Antony van Leeuwenhoek: Creation “Magnified” Through His Magnificent Microscopes

Although van Leeuwenhoek was not the inventor of the microscope, he advanced it more than anyone else for seeing living things. Antony van Leeuwenhoek1 (Fig. 1) found great joy in God’s smallest creatures. He first discovered protozoans in his youth. The Dutch haberdasher retained a child-like joy of discovery from his youth until his death at age 90. He lived to see tiny microbes though his homemade microscopes. He loved to grind and focus a new lens in order to see the unseen world. Leeuwenhoek spent countless hours grinding tiny lenses and looking through them. This Christian lay biologist even used candlelight to see specimens at night. For Leeuwenhoek, the amazing diversity of tiny life forms revealed under his homemade microscopes glorified God as much as looking at stars through a telescope. Leeuwenhoek was born in South Holland in 1632. As a young adult, he became a cloth merchant (also called a draper, or haberdasher). In 1668, he started his biological study as a hobby after seeing beautiful microscopic pictures while making a visit to London. After years of careful study, Leeuwenhoek (Fig. 2) made the microscope famous. In his lifetime, he became the father of microbiology and opened mankind to the world of microorganisms

Differential Privacy in Metric Spaces: Numerical, Categorical and Functional Data Under the One Roof

We study Differential Privacy in the abstract setting of Probability on metric spaces. Numerical, categorical and functional data can be handled in a uniform manner in this setting. We demonstrate how mechanisms based on data sanitisation and those that rely on adding noise to query responses fit within this framework. We prove that once the sanitisation is differentially private, then so is the query response for any query. We show how to construct sanitisations for high-dimensional databases using simple 1-dimensional mechanisms. We also provide lower bounds on the expected error for differentially private sanitisations in the general metric space setting. Finally, we consider the question of sufficient sets for differential privacy and show that for relaxed differential privacy, any algebra generating the Borel $\sigma$-algebra is a sufficient set for relaxed differential privacy.Comment: 18 Page

Robert Koch, Creation, and the Specificity of Germs

Microbiology is dominated by evolution today. Just look at any text, journal article, or the topics presented at professional scientific meetings. Darwin is dominant. Microbiology is dominated by evolution today. Just look at any text, journal article, or the topics presented at professional scientific meetings. Darwin is dominant. Many argue that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (Dobzhansky 1973). But it was not always this way. In fact, a review of the major founders of microbiology has shown that they were creationists.1 We would argue that a better idea thanevolution and one of much more practical importance is the germ theory of disease, originally put forth primarily by non-Darwinian biologists (Gillen and Oliver 2009). In our previous article (Gillen and Oliver 2009), we documented these and many other creation and Christian contributions to germ theory. But only recently has it become known that another important microbiology founder, Robert Koch (Fig. 1) and his co-workers were Linnaean creationists in their classification.2 This is due, in part, to additional works of Robert Koch that were translated from German to English. The year 2010 marks the 100thanniversary of his death (died: May 27, 1910). Although Koch and other German microbiologists were fairly secular in their thinking, their acceptance of Darwinian evolution was minimal

Testing the Capital Asset Pricing Model Efficiently Under Elliptical Symmetry: A Semiparametric Approach

We develop new tests of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) that take account of and are valid under the assumption that the distribution generating returns is elliptically symmetric; this assumption is necessary and sufficient for the validity of the CAPM. Our test is based on semiparametric efficient estimation procedures for a seemingly unrelated regression model where the multivariate error density is elliptically symmetric, but otherwise unrestricted. The elliptical symmetry assumption allows us to avert the curse of dimensionality problem that typically arises in multivariate semiparametric estimation procedures, because the multivariate elliptically symmetric density function can be written as a function of a scalar transformation of the observed multivariate data. The elliptically symmetric family includes a number of thick-tailed distributions and so is potentially relevant in financial applications. Our estimated betas are lower than the OLS estimates, and our parameter estimates are much less consistent with the CAPM restrictions than the corresponding OLS estimates. Nous développons de nouveaux tests du modèle d'évaluation des actifs financiers (" CAPM ") qui tiennent compte de, et sont valides sous, l'hypothèse que les retours des actifs découlent d'un loi de probabilité elliptiquement symétrique. Cette hypothèse est nécessaire et suffisante pour la validité du CAPM. Notre test utilise un estimateur des paramètres du modèle qui a l'efficacité semiparamétrique quand on a un modèle de régression apparemment sans relation et qui a des erreurs qui suivent une loi elliptiquement symétrique. L'hypothèse de la symétrie elliptique nous permet d'éviter le problème d'estimer non-paramétriquement une fonction de haute dimension parce qu'on peut écrire la densité d'une loi elliptique comme une fonction d'une transformation unidimensionnelle de la variable aléatoire multidimensionnelle. La famille des lois elliptiquement symétriques inclue plusieurs lois leptokurtiques, donc elle est pertinente à des applications financières. Les bêtas obtenus avec notre estimateur sont plus bas que ceux qui sont obtenus en utilisant des moindres carrés, et sont moins compatibles avec le CAPM.Adaptive estimation, capital asset pricing model, elliptical symmetry, semiparametric efficiency

