Is the Enneagram Compatible with the Catholic Faith?

Within the past several years, the Enneagram of Personality’s popularity has increased significantly in terms of public attention. As a result, social media contains many “memes” primarily focusing on stereotypes of “9 personality types.” Like all stereotyping, this focus is often damaging from a psychological standpoint. Additionally, some have appropriated the material into a form of New Age Spirituality. Use of the Enneagram in this way has led to much suspicion and criticism of the Enneagram. In 2000, the US Bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices drafted A Brief Report on the Origins of the Enneagram (US bishop\u27 Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices). In this paper, I intend to address several points within the Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices (from here forth, SDPP) document in terms of the Enneagram’s origin, roots in spirituality, and connections with modern psychology. I concur with the SDPP thesis that “aspects of the intersection between Enneagram doctrine and Catholic belief warrant particular scrutiny” (US bishop\u27 Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices) however, I wish to contribute to that scrutiny in a more positive light

'Soft' Deviance or Erosion: The Forming of Organizational Culture

Omnibus survey data collected from the economically active population (N = 1,322) in the Czech Republic in 1996 showed a number of workplace nuisances or more serious deviance. Even though privatization has caused some positive development in organizational culture, the quality of leadership & management & the whole agenda of human resources are weak. Sexual harassment is not a major problem; however, the readiness of higher-level staff to tackle this problem is not very high. The main nuisances are misuses of telephones & the material equipment of the company. While employees react sensitively to partial manifestations of inequality & protection in the organization, their attitudes toward customers remain a problem. This experience is seen in the context of theories of anomie, concepts of discipline, & life in a risk-society

Mechanics of fatigue damage in titanium-graphite hybrid laminates

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-207).Titanium-graphite hybrid laminates are being developed for high-temperature aerospace applications. Experimental observations have indicated that cracks in the titanium facesheets initiate at free edges as well as in areas of high stress concentration, such as holes and notches and that a delaminated region between the facesheet and the intact plies develops and propagates in the wake of the facesheet crack. This thesis experimentally and analytically evaluates the facesheet crack and delamination growth behavior of TiGr laminates. The delamination growth behavior is studied by isolating delamination growth using TiGr specimens with facesheet seams. The growth rate of delamination from facesheet seams is related via a power law to the applied strain energy release rate. It is shown that elevated temperatures significantly increase the growth rate of facesheet delamination. The facesheet crack growth behavior in TiGr laminates was measured experimentally and compared to model predictions. It is shown that the crack growth rate in TiGr facesheets is significantly lower for TiGr laminates as compared to monolithic titanium. After an initial decrease in crack growth rate, the crack propagates at a constant rate while the crack growth rate for monolithic titanium increases as the crack extends.(cont.) A three-dimensional finite element model was implemented that captured the experimental crack growth trends without any additional tuning parameters. A global, bridged-crack model was not accurate in predicting the facesheet crack growth behavior of TiGr laminates. The bridged-crack model failed because it did not capture the details of the bridging stresses and delamination in the vicinity of the crack tip. In contrast to the delamination growth from facesheet seams, it was shown that elevated temperatures did not significantly affect the growth rate of the titanium facesheet crack. Future efforts to model composite damage growth using global modeling approach must validate the model to ensure that all of the necessary parameters are captured.by Dennis Arthur Burianek.Ph.D

Advanced Solar-propelled Cargo Spacecraft for Mars Missions

Three concepts for an unmanned, solar powered, cargo spacecraft for Mars support missions were investigated. These spacecraft are designed to carry a 50,000 kg payload from a low Earth orbit to a low Mars orbit. Each design uses a distinctly different propulsion system: A Solar Radiation Absorption (SRA) system, a Solar-Pumped Laser (SPL) system and a solar powered magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) arc system. The SRA directly converts solar energy to thermal energy in the propellant through a novel process. In the SPL system, a pair of solar-pumped, multi-megawatt, CO2 lasers in sunsynchronous Earth orbit converts solar energy to laser energy. The MPD system used indium phosphide solar cells to convert sunlight to electricity, which powers the propulsion system. Various orbital transfer options are examined for these concepts. In the SRA system, the mother ship transfers the payload into a very high Earth orbit and a small auxiliary propulsion system boosts the payload into a Hohmann transfer to Mars. The SPL spacecraft and the SPL powered spacecraft return to Earth for subsequent missions. The MPD propelled spacecraft, however, remains at Mars as an orbiting space station. A patched conic approximation was used to determine a heliocentric interplanetary transfer orbit for the MPD propelled spacecraft. All three solar-powered spacecraft use an aerobrake procedure to place the payload into a low Mars parking orbit. The payload delivery times range from 160 days to 873 days (2.39 years)

Bandgap behavior and singularity of the domain-induced light scattering through the pressure-induced ferroelectric transition in relaxor ferroelectric A(x)Ba(1-x)Nb(2)O(6) (A: Sr,Ca)

