Heart and soul: Receptive ecumenism as a dynamic development of spiritual ecumenism

Receptive Ecumenism is a fresh ecumenical approach that has immense potential. However, precisely what Receptive Ecumenism is, and how it is significant, remains unclear. This thesis argues that Receptive Ecumenism has the potential to reinvigorate ecumenism because it is a form of Spiritual Ecumenism. To date, no systematic investigation has been undertaken on explicating Receptive Ecumenism in relation to Spiritual Ecumenism. This study investigates Receptive Ecumenism’s development from what we term the Spiritual Ecumenical Movement. We focus on the key themes of interior conversion; ecclesial learning; pneumatology; the ecumenical gift exchange; the affective levels of ecumenical engagement; and the virtues of humility and hope. We draw on the work of key figures, including: Paul Couturier, Yves Congar, Vatican II, Ut Unum Sint, Walter Kasper, and Margaret O’Gara. The introductory chapter addresses the research proposal, literature review, methodology, and the study’s scope and limitations. The next chapter undertakes an in-depth examination of Receptive Ecumenism’s primary source material. Chapter Three investigates the roots of Receptive Ecumenism within the Spiritual Ecumenical Movement, and defines Spiritual Ecumenism’s key features. Next, we give particular attention to the themes of humility and hope as constituting essential virtues within Spiritual and Receptive Ecumenism. The fifth chapter examines the connection between Receptive and Spiritual Ecumenism as complementary. Chapter Six asserts Receptive Ecumenism’s potential and effectiveness, as well as the challenges facing its successful implementation. The conclusion proposes seven critical reflections for Receptive Ecumenism, and areas for further research. The research resulted in two key findings: 1) Receptive Ecumenism is an advanced form of ecumenical engagement, which has the potential to reinvigorate contemporary ecumenism because it is a form of Spiritual Ecumenism; and 2) Ecumenical renewal requires tapping into Spiritual Ecumenism, which is underdeveloped. Ecumenism is not just a theological endeavour, or a practical mission, but is also a spiritual and affective experience, of the heart and soul

Tunable homogeneous kG magnetic field production using permanent magnets

We present a permanent ring magnet arrangement that can achieve a tunable axial magnetic field from 1.80(5) to 2.67(9) kG. The apparatus has been designed to accommodate a cylindrical atomic vapor cell of length 25 mm and diameter 25 mm to lie within the bore of the ring magnets, providing an alternative route for imaging through atomic vapors in large magnetic fields. The measured axial magnetic field has an rms variation of less than 4% over the length of vapor cell, while the calculated field inhomogeneity is less than 5% radially and 12% longitudinally across a cylindrical volume with diameter 20 mm and length 25 mm. The instrument consists of layered concentric off-the-shelf N42 neodymium–iron–boron axially magnetized ring magnets. The magnets are organized into four cylindrical brass holders, whose relative separation can be manipulated to achieve the desired magnetic field strength. We present magnetic field computations and Marquardt–Levenberg fits to experimental data and demonstrate excellent agreement between theory and experiment

Pass the Salt: Markets for Grain Shipping on the Great Lakes

We assess the structure of grain shipping within the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway system. While U.S. grain exports ship from the port of Duluth, Minnesota, Canadian grain exports ship from several ports located on the Lower St. Lawrence Seaway. While North American grain exports moving from west to east can be transported in several different ways, due to data limitations our focus in this analysis is on the so-called saltie shipping market. While our findings are somewhat unexpected, they give us some unique insight into the nature of this crucial yet understudied transportation market

Pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines in threatened miscarriages

