Romans 8:9-11 (NIV)

⁹ You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives lifebecause of righteousness. ¹¹ And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because ofhis Spirit who lives in you.

Reflection:

As those who have been saved, our identity is now marked by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.  We now live in and by the Spirit. What’s even greater is that the same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is living in us!  This reality changes everything for us.  We are no longer controlled by our old sinful nature.  We are no longer controlled by the things that bring spiritual death.   We are set apart to be the people where God’s Spirit dwells, an “alternative” temple, where others can come and experience the Holy Spirit.

Response:

Let’s take some time receiving this reality for our lives once again.  Let’s pray that God would increase the activity of His Spirit in and through our missional groups and campus fellowships.  Let’s pray that as He does so, others would receive life in the Spirit through our ministry.

Mitt Romney is running for president!

Okay, you probably could have predicted that. But no one could have predicted how rough his first week as an official candidate would turn out.

Having announced his candidacy early Thursday, Romney quickly found himself fighting off criticism and fighting for airtime.

The former Massachusetts governor’s conservative credentials have been being questioned since his name entered the ring for the GOP nomination. Things took a turn for a worse when the questioning turned into an all-out movement to stop his campaign, led by Tea Party leader and failed Senate candidate Joe Miller.

‘In a matchup against Obama, Tea Party voters are looking for a consistent constitutional conservative,’ said Miller. ‘We will never get behind Mitt Romney. On issues like gun rights, gay rights, abortion, immigration, and health care, Romney has flipped more than John Kerry flopped.’”

As if Romney’s record wasn’t detrimental enough, his campaign seemed to have trouble just getting mentioned in a week that featured a lot of buzz around other potential candidates. One of those causing a stir was Sarah Palin, whose bus tour seemed to steal the spotlight.

Sarah Palin crashed her red, white and blue bus into Mitt Romney’s party yesterday, sweeping into New Hampshire for the final leg of her multi-day East Coast tour as he was in the state declaring his candidacy for president.”

Jon Stewart provided some insight into another issue overtaking the media.

As for now, Romney’s main defense appears to be his business experience, at least that’s his opinion.

Image courtesy of CBS

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, pathologist and vocal advocate for assisted suicide, died at the age of 83 at a Michigan hospital.

The infamous Dr. Kevorkian (also known as Dr. Death) achieved celebrity status for his support of doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Twenty-one years ago today, he participated in his first assisted suicide for a patient suffering from Alzheimer’s.

In the next 21 years, Kevorkian would assist over 130 terminally-ill patients end their lives. As a result, Kevorkian is seen as both a merciful hero and as a destructive monster. His life caused divisive debate – and his legacy is sure to as well.

Kevorkian used his own inventions, the Thanatron and Mercitron– a machine that allowed patients to administer the lethal doses of drugs themselves. This system is how Kevorkian escaped criminal prosecution for many years.

However, he eventually released a video of himself giving a lethal dose to an ALS patient. Because of this he was found guilty of second-degree murder and served 8 years in prison before his release in 2008.

His role in assisting in suicide evoked debate about a previously taboo subject – a person’s right to choose their death and brought Kevorkian much criticism.

Kevorkian responded to criticism in a TIME interview,

I will debate so-called ethicists. They are not even ethicists. They are propagandists. I will argue with them if they will allow themselves to be strapped to a wheelchair for 72 hours so they can’t move, and they are catheterized and they are placed on the toilet and fed and bathed. Then they can sit in a chair and debate with me.

Kevorkian’s agitation of debate was perhaps most notable around the issue of doctor-assisted suicide, but his work also caused people to face other important issues around mortality – like living wills, pain relief, the hospice, and other issues surrounding end of life care.

Currently only two states – Oregon and Washington – have laws allowing some form of physician-assisted suicide.

What are your thoughts? Should people be able to decide when to end their life? And what role should doctors play in the process?

MSEE Thesis Defense

On Gas Detection and Concentration Estimation via
Mid-IR-based Gas Detection System Analysis Model

Yi Xin

2pm Monday, 6 June 2011, ITE 325

Due to recent development in laser technology and infrared spectroscopy, Laser-based spectroscopy (LAS) has been used in a wide range of research and application fields. A particular application of interest is mid-IR laser-based gas detection systems for health and environment assessment. The NSF-ERC Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and Environment (MIRTHE) project has engineers and researchers from different areas. As a participant in MIRTHE, we study the performance analysis and improvement possibilities of the integrated sensing system.

