Hasil untuk "The Bible"

P. Dobson

Philippe Castillon, Cang Nguyen-The

Recent works by the second author and Maxwell et al. have shown that the Einstein-scalar field conformal constraint equations are highly complex and generally intractable, even in the vacuum case. In this article, to gain a clearer understanding and offer a new perspective, we study these equations under special assumptions: the manifold $(M,g)$ is harmonic and all data are radial. In this setting, the system reduces to a single nonlinear equation and is completely resolved in the standard cases. In particular, on the sphere, our results reveal phenomena that contrast with the well-known achievements on compact manifolds without conformal Killing vector fields, including nonexistence of solutions in the near-CMC regime and instability when the mean curvature is non-constant. By contrast, on Euclidean or hyperbolic manifolds, the equations are always solvable, with all expected properties of solutions satisfied. These findings support the view that, although the conformal method appears to present some drawbacks on compact manifolds, it remains a promising tool for parametrizing solutions to the constraint equations on asymptotically flat and hyperbolic manifolds in arbitrary mean curvature regimes. In this article, we also investigate the sign of mass, showing that the ADM and asymptotically hyperbolic mass of vacuum constraint solutions can take arbitrary sign when the decay rate of symmetric $(0,2)$-tensor $k$ at infinity is critical. Finally, most solution classes in our framework are explicit, providing a variety of models in general relativity and offering insights into the behavior of initial data, particularly in numerical applications.

The Hieu Pham, Tan Dat Nguyen, Phuong Thanh Tran et al.

Speech enhancement remains challenging due to the trade-off between efficiency and perceptual quality. In this paper, we introduce MAGE, a Masked Audio Generative Enhancer that advances generative speech enhancement through a compact and robust design. Unlike prior masked generative models with random masking, MAGE employs a scarcity-aware coarse-to-fine masking strategy that prioritizes frequent tokens in early steps and rare tokens in later refinements, improving efficiency and generalization. We also propose a lightweight corrector module that further stabilizes inference by detecting low-confidence predictions and re-masking them for refinement. Built on BigCodec and finetuned from Qwen2.5-0.5B, MAGE is reduced to 200M parameters through selective layer retention. Experiments on DNS Challenge and noisy LibriSpeech show that MAGE achieves state-of-the-art perceptual quality and significantly reduces word error rate for downstream recognition, outperforming larger baselines. Audio examples are available at https://hieugiaosu.github.io/MAGE/.

Van An Nguyen, Vuong Khang Huynh, Ho Nam Duong et al.

Research on promoting cooperation among autonomous, self-regarding agents has often focused on the bi-objective optimisation problem: minimising the total incentive cost while maximising the frequency of cooperation. However, the optimal value of social welfare under such constraints remains largely unexplored. In this work, we hypothesise that achieving maximal social welfare is not guaranteed at the minimal incentive cost required to drive agents to a desired cooperative state. To address this gap, we adopt to a single-objective approach focused on maximising social welfare, building upon foundational evolutionary game theory models that examined cost efficiency in finite populations, in both well-mixed and structured population settings. Our analytical model and agent-based simulations show how different interference strategies, including rewarding local versus global behavioural patterns, affect social welfare and dynamics of cooperation. Our results reveal a significant gap in the per-individual incentive cost between optimising for pure cost efficiency or cooperation frequency and optimising for maximal social welfare. Overall, our findings indicate that incentive design, policy, and benchmarking in multi-agent systems and human societies should prioritise welfare-centric objectives over proxy targets of cost or cooperation frequency.

Nataliya Balabanova, Adeela Bashir, Paolo Bova et al.

