Partnering with Faith Communities: Challenges of Religious and Secular Literacy

Partnering with Faith Communities: Challenges of Religious and Secular Literacy While many scholars have noted the necessity of a grasp of the complexity of religious belief for engagement in international relations, human rights, and humanitarian work, the topic of religious belief remains fraught and underdeveloped in human rights activism. Concerns include the conviction that religion must be treated as private in order to preserve an inclusive public life; evidence that religious communities may oppose the human rights\u27 groups commitments on LGBTQI and women\u27s rights; and anxieties that various religious groups will exclude or manipulate those who are not members and use their influence to proselytize. On the other hand, some faith communities interested in partnering with human rights activism struggle to express and maintain their own distinctive missions, resisting instrumentalization of their resources. This session will focus on the challenges of promoting religious literacy among international organizations and among partners. What is ‘religious literacy’? How is it related to a need for “secular literacy,” i.e. an understanding of the complexity of secularisms and the assumptions that undergird them, the biases that they entail? To what extent can various faiths and secularisms “translate” their beliefs, and how will faith actors and human rights activists cooperate around those aspects that cannot be translated? Rob Brodrick, one of the authors of the Harvard Religious Literacy Project’s paper, “Local Humanitarian Leadership and Religious Literacy: Engaging with Religion, Faith, and Faith Actors,” will provide an overview of the state of the question. Three responses will be offered, including representation from faith communities interested in collaboration on human rights, human rights activism working to include faith communities, and scholars examining questions of “translation” of faith traditions. Convener: Kelly Johnson Main Presenter: Rob Broderick, Ph.D. Respondents: Anwar Khan (Islamic Relief, USA), Edith Tapia (Hope Border Institute), Leocadie Lushombo (Boston College

Partnering with Faith Communities: Challenges of Religious and Secular Literacy

Partnering with Faith Communities: Challenges of Religious and Secular Literacy While many scholars have noted the necessity of a grasp of the complexity of religious belief for engagement in international relations, human rights, and humanitarian work, the topic of religious belief remains fraught and underdeveloped in human rights activism. Concerns include the conviction that religion must be treated as private in order to preserve an inclusive public life; evidence that religious communities may oppose the human rights\u27 groups commitments on LGBTQI and women\u27s rights; and anxieties that various religious groups will exclude or manipulate those who are not members and use their influence to proselytize. On the other hand, some faith communities interested in partnering with human rights activism struggle to express and maintain their own distinctive missions, resisting instrumentalization of their resources. This session will focus on the challenges of promoting religious literacy among international organizations and among partners. What is ‘religious literacy’? How is it related to a need for “secular literacy,” i.e. an understanding of the complexity of secularisms and the assumptions that undergird them, the biases that they entail? To what extent can various faiths and secularisms “translate” their beliefs, and how will faith actors and human rights activists cooperate around those aspects that cannot be translated? Rob Brodrick, one of the authors of the Harvard Religious Literacy Project’s paper, “Local Humanitarian Leadership and Religious Literacy: Engaging with Religion, Faith, and Faith Actors,” will provide an overview of the state of the question. Three responses will be offered, including representation from faith communities interested in collaboration on human rights, human rights activism working to include faith communities, and scholars examining questions of “translation” of faith traditions. Convener: Kelly Johnson Main Presenter: Rob Broderick, Ph.D. Respondents: Anwar Khan (Islamic Relief, USA), Edith Tapia (Hope Border Institute), Leocadie Lushombo (Boston College

Effect of different scintillator choices on the x-ray imaging performance of CMOS sensors

The ability of wafer scale Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) imagers to integrate sensing with analogue to digital conversion at the pixel level has led to their widespread appeal in a variety of imaging applications. This has led to significant improvement in speed and reduction in read-out noise in these imagers when compared to charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and amorphous silicon/selenium based flat panel imagers (FPIs). This paper compares the performance characteristics of CMOS X-ray detectors in various configurations by varying certain parameters of a typical X-ray detector such as fibre optic face plate (FOP), scintillator substrate coating, sensor pixel pitch and scintillator thickness. The evaluations were carried out using RQA5 (70 kV) radiation beam quality aimed at general radiography applications. At comparable Air Kerma values, detectors with a fibre optic plate showed an overall better DQE performance at most spatial frequencies, starting slightly lower at low frequencies then overtaking the “no-FOP” case at mid and high frequencies. The analysis of detectors with different substrate coatings for the scintillators showed comparatively higher DQE for the white-coated aluminium substrate scintillator compared to the black-coated one. The DQE comparison of detectors with and pixel pitch resulted in a higher DQE for the pixel pitch one, with the caveat that the scintillator was thick enough as to render differences in pMTF negligible. Finally, the comparison of scintillators with varying thicknesses showed that the thickest scintillator yielded the highest DQE. These characterisation studies helped in understanding the suitability of these different configurations in various general radiography application scenarios and could be of help to prospective users to determine the overall configuration that best fits their specific imaging needs

