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2009

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Prioritization Of Safety Countermeasures For The State Of Louisiana Using Fuzzy Inference Systems, Meisam Akbarzadeh Jan 2009

Prioritization Of Safety Countermeasures For The State Of Louisiana Using Fuzzy Inference Systems, Meisam Akbarzadeh

LSU Master's Theses

In this study a fuzzy inference system is proposed for prioritization of countermeasures aimed at improving safety in the state of Louisiana. Countermeasures are prioritized based on their collective performance on cost, expected crash reduction and the severity of the problem they address. These three decision parameters can have six permutations in terms of their relative importance in decision making. In order to make the prioritization procedure handier for decision makers, the inference system is capable of being run under all six possible cases. Current safety standards influence the importance attached to crash reduction performance and severity of the problem …

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Examining The Influence Of Popular Music And Poetry Therapy On The Development Of Therapeutic Factors In Groups With At-Risk Adolsecents, Leah Olson-Mcbride Jan 2009

Examining The Influence Of Popular Music And Poetry Therapy On The Development Of Therapeutic Factors In Groups With At-Risk Adolsecents, Leah Olson-Mcbride

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, music and poetry were combined to form a client-centered therapeutic approach to group psychotherapy with at-risk youth that encourages connection, communication, and self-expression. This specialized poetry therapy intervention utilizes popular music and creative writing activities to facilitate group discussion about feelings, life experiences, goals, and values. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of such an intervention on group formation and development, with a specific focus on the development of factors, such as self-disclosure, which contribute to therapeutic change over the course of the intervention. A multiple embedded case study approach was utilized to …

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U.S. Public Diplomacy Toward Iran: Structures, Actors, And Policy Communities, Foad Izadi Jan 2009

U.S. Public Diplomacy Toward Iran: Structures, Actors, And Policy Communities, Foad Izadi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is an in depth study of the structures, actors, and policy communities associated with U.S. public diplomacy toward Iran. Since 2006, the U.S. government has spent more than $200 million for its Iran-related public diplomacy via State Department "democracy promotion" programs, National Endowment for Democracy, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. These initiatives promoted regime change in Iran, ignoring a substantial majority of Iran’s population opposed to U.S.-sponsored interventions. The study finds U.S. public diplomacy as it relates to Iran fits with the two-way asymmetrical model of public relations. The dissertation identifies 182 individuals who participated in the …

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Task Scheduling And Placement For Reconfigurable Devices, Mostafa Elbidweihy Jan 2009

Task Scheduling And Placement For Reconfigurable Devices, Mostafa Elbidweihy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Partially reconfigurable devices allow the execution of different tasks at the same time, removing tasks when they finish and inserting new tasks when they arrive. This dissertation investigates scheduling and placing real-time tasks (tasks with deadline) on reconfigurable devices. One basic scheduler is the First-Fit scheduler. By allowing the First-Fit scheduler to retry tasks while they can satisfy their deadlines, we found that its performance can be enhanced to be better than other schedulers. We also proposed a placement idea based on partitioning the reconfigurable area into regions of various widths, assigning a task to a region based on its …

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Proxy Records Of Paleohurricanes For The Western And Southern Caribbean, Terrence Allen Mccloskey Jan 2009

Proxy Records Of Paleohurricanes For The Western And Southern Caribbean, Terrence Allen Mccloskey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the hypothesis that hurricane activity levels in the North Atlantic during the late Holocene have been driven by latitudinal movements of the North Atlantic circulation system. Multi-millennial sedimentary proxy records, based on the occurrence of overwash clastic layers, provide clear evidence of abruptly alternating periods of hurricane landfall frequency for Nicaragua and Belize. Three Belizean transects exhibit an Active period (hyperactivity) occurring from ~2000-6000 cal yr BP, although dating is inconsistent across the transects. An Active period covering the last 500 years is found at one location. The Nicaraguan record, derived from three transects covering >90 km …

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Chondrocyte Death In Canine Osteochondral Explants Exposed To 0.5 Percent Bupivacaine, Geoffrey Stuart Hennig Jan 2009

Chondrocyte Death In Canine Osteochondral Explants Exposed To 0.5 Percent Bupivacaine, Geoffrey Stuart Hennig