This paper investigates the complex interplay between AI developers, regulators, users, and the media in fostering trustworthy AI systems. Using evolutionary game theory and large language models (LLMs), we model the strategic interactions among these actors under different regulatory regimes. The research explores two key mechanisms for achieving responsible governance, safe AI development and adoption of safe AI: incentivising effective regulation through media reporting, and conditioning user trust on commentariats' recommendation. The findings highlight the crucial role of the media in providing information to users, potentially acting as a form of "soft" regulation by investigating developers or regulators, as a substitute to institutional AI regulation (which is still absent in many regions). Both game-theoretic analysis and LLM-based simulations reveal conditions under which effective regulation and trustworthy AI development emerge, emphasising the importance of considering the influence of different regulatory regimes from an evolutionary game-theoretic perspective. The study concludes that effective governance requires managing incentives and costs for high quality commentaries.

Gideon Yoffe, Yair Segev, Barak Sober

Texts, whether literary or historical, exhibit structural and stylistic patterns shaped by their purpose, authorship, and cultural context. Formulaic texts, characterized by repetition and constrained expression, tend to have lower variability in self-information compared to more dynamic compositions. Identifying such patterns in historical documents, particularly multi-author texts like the Hebrew Bible provides insights into their origins, purpose, and transmission. This study aims to identify formulaic clusters -- sections exhibiting systematic repetition and structural constraints -- by analyzing recurring phrases, syntactic structures, and stylistic markers. However, distinguishing formulaic from non-formulaic elements in an unsupervised manner presents a computational challenge, especially in high-dimensional textual spaces where patterns must be inferred without predefined labels. To address this, we develop an information-theoretic algorithm leveraging weighted self-information distributions to detect structured patterns in text, unlike covariance-based methods, which become unstable in small-sample, high-dimensional settings, our approach directly models variations in self-information to identify formulaicity. By extending classical discrete self-information measures with a continuous formulation based on differential self-information, our method remains applicable across different types of textual representations, including neural embeddings under Gaussian priors. Applied to hypothesized authorial divisions in the Hebrew Bible, our approach successfully isolates stylistic layers, providing a quantitative framework for textual stratification. This method enhances our ability to analyze compositional patterns, offering deeper insights into the literary and cultural evolution of texts shaped by complex authorship and editorial processes.

Alessio Buscemi, Daniele Proverbio, Paolo Bova et al.

There is general agreement that fostering trust and cooperation within the AI development ecosystem is essential to promote the adoption of trustworthy AI systems. By embedding Large Language Model (LLM) agents within an evolutionary game-theoretic framework, this paper investigates the complex interplay between AI developers, regulators and users, modelling their strategic choices under different regulatory scenarios. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is used to quantitatively model the dilemmas faced by each actor, and LLMs provide additional degrees of complexity and nuances and enable repeated games and incorporation of personality traits. Our research identifies emerging behaviours of strategic AI agents, which tend to adopt more "pessimistic" (not trusting and defective) stances than pure game-theoretic agents. We observe that, in case of full trust by users, incentives are effective to promote effective regulation; however, conditional trust may deteriorate the "social pact". Establishing a virtuous feedback between users' trust and regulators' reputation thus appears to be key to nudge developers towards creating safe AI. However, the level at which this trust emerges may depend on the specific LLM used for testing. Our results thus provide guidance for AI regulation systems, and help predict the outcome of strategic LLM agents, should they be used to aid regulation itself.

Václav Ježek

Recent archaeological discoveries in Israel of what appear to be tombs of deaconesses, as well as the ordination of a woman deacon in Africa, have coincided with a renewed reflection in the Orthodox Church on the nature of the communion/parish in Christ. This reflection necessarily implies a reassessment of the relationship between the sacral and ministerial in its visible and non-visible aspects. In the Orthodox tradition and contemporary Orthodox theology, the priestly function or character is directly related to the communion understood as a gathering of love in Christ. Contribution: The study offers some brief suggestions to relieve the possible tension regarding the existence of deaconesses in the church by demonstrating that there is interaction between the sacral and ministerial without necessarily merging the two, and that this is the way forward for further reflection on deaconesses.

