Victor M. Banda Guzman, James P. Edwards, C. Moctezuma Mata Zamora
et al.
The worldline formalism allows one to obtain compact integral representations combining the information of large numbers of Feynman diagrams. However, their analytic calculation leads to a non-standard integration problem for which existing mathematical algorithms are of little help. Here I will summarize the state-of-the-art of worldline integration focusing on examples from QED in vacuum and in constant external fields.
While disproportionate harms visited upon the most vulnerable call for drastic change to our current trajectory of producing, using, and disposing of plastics, the scale of the crisis is daunting. When considering the global economic factors driving this trajectory, it is tempting to conclude that until governments step in to stop markets from doing what they do “naturally,” the “rest of us” are effectively powerless. While granting the necessity of coordinated political action, this chapter proposes that economics and Catholic social thought each offer resources for taking a less fatalistic approach, and viewing the economy—and thus the plastics crisis—in more three-dimensional terms. Drawing upon these fields, this chapter sketches a view highlighting the deeply social nature of all economic activity, and the way that market processes and outcomes are sustained and shaped by cultural norms and practices undertaken at all levels of society. Such a perspective broadens our sense of who participates in economic governance and of what forms of action can be taken to steer global and local economies away from our mindlessly increasing reliance on plastics—and in so doing, opens up important questions about who is called to implement the preferential option for the poor.
Connectedness, belonging, and relationality are necessary ingredients for a flourishing society. They point to the theological and anthropological truth that humans are not alone. Ethical and moral principles require that we have a duty and obligation towards one another, thus emphasizing that we are relational and interdependent. We are meant for relationships and have a shared responsibility to live for one another. We are for others. These truths are at the heart of creation and the Gospel accounts of Christ’s salvific mission. We are all endowed with human dignity as an immutable quality regardless of race, nationality, and background. Thus, we are called to respect, reverence, and protect everyone’s dignity and work together to promote each other’s lives and well-being. This reflects the practical concept of solidarity, which Desmond Tutu articulates as Ubuntu and J. S. Mbiti as “I am because we are.” Inspired by this, Pope Francis in _Fratelli Tutti_ encourages the building of a human community that cuts across races and nationalities. Against this backdrop, this article argues that in recognition of one another as brothers and sisters, we can contribute to building a social friendship and global network devoid of discrimination, racism, wars, and conflicts. The connections between _Fratelli Tutti_, Ubuntu, and “I am because we are” establish that we are endowed with the capacity to inspire and engender a global network that can significantly impact international politics through solidarity and social friendship.
Ana Glidden, Sara Seager, Janusz J. Petkowski
et al.
Isotopologue ratios are anticipated to be one of the most promising signs of life that can be observed remotely. On Earth, carbon isotopes have been used for decades as evidence of modern and early metabolic processes. In fact, carbon isotopes may be the oldest evidence for life on Earth, though there are alternative geological processes that can lead to the same magnitude of fractionation. However, using isotopologues as biosignature gases in exoplanet atmospheres presents several challenges. Most significantly, we will only have limited knowledge of the underlying abiotic carbon reservoir of an exoplanet. Atmospheric carbon isotope ratios will thus have to be compared against the local interstellar medium or, better yet, their host star. A further substantial complication is the limited precision of remote atmospheric measurements using spectroscopy. The various metabolic processes which cause isotope fractionation cause less fractionation than anticipated measurement precision (biological fractionation is typically 2 to 7%). While this level of precision is easily reachable in the laboratory or with special in situ instruments, it is out of reach of current telescope technology to measure isotope ratios for terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres. Thus, gas isotopologues are poor biosignatures for exoplanets given our current and foreseeable technological limitations.
Francesco Esposito, Mario Marietti, Grant T. Barkley
et al.
