A Study of the Duties of the Elders of Local Seventh-day Adventist Churches in Chile: a Needs Assessment

Problem. Many Seventh-day Adventist churches in Chile, South America, do not have the assistance of a resident pastor, and most of the work in the church is done by volunteer lay leaders. The highest officer of the church is the elder, who usually has no training in leadership nor in theology. What is the work of the elder of the local church? How well is he performing his tasks? No specific study of this problem was found in the literature, and because the elders in Chile appeared to be eager and willing to be trained, this study was designed to investigate these questions and to offer recommendations to aid in the development of a curriculum for the training of elders based on their perceived needs. Method. Information about the duties of the elders was obtained by a study of the Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual. Twelve basic duties were identified, and for each one of them indicators were selected and standards established to measure the performance of the elders. Information about the elders was gathered by a questionnaire developed on the basis of the above-mentioned indicators and mailed to a representative randomly selected sample of 147 elders of the two conferences and one mission which comprise the Chile Union Mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In spite of the distance from the re­ search population, the response rate was 88 percent. Data obtained included the frequency of task performance, level of agreement on a number of statements related to their duties, and self-evaluation of their perceived preparation to perform selected tasks. Findings. The answers the elders gave to the questions indicated that in a number of areas they felt reasonably well prepared to fulfill their duties. This may account for the measure of success they appear to have in their churches. In areas such as teaching adult Sabbath School classes, giving Bible studies, participating in different lay activities, helping members with counseling and advice, and in their concern for the spiritual welfare of the members, they felt they were performing well. There were other areas in which the elders felt they were not perform ing as well as they would like, thus disclosing specific needs. Some of these areas were: (1) understanding of and ability to explain the purpose and organization of an elementary church school; (2) the organization and functioning of a stewardship plan; (3) the planning of various activities; (4) writing objectives; (5) evaluating plans, pro­ grams, and activities; (6) adapting general plans to local situations; (7) advising the treasurer and the clerk; (8) leading out in a communion service; and (9) explaining youth work. From the data it was concluded that the elders felt best pre­ pared to care for the duties they have been familiar with through the years. Some technical administrative skills, such as writing objectives and preparing plans, are conspicuous among their needs. Most of the needs discovered were instructional, but a few related to their personal habits and example, and some pertained to the congregation in general. Recommendations. It was recommended, based on the needs discovered in this study, that (1) an instructional program for the elders be encouraged; (2) special emphasis be given to the concept that elders should not only know how to perform their duties, but should also be prepared to teach others; (3) the instructional program take into consideration the individual characteristics of the elders and local circumstances, using andragogical techniques such as problem-centered instruction and mutual assistance for problem solving in a group setting; and (4) pastors and elders engage in a serious continuing study on an ideal spiritual growth and nurture program for new believers in their churches

MOBILE APPLICATIONS AS TOOL FOR EXPLOITING CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE REGION OF TURIN AND MILAN

