From parson to professional: the changing ministry of the Anglican clergy in Staffordshire, 1830-1960

From 1830 to 1960 the parish ministry of the clergy of the Church of England underwent a transformation, which was expressed in the gradual abandonment of the parson model and the adoption of the professional model. Staffordshire provides a good case-study area because of its wide variety of urban and rural parishes where this development can be assessed. Amongst the many causes of the change, the population size of the parishes and the sources of clerical funding are considered to be crucially important. The evidence suggests that where parishes exceeded 2000 people and where the worshiping community became the main provider of financial support, the parson model was increasingly difficult to operate. Out of necessity, and sometimes subconsciously, the clergy developed a model with significant professional features, even though the parson model continued to be promoted as the ideal. There was a narrowing of the remit of the clergy and within their local communities they were less involved and less influential. If as a consequence the incarnational aspect of local ministry has been eroded then there are far reaching implications. This study shows how practical circumstances, such as those that relate to geography and economics, although not always recognised, have an important effect upon the practice and the theology of ministry

A comparison of saccadic and blink suppression in normal observers

Recent research suggests that blink and saccadic suppression are produced by the same mechanism (Volkmann, 1986; Uchikawa & Sato, 1995; Ridder & Tomlinson, 1993, 1995). These studies demonstrated that blink and saccadic suppression have the same effect on various visual functions. However, none of these studies made a comparison of blink and saccadic suppression in the same individual. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of blink and saccadic suppression on contrast sensitivity functions in the same subject. The effect of saccadic suppression on the contrast sensitivity function in three normal observers was determined. Employing a two-alternative, forced-choice technique, thresholds were measured for seven spatial frequencies. At each spatial frequency, the threshold was determined immediately following detection of a voluntary saccade. The magnitude of suppression was taken as the log ratio of the contrast sensitivities obtained while foveating the stimulus and those obtained during saccades. The magnitude of saccadic suppression was found to increase as the saccade amplitude increased and to be spatial-frequency dependent. Low spatial frequencies were suppressed more than high spatial frequencies. The blink suppression data have been measured previously (Ridder & Tomlinson, 1993). Saccadic and blink suppression were qualitatively similar. A vertical shift of the data brought the saccadic and blink suppression data into register. These results suggest that blink and saccadic suppression are produced by the same or similar mechanisms

Use of random Martian atmosphere to evaluate potential entry guidance schemes

A random Martian atmosphere was developed and was used with three guidance schemes to determine the effect of random density variations on the guidance. This random atmosphere was shown to be useful for testing the robustness of guidance schemes for vehicles encountering random disturbances during aerobraking for capture into planetary orbit. Levels of disturbance that could be tolerated and areas where performance could be improved were established. The need for Monte Carlo studies to define the excursion boundaries of capture orbit parameters was indicated

Synthetic social relationships for computational entities

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-189).Humans and many other animals form long term social relationships with each other. These relationships confer a variety of benefits upon us, both as individuals and as groups. Computational systems that can form social relationships like those formed by animals could reap many of the benefits of sociality, both within their own groups and in their interactions with people. This dissertation explores two main questions: *What kinds of internal and external representations are necessary for computational entities to form social relationships like those formed by animals? *How can people participate in and direct the relationships of these entities? To explore these questions, I designed and implemented a system by which computational entities may form simple social relationships. In particular, these synthetic social relationships are modeled after the social behavior of the gray wolf (Canis lupus). The system comprises a novel combination of simple models of emotion, perception and learning in an emotional memory-based mechanism for social relationship formation. The system also includes supporting technologies through which people may participate in and direct the relationships. The system was presented as an interactive installation entitled AlphaWolf in the Emerging Technologies program at SIGGRAPH 2001. This installation featured a pack of six virtual wolves - three fully autonomous adults and three semi-autonomous pups whom people could direct by howling, growling, whining or barking into microphones.(cont.) In addition to observing the interactions of several hundred SIGGRAPH participants, I performed two main evaluations of the AlphaWolf system - a 32-subject human user study and a set of simulations of resource exploitation among the virtual wolves. Results from these evaluations support the hypothesis that the AlphaWolf system enables the formation of social relationships among groups of computational entities and people, and that these relationships are beneficial to both the inter-machine interactions and the human-machine interactions in a variety of ways. This research represents one of many possible steps towards synthetic social relationships with the complexity of the relationships found in real wolves, let alone in humans. Much further work will be necessary to create entities who can fully engage us in our own social terms. The system presented here provides a basic scaffolding on which such entities may be built, including an implemented, real-time example; new ideas in directable characters and character-based interactive installations; a simple, ethologically plausible model of computational social relationships; and statistically significant support for these claims.by William Michael Tomlinson, Jr.Ph.D

Olfactory processing of spatial information in hamsters

The purpose of this research was to elucidate the nature and ontogeny of spatial information processing in hamsters. The study consisted of a series of spatial tasks administered to hamsters reared under different conditions. Experiment 1 demonstrated that hamsters reared on solid food, but not hamsters reared on a liquid diet, increased their exploratory behavior after a change in the spatial location of two odor cues when forced to adopt an allocentric frame of reference. Experiment 2 showed that 1iquid-reared hamsters could detect a change in the spatial location of odor cues if allowed to adopt an egocentric frame of reference. Experiment 3 showed that the liquid-reared hamsters could detect a change in the spatial location of two visual cues when forced to adopt an allocentric frame of reference. Experiment 4 compared a group of hamsters which experienced restricted exploratory experiences early in development with the 1iquid-reared and normally-reared animals tested in Experiment 1. A series of orthogonal comparisons indicated that the normally-reared group differed from both experimental groups. The restricted-rearing group and the 1iquid-rearing group did not differ and both failed to detect a change in the spatial location of odor cues from an allocentric frame of reference

An Investigation of the Ability of Antipsoriatic Drugs to Inhibit Calmodulin Activity: A Possible Mode of Action of Dithranol (Anthralin)

Epidermal calmodulin (CaM) has been reported to be elevated in psoriasis and to decrease following clearance of psoriasis with treatment. We set out to investigate whether any of the principle drugs used in the treatment of psoriasis had inherent CaM antagonist activity. Utilizing a CaM-activated phosphodiesterase we have demonstrated that even at very high concentrations, the systemic drugs etretinate, methotrexate, and 8-methoxypsoralen, and the topical agents hydrocortisone and crude coal tar showed minimal CaM inhibitory activity. Dithranol (anthralin), however, whether freshly prepared or oxidized, produced substantial inhibition of CaM activity and was demonstrated to be a potent competitive antagonist of CaM, suggesting another possible therapeutic mode of action of dithranol in psoriasis