YongHan Chung

This study explores Matthew 15:21–28 through a postcolonial feminist criticism, comparing the Canaanite woman in the Roman Empire with the North Korean women in South Korea to expose the dynamics of imperialism, androcentrism and patriarchal power. By challenging androcentric and Christ-centric interpretations that often overshadow the woman’s agency and voice, the analysis highlights the woman’s act of crossing boundaries, building a new identity and claiming participation in the table as acts of resistance. Parallels are drawn between the Canaanite woman and North Korean women, who similarly navigate boundaries and confront marginalisation within androcentric and imperial frameworks. North Korean women’s crossings highlight their struggle for survival amid poverty and human rights violations, as well as their efforts to construct a new identity within South Korea’s discriminatory context and to claim participation in the table amid neo-imperial context of two Koreas. The study advocates for a redefinition of communal inclusion, challenging dominant ideologies that perpetuate inequality. By amplifying the voices of marginalised women, it calls for a more equitable understanding of identity that transcends political, gender and cultural boundaries, emphasising the necessity of breaking down barriers of exclusion across biblical and contemporary contexts. Contribution: The study contributes significantly to both biblical studies and contemporary social discourse by applying a postcolonial feminist critique to Matthew 15:21–28. The study challenges traditional androcentric and Christ-centric readings of the text that often minimise the Canaanite woman’s voice and agency. By drawing a parallel between the Canaanite woman and North Korean women in South Korea, the study underscores how imperialistic and androcentric systems marginalise women across both biblical and modern contexts.

Nomatter Sande

There is a gap in understanding how beliefs in demonic forces affect perceptions and therapeutic methodologies. This study, therefore, examined the tensions that exist in dealing with mental health matters in African Pentecostal churches. This paper used social constructionism as a theoretical framework. Data for this study were collected through qualitative desktop analysis. The research revealed a prevalent tendency among African Pentecostal pastors to attribute mental disorders primarily to supernatural influences, including demonic possession and spiritual attacks. This perspective significantly influences mental health care approaches within these churches, often leading to excessive reliance on spiritual practices such as prayer, anointing with oil, and exorcisms. The key findings suggest that excessive spiritualization may lead to the stigmatisation of individuals with mental illness and could obstruct access to professional mental health services. This paper concludes that there is tension between neurophysiological interpretations and Pentecostal faith-based perspectives on mental health concerns. The paper recommends collaboration between the spiritual support provided by Pentecostal churches and mental health practitioners to deliver more comprehensive and culturally sensitive mental health care practices in African communities. The paper enhances scholarship by elucidating evolving African Pentecostal perspectives on mental health, underscoring the necessity for collaboration between clergy and professionals to create culturally attuned, comprehensive mental health therapies.

E. Tonello, F. Mombelli, O. Février et al.

L-mode negative triangularity (NT) operation is a promising alternative to the positive triangularity (PT) H-mode as a high-confinement ELM-free operational regime. In this work, two TCV L-mode lower single null Ohmic discharges with opposite triangularity $δ\simeq \pm 0.3$ are investigated using SOLPS-ITER modelling. The main focus is the exploration of the reasons behind the experimentally observed feature of NT plasmas being more difficult to detach than similar PT experiments. SOLPS-ITER simulations are performed assuming the same anomalous diffusivity for particles $D_n^{AN}$ and energy $κ_{e/i}^{AN}$ in PT and NT. Nonetheless, the results clearly show dissimilar transport and accumulation of neutral particles in the scrape-off layer (SOL) of the two configurations, which consequently gives rise to different ionization sources for the plasma and produces different poloidal and cross-field fluxes. Simulations also recover the experimental feature of the outer target being hotter in the NT scenario (with $T_{e, NT} \gtrsim 5 \, \mathrm{eV}$) than in the PT counterpart.

