Urgent Messages Research Articles

The portrait of a prophet - why is Wright not right about Jesus?

N T Wright’s extensive research on the subject of the historical Jesus has led him to the conclusion that the office of eschatological prophet passionately bent on delivering an urgent eschatological message is best suited to describe the portrait of Jesus as it emanates from the sources at hand. Wright furthermore abstracts from the sources the program of this prophet which involves extending a message of welcome and warning. Many a scholar would agree with these conclusions. When revealing how he arrived at the conclusions he refers to the “notorious” complexity of the problem of the literary relationship between the gospels. Can any scholar disagree? What does, however, seem to invite contention, are his statements that the gospels tell us far more about Jesus than scholarship has ever done, and that the two-source hypothesis which has been misleading scholars over the past two hundred years is not of any great importance in the study of Jesus. Wright believes that we are not in a position to answer the synoptic question and then bases a reconstruction of Jesus on this answer. What, then, are his sources and how does he apply them to arrive at these conclusions? This article presents the portrait Wright painted of the historical Jesus and investigates how it was arrived at.

Proposal and Implementation Study of Forwarding Method for Urgent Messages on a Wireless Sensor Network

Recent advances in wireless technologies and electronic devices have enabled the development of low-cost and large-scale wireless sensor networks. Many recent studies have targeted wireless sensor networks, but forwarding messages while satisfying both delay and reliability constraints remains an unsatisfied goal. Although most existing proposals aim at resiliency in multi-hop networks, improvement of network performance such as throughput and latency, and load balancing, supporting multiple forwarding strategies satisfying various demands is not discussed. We propose a forwarding method for messages with delay and reliability constraints on a single wireless sensor network. We evaluate message loss rate by using computer simulation and by implementing the proposed method on actual sensor nodes. Our results show that the proposed method achieves lower message loss rate for messages with delay and reliability constraints than that for best-efforts messages on a network with error-prone wireless links.

Tough choices or tough times: seeing with one eye

In December 2006, a bi-partisan group of prominent American educators, economists, business and union leaders constituting the ‘‘New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce’’ published a report on the skills of the workforce in the United States entitled Tough Choices or Tough Times. The report heralded an urgent and radical message, arguing that America’s standard of living is under threat unless a revolutionary change of the educational system is undertaken. The key challenge, according to the report, comes from the dynamics of the new global economy. The authors contend that there will be a steady decline in the standard of living of the United States unless the vast majority of American workers acquire world-class academic skills and knowledge. The threat is exemplified by the rise of countries like China and India, with their hundred of thousands of highly-qualified engineers ready to work for a fraction of the salaries of their US equivalents. The reports’ authors call for an entirely new education system, able to bring the majority to college-level work and to produce the skills of creativity, innovation and flexibility that will allow American firms, large and small, ‘‘to be on the creative edge in every single business function’’ (p. 25) and thus maintain their economic primacy. Against this very tall order, the Commission finds fundamental faults in the present American education system and how it relates to the economy. The Commission’s report notes a host of systemic problems. For example, American teachers are disproportionately recruited from among the less able of the high school students who go to college. The current system is wasteful and inefficient with learning gains in relation to increases in expenditures in the last 30 years. The ‘‘achievement gap’’ between white and AsianAmerican students on the one hand and black and Hispanic students on the other was closing in the 1990s but is now widening again. Educators fail to motivate most students to take tough courses and work hard. School compensation systems reward teachers solely on

Teaching Business Ethics Through Service Learning Metaprojects

The urgent messages of good business include the importance of ethical management behaviors, focus on corporate citizenship, recognition of principled leadership, moral awareness, and participation in social change. This article describes the Service Learning Metaproject (a nested set of projects required of all students) and shows what students can accomplish to promote a better world. It addresses four measurable learning objectives: providing contact with divergent populations, making conscious moral decisions and committing to ethical action, deriving meaning from everyday activities, and developing adaptability and flexibility. It documents the achievement of these with undergraduate business students performing metaprojects that begin with service, lead to learning, and are followed by the development of a direct application. The conclusion is the implementation of that application. All the service learning projects this article describes required a Service Folio for student reflection on service experiences, relationships to readings, and concrete team project deliverables.

