Search Results (15)

Road traffic crashes pose significant economic and public health burdens, necessitating an in-depth understanding of crash causation and its links to underlying factors. This study introduces a machine learning-based hurdle model framework tailored for analyzing zero-inflated crash frequency data, addressing the limitations of traditional statistical models like the Poisson and negative binomial models, which struggle with zero-inflation and overdispersion. The research employs a two-stage modeling process using CatBoost. The first stage uses binary classification to identify road segments with potential crash occurrences, applying a customized loss function to tackle data imbalance. The second stage predicts crash frequency, also utilizing a customized loss function for count data. SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis interprets the model outcomes, providing insights into factors affecting crash likelihood and frequency. This study validates the model’s performance with real-world crash data from 2011 to 2015 in South Korea, demonstrating superior accuracy in both the classification and regression stages compared to other machine learning algorithms and traditional models. These findings have significant implications for traffic safety research and policymaking, offering stakeholders a more accurate and interpretable tool for crash data analysis to develop targeted safety interventions. Full article

The animal gastrointestinal tract contains a complex microbiome whose composition ultimately reflects the co-evolution of microorganisms with their animal host and their host’s environment. This study aimed to gain insights into the adaptation of the microbiota of local Egyptian cattle to three different ecosystems (Upper Egypt, Middle Egypt, and Lower Egypt) distributed across 11 governorates (with an average of 12 animals per governorate) using amplicon sequencing. We analyzed the microbiota from 136 fecal samples of local Egyptian cattle through a 16S rRNA gene sequencing approach to better understand the fecal microbial diversity of this breed which developed under different ecosystems. An alpha diversity analysis showed that the fecal microbiota of the Egyptian cattle was not significantly diverse across areas, seasons, sexes, or farm types. Meanwhile, microbiota data revealed significant differences in richness among age groups (p = 0.0018). The microbial community differed significantly in the distribution of its relative abundance rather than in richness across different ecosystems. The taxonomic analysis of the reads identified Firmicutes and Actinobacteriota as the dominant phyla, accounting for over 93% of the total bacterial community in Egyptian cattle. Middle Egypt exhibited a different microbial community composition compared to Upper and Lower Egypt, with a significantly higher abundance of Firmicutes and Euryarchaeota and a lower abundance of Actinobacteriota in this region than the other two ecosystems. Additionally, Middle Egypt had a significantly higher relative abundance of the Methanobacteriaceae family and the Methanobrevibacter genera than Lower and Upper Egypt. These results suggest a difference in the adaptation of the fecal microbial communities of Egyptian cattle raised in Middle Egypt. At the genus level, eleven genera were significantly different among the three ecosystems including Bacillus, DNF00809, Kandleria, Lachnospiraceae_NK3A20_group, Methanobrevibacter, Mogibacterium, Olsenella, Paeniclostridium, Romboutsia, Turicibacter, and UCG-005. These significant differences in microbiota composition may impact the animal’s adaptation to varied environments. Full article

Tourism has gained enormous attention, and every country is determined to attract more visitors. Concerned stakeholders are trying to promote their country’s image and that of their tourist destinations. Travelers attain information from different sustainable sources, and these different sustainable sources might be critical in shaping the perceived image of a country. Not enough research has been conducted with respect to investigating the association between these perceived images and sustainable information sources regarding any country. Hence, this study tries to fill this research gap by integrating country and destination image, outbound travel motivation, and information sources to obtain relevant information. Considering the above-mentioned context, data were gathered from a survey completed by respondents who had visited a developing country, i.e., Pakistan. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was utilized to examine the validity of the data of 205 potential visitors. Our findings show that a country’s image has a significant favorable influence on destination image. Destination and country image favorably impact travelers’ intentions to visit a certain destination, though this is also partially mediated by outbound travel motivation. Furthermore, the critical role of sustainable information sources in shaping country and destination image is highlighted in this paper. The proposed model offers novel insights into the literature and can be used to assist in the design of appropriate marketing strategies for the tourism sector by incorporating perceived image, outbound travel motivation, and information sources. This research offers pertinent recommendations to enhance tourism. Though we feel our research makes a pertinent contribution to the literature, in the future, other researchers may test the proposed model by integrating the data from other Chinese cities to gain more insights. Full article