Nataliya Krynytska

The US national mythology, one of the components of which is the Puritan cultural heritage, has recently increasingly attracted the attention of researchers of contemporary American literature. The attention often focuses on the problem of the consequences (destructive or beneficial) of postmodern deconstruction regarding the fundamental US myths. The article shows that Kurt Vonnegut in his anti-war postmodernist novel Slaughterhouse-Five manages to create a double code that allows to deconstruct John Bunyan’s important allegorical work The Pilgrim’s Progress, which at one time was an effective means of Protestant religious propaganda, and at the same time to urge readers to return to Christian humanism. The purpose of the article is to study the deconstruction of Bunyan’s work in Vonnegut’s novel through the lens of jeremiad as the Puritan rhetorical form. The author emphasizes that historically the jeremiad was a sermon for the salvation of the souls of the flock, because it lamented the current state of affairs in society, called to come to its senses and embark on the path of correction. Despite the satire and absurdity of the world in Slaughterhouse-Five, it contains the features of the jeremiad: “an Elect” is Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s alter ego, “an exodus” is his service in the US Army during World War II, “an errand into the wilderness” is Billy’s move to Europe and participation in the Battle of the Bulge, then his capture, and the punishment of sinners – the Dresden tragedy. Fortunately, Billy survives, as if he has “a covenant” with God, and then he fulfils his will and brings to the people – whether from God or from the Tralfamadorian aliens – “providential historical thinking”. The paper considers the connection of the concept of time in the novel with the concept of the triple synthesis of time by Gilles Deleuze, the understanding of time in the works of Saint Augustine, and in the Bible. The use of a SF concept of non-linear time allows Vonnegut to reach a new level of understanding the problems of destination, choice, and responsibility. He creates an alternative to the pilgrim’s progress in Bunyan’s novel, since the linearity of the development of civilization and Protestant ethics lead to catastrophes like World War II. The author concludes that, despite all the irony, Vonnegut’s novel is not only humanistic, but also deeply Christian, and develops, but already at a modern level, the educational mission that is characteristic of the US literature.

A. Sladkomedova, I. Cziegler, A. R. Field et al.

The properties of the edge ion-scale turbulence are studied using the beam emission spectroscopy (BES) diagnostic on MAST. Evidence of the formation of large-scale high-amplitude coherent structures, filamentary density blobs and holes, 2$-$4 cm inside the plasma separatrix is presented. Measurements of radial velocity and skewness of the density fluctuations indicate that density holes propagate radially inwards, with the skewness profile peaking at 7$-$10 cm inside the separatrix. Poloidal velocities of the density fluctuations measured using cross-correlation time delay estimation (CCTDE) are found to exhibit an intermittent behaviour. Zonal-flow analysis reveals the presence of poloidally symmetric coherent oscillations $-$ low-frequency (LF) zonal flows and geodesic acoustic modes (GAM). Shearing rates of the observed zonal flows are found to be comparable to the turbulence decorrelation rate. The observed bursts in density-fluctuation power are followed by quiescent periods with a transient increase in the power of sheared flows. Three-wave interactions between broadband turbulence and a GAM are illustrated using the autobispectral technique. It is shown that the zonal flows and the density-fluctuation field are nonlinearly coupled and LF zonal flows mediate the energy transfer from high- to low-frequency density fluctuations.

Enna S. Gudhlanga, Angeline M. Madongonda, Molly Manyonganise

There is a general consensus among religious scholars that Pentecostalism has risen phenomenally in Africa and Zimbabwe is no exception. In most cases, Pentecostalism has been presented as a sophisticated brand of Christianity while members of African Independent churches are shown to be gullible. The newly founded Pentecostal churches are more focused on gospreneurship while the media is busy with cases of cheating, dishonesty and the sexual abuse of women in these churches. Thus, academic scholars have begun to pay their attention on gullibility in Pentecostalism. Unfortunately, not many scholarly works have looked at literary texts that bring out the gullibility of members of Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe. This article seeks to bridge this gap by analysing Aaron Chiundura Moyo’s Kereke Inofa [The Church Can die]. The main purpose is to bring out the significance of literary texts in projecting societal ills, specifically the gender power dynamics in Zimbabwean Pentecostal churches that may be difficult to deal with directly. The focus is on how women and some men are victims of the whims of some Pentecostal church leaders. The article is informed by the socio-historical approach, which states that artists derive the material for their works of art, subject matter, images and artistic languages from the life experiences of their societies. The socio-historical approach enables the researcher to understand the prevalence of gullibility in Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe. The article relies heavily on content analysis of Moyo’s Kereke Inofa’s presentation of deception, and infidelity in Pentecostal Churches being performed on members who are projected in this play as ‘gullible’. Contribution: This article’s contribution lies in its critical analysis of gender and gullibility in African Pentecostalism in Zimbabwe. It is significant as it utilises a literary text to project the ills in Pentecostal churches and women’s sexual vulnerabilities.

