A Program For Caring Church Ministry In The Eugene, Oregon, Seventh-day Adventist Church

Problem Caring Church Ministry is a strategy for church growth which was developed by the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. How that strategy might be implemented in the Eugene Seventh-day Adventist Church was the basic concern of this research project. How theology and management philosophy inform a caring church membership, how to implement a program involving the church membership, and dynamics of that church which favored or inhibited church growth were questions that had to be addressed. Method A theological investigation and an examination of contemporary concepts of caring in management literature form a basis for the study. Two surveys establish the felt needs of the community, and their awareness and attitudes toward Seventh-day Adventists. A third survey documents the attitudes and behavior of church members which enhance or inhibit church growth. A descriptive narrative is given of the planning and administration of a one-year program for caring church ministry in the Eugene, Oregon, Seventhday Adventist church. Results While many caring ministries were engaged in by the church during the year\u27s program, the number of new members added to the congregation was minimal. In the last chapter, both church growth enhancing and church-growth inhibiting characteristics of the Eugene Church are identified. The identification of those characteristics and recommendations for change are of great value to many older congregations who have reached a plateau in growth. Conclusions Heritage and contemporary goals of members must be respected for a church-growth climate to exist. In churches where there is a long term tenure of membership, an intentional effort must be given to include a broad spectrum of the membership in policy-making decisions that will support a positive caring church ministry

Developing Student-to-Student Connectedness: An Examination of Instructors’ Humor, Nonverbal Immediacy, and Self-Disclosure in Public Speaking Courses

Students often do not look forward to enrolling in public speaking courses, and therefore, it is warranted to examine opportunities to develop a supportive peer communication climate in what is typically seen as an anxiety inducing course. The present study collected data at three points in a semester (first day, mid-semester, and end-semester) to determine if initial perceptions of student-to-student connectedness and instructors’ communication behaviors (humor, nonverbal immediacy, and self-disclosure) lead to positive increases in student-to-student connectedness over the course of a semester in public speaking classes. Changes in perceptions of student-to-student connectedness at mid- and end-semester were predicted by first day perceptions of connectedness, followed by nonverbal immediacy, and teacher humor. Also, connectedness predicted students’ affect for the course, and teacher nonverbal immediacy and humor predicted students’ affect toward the instructor. However, teacher self-disclosure (i.e., amount) was negatively linked to students’ affective learning

Millimeter-Wave Spectroscopy and Mapping of Quasar Hosts, and the Status of ULIRGs as Quasar 2s

It is becoming possible to detect high redshift quasars in various molecular lines, and to show by mapping lensed objects that the strong dust and molecular emission arises in warm dense ~100 pc-scale "tori." The properties of ULIRGs, at least those with AGN-like narrow line regions, are very similar, as expected in the hidden quasar hypothesis. Several of the latter are in fact confirmed as "Quasar 2s" by spectropolarimetry.Comment: 7 page

Identification of Adropin as a Secreted Factor Linking Dietary Macronutrient Intake with Energy Homeostasis and Lipid Metabolism

Obesity and nutrient homeostasis are linked by mechanisms that are not fully elucidated. Here we describe a secreted protein, adropin, encoded by a gene, Energy Homeostasis Associated (Enho), expressed in liver and brain. Liver Enho expression is regulated by nutrition: lean C57BL/6J mice fed high-fat diet (HFD) exhibited a rapid increase, while fasting reduced expression compared to controls. However, liver Enho expression declines with diet-induced obesity (DIO) associated with 3 months of HFD or with genetically induced obesity, suggesting an association with metabolic disorders in the obese state. In DIO mice, transgenic overexpression or systemic adropin treatment attenuated hepatosteatosis and insulin resistance independently of effects on adiposity or food intake. Adropin regulated expression of hepatic lipogenic genes and adipose tissue peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma, a major regulator of lipogenesis. Adropin may therefore be a factor governing glucose and lipid homeostasis, which protects against hepatosteatosis and hyperinsulinemia associated with obesity. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Patients with Complex Chronic Diseases: Perspectives on Supporting Self-Management

