Matthew 13:1-7 (NIV) - “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop-a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.’”

As we read the parable of the sower, we can get bit discouraged by the number of seeds that do not produce fruit. We may wonder, is it worth sharing our story? What is important to recognize is that the seed, the gospel, willproduce crop on good soil and the harvest will be worth it! The amount of crop produced is a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

When we tell our stories of what Christ has done for us and sharing the gospel, we are planting and sowing seeds. Do we realize that Jesus who came to save me personally is also the Savior or the world?  As we are telling our stories of how God has changed our lives, do we give opportunities for others to see that Jesus is the Savior of the world, to help our friends make the connection?

Today, let’s consider how we can tell our stories so that others can recognize that Jesus is the Savior of the world!  Let’s be renewed in our commitment to announce the Good News of His salvation. Let’s commit to earnestly pray for opportunities to share our story and to sow faithfully in anticipating the harvest.

-DP

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense

Dynamic Data Assimilation for Topic Modeling

Jennifer Sleeman
9:00am Thursday, 29 June 2017, ITE 325b, UMBC

Understanding how a particular discipline such as climate science evolves over time has received renewed interest. By understanding this evolution, predicting the future direction of that discipline becomes more achievable. Dynamic Topic Modeling (DTM) has been applied to a number of disciplines to model topic evolution as a means to learn how a particular scientific discipline and its underlying concepts are changing. Understanding how a discipline evolves, and its internal and external influences, can be complicated by how the information retrieved over time is integrated. There are different techniques used to integrate sources of information, however, less research has been dedicated to understanding how to integrate these sources over time. The method of data assimilation is commonly used in a number of scientific disciplines to both understand and make predictions of various phenomena, using numerical models and assimilated observational data over time.

In this dissertation, I introduce a novel algorithm for scientific data assimilation, called Dynamic Data Assimilation for Topic Modeling (DDATM), which uses a new cross-domain divergence method (CDDM) and DTM. By using DDATM, observational data in the form of full-text research papers can be assimilated over time starting from an initial model. DDATM can be used as a way to integrate data from multiple sources and, due to its robustness, can exploit the assimilating observational information to better tolerate missing model information. When compared with a DTM model, the assimilated model is shown to have better performance using standard topic modeling measures, including perplexity and topic coherence. The DDATM method is suitable for prediction and results in higher likelihood for subsequent documents. DDATM is able to overcome missing information during the assimilation process when compared with a DTM model. CDDM generalizes as a method that can also bring together multiple disciplines into one cohesive model enabling the identification of related concepts and documents across disciplines and time periods. Finally, grounding the topic modeling process with an ontology improves the quality of the topics and enables a more granular understanding of concept relatedness and cross-domain influence.

The results of this dissertation are demonstrated and evaluated by applying DDATM to 30 years of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) along with more than 150,000 documents that they cite to show the evolution of the physical basis of climate change.

Committee Members: Drs. Tim Finin (co-advisor), Milton Halem (co-advisor), Anupam Joshi, Tim Oates, Cynthia Matuszek, Mark Cane, Rafael Alonso

A $5,000 grant is available for CIEE's Open Campus Program. CIEE’s Global Institutes are located in six major international cities. Each Global Institute offers a number of courses across five academic disciplines, offered in six week blocks.  This Open Campus Academic Model allows you to study in one location for a full semester, or create a custom, comparable study abroad experience that takes you to up to three international cities in CIEE’s Global Quad.

For more information check out the link below! 

Baltimore Center Stage is seeking a Director of Finance. Known as The State Theater of Maryland, we are an artistically driven institution committed to engaging, educating, and expanding the horizons of diverse audiences through challenging, bold, thought-provoking classical and contemporary theater. We have recently completed our Theater Renovation Project and will be wrapping up the current Capital Campaign. As a member of the senior management team, this uniquely qualified individual will enjoy the rare opportunity to be a key member in the transition and re-invention of our theater.

The NIH Graduate and Professional School Fair, to be held on Tuesday, July 18, 2017 from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm on the Bethesda campus of the NIH, will provide an opportunity for NIH summer interns (especially those in college) and NIH postbacs, as well as other college students in the DC area, to prepare for the next step in their careers by exploring educational programs leading to the PhD, MD, DDS, MD/PhD, and other graduate and professional degrees. More than 195 outstanding colleges and universities from across the U.S. will be sending representatives of their graduate schools, medical and dental schools, schools of public health, and other biomedically relevant programs to the Fair in the hopes of recruiting NIH trainees.

The day will also include workshops on getting to graduate and professional school, MD/PhD programs, interviewing, and careers in public health, psychology, and dentistry.

For more information and to register, go to:

https://www.training.nih.gov/gp_fair

Psalm 126:5 (NLT) - “Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy.”

This may be too obvious, but just as the farmer must sow the seed to reap the harvest, we must proactively and intentionally sow the message of the gospel. No sowing of seeds, no crops. The crops are not going to just appear. Often we want to settle in our comfort zones when it comes to evangelism, but we must be intentional about sowing the seed in anticipation of the harvest. We need to recognize that evangelism takes hard work and we must be intentional about it.

“Be intentional. I often say, that which we intentionally ignore will unintentionally not get done! While true evangelism always depends on the Holy Spirit, sharing your faith does not happen by accident. It must be an intentional and conscious commitment of every Christian.” (Evangelism Is: How to Share Jesus with Passion and Confidence, D. Earley and D. Wheeler)

Evangelism as “spiritual farming”
Plowing in prayer with the Father’s love
Planting seeds of the gospel of Christ
Trusting the Spirit’s timing and power
Being willing to do the work of harvesting (Luke 10.2)
[Adapted from D. Earley and D. Wheeler, Evangelism Is: How to Share Jesus with Passion and Confidence]

First, plowing in prayer is hard work!  To break hard, infertile ground is not easy. To battle in prayer, sow in tears for our friends and family who do not know Jesus is not glamorous, but so needed.

What would drive us to do this hard work of plowing in prayer? It’s the Father God’s love for the lost that compels us! He moves our hearts to pray. Today, if God is urging your heart to begin this hard work of plowing in prayer, let’s obey the Spirit and participate in the work that God has entrusted to us and wait in expectation of what He will do!

-DP