The Development and Implementation of a Grief Support Group Program for the Toronto East Seventh-day Adventist Church Community

This project attempts to develop and implement a grief support group for the Toronto East Seventh-day Adventist Church. Several theories of grief, both within and outside of the SDA Church, are briefly explored. The intent is to derive an understanding of the dynamics of the grief encounter. The research shows that in the context of grief, one of the best methods for resolving the pain and trauma of grief is to attend a grief support group. Our contemporary society shuns openness of expression with regard to grief. Society also imposes on the bereaved a limited time period to get over one\u27s grief. However, grievers learn from experience that one does not get over grief; rather with God\u27s help, they go through the encounter. From a theological perspective, the Bible is replete with model mourners. In the Old Testament, Job demonstrates that the experience of suffering or grief is not the result of one\u27s wickedness. In the New Testament, Jesus Himself models that it is acceptable to weep. In John 11:35 the Bible records: Jesus wept. The best news of the New Testament is that the second coming of Christ and the resurrection is the ultimate source of permanent comfort for today\u27s grievers. Ten grieving individuals of the Toronto East SDA Church founded and formed a grief support group. For six consecutive weeks they met and (1) processed their grief pains, and (2) acquired insights on being caregivers to other grievers. The evaluation by the support group members revealed that they received much benefit in being able to look back at their losses and realistically come to terms with the finality and reality of death, as one griever put it. The findings of this project suggest that the church and the pastors must become proactive in seeking creative ways of providing support groups for hurting grievers within their communities. It is anticipated that the Seventh-day Adventist Church in particular will become motivated in providing ministry to the bereaved by (1) offering more support to the bereaved, (2) seeking to establish support groups for those who are having difficulty in accepting the reality of their loss, and (3) offering help to re-invest in new relationships, new dreams, new activities, and new aspirations

Divergence of opinion and risk : an empirical analysis of the Ex Ante beliefs of institutional investors

Bibliography: p. [24-25

The Ratio of Total to Selective Extinction Toward Baade's Window

We measure the ratio of total to selective extinction, R_{VI}=A_V/E(V-I), toward Baade's Window by comparing the VIK colors of 132 Baade's Window G and K giants from Tiede, Frogel, & Terndrup with the solar-neighborhood (V-I),(V-K) relation from Bessell & Brett. We find R_{VI}=2.283 +/- 0.016, and show that our measurement has no significant dependence on stellar type from G0 to K4. Adjusting the Paczynski et al. determination of the centroid of the dereddened Baade's Window clump for this revised value of $R_{VI}$, we find I_{0,RC}=14.43 and (V-I)_{0,RC}=1.058. This implies a distance to the Baade's Window clump of d_{BW} = 8.63 +/- 0.16 kpc, where the error bar takes account of statistical but not systematic uncertainties.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Ap

BUSINESS CYCLE AND LONG-TERM DEBT: EFFECTS ON HOTEL OPERATING LEASE

Over the last 25 years, many hotel operators have chosen to lease their property instead of owning as a financing strategy. This paper examines the combined and separate contributions of business cycles and a firm’s level of long-term debt on hotel owner/operator use of operating leases. The results indicate that operating leases were used more often during contracting business cycles and less often during cycles of expansion. According to the results, operating leases and long-term debt are not complementary, although they are increasingly treated as complements when the economy suffers a downturn

Profiles of cash flow components

Includes bibliographical references (p. 20-22)

Evaluating bulk flow estimators for CosmicFlows-4 measurements

For over a decade there have been contradictory claims in the literature about whether the local bulk flow motion of galaxies is consistent or in tension with the $\Lambda$CDM model. While it has become evident that systematics affect bulk flow measurements, systematics in the estimators have not been widely investigated. In this work, we thoroughly evaluate the performance of four estimator variants, including the Kaiser maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) and the minimum variance estimator (MVE). We find that these estimators are unbiased, however their precision may be strongly correlated with the survey geometry. Small biases in the estimators can be present leading to underestimated bulk flows, which we suspect are due to the presence of non-linear peculiar velocities. The uncertainty assigned to the bulk flows from these estimators is typically underestimated, which leads to an overestimate of the tension with $\Lambda$CDM. We estimate the bulk flow for the CosmicFlows-4 data and use mocks to ensure the uncertainties are appropriately accounted for. Using the MLE we find a bulk flow amplitude of $408\pm165 \mathrm{km s}^{-1}$ at a depth of $49\, \mathrm{Mpc} h^{-1}$, in reasonable agreement with $\Lambda$CDM. However using the MVE which can probe greater effective depths, we find an amplitude of $428\pm108 \mathrm{km s}^{-1}$ at a depth of $173\, \mathrm{Mpc} h^{-1}$, in tension with the model, having only a 0.11% probability of obtaining a larger $\chi^2$. These measurements appear directed towards the Great Attractor region where more data may be needed to resolve tensions

