Contextualized Discipleship: A Catalyst System for the XXI Century

The reality for the Christian churches in the U.S. is that congregations are declining in attendance. Local churches are being closed every year, and the people called Christians are decreasing in their discipleship practices more than in previous years. However, the reason for this disgraceful reality is not because people have stopped attending church; rather, it is because there are now fewer Christians. Unfortunately, churches in their effort to make disciples prefer to buy a curriculum that, in the end, does not reflect the needs and realities of their own context. More than ever, the Christian industry in the U.S. has benefited from discipleship and at the same time discipleship for many churches has become one more item to buy, instead of a contextual endeavor. The various contexts for churches in the U.S. require an alternative approach to this reality. The purpose of this dissertation is to propose a contextualized discipleship system that could be an alternative to solve this reality that the church in the XXI Century in the United States is facing. The methodology used throughout this work will include church history, sociology, empirical data, demographic studies, discipleship surveys, and research in discipleship assessment. The work in this dissertation will disclose the way certain faith communities in the early, medieval, and modern period developed a fruitful contextualized discipleship model. Moreover, I will look at the role of contextualization in discipleship and then provide a process to develop a contextualized discipleship system. In this proposal, I am not attempting to present a perfect formula for a successful discipleship model; rather, I offer a new way of looking at our Christian history, a way that claims discipleship regardless of the context of the local church. My approach to discipleship is distinctive not only for providing a research component but also for including biblical and historical grounds, principles, resources, practical ideas, and a clear methodology of development for disciple-making to take place in any context. Contextualized discipleship may be an alternative to any church who longs to make disciples in its own context

Trading in a Pure Exchange Economy without an Auctioneer: An Experimental Approach

This paper explores alternatives to the vVa1rasian Auctioneer for the allocation of resources in a pure exchange economy lacking a bilateral coincidence of wants. We have created three different computerized trading processes called BARTER, NUMERAIRE, and CARE (acronym for Computer Assisted Resource Exchange). CARE is a "smart market" in the sense that it contains computer algorithms that assist users in finding a coincidence of wants. The experimental results show that CARE outperforms BARTER and NUMERAIRE by extracting most of the gains from exchange with fewer contracts, lower volume, smaller utility swings, and lower variances in final utility positions

Sistema de costeo basado en actividades para Carnes Cantabria

En un contexto comercial tan competitivo como el que se ha venido progresivamente gestando, las herramientas de generación de valor y gestión para los procesos, además de los diferentes sistemas de información no exigidos normativamente, están marcando un ítem importante dentro de la administración de las compañías -- Por ello, aclarar el funcionamiento de éstas en detalle y conocer a término final el costo beneficio de sus operaciones, jerarquías y productos a ofrecer, permitirá determinar una afirmación racional de rentabilidad y permanencia en el mercado -- Es por esto que Carnes Cantabria ahora cuenta con un modelo de costos ABC que costea sus productos en la línea de cerdo, contando desde la recepción del canal hasta la distribución en punto de venta o mayorista, determinando el valor de sus actividades, los procesos misionales, los procedimientos que agregan valor a la cadena de mercado, puntos vulnerables y el costo de servicios que generan satisfacción en el consumidor final -- En consecuencia, con el proceso de investigación, el resultado final de este trabajo es la comparación desde la práctica como herramienta investigativa de las metodologías y la aplicación al sector cárnico, evaluándolas, no sólo desde la teoría, también en un campo práctic

¿Can mining be done in any part of this contry?

En este artículo de reflexión se pregunta ¿Qué impide que puedan excluirse o restringirse los trabajos y obras de exploración y explotación mineras en las zonas de conservación ambiental? La respuesta, carecemos de una conciencia social, y tenemos un sistema político dónde se aprueban leyes y prácticas administrativas en beneficio de ciertos grupos sociales, en detrimento del uso eficiente de los recursos naturales.In this reflective article the question is, what impedes that exploration and explotation works can be excluded or restricted from the areas of environmental conservation? The answer is that our society lacks of social conscience, and we have a political system where laws and administratives practices are approved for the benefit of certain social groups in detriment of the efficient use of natural resources

Comparison of four different programs for the analysis of hemispherical photographs using parameters of canopy structure and solar radiation transmittance