The Trampoline

THE TRAMPOLINE Michael McFee It sits outside the Feed & Seed so long, they finally tip it on its side as a billboard, a black honeycomb reminding Back to School!, a black web wishing Happy Halloween'., a black snowflake offering Layaway forXmasl Unemployed again, driving my wife to work, I joke about the signs, like I joke about the trampoline being there at all, at a farm supply store east ofnowhere. And then I joke about that time in co-ed gym class when I came down half-on half-offour high school's antique model, racking myself and ripping my shorts and hitting a note so high not even dogs could hear it. "I remember," she says, not bothering to laugh anymore. One cold day the trampoline is gone, and so I make a joke about that too—how hard some dad will have to work to get it through the door, much less into the living room and under the tree without the kids hearing. I think she almost laughs at that. And then, on the night before Xmas, I drive into our driveway and see my wife, wearing nothing but a leotard, tumbling on the trampoline. "Jackknife!" she shouts at me. "Dagger! Dead man!" The words make brief clouds where her mouth just was. She keeps vanishing then resurfacing in my car's high beams, her body casting tall shadows against the house, spelling its urgent message. 94 ...

The Ice Is Melting in the North

The Ice Is Melting in the North Oren Lyons (bio) The following statement reflects the position of the Traditional Circle of lndian Elders and Youth and was delivered by Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper, Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation, to the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, held at the United Nations, New York, in August 2000. It is reprinted here with his permission. Leaders of the World, Neyaweha-scano (thank you for being well). Today I bring you greetings from the Indigenous Peoples of North, Central, and South America. Indeed, I bring you greetings from the Indigenous Peoples of the world. We are the keepers of the traditions, ceremonies, histories, and future of our nations. We are the ones who escaped from your proselytizing. We survived with the wisdom of the Old Ones. And we are pleased to add our voices to yours in this great effort for common sense and peace among nations. Leaders of the World, I bring you a most urgent message that was brought to our twenty-third annual gathering of the Traditional Circle of Elders and Youth. This message was brought by a runner from the north, from Greenland, and he said: The ice is melting in the north! He informed us that some fifteen years ago they noticed trickles of water coming down the sheer face of Glacier Mountain. That trickle has grown to a roaring river of ice water pouring out of this mountain into the Atlantic Ocean. He informed us that Glacier Mountain has lost four thousand feet of ice in these past few years. And the melt continues to accelerate. This is an alarming message that requires your absolute attention. Leaders of the World, We are a collective voice of Indigenous Peoples. We have joined this great mission for peace. We add our presence in support of this great effort for reconciliation between peoples and nations. [End Page 1] We agree that there must be parity and equity between rich and poor nations, between white people and people of color, and rich people and poor people, with special attention to women, children, and indigenous peoples. We, in our collective voices, add to this: that there must be a reconciliation between peoples and the natural world, between nation states and the forests that sustain us, between corporations and the resources they mine, the fish that they catch, and the water that they use. Leaders of the World, Indigenous nations and peoples believe in the spiritual powers of the universe. We believe in the ultimate power and authority of a limitless energy beyond our comprehension. We believe in the order of the universe. We believe in the laws of creation and that all life is bound by these same natural laws. We call this essence the spirit of life. This is what gives the world the energy to create and procreate, and what becomes the ponderous and powerful law of regeneration—the law of the seed. We, in our collective voices, speak to this to remind you that spirit and spiritual laws transcend generations. We know, because this has sustained us. Religion and spirituality are vital to survival and moral law. It is a faith that has sustained our human spirit through our darkest hours. It has sustained our human spirit in times of crisis during the times we suffered through the grinding measures of inexorable persecutions that have spanned generations and continue today. Yet here we are, today, adding our voices to this plea for sanity in leadership and responsibility to the future generations whose faces are looking up from the Earth, each awaiting their time of life here. Leaders of the World, We believe that reconciliation should begin here because peace is an inclusive term, and peace and reconciliation are the purpose of this summit. Peace is dynamic and requires great effort of spirit and mind to attain unity. Leaders of peace must step forward and take responsibility for a paradigm change in the direction of current lifestyles and materialistic societies. The human species has become the most voracious and abusive consumer of Earth's resources. We have tipped the balance of life against our children, and we imperil...

