Liturgy and Social Justice

(Excerpt) As a prelude to this vast subject, I would like to read a passage which is becoming part of my contemporary canon, a scene from Toni Morrison\u27s novel Beloved. She describes a worship service--though it is indeed quite different from most of our liturgies! This service is led by a holy woman named Baby Suggs. She is an elderly black woman, born into slavery and later bought into freedom by her son. Now, she lives in her own home on her own piece of ground near a little town in Ohio. Every Saturday, when warm weather came, Baby Suggs would gather the people--all of them former slaves--in the Clearing (with a capital C) ... In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the Clearing while the people waited among the trees

Assessment of the environmental aspects of the DOE phosphoric acid fuel cell program

The likely facets of a nationwide phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) power plant commercial system are described. The beneficial and adverse environmental impacts produced by the system are assessed. Eleven specific system activities are characterized and evaluated. Also included is a review of fuel cell technology and a description of DOE's National Fuel Cell Program. Based on current and reasonably foreseeable PAFC characteristics, no environmental or energy impact factor was identified that would significantly inhibit the commercialization of PAFC power plant technology

Does Financial Liberalization Spur Growth?

We show that equity market liberalizations, on average, lead to a one percent increase in annual real economic growth over a five-year period. The effect is robust to alternative definitions of liberalization and does not reflect variation in the world business cycle. The effect also remains intact when liberalization is instrumented with quality of institutions-variables that explain liberalization but not growth and when a growth opportunity measure is included in the regression. Capital account liberalization has a less robust effect on growth than equity market liberalization has. Other simultaneous reforms only partially account for the effect. Finally, we examine why some countries respond to equity market liberalization differently from others.

Liquidity and Expected Returns: Lessons From Emerging Markets

Given the cross-sectional and temporal variation in their liquidity, emerging equity markets provide an ideal setting to examine the impact of liquidity on expected returns. Our main liquidity measure is a transformation of the proportion of zero daily firm returns, averaged over the month. We find that our liquidity measures significantly predict future returns, whereas alternative measures such as turnover do not. Consistent with liquidity being a priced factor, unexpected liquidity shocks are positively correlated with contemporaneous return shocks and negatively correlated with shocks to the dividend yield. We consider a simple asset pricing model with liquidity and the market portfolio as risk factors and transaction costs that are proportional to liquidity. The model differentiates between integrated and segmented countries and periods. Our results suggest that local market liquidity is an important driver of expected returns in emerging markets, and that the liberalization process has not eliminated its impact.

Spinor Dynamics-Driven Formation of a Dual-Beam Atom Laser

We demonstrate a novel dual-beam atom laser formed by outcoupling oppositely polarized components of an F=1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate whose Zeeman sublevel populations have been coherently evolved through spin dynamics. The condensate is formed through all-optical means using a single-beam running-wave dipole trap. We create a condensate in the field-insensitive $m_F=0$ state, and drive coherent spin-mixing evolution through adiabatic compression of the initially weak trap. Such dual beams, number-correlated through the angular momentum-conserving reaction $2m_0\leftrightharpoons m_{+1}+m_{-1}$, have been proposed as tools to explore entanglement and squeezing in Bose-Einstein condensates, and have potential use in precision phase measurements.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Uppskattning av blomningspotential och tillväxt i en remonterande jordgubbssort

Flower mapping is a morphological mapping method that can be used in strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) plant production to get an insight of the status, numbers and the developmental stages of flower buds. It is commonly used by nurseries in order to evaluate plant management techniques to achieve enhanced yield potential over time. In the present study, flower mapping was tested with an everbearing strawberry cultivar Favori in a greenhouse production system. In the trial flower mapping was conducted before planting and after the first harvest on two different batches, planted at two separate dates. This was done to evaluate the applicability of flower mapping on an everbearing cultivar and to gain experience to benefit future production of everbearing strawberries in Sweden. The study showed that the everbearing strawberry cultivar Favori responds to its cultivation system and surrounding environment. The response was expressed as differences in the development pattern and in the plant architecture. To help the interpretation of flower mapping a frequency model was developed summarizing the bud stages and the bud distribution. The flower mapping performed before planting gave an indication of plant quality e.g. number of initiated buds and crown size, and helped to predict future flowering and yield pattern. The second flower mapping conducted after first harvest peak did not predict future flowering pattern, but gave support for the potential future development by identify initiated buds and secondary crowns. In conclusion, flower mapping is suggested to be used as a method to predict potential future inflorescences and to optimize the production of an everbearing strawberry grown in greenhouse.Flower mapping är en metod som används för att på en grundlig nivå analysera blomsterknoppar och illustrera plantors arkitektur. I jordgubbar (Fragaria x ananassa) görs det bland annat för att få en uppfattning om framtida plantutveckling och skörd. I detta arbete testades metoden flower mapping i en remonterande jordgubbssort, som var planterad och skördades i växthus. I försöket utfördes flower mapping innan plantering och efter första skörden på två batcher, planterade vid två separata tillfällen. Målet med försöket var att främja framtida produktion av remonterande jordgubbar i Sverige, genom att skapa en djupare förståelse för flower mapping och dess användningsområden. I studien fastställdes det att den remonterande sorten Favori reagerade på sin omgivande miljö. Detta uttrycktes som variation i plantuppbyggnaden och i tillväxtmönstret hos de båda batcherna. Att utföra flower mapping innan plantering var bäst om man vill förutspå framtida blomsterutveckling. Att utföra andra flower mappingen, efter första skörden, förutspådde inte lika väl utvecklingen av knoppar men kunde användas i andra syften, tillexempel att utvärdera odlingsmetoder. I studien framgick det att flower mapping med fördel kan användas för att uppskatta framtida blomning och optimera skörd i remonterande jordgubbar

Synthetic clock transitions via continuous dynamical decoupling

Decoherence of quantum systems due to uncontrolled fluctuations of the environment presents fundamental obstacles in quantum science. `Clock' transitions which are insensitive to such fluctuations are used to improve coherence, however, they are not present in all systems or for arbitrary system parameters. Here, we create a trio of synthetic clock transitions using continuous dynamical decoupling in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate in which we observe a reduction of sensitivity to magnetic field noise of up to four orders of magnitude; this work complements the parallel work by Anderson et al. (submitted, 2017). In addition, using a concatenated scheme, we demonstrate suppression of sensitivity to fluctuations in our control fields. These field-insensitive states represent an ideal foundation for the next generation of cold atom experiments focused on fragile many-body phases relevant to quantum magnetism, artificial gauge fields, and topological matter.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental material

Does Financial Liberalization Spur Growth?

We show that equity market liberalizations, on average, lead to a one percent increase in annual real economic growth over a five-year period. The liberalization effect is not spuriously accounted for by macro-economic reforms and does not reflect a business cycle effect. Although financial liberalizations further financial development, measures of financial development fail to fully drive out the liberalization effect. The investment/GDP ratio increases post liberalization, with the investment partially financed by foreign capital inducing worsened trade balances. Differentiating across liberalizing countries, a large secondary school enrollment, a small government sector and an Anglo-Saxon legal system tend to enhance the liberalization effect. Finally, the conditional convergence effect is larger once financial liberalization is accounted for.