Abstract Christian Nationalism has been an increasing focus of scholars as it has seemingly come to dominate much of the Republican Party and its voters. Existing research, however, has focused almost exclusively on individual attitudes. In this article, I examine a key piece of the Christian Nationalist agenda, policy change at the state level, seeking to change individuals’ perception of the religious foundations of the United States through symbolic legislation. I focus on Project Blitz, an organization that creates model bills for state legislators to introduce all over the country. Project Blitz is an explicitly Christian Nationalist effort, and its origins and supporters help demonstrate a key missing piece of the scholarly and popular conversation about Christian Nationalism: the current power and influence of Christian Nationalist attitudes and activities is based on the historical influence of the Christian Right social movement.
Tram Thi Minh Tran, Soojeong Yoo, Oliver Weidlich
et al.
While visual augmentation dominates the augmented reality landscape, devices like Meta Ray-Ban audio smart glasses signal growing industry movement toward audio augmented reality (AAR). Hearing is a primary channel for sensing context, anticipating change, and navigating social space, yet AAR's everyday potential remains underexplored. We address this gap through a collaborative autoethnography (N=5, authoring) and an online survey (N=74). We identify ten roles for AAR, grouped into three categories: task- and utility-oriented, emotional and social, and perceptual collaborator. These roles are further layered with a rhythmic and embodied collaborator framing, mapping them onto micro-, meso-, and macro-rhythms of everyday life. Our analysis surfaces nuanced tensions, such as blocking distractions without erasing social presence, highlighting the need for context-aware design. This paper contributes a foundational and forward-looking framework for AAR in everyday life, providing design groundwork for systems attuned to daily routines, sensory engagement, and social expectations.
“Eşik Kavramlar Teorisi” (Threshold Concepts Theory), Türkiye akademik literatüründe henüz yeterince tanınmayan bir eğitim teorisi olarak, Din Eğitimi Bilimi içinde tartışılması, değerlendirilmesi ve çok yönlü olarak ele alınması gereken bir modern dönem eğitim teorisi olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu teori, sosyal yapılandırmacı olan David Perkins’in ‘sorunlu bilgi’ (troublesome knowledge) düşüncesinden yola çıkan ekonomistler Erik Meyer ve Ray Land tarafından 2003 yılında geliştirilmiştir. Dünya genelinde çeşitli disiplinlerden araştırmacıların katkılarıyla zenginleştirilen Eşik Kavramlar Teorisi, şu anda eğitimsel bir yaklaşım olarak farklı alanlarda uygulanmaktadır. Eşik Kavramlar Teorisi, en temelde kavramların niteliklerine ve öğretim süreçlerine odaklanmaktadır. Doğaları gereği sorunlu bilgi olarak kabul edilen zorlu kavramların öğretim esnasında bazı problemlere yol açtığını öngörmektedir. Teori, öncelikle bu kavramların zorluklarının farkında olmayı ve ardından öğrencinin öğrenme sürecinde bu engelleri aşmasına rehberlik etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu noktada, öğretmenlerin teoriyle olan ilişkisi ve öğretim içeriğini buna uygun olarak yapılandırabilme becerisi belirleyici bir rol oynamaktadır. Bu nedenle teori, öğrenme süreçlerinin dönüşümü, öğrenci merkezli öğrenmenin derinleştirilmesi ve öğretmen eğitimi ve uzmanlıkları gibi konularda pedagojik bir perspektif sunmaktadır. Makalede, öncelikle Eşik Kavramlar Teorisi’nin tanıtımına, kavramsallaştırılması sürecine ve genel değerlendirilmesine yer verilmiştir. Bu çerçevede, büyük ölçüde İngilizce kaynaklardan oluşan kapsamlı bir literatür taraması gerçekleştirilmiş, ilgili çalışmalar içerik analizi yöntemiyle değerlendirilerek arşivlenmiştir. Teorinin ortaya çıkışından gelişimine kadar geçen süreçte yöneltilen eleştiriler de ele alınarak disiplinlerarası bir bakış açısıyla bütüncül bir değerlendirme sunulmuştur. Çalışma, nitel araştırma yöntemi temelinde yürütülmüş olup, literatür analizi yoluyla teorik bir çerçeve oluşturmak amaçlanmıştır. Literatürdeki çalışmalar temel alınarak yapılan bu teorik değerlendirmede, Eşik Kavramlar Teorisi’nin Din Eğitimi Bilimi alanında özgün bir perspektif olma potansiyeli ortaya konmaya çalışılmıştır. Araştırmanın temel amacı, Eşik Kavramlar Teorisi’ni Türkiye Din Eğitimi Bilimine tanıtmak olduğundan, kesin