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate circulating and intracellular levels of Th1 and Th2 cytokines in women with threatenedmiscarriage (TM) and subsequent outcome. STUDY DESIGN: Plasma levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-receptors 1 and 2, TNF , interferon gamma (IFN ), and interleukins (IL) -6 and -10 were measured by flow cytometric bead assays in 80 women with TM: 53 women with normal outcome and 27 women who miscarried. Fluorescent antibody labeling was also performed on whole blood in a subgroup of 27 women of TM: 16 women with normal outcome and 11 women who miscarried. RESULTS: Monocyte expression of TNF and circulating levels of TNF , IFN , IL-10, IL-6, and TNF-R1 were significantly lower, whereas circulating levels of TNF /IL-10, IFN /IL-10, and TNF /IL-6 ratios were significantly higher, in women with TM who subsequently miscarried, compared with the women with normal outcome. CONCLUSION: An increased Th1 type of immune response, which was similar to that observed in preterm delivery, was found in TM cases that were complicated by a subsequent miscarriage.peer-reviewe

Impaired bone marrow homing of cytokine-activated CD34⁺ cells in the NOD/SCID model

The reduced engraftment potential of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) after exposure to cytokines may be related to the impaired homing ability of actively cycling cells. We tested this hypothesis by quantifying the short-term horning of human adult CD34+ cells in nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) animals. We show that the loss of engraftment ability of cytokine-activated CD34+ cells is associated with a reduction in homing of colony-forming cells (CFCs) to bone marrow (BM) at 24 hours after transplantation (from median 2.8% [range, 1.9%-6.1%] to 0.3% [0.0%-0.7%]; n = 3; P < .01), coincident with an increase in CFC accumulation in the lungs (P < .01). Impaired BM homing of cytokine-activated cells was not restored by using sorted cells in G 0G1 or by inducing cell cycle arrest at the G 1/S border. Blocking Fas ligation in vivo did not increase the BM homing of cultured cells. Finally, we tested cytokine combinations or culture conditions previously reported to restore the engraftment of cultured cells but did not find that any of these was able to reverse the changes in homing behavior of cytokine-exposed cells. We suggest that these changes in homing and, as a consequence, engraftment result from the increased migratory capacity of infused activated cells, leading to the loss of selectivity of the homing process. © 2004 by The American Society of Hematology

Phase behaviour of binary mixtures of diamagnetic colloidal platelets in an external magnetic field

Using fundamental measure density functional theory we investigate paranematic-nematic and nematic-nematic phase coexistence in binary mixtures of circular platelets with vanishing thicknesses. An external magnetic field induces uniaxial alignment and acts on the platelets with a strength that is taken to scale with the platelet area. At particle diameter ratio lambda=1.5 the system displays paranematic-nematic coexistence. For lambda=2, demixing into two nematic states with different compositions also occurs, between an upper critical point and a paranematic-nematic-nematic triple point. Increasing the field strength leads to shrinking of the coexistence regions. At high enough field strength a closed loop of immiscibility is induced and phase coexistence vanishes at a double critical point above which the system is homogeneously nematic. For lambda=2.5, besides paranematic-nematic coexistence, there is nematic-nematic coexistence which persists and hence does not end in a critical point. The partial orientational order parameters along the binodals vary strongly with composition and connect smoothly for each species when closed loops of immiscibility are present in the corresponding phase diagram.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in J.Phys:Condensed Matte

WHERE STEEL MEETS THE TRACK: EXAMINING THE FUNCTIONALITY OF REGULATORY POLICY IN THE CANADIAN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

The last century has been an era of incredible advancements in grain production for Canada’s agricultural sector. A large portion of the country’s annual grain production is exported around the globe to a wide variety of international destinations. However, many of these exports originate from Western Canada – a fertile but land-locked portion of the country. This has left the grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) in Western Canada heavily reliant on rail transportation as a means of efficiently and cost-effectively moving product to tide water. With rapid modernization continuing to occur in both the production and grain handling sectors of the industry, it is important that the government policies regulating the transportation of Canadian grain by rail continue to best serve all the players involved in the face of a changing industry landscape. The thesis explores three main policy measures currently used by the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) to regulate movements of grain by rail in Western Canada. These include the Maximum Revenue Entitlement (MRE), interswitching provisions, and Final Offer Arbitration (FOA). Discussion of these measures is augmented by the presentation of a game theory model to investigate current topics of debate related to interswitching regulations. The model is used to support an argument grounded in contestable market theory that using interswitching activity as a means of measuring the usefulness of interswitching provisions might be a poor metric. The model demonstrates that when a shipper’s ability to call for an interswitch order is viewed by a railway as a viable threat, competitive outcomes can be achieved without an interswitch movement occurring. Furthermore, the thesis also examines data obtained through experiments conducted with the Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research (CHASR) to investigate aspects of the current FOA framework that could be optimized. A two-player game was designed and conducted with the help of 50 participants to investigate the effects of information asymmetry and variance in the length of FOA arbitrator rulings. Our findings underline the importance of minimizing information asymmetry amongst shippers and railways participating in the FOA process to ensure that the policy achieves its intended outcomes. Furthermore, trends in the data suggest that lengthening the period of time that an arbitrator’s ruling is enforced may encourage even less extreme offers from the parties participating in the FOA process. The thesis is intended as a means of better understanding the strengths and deficiencies of the current regulatory measures in place so that the industry is prepared for continued growth and advancement in the century ahead