We introduce the concepts of an amazing hypercube decomposition and a double shortcut for it, and use these new ideas to formulate a conjecture implying the Combinatorial Invariance Conjecture of the Kazhdan--Lusztig polynomials for the symmetric group. This conjecture has the advantage of being combinatorial in nature. The appendix by Grant T. Barkley and Christian Gaetz discusses the related notion of double hypercubes and proves an analogous conjecture for these in the case of co-elementary intervals.
Genoveva Vargas-Solar, Jérôme Darmont, Alejandro Adorjan
et al.
This vision paper introduces a pioneering data lake architecture designed to meet Life \& Earth sciences' burgeoning data management needs. As the data landscape evolves, the imperative to navigate and maximize scientific opportunities has never been greater. Our vision paper outlines a strategic approach to unify and integrate diverse datasets, aiming to cultivate a collaborative space conducive to scientific discovery.The core of the design and construction of a data lake is the development of formal and semi-automatic tools, enabling the meticulous curation of quantitative and qualitative data from experiments. Our unique ''research-in-the-loop'' methodology ensures that scientists across various disciplines are integrally involved in the curation process, combining automated, mathematical, and manual tasks to address complex problems, from seismic detection to biodiversity studies. By fostering reproducibility and applicability of research, our approach enhances the integrity and impact of scientific experiments. This initiative is set to improve data management practices, strengthening the capacity of Life \& Earth sciences to solve some of our time's most critical environmental and biological challenges.
This research focuses, firstly, on a farewell from a certain manifestation of traditional, reformed ‘tamed’ theism (that is in this case, theism which neglects or represses the authentic biblical insight into the triune God, who reveals himself in unfathomable hiddenness or ‘masking’). The latter dimension of genuine theism was a central rediscovery of the 16th century Reformation which, however, was widely neglected and even ‘nearly totally forgotten’, according to H. Bavinck, in post-Reformation scholasticism. Reformed theism thus participated to a large measure, in the general rationalistic climate of the modern paradigm and its dogmatic domestication of the living God, into a cerebrally manageable idea of a God who forms the apex of a world system, constructed by sovereign Western man. The research also focuses, in the second place, on a farewell towards recovering the ‘always greater God’, who hides himself, as it were behind a mask, in dazzling, impenetrable light. He reveals himself obliquely from the backside, as to Moses, only after he had passed. In the fullness of time, he revealed himself in the hiddenness of Jesus Christ, culminating in the deformed humanity of a wretched criminal dying on a cross. This resurrected and exalted Crucified is now hidden in God. On the way to the final eschaton, he reveals himself in ‘the garb’ of his Spirit-energised Word and sacraments. Two examples of a tamed theism, possibly neglecting Divine hiddenness, are taken from our Afrikaans-reformed ambience: Afrikaner nationalism, and the sporadic encouragement to erect signs of the kingdom of God in our world.
Contribution: This research, firstly, contributes to the diagnosis and discarding of a kind of distorted reformed theism that has ‘domesticated’ the inscrutable hiddenness of the living triune God (still so vital to the magisterial Reformers) through a post-Reformation process of recovered scholasticism. In some ways, this frequently blended into rationalism in such a way that it did not escape accommodation to post-Enlightenment bourgeois or civil theism. Bourgeois theism is currently collapsing rapidly in many Christian theologies and churches of the West. Secondly, it contributes to the quest of many – also reformed – Christians to arrive at a renewed confession and experience in the faith of truly biblical theism. This is theism of the Deus semper major, which gives due honour to the ineffable triune God as absconditus et revelatus. Lastly, it contributes to the self-searching of Afrikaans-reformed believers as to the presence, –only traces – of tamed theism in our nationalistic heritage, and in our rightly valued theology of the kingdom of God.
Practical Theology, Practical religion. The Christian life
In multi-state life insurance, an adequate balance between analytic tractability, computational efficiency, and statistical flexibility is of great importance. This might explain the popularity of Markov chain modelling, where matrix analytic methods allow for a comprehensive treatment. Unfortunately, Markov chain modelling is unable to capture duration effects, so this paper presents aggregate Markov models as an alternative. Aggregate Markov models retain most of the analytical tractability of Markov chains, yet are non-Markovian and thus more flexible. Based on an explicit characterization of the fundamental martingales, matrix representations of the expected accumulated cash flows and corresponding prospective reserves are derived for duration-dependent payments with and without incidental policyholder behaviour. Throughout, special attention is given to a semi-Markovian case. Finally, the methods and results are illustrated in a numerical example.