sınırları belirlenmiş bir model sunmak yerine, teorinin bu bağlamdaki işlevselliğini tartışmaya açan bir çerçeve oluşturulmuştur. Ön çalışma niteliğindeki bu araştırma, Türkiye’deki İslam Din Öğretimi süreçlerinde Eşik Kavramlar Teorisinin pedagojik değerine dikkat çekmektedir. Gelecekte yapılacak ampirik çalışmalar için bir başlangıç noktası oluşturmakta olan bu çalışma nitel yöntemle oluşturulmuş kuramsal bir zemin olma potansiyeli taşımaktadır. Makale kapsamında “cihad”, “hak”, “halife” ve “emanet” gibi kavramlar eşik kavram özellikleri bakımından ele alınmış ve bu örnekler tablolar halinde sunularak her biri pedagojik potansiyelleri açıdan kısaca değerlendirilmiştir. Bu kavramların din öğretimi açısından eşik niteliği taşımaları bireyin düşünsel ve duygusal dünyasında epistemolojik ve ontolojik kırılmalar yaratma niteliklerinden kaynaklanmaktadır. Bu nedenle çalışmada, teorinin pedagojik katkılarının yanı sıra tanımsal belirsizlikleri, bağlamsal sınırlılıkları ve evrensel geçerliliğe dair tartışmaları da ayrıca ele alınmıştır. Böylelikle teorinin İslam din öğretimi içinde ancak bağlam duyarlılığı yüksek ve eleştirel bir tutum ile uygulanması gerektiği vurgulanmıştır.
AI Research Group of the Centre for Digital Culture, Paul Scherz, Brian Patrick Green
The text, in continuity with the group’s previous publication and following _Antiqua et Nova_, highlights the difference between the prevailing AI definition of intelligence as rational action and problem-solving (often influenced by behaviorism and functionalism) and the traditional theological view of intelligence as a rational understanding and interpretation of reality. It stresses that human agency is fundamentally relational, rooted in the _imago Dei_ (image of God), which involves intellect, free will, and stewardship. It discusses how AI, through practices like manipulative nudging, algorithmic governance, deskilling, and the _rapidification_ of life, negatively impacts human freedom and promotes a paradigm focused on efficiency and control. Finally, the text proposes that the principles of Catholic social teaching, particularly subsidiarity and a focus on human dignity, offer ethical guidance for developing AI as a tool that genuinely supports human flourishing and responsible action rather than eroding it.
Prompted by conversations at the Society of Christian Ethics and the author’s own family history marked by divorce, single motherhood, and suicide, this essay examines how shame can isolate individuals rather than foster healing. Drawing on Brené Brown’s assertion that shame impedes empathy and engaging Greg Ten Elshoff’s work, the piece critiques how moral judgment within families and faith communities can deepen trauma. Ultimately, it challenges the practice of using shame as a tool for moral formation, advocating instead for compassion and support in moments of vulnerability and failure.
Chenyang Li, Tanmay Sunil Kapure, Prokash Chandra Roy
et al.
Fatigue life characterizes the duration a material can function before failure under specific environmental conditions, and is traditionally assessed using stress-life (S-N) curves. While machine learning and deep learning offer promising results for fatigue life prediction, they face the overfitting challenge because of the small size of fatigue experimental data in specific materials. To address this challenge, we propose, DeepOFormer, by formulating S-N curve prediction as an operator learning problem. DeepOFormer improves the deep operator learning framework with a transformer-based encoder and a mean L2 relative error loss function. We also consider Stussi, Weibull, and Pascual and Meeker (PM) features as domain-informed features. These features are motivated by empirical fatigue models. To evaluate the performance of our DeepOFormer, we compare it with different deep learning models and XGBoost on a dataset with 54 S-N curves of aluminum alloys. With seven different aluminum alloys selected for testing, our DeepOFormer achieves an R2 of 0.9515, a mean absolute error of 0.2080, and a mean relative error of 0.5077, significantly outperforming state-of-the-art deep/machine learning methods including DeepONet, TabTransformer, and XGBoost, etc. The results highlight that our Deep0Former integrating with domain-informed features substantially improves prediction accuracy and generalization capabilities for fatigue life prediction in aluminum alloys.
Ruijun Hou, Samuel Baker, Stephanie von Hinke
et al.
