Worship-Worthiness and Absolute Perfection: Towards an Account of Supreme Worship-Worthiness

Theists and non-theists alike have generally taken absolute perfection to be a necessary condition for worship-worthiness. Unless the object is absolutely perfect, it is often put, the kinds of attitudes or actions constitutive of worship are unwarranted. In this thesis, I offer an account of worship-worthiness that does not take for granted that to be worship-worthy is to be absolutely perfect. More specifically, I advance the claim that to be absolutely perfect is to be supremely worship-worthy and that supreme worship-worthiness holds a unique position in this respect. For instance, I argue that to be absolutely perfect and thus supremely worship-worthy is to be necessarily worship-worthy and uniquely worthy of an undivided worship. I arrive at this conclusion in a somewhat circuitous fashion in that the argument is premised on thin metaphysical and theological commitments so that the success of the argument is not contingent on commitments unlikely to be shared by my interlocutors

No Radical Hangover: Black Power, New Left, and Progressive Politics in the Midwest, 1967-1989.

“No Radical Hangover” recovers the history of left-wing progressivism in the Midwest from 1967 to 1989. In response to the limited achievements of the New Left and black power revolutionary politics, left-wing progressives combined radical analyses of the 1960s urban rebellions, policing, the Vietnam War, and deindustrialization with pragmatic and reformist political strategies such as coalition-building, lobbying, policymaking, and electoral politics. The study is organized around five case studies illustrating how progressives sought to address particular “focal points” for action—Detroit Reverend Albert Cleage’s attempt to take power after the 1967 rebellion, the city’s anti-police brutality campaign during the early 1970s, the Indochina Peace Campaign’s movement to end U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE) and the Ohio Public Interest Campaign (OPIC) attempts to respond to deindustrialization and economic recession during the late-1970s and early-1980s. “No Radical Hangover” reveals the existence of a consequential left-wing progressive politics during the 1970s and 1980s. Progressives in Detroit and Ohio organized successfully around issues of police killings and war and empire. These campaigns successfully won debates around these issues in public discourse and rallied a coalition of different groups and constituencies to achieve their goals. Consequently, left-wing progressive activists did not succumb to sectarianism, neither did they focus on a narrow “identity politics.” This study also uncovers the struggles that left-wing progressives experienced in their efforts to enact racial and economic justice. OPIC and DARE failed to implement their visions of economic democracy, but it was not due to a lack of political imagination. Rather, DARE and OPIC suffered from a lack of political power, especially in the economic realm. They were, however, successful in devising and articulating alternatives to deindustrialization. Studying progressive politics in the Midwest during the 1970s and 1980s from comparative, social movement, intellectual, political, and urban perspectives allows one to see how movements against war and empire and police brutality help inform the resurgence of campaigns to confront plant closings.PhDHistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133355/1/ausmccoy_1.pd

Salinity Inventory and Tolerance Screening in Utah Agriculture

Soil salinity, a yield-limiting condition, has plagued crop production for centuries by reducing crop productivity. Research has introduced methods for successfully managing soil salinity. This research discusses the adaptation of established management methods to create new soil salinity management techniques. One adapted technique is an automated crop screening apparatus. A new design was created and successfully used in rapidly screening two strawberry cultivars to determine their tolerance to salinity. Screening crops and determining their tolerance to yield-limiting conditions are essential in managing soil salinity. Another salinity management tool used in this research was electromagnetic induction (EMI). EMI was used to complete a basin-scale inventory over an 18,000 ha study area in Cache County, Utah. The data obtained during the inventory were used to create EMI calibration models and a basin-scale map showing the spatial distribution of apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa). These new methods for crop tolerance screenings and basin-scale salinity inventories will assist in successfully managing soil salinity and decrease its effect on the global food supply

hagis, an R Package Resource for Pathotype Analysis of Phytophthora sojae Populations Causing Stem and Root Rot of Soybean

Phytophthora sojae is a significant pathogen of soybean worldwide. Pathotype surveys for Phytophthora sojae are conducted to monitor resistance gene efficacy and determine if new resistance genes are needed. Valuable measurements for pathotype analysis include the distribution of susceptible reactions, pathotype complexity, pathotype frequency, and diversity indices for pathotype distributions. Previously the Habgood-Gilmour Spreadsheet (HaGiS), written in Microsoft Excel, was used for data analysis. However, the growing popularity of the R programming language in plant pathology and desire for reproducible research made HaGiS a prime candidate for conversion into an R package. Here we report on the development and use of an R package, hagis, that can be used to produce all outputs from the HaGiS Excel sheet for P. sojae or other gene-for-gene pathosystem studies

Expression, purification, and crystallization of a plant polyketide cyclase from Cannabis sativa