Herein, we have improved the previously-developed statistical analysis model, and then used our statistical analysis model for a generic mid-IR pulsed-laser gas detection system to predict trace gas detection and concentration estimation performance, and their sensitivity to system parameters. Based on PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) data and the Beer-Lambert law, we defined three main spectral peaks of a trace gas for detecting a target gas and evaluate 3-peak joint detection performance in terms of P_D vs. P_FA. For concentration estimation we used the relationship between gas transmittance (beta), molar absorptivity (epsilon), concentration (c), the sample-mean measurement (x_N) from the photo-detector, and number of samples (N) as the basis. Using the standard confidence interval method, we evaluated estimation reliability, and then analyzed estimation errors.

Simulated gas-detection and concentration-estimation results are presented for 17 trace gases at 1ppm and 1ppb concentrations.

Committee:

• Dr. Joel M. Morris (chair)
• Dr. Chuck LaBerge
• Dr. Gymama Slaughter

This special STARS edition of the AASHE Bulletin Sustainability Student Diary series follows three students who experienced the STARS reporting process at Unity College in Maine. As part of a "STARS: Sustainability Assessment" course at the college, the students chronicled their efforts on Unity's Sustainability Monitor blog. Below are republished excerpts. AASHE welcomes questions and invites feedback on each Sustainability Student Diary entry. Submit diary entries of your own for consideration to bulletin@aashe.org.

Timothy Godaire

May 1, 2011
As a student enrolled in the STARS: AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking course, and an intern in the Sustainability office, I am on the frontline of the sustainability efforts and energy tracking taking place on campus. This work has provided me a unique opportunity to influence the procedure the college uses to track energy usage and implementation of energy conservation measures on campus. My work involved the untangling of years worth of energy data in several different formats, and organizing it all in easy to understand workbooks.

As part of my internship, I have established and institutionalized an Excel workbook to track campus utilities, BTU’s and emissions by building on campus. I have also created a data file to track these values from year to year. These two data files allow our sustainability coordinator to monitor energy usage on campus, and to understand the implications of various energy conservation measures. These efforts began in the fall of 2010, and were critically important to the STARS reporting taking place this semester.

In the STARS class, we were able to choose the credits that we wished to pursue. I immediately thought of the energy and climate credits because of my experience with energy tracking on campus. My data management work made the STARS reporting for the energy credits much easier since I had already found, sorted and organized the data. These efforts have been instrumental in the creation of institutionalized energy tracking. The STARS class is enforcing the importance of tracking the campus-wide sustainability efforts to staff, faculty and students.

Previously, energy tracking has not taken precedence over other sustainability efforts, and consequently has hindered our ability to assess building performance, building efficiency and occupant behavior and energy use. This is especially challenging when nearly every electrical meter has multiple buildings feeding into it. Our recent efforts to understand campus-wide energy use by tracking utility data is a transition to better understand our sustainability efforts and to begin to quantify those efforts.

The STARS reporting is allowing us to evaluate our efforts, and where improvements can be made. When the time comes where we can quantify the energy use per building, we will be able to implement educational, behavioral change programs. This is the “real” work of the sustainability office; to provide education to the campus community on how to live, work and act more sustainably and live an ecologically aware life. The culmination of our work in the office and with STARS is preparing us, personally and as an institution, to address the imminent global environmental and energy issues of the 21st Century.

Shayne Van Leer

April 29, 2011
Unity College is filling out AASHE’s STARS for the first time...STARS is currently being conducted by our sustainability coordinator and three Unity College students. This assessment is popular among colleges because of its comprehensive focus on sustainability. Not only does it focus on the institution’s environmental performance, it also focuses on the institution’s social performance. The college’s performance includes Operations, Planning, Administration and Engagement, and Education and Research.

With that mind, as I started collecting data and filling out the credits, I noticed that there was a trend towards an institution’s policies. By this I mean that some credits were worded as, “Does your institution have an institution-wide stated preference for…..?” My response to this is; does an institution have to have a “policy” to be sustainable?

Here at Unity College all of the paper we purchase is 100 percent recycled content, all of the cleaning products that our maintenance department uses are Green Seal certified. Unity College does not have a “stated” preference for these things but we do have a preference for these things. In reality, in both situations an institution would be equally sustainable with or without a policy. However, with STARS, Purchasing credits require a purchasing policy to receive full credit.