LSU Master's Theses

Objective: Our in vitro study evaluated chondrocyte death in canine articular cartilage exposed to 0.5% bupivacaine without (B) and with methylparaben (BP) and compared the viability with intact (SI) and mechanically debrided surfaces (SR). We hypothesized that B or BP would cause chondrocyte death in vitro in a time dependent manner and that chondrocyte death would be increased in SI osteochondral cores compared to SR. Materials and Methods: Intact cartilage cores with underlying subchondral bone were collected aseptically from both humeral heads of 16 fresh canine cadavers. Joints from each dog were randomly assigned to SI or SR. Ten osteochondral …

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Comorbid Psychopathology In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders And Intellectual Disabilities, Santino Vincent Lovullo Jan 2009

Comorbid Psychopathology In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders And Intellectual Disabilities, Santino Vincent Lovullo

LSU Master's Theses

While there has been an abundance of research investigating Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in children, very little emphasis has been placed on ASD in adults, especially in regards to comorbid psychopathology. This is of great concern considering that ASD often co-occurs with intellectual disability (ID), and that both may serve as risk factors for additional psychopathology. While instruments exist that measure comorbid psychopathology in adults with ID, these scales are not targeted to the unique expression of comorbidity in adults with ID and ASD. The Autism Spectrum Disorders-Comorbidity for Adults (ASD-CA) was devised for this reason. This paper begins with …

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"It Takes A Lot Out Of You": Ethnography Of Secondary English Teachers' Writing Pedagogy, Lisa F. Morales Jan 2009

"It Takes A Lot Out Of You": Ethnography Of Secondary English Teachers' Writing Pedagogy, Lisa F. Morales

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study was conducted in two case-study teachers’ public middle school classrooms in south Louisiana and a survey in three public school districts. A qualitative research focus with the research design taken from work of Michael Patton’s (2002) Qualitative Research Evaluation Methods and James Spradley and David McCurdy’s (1975) Anthropology: The Cultural Perspective. The survey was developed from the work of Tourangeau, Rips, and Rasinski’s (2002) The Psychology of Survey Responses. The researcher assumed the role of participant observer for three months which resulted in two themes: first, traditional teaching methods in the teaching of writing, and secondly, teacher perceptions …

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Compilation And Scheduling Techniques For Embedded Systems, Hassan Salamy Jan 2009

Compilation And Scheduling Techniques For Embedded Systems, Hassan Salamy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Embedded applications are constantly increasing in size, which has resulted in increasing demand on designers of digital signal processors (DSPs) to meet the tight memory, size and cost constraints. With this trend, memory requirement reduction through code compaction and variable coalescing techniques are gaining more ground. Also, as the current trend in complex embedded systems of using multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) grows, problems like mapping, memory management and scheduling are gaining more attention. The first part of the dissertation deals with problems related to digital signal processors. Most modern DSPs provide multiple address registers and a dedicated address generation unit (AGU) …

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Writers On Writing Instruction: Experiences And Advice From Professional Writers, Sheri Allen Jan 2009

Writers On Writing Instruction: Experiences And Advice From Professional Writers, Sheri Allen

LSU Master's Theses

In examining the childhood experiences of professional authors, this qualitative research found some similarities: voracious reading, writing for pleasure, early awards and publishing, mentors, meaningful lessons from teachers, and journal writing. Common areas were found among the participants’ advice for writing teachers as well, and the suggestions were organized into six general themes: teaching the fundamentals, getting ideas down before revising, focusing on creativity, teaching the reading-writing relationship, providing rewards like positive feedback, and being a writing role model. Suggestions were offered on how to bring this advice into the classroom.

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Factors Influencing The Perceived Usefulness Of An Information Delivery Website Among The United States Resident Viewership, Frederick Joseph Piazza Jan 2009

Factors Influencing The Perceived Usefulness Of An Information Delivery Website Among The United States Resident Viewership, Frederick Joseph Piazza

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the World Wide Web (Web) has become a major media outlet for disseminating information. Government and Higher Education institutions have both embraced Web technologies to serve the needs of their clientele. Thus, a method of developing targeted Web-based material that is optimized for the viewer to provide the greatest impact in terms of usefulness is needed. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of selected demographic characteristics on the perception of usefulness among United States resident viewers of an information delivery website. The accessible population for this study was all viewers …

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Nutrition And Eating Habits In Adolescent Television Programs: A Content Analysis Of Food And Beverage Consumption On Popular Teen Television, Carly Nicole Dickson Jan 2009

Nutrition And Eating Habits In Adolescent Television Programs: A Content Analysis Of Food And Beverage Consumption On Popular Teen Television, Carly Nicole Dickson