MS/TP 프로토콜에서 대역폭할당기법 구현 및 실험적 평가

Digital communication networks have become a core technology in advanced building automation systems. BACnet(Building Automation and Control networks) is a standard data communication protocol designed specifically for building automation and control systems. BACnet adopts Master-Slave/Token-Passing(MS/TP) protocol as one of its field level networks. In this study, we introduce a method of implementing a bandwidth allocation scheme in the MS/TP protocol. The bandwidth allocation scheme improves the capability of real-time communication of the original MS/TP protocol. The bandwidth allocation scheme introduced in this paper can be easily implemented in the existing MS/TP protocol with a slight modification. In this study, we actually developed the hardware and firmware of the modified MS/TP communication module in which the bandwidth allocation scheme is implemented. Using the modified MS/TP communication module, we developed an experimental model in order to examine the validity of the bandwidth allocation scheme in the MS/TP protocol. Experimental results show that the modified MS/TP protocol satisfies the requirements of real time communication for periodic and urgent messages of BACnet communication services.

A content analysis of e-mail communication between patients and their providers: patients get the message

ObjectiveE-mail use in the clinical setting has been slow to diffuse for several reasons, including providers' concerns about patients' inappropriate and inefficient use of the technology. This study examined the content of a random sample of patient–physician e-mail messages to determine the validity of those concerns. DesignA qualitative analysis of patient–physician e-mail messages was performed. MeasurementsA total of 3,007 patient–physician e-mail messages were collected over 11 months as part of a randomized, controlled trial of a triage-based e-mail system in two primary care centers (including 98 physicians); 10% of messages were randomly selected for review. Messages were coded across such domains as message type, number of requests per e-mail, inclusion of sensitive content, necessity of a physician response, and message tone. ResultsThe majority (82.8%) of messages addressed a single issue. The most common message types included information updates to the physicians (41.4%), prescription renewals (24.2%), health questions (13.2%), questions about test results (10.9%), referrals (8.8%), “other” (including thank yous, apologies) (8.8%), appointments (5.4%), requests for non-health-related information (4.8%), and billing questions (0.3%). Overall, messages were concise, formal, and medically relevant. Very few (5.1%) included sensitive content, and none included urgent messages. Less than half (43.2%) required a physician response. ConclusionA triage-based e-mail system promoted e-mail exchanges appropriate for primary care. Most patients adhered to guidelines aimed at focusing content, limiting the number of requests per message, and avoiding urgent requests or highly sensitive content. Thus, physicians' concerns about the content of patients' e-mails may be unwarranted.

English in the Middle Ages by Tim William Machan (review)