We study the long-term health and human capital impacts of local economic conditions experienced during the first 1,000 days of life. We combine historical data on monthly unemployment rates in urban England and Wales 1952-1967 with data from the UK Biobank on later-life outcomes. Leveraging variation in unemployment driven by national industry-specific shocks weighted by industry's importance in each area, we find no evidence that small, common fluctuations in local economic conditions during the early life period affect health or human capital in older age.
The process of evolution by natural selection leads to phenotypes of increasing fitness. For cellular chemical reaction networks, this means optimising a variety of fitness functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external stimuli. We argue that these diverse goals can be achieved by a versatile, generic mechanism: coupling chemical reaction networks to reservoirs that are strongly out of equilibrium. Using theory and numerics we show that this mechanism of optimization comes at the price of significant heat dissipation. We compute the heat flux caused by kinetic proofreading in {\it Escherichia coli} and show that it constitutes a significant fraction of the total heat flux experimentally measured in this model organism. We then demonstrate that the degree of optimality achievable saturates, and that Nature appears to operate near saturation despite high energetic costs. We conclude that `life is hot' largely because of the need for a versatile mechanism to optimise a variety of fitness functions.
V Gimeno Hernan, I Duran-Muños, MR Del Pino- Jurado
et al.
Objetive: In the care of renal patients, prioritising their quality of life and nursing care is essential. Research links patients' perceptions of care quality to improved outcomes such as safety, clinical efficacy, treatment adherence, and preventive practices. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of life and care perception in these patients and explore potential associations between these dimensions. Material and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 43 patients attending an advanced CKD clinic. Quality of life was assessed using the KDQOL-36 questionnaire, while the IECPAX questionnaire measured perceived care quality. Sociodemographic and clinical data were collected from patient records. Participants completed the questionnaires during routine visits, with scores analysed to identify associations between variables. Results: The study included 60% men (n=28) and 32% women (n=15), with a mean age of 78 years . Among participants, 45% were diabetic, 79% hypertensive, and 58% took more than five medications daily. Mean scores were 78.76 for KDQOL-36 and 5.54 for IECPAX. Significant differences were found in the physical role domain between men and women (p=0.01) and for individuals over 65 years (p=0.04). Higher IECPAX scores were associated with taking more than five medications (p=0.05). However, no correlation was observed between KDQOL-36 and IECPAX scores. Conclusions: The findings suggest that quality of life and perceived care quality are independent in advanced CKD patients. While this study provides insights, larger multicentre studies are needed to validate these results. These findings highlight the importance of addressing both aspects separately to improve outcomes in this population.
The role of teacher as a guide is very significant in teaching, especially to equip students to know God through Christian education. Teachers guide the students to understand knowledge, attitudes, skills, and spirituality based on Biblical principles. But in reality, teachers do not teach the Bible principles in learning, teachers do not guide the students, and have lack of knowledge of the Bible. Teachers should have understood the significance of guiding students based on the Bible. Hence, the purpose of writing this article is to present the significant role of teachers as a guide through the theological study based on Ephesians 4:11-16 for the context of Christian education with literature study as the research method. Teachers must guide students based on the truth of God's Word, through imitating Jesus as the Great Shepherd. Christian teachers’ role as guide do not only stop at knowledge in academic learning, but to be an impact for students to be a part of service to God and to build others up as members of the body of Christ. Christian teachers must guide students to achieve, namely: the unity of the faith in Christ as God and Savior in true knowledge, thorough maturity, and growth in accordance with the fullness of Christ and to ensure to be not tossed around by the waves of false teaching that ignore The Lord. This article concludes that the teacher's role as guide is one form for equipping students to grow more mature in Christ. The author suggests that Christian teachers understand that teachers are God's calling to reveal God's truth to students so that their lives base on Bible teaching, and Christian teachers must understand the students' needs to know God and grow spiritually to become more like Christ.