Flow-Based Single Cell Deposition for High-Throughput Screening of Protein Libraries

The identification and engineering of proteins having refined or novel characteristics is an important area of research in many scientific fields. Protein modelling has enabled the rational design of unique proteins, but high-throughput screening of large libraries is still required to identify proteins with potentially valuable properties. Here we report on the development and evaluation of a novel fluorescent activated cell sorting based screening platform. Single bacterial cells, expressing a protein library to be screened, are electronically sorted and deposited onto plates containing solid nutrient growth media in a dense matrix format of between 44 and 195 colonies/cm2. We show that this matrix format is readily applicable to machine interrogation (<30 seconds per plate) and subsequent bioinformatic analysis (~60 seconds per plate) thus enabling the high-throughput screening of the protein library. We evaluate this platform and show that bacteria containing a bioluminescent protein can be spectrally analysed using an optical imager, and a rare clone (0.5% population) can successfully be identified, picked and further characterised. To further enhance this screening platform, we have developed a prototype electronic sort stream multiplexer, that when integrated into a commercial flow cytometric sorter, increases the rate of colony deposition by 89.2% to 24 colonies per second. We believe that the screening platform described here is potentially the foundation of a new generation of high-throughput screening technologies for proteins

Investigation of systemic inflammatory response in first trimester pregnancy failure

Background: The contribution of local and systemic inflammation to the pathophysiology of sporadic first trimester miscarriages remains unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the inflammatory response in the circulation of women presenting with first trimester miscarriage. Methods: Levels of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFa), TNF receptors 1 and 2, interferon gamma (IFNg), interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-10 were assayed using cytometric bead arrays in plasma samples from 29 euploid and 21 aneuploid missed miscarriages, 35 normal pregnant controls and 31 non-pregnant women (NPW). Whole blood flow cytometry was carried out with samples from 17 euploid and 16 aneuploid miscarriages, 18 pregnant controls and 13 NPW. Results: The plasma of women with euploid miscarriage contained significantly higher circulating levels of TNFa (P , 0.005), IFNg (P , 0.005), IL-6 (P , 0.005) and IL-10 (P , 0.01) than that of pregnant controls, irrespective of gestational age. Significantly (P , 0.05) higher TNF-R1 levels at 6–9 weeks, and significantly higher TNFa/IL-6 (P , 0.001) and significantly lower TNFa/IL-10 (P , 0.001) and IFNg/IL-10 (P , 0.001) ratios at 10–14 weeks, were also found in euploid miscarriage cases compared with pregnant controls. TNFa/IL-10 ratio in plasma was significantly (P , 0.05) lower in miscarriages with an abnormal karyotype than those with normal karyotype. Normal pregnant women had a significantly higher plasma level of IFNg (P , 0.01) and IFNg/IL-10 ratio (P , 0.005), a significantly (P , 0.005) lower TNF-R1 level, and a significant (P , 0.05) increase in stimulated TNFa in monocytes, compared with NPW. Conclusions: Our data confirm that there is an inflammatory reaction in normal pregnancy compared with the non-pregnant state, which may be disrupted during miscarriage.peer-reviewe