This paper reviews the synthesis, characterization, healing assessment, and mechanics of NiTi and other shape memory alloy (SMA)-reinforced self-healing metal matrix composites (SHMMCs). Challenges to synthesizing and characterizing the SMA-reinforced SHMMCs and the strategies followed to overcome those challenges are discussed. To design the SMA-reinforced SHMMCs, it is necessary to understand their microstructural evolution during melting and solidification. This requires the knowledge of the thermodynamics of phase diagrams and nonequilibrium solidification, which are presented in this paper for a model self-healing composite system. Healing assessment provides information about the autonomous and multicycle healing capability of synthesized SHMMCs, which ultimately determines their success. Different techniques to assess the degree of healing of SHMMCs are discussed in this paper. Strategies are explored to find the optimum volume fraction of SMA wires needed to yield the matrix and prevent damage to the SMA wires for the most effective healing. Finally, major challenges, knowledge gaps, and future research directions, including the need for autonomous and multicycle healing capability in SMA-reinforced SHMMCs, are outlined. Full article

In 1967, Robert Bellah argued that America’s “founding myth”, what he called American civil religion, helps bind American society together by providing its citizens with a sense of origin, direction, and meaning. For evidence, Bellah primarily turned to the inaugural speeches of American presidents. This paper draws on semantic network analysis to empirically examine the inaugural addresses of Presidents Trump and Biden, looking for evidence of what some would consider aspects of American civil religion. As some believe American civil religion to be no more than a thinly veiled form of nationalism, it also considers the importance of words associated with nationalism. It finds that both Trump and Biden employed the language of nationalism and American civil religion in their respective addresses, and while it found no differences in their use of nationalist discourse, it did find that American civil religion figures more prominently in Biden’s address than in Trump’s. Full article

Civil religion as formulated in Robert Bellah’s seminal 1967 article, recalling Rousseau’s Social Contract, has recently been proposed to build shared values and bridge deep partisan divides. A competing approach to shared values, based on public reason, relies on overlapping consensus in the works of John Rawls. In this paper, we present an in-between strategy that recognizes the insuperable empirical and normative problems of civil religion while using university civic engagement programs to bring about a public square in which religious reasons are found alongside neutral ones, ultimately for the sake of public justification. Having documented recent polarization trends, we consider the last major attempt to defend civil religion from the perspective of democratic solidarity, Phil Gorski’s American Covenant, but believe it falls short: based on sociological work and Augustinian insights, we show the risk of domination that Gorski’s strategy still entails, not least because of the definitional indeterminacy of civil religion and its overlap with religious nationalism. Paradoxically, a late Rawlsian approach that allows for the initial use of religious reasons, with a generosity proviso of necessary translation into public reason at some point, can lead to a public square with more religious arguments than one theorized explicitly from the perspective of civil religion. This is especially important because, given the discussed polarization trends, universities have taken on an increasingly important civic engagement role even as some still rely on a civil religion approach. We insist on public justification in university civic engagement, and for the sake of doing so take as a starting point Ben Berger’s work in favoring civil engagement, which we define as combining moral, political, and social rather than exclusively political commitments. In proposing a novel university shared values mechanism, intended to expose learners to a maximum diversity of opinions and lived experiences, we offer a fresh approach to building trust in cohorts that increases the likelihood of true dialogue across difference. Full article

This paper explores the question of how religious symbolism functions to provide a more meaningful or enriched experience of life. It examines a common and highly influential view, referred to here as the “source model”, for which this function requires the addition to experience of transcendent meanings generated by rituals and other specially adapted kinds of symbolic activity. Using Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution and Clifford Geertz’s “Religion as a Cultural System” as representative examples, I critique a key premise of the source model, namely that the meaning-making function of religious symbolism evolved in response to a universal experience of life as problematic. I argue that the experience of life as problematic is a product of symbolism, not a precondition. Moreover, with respect to this experience, I propose that symbolism functions not to add meaning but to enhance meanings that are vaguely discerned in everyday life. I close with the suggestion that an enhanced experience of life as problematic is itself a kind of enriched meaning and an important source of the affective power of religious practice. Full article

