Search Results (48)

The liturgy of the Catholic Church adopts and reframes passages from Scripture in manifold ways. At times a passage is proclaimed or sung in the liturgy exactly as it appears in the Bible; at other times, a prayer or antiphon draws from one or more verses of the Scripture for inspiration. In order to demonstrate this twofold practice, this article presents a single example of a random day on the liturgical calendar, the Second Sunday of Lent. It will explore the uses of Scripture in the revised entrance and communion antiphons, the restoration of long-neglected ancient presidential prayers, the composition of a new collect and preface, the three-year cycle of readings, and the intersection of biblical references between the Roman Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours. By examining a single example, the reader will come to a deeper appreciation of the depth of the interplay between the Bible and liturgy on every day of the calendar. This article will cite the present and previous Roman Missals, the Roman Gradual, the context for the structure of the Lectionary for Mass on this day as the revisers conceived it, and unique features from the Liturgy of the Hours. It will also show how particular biblical references on one day reappear in other liturgical celebrations, expanding the reader’s appreciation of the specific application of biblical texts to a variety of liturgical events. Full article

Cardiovascular diseases stand as the leading cause of mortality worldwide, underscoring the urgent need for effective tools that enable early detection and monitoring of at-risk patients. This study combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques—specifically the k-means clustering algorithm—alongside dimensionality reduction methods like Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) to identify patient groups with varying levels of heart attack risk. We used a publicly available clinical dataset with 1319 patient records, which included variables such as age, gender, blood pressure, glucose levels, CK-MB Creatine Kinase MB (KCM), and troponin levels. We normalized and prepared the data, then we employed PCA and UMAP to reduce dimensionality and facilitate visualization. Using the k-means algorithm, we segmented the patients into distinct groups based on their clinical features. Our analysis revealed two distinct patient groups. Group 2 exhibited significantly higher levels of troponin (mean 0.4761 ng/mL), KCM (18.65 ng/mL), and glucose (mean 148.19 mg/dL) and was predominantly composed of men (97%). These factors indicate an increased risk of cardiac events compared to Group 1, which had lower levels of these biomarkers and a slightly higher average age. Interestingly, no significant differences in blood pressure were observed between the groups. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of combining Machine Learning (ML) techniques with dimensionality reduction methods to enhance risk stratification accuracy in cardiology. By enabling more targeted interventions for high-risk patients, our unsupervised segmentation approach focuses on intrinsic data patterns rather than predefined diagnostic labels, serves as a powerful complement to traditional risk assessment tools. Full article

In their evolution from conservation places of isolated resources to social spaces in service of communities, museums are increasingly called to express their representative character towards their originating territories. Furthermore, the museum’s mission has been gradually enriched with new, more complex functions towards local communities, through a call to actively confront with their contexts, a trend the recent pandemic events have only accelerated. Cultural heritage, with museums at the forefront, as an acknowledged driver of socioeconomic development, has manifold impacts on territories, which have been identified and investigated in the literature, often from a potential perspective. Given the strong territorial component of the museum heritage connection with its reference context, this study aims to investigate the contribution that mapping and GIS technologies, traditionally employed at the scale of single museum buildings, can offer in assessing the actual “living” presence of museums in the local socioeconomic and productive fabric, through the relationships with other reference entities in the territories and their outreach. Taking a sample with a marked nature of spatially ‘distributed’ heritage (archaeologic museums of the Puglia region, South Italy) as a case study, the article presents a mapped representation of a questionnaire-based survey of museums