Worship and the Ministry of Reconciliation: Turning Walls into Tables

(Excerpt) Thank you for the invitation to be with you. One regret I have had, not the only one, is that I have never attended the Institute of Liturgical Studies. Each spring my colleague, William Beckstrand, the cantor at University Lutheran Church of Hope, Minneapolis, would begin to invite and encourage me to join him for his annual journey to the institute at Valparaiso University. As I worked with Bill I began to realize that this event was like a pool of refreshing water that beckoned him through the often taxing days of Lent, Holy Week, and Triduum- I know I can do this .... I know I can do this because soon I will be at Valpo ..

Understanding Retention among Private Baccalaureate Liberal Arts Colleges

This paper attempts to analyze the explanatory variables that best explain retention among liberal arts colleges. Using the model’s estimated parameters, the effects of Standardized Test Scores, average loans, educational related expenditures, average grants, and acceptance rate were calculated. This study concludes that increases in average grants, educational related expenditures, along with increases in Standardized Test Scores will lead to higher levels of retention among Baccalaureate Private Colleges. Taken together, these calculations indicate the degree of importance each explanatory variable has on the retention across Private Liberal Arts Colleges. This study compares the results of a cross sectional data set and a panel data set in order to properly examine the validity of the both outcomes. This analysis is intended to help Baccalaureate Private Colleges understand the factors that lead a student to drop out, as well as the factors that can enhance the college’s ability to successfully retain students

The scattering of ff- and pp-modes from ensembles of thin magnetic flux tubes - An analytical approach

Motivated by the observational results of Braun (1995), we extend the model of Hanson & Cally (2014) to address the effect of multiple scattering of f and p-modes by an ensemble of thin vertical magnetic flux tubes in the surface layers of the Sun. As in observational Hankel analysis we measure the scatter and phase shift from an incident cylindrical wave in a coordinate system roughly centred in the core of the ensemble. It is demonstrated that, although thin flux tubes are unable to interact with high order fluting modes individually, they can indirectly absorb energy from these waves through the scatters of kink and sausage components. It is also shown how the distribution of absorption and phase shift across the azimuthal order m depends strongly on the tube position, as well as on the individual tube characteristics. This is the first analytical study into an ensembles multiple scattering regime, that is embedded within a stratified atmosphere.Comment: 20 pages, 8 Figure

Multiple Scattering of Seismic Waves from Ensembles of Upwardly Lossy Thin Flux Tubes

Our previous semi-analytic treatment of f- and p-mode multiple scattering from ensembles of thin flux tubes (Hanson and Cally, Astrophys. J. 781, 125; 791, 129, 2014) is extended by allowing both sausage and kink waves to freely escape at the top of the model using a radiative boundary condition there. As expected, this additional avenue of escape, supplementing downward loss into the deep solar interior, results in substantially greater absorption of incident f- and p-modes. However, less intuitively, it also yields mildly to substantially smaller phase shifts in waves emerging from the ensemble. This may have implications for the interpretation of seismic data for solar plage regions, and in particular their small measured phase shifts.Comment: 9 Pages, 5 Figures. Accepted by Solar Physic

Varying Monetary Policy Regimes: A Vector Autoregressive Investigation

Recently, two stylized facts about the behavior of the U.S. economy have emerged: first, macroeconomic aggregates appear to be less volatile post-1984 than in the preceding two decades; second, monetary policy appears more responsive to inflationary pressures—and thereby more “stabilizing” — during the Volcker/Greenspan chairmanships relative to earlier regimes. Does a causal relationship exist between these two observations? In particular, has “better” policy by the Federal Reserve Board contributed significantly to the lessened volatility of the U.S. economy? This paper uses a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) specification to address these questions, examining the advantages and limitations of such an approach. In contrast with much of the existing research on these topics, I find that most of the quantitatively significant changes in volatility are attributed to breaks in the non-policy portion of the structural VAR, and not to the identified policy equation.Monetary policy reaction function, structural VAR models, Taylor rule, Volcker disinflation, parameter instability

Monetary Factors in the Long-Run Co-movement of Consumer and Commodity Prices

This paper estimates a structural VAR model of U.S. consumer and world commodity prices. An equiproportional long-run response of nominal price levels to amonetary shock yields identifying restrictions. Exogenous innovations to monetary policy account for a sizable share of the co-movement of these series, including during episodes more commonly attributed to “supply shocks.”Commodity price determination, vector autoregression, long-run restrictions, co-integration, monetary shocks

Extragalactic Foreground Contamination in Temperature-based CMB Lens Reconstruction

We discuss the effect of unresolved point source contamination on estimates of the CMB lensing potential, from components such as the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, radio point sources, and the Cosmic Infrared Background. We classify the possible trispectra associated with such source populations, and construct estimators for the amplitude and scale-dependence of several of the major trispectra. We show how to propagate analytical models for these source trispectra to biases for lensing. We also construct a "source-hardened" lensing estimator which experiences significantly smaller biases when exposed to unresolved point sources than the standard quadratic lensing estimator. We demonstrate these ideas in practice using the sky simulations of Sehgal et. al., for cosmic-variance limited experiments designed to mimic ACT, SPT, and Planck