Plant polyketides are a structurally diverse family of natural products. In the biosynthesis of plant polyketides, the construction of the carbocyclic scaffolds is a key step for diversifying the polyketide structure. Olivetolic acid cyclase (OAC) from Cannabis sativa L. is the only known plant polyketide cyclase that catalyzes the C2/C7 intramolecular aldol cyclization of linear pentyl tetra-β-ketide CoA to generate olivetolic acid in the biosynthesis of cannabinoid. The enzyme is also thought to belong to the dimeric α+β barrel (DABB) protein family. However, because of lack of the functional analysis of the other plant DABB proteins and low sequence identity with the functionally and structually characterized bacterial DABB proteins, the catalytic mechanism of OAC has remained unclear. To clarify the intimate catalytic mechanism of OAC, the enzyme was overexpressed in Escherichia coli and crystallized in a vapour-diffusion method. The crystals diffracted X-rays to 1.40 Å resolutions and belonged to space group P3121 or P3221, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 47.3 Å, c = 176.0 Å. Further crystallographic analysis will provide valuable insights into the structure–function relationship and catalytic mechanism of OAC

Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law

Journal containing articles, notes, book reviews, and other analyses of law and legal cases

Tumour-infiltrating regulatory T cell density before neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for rectal cancer does not predict treatment response

Neoadjuvant (preoperative) chemoradiotherapy (CRT) decreases the risk of rectal cancer recurrence and reduces tumour volume prior to surgery. However, response to CRT varies considerably between individuals and factors associated with response are poorly understood. Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) inhibit anti-tumour immunity and may limit any response to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We have previously reported that a low density of Tregs in the tumour stroma following neoadjuvant CRT for rectal cancer is associated with improved tumour regression. Here we have examined the association between Treg density in pre-treatment diagnostic biopsy specimens and treatment response, in this same patient cohort. We aimed to determine whether pre-treatment tumour-infiltrating Treg density predicts subsequent response to neoadjuvant CRT. Foxp3+, CD8+ and CD3+ cell densities in biopsy samples from 106 patients were assessed by standard immunohistochemistry (IHC) and evaluated for their association with tumour regression grade and survival. We found no association between the density of any T cell subset pre-treatment and clinical outcome, indicating that tumour-infiltrating Treg density does not predict response to neoadjuvant CRT in rectal cancer. Taken together with the findings of the previous study, these data suggest that in the context of neoadjuvant CRT for rectal cancer, the impact of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy on anti-tumour immunity may be more important than the state of the pre-existing local immune response

Subjectivation and performative politics—Butler thinking Althusser and Foucault: intelligibility, agency and the raced-nationed-religioned subjects of education

Judith Butler is perhaps best known for her take-up of the debate between Derrida and Austin over the function of the performative and her subsequent suggestion that the subject be understood as performatively constituted. Another important but less often noted move within Butler‘s consideration of the processes through which the subject is constituted is her thinking between Althusser‘s notion of subjection and Foucault‘s notion of subjectivation. In this paper, I explore Butler‘s understanding of processes of subjectivation; examine the relationship between subjectivation and the performative suggested in and by Butler‘s work, and consider how the performative is implicated in processes of subjectivation – in =who‘ the subject is, or might be, subjectivated as. Finally, I examine the usefulness of understanding the subjectivating effects of discourse for education, in particular for educationalists concerned to make better sense of and interrupt educational inequalities. In doing this I offer a reading of an episode of ethnographic data generated in an Australian high School. I suggest that it is through subjectivating processes of the sort that Butler helps us to understand that some students are rendered subjects inside the educational endeavour, and others are rendered outside this endeavour or, indeed, outside student-hood

Examining the impact of 11 long-standing health conditions on health-related quality of life using the EQ-5D in a general population sample

Objectives Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) measures have been increasingly used in economic evaluations for policy guidance. We investigate the impact of 11 self-reported long-standing health conditions on HRQoL using the EQ-5D in a UK sample. Methods We used data from 13,955 patients in the South Yorkshire Cohort study collected between 2010 and 2012 containing the EQ-5D, a preference-based measure. Ordinary least squares (OLS), Tobit and two-part regression analyses were undertaken to estimate the impact of 11 long-standing health conditions on HRQoL at the individual level. Results The results varied significantly with the regression models employed. In the OLS and Tobit models, pain had the largest negative impact on HRQoL, followed by depression, osteoarthritis and anxiety/nerves, after controlling for all other conditions and sociodemographic characteristics. The magnitude of coefficients was higher in the Tobit model than in the OLS model. In the two-part model, these four long-standing health conditions were statistically significant, but the magnitude of coefficients decreased significantly compared to that in the OLS and Tobit models and was ranked from pain followed by depression, anxiety/nerves and osteoarthritis. Conclusions Pain, depression, osteoarthritis and anxiety/nerves are associated with the greatest losses of HRQoL in the UK population. The estimates presented in this article should be used to inform economic evaluations when assessing health care interventions, though improvements can be made in terms of diagnostic information and obtaining longitudinal data