The current research aims at showing as applications working on personal mobile communication terminals such as smartphones, can be useful for exploration of places and, at the same time, as tools able to develop interaction between cultural heritage and users. In this sense, the use of smartphone applications can be combined with GIS in order to make a platform of knowledge useful to support research studies in the field of cultural heritage, with specific reference to accessibility issues and to the combined use of integrated technologies like GPS, QR code and GIS, with the final aim to find an useful methodology for collecting data by visitors and visualizing them through mapping techniques. The research shows how the integration of different systems and technologies can be used as method for inquiring the interactions between users and cultural heritage in terms of accessibility to places. GPS devices can be used to record visitors movements (cultural routes) in terms of space and time; QR code can be used for users interaction with cultural heritage (tourists opinion, heritage ranking, facilities, accessibility); GIS software can be used for data management, analysis and mapping (tourist flows, more visited places). The focus of research is about a combination of information related to cultural routes with the information related to single cultural places. The focus of research is about a combination of information related to cultural routes with the information related to single cultural places. The current research shows the potential use of smartphone applications, as mobile device for collecting data, as means to record rides and more visited places by tourists. The research could be divided into three steps; the first one concerns with GPS that can be used to record routes; the second one deals with interaction between tourists and cultural heritage through a system based on QR code; the third one is about GIS, used as tool for management, analysis and visualization of data flows. In the current research, the field of investigation refers both to the territorial scale of Turin – Milan axis, and to the local scale of small cities localized in the territories in between. The research has been applied to Turin – Milan infrastructural axis, with the aim to represent the relationships that can be established between mobility infrastructure and cultural heritage. Such relationships should be intended in terms of accessibility from mobility infrastructure (motorway exit, service areas, railways stations) to cultural heritage localized in the surrounding landscape. The richness of cultural heritage and landscape along the chosen infrastructural bundle represent a great opportunity for territorial development in terms of attractiveness, both for local inhabitants and for tourists. Nowadays, the use of tracking technologies can be applied to investigate tourist flows, behaviors of local inhabitants in the historic city centre, number of visitors in the city and so on. In this sense it is possible to apply these technologies, which are particularly relevant in urban studies, extending them to the territorial scale of the Turin – Milan region. The large amount of available geo-referenced data can be used in different ways and it is very potential for different kind of analysis: it is possible to show tourist flows in the territory, receive information about more visited places, obtain interaction from users and cultural heritage in terms of visitors opinion about the places, give information to tourists about cultural places, monitor the accessibility to the places, understand the use of means of transport and keep under control the impacts of tourism (social, cultural, environmental) on territory. Applications based on smartphones can be considered a powerful device for visitors but also for institutions that are involved in tourism and cultural heritage management. In fact, the use of mobile applications it can produce a real time data exchange between geographical position of users and system that receives data. The research shows the opportunity to use GPS and QR code, integrated in a single smartphone application, with GIS software. In the current step of the research only the interaction with GPS and GIS has been tested on the case study of Turin – Milan. Further development of research could be realized to test the real integration of QR code with other systems, developing an application that supports QR code and GPS, and installing a barcode or other interactive devices such as NFC (Near Field Communication) on each relevant cultural places. It is evident that different actors, such as tourists, cultural heritage institutions and employers, have to be involved in this process, in order to have a deeper understanding of the problem, also integrating bottom up and top down contributions

Transmission needs across a fully renewable European power system

The residual load and excess power generation of 27 European countries with a 100% penetration of variable renewable energy sources are explored in order to quantify the benefit of power transmission between countries. Estimates are based on extensive weather data, which allows for modelling of hourly mismatches between the demand and renewable generation from wind and solar photovoltaics. For separated countries, balancing is required to cover around 24% of the total annual energy consumption. This number can be reduced down to 15% once all countries are networked together with uncon- strained interconnectors. The reduction represents the maximum possible benefit of transmission for the countries. The total Net Transfer Capacity of the unconstrained interconnectors is roughly twelve times larger than current values. However, constrained interconnector capacities six times larger than the current values are found to provide 97% of the maximum possible benefit of cooperation. This motivates a detailed investigation of several constrained transmission capacity layouts to determine the export and import capabilities of countries participating in a fully renewable European electricity system

The "Flight Testing" Graduate Course at Politecnico di Milano

This paper describes the current status of the “Flight Testing” graduate course held at the Politecnico di Milano as an elective subject in its Aeronautical Engi-neering MSc curriculum. The course, delivered each year, has reached its 10th anniver-sary in 2015. Nearly 120 students passed the course to date, most of them upon submis-sion and presentation of a flight test report concerning a real flight test mission carried out by the student in person. In fact, the unique characteristic of this course is the provi-sion of a complete experience in which each student is requested to design, perform and report on a real flight test of a manned aircraft, acting as a Flight Test Engineer under all respects. The conditions of the flight test experience and two flight test campaigns are described, reporting on the latest updates in the FTI system, which now features a fully functional telemetry capability