BAHASA INDONESIA ABSTRACT: Peran guru sebagai pembimbing sangat penting dalam pengajaran, terutama untuk memperlengkapi murid-murid mengenal Tuhan melalui pendidikan Kristen. Guru membimbing murid untuk memahami pengetahuan, sikap, keterampilan, dan kerohanian berdasarkan prinsip-prinsip Alkitab. Namun pada kenyataannya, guru tidak mengajarkan prinsip-prinsip Alkitab dalam pembelajaran, guru tidak membimbing siswa, dan memiliki pengetahuan yang kurang tentang Alkitab. Seharusnya para guru memahami pentingnya membimbing murid berdasarkan Alkitab. Oleh karena itu, tujuan dari penulisan artikel ini adalah untuk memaparkan peran penting guru sebagai pembimbing melalui kajian teologis berdasarkan Efesus 4:11-16 dalam konteks pendidikan Kristen dengan metode studi literatur. Guru harus membimbing siswa berdasarkan kebenaran Firman Tuhan, dengan meneladani Yesus sebagai Gembala Agung. Peran guru Kristen sebagai pembimbing tidak hanya berhenti pada pengetahuan dalam pembelajaran akademis, tetapi menjadi dampak bagi siswa untuk menjadi bagian dari pelayanan kepada Tuhan dan membangun orang lain sebagai anggota tubuh Kristus. Guru Kristen harus membimbing murid-muridnya untuk mencapai, yaitu: kesatuan iman kepada Kristus sebagai Tuhan dan Juruselamat dalam pengetahuan yang benar, kedewasaan yang menyeluruh, dan pertumbuhan yang sesuai dengan kepenuhan Kristus serta memastikan agar tidak terombang-ambing oleh gelombang pengajaran palsu yang mengabaikan Tuhan. Artikel ini menyimpulkan bahwa peran guru sebagai pembimbing adalah salah satu bentuk untuk memperlengkapi murid-muridnya agar bertumbuh semakin dewasa di dalam Kristus. Penulis menyarankan agar para guru Kristen memahami bahwa guru adalah panggilan Tuhan untuk menyatakan kebenaran Tuhan kepada murid-muridnya agar hidup mereka didasarkan pada pengajaran Alkitab, dan guru Kristen harus memahami kebutuhan murid-muridnya untuk mengenal Tuhan dan bertumbuh secara rohani agar semakin serupa dengan Kristus.
Christianity, Practical religion. The Christian life
The idea of ‘I’ in Romans 7:14–25, used rhetorically, is written to have an impact on its reader and to reach into something readers have experienced: a spiritual reality. When Paul wrote the pericope, it was written in a specific context to and a specific group of people. They would have recognised what Paul’s fundamental idea was concerning ‘I’ and the law. That is, the struggling image of ‘I’ under the law, wanting to do what is right, but is unable to. However, the way the original audience would have received and understood the law and the tension would differ exponentially to the way the pericope is read today. But does that make Paul’s fundamental argument invalid for readers today? An initial reading of the text does evoke some kind of inner experience, relating or convicted by Paul’s ‘I’. This falls in the realm of spirituality as a lived experience. What makes it spiritual is the fact that the pericope is part of the Christian sacred text, and there is a certain initial stance or attitude taken when the text is read. The author is painting a mental picture using ‘I’ as a rhetoric device to lead the reader in participating in Paul’s argument. Thus, the text is experienced. There is no spirituality without experience. This participation leaves a lasting impact on the reader, and pointing the reader by the Spirit in a direction that moves from hopelessness to hopefulness found in Jesus Christ.
Contribution: Firstly, the article adds to the body of work done on Romans 7:14–25, particularly the discussion referring to ‘I’. Secondly, there has been a large volume of work done on this specific pericope, especially on the interpretation of the text. However, a contribution can be made in respect of spirituality and the lived experience of the reader in relation to the text, because not much on the topic was found. The focus on the fundamental idea as a lived experience constitutes a specific angle to the text that may contribute to scholarly body of knowledge.
Practical Theology, Practical religion. The Christian life
The emergence of complex structures in the systems governed by a simple set of rules is among the most fascinating aspects of Nature. The particularly powerful and versatile model suitable for investigating this phenomenon is provided by cellular automata, with the Game of Life being one of the most prominent examples. However, this simplified model can be too limiting in providing a tool for modelling real systems. To address this, we introduce and study an extended version of the Game of Life, with the dynamical process governing the rule selection at each step. We show that the introduced modification significantly alters the behaviour of the game. We also demonstrate that the choice of the synchronization policy can be used to control the trade-off between the stability and the growth in the system.
Machine learning as a data-driven solution has been widely applied in the field of fatigue lifetime prediction. In this paper, three models for wideband fatigue life prediction are built based on three machine learning models, i.e. support vector machine (SVM), Gaussian process regression (GPR) and artificial neural network (ANN). The generalization ability of the models is enhanced by employing numerous power spectra samples with different bandwidth parameters and a variety of material properties related to fatigue life. Sufficient Monte Carlo numerical simulations demonstrate that the newly developed machine learning models are superior to the traditional frequency-domain models in terms of life prediction accuracy and the ANN model has the best overall performance among the three developed machine learning models.
