The Role Expectations for the Division Director of Education of Seventh-day Adventists : As Perceived by Seven Status Groups Within the Church

Problem: One of the most important and costly services provided by the Seventh-day Adventist Church is education. With a rapidly growing membership overseas and new nations sprouting up almost overnight, the need for adapting and fitting the Adventist educational mold to church school systems in these new nations is crucial. In this context, the Division Director of Education appears to play a vital part, yet his role has not been clearly delineated. It is with a view to ascertaining what his role should be, that this study has been undertaken. Method: The respondents drawn from eight overseas divisions as well as from the world headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist church were grouped under the organizational levels (sectors) of General Conference, Division, Union, and Local, and the professions (units) of principals, pastors, and teachers. A thirty statement questionnaire so designed as to be easily answered and computer scanned, and containing a five-point scale of response covering the range from I, strongly agree, to 5, strongly disagree, was provided. These statements were grouped under six areas, namely, communicator and coordinator; director of personnel; educational specialist and consultant; relations with management; spiritual leader; and supervisor and evaluator. This descriptive study used three statistical procedures to aid in analyzing the data. The first, the Kendall Coefficient of Concordance W, tested the reliability within groups. The second, the Cattell Coefficient of Pattern Similarity, presented a Gestalt view of the inter-relationships of the group responses. The third, the median and Q test, assisted in item identification. Results: The reliability was low but statistically significant. The Gestalt view indicated a negative pattern of similarity among the group responses. The views of teachers, church administrators, educational administrators, and education secretaries compared more closely than did those of pastors, Division Directors of Education, and General Conference respondents. The divergence of reaction indicated a certain independence of thought and response. The areas of the role of the Division Director of Education, according to the degree of agreement awarded them, are placed in priority as follows: specialist and consultant; spiritual leader; supervisor and evaluator; communicator and coordinator; relations with management; director of personnel. Conclusions: The priorities set by all respondents for the specific aspects of the role of the Division Director of Education were to: (1) propagate the philosophy of Christian education, (2) consult and advise Division administrators on educational matters, (3) ensure relevant, spiritual Bible teaching, (4) communicate with the General Conference education department, (5) encourage upgrading and in-service training for educators in all sectors, (6) ensure an Adventist emphasis in the curriculum of all schools, (7) organize division-level workshops, conferences, institutes and extension schools, (8) provide resource materials, (9) emphasize character development, (10) consult through associates, on educational planning and operation, (11) communicate with all levels of educators, (12) consult in planning and problem-evolving situations, (13) ensure the optimum balance among work, study, worship, and recreation in school programs, (14) assist in assessing the professional performance of educators, (15) uphold professional and religious standards, (16) ensure that current files are maintained on educational workers, (17) ensure that schools have current master plans of development, (18) ensure adequate supervision of schools, (19) have responsibility for professional aspects of inter-division transfers of educational personnel, (20) generally communicate with church members, and (21) advise in the selection of union education secretaries

Is the Federal Home Loan Bank system good for banks? a look at evidence on membership, advances and risk

Since the early 1990s, commercial banks have turned to Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) advances to plug the gap between loan and deposit growth. Is this trend worrisome? On the one hand, advances implicitly encourage risk by insulating borrowers from market discipline. On the other, advances give borrowers greater flexibility to managing interest rate and liquidity risk. And access to FHLBank funding encourages members to reshape their balance sheets in ways that could lower credit risk. Using quarterly financial and supervisory data for banks from 1992 to 2000, we assess the effect of FHLBank membership and advances on risk. The evidence suggests liquidity and leverage risks rose modestly, but interest-rate risk declined somewhat. Credit risk and overall failure risk were largely unaffected. Although the evidence suggest FHLBank membership and advances have had, at best, only a modest impact on bank risk, we caution that the 1990s constitute one observation and that moral hazard could be pronounced if leverage ratios revert to historical norms.Government-sponsored enterprises ; Federal home loan banks ; Bank liquidity

Simultaneous reconstruction of evolutionary history and epidemiological dynamics from viral sequences with the birth-death SIR model

The evolution of RNA viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis C and Influenza virus occurs so rapidly that the viruses' genomes contain information on past ecological dynamics. Hence, we develop a phylodynamic method that enables the joint estimation of epidemiological parameters and phylogenetic history. Based on a compartmental susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model, this method provides separate information on incidence and prevalence of infections. Detailed information on the interaction of host population dynamics and evolutionary history can inform decisions on how to contain or entirely avoid disease outbreaks. We apply our Birth-Death SIR method (BDSIR) to two viral data sets. First, five human immunodeficiency virus type 1 clusters sampled in the United Kingdom between 1999 and 2003 are analyzed. The estimated basic reproduction ratios range from 1.9 to 3.2 among the clusters. All clusters show a decline in the growth rate of the local epidemic in the middle or end of the 90's. The analysis of a hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 2c data set shows that the local epidemic in the C\'ordoban city Cruz del Eje originated around 1906 (median), coinciding with an immigration wave from Europe to central Argentina that dates from 1880--1920. The estimated time of epidemic peak is around 1970.Comment: Journal link: http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/94/20131106.ful