Daniela De Panfilis

The theme of the “stranger” in the Bible will be approached from the point of view of the relationship between an indigenous group and the “otherness” represented by those who sojourn in a foreign land. The words that the Hebrew language uses for “stranger” testifies to a nuanced perception of this overall category and also a nuanced attitude toward different kinds of “strangers.” The methodology applied is the Social Identity Approach, that focuses on intergroup relationship, and, the concept of Proximate Other. Among the “others,” the biblical Laws’ corpora give particular attention to gēr. The gēr is “other,” but he/she dwells within the Israelite in-group and shares with it his/her everyday life. Nine rules add a motive clause which refers to the experiential background of Jacob’s clan in Egypt. Four of these motive clauses refer to Israelites as gērim and come at the end of rules about only the gēr in Israel’s land. The theological background is expressed in Lev 25:23, which uses the word gērim for the relationship between God and his people. The proposal of the Bible is to bring near the “stranger,” so that the “stranger” is not more an “extraneous.”

Thê Hoang Ngoc Minh, Gabriel Stoltz, Benjamin Rotenberg

Using Brownian dynamics simulations, we investigate the effects of confinement, adsorption on surfaces and ion-ion interactions on the response of confined electrolyte solutions to oscillating electric fields in the direction perpendicular to the confining walls. Nonequilibrium simulations allow to characterize the transitions between linear and nonlinear regimes when varying the magnitude and frequency of the applied field but the linear response, characterized by the frequency-dependent conductivity, is more efficiently predicted from the equilibrium current fluctuations. To that end, we (rederive and) use the Green-Kubo relation appropriate for overdamped dynamics, which differs from the standard one for Newtonian or underdamped Langevin dynamics. This expression highlights the contributions of the underlying Brownian fluctuations and of the interactions of the particles between them and with external potentials. While already known in the literature, this relation has rarely been used to date, beyond the static limit to determine the effective diffusion coefficient or the DC conductivity. The frequency-dependent conductivity always decays from a bulk-like behavior at high frequency to a vanishing conductivity at low frequency due to the confinement of the charge carriers by the walls. We discuss the characteristic features of the crossover between the two regimes, most importantly how the crossover frequency depends on the confining distance and the salt concentration, and the fact that adsorption on the walls may lead to significant changes both at high- and low-frequencies. Conversely, our results illustrate the possibility to obtain information on diffusion between walls, charge relaxation and adsorption by analyzing the frequency-dependent conductivity.

Zhong Zhou, Alex Waibel

We translate a closed text that is known in advance into a severely low resource language by leveraging massive source parallelism. In other words, given a text in 124 source languages, we translate it into a severely low resource language using only ~1,000 lines of low resource data without any external help. Firstly, we propose a systematic method to rank and choose source languages that are close to the low resource language. We call the linguistic definition of language family Family of Origin (FAMO), and we call the empirical definition of higher-ranked languages using our metrics Family of Choice (FAMC). Secondly, we build an Iteratively Pretrained Multilingual Order-preserving Lexiconized Transformer (IPML) to train on ~1,000 lines (~3.5%) of low resource data. To translate named entities correctly, we build a massive lexicon table for 2,939 Bible named entities in 124 source languages, and include many that occur once and covers more than 66 severely low resource languages. Moreover, we also build a novel method of combining translations from different source languages into one. Using English as a hypothetical low resource language, we get a +23.9 BLEU increase over a multilingual baseline, and a +10.3 BLEU increase over our asymmetric baseline in the Bible dataset. We get a 42.8 BLEU score for Portuguese-English translation on the medical EMEA dataset. We also have good results for a real severely low resource Mayan language, Eastern Pokomchi.

