TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT IN THE CHURCH: ITS EFFECTIVENESS IN IMPROVING WORSHIP AND CHURCH FUNCTIONS

This paper provides an objective look at the subjective topic of technological advancement in the ministry setting. The first step of this literary work is to identify what constitutes as technology and how has it either improved or complicated life as a whole. From the worship service to productivity in the office, technology has permeated the church world. Through literary research and interviews of technical directors in churches, this paper will be able to analyze the positive and negative components of technology adoption. This includes ease of process and spiritual potency. How technology has changed the church dynamic in the past to the present will be displayed to show the long-term effects. From there the paper will make an educated guess to what the future will look like, as well as whether the tradeoffs of technology are a worthy price to pay

Recombining your way out of trouble: the genetic architecture of hybrid fitness under environmental stress

Hybridization between species is a fundamental evolutionary force that can both promote and delay adaptation. There is a deficit in our understanding of the genetic basis of hybrid fitness, especially in non-domesticated organisms. We also know little about how hybrid fitness changes as a function of environmental stress. Here, we made genetically variable F2 hybrid populations from two divergent Saccharomyces yeast species, exposed populations to ten toxins, and sequenced the most resilient hybrids on low coverage using ddRADseq. We expected to find strong negative epistasis and heterozygote advantage in the hybrid genomes. We investigated three aspects of hybridness: 1) hybridity, 2) interspecific heterozygosity, and 3) epistasis (positive or negative associations between non-homologous chromosomes). Linear mixed effect models revealed strong genotype-by-environment interactions with many chromosomes and chromosomal interactions showing species-biased content depending on the environment. Against our predictions, we found extensive selection against heterozygosity such that homozygous allelic combinations from the same species were strongly overrepresented in an otherwise hybrid genomic background. We also observed multiple cases of positive epistasis between chromosomes from opposite species, confirmed by epistasis- and selection-free simulations, which is surprising given the large divergence of the parental species (~15% genome-wide). Together, these results suggest that stress-resilient hybrid genomes can be assembled from the best features of both parents, without paying high costs of negative epistasis across large evolutionary distances. Our findings illustrate the importance of measuring genetic trait architecture in an environmental context when determining the evolutionary potential of hybrid populations

Supporting Introductory Test-Driven Labs with WebIDE

WebIDE is a new web-based development environment for entry-level programmers with two primary goals: minimize tool barriers to writing computer programs and introduce software engineering best practices early in a student\u27s educational career. Currently, WebIDE focuses on Test-Driven Learning (TDL) by using small iterative examples and introducing lock-step labs, which prevent the student from moving forward until they finish the current step. However, WebIDE does not require that labs follow TDL. Instructors can write their own labs for WebIDE using any software engineering or pedagogical approach. Likewise, instructors can build custom evaluators - written in any language - to support their approach and provide detailed error messages to students. We report on a pilot study in a CS0 course where students were split into two groups, one that used WebIDE and one that didn\u27t. The WebIDE group showed a significant improvement in performance when writing a simple Android application. Additionally, among students with some programming experience, the WebIDE group was more proficient in writing unit tests

Izolacija i karakterizacija bakterijske flore iz autohtonih fermentisanih proizvoda Srbije i Crne Gore