LSU Master's Theses

Media research often argues that viewing certain media can significantly increase the likelihood someone will develop an eating disorder or become obese. This study uses social cognitive and drama theory to discuss how adolescents may learn nutrition information and eating habits by watching television programs. Since adolescence is when people form eating habits, this exploratory study will analyze the nutrition content in three top teen television shows. This quantitative content analysis found that the characters in teen television primarily have a healthy body size but consume unhealthy items. This may be sending a message to adolescents that unhealthy nutrition maintains …

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Source(S) Of Salinity In The Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer, Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Stephanie Erin Welch Jan 2009

Source(S) Of Salinity In The Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer, Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Stephanie Erin Welch

LSU Master's Theses

The Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer extends from Southern Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi and is comprised of fluvial sands and gravels of Late Pleistocene age. Several areas of the aquifer in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana are affected by elevated levels of salinity. One such area occurs in Iberville Parish, LA, where the aquifer is 150-240 m in thickness and is capped by 23-38 m of clay. Recharge of the aquifer from the Mississippi River on the east is fresh, but salinity is high in the western portions of the aquifer and chloride levels are as high as 1,000 …

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Effects Of Simulated Drift Of Glyphosate, Imazethapyr, Glufosinate, And Imazamox To Non-Transgenic Rice, Justin Brian Hensley Jan 2009

Effects Of Simulated Drift Of Glyphosate, Imazethapyr, Glufosinate, And Imazamox To Non-Transgenic Rice, Justin Brian Hensley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Four studies were conducted at the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station near Crowley, Louisiana to evaluate the effects of simulated herbicide drift on ‘Cocodrie’ rice. Herbicides were applied at 6.3 and 12.5% of the labeled usage rate of 863 g ae/ha of glyphosate, 70 g ai/ha of imazethapyr, 493 g ai/ha of glufosinate, and 44 g ai/ha of imazamox. Herbicides were applied to rice at the 1-tiller, panicle differentiation (PD), boot, and physiological maturity growth stages. Spray volume varied proportionally to herbicide dosage and was 15 L/ha for the 6.3% rate and 29 L/ha for the 12.5% rate using 234 …

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An Integrated Agent-Based Microsimulation Model For Hurricane Evacuation In New Orleans, Wei Liang Jan 2009

An Integrated Agent-Based Microsimulation Model For Hurricane Evacuation In New Orleans, Wei Liang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mass evacuation of urban areas due to hurricanes is a critical problem that requires extensive basic and applied research. Knowing the accurate evacuation time needed for the entire region in advance such that the evacuation order can be issued on a timely basis is crucial for the officials. Microsimulation modeling, which focuses on the characteristics of individual motorists and travel behavior, has been used widely in traffic simulation as it can lead to the most accurate result. However, because detailed driver response modeling and path processing must be incorporated, vehicle-based microscopic models have always been used only to simulate small …

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Third Order Cmos Decimator Design For Sigma Delta Modulators, Hemalatha Mekala Jan 2009

Third Order Cmos Decimator Design For Sigma Delta Modulators, Hemalatha Mekala

LSU Master's Theses

A third order Cascaded Integrated Comb (CIC) filter has been designed in 0.5μm n-well CMOS process to interface with a second order oversampling sigma-delta ADC modulator. The modulator was designed earlier in 0.5μm technology. The CIC filter is designed to operate with 0 to 5V supply voltages. The modulator is operated with ±2.5V supply voltage and a fixed oversampling ratio of 64. The CIC filter designed includes integrator, differentiator blocks and a dedicated clock divider circuit, which divides the input clock by 64. The CIC filter is designed to work with an ADC that operates at a maximum oversampling clock …

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Factors That Influence Course Completion Of Individuals Enrolled In Craft-Training Courses Offered By A Large Organization Of Member Construction Companies, Alvin James Justelien, Iii Jan 2009

Factors That Influence Course Completion Of Individuals Enrolled In Craft-Training Courses Offered By A Large Organization Of Member Construction Companies, Alvin James Justelien, Iii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The construction industry is one of the largest providers of jobs in the United States. Between 2009 and 2013, approximately 20% of the 7.7 million Americans employed in construction related jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 2009) would be eligible to retire. The industrial construction industry must attract, train, and retain a significant number of people to the construction industry. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of selected personal demographic characteristics and academic behaviors of individuals participating in craft training courses offered by a large organization of member construction companies who successfully completed or left …

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Public Opinion And The Katrina Disaster: Linking Support For Rebuilding And Perceptions Of Flood Victims In New Orleans, Vincenzo Pasquantonio Jan 2009