The Dang Vu, Hiroaki Shishido, Kenji M. Kojima et al.

We previously proposed a method to detect neutrons by using a current-biased kinetic inductance detector (CB-KID), where neutrons are converted into charged particles using a 10B conversion layer. The charged particles are detected based on local changes in kinetic inductance of X and Y superconducting meanderlines under a modest DC bias current. The system uses a delay-line method to locate the positions of neutron-10B reactions by acquiring the four arrival timestamps of signals that propagate from hot spots created by a passing charged particle to the end electrodes of the meanderlines. Unlike conventional multi-pixel imaging systems, the CB-KID system performs high spatial resolution imaging over a 15 mm x 15 mm sensitive area using only four channel readouts. Given the large sensitive area, it is important to check the spatial homogeneity and linearity of detected neutron positions when imaging with CB-KID. To this end we imaged a pattern of 10B dot absorbers with a precise dot pitch to investigate the spatial homogeneity of the detector. We confirmed the spatial homogeneity of detected dot positions based on the distribution of measured dot pitches across the sensitive area of the detector. We demonstrate potential applications of the system by taking a clear transmission image of tiny metallic screws and nuts and a ladybug. The image was useful for characterizing the ladybug noninvasively. Detection efficiencies were low when the detector was operated at 4 K, so we plan to explore raising the operating temperature towards the critical temperature of the detector as a means to improve counting rates.

Tadeusz Lewandowski

Dwight Macdonald’s writings on English designated the source of the language’s corruption in one ofits homelands: the United States. In “Updating the Bible” (1953), “The Decline and Fall of English” (1962), and his analysis of the third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary “The String Untuned” (1962), Macdonald presented a discourse that amounted to a call for the maintenance of standards in the face of a cultural and academic climate permeated by permissiveness, which to his mind debased English by rendering it less precise, aesthetically beautiful, and effective in communication. Countering this perceived downward spiral, therefore, became his main concern.

Grzegorz Kubski

Polski filozof romantyczny August Cieszkowski pisał traktat egzegetyczny i zarazem historiozoficzny – Ojcze nasz, komentarz do Modlitwy Pańskiej, oparty na interpretacji setek wersetów biblijnych. Poloniści wskazywali na wartości literackie tego tekstu, a to implikuje kwestię wyobraźni autora. W artykule uwzględniono eksplicytnie wyrażony przez filozofa oraz implikowany jego tekstem pogląd na temat wyobraźni. W końcowej części artykułu opisano niektóre cechy wyobraźni odzwierciedlone w traktacie. Dzieło Cieszkowskiego ma wiele wspólnego z poezją wieszczów, autor traktuje ich jako proroków (za takich uważa również uczonych). Mimo to nie ma w tekście obszerniejszych stwierdzeń na temat wyobraźni – podstawowej w wypadku poezji. Nawet padają sporadyczne uwagi marginalizujące tę władzę duchową. Są za to stwierdzenia o wartości wypowiedzi, które przez poruszenie uczuć prowadzą człowieka do Boga. To kazania oraz pieśni kościelne. Niejeden fragment Ojcze nasz retoryką zbliża się do takich kaznodziejskich paradygmatów. Kategoria wyobraźni teologicznej w analizie Ojcze nasz pozwala uznać typ wyobraźni autora za ewidentnie teologiczny. Potwierdza spostrzeżeniową funkcję wyobraźni opartą na wierze – historia jest odczytywaniem przez treści Objawienia Bożego. Interpretatywna zdolność zmierza do proklamowania „Ducha Świętego Króla wiekuistego”. Zaangażowanie etyczne znamionuje kognitywną rolę wyobraźni. Dyskurs ciągle oscyluje między „już” a „jeszcze nie” ery Ducha Świętego.