In the design of offshore jacket foundations, fatigue life is crucial. Post-weld treatment has been proposed to enhance the fatigue performance of welded joints, where particularly high-frequency mechanical impact (HFMI) treatment has been shown to improve fatigue performance significantly. Automated HFMI treatment has improved quality assurance and can lead to cost-effective design when combined with accurate fatigue life prediction. However, the finite element method (FEM), commonly used for predicting fatigue life in complex or multi-axial joints, relies on a basic CAD depiction of the weld, failing to consider the actual weld geometry and defects. Including the actual weld geometry in the FE model improves fatigue life prediction and possible crack location prediction but requires a digital reconstruction of the weld. Current digital reconstruction methods are time-consuming or require specialised scanning equipment and potential component relocation. The proposed framework instead uses an industrial manipulator combined with a line scanner to integrate digital reconstruction as part of the automated HFMI treatment setup. This approach applies standard image processing, simple filtering techniques, and non-linear optimisation for aligning and merging overlapping scans. A screened Poisson surface reconstruction finalises the 3D model to create a meshed surface. The outcome is a generic, cost-effective, flexible, and rapid method that enables generic digital reconstruction of welded parts, aiding in component design, overall quality assurance, and documentation of the HFMI treatment.
In the present discussion of the multiplicity of sciences as against the unity of knowledge, sometimes the possibility of one super-science is advocated with a suggestion that all other scientific methods should be reduced to just one method of a one particular, usually natural science. Such reductionism often leads to disrespectful pronouncements at the address of all other sciences and their methods.
This article advocates theological foundations for a multiplicity of scientific methods. Biblical ontology introduces a series of dualities called here, for the lack of a better word, “biblical graded dualism.” It is a system of asymmetrical dualities that give substance to the idea of the hierarchy of being. In the article an axiological view of reality is deduced that should facilitate a more respectful and fruitful debate among the sciences.
Recent work with Lenia, a continuously-valued cellular automata (CA) framework, has yielded $\sim$100s of compelling, bioreminiscent and mobile patterns. Lenia can be viewed as a continuously-valued generalization of the Game of Life, a seminal cellular automaton developed by John Conway that exhibits complex and universal behavior based on simple birth and survival rules. Life's framework of totalistic CA based on the Moore neighborhood includes many other interesting, Life-like, CA. A simplification introduced in Lenia limits the types of Life-like CA that are expressible in Lenia to a specific subset. This work recovers the ability to easily implement any Life-like CA by splitting Lenia's growth function into genesis and persistence functions, analogous to Life's birth and survival rules. We demonstrate the capabilities of this new CA variant by implementing a puffer pattern from Life-like CA Morley/Move, and examine differences between related CA in Lenia and Glaberish frameworks: Hydrogeminium natans and s613, respectively. These CA exhibit marked differences in dynamics and character based on spatial entropy over time, and both support several persistent mobile patterns. The CA s613, implemented in the Glaberish framework, is more dynamic than the Hydrogeminium CA in terms of a consistently high variance in spatial entropy over time. These results suggest there may be a wide variety of interesting CA that can be implemented in the Glaberish variant of the Lenia framework, analogous to the many interesting Life-like CA outside of Conway's Life.
Pol Heuschling, Christian Partmann, Christian Fidler
We present a novel method for including the impact of massive neutrinos in cold dark matter N-body simulations. Our approach is compatible with widely employed Newtonian N-body codes and relies on only three simple modifications. First, we use commonly employed backscaling initial conditions, based on the cold dark matter plus baryon power spectrum instead of the total matter power spectrum. Second, the accurate Hubble rate is employed in both the backscaling and the evolution of particles in the N-body code. Finally, we shift the final particle positions in a post-processing step to account for the integrated effect of neutrinos on the particles in the simulation. However, we show that the first two modifications already capture most of the relevant neutrino physics for a large range of observationally interesting redshifts and scales. The output of the simulations are the cold dark matter and baryon distributions and can be analysed using standard methods. All modifications are simple to implement and do not generate any computational overhead. By implementing our methods in the N-body codes GADGET and gevolution, we show that any state-of-the-art Newtonian N-body code can be utilised out of the box. Our method is also compatible with higher order Lagrangian perturbation theory initial conditions and accurate for combined neutrino masses of up to at least 0.3 eV. Being formulated in relativistic gauge theory, in addition to including the impact of massive neutrinos, our method further includes relativistic corrections relevant on the large scales for free.
Nuha Chreim, Christian Hoelbling, Christian Zielinski
We give an explicit proof for the locality of staggered overlap operators. The proof covers the original two flavor construction by Adams as well as a single flavor version. As in the case of Neuberger's operator, an admissibility condition for the gauge fields is required.