MLR, 100.4, 2005 1079 phenomenology of the nineteenth-century crowd as on the ways in which the crowd impinges on the principles of the liberal-democratic public sphere in American liter? ary representations from the 1830s to the 1930s. As such, the book's title accurately conveys the author's interest in exploring the relationship between the affective aes? thetics of crowd experience and the political significance of the crowd for American liberal democracy?a distinction which must be preserved, in Kantian fashion, as a categorial separation of spheres. The danger of conflating aesthetics and politics, and, in consequence, blurring the boundaries between the 'crowd' and the 'public', is indeed a recurring theme of Esteve 's analysis of crowd representations in the fiction of Poe, Henry James, Crane, du Bois, Nella Larsen, and Henry Roth (to list the main authors under discussion), and at the heart of the book's underlying theoretical and political concerns. Esteve mounts a vigorous defence of the principles of the liberal-democratic public sphere (as defined, most influentially, by Jiirgen Habermas in The Structural Transforma? tion of the Public Sphere (German original 1962; trans. by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge: Polity, 1989)), which, she maintains, establish the conceptual boundaries for 'rational-critical debate' and the necessarily abstract, non-empirical framework of consensual public discourse. The accompanying polemic against the fetishization of empirical 'particularity' and 'difference' in radical postmodern democratic theory will, no doubt, prove the most contentious aspect of this book, but, apart from some occasionally glib analogies between the reactionary nineteenth-century discourse of 'crowd psychology' and the putatively radical postmodern theorization ofpolitics as power (Foucault et al.), the author deve? lops an important and often compelling case. Where the argument is less convincing is not so much in its defence of the disinterested reason of a critical public sphere as in its departure from (or at least inconsistent application of) Habermas's account ofthe transformation ofthe public sphere under the conditions ofadvanced capitalist society. In the chapter on Henry James, forexample, Esteve begins by aiming to demonstrate how James's fictional representation ofthe crowd 'exemplifies [. . .] the fall ofthe pub? lic sphere' in Habermasian terms (p. 61), but then, in a strangely optimistic reading of 'The Papers' (1903)?one of James's darkest cultural satires?goes on to suggest that a Kantian model of the public sphere emerges virtually unscathed from its exposi? tion of the logic of mass-media publicity. Esteve's intention of tracing the 'particular literary history' of the 'abiding virtues of political-liberal ideas and practices' thus produces an insufficientlyhistorical account of the changing conditions of the public sphere in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American culture (p. 171). Despite this objection, the conceptual sophistication and breadth of Esteve's read? ings of individual texts, as well as the richness of the contextual material that she uncovers, are impressive. In particular, her detailed study of discursive and ideologi? cal connections between the representation of crowds gathering forthe 1893 Chicago World's Fair?the 'White City'?and contemporaneous representations ofthe lynchmob in Chapter 4 addresses the relationship between political and aesthetic experi? ences of the crowd in complex and nuanced form. The disturbing nature of these connections highlights, most graphically, the importance forpolitical democracies of distinguishing between crowds and publics, which is the urgent message of this book. University of Leeds Richard Salmon English in the Middle Ages. By Tim William Machan. Oxford and New York: Ox? ford University Press. 2003. x + 205pp. ?45. ISBN 0-19-926268-3. Using the present to explain the past (William Labov's formulation) has become stan? dard practice formany historical linguists. As Suzanne Romaine states, 'the linguistic 1080 Reviews forces which operate today and are observable around us are not unlike those which have operated in the past. Sociolinguistically speaking, this means that there is no reason forclaiming that language did not vary in the same patterned ways in the past as it has been observed to do today' (cited p. 12). This view needs unpacking and careful qualification before serving as the basis of 'sociohistorical linguistics'. All texts?a poem, a document, a private letter,a conver? sation...

Book Review: Jesus' Urgent Message for Today: The Kingdom of God in Mark's Gospel

Book Review: Jesus' Urgent Message for Today: The Kingdom of God in Mark's Gospel

West not the best for maternity care

If you get an opportunity to read anything by Beverley Chalmers a doctor and researcher, specialising in reproductive health issues, take it. No better place to start than her recent commentary in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Chalmers, 2004) where she addresses the topic of globalisation and maternity services with insight and wisdom. It seems that activists for childbirth who have worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO) have an urgent message to convey. Marsden Wagner, author of Pursuing the Birth Machine is another example. It may be their international perspective that makes them such convincing critics of the developed world's maternity care agenda.

Real-time performance evaluation of urgent aperiodic messages in FF communication and its improvement

In distributed control system (DCS), computation tasks, which usually reside in different nodes and communicate with one another to accomplish a common goal, have to be executed timely. Therefore, there is a need for special-purposed real-time industrial networks. Foundation Fieldbus (FF) is characterized by explicitly distinguishing between periodic and aperiodic messages. Centralized Media Access Control (MAC) is utilized by FF to support periodic messages, and distributed MAC to support aperiodic messages. It is indicated that FF's current mechanism using Pass Token (PT) priority and PT circulation period cannot effectively guarantee the real-time requirement of important aperiodic messages. A detailed analysis shows the method of computing Actual PT Circulation Period (APTCP) should be improved. An improved method of computing APTCP is proposed in this paper, and then a method of determining Setting PT Circulation Period (SPTCP) is presented accordingly. In the end, simulation validates the effect of the improved method on the real-time performance of urgent aperiodic messages in FF.

