Admissible Christianity : a study of Christian fundamentalism in the writings of James Barr

An attempt to set forth the essential nature of a theology is a notoriously difficult task. This thesis addresses two questions to a contemporary study of fundamentalism. It asks to what extent has James Barr been able to describe the theology of fundamentalism and to what extent his critical analysis of that theology is philosophically valid? The first chapter identifies the inherent difficulties in a phenomenology of fundamentalism and includes an historical survey of the theology of the movement. This chapter is supported by appendix one which identifies the philosophical culture associated with fundamentalist thought. Barr's description of the theological and religious character of fundamentalism is accepted within the identified limitations. The second and third chapters give an account of Barr's theological evaluation of fundamentalism. He argues the fundamentalists espouse an aberrant form of Christianity. Their religion represents a projection onto the biblical text of a religion foreign to the theological character of the Old and New Testaments. This projection is achieved by an intellectually sophisticated hermeneutical procedure. The doctrines of inerrancy, verbal inspiration and infallibility establish an understanding of Christianity which does not represent the essential character of the Christian faith. Fundamentalist hermeneutics, Barr concludes, allows for a theology indigenous neither to the biblical text nor to the Christian tradition. It attempts to afford biblical justification to the doctrines of a human religion extraneous to the biblical text. The fourth chapter considers the philosophical basis of Barr's understanding of the Bible. He takes the idealist view that the biblical text possesses a theological meaning whose boundaries can be delineated and whose essential content defined. This chapter is supported by appendix two which locates Barr's writings on fundamentalism within his wider concerns about the hermeneutical problems raised by the biblical text and the religious authority of the Bible. The penultimate chapter surveys the insights of contemporary literary theory concerning the perception of written texts. The philosophical validity of an idealist view of the biblical text is questioned. Two major conclusions are drawn. Barr's assessment of fundamentalism is philosophically dependent upon his idealist perception of the biblical text. This conclusion leads to the more general conclusion that the biblical text contains no essential description of Christianity but is capable of being read according to a range of theological interpretations some of which are more defensible than others.

Monitoring the marine environment adjacent to a petroleum refinery on Corio Bay, Victoria, Australia /Peter James Gilbert

The objective of the work reported in this thesis was to design and implement an ecological effects environmental monitoring program which would: 1) Collect baseline biological information on sessile epibiotic fouling communities from an area adjacent to a petroleum refinery located on Corio Bay, Victoria, to allow comparison with results of future monitoring for the assessment of long term temporal water quality trends. 2) Detect and — if possible - estimate the magnitude of any influence on epibiotic fouling communities within the Corio Bay marine ecosystem attributable to operations at the Shell Petroleum Refinery. 3) Investigate the extent of thermal stratification and rate of dispersal of the petroleum refinery main cooling-water outfall plume (discharging up to 350,000 tonnes of warmed seawater per day), and its effect on epibiotic communities within the EPA-defined mixing zone. A major component of the work undertaken was the design and development of artificial-substrate biological sampling stations suitable for use under the conditions prevailing in Corio Bay, and the development of appropriate quantitative underwater photographic sampling techniques to fulfil the experimental criteria outlined above. Experimental and other constraints imposed on the design of the stations precluded the simple suspension of frames from jetties or pylons, a technique widely used in previous work of this type. Artificial substrate panels were deployed along three radial transects centred within and extending beyond the petroleum refinery main cooling-water mixing zone. Identical substrate panels were deployed at a number of control sites located throughout Corio Bay, each chosen for differences in their degree of exposure to such factors as water movement, depth, shipping traffic and/or comparable industrial activity. The rate of colonisation (space utilisation) and the development of epibiotic fouling communities on artificial substrate panels was monitored over two twelve-month sampling periods using quantitative underwater photographic sampling techniques. Sampling was conducted at 4-8 week intervals with the rate of panel colonisation and community structure determined via coverage measurements. Various species of marine algae, polychaete tubeworms, hydroids, barnacles, simple and colonial ascidians, sponges, bivalve molluscs and encrusting bryozoans were all detected growing on panels. Communities which established on panels within the cooling-water mixing-zone and those at control sites were compared using statistical procedures including agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis. A photographic sample archive has been established to allow comparison with similar future studies.