In a few years, space telescopes will investigate our Galaxy to detect evidence of life, mainly by observing rocky planets. In the last decade, the observation of exoplanet atmospheres and the theoretical works on biosignature gasses have experienced a considerable acceleration. The~most attractive feature of the realm of exoplanets is that 40\% of M dwarfs host super-Earths with a minimum mass between 1 and 30 Earth masses, orbital periods shorter than 50 days, and radii between those of the Earth and Neptune (1--3.8 R$_\oplus$). Moreover, the recent finding of cyanobacteria able to use far-red (FR) light for oxygenic photosynthesis due to the synthesis of chlorophylls $d$ and $f$, extending in vivo light absorption up to 750\ nm, suggests the possibility of exotic photosynthesis in planets around M dwarfs. Using innovative laboratory instrumentation, we exposed different cyanobacteria to an M dwarf star simulated irradiation, comparing their responses to those under solar and FR simulated lights.~As expected, in FR light, only the cyanobacteria able to synthesize chlorophyll $d$ and $f$ could grow. Surprisingly, all strains, both able or unable to use FR light, grew and photosynthesized under the M dwarf generated spectrum in a similar way to the solar light and much more efficiently than under the FR one. Our findings highlight the importance of simulating both the visible and FR light components of an M dwarf spectrum to correctly evaluate the photosynthetic performances of oxygenic organisms exposed under such an exotic light~condition.
Thue Christian Thann, Tobias Særkjær, Sergej Schuwalow
et al.
In this work we model the evolution of strain energy during different growth stages of heterostructure nanowires. We find that the minimum energy configuration changes abruptly from fully elastically strained to partially relaxed due to collective formation of a misfit dislocation network. The transition at the critical thickness is associated with a characteristic density of misfits. These insights are gained from a technique developed to simulate misfit dislocations in a finite element framework, incorporating both elastic and plastic relaxation in a stationary heterostructure. We argue that these results have general relevance for mismatched heterostructures.
Amino acids are the essential keys that contribute to the study of the formation of life. The simplest amino acid, glycine (NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH), has been searched for a long time in the interstellar medium, but all surveys of glycine have failed. Since the detection of glycine in the interstellar medium was extremely difficult, we aimed to search for the precursor of glycine. After detailed searches of the individual prebiotic molecular species, we successfully identified the emission lines of possible glycine precursor molecule amino acetonitrile (NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$CN) towards the hot molecular core G10.47+0.03 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array. We estimated the statistical column density of amino acetonitrile was (9.10$\pm$0.7)$\times$10$^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$ with rotational temperature ($T_{rot}$) 122$\pm$8.8 K. The estimated fractional abundance of amino acetonitrile was 7.01$\times$10$^{-8}$. We found that the estimated fractional abundance of NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$CN fairly agrees with the theoretical value predicted by the three-phase warm-up model from Garrod (2013).
Within the corona crisis, the core question is: What is the impact of Covid-19 on the spiritual realm of meaning-giving, hoping and pastoral caregiving? How does it affect the realm of habitus and religious convictions, specifically when pastoral caregivers become involved? With reference to the human quest for wholeness in healing and helping, existing paradigms are critically analysed. What is meant by the aesthetics of Covid-19? A soulful movement within an aesthetic approach is discussed, i.e. from the ugliness of the pandemic to the beautification of the virus. Thus, the question is about the challenge how to grow and revisit the meaning dimension of life within a re-evaluation of the value of compassion. In this regard, the God-image of divine companionship, as framed by the ugliness of a “suffering God”, is discussed within the parameters of the praxis of hope care in pastoral ministry.
