Empowering and Equipping the Laity in the South Caribbean Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Problem Some pastors in the South Caribbean Conference of Seventh-day Adventists feel challenged by the ministry of the laity. One reason is the lack of a clear understanding of the biblical and theological perspectives on empowering and equipping the laity. Consequently, the potential of the laity is not fully utilized. Method Current literature was reviewed. This included books and articles on the principles, strategies, and programs which assist pastors to develop’ their empowering and equipping skills. A comparison was done between the ministry of the pastors and the laity in the South Caribbean Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. An evaluation of selected equipping programs was completed. Seminars were developed for pastors to empower and equip the laity. Conclusions Empowering and equipping is an indispensable ministry in a church. To make it optional is to neglect the training of new church members, older church members, and church leaders. A church cannot have a positive influence in community services without a prayerful, systematic training of its membership. With carefully correlated ongoing church membership training, a church can have an effective ministry which will enrich its gospel commission. This is the challenge of the ministry of membership training. The doctrines of spiritual gifts and the priesthood of all believers need to be understood by pastors and members. The mobilization of church members to exercise their ministry should be based on their areas of giftedness. The role of the pastor is many faceted. It is very clear that the main function is to equip the members to develop their own ministry in building up the church (Eph 4:11, 12) . As members are equipped and empowered, they become liberated to perform ministry

Comparison of herbicide programs in imidazolinone tolerant corn

Field studies were conducted in 1998 at Jackson, Milan, Knoxville, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, to examine several herbicide programs for weed control in imidazolinone-tolerant corn. Field corn variety FFR 797 IMI was no-till or minimum-till planted at all locations. The treatments were replicated four times in a randomized block design. Treatments ranging from a PRE-only to PRE followed by postemergent (POST) to total POST applied to examine weed control, crop injury, and yield. Crop oil concentrate (COC) was combined with atrazine when applied POST, while nonionic surfactant was added to all other POST treatments. Visual evaluations were taken four weeks after treatment to evaluate control of broadleaf signalgrass (Brachiaria platyphylla (Griseb.) Nash), large crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis (L.) Scop), Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri (S.) Wats), pitted morningglory (Ipomoea lacunosa L.), and sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia (L.) Irwin and Barnaby). None of the treatments controlled sicklepod at Milan due to high population density (600-5000 plants/m2). Imazethapyr + imazapyr + dicamba POST and atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by prosulfuron + primisulfuron + nicosulfuron POST controlled these weeds while imazethapyr + imazapyr POST, imazethapyr + imazapyr + pendimethalin POST, and atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by flumetsulam + clopyralid + nicosulfuron POST controlled all weeds \u3e86% except Palmer amaranth (\u3c67%). Imazethapyr + imazapyr + nicosulfuron POST failed to control Palmer amaranth and only controlled sicklepod 75% at Spring Hill. Atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by nicosulfuron POST did not control Palmer amaranth and pitted morningglory but controlled all other weeds. Atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by dicamba POST failed to control broadleaf signalgrass and pitted morningglory, but controlled large crabgrass, Palmer amaranth, and sicklepod. Imazethapyr + imazapyr + atrazine POST controlled all weeds except pitted morningglory (71%), while atrazine + crop oil concentrate controlled the dicot weeds but had little monocot activity. Nicosulfuron + rimsulfuron + atrazine POST controlled broadleaf signalgrass and Palmer amaranth, but only partially controlled pitted morningglory control. Sicklepod was controlled at Knoxville but not at Spring Hill by the mixture of these three herbicides. Although atrazine + metolachlor PRE controlled broadleaf signalgrass and sicklepod at Knoxville, the treatment did not control all other weeds at Jackson and Spring Hill. Corn yields were reduced at Milan from sicklepod competition. Yields were also low for treatments that did not provide adequate large crabgrass and Palmer amaranth control. Slight corn injury was observed but did not appear to influence corn yields

Manufacturing processes

The following issues are covered: process development frequently lags behind material development, high fabrication costs, flex joints (bellows) - a continuing program, SRM fabrication-induced defects, and in-space assembly will require simplified design

A Mixed Methods Study of Environmental Determinants of Entrepreneurship

It wasn’t until the 1960s that academic interest emerged to explore the relationship between organizations, such as entrepreneurial firms, and their respective natural environments (Starik & Marcus, 2000). Although the study of entrepreneurship and environmental conditions is a more recent scholarly focus, it continues to gain attention in academic research (Meek et al., 2010). Despite an increasing amount of highquality research throughout the past decade, environmental conditions remain largely underappreciated in management theory (Whiteman & Cooper, 2011). This study complements prior research by exploring the theories surrounding entrepreneurship and environmental conditions. In addition, this study advances the cumulative body of research by analyzing the multilevel determinants of entrepreneurship across environments. Using a mixed methods approach consisting of interviews and cross-sectional data, the results provide a descriptive illustration of the relationship between entrepreneurship and environmental conditions. The qualitative and quantitative findings offer novel insight to help answer the following research question: In what ways do environments influence entrepreneurship

