Fine Arts and Missions: A Pragmatic Application and Implications

Missionaries must raise finances and general awareness of their mission work within the evangelical community. In their attempt to do this, missionaries rarely collaborate with fine artists in their efforts to inform the pastorate and congregants of their missions’ objectives and needs. In this study, a thematic review of relevant literature is combined with an Intrinsic Case Study of several artists, including the Erin— DVD, made by Daniel E. Greene N.A. during his lifetime. Daniel E. Greene, N.A., was one of the world’s foremost painters. An analysis of Mr. Greene’s applicable methodologies for oil painting was investigated. His methodology was applied to several of my paintings. These paintings, which depict the missionaries and landscapes of the places where they are serving, were executed in the representational realist tradition of Greene. The paintings were made into prints, the prints and the originals sold, then the money earned was donated to the missionaries to help with their financial needs

Advancing an Organizational Health Perspective for Insider Threat Prevention and Management

Malicious insiders pose a serious risk to valued organizational assets, including proprietary information, institutional processes, personnel, finances, reputation, and firm connections. Research-based solutions for predicting, detecting, and mitigating insider threats have focused heavily on individual, organizational, and cyber risk factors (Kont et al. 2015; Greitzer et al. 2018). To that end, scholars have increasingly recognized that people’s personalities, motivations, grievances, and work stressors raise the risk of insider threat events, and the corresponding interventional strategies involve cybersecurity and work design practices to safeguard the organization against human error and deviance (Homoliak et al. 2019; Greitzer et al. 2013; Maasberg, Warren, and Beebe 2015). Yet, despite evidence that insider threat events are perpetrated by people situated within a social and organizational context, discussions of insider threat have only started to recognize the importance of socio-organizational protective factors for reducing the occurrence of insider threats (Moore, Gardner, and Rousseau 2022; Whitty 2021). We argue that a healthy organization—an organization whose people, practices, and policies effectively sustain its survival and performance—may be key to preventing and managing insider threats

Dynamic remodelling of synapses can occur in the absence of the parent cell body

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Retraction of nerve terminals is a characteristic feature of development, injury and insult and may herald many neurodegenerative diseases. Although morphological events have been well characterized, we know relatively little about the nature of the underlying cellular machinery. Evidence suggests a strong local component in determining which neuronal branches and synapses are lost, but a greater understanding of this basic neurological process is required. Here we test the hypothesis that nerve terminals are semi-autonomous and able to rapidly respond to local stimuli in the absence of communication with their parent cell body.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We used an isolated preparation consisting of distal peripheral nerve stumps, associated nerve terminals and post-synaptic muscle fibres, maintained in-vitro for up to 3 hrs. In this system synapses are intact but the presynaptic nerve terminal is disconnected from its cell soma. In control preparations synapses were stable for extended periods and did not undergo Wallerian degneration. In contrast, addition of purines triggers rapid changes at synapses. Using fluorescence and electron microscopy we observe ultrastructural and gross morphological events consistent with nerve terminal retraction. We find no evidence of Wallerian or Wallerian-like degeneration in these preparations. Pharmacological experiments implicate pre-synaptic P2X7 receptor subunits as key mediators of these events.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The data presented suggest; first that isolated nerve terminals are able to regulate connectivity independent of signals from the cell body, second that synapses exist in a dynamic state, poised to shift from stability to loss by activating intrinsic mechanisms and molecules, and third that local purines acting at purinergic receptors can trigger these events. A role for ATP receptors in this is not surprising since they are frequently activated during cellular injury, when adenosine tri-phosphate is released from damaged cells. Local control demands that the elements necessary to drive retraction are constitutively present. We hypothesize that pre-existing scaffolds of molecular motors and cytoskeletal proteins could provide the dynamism required to drive such structural changes in nerve terminals in the absence of the cell body.</p

Full-scale testing, production and cost analysis data for the advanced composite stabilizer for Boeing 737 aircraft, volume 2

The development, testing, production activities, and associated costs that were required to produce five-and-one-half advanced-composite stabilizer shipsets for Boeing 737 aircraft are defined and discussed

37. ORIGIN OF SEGREGATION VESICLES IN VOLCANIC ROCKS FROM THE LAU BASIN, LEG 135

ABSTRACT Concentrations of dark-colored, highly vesicular, quench-textured mesostasis occur commonly in volcanic rocks drilled in the Lau Basin during Leg 135. These segregations occur as veins, patches, and vesicle linings in rocks with 49%-54% SiO 2 . The segregations are depleted in Mg, Ca, Al, Se, Ni, and Cr and enriched in Ti, Ba, Y, and Zr compared to the groundmass with which they occur. Many of the segregations are unusually enriched in copper. The elemental variations show that the segregations are residual liquids produced by 12%-55% crystallization of Plagioclase and clinopyroxene, with minor olivine, opaques, or orthopyroxene from the groundmass melt. The liquids forming the segregations are mobilized and emplaced in earlier formed vesicles during the rapid crystallization of the groundmass. The dominant process in this mobilization and emplacement is volatile exsolution from crystallizing melts constrained by a rigid crystalline framework. This exsolution produces significant overpressures within the late-stage melts; the overpressure drives the residual melts through the walls of the older vesicles, along planes of weakness, and into voids. This mechanism is consistent with the occurrence of bimodal vesicle populations in many of the host lavas

Modelling Emergent Patterns of Dynamic Desert Ecosystems

In many desert ecosystems vegetation is both patchy and dynamic: vegetated areas are interspersed with patches of bare ground, and both the positioning and the species composition of the vegetated areas exhibit change through time. These characteristics lead to the emergence of multi-scale patterns in vegetation that arise from complex relationships between plants, soils and transport processes. Previous attempts to probe the causes of spatial complexity and predict responses of desert ecosystems tend to be limited in their focus: models of dynamics have been developed with no consideration of the inherent patchiness in the vegetation, or else models have been developed to generate patterns with no consideration of the dynamics. Here we develop a general modelling framework for the analysis of ecosystem change in deserts that is rooted in the concept of connectivity and is derived from a detailed process-based understanding. We explicitly consider spatial interactions among multiple vegetation types and multiple resources, and our model is formulated to predict responses to a variety of endogenous and exogenous disturbances. The model is implemented in the deserts of the American Southwest both to test hypotheses of the causes of the invasion of woody shrubs, and to test its ability to reproduce 16 observed spatial differences in response to drought in the twentieth century. The model’s performance leads us to argue that vertical and lateral connectivity are key emergent properties of the ecosystem, which both control its behaviour and provide indicators of its state. If this argument is shown to be compatible with field observations, the model presented here will provide a more certain approach towards preventing further degradation of semi-arid grasslands. http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/12-1253.