Transcendent Financial Planning

Financial planning is a broad discipline that involves many different categories of work. Professionally, the goal of financial planning is to help a client invest according to his/her personal needs in such a way that minimizes risk. From a Christian perspective, financial planning is about stewarding what God has given. Combining these perspectives means helping a client invest their finances in such a way that minimizes risk and accomplishes the goals of God. While simply stated, this is a complex and profound topic. To bring greater clarity, financial planning can be broken down into categories, four of which are retirement planning, investing, insurance planning, and estate planning. These categories help isolate different aspects of financial planning to understand what the industry entails, as well as provide frameworks through which financial planners can search scripture for biblical principles on wealth management

The Fetal Position: An Examination of the Validity of Gender through the Lens of Ecological Fluidity of Behavioral Dimorphisms

Sex and gender is not dichotomous as traditionally thought. Once the biology of sex is understood, perhaps a correction of the teaching about male and female uniqueness can be balanced with Jesus’ teaching regarding eunuchs. Until this is done, persons with gender identity discontinuities will be marginalized by the church. Recognizing that this dichotomous view is incorrect is the first step in correcting the marginalization

Effects of soil and canopy characteristics on microwave backscattering of vegetation

A frequency modulated continuous wave C-band (4.8 GHz) scatterometer was mounted on an aerial lift truck and backscatter coefficients of corn were acquired as functions of polarizations, view angles, and row directions. As phytomass and green leaf area index increased, the backscatter also increased. Near anthesis when the canopies were fully developed, the major scattering elements were located in the upper 1 m of the 2.8 m tall canopy and little backscatter was measured below that level. C-band backscatter data could provide information to monitor vegetation at large view zenith angles

Estimating scattered and absorbed radiation in plant canopies by remote sensing

Several research avenues are summarized. The relationships of canopy characteristics to multispectral reflectance factors of vegetation are reviewed. Several alternative approaches for incorporating spectrally derived information into plant models are discussed, using corn as the main example. A method is described and evaluated whereby a leaf area index is estimated from measurements of radiation transmitted through plant canopies, using soybeans as an example. Albedo of a big bluestem grass canopy is estimated from 60 directional reflectance factor measurements. Effects of estimating albedo with substantially smaller subsets of data are evaluated

The Effects of Art Therapy on the Well-Being of Medical Students in Eastern North Carolina

This research examines how art-based interventions may improve the well-being, and more specifically, any negative emotions, of medical students. Medical students are a population who are at high-risk for the development of stress based psychological disorders (Dyrbye, 2011) and also have shown to infrequently utilize mental health services (Tija, Givens, & Shea, 2005). As art therapy holds low stigma and yields a tangible creative product, it was deemed that it may be an appropriate therapeutic mechanism for stress coping in the demographic of medical students. Three art sessions were held at the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine in which students were provided instruction, materials, and meditative purpose for each creative project. Following the completion of the project, students were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire regarding feelings before, during, and after the art sessions. Results mostly supported this hypothesis with significant positive impact on pre-existing negative emotions and high post-session affect reports. However, there was significant induction of anxiety during creative activities correlated with pre-existing negative emotions

Processing techniques development, volume 2. Part 1: Crop inventory techniques

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Characterization of Silicon Ion Exposure on Deinococcus radiodurans

Deinococcus radiodurans is a robust bacterium that is known for its extraordinary resistance to ionizing radiation. In general, many of the investigations of this bacterium\u27s resistance have revolved around low linear energy transfer radiation, such as gamma and electron radiation. This study explored Deinococcus radiodurans\u27s ability to survive high linear energy transfer radiation, specifically proton and neutron radiation. Deinococcus radiodurans was dehydrated to reduce the effects of low linear energy transfer radiation. The bacteria were exposed to both neutron and proton radiation of varying amounts and rehydrated. The resulting colonies were counted and compared to colonies of non-irradiated control samples using a two population, t-statistic test. With few, non-trend forming exceptions, the results of these comparisons showed, with 95% certainty, that there was no statistical difference between the non-irradiated controls and the irradiated samples