A Complex Chronic Disease (CCD) is a condition involving multiple morbidities that requires the attention of multiple health care providers or facilities and possibly community (home)-based care. A patient with CCD presents to the health care system with unique needs, disabilities, or functional limitations. The literature on how to best support self-management efforts in those with CCD is lacking. With this paper, the authors present the case of an individual with diabetes and end-stage renal disease who is having difficulty with self-management. The case is discussed in terms of intervention effectiveness in the areas of prevention, addiction, and self-management of single diseases. Implications for research are discussed

Changes in Drug Utilization during a Gap in Insurance Coverage: An Examination of the Medicare Part D Coverage Gap

Jennifer Polinski and colleagues estimated the effect of the "coverage gap" during which US Medicare beneficiaries are fully responsible for drug costs and found that the gap was associated with a doubling in discontinuing essential medications

ROP GTPase-Dependent Actin Microfilaments Promote PIN1 Polarization by Localized Inhibition of Clathrin-Dependent Endocytosis

A study in leaf epidermal pavement cells reveals that auxin activation of a Rho-like GTPase from plants induces inhibition of endocytosis through the clathrin-mediated pathway by regulating the accumulation of cortical F-actin

A comprehensive assessment of somatic mutation detection in cancer using whole-genome sequencing.

As whole-genome sequencing for cancer genome analysis becomes a clinical tool, a full understanding of the variables affecting sequencing analysis output is required. Here using tumour-normal sample pairs from two different types of cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and medulloblastoma, we conduct a benchmarking exercise within the context of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. We compare sequencing methods, analysis pipelines and validation methods. We show that using PCR-free methods and increasing sequencing depth to ∼ 100 × shows benefits, as long as the tumour:control coverage ratio remains balanced. We observe widely varying mutation call rates and low concordance among analysis pipelines, reflecting the artefact-prone nature of the raw data and lack of standards for dealing with the artefacts. However, we show that, using the benchmark mutation set we have created, many issues are in fact easy to remedy and have an immediate positive impact on mutation detection accuracy.We thank the DKFZ Genomics and Proteomics Core Facility and the OICR Genome Technologies Platform for provision of sequencing services. Financial support was provided by the consortium projects READNA under grant agreement FP7 Health-F4-2008-201418, ESGI under grant agreement 262055, GEUVADIS under grant agreement 261123 of the European Commission Framework Programme 7, ICGC-CLL through the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and the Generalitat de Catalunya. Additional financial support was provided by the PedBrain Tumor Project contributing to the International Cancer Genome Consortium, funded by German Cancer Aid (109252) and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grants #01KU1201A, MedSys #0315416C and NGFNplus #01GS0883; the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research to PCB and JDM through funding provided by the Government of Ontario, Ministry of Research and Innovation; Genome Canada; the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Prostate Cancer Canada with funding from the Movember Foundation (PCB). PCB was also supported by a Terry Fox Research Institute New Investigator Award, a CIHR New Investigator Award and a Genome Canada Large-Scale Applied Project Contract. The Synergie Lyon Cancer platform has received support from the French National Institute of Cancer (INCa) and from the ABS4NGS ANR project (ANR-11-BINF-0001-06). The ICGC RIKEN study was supported partially by RIKEN President’s Fund 2011, and the supercomputing resource for the RIKEN study was provided by the Human Genome Center, University of Tokyo. MDE, LB, AGL and CLA were supported by Cancer Research UK, the University of Cambridge and Hutchison-Whampoa Limited. SD is supported by the Torres Quevedo subprogram (MI CINN) under grant agreement PTQ-12-05391. EH is supported by the Research Council of Norway under grant agreements 221580 and 218241 and by the Norwegian Cancer Society under grant agreement 71220-PR-2006-0433. Very special thanks go to Jennifer Jennings for administrating the activity of the ICGC Verification Working Group and Anna Borrell for administrative support.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1000