Shellfish Spotlight: 2008

Each year Granite State shellfishers search shallow briny waters in search of delicious mussels, clams, or oysters for the dinner table. Those who are skilled often are rewarded with full buckets, but few shellfishers realize that good harvests in New Hampshire’s Seacoast owe much to activities occurring far upstream. The quality of the water and amount of available nutrients that sustain a clam or oyster is directly related to the condition of the rivers and streams that drain the land. The Hampton-Seabrook Estuary is fed by approximately 46 square miles of surrounding land. An even larger system, the Piscataqua River Estuary that includes Great Bay, is supplied by a watershed that is 1,023 square miles. Development within the coastal watershed area has profound impacts on the amount of contaminants flowing to the sea. Sediment washed from roadways and bare soil flows downstream and collects in the estuary where it smothers shellfish beds in extreme cases. Nutrients, primarily nitrogen, are contributed by wastewater treatment plants, septic systems, and land use activities such as lawn fertilizing. Excessive nutrients threaten the ecological balance of the estuaries and thus the survival of shellfish populations. Finally, bacteria from failing septic systems, pet waste, or damaged sewer systems create a human health hazard in estuarine waters. Because shellfish filter great amounts of water to take in food and oxygen, they absorb contaminants from the water that accumulate in their flesh. Therefore, a watershed that flushes large amounts of contaminants downstream will deliver many of these contaminants to shellfish and reduce their numbers or often make them unsafe to eat. It is this close relationship between coastal watershed function and shellfish health that caused the New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP), and many partnering agencies, to monitor shellfish in New Hampshire and make their restoration and maintenance a priority. The NHEP Manage- ment Plan includes many strategies that improve water quality throughout the watershed that will in turn improve shellfish populations and open more harvesting areas

Developing a Programme Theory of Integrated Care: the effectiveness of Lincolnshire’s multidisciplinary Neighbourhood Teams in supporting older people with multi-morbidity’ (ProTICare) [summary report]

It is a well-rehearsed conversation that an ageing population places a significant ‘burden’ on the healthcare system where this narrative has become arguably more prevalent during a time of unprecedented economic restraint. A key approach to ensuring cost-effective service delivery through the integration of health and social care services aims to ensure a ‘seamless’ care pathway from early preventative interventions, planned care for complex needs, and a reduction in unscheduled hospital admissions and inappropriate service use. Ultimately it is acknowledged that integrated care will lead to the improvement of older people’s quality of life (Curry and Ham, 2010). An innovative concept developed from this discourse is the ‘Neighbourhood Teams’, a multidisciplinary team, comprising healthcare professionals and voluntary sector services with the underlying focus of providing streamlined case managing of care for individuals with multiple long term conditions. It is evident that multimorbidity is an increasing concern for the healthcare system, recognisable amongst individuals over 65 years of age, especially those defined as the 'oldest old'. Echoing current policy, an additional but essential role of the Neighbourhood Teams is encouraging individuals to self-manage their conditions. This research will report on the effectiveness of four Lincolnshire Neighbourhood Teams in supporting older people with multimorbidities. Furthermore drawing upon existing literature and qualitative interviews with healthcare and voluntary sector staff, the development of a programme theory of integrated care derived from various elements of the project will reflect upon the perceived outcomes of the Neighbourhood Teams and their successes in achieving their stated aims

Joint Estimation of Attenuation and Scatter for Tomographic Imaging with the Broken Ray Transform

The single-scatter approximation is fundamental for many tomographic imaging problems. This class broadly includes x-ray scattering imaging and optical scatter imaging for certain media. In all cases, noisy measurements are affected by both local events and nonlocal attenuation. Related applications typically focus on reconstructing one of two images: scatter density or total attenuation. However, both images are media specific. Both images are useful for object identification. Knowledge of one image aides estimation of the other, especially when estimating images from noisy data.Joint image recovery has been demonstrated analytically in the context of the broken ray transform (BRT) for attenuation and scatter-density images. The BRT summarizes the nonlocal affects of attenuation in single-scatter measurement geometries. We find BRT analysis particularly interesting as joint image recovery has been demonstrated analytically using only two scatter angles. Limiting observations to two scatter angles is significant because it supports joint reconstruction in two dimensions for anisotropic scatter modalities (e.g. Bragg, Compton). However, all analytic inversion strategies share two fundamental assumptions limiting their utility: nonzero scatter everywhere, and a deterministic data model.There are two themes to our work. First, we consider the BRT in a purely deterministic setting. We are the first to recognize the BRT as a linear shift-invariant operator. This linear-systems perspective motivates frequency-domain analysis both of the data and operator. Frequency-domain representations provide new insights on the operator and a common framework for contrasting recent inversion formulas. New algorithms are presented for regularized inversion of the BRT in addition to fast forward and adjoint operators. Second, we incorporate the BRT in a stochastic data model. Approximating the detectors as photon counting processes, we model the data as Poisson distributed. Our iterative algorithm, alternating scatter and attenuation image updates, guarantees monotonic reduction of the regularized log-likelihood function of the data. We are the first to consider joint image estimation from noisy data. Our results demonstrate a significant improvement over analytic methods for data sets with missing data (regions with zero scatter). In addition to joint image estimation, our approach can be specialized for single image estimation. With known attenuation, we can improve the quality of scatter image estimates. Similarly, with known scatter, we can improve the quality of attenuation image estimates.Through analysis and simulations, we highlight challenges for attenuation image estimation from BRT data, and ambiguity in the joint image recovery problem. Performance will vary with scaling of the problem. Total attenuation, detected counts, and scatter angle all affect the quality of image estimates. We are the first to incorporate both scatter density and attenuation in noisy data models. Our results demonstrate the benefits of accounting for both images, and should inform design of future measurement systems

Media Literacy in Teacher Education: A Good Fit across the Curriculum

Abstract Current preoccupations in teacher education reform include data gathering, teaching technique, and preparing PK-12 students for standardized tests. The purpose of American education has been reduced to economic benefit. Concerns with ethical behavior, the good life, and democratic citizenship have fallen by the wayside except perhaps in a single social foundations course. Media literacy education infused in the teacher education curriculum offers one way to restore purpose to teacher education, encouraging both pre-service teachers and their students to think critically about their media-dominated society