Context for Confusion: Understanding Babel in the Book of Beginnings

The meaning of the Tower of Babel episode in Genesis 11 proves to be continually elusive for both biblical scholars and pastors. While the results of this momentous event in world history seem obvious, owing to the racial and linguistic diversity present in the world today, the reason for God\u27s judgment over the unified peoples who attempted to build together is far less clear. This has even led some to question the justice and wisdom of God, considering the challenges posed by racial division throughout history. As with most questions of biblical interpretation, however, the key to interpretation lies within the unity of the text itself. The Babel passage stands as the climax to the primeval history section of Genesis and, therefore, relies heavily on the literary themes and motifs which are presented in earlier chapters. Relying on these clues along with supplemental material from the contemporary cultures of the Genesis account, this study will probe the meaning of the Babel narrative in light of man\u27s descending spiral into sin, just before God decisively re-enters history to begin his redemptive master plan

The systematic instability of consumer preferences

Contrary to conventional thinking, research has shown that consumer choice is a motivational and dynamic process based on goals and ‘circumstances’

Of Rats and Brands: A Learning-and-Memory Perspective on Consumer Decisions

Stijn van Osselaer (1971, Ph.D. (Marketing), University of Florida 1998) is Professor of Marketing specializing in Consumer Behavior at the Rotterdam School of Management/Faculteit Bedrijfskunde of Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His research focuses on the study of basic psychological processes involved in consumer decision making. In his inaugural address he argues that even sophisticated patterns of product evaluation and choice can be explained by simple associative learning-and-memory processes similar to those found in rats, dogs, and other animals. He outlines strategic implications for brand management and public policy as well as theoretical implications for the study of human learning and memory. Prior to his appointment at Erasmus University, Van Osselaer was an Assistant and later Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. His research is published in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. He has presented his work at Columbia University, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, INSEAD, the London Business School, Northwestern University, and to many other audiences worldwide.When consumers evaluate or choose products, they rely on what they have learned and can remember about those productsâ characteristics, such as brand names, ingredients, orfeatures. Severalexperimentssuggest that evenrathersophisticatedpatternsofproduct evaluation and choice can be explained by simple associative learning-and-memory processes,which show similarities to those found in rats,dogs,and other animals.Strategic implications for brand management and public policy, theoretical implications for the study of human learning and memory, and directions for future research are outlined

Memory Accessibility and Product Judgment

This section presents abstracts of studies which investigated the effects of accessibility of information in memory on product judgment. The first paper, by Tybout, Stemthal, Malaviya, Bakamitson, and Park, addresses a paradoxical set of results. Prior research suggests that asking consumers to generate multiple reasons to buy a product can have both positive and negative effects on product judgments. The authors investigate the conditions under which these effects occur. Their results show that the effects of generating reasons are moderated by the accessibility of the reasons in memory. When the reasons are highly accessible or inaccessible, asking for more reasons prompts more favorable judgments. Between these extremes in accessibility, asking for more reasons prompts less favorable judgments. The authors argue that these results are driven by the independent operation of two memory processes, one involves using the content of the retrieved information as a basis for judgment, such as that evaluation is based on the diagnosticity of the accessible information, while the other involves monitoring of the retrieval process and then making a judgment based on how easy it is to retrieve the information, such as the evaluation is based on the accessibility of the information. When accessibility of reasons in memory is very low, consumers do not perceive ease of retrieval to be diagnostic of their feelings about a product

Numerical simulations of dwarf galaxy merger trees

We investigate the evolution of dwarf galaxies using N -body/SPH simulations that incorporate their formation histories through merger trees constructed using the ex- tended Press-Schechter formalism. The simulations are computationally cheap and have high spatial resolution. We compare the properties of galaxies with equal final mass but with different merger histories with each other and with those of observed dwarf spheroidals and irregulars. We show that the merger history influences many observable dwarf galaxy proper- ties. We identify two extreme cases that make this influence stand out most clearly: (i) merger trees with one massive progenitor that grows through relatively few mergers and (ii) merger trees with many small progenitors that merge only quite late. At a fixed halo mass, a type (i) tree tends to produce galaxies with larger stellar masses, larger half-light radii, lower central surface brightness, and since fewer potentially an- gular momentum cancelling mergers are required to build up the final galaxy, a higher specific angular momentum, compared with a type (ii) tree. We do not perform full-fledged cosmological simulations and therefore cannot hope to reproduce all observed properties of dwarf galaxies. However, we show that the simulated dwarfs are not unsimilar to real ones.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures, 3 table

Op zoek naar de goede katholiek m/v. Feminisering en masculiniteit in het katholicisme in België sinds de vroegmoderne tijd (ca. 1750-1950)

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Gaseous infall triggering starbursts in simulated dwarf galaxies

Using computer simulations, we explored gaseous infall as a possible explanation for the starburst phase in Blue Compact Dwarf galaxies. We simulate a cloud impact by merging a spherical gas cloud into an isolated dwarf galaxy. We investigated which conditions were favourable for triggering a burst and found that the orbit and the mass of the gas cloud play an important role. We discuss the metallicity, the kinematical properties, the internal dynamics and the gas, stellar and dark matter distribution of the simulations during a starburst. We find that these are in good agreement with observations and depending on the set-up (e.g. rotation of the host galaxy, radius of the gas cloud), our bursting galaxies can have qualitatively very different properties. Our simulations offer insight in how starbursts start and evolve. Based on this, we propose what postburst dwarf galaxies will look like.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS | 16 pages, 16 figure