Genome - wide association study identifies novel breast cancer susceptibility loci

Breast cancer exhibits familial aggregation, consistent with variation in genetic susceptibility to the disease. Known susceptibility genes account for less than 25% of the familial risk of breast cancer, and the residual genetic variance is likely to be due to variants conferring more moderate risks. To identify further susceptibility alleles, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association study in 4,398 breast cancer cases and 4,316 controls, followed by a third stage in which 30 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were tested for confirmation in 21,860 cases and 22,578 controls from 22 studies. We used 227,876 SNPs that were estimated to correlate with 77% of known common SNPs in Europeans at r² > 0.5. SNPs in five novel independent loci exhibited strong and consistent evidence of association with breast cancer (P < 10^-7). Four of these contain plausible causative genes (FGFR2, TNRC9, MAP3K1 and LSP1). At the second stage, 1,792 SNPs were significant at the P < 0.05 level compared with an estimated 1,343 that would be expected by chance, indicating that many additional common susceptibility alleles may be identifiable by this approach.

Mid-Holocene vertebrate bone Concentration-Lagerstätte on oceanic island Mauritius provides a window into the ecosystem of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus)

Although the recent history of human colonisation and impact on Mauritius is well documented, virtually no records of the pre-human native ecosystem exist, making it difficult to assess the magnitude of the changes brought about by human settlement. Here, we describe a 4000-year-old fossil bed at Mare aux Songes (MAS) in south-eastern Mauritius that contains both macrofossils (vertebrate fauna, gastropods, insects and flora) and microfossils (diatoms, pollen, spores and phytoliths). With >250 bone fragments/m2 and comprising 50% of all known extinct and extant vertebrate species (ns = 44) of Mauritius, MAS may constitute the first Holocene vertebrate bone Concentration-Lagerstätte identified on an oceanic volcanic island. Fossil remains are dominated by extinct giant tortoises Cylindraspis spp. (63%), passerines (10%), small bats (7.8%) and dodo Raphus cucullatus (7.1%). Twelve radiocarbon ages [four of them duplicates] from bones and other material suggest that accumulation of fossils took place within several centuries. An exceptional combination of abiotic conditions led to preservation of bones, bone collagen, plant tissue and microfossils. Although bone collagen is well preserved, DNA from dodo and other Mauritian vertebrates has proved difficult. Our analysis suggests that from ca 4000 years ago (4 ka), rising sea levels created a freshwater lake at MAS, generating an oasis in an otherwise dry environment which attracted a diverse vertebrate fauna. Subsequent aridification in the south-west Indian Ocean region may have increased carcass accumulation during droughts, contributing to the exceptionally high fossil concentration. The abundance of floral and faunal remains in this Lagerstätte offers a unique opportunity to reconstruct a pre-human ecosystem on an oceanic island, providing a key foundation for assessing the vulnerability of island ecosystems to human impact.

Does the choice of estimator matter when forecasting returns?

While the literature concerned with the predictability of stock returns is huge, surprisingly little is known when it comes to role of the choice of estimator of the predictive regression. Ideally, the choice of estimator should be rooted in the salient features of the data. In case of predictive regressions of returns there are at least three such features; (i) returns are heteroskedastic, (ii) predictors are persistent, and (iii) regression errors are correlated with predictor innovations. In this paper we examine if the accounting of these features in the estimation process has any bearing on our ability to forecast future returns. The results suggest that it does.

Estimator-based sliding mode control strategy design

This study addresses the design and properties of serial sliding mode control (SMC) systems for an induction servo motor drive to track periodic commands. It contains a SMC, an adaptive SMC (ASMC) and an estimator-based SMC (ESMC). The effectiveness of the proposed control systems is verifi ed by numerical simulations, and the superiority of the ESMC system is indicated in comparison with the SMC and ASMC systems.

Exact-estimator-based terminal sliding mode control system design

This paper investigates an estimator-based terminal sliding mode control system. An exact estimator is proposed to exactly estimate the unknown uncertainties in finite time. The output of the exact estimator is used to design a continuous chattering free terminal sliding mode control. The time taken for the closed-loop system to reach zero tracking error is proven to be finite. Experiment results are presented, using a real time digital-signal-processor (DSP) based electromagnetic levitation system to implement the control performance.