The natural community of lactic acid bacteria isolated from farmhouse fermented milk products has been investigated. In such products, where no starters are added, fermentation occurs as a result of natural flora present in the surrounding environment. A total of 200 isolated strains were examined for their acidification activity and EPS formation. Out of the 200 isolated strains, 27 strains were selected for further investigation. They were further identified by 16S rRNA sequencing in order to obtain the identification at species level, which showed that 14 strains belong to Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, 10 of them to Lactobacillus sp and 3 strains belongs to Leuconostoc sp. To differentiate between strains the pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns, of 15 isolated lactococcal strains, was generated using Smal or Ascl. Unrelated strains yielded different patterns of digestion products. The plasmid isolation of these strains has also been conducted in order to compare these results to patterns of PFGE. Phage typing of the Lactococcus sp. strains has been conducted. All lactococcal strains were resistant against 41 phages (Chr. Hansen phage collection) representing the major phage groups known for Lactococcus. These results indicate that the strains represent a possible tool for cultures that have not been exposed to any industrial selection.U ovom radu su proučavani sojevi bakterija mlečne kiseline izolovani iz autohtonih fermentisanih mlečnih proizvoda. Kod ovih proizvoda, kojima se ne dodaju starter kulture, fermentacija se odigrava kao rezultat aktivnosti prirodne mikroflore koja je prisutna u okolnoj sredini. Kod ukupno 200 sojeva proučavana je njihova sposobnost acidifikacije i sposobnost stvaranja egzopolisaharida (EPS). Od ukupno 200 izolovanih sojeva selektovano je njih 27 koji su podvrgnuti daljem proučavanju. Nakon ove selekcije, sojevi su identifikovani 16S rRNA sekvenciranjem u cilju njihove identifikacije na nivou vrste. Od 27 selektovanih sojeva, 14 je pripadalo vrsti Lactococcus lactis subsp. Lactis, 3 soja je pripadalo vrsti Leuconostoc spp., dok je 10 sojeva pripadalo vrsti Lactobacillus sp. Da bi se utvrdile razlike između različitih sojeva urađena je analiza uz korišćenje elektroforeze u pulsirajućem električnom polju (PFGE), a matrice su dobijene uz korišćenje Smal i AscI restrikcionih enzima. Sojevi koji nisu u srodstvu dali su različite matrice digestionih produkata. Izvršena je i izolacija plazmida iz ovih sojeva kako bi se potvrdili rezultati dobijeni PFGE tehnikom. Takođe je izvršena i fagotipizacija sojeva za sve sojeve za koje je dokazano da pripadaju vrsti Lactococcus sp. Svi laktokokni sojevi su bili rezistentni na 41 fag (kolekcija faga kompanije Chr. Hansen) koji predstavljaju grupu bakteriofaga koji su najčešći za vrstu Lactococcus. Dobijeni rezultati ukazuju na to da proučavani sojevi predstavljaju mogući izvor kultura koji do sada nisu bili izloženi bilo kakvoj industrijskoj selekciji

Recombining your way out of trouble: The genetic architecture of hybrid fitness under environmental stress

Hybridization between species can either promote or impede adaptation. But there is a deficit in our understanding of the genetic basis of hybrid fitness, especially in non-domesticated organisms, and when populations are facing environmental stress. We made genetically variable F2 hybrid populations from two divergent Saccharomyces yeast species. We exposed populations to ten toxins and sequenced the most resilient hybrids on low coverage using ddRADseq to investigate four aspects of their genomes: 1) hybridity, 2) interspecific heterozygosity, 3) epistasis (positive or negative associations between non-homologous chromosomes) and 4) ploidy. We used linear mixed effect models and simulations to measure to which extent hybrid genome composition was contingent on the environment. Genomes grown in different environments varied in every aspect of hybridness measured, revealing strong genotype-environment interactions. We also found selection against heterozygosity or directional selection for one of the parental alleles, with larger fitness of genomes carrying more homozygous allelic combinations in an otherwise hybrid genomic background. In addition, individual chromosomes and chromosomal interactions showed significant species biases and pervasive aneuploidies. Against our expectations, we observed multiple beneficial, opposite-species chromosome associations, confirmed by epistasis- and selection-free computer simulations, which is surprising given the large divergence of parental genomes (∼15%). Together, these results suggest that successful, stress-resilient hybrid genomes can be assembled from the best features of both parents without paying high costs of negative epistasis. This illustrates the importance of measuring genetic trait architecture in an environmental context when determining the evolutionary potential of genetically diverse hybrid populations