The Causes of the Division of Israel\u27s Kingdom

The article describes the various causes of the division of the Israelite monarchy following the reign of Solomon: 1) tribal jealousy, particularly between Ephraim and Judah; 2) sectionalistic military policies favoring Judah, through which Solomon alienated much of northern Israel; 3) Solomonic exploitation of the population for personal enrichment; and 4) Solomonic apostasy and spiritual compromise through idolatry and intermarriage with pagans, resulting in divine judgment for violating Israel\u27s covenant with Yahweh. The article concludes that these factors were used by God\u27s providence to further his program of discipline and eventual messianic deliverance of Israel

A space station onboard scheduling assistant

One of the goals for the Space Station is to achieve greater autonomy, and have less reliance on ground commanding than previous space missions. This means that the crew will have to take an active role in scheduling and rescheduling their activities onboard, perhaps working from preliminary schedules generated on the ground. Scheduling is a time intensive task, whether performed manually or automatically, so the best approach to solving onboard scheduling problems may involve crew members working with an interactive software scheduling package. A project is described which investigates a system that uses knowledge based techniques for the rescheduling of experiments within the Materials Technology Laboratory of the Space Station. Particular attention is paid to: (1) methods for rapid response rescheduling to accommodate unplanned changes in resource availability, (2) the nature of the interface to the crew, (3) the representation of the many types of data within the knowledge base, and (4) the possibility of applying rule-based and constraint-based reasoning methods to onboard activity scheduling

A virtual laboratory system for physiology teaching

The problem of understanding physiological processes can be aided by visualization tools. Traditionally this has been achieved by the use of schematic paper diagrams. However, many physiological processes are quite complex, and in many instances students encounter difficulties in understanding the dynamics. This paper describes the rationale behind an alternative approach using interactive three‐dimensional computer‐graphics simulation to aid comprehension of scientific concepts

New approaches for imaging tumour responses to treatment.

Tumour responses to treatment are still largely assessed from imaging measurements of reductions in tumour size. However, this can take several weeks to become manifest and in some cases may not occur at all, despite a positive response to treatment. There has been considerable interest, therefore, in non-invasive techniques for imaging tissue function that can give early evidence of response. These can be used in clinical trials of new drugs to give an early indication of drug efficacy, and subsequently in the clinic to select the most effective therapy at an early stage of treatment.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

The Origin and History of the Samaritans

The development of Samaritanism and its alienation from Judaism was a process that began with the division of the kingdom of Israel and continued through successive incidents which promoted antagonism, including the importation of foreign colonists into Samaria by Assyria, the rejection of the new Samaritan community by the Jews, the building of a rival temple on Mt Gerizim, the political and religious opportunism of the Samaritans, and the destruction of both the Samaritan temple and their capital of Shechem by John Hyrcanus during the 2d century BC. The Samaritan religion at the time of Jesus had become Mosaic and quasi-Sadducean, but strongly anti-Jewish. Jesus recognized their heathen origins and the falsity of their religious claims