Public Opinion And The Katrina Disaster: Linking Support For Rebuilding And Perceptions Of Flood Victims In New Orleans, Vincenzo Pasquantonio

LSU Master's Theses

Public support for government assistance to the needy has long been the focus of scholarly attention. Some assert that the perceived race of recipients of such aid is the primary determinant influencing such support. Others cite that it is the degree of trust one has in government institutions while still others cite American notions of individualism and self-reliance versus collective responsibility. The present study analyzes public opinion regarding aid to the City of New Orleans and its inhabitants following Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of the city. Several important findings emerge from this analysis. First, it cannot be demonstrated …

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Typewriters Typing Typist: A Performance History, Sarah Kathryn Jackson Jan 2009

Typewriters Typing Typist: A Performance History, Sarah Kathryn Jackson

LSU Master's Theses

This study contributes to the ongoing exploration of the multiple ways visual and material artifacts perform. I take a look at how typewriters or rather how two representations of typewriters perform. I focus on two different images of working women, each rendered in terms of a popular female stereotype of the period. I selected the images because they bookend a period of time in which typewriters emerged to the fore as an efficient tool of reproduction in the business world. In turn, two different perspectives on the relationship between the typist and her typewriter, woman and machine, are provided. The …

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Your Land Is My Land: Exploring Land Policy In Tangerang, Indonesia Using Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model, Milla Budiarto Jan 2009

Your Land Is My Land: Exploring Land Policy In Tangerang, Indonesia Using Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model, Milla Budiarto

LSU Master's Theses

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic country comprised of over 17, 000 islands with more than 300 ethnic groups and more than 250 different ethnic languages spoken. Due to its land mass size and multifaceted culture, land policy in this country has been ineffective and inadequate in addressing some of the land affairs. One of the indicators of effective land policy is land tenure security, where land dispute incidence is a function of it. Given that the government has very minimal guarantee for land tenure security in this nation, land disputes are inevitable and very common. By the end of …

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Peptide Targeting Of Platinum Anti-Cancer Drug And Synthesis Of Water Soluble Monofunctional Pt(Ii) Complexes Useful For Biological Labeling, Margaret W. Ndinguri Jan 2009

Peptide Targeting Of Platinum Anti-Cancer Drug And Synthesis Of Water Soluble Monofunctional Pt(Ii) Complexes Useful For Biological Labeling, Margaret W. Ndinguri

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Platinum has been used as an inorganic medicinal agent with various applications such as anti cancer agents. Several new targeted Pt(II) conjugates were synthesized having the NGR and LHRH targeting motif. The platinum conjugates bearing the NGR motif revealed selective delivery and destruction of cancer cells that had CD13 receptors compared to untargeted carboplatin drug. The development of targeted chemotherapeutic has opened a new approach for efficient delivery of antitumor toxins with minimal exposure to normal cells. Several peptide sequences are known to have the ability to target tumors, for instance NGR motif which home specifically in solid tumors and …

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Rejecting The Epistolary Woman: Modern Female Protagonists In Mariama Bâ'S Une Si Longue Lettre And Ying Chen's Les Lettres Chinoises, Rosemary Michele Harrington Jan 2009

Rejecting The Epistolary Woman: Modern Female Protagonists In Mariama Bâ'S Une Si Longue Lettre And Ying Chen's Les Lettres Chinoises, Rosemary Michele Harrington

LSU Master's Theses

One of the most interesting thematic elements of the male-authored epistolary texts of the 18th century is what Katharine Ann Jensen refers to as the “Epistolary Woman”: “Seduced, betrayed, and suffering, this woman writes letter after letter of anguished and masochistic lament to the man who has left her behind” (Jensen 1). Jensen notes a pattern of this portrayal in texts such as Lettres portugaises and also in the letter-writing manuals written by men of the period. Epistolary Woman stems from masculine efforts to limit and define women’s writing as highly emotional, and in turn, Epistolary Woman is “a male …

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Applying The Isotope Pairing Technique To Evaluate How Water Temperature And Habitat Type Influence Denitrification Estimates In Breton Sound, Louisiana, Peter L. Lenaker Jan 2009

Applying The Isotope Pairing Technique To Evaluate How Water Temperature And Habitat Type Influence Denitrification Estimates In Breton Sound, Louisiana, Peter L. Lenaker