Plants from the genus Astragalus are gaining attention for their pharmacological importance. However, the information available regarding the HPLC–MS/MS chemical profile of A. fruticosus is inadequate. In this study, we performed HPLC–MS/MS analysis using electrospray ionization (ESI) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI). We tentatively identified 11 compounds in the A. fruticosus methanolic extract, including five flavonoidal and six saponin glycosides. The extract showed moderate antioxidant activity with 21.05% reduction in DPPH UV absorption. The preliminary cytotoxic screening against seven human cancer cell lines using 100 μg/mL extract showed prominent cytotoxic potential against colorectal cancer HCT–116 with 3.368% cell viability. It also showed moderate cytotoxic potential against prostate (DU–145), ovarian (SKOV–3) and lung (A–549) cancer cell lines with cell viability of 14.25%, 16.02% and 27.24%, respectively. The IC₅₀ of the total extract against HCT–116 and DU–145 cell lines were 7.81 μg/mL and 40.79 μg/mL, respectively. The observed cytotoxicity of the total methanolic extract from the leaves against colorectal cancer might facilitate future investigations on cytotoxic agent(s) for disease management. Full article

Many routes have been explored to search for effective, safe, and affordable alternatives to hazardous female contraceptives. Herbal extracts and their secondary metabolites are some of the interesting research areas to address this growing issue. This study aims to investigate the effects of ten different plant extracts on testicular spermatogenesis. The correlation between the chemical profile of these extracts and their in vivo effect on male reproductive system was evaluated using various techniques. Approximately 10% of LD₅₀ of hydro-methanolic extracts were orally administrated to rats for 60 days. Semen parameters, sexual organ weights, and serum levels of male sex hormones in addition to testes histopathology, were evaluated. Moreover, metabolomic analysis using (LC-HRESIMS), multivariate analysis (PCA), immunohistochemistry (caspase-3 and β-catenin), and a docking study were performed. Results indicated that three plant extracts significantly decreased epididymal sperm density and motility. Moreover, their effects on testicular cells were also assured by histopathological evaluations. Metabolomic profiling of the bioactive plant extracts showed the presence of diverse phytochemicals, mostly oleanane saponins, phenolic diterpenes, and lupane triterpenes. A docking study on caspase-3 enzyme showed that oleanane saponins possessed the highest binding affinity. An immunohistochemistry assay on β-catenin and caspase-3 indicated that Albizzia lebbeck was the most active extract for decreasing immunoexpression of β-catenin, while Rosmarinus officinalis showed the highest activity for increasing immunoexpression of caspase-3. The spermatogenesis decreasing the activity of A. lebbeck, Anagallis arvensis, and R. officinalis can be mediated via up-regulation of caspase-3 and down-regulation of β-catenin existing in testis cells. Full article

Over the past ten years, athletes Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick have become famous for kneeling on the NFL football field. However, public reactions to these gestures varied significantly: Tebow’s kneeling spawned a lightly mocking but overall flattering meme, while Kaepernick’s stoked public controversy and derailed his NFL career. In order to interrogate these divergent responses, this article places the work of sociologist Robert Bellah and philosopher Michel Foucault in dialogue. It argues that spectator sports are a crucial space for the negotiation and contestation of American identity, or, in Bellah’s terms, civil religion. It then draws on philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of the docile body to explore the rationales behind and cultural reactions to the kneeling posture. I argue that Tebow and Kaepernick advance divergent civil religious visions within the “politics of the sacred” being negotiated in American life. In this process of negotiation, American football emerges as both a space for the public cultivation of docile bodies and a crucial forum for reassessing American values and practices. Full article