Yes, there is a benefit to having a written policy; a policy would bind departments to purchasing things like recycled paper and Green Seal certified cleaning products. Here at Unity College things are a little different. Sustainability is intertwined into everything we do. Working towards sustainability is ingrained into our everyday lives. From class projects to classes, from faculty and staff to entire departments, sustainability is part of our job description, culture and our way of life.

In my personal opinion I feel that Unity College would not benefit from having a formal purchasing policy because we follow an unwritten rule of purchasing 100 percent recycled paper and Green Sealed cleaning products. However, if someone wanted to take the time to write a policy it would help us receive credit on the STARS application, but would not further sustainability at Unity College.

Hannia Candelario

April 30, 2011
The Environmental Stewardship Core Curriculum is a primary component of the Unity College education. There are four courses that are distributed through the four years and they prepare Unity graduates for leadership roles in environmental issues, on levels ranging from local to global...

...What draws attention to these classes is the ability that they give students to go after what they are passionate about. As part of my work for the STARS credit report, I took a deep look at the structure and function of academics here at Unity College. I was in charge of collecting information on the Education and Research credits; as I talked to the school’s registrar, teachers and faculty about the co-curricular education credits, it struck me to find out that many schools in the nation are just starting to put together a sustainability curriculum. STARS gives a lot of credit to sustainability education and the fact that all of us at Unity are required to take these classes makes me feel that we are being trained at a deeper level to become environmental stewards. We are a community that is aware of the problems today’s societies are facing and we are being trained on how to approach them while also increasing sustainability awareness on campus.

This special STARS edition of the AASHE Bulletin Sustainability Student Diary series follows three students who experienced the STARS reporting process at Unity College in Maine. As part of a "STARS: Sustainability Assessment" course at the college, the students chronicled their efforts on Unity's Sustainability Monitor blog. Below are republished excerpts. AASHE welcomes questions and invites feedback on each Sustainability Student Diary entry. Submit diary entries of your own for consideration to bulletin@aashe.org.

Timothy Godaire

May 1, 2011
As a student enrolled in the STARS: AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking course, and an intern in the Sustainability office, I am on the frontline of the sustainability efforts and energy tracking taking place on campus. This work has provided me a unique opportunity to influence the procedure the college uses to track energy usage and implementation of energy conservation measures on campus. My work involved the untangling of years worth of energy data in several different formats, and organizing it all in easy to understand workbooks.

As part of my internship, I have established and institutionalized an Excel workbook to track campus utilities, BTU’s and emissions by building on campus. I have also created a data file to track these values from year to year. These two data files allow our sustainability coordinator to monitor energy usage on campus, and to understand the implications of various energy conservation measures. These efforts began in the fall of 2010, and were critically important to the STARS reporting taking place this semester.

In the STARS class, we were able to choose the credits that we wished to pursue. I immediately thought of the energy and climate credits because of my experience with energy tracking on campus. My data management work made the STARS reporting for the energy credits much easier since I had already found, sorted and organized the data. These efforts have been instrumental in the creation of institutionalized energy tracking. The STARS class is enforcing the importance of tracking the campus-wide sustainability efforts to staff, faculty and students.

Previously, energy tracking has not taken precedence over other sustainability efforts, and consequently has hindered our ability to assess building performance, building efficiency and occupant behavior and energy use. This is especially challenging when nearly every electrical meter has multiple buildings feeding into it. Our recent efforts to understand campus-wide energy use by tracking utility data is a transition to better understand our sustainability efforts and to begin to quantify those efforts.

The STARS reporting is allowing us to evaluate our efforts, and where improvements can be made. When the time comes where we can quantify the energy use per building, we will be able to implement educational, behavioral change programs. This is the “real” work of the sustainability office; to provide education to the campus community on how to live, work and act more sustainably and live an ecologically aware life. The culmination of our work in the office and with STARS is preparing us, personally and as an institution, to address the imminent global environmental and energy issues of the 21st Century.

Shayne Van Leer

April 29, 2011
Unity College is filling out AASHE’s STARS for the first time...STARS is currently being conducted by our sustainability coordinator and three Unity College students. This assessment is popular among colleges because of its comprehensive focus on sustainability. Not only does it focus on the institution’s environmental performance, it also focuses on the institution’s social performance. The college’s performance includes Operations, Planning, Administration and Engagement, and Education and Research.

With that mind, as I started collecting data and filling out the credits, I noticed that there was a trend towards an institution’s policies. By this I mean that some credits were worded as, “Does your institution have an institution-wide stated preference for…..?” My response to this is; does an institution have to have a “policy” to be sustainable?

