Sea Change?

Researchers say Moses may have had help parting the Red Sea.

A team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder has found that a strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have pushed the waters back in the way described in the ancient story.

Through computer simulations, researchers have shown the water could have been pushed back at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea. With the water pushed back into both waterways, a land bridge would have opened at the bend, enabling people to walk across exposed mud flats to safety. As soon as the wind died down, the waters would have rushed back in, researchers said.
 
“The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” says Carl Drews of NCAR, the lead author. “The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that’s in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in.”

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

Studying maps of the ancient topography of the Nile delta, researchers Drews and CU oceanographer Weiqing Han found site for the crossing about 75 miles north of the Suez reef and just south of the Mediterranean Sea. Although there are uncertainties about the waterways of the time, some oceanographers believe that an ancient branch of the Nile River flowed into a coastal lagoon then known as the Lake of Tanis forming a U-shaped curve.

Drews and Han found that a wind of 63 miles an hour, lasting for 12 hours, would have pushed back six-foot deep waters, exposing mud flats for four hours. This would have created a dry passage about 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide.

The Exodus account describes Moses and the fleeing Israelites trapped between the Pharaoh’s advancing chariots and a body of water that has been variously translated as the Red Sea or the Sea of Reeds. In a divine miracle, the account continues, a mighty east wind blows all night, splitting the waters and leaving a passage of dry land with walls of water on both sides. The Israelites are able to flee to the other shore. But when the Pharaoh’s army attempts to pursue them in the morning, the waters rush back and drown the soldiers.

Details of the model are available at https://www2.ucar.edu/news/parting-waters-computer-modeling-applies-physics-red-sea-escape-route.

Pru Retirement Moving to ‘Key Account’ Team Structure

Prudential Retirement on Wednesday announced a reshuffling of its client-facing service personnel into 10 “key account” teams based in three U.S. regions. 

George Castineiras, senior vice president of Client Relations and Business Development for Prudential Retirement, said the key to the new system is to assign collective service responsibility for a book of 40 to 50 plans to a group of three or four rather than to a single relationship manager as has historically been the case.

By assigning a leader and two or three direct reports to that leader – all of whom are held jointly accountable – Castineiras told PLANSPONSOR in an interview that clients should benefit from having a broader range of expertise and diversity of thought utilized to meet their needs. He said the new system should also be more scalable as the size of the business changes.

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

“If all we did was to say (to relationship managers), ‘You have these 20 clients’ and ‘You have these 20 clients,’ we didn’t solve very much at all,” Castineiras said

Castineiras said the new alignment, which Prudential hopes to have rolled out by year-end, will find five teams servicing East Coast clients, and another five focusing on clients in the Midwest and on the West Coast. Exact team locations and specific personnel assignments are still being finalized, he said.

Castineiras said he anticipated a “small” reduction in staff as a result of the changes as well as the need to relocate some employees to other offices, but that those details also have yet to be worked out.

He explained that clients with roughly $20 million in assets and up will get assigned to one of the new teams and that smaller Prudential plans – which presumably have less-complex needs – will remain in the current client service system. “We just didn’t see any need to make any changes to that (smaller client) group,” he said. 

«