Should the FDIC worry about the FHLB? the impact of Federal Home Loan Bank advances on the Bank Insurance Fund

Does growing commercial-bank reliance on Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) advances increase expected losses to the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF)? Our approach to this question begins by modeling the link between advances and expected losses. We then quantify the effect of advances on default probability with a CAMELS-downgrade model. Finally, we assess the impact on loss-given-default by estimating resolution costs in two scenarios: the liquidation of all banks with failure probabilities above two percent and the liquidation of all banks with advance-to-asset ratios above 15 percent. The evidence points to non-trivial increases in expected losses. The policy implication is that the FDIC should price FHLBank-related exposures.Banks and banking ; Financial institutions ; Deposit insurance

On the number of prime order subgroups of finite groups

Let G be a finite group and let ?(G) be the number of prime order subgroups of G. We determine the groups G with the property ?(G)??G?/2?1, extending earlier work of C. T. C. Wall, and we use our classification to obtain new results on the generation of near-rings by units of prime order

A Gauge-fixed Hamiltonian for Lattice QCD

We study the gauge fixing of lattice QCD in 2+1 dimensions, in the Hamiltonian formulation. The technique easily generalizes to other theories and dimensions. The Hamiltonian is rewritten in terms of variables which are gauge invariant except under a single global transformation. This paper extends previous work, involving only pure gauge theories, to include matter fields.Comment: 7 pages of LaTeX, RU-92-45 and BUHEP-92-3

JULES-BE:Representation of bioenergy crops and harvesting in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator vn5.1

We describe developments to the land surface model JULES, allowing for flexible user-prescribed harvest regimes of various perennial bioenergy crops or natural vegetation types. Our aim is to integrate the most useful aspects of dedicated bioenergy models into dynamic global vegetation models, in order that assessment of bioenergy options can benefit from state-of-the-art Earth system modelling. A new plant functional type (PFT) representing Miscanthus is also presented. The Miscanthus PFT fits well with growth parameters observed at a site in Lincolnshire, UK; however, global observed yields of Miscanthus are far more variable than is captured by the model, primarily owing to the model's lack of representation of crop age and establishment time. Global expansion of bioenergy crop areas under a 2 ?C emissions scenario and balanced greenhouse gas mitigation strategy from the IMAGE integrated assessment model (RCP2.6- SSP2) achieves a mean yield of 4.3 billion tonnes of dry matter per year over 2040-2099, around 30 % higher than the biomass availability projected by IMAGE. In addition to perennial grasses, JULES-BE can also be used to represent short-rotation coppicing, residue harvesting from cropland or forestry and rotation forestry

TreeKnit: Inferring ancestral reassortment graphs of influenza viruses

When two influenza viruses co-infect the same cell, they can exchange genome segments in a process known as reassortment. Reassortment is an important source of genetic diversity and is known to have been involved in the emergence of most pandemic influenza strains. However, because of the difficulty in identifying reassortment events from viral sequence data, little is known about their role in the evolution of the seasonal influenza viruses. Here we introduce TreeKnit, a method that infers ancestral reassortment graphs (ARG) from two segment trees. It is based on topological differences between trees, and proceeds in a greedy fashion by finding regions that are compatible in the two trees. Using simulated genealogies with reassortments, we show that TreeKnit performs well in a wide range of settings and that it is as accurate as a more principled bayesian method, while being orders of magnitude faster. Finally, we show that it is possible to use the inferred ARG to better resolve segment trees and to construct more informative visualizations of reassortments

Theoretical Limits on the Threshold for the Response of Long Cells to Weak Extremely Low Frequency Electric Fields Due to Ionic and Molecular Flux Rectification

AbstractUnderstanding exposure thresholds for the response of biological systems to extremely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic fields is a fundamental problem of long-standing interest. We consider a two-state model for voltage-gated channels in the membrane of an isolated elongated cell (Lcell=1mm; rcell=25μm) and use a previously described process of ionic and molecular flux rectification to set lower bounds for a threshold exposure. A key assumption is that it is the ability of weak physical fields to alter biochemistry that is limiting, not the ability of a small number of molecules to alter biological systems. Moreover, molecular shot noise, not thermal voltage noise, is the basis of threshold estimates. Models with and without stochastic resonance are used, with a long exposure time, texp=104 s. We also determined the dependence of the threshold on the basal transport rate. By considering both spherical and elongated cells, we find that the lowest bound for the threshold is Emin ≈ 9×10−3 V m−1 (9×10−5 V cm−1). Using a conservative value for the loop radius rloop=0.3m for induced current, the corresponding lower bound in the human body for a magnetic field exposure is Bmin ≈ 6×10−4 T (6G). Unless large, organized, and electrically amplifying multicellular systems such as the ampullae of Lorenzini of elasmobranch fish are involved, these results strongly suggest that the biophysical mechanism of voltage-gated macromolecules in the membranes of cells can be ruled out as a basis of possible effects of weak ELF electric and magnetic fields in humans