Here at Unity College all of the paper we purchase is 100 percent recycled content, all of the cleaning products that our maintenance department uses are Green Seal certified. Unity College does not have a “stated” preference for these things but we do have a preference for these things. In reality, in both situations an institution would be equally sustainable with or without a policy. However, with STARS, Purchasing credits require a purchasing policy to receive full credit.

Yes, there is a benefit to having a written policy; a policy would bind departments to purchasing things like recycled paper and Green Seal certified cleaning products. Here at Unity College things are a little different. Sustainability is intertwined into everything we do. Working towards sustainability is ingrained into our everyday lives. From class projects to classes, from faculty and staff to entire departments, sustainability is part of our job description, culture and our way of life.

In my personal opinion I feel that Unity College would not benefit from having a formal purchasing policy because we follow an unwritten rule of purchasing 100 percent recycled paper and Green Sealed cleaning products. However, if someone wanted to take the time to write a policy it would help us receive credit on the STARS application, but would not further sustainability at Unity College.

Hannia Candelario

April 30, 2011
The Environmental Stewardship Core Curriculum is a primary component of the Unity College education. There are four courses that are distributed through the four years and they prepare Unity graduates for leadership roles in environmental issues, on levels ranging from local to global...

...What draws attention to these classes is the ability that they give students to go after what they are passionate about. As part of my work for the STARS credit report, I took a deep look at the structure and function of academics here at Unity College. I was in charge of collecting information on the Education and Research credits; as I talked to the school’s registrar, teachers and faculty about the co-curricular education credits, it struck me to find out that many schools in the nation are just starting to put together a sustainability curriculum. STARS gives a lot of credit to sustainability education and the fact that all of us at Unity are required to take these classes makes me feel that we are being trained at a deeper level to become environmental stewards. We are a community that is aware of the problems today’s societies are facing and we are being trained on how to approach them while also increasing sustainability awareness on campus.

The Semantic Web community is still unsure what to think of the microdata.

The schema.rdfs.org provides static RDFS documents of the schema.org terms in RDF serialized in turtle, XML and ntriples as well as in JSON.

Mike Bergman argues that the microdata effort will also boost RDF.

Yahoo!’s Peter Mika is still a RDFa fan, but also has a pragmatic appreciation for the agreement of the big three search companies on a standard for semantic data.

“Given the above history, I’m extremely glad that cooperation prevailed in the end and hopefully schema.org will become a central point for vocabularies for the Semantic Web for a long time to come. Note that it will almost certainly not be the only one. schema.org covers the core interests of search providers, i.e. the stuff that people search for the most (hence the somewhat awkward term ‘search vocabularies’). As the simple needs are the most common in search logs, this includes things like addresses of businesses, reviews and recipes. schema.org will hopefully evolve with extensions over time but it may never cover complex domains such as biotechnology, e-government or others where people have been using Semantic Web technology with success.”

Sustainability in higher education continues to be an emerging and dynamic field, and, to some, unexplored terrain. Thus, the sharing of knowledge and information is a compelling and propelling force to the higher education sustainability movement, which continues to gain momentum.

In order to emphasize and recognize the institutions that are willing to go above and beyond to not only share their successes but also the lessons they learned during the journey in spite of the end result being different of what was desired, AASHE has created the “Oops” Award for Honest Disclosure of Lessons Learned, as part of the Awards Program (which also includes awards for students, institutions, green building and faculty achievements).

Oftentimes, stories of projects that don’t go as planned can be really helpful, but campuses can be hesitant to tell such stories. The transition towards sustainability requires a willingness to try new things and inevitably this involves some mistakes. Campuses willing to go out on a limb to try something new deserve credit and recognition.

The “Oops!” Award for Honest Disclosure of Lessons Learned, recognizes the best case study of a project that did not go as planned and that offers important lessons from which others can learn. This is an opportunity for your institution to be recognized for disclosing its process for implementing a given sustainability initiative, help peer institutions avoid or prevent similar obstacles, and encourage them to be conversational about their own methods as well.

Winners of the award will receive a complimentary conference pass to AASHE 2011 where the award will be presented. In addition, the winner of this year's award will be featured in Sustainability: The Journal of Record and invited to a VIP reception during the AASHE 2011 conference

To apply, please fill out the application form found here by June 17, 2011.

If you have any questions / comments, please email Niles Barnes at niles@aashe.org.