Does Sickle Cell Disease Protect Against Diabetes Mellitus? : Cross-sectional study

Objectives: The co-existence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and sickle cell disease (SCD) is rare. This study aimed to explore whether SCD patients have the same DM prevalence as the general population in a country with a high prevalence of DM. Methods: This cross-sectional study included all SCD adult patients admitted to Salmaniya Medical Complex, Bahrain, between 2003 and 2010 (n = 2,204). A random sample (n = 520) was taken to establish the prevalence of DM. Laboratory records were examined to determine the presence of DM. Results: There were 376 SCD patients with complete records; of these, 24 (6.4%) had DM. The age- and sex-standardised prevalence of DM was 8.3%. Conclusion: While the prevalence of DM in SCD patients in Bahrain was high, it was lower than expected in this population. SCD may have a protective effect towards DM development. However, the impact of these two conditions on vascular diseases suggest a need for screening and aggressive treatment in this population

Psychological interventions for women with non-metastatic breast cancer (Review)

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women worldwide. It is a distressing diagnosis and, as a result, considerable research has examined the psychological sequelae of being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. Breast cancer is associated with increased rates of depression and anxiety and reduced quality of life. As a consequence, multiple studies have explored the impact of psychological interventions on the psychological distress experienced after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Objectives: To assess the effects of psychological interventions on psychological morbidities, quality of life and survival among women with nonmetastatic breast cancer. Search methods: We searched the following databases up to 16 May 2013: the Cochrane Breast Cancer Group Specialised Register, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and PsycINFO; and reference lists of articles. We also searched the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO ICTRP) search portal and ClinicalTrials.gov for ongoing trials in addition to handsearching. Selection criteria: Randomised controlled trials that assessed the effectiveness of psychological interventions for non-metastatic breast cancer in women. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently appraised and extracted data from eligible trials. Any disagreement was resolved by discussion. Extracted data included information about participants, methods, the intervention and outcome. Main results: Twenty-eight randomised controlled trials comprising 3940 participants were included. The most frequent reasons for exclusion were non-randomised trials and the inclusion of women with metastatic disease. A wide range of interventions were evaluated, with 24 trials investigating a cognitive behavioural therapy and four trials investigating psychotherapy compared to control. Pooled standardised mean differences (SMD) from baseline indicated less depression (SMD -1.01, 95% confidence interval (CI) -1.83 to -0.18; P = 0.02; 7 studies, 637 participants, I2 = 95%, low quality evidence), anxiety (SMD -0.48, 95% CI -0.76 to -0.21; P = 0.0006; 8 studies, 776 participants, I2 = 64%, low quality evidence) and mood disturbance (SMD -0.28, 95% CI -0.43 to -0.13; P = 0.0003; 8 studies, 1536 participants, I2 = 47%, moderate quality evidence) for the cognitive behavioural therapy group than the control group. For quality of life, only an individually-delivered cognitive behavioural intervention showed significantly better quality of life than the control with an SMD of 0.65 (95% CI 0.07 to 1.23; P = 0.03; 3 studies, 141 participants, I2 = 41%, very low quality evidence). Pooled data from two group-delivered studies showed a non-significant overall survival benefit favouring cognitive behavioural therapy compared to control (pooled hazard ratio (HR) 0.76, 95% CI 0.25 to 2.32; P = 0.63; 530 participants, I2 = 84%, low quality evidence). Four studies compared psychotherapy to control with one to two studies reporting on each outcome. The four studies were assessed as high risk of bias and provided limited evidence of the efficacy of psychotherapy. Adverse events were not reported in any of the included studies. Authors’ conclusions: A psychological intervention, namely cognitive behavioural therapy, produced favourable effects on some psychological outcomes, in particular anxiety, depression and mood disturbance. However, the evidence for survival improvement is still lacking. These findings are open to criticism because of the notable heterogeneity across the included studies and the shortcomings of the included studies

A refined hydrogen bond potential for flexible protein models

One of the major disadvantages of coarse-grained hydrogen bond potentials, for their use in protein folding simulations, is the appearance of abnormal structures when these potentials are used in flexible chain models, and no other geometrical restrictions or energetic contributions are defined into the system.We have efficiently overcome this problem, for chains of adequate size in a relevant temperature range, with a refined coarse-grained hydrogen bond potential. With it, we have been able to obtain nativelike alpha-helices and beta-sheets in peptidic systems, and successfully reproduced the competition between the populations of these secondary structure elements by the effect of temperature and concentration changes. In this manuscript we detail the design of the interaction potential and thoroughly examine its applicability in energetic and structural terms, considering factors such as chain length, concentration, and temperature