Scholars of American civil religion (ACR) have paid insufficient attention to the micro-level processes through which civil religious ideas have historically influenced beliefs and behavior. We know little about what makes such appeals meaningful to average Americans (assuming they are meaningful); nor do we know much about the mechanisms through which abstract religious themes and imagery come to be associated with specific policy aims, or what Robert Bellah called “national goals.” This article argues that a renewed focus on the relationship between civil religion and organized religion can help fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, I draw attention to three mainline Protestant institutions that for much of the twentieth-century were instrumental both in cultivating respect for the national civic faith and in connecting its abstract ideals to concrete reform programs: namely, the clergy, the state and local church councils, and the policy-oriented departments of the National Council of Churches (NCC). Finally, I argue that a fresh look at the relationship between civil religion and “church religion” sheds new light on the (arguably) diminished role of civil religious appeals in the present. If, as Bellah claimed in his later writings, ACR appeals have lost much of their power to motivate support for shared national goals, it is at least in part because the formal religious networks through which they once were transmitted and interpreted have largely collapsed. Full article

Near the conclusion of The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau starkly proclaims that no state has been founded without a religious basis, and thus if he is right, every political community must grapple with the tension between the conflicting claims of the divine and the mundane. Because Christianity cannot solve this tension, Rousseau calls for a new religion, a civil religion. Whereas most of the academic treatment of civil religion follows various paths beginning with Robert Bellah’s original 1967 article, this essay explores more deeply the contours of Rousseau’s original articulation of the problem to which civil religion is his proposed solution. The essay concludes by suggesting that we can find important elements of Rousseau’s approach still alive and well in American politics and culture today. Full article

In this essay, “In God We Trust”, the official motto of the United States, is discussed as an illustration of the contested character of American civil religion. Applying and evaluating assumptions from Robert N. Bellah and his critics, a conceptual history of the motto is presented, showing how from its first appearance to today it has inspired debates about the place of civil religion in American culture, law, and politics. Examining these debates, the changing character of the motto is explored: its creation as a religious response to the Civil War; its secularization as a symbol on the nation’s currency at the turn of the twentieth century; its state-sponsored institutionalization during the Cold War; its part in the litigation that challenged the constitutionality of civil religious symbolism in the era of the culture wars; and its continuing role in the increasingly partisan political battles of our own time. In this essay, I make the case that, while seemingly timeless, the meaning of the motto has been repeatedly reinterpreted, with culture, law, and politics interacting in sometimes surprising ways to form one of the nation’s most commonly accepted and frequently challenged symbols. In concluding, I speculate on the future of the motto, as well as on the changing place of civil religion in a nation that is increasingly pluralistic in its religion and polarized in its politics. Full article

This essay reads Will Herberg’s Protestant-Catholic-Jew alongside Robert Bellah’s “Civil Religion in America” to illuminate how mid-century thinkers constructed, rather than merely observed, a vision of, and for, American religion. Placing Herberg in direct conversation with Bellah illuminates why Herberg’s religious triptych depiction of America endured while his argument for an “American Way of Life”—the prototype for Bellah’s widely accepted idea of civil religion—flailed. Although Herberg’s “American Way of Life” and Bellah’s “Civil Religion” resemble one another as systems built on but distinct from faith traditions, they emerged from intellectual struggles with two distinct issues. Herberg’s work stemmed from the challenges wrought by ethnic and religious diversity in America, while Bellah wrote out of frustration with Cold War conformity. Both men used civil religion to critique American complacency, but Herberg agonized over trite formulations of faith while Bellah derided uncritical affirmations of patriotism. Bellah’s civil religion co-existed with and, more importantly, contained Herberg’s “Protestant-Catholic-Jew” triad and obscured the American Way of Life. In an increasingly diverse and divisive America, Bellah’s civil religion provided a more optimistic template for national self-critique, even as Herberg’s American Way of Life more accurately described the limits of national self-understanding. Full article

For some, the problem with the domination of instrumental rationality is the tendency towards anomie. However, this fails to recognise the instrumental use of norms by elite groups to manipulate public opinion. Such manipulation can then allow elite groups to treat the citizenry as a means for the pursuit of their self-interest. Horkheimer was one of the first to recognise the problem in this form, but was unable to offer any solution because he conceptualised the citizenry as passive. By contrast, Dewey argued for an active citizenry to value participation in public life as good in, and of, itself. This is associated with his conception of democracy as an ethical way of life offering the possibility for the domination of instrumental rationality to be transcended. In this article Dewey’s resolution of the problem is addressed in the light of the weaknesses attributed here to Horkheimer and to later developments by Bellah, Bernstein, Gellner, Habermas and Honneth. Full article