Christianity, Practical religion. The Christian life
Monika Henzinger, Shahbaz Khan, Richard Paul
et al.
In recent years, significant advances have been made in the design and analysis of fully dynamic maximal matching algorithms. However, these theoretical results have received very little attention from the practical perspective. Few of the algorithms are implemented and tested on real datasets, and their practical potential is far from understood. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice that is currently observed for the fully dynamic maximal matching problem. We engineer several algorithms and empirically study those algorithms on an extensive set of dynamic instances.
W niniejszym artykule przedstawiona została moralność aktu małżeńskiego w świetle nauczania Jana Pawła II zawartego w Katechezach Środowych. Omówione zostały następujące aspekty tego zagadnienia: norma aktu małżeńskiego i jej etyczno-teologiczne uzasadnienie, norma etyczna aktu małżeńskiego odczytana w perspektywie „mowy ciała”, naturalna regulacja poczęć i cnota wstrzemięźliwości, chrześcijańskie świadectwo małżonków dokonane w mocy Ducha Świętego oraz duchowość małżeńska. W świetle podjętych analiz moralność aktu małżeńskiego opiera się na uznaniu „podwójnej funkcji znaku w zbliżeniu małżeńskim” oraz „nierozerwalności” tej podwójnej funkcji. Jan Paweł II poszerza rozumienie owej normy o kategorię „mowy ciała”, w ramach której do wewnętrznej prawdy aktu małżeńskiego należy sens miłości i prokreacji. W niniejszej analizie wskazano również na wartość cnoty wstrzemięźliwości w pożyciu małżeńskim oraz na duchowość i świadectwo życia małżonków katolickich, realizujących normy moralne komunii małżeńskiej mocą Ducha Świętego.
One of the mayor topics in astronomy at the beginning of the 19th century was the interpretation of the observations of the first asteroids. In 1810 Christian Ludwig Gerling at the age of twenty two came to Göttingen University to continue his academic studies. Supervised by Carl Friedrich Gauß at the observatory he was engaged in studies of theoretical and practical astronomy. Starting in 1812 Gerling accepted the responsibility for collecting observational data of the asteroid Vesta from the European observatories and for calculating the ephemeris of this new minor planet. In 1817 Gerling was appointed professor at Marburg University. One of his early astronomical projects in Marburg was his contribution to the Berliner Akademische Sternkarten. After completion of his observatory in 1841 Gerling's students started observing and theoretically analysing the orbits of the continuously newly discovered asteroids including the perturbation of the larger solar system bodies. The observations at Gerling's observatory are the first astrometric measurements of solar systems minor bodies of Hesse.
The article by Monique and Jeffery Wubbenhorst asks the question—Should Evangelical Christian Organizations Support International Family Planning?1 The article’s response to this question shows a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of population dynamics in the modern world as well as of the critical role contraceptives play in preventing unintended pregnancies and abortions and promoting maternal and child health. These errors are compounded by selective citation and misrepresentation of the evidence in the scientific literature. This commentary seeks to provide a balanced view of the evidence and correct several unfounded assertions in order to document why evangelical Christians and Christian organizations are, in fact, providing family planning services around the world. Specific points addressed are as follows: fundamentals of the global demographic transition including how the contraceptive revolution has slowed world population growth; the social, economic, and cultural forces driving couples to choose to control their fertility for the welfare of their families; the critical role of contraceptive practice in preventing unintended pregnancies and abortions as well as directly promoting safe motherhood and child health; the evidence that women and couples in less-developed countries desire to control their fertility as attested by the measurement of unmet need for family planning; and the reason why failing to provide poor women and couples in less-developed countries who want to control their fertility with the information and contraceptive methods of their choice is likely to lead to unintended pregnancies and more abortions. Christian health professionals and organizations need to be in the world, working with people of all belief systems, since that is a powerful way for the world to be reached with the love of Jesus and the gospel of salvation.
Public aspects of medicine, Practical religion. The Christian life