. The range of random variation is reduced, as lower cost solutions are not found within a given number of repetitions, in order to identify a precise convergence on the optimum solution. The procedure may be restarted, and repeated many times, with the range of variation each time initially at maximum, in order to insure the identification of the global optimum

Taylorism 2.0: Gamification, Scientific Management and the Capitalist Appropriation of Play

By making work seem more like leisure time, gamification and corporate training games serve as a mechanism for solving a range of problems and, significantly, of increasing productivity. This piece examines the implications of gamification as a means of productivity gains that extend Frederick Winslow Taylor\u27s principles of scientific management, or Taylorism. Relying on measurement and observation as a mechanism to collapse the domains of labour and leisure for the benefit of businesses (rather than for the benefit or fulfilment of workers), gamification potentially subjugates all time into productive time, even as business leaders use games to mask all labour as something to be enjoyed. In so doing, this study argues, the agency of individuals - whether worker or player - becomes subject to the rationalized nature of production. This rationalization changes the nature of play, making it a duty rather than a choice, a routine rather than a process of exploration. Taken too far or used unthinkingly, it renders Huizinga\u27s magic circle into one more regulated office cubicle

A comparative study of the involvement of dropouts and graduates in high school activities

In recent years, schools have been faced with an increasingly burdensome .financial strain as prices for fuel and supplies climb, maintenance costs grow, teacher associations demand better salaries and benefits for their members, and governmental regulations multiply. These .increased costs, combined with decreasing income due to declining enrollments, have severely pinched public schools\u27 ability to continue to provide current programs. On top of this, schools confront a depressed economy and taxpayer cries for economic accountability. Schools find themselves increasingly forced to consider the possibility of eliminating programs

Preface: A Community of Players

The articles in this section were initially developed for and presented at the 2010 conference of the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (http://swtxpca.org/). The conference, which began as a small, regional meeting in the 1970s, has since become international in scope, with upwards of a thousand presentations delivered by participants from dozens of countries. Yet despite its size, the conference maintains a friendly, casual, and intellectually robust atmosphere

Disruptive Technologies with Applications in Airline & Marine and Defense Industries

Disruptive Technologies With Applications in Airline, Marine, Defense Industries is our fifth textbook in a series covering the world of Unmanned Vehicle Systems Applications & Operations On Air, Sea, and Land. The authors have expanded their purview beyond UAS / CUAS / UUV systems that we have written extensively about in our previous four textbooks. Our new title shows our concern for the emergence of Disruptive Technologies and how they apply to the Airline, Marine and Defense industries. Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized, such that they are figuratively emerging into prominence from a background of nonexistence or obscurity. A Disruptive technology is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry.That is what our book is about. The authors think we have found technology trends that will replace the status quo or disrupt the conventional technology paradigms.The authors have collaborated to write some explosive chapters in Book 5:Advances in Automation & Human Machine Interface; Social Media as a Battleground in Information Warfare (IW); Robust cyber-security alterative / replacement for the popular Blockchain Algorithm and a clean solution for Ransomware; Advanced sensor technologies that are used by UUVs for munitions characterization, assessment, and classification and counter hostile use of UUVs against U.S. capital assets in the South China Seas. Challenged the status quo and debunked the climate change fraud with verifiable facts; Explodes our minds with nightmare technologies that if they come to fruition may do more harm than good; Propulsion and Fuels: Disruptive Technologies for Submersible Craft Including UUVs; Challenge the ammunition industry by grassroots use of recycled metals; Changing landscape of UAS regulations and drone privacy; and finally, Detailing Bioterrorism Risks, Biodefense, Biological Threat Agents, and the need for advanced sensors to detect these attacks.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1038/thumbnail.jp

The application of remote sensing to the inventory of white pine (Pinus strobus L.) in eastern Ohio

Rural Development Through Forestry FundThe University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems technology were successfully used to inventory white pine resources in a 21-county area in eastern Ohio. The inventory required less labor and time than traditional forest inventory techniques and produced acreage and volume estimates with standard errors substantially below those of existing inventories. Conifer stands within the 21-county study area were identified on 1994 Landstat 5 Thematic Mapper images using a maximum likelihood classification algorithm in ERDAS IMAGINE. The validity of the conifer classification; the proportion of white pine; and the area, volume, and other stand characteristics were evaluated by surveys. Within the 21-county study area, 36,454 acres of conifers were identified, 24,147 acres of which were white pine containing 570.5 million board-feet volume. White pine stands in the study area averaged 9.8 acres in size; 37 years in age; 11.7 inches average diameter at breast height; 162 square feet basal area; 23,625 board feet of volume; and had a 35-year white pine site index of 76 feet. These results indicate that Ohio's white pine resource is considerably larger and may have substantially greater economic development potential than previous inventories suggested.School of Natural ResourcesUnited States Department of Agriculture Forest Servic