Living troubadours and other recent uses for medieval music

This essay aims to expand on existing narratives of medieval music performance by exploring recent interpretations of the troubadours. Recent advances in the field of ethnomusicology, popular music and medieval music reception suggest the need to view medieval music performance in ways other than the conventional narrative of early music performance. This article focuses on the troubadours, originally song-makers in the late medieval Midi, or South of France. Based on my interviews with recent ‘living troubadours’ in the United States and France, I present evidence for multifarious musical interpretations of the art de trobar, or medieval troubadour art. Living troubadours under consideration here include Eco-Troubadour Stan Slaughter from Missouri and Occitan rap group Massilia Sound System from Marseille. The latter claim a special distinction as living descendants of the original troubadours; the former views himself as more remotely related to medieval music. And while all the different musicians considered here offer widely contrasting interpretations of the medieval art de trobar, they do have in common certain recent musical influences, along with a view of folk music as an open-ended, and musically flexible category. All of these artists are also united in their belief that the essence of folk song is an urgent message which, though it may range from recycling to anti-centralist politics, consistently controls the musical medium. What the groups considered here have in common with traditional early music groups is their creative use of contemporary influences to evoke for their audience the Middle Ages.

A neglected history: Richard Hoggart’s discourse of empathy

While a notoriously naval-gazing discipline, the history of cultural studies’ development has been somewhat nebulous in describing the contribution of Richard Hoggart, author of The Uses of Literacy (1957) and inaugural director of the groundbreaking Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. Typically recognized in association with postwar British counterparts Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson, given the similarly passionate style of WEA teaching at the heart of their projects, an analysis of Hoggart’s unique approach is strangely lacking, and the specificity of its still urgent political message largely overlooked. Responding to this absence, this article introduces the idea of a ‘discourse of empathy’ to make manifest the affective response Hoggart encourages in readers. This mode of address seeks avenues for identification from many different readers, finding common concerns and values which might encourage understanding between classes. In contrast to existing assessments which criticize his too heavy reliance on experience, I want to use Hoggart’s recent three-volume autobiography to amplify the political strategy at work in The Uses of Literacy. In so doing I draw attention to the way he negotiates a balance between historical mindfulness and the particularities of a lived culture. Hoggart was pivotal in forging a space for critical commentary within the institutions he served, and his unique voice raised difficult questions about the consequences of wider access to higher education. But revisiting his legacy seems especially important in light of Richard Johnson’s recent claims, that the dialogue between history and cultural studies was too quickly foreshortened. Here I want to lay the foundation for such a dialogue to again take place between these disciplines. In Hoggart, we find neglected resources from which both history and cultural studies stand to benefit.

Relevance and Priorities of ICT for Women in Rural Communities: A Case Study from Nigeria

Relevance and Priorities of ICT for Women in Rural Communities: A Case Study from Nigeria

Wireless communications in acute health-care.

Before a particular form of wireless communication is implemented within a health-care institution, consideration should be given to the system's capacity for transmitting voice, data and video information, as well as its reliability and coverage. An important associated choice concerns the best combination of user devices that will enable secure and rapid transmission of data to clinical staff at the point of care. Several technologies are available. No new technology that is likely to become available over the next five years will address the two main concerns of health service organizations: the need for non-interference with sensitive equipment; and the need for immediate communication of urgent messages. We therefore believe that health industries with a mobile workforce will gain five to eight years of useful life from cordless telephone systems and that paging or other radio-based devices will remain an important mode of communication for at least the next five years, especially where emergency communication is concerned.

Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari (review)

Reviewed by: Dread Talk: The language of Rastafari by Velma Pollard Elizabeth Grace Winkler Dread Talk: The language of Rastafari. 2nd edn. By Velma Pollard. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Pp. xv, 117. In Dread Talk, Velma Pollard elaborates on the history and unique features of Jamaican Dread Talk. Far from being solely a dialect of Jamaican Creole (JC), ‘Dread Talk reflects the speaker’s resistance to perceived oppression (both historical colonial prejudice and current economic disenfranchisement) . . . Here patterns of speech really do reflect patterns of thought’ (xiii). In terms of linguistic features, Dread Talk varies most greatly from JC in its lexicon. However, it is not simply an accidental evolution of the lexicon but a conscious shift in lexical usage to better reflect the speakers’ reality. An example is the use of ‘downpress’ rather than ‘oppress’ (up) because, actually, people are being pushed down. Additionally, she explains the predominant use of ‘ai’ (I) in Dread Talk rather than JC ‘me’. ‘Me’ is viewed as a symbol of racial submissiveness. That this shift to ‘I’ is not just an indicator of decreolization towards a more standard usage is reflected in the reflexive forms generated like ‘Iself’. In Ch. 2 she traces Rastafarianism from its predominantly lower class roots to the 1970s when a nationwide rise in political consciousness brought it home to the middle classes as well. Dread Talk ‘was ready and in place as a vehicle to convey the urgent message of protest’ (31–2) for all Jamaicans. At present, Dread Talk is no longer solely a language of protest, but of the youth across Jamaica and elsewhere. This has happened because Dread Talk has been separated from ‘the burden’ of its original message for many speakers. P discusses the spread of Dread Talk to urban areas of the Caribbean and its impact on English creole languages. She argues that these areas were fertile ground for Rastafari because the Black experience in these places was not all that unique nor are the present-day realities: ‘the inhabitants are poor black people occupying underprivileged positions in societies with stark social and economic discrepancies’ (54). In the book’s new chapter, she shows how dictionaries of Dread Talk (Rasta patois) found on the internet provide more than just simple word lists but important grammatical information as well. They serve not just as sources but as a normative influence in the worldwide spread of Dread Talk. The work [End Page 597] ends with a discussion of the dynamic word formation processes common to Dread Talk. The text provides a good balance between linguistic description, social history, and current practice and provides many illustrative speech samples. Dread Talk is essentially a reprint of the original 1994 book with the useful inclusion of a bibliography and the additional chapter on the spread of Rasta culture and language worldwide through the internet. Because the remaining chapters have been previously published as articles or conference presentations, there is a good deal of repetition of information that could be edited out of future editions leaving room for more content on the subject about which Pollard clearly has great insight. Elizabeth Grace Winkler Columbus State University Copyright © 2002 Linguistic Society of America

Iatrogenic causes of falls in hospitalised elderly patients: a case-control study

Objective: To explore risk factors associated with falls and to evaluate a strategy used by nurses to predict and prevent falls in a hospitalised cohort of elderly patients. Design: A...

The evolution explosion: how humans cause rapid evolutionary change

Evolution is not merely the process that ruled the rise and fall of the dinosaurs over hundreds of millions of years. It also happens rapidly, so quickly and so frequently that it changes how all of us live our lives. Drugs fail because diseases like HIV and tuberculosis evolve in a matter of months, neatly sidestepping pharmacology. Insects adapt and render harmless the most powerful pesticides in a matter of years, not centuries. While the ecological impact of human technology has been well publicized, the evolutionary consequences of antibiotic and antiviral use, insecticide applications, and herbicide bioengineering have been largely unexplored. In The Evolution Explosion, Stephen R. Palumbi examines these practical and critical aspects of modern evolution with a simple, yet forceful style that contains both an urgent message and a sense of humor.

How To Support Real-Time Traffic of Urgent Aperiodic Message Using FF

This paper deeply investigates how to support real-time traffic of urgent aperiodic messages using Foundation Fieldbus (FF). This paper shows that, despite FF providing such mechanisms as PT priority and PT rotation period, etc., FF can't effectively guarantee real-time traftic of urgent aperiodic message that is shown in its worst-case response time. The main contribution of this paper is to find the deficiency of current mechanism and proposes a new one. Further, this paper gives methodologies for setting SCT under the new mechanism.