LSU Master's Theses

The upper Breton Sound estuary was hydrologically reconnected to the Mississippi River via the Caernarvon freshwater diversion structure in 1991. The Caernarvon structure can provide controlled freshwater pulses to the upper Breton Sound estuarine ecosystem, replicating historic freshwater pulsed events, although the original authorization was to control salinity isohalines at specific locations in the estuary. However, unlike historic freshwater pulsed events prior to the construction of levees, the current freshwater pulse contains an unprecedented amount of inorganic nitrogen, predominately as nitrate (annual average 71.4 µM NO3-). Denitrification is a microbial process, which can potentially remove excess nitrate entering coastal Louisiana …

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Bridging Academic Writing With Service-Learning: Measuring Student Perceptions And Learning Outcomes Of An Academic Writing Course, Karen Gabrielle Johnson Jan 2009

Bridging Academic Writing With Service-Learning: Measuring Student Perceptions And Learning Outcomes Of An Academic Writing Course, Karen Gabrielle Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a significant difference between students who completed a service-learning component and those who did not complete a service-learning component in the areas of student achievement of learning outcomes and perceptions of the course. Proponents of service-learning claim that students write higher quality papers and are more engaged, motivated, and satisfied when they complete a service-learning component. However, these findings are largely based on anecdotal and qualitative evidence that lack empirical evidence to strengthen these claims. This study employed a quasi-experimental design using static group comparison to measure differences between …

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Young Love Can Be Torture: An Autoethnography Exploring The Making Of High School Sweethearts, William Stanley Gartside Jan 2009

Young Love Can Be Torture: An Autoethnography Exploring The Making Of High School Sweethearts, William Stanley Gartside

Master's Theses (2009 -)

We experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, and these narratives are heavily reliant upon the frames we consciously and unconsciously use to define ourselves within them. Though previous research indicates that the consumption of violent media either increase aggressive constructs in viewers (Bushman, 1998), desensitize viewers to domestic and sexual violence (e. g., Donnerstein & Penrod, 1988; Mullin & Linz, 1995) or prime individuals to make hostile attributions about the behavior of others (e.g., Thomas & Drabman, 1978; Bargh and Pietromonaco, 1982; Wann and Branscombe, 1990; Zelli, Huesmann, & Cervone, 1995), my own experiences as a …

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Gain Enhancement Of Microstrip Patch Antenna Using Dielectric Dng Superstrate, Abdulbaset M. Ali Jan 2009

Gain Enhancement Of Microstrip Patch Antenna Using Dielectric Dng Superstrate, Abdulbaset M. Ali

Theses

As the trend continues towards miniaturizing integrated electronic circuits, the need to reduce the size of the antenna continues to be a challenge particularly for the microstrip antenna. Several techniques that have been successfully implemented for size reduction up to 75%, by a variety of methods such as cutting slots in the patch or reconfiguring its size using MEMS, etc. in conjunction with optimization techniques such as genetic algorithms or particle swarm. However, antenna size reduction comes at the expense of a reduced gain by a few dBs. Recently, materials engineered to have negative permittivity and permeability (DNG) or left …

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The Organization In Front Of The Text : A Critical Hermeneutic Inquiry In Employee Policy Appropriation, Marisa B. Michaels Jan 2009

The Organization In Front Of The Text : A Critical Hermeneutic Inquiry In Employee Policy Appropriation, Marisa B. Michaels

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

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Appropriating The Unspoken Text : Development Discourse And Hmong Women In Lao People's Democratic Republic, Kimberly C. Mendonca Jan 2009

Appropriating The Unspoken Text : Development Discourse And Hmong Women In Lao People's Democratic Republic, Kimberly C. Mendonca

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

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A Report On The 180 Symposium, Roger Dudley, Allen Walshe Jan 2009

A Report On The 180 Symposium, Roger Dudley, Allen Walshe

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Three Reasons To Serve, Gary L. Hopkins, Duane C. Mcbride, Stuart Tyner, Jonathan Duffy Jan 2009

Three Reasons To Serve, Gary L. Hopkins, Duane C. Mcbride, Stuart Tyner, Jonathan Duffy

Faculty Publications

Young people in the Seventh-day Adventist Church are in need of leadership creating effective strategies for protecting the youngsters from engaging in high risk behaviors along with finding effective methods of keeping these same youngsters churched. It is clear that God had answers to these problems long ago. A review of Matthew 25 clearly states that our purpose as Christians should be to serve individuals in need. When young people engage in service, they are more likely to be attracted to the church, get involved in the church, and stay in the church. Furthermore, service is associated with better grades …

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