[EN] In this letter, we have investigated the electronic structure of A(x)Ba(1-x)Nb(2)O(6) relaxor ferroelectrics on the basis of optical absorption spectroscopy in unpoled single crystals with A = Sr and Ca under high pressure. The direct character of the fundamental transition could be established by fitting Urbach's rule to the photon energy dependence of the absorption edge yielding bandgaps of 3.44(1) eV and 3.57(1) eV for A = Sr and Ca, respectively. The light scattering by ferroelectric domains in the pre-edge spectral range has been studied as a function of composition and pressure. After confirming with x-ray diffraction the occurrence of the previously observed ferroelectric to paraelelectric phase transition at 4 GPa, the light scattering produced by micro-and nano-ferroelectric domains at 3.3 eV in Ca0.28Ba0.72Nb2O6 has been probed. The direct bandgap remains virtually constant under compression with a drop of only 0.01 eV around the phase transition. Interestingly, we have also found that light scattering by the polar nanoregions in the paraelectric phase is comparable to the dispersion due to ferroelectric microdomains in the ferroelectric state. Finally, we have obtained that the bulk modulus of the ferroelectric phase of Ca0.28Ba0.72Nb2O6 is B-0 = 222(9) GPa. Published by AIP Publishing.J.R.-F. acknowledges the Spanish MINECO for the Juan de la Cierva (IJCI-2014-20513) Program and Dr. Bayarjargal from the Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt for providing the CBN28 samples. This work was supported by Spanish MINECO under Grant No. MAT2016-75586-C4-1-P/2-P. The high pressure x-ray diffraction experiments were performed at MSPD beamline at ALBA Synchrotron (Project 2016021588) with the collaboration of ALBA staff.Ruiz-Fuertes, J.; Gomis, O.; Segura, A.; Bettinelli, M.; Burianek, M.; Muehlberg, M. (2018). Bandgap behavior and singularity of the domain-induced light scattering through the pressure-induced ferroelectric transition in relaxor ferroelectric A(x)Ba(1-x)Nb(2)O(6) (A: Sr,Ca). Applied Physics Letters. 112(4). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5012111S112

Building a speech understanding system using word spotting techniques

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).by Theresa K. Burianek.M.Eng

Human P2Y 14 Receptor Agonists: Truncation of the Hexose Moiety of Uridine-5′-Diphosphoglucose and Its Replacement with Alkyl and Aryl Groups

Uridine-5′-diphosphoglucose (UDPG) activates the P2Y14 receptor, a neuroimmune system GPCR. P2Y14 receptor tolerates glucose substitution with small alkyl or aryl groups or its truncation to uridine-5′-diphosphate (UDP), a full agonist human P2Y14 receptor expressed in HEK-293 cells. 2-Thiouracil derivatives displayed selectivity for activation of the human P2Y14 vs. the P2Y6 receptor, such as 2-thio-UDP 4 (EC50 1.92 nM at P2Y14, 224-fold selectivity vs. P2Y6) and its β-propyloxy ester 18. EC50 of β-methyl ester of UDP and its 2-thio analogue were 2730 and 56 nM, respectively. β-t-Butyl ester of 4 was 11-fold more potent than UDPG, but β-aryloxy or larger, branched β-alkyl esters, such as cyclohexyl, were less potent. Ribose replacement of UDP with a rigid North or South methanocarba (bicyclo[3.1.0]hexane) group abolished P2Y14 receptor agonist activity. α,β-Methylene and difluoromethylene groups were well tolerated at the P2Y14 receptor and are expected to provide enhanced stability in biological systems. α,β-Methylene-2-thio-UDP 11 (EC50 0.92 nM) was 2160-fold selective versus P2Y6. Thus, these nucleotides and their congeners may serve as important pharmacological probes for the detection and characterization of the P2Y14 receptor

Toward Reliable Characterization of Sites With Pronounced Topography and Related Effects on Ground Motion

Here we present first results of a joint effort undertaken in ongoing European project NERA -JRA1, which aims at establishing scientifically solid and practically acceptable propositions to incorporate surface topography effects in seismic hazard estimates. We assembled a dataset of both ambient vibration and earthquake recordings acquired at 40 European sites with pronounced topography. It comprises a wide variety of sites including populated hills and even extreme cases of unstable rock slopes in Alpine regions. Results of the polarisation analysis for the two sites presented here show the peculiarity of the topographic site effects

Disruption of Arp2/3 results in asymmetric structural plasticity of dendritic spines and progressive synaptic and behavioral abnormalities

Despite evidence for a strong genetic contribution to several major psychiatric disorders, individual candidate genes account for only a small fraction of these disorders, leading to the suggestion that multigenetic pathways may be involved. Several known genetic risk factors for psychiatric disease are related to the regulation of actin polymerization, which plays a key role in synaptic plasticity. To gain insight into and test the possible pathogenetic role of this pathway, we designed a conditional knock-out of the Arp2/3 complex, a conserved final output for actin signaling pathways that orchestrates de novo actin polymerization. Here we report that postnatal loss of the Arp2/3 subunit ArpC3 in forebrain excitatory neurons leads to an asymmetric structural plasticity of dendritic spines, followed by a progressive loss of spine synapses. This progression of synaptic deficits corresponds with an evolution of distinct cognitive, psychomotor, and social disturbances as the mice age. Together, these results point to the dysfunction of actin signaling, specifically that which converges to regulate Arp2/3, as an important cellular pathway that may contribute to the etiology of complex psychiatric disorders

Disruption of Arp2/3 Results in Asymmetric Structural Plasticity of Dendritic Spines and Progressive Synaptic and Behavioral Abnormalities

Despite evidence for a strong genetic contribution to several major psychiatric disorders, individual candidate genes account for only a small fraction of these disorders, leading to the suggestion that multigenetic pathways may be involved. Several known genetic risk factors for psychiatric disease are related to the regulation of actin polymerization, which plays a key role in synaptic plasticity. To gain insight into and test the possible pathogenetic role of this pathway, we designed a conditional knockout of the Arp2/3 complex, a conserved final output for actin signaling pathways that orchestrates de novo actin polymerization. Here we report that postnatal loss of the Arp2/3 subunit ArpC3 in forebrain excitatory neurons leads to an asymmetric structural plasticity of dendritic spines, followed by a progressive loss of spine synapses. This progression of synaptic deficits corresponds with an evolution of distinct cognitive, psychomotor, and social disturbances as the mice age. Together these results point to the dysfunction of actin signaling, specifically that which converges to regulate Arp2/3, as an important cellular pathway that may contribute to the etiology of complex psychiatric disorders