Mile-a-minute Weed, (Polygonum perfoliatum L.), an Invasive Vine in Natural and Disturbed Sites

Polygonum perfoliatum L. (Polygonaceae) or mile-a-minute weed, from eastern Asia, has been spreading through wild and disturbed areas of the mid-Atlantic United States. It has a wide ecological amplitude and is found on stream banks, moist thickets, roadsides, nurseries, wood-piles, clearings, and ditches. Polygonum perfoliatum presents serious problems for reforestation because it thrives where forests are clear-cut. A southward direction of spread indicates that the species will probably proliferate in at least some southern states. Mechanical control is not likely to be completely effective because seeds are often left behind. No appropriate biocontrols are known. The plant poses a threat to natural and restored ecosystems because of its capacity to grow rapidly and overgrow other species. It is expected to cover large areas unless it is controlled

Consumption Rates, Evacuation Rates and Diets of Pygmy Killifish, Leptolucania ommata, and Mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis in the Okefenokee Swamp

I studied feeding dynamics of Leptolucania ommata and Gambusia affinis in the Okefenokee Swamp. Both fishes mainly ate insect larvae (such as Chironomidae) and Cladocera. Evacuation rates ranged from 0.143 (L. ommala in winter) to 0.279/hour (L. ommala in summer). Daily food consumption (dry weight) ranged from 24.2 (L. ommata in winter) to 148.3 mg/g/day (G. affinis in summer). Maximum consumption by both species was estimated at 26.31 mg/t m2 / day, in summer. These values are consistent with other observations supporting a hypothesis that invertebrate prey production is substantial in these blackwater wetlands

A Review of the Biology of Giant Salvinia

Giant salvinia (Salviniaceae) is a potentially serious aquatic weed that is native to Brazil. It has been reported in more than 20 countries, but is not established in the U.S. at this time. Mitchell and Tur (1975) reported that three years after the formation of the Kariba Reservoir in Africa, giant salvinia blanketed 21.5% or 1003 km2 of the reservoir surface area. Creagh (199111992) wrote, A single small plant may grow to form a thick mat covering more than 100 sq. km. in just three months - choking lakes and waterways, reducing populations of aquatic plants and animals and in some countries threatening the livelihoods of ... thousands of people . Dense mats of giant salvinia. interfere with rice cultivation, clog fishing nets, and disrupt access to water for humans, livestock, and wildlife (Mitchell 1979), and recreation, transportation, irrigation, hydroelectric generation, and flood control are also hampered (Holm et al. 1977). Thick mats of giant salvinia form large floating islands which support secondary and tertiary colonizing plants and fill in waterbodies (Thomas 1979). Common names of S. molesta include giant salvinia, African pyle, and Kariba weed (Mitchell and Thomas 1972). These names allude to this species\u27 relatively large size and to its successful invasion of Lake Kariba and other waters of Africa. The plant was originally reported as a form of S. auriculata Aubl. It was later reclassified as S. molesta, based on details of the male sporocarps (Mitchell 1972). This review reports on the pertinent scientific literature concerning giant salvinia

Ancient Tahitian Society

“Tahiti is far famed yet too little known.” Thus wrote J. M. Orsmond in 1848, and the same assertion can be made in 1972. Thousands of pages had been published about Tahiti and its neighboring islands when Orsmond uttered his judgment, and tens of thousands have been published since that time, but a unified, comprehensive, and detailed description of the pre-European ways of life of the inhabitants of those Islands is yet to appear in print. The present work, lengthy as it is, makes no such claim to comprehensiveness; rather, it is concerned mainly with the social relations of those inhabitants, and it serves up only enough about their technology, their religion, their aesthetic expressions, and so forth to place descriptions of their social relations in context and render them more comprehensible. Volumes 1 and 2 of this work are a reconstruction of the Islanders’ way of life as it was believed to have been just before it began to be transformed by European influence—a period labeled the Late Indigenous Era. Volume 3 covers events in Tahiti and Mo‘orea from about 1767 to 1815—a period labeled the Early European Era

The Magic Flute: a condensed and simplified arrangement for junior high school.

Thesis (M.M.E.)--Boston Universit