There have been many studies involving the use of hemispherical photographs to indirectly estimate canopy structures and forest light environments. A variety of commercial and free software packages are available for the analysis of hemispherical photographs. The costs of investment might represent an advantage of the free programmes over the commercial, but as yet little has been documented about the differences in their outputs and in the technical applications from a user (ecologist and forester) perspective. The objective of the study was to compare the canopy structure variables (canopy openness and effective plant area index) and solar radiation transmission estimates (direct, diffuse and global solar radiation transmittances) from digital hemispherical photographs taken under two forest canopy conditions (gap and closed canopy) in three different broadleaf forest regions (Chile, Germany, Venezuela) and calculated using four different programmes. The hemispherical photographs were analysed using one commercial (HemiView) and three free programmes (Gap Light Analyzer, hemIMAGE and Winphot). The results obtained revealed that all of the programmes computed similar estimates of both canopy structures and below-canopy solar radiation. Only the results relating to the effective plant area index with an ellipsoidal leaf angle distribution made with HemiView and Winphot deviated significantly. Other user aspects are also discussed, such as costs, image formats, computer system requirements, etc.In vielen Studien werden Hemisphärenphotos genutzt um indirekt die Kronenstruktur und die Belichtungsverhältnisse zu schätzen. Verschiedene kommerzielle und kostenfreie Softwarepakete sind zu Analyse von Hemisphärenphotos verfügbar. Es gibt bisher keine umfassende Vergleichsstudie zu Ergebnissen oder technischer Handhabung aus Sicht der Nutzer dieser Programme (Ökologen und Forstwissenschaftler). Das Ziel dieser Studie war der Vergleich der Schätzungen von Kronenstrukturvariablen (Kronenöffnung und effektiver Pflanzenflächenindex) Solartransmission (direkte, diffuse und Global-Strahlung) aus digitalen Hemisphärenphotos berechnet mit vier verschiedenen Programmen (kostenpflichtig: Hemi- View und frei: Gap Light Analyzer, hemIMAGE and Winphot). Die verwendeten Photos stammen aus drei verschiedenen Laubwaldregionen (Chile, Deutschland und Venezuela) und repräsentieren jeweils Verhältnisse unter geschlossenem Kronendach und in Lücken. Die ermittelten Schätzungen für die verschiedenen Strukturvariablen und Einstrahlungsverhältnisse zeigten eine sehr hohe Übereinstimmung. Einzig der effektive Pflanzenflächenindex basierend auf ellipsoider Blattwinkelverteilung unterschied sich signifikant zwischen den Programmen. Weitere für Nutzer interessante Aspekte wie Kosten, Bildformate, Systemvoraussetzungen und mehr wurden verglichen und diskutiert

The Results of Some Tests of Mechanism Designs for the Allocation and Pricing of Collections of Heterogeneous Items

During the discussion and evaluation of proposals for the design of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mechanism to sell the spectrum, over 130 auctions were run under controlled conditions at Caltech for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the FCC and others. In this paper we look at these data and try to extract some useful findings for those who may be involved in creating future designs of similar auctions. For those whose experience with experimental economics methodology is limited, we begin with a section on the general framework within which experimental work underlying applied mechanism design is conducted. Next we cover, in section 2, the various technical pieces needed to understand the data: performance measures, economic environments, mechanisms tested, and the major issues considered. The experimental data are presented and our observations are summarized in section 3. We end, in section 4, with some thoughts for future work and with the observation that there is a huge gap between, theory, scientific evidence, and practice in the design of complex auctions. Much needed research remains to be done

Biopolitics\u27 New Iteration: Gay Men, Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and the Pharmaco-Pornographic Imagination

This article builds upon Paul Preciado’s conceptualisation of pharmaco-pornographic power to understand the ongoing affects and effects of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) on queer men’s sexual socialities and subjectivities. Drawing from a new-materialist epistemology, we analyze data from a sexual health pilot study in NYC to trace the techno-sexual health assemblages forming in queer life worlds. Our analysis suggests that these assemblages, entangling PrEP and other pharmacological substances, pornographic imaginaries together with mediatic technologies and public health rationalties, are creating paradoxical desires and practices of intimacy that are both normative and exceed rational health-actor logics and normative understandings of risk. These effects have population-level biopolitical implications

Socio-Cultures Perspectives in the Influence of Entertainment to the Fashion Industry

This research article presents the various sociocultural perspectives generated as a result of the influence of major entertainment figures such as J Balvin Rihanna Beyonce and the kpop group of the moment BTS through case studies on the aforementioned characters it is possible to conclude the various sociocultural scenarios It also presents the massive diffusion of fashion trends through the digital world and how the use of different web platforms to acquire the various products has grown due to the current health situation of the Covid-19 pandemic impacting the fashion industries and their economic growt

From dust bowl to dust bowl:soils are still very much a frontier of science

When the Soil Science Society of America was created, 75 yr ago, the USA was suffering from major dust storms, causing the loss of enormous amounts of topsoil as well as human lives. These catastrophic events reminded public officials that soils are essential to society’s well-being. The Soil Conservation Service was founded and farmers were encouraged to implement erosion mitigation practices. Still, many questions about soil processes remained poorly understood and controversial. In this article, we argue that the current status of soils worldwide parallels that in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. Dust bowls and large-scale soil degradation occur over vast regions in a number of countries. Perhaps more so even than in the past, soils currently have the potential to affect populations critically in several other ways as well, from their effect on global climate change, to the toxicity of brownfield soils in urban settings. Even though our collective understanding of soil processes has experienced significant advances since 1936, many basic questions still remain unanswered, for example whether or not a switch to no-till agriculture promotes C sequestration in soils, or how to account for microscale heterogeneity in the modeling of soil organic matter transformation. Given the enormity of the challenges raised by our (ab)uses of soils, one may consider that if we do not address them rapidly, and in the process heed the example of U.S. public officials in the 1930s who took swift action, humanity may not get a chance to explore other frontiers of science in the future. From this perspective, insistence on the fact that soils are critical to life on earth, and indeed to the survival of humans, may again stimulate interest in soils among the public, generate support for soil research, and attract new generations of students to study soils