Aerosol measurements from plasma torch cuts on stainless steel, carbon steel, and aluminum

The main purpose of this project is to quantify aerosol particle size and generation rates produced by a plasma torch whencutting stainless steel, carbon steel and aluminum. the plasma torch is a common cutting tool used in the dismantling of nuclear facilities. Eventually, other cutting tools will be characterized and the information will be compiled in a user guide to aid in theplanning of both D&D and other cutting operations. The data will be taken from controlled laboratory experiments on uncontaminated metals and field samples taken during D&D operations at ANL nuclear facilities. The plasma torch data was collected from laboratory cutting tests conducted inside of a closed, filtered chamber. The particle size distributions were determined by isokinetically sampling the exhaust duct using a cascade impactor. Cuts on different thicknesses showed there was no observable dependence of the aerosol quantity produced as a function of material thickness for carbon steel. However, data for both stainless steel and aluminum revealed that the aerosol mass produced for these materials appear to have some dependance on thickness, with thinner materials producing tmore aerosols. The results of the laboratory cutting tests show that most measured particle size distributions are bimodal with one mode at about 0.2 {mu}m and the other at about 10 {mu}m. The average Mass Median Aerodynamic Diameters (MMAD`s) for these tests are 0.36 {+-}0.08 {mu}m for stainless steel, 0.48 {+-}0.17{mu}m for aluminum and 0.52{+-}0.12 {mu}m for carbon steel

Shared decision-making during childbirth in maternity units: the VIP mixed-methods study

Background NHS policy emphasises shared decision-making during labour and birth. There is, however, limited evidence concerning how decision-making happens in real time. Objectives Our objectives were as follows – create a data set of video- and audio-recordings of labour and birth in midwife-led units; use conversation analysis to explore how talk is used in shared decision-making; assess whether or not women’s antenatal expectations are reflected in experiences and whether or not the interactional strategies used (particularly the extent to which decisions are shared) are associated with women’s postnatal satisfaction; and disseminate findings to health-care practitioners and service users to inform policy on communication in clinical practice. Design This was a mixed-methods study. The principal method was conversation analysis to explore the fine detail of interaction during decision-making. Derived from the conversation analysis, a coding frame was developed to quantify interactions, which were explored alongside questionnaire data concerning women’s antenatal expectations and preferences, and women’s experiences of, and postnatal satisfaction with, decision-making. Semistructured interviews with health-care practitioners explored factors shaping decision-making. Setting and participants The study took place in midwife-led units at two English NHS trusts. A total of 154 women (aged ≥ 16 years with low-risk pregnancies), 158 birth partners and 121 health-care practitioners consented to be recorded. Of these participants, 37 women, 43 birth partners and 74 health-care practitioners were recorded. Key findings Midwives initiate the majority of decisions in formats that do not invite women’s participation (i.e. beyond consenting). The extent of optionality that midwives provide varies with the decision. Women have most involvement in decisions pertaining to pain relief and the third stage of labour. High levels of satisfaction are reported. There is no statistically significant relationship between midwives’ use of different formats of decision-making and any measures of satisfaction. However, women’s initiation of decisions, particularly relating to pain relief (e.g. making lots of requests), is associated with lower satisfaction. Limitations Our data set is explored with a focus on decision initiation and responses, leaving other important aspects of care (e.g. midwives’ and birth partners’ interactional techniques to facilitate working with pain) underexplored, which might be implicated in decision-making. Despite efforts to recruit a diverse sample, ethnic minority women are under-represented. Conclusions Policy initiatives emphasising patient involvement in decision-making are challenging to enact in practice. Our findings illustrate that women are afforded limited optionality in decision-making, and that midwives orient to guidelines/standard clinical practice in pursuing particular decisional outcomes. Nonetheless, the majority of women were satisfied with their experiences. However, when women needed to pursue decisions, particularly concerning pain relief, satisfaction is lower. Conversation analysis demonstrates that such ‘women-initiated’ decision-making occurs in the context of midwives’ avoiding pharmacological methods of pain relief at particular stages of labour. Future research We suggest that future research address the following – the barriers to inclusion of ethnic minority research participants, decision-making in obstetric units, systematic understanding of how pain relief decisions are pursued/resolved, conversation analysis of interactional elements beyond the specific decision-making context, interactional ‘markers’ of the emotional labour and inclusion of antenatal encounters

Active restoration accelerates the carbon recovery of human modified-tropical forests

More than half of all tropical forests are degraded by human impacts, leaving them threatened with conversion to agricultural plantations and risking substantial biodiversity and carbon losses. Restoration could accelerate recovery of aboveground carbon density (ACD), but adoption of restoration is constrained by cost and uncertainties over effectiveness. We report a long-term comparison of ACD recovery rates between naturally regenerating and actively restored logged tropical forests. Restoration enhanced decadal ACD recovery by more than 50%, from 2.9 to 4.4 megagrams per hectare per year. This magnitude of response, coupled with modal values of restoration costs globally, would require higher carbon prices to justify investment in restoration. However, carbon prices required to fulfill the 2016 Paris climate agreement [$40 to$80 (USD) per tonne carbon dioxide equivalent] would provide an economic justification for tropical forest restoration

Incorporating kinetic effects on Nernst advection in inertial fusion simulations

We present a simple method to incorporate nonlocal effects on the Nernst advection of magnetic fields down steep temperature gradients, and demonstrate its effectiveness in a number of inertial fusion scenarios. This is based on assuming that the relationship between the Nernst velocity and the heat flow velocity is unaffected by nonlocality. The validity of this assumption is confirmed over a wide range of plasma conditions by comparing Vlasov-Fokker-Planck and flux-limited classical transport simulations. Additionally, we observe that the Righi-Leduc heat flow is more severely affected by nonlocality due to its dependence on high velocity moments of the electron distribution function, but are unable to suggest a reliable method of accounting for this in fluid simulations

Fort Lewis natural gas and fuel oil energy baseline and efficiency resource assessment

The mission of the US Department of Energy (DOE) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) is to lead the improvement of energy efficiency and fuel flexibility within the federal sector. Through the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL), FEMP is developing a fuel-neutral approach for identifying, evaluating, and acquiring all cost-effective energy projects at federal installations; this procedure is entitled the Federal Energy Decision Screening (FEDS) system. Through a cooperative program between FEMP and the Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) for providing technical assistance to FORSCOM installations, PNL has been working with the Fort Lewis Army installation to develop the FEDS procedure. The natural gas and fuel oil assessment contained in this report was preceded with an assessment of electric energy usage that was used to implement a cofunded program between Fort Lewis and Tacoma Public Utilities to improve the efficiency of the Fort's electric-energy-using systems. This report extends the assessment procedure to the systems using natural gas and fuel oil to provide a baseline of consumption and an estimate of the energy-efficiency potential that exists for these two fuel types at Fort Lewis. The baseline is essential to segment the end uses that are targets for broad-based efficiency improvement programs. The estimated fossil-fuel efficiency resources are estimates of the available quantities of conservation for natural gas, fuel oils [number sign]2 and [number sign]6, and fuel-switching opportunities by level of cost-effectiveness. The intent of the baseline and efficiency resource estimates is to identify the major efficiency resource opportunities and not to identify all possible opportunities; however, areas of additional opportunity are noted to encourage further effort

ASKAP HI imaging of the galaxy group IC 1459

© 2015 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. We present HI imaging of the galaxy group IC 1459 carried out with six antennas of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder equipped with phased-array feeds. We detect and resolve HI in 11 galaxies down to a column density of ~1020 cm-2 inside a ~6 deg2 field and with a resolution of ~1 arcmin on the sky and ~8 kms-1 in velocity. We present HI images, velocity fields and integrated spectra of all detections, and highlight the discovery of three HI clouds - two in the proximity of the galaxy IC 5270 and one close to NGC 7418. Each cloud has an HI mass of ~109 M? and accounts for ~15 per cent of the HI associated with its host galaxy. Available images at ultraviolet, optical and infrared wavelengths do not reveal any clear stellar counterpart of any of the clouds, suggesting that they are not gas-rich dwarf neighbours of IC 5270 and NGC 7418. Using Parkes data, we find evidence of additional extended, low-column-density HI emission around IC 5270, indicating that the clouds are the tip of the iceberg of a larger system of gas surrounding this galaxy. This result adds to the body of evidence on the presence of intragroup gas within the IC 1459 group. Altogether, the HI found outside galaxies in this group amounts to several times 109 M?, at least 10 per cent of the HI contained inside galaxies. This suggests a substantial flow of gas in and out of galaxies during the several billion years of the group's evolution

The Detection of an Extremely Bright Fast Radio Burst in a Phased Array Feed Survey

We report the detection of an ultra-bright fast radio burst FRB)from a modest, 3.4-day pilot survey with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. The survey was conducted in a wide- field fly’s-eye configuration using the phased-array-feed technology deployed on the array to instantaneously observe an effective area of 160 deg2, and achieve an exposure totalling 13200 deg2 hr. We constrain the position of FRB 170107 to a region 8 ́ x 8 ́ in size(90% containment)and its fluence to be 58 ± 6 Jy ms. The spectrum of the burst shows a sharp cutoff above 1400 MHz, which could be due to either scintillation or an intrinsic feature of the burst. This confirms the existence of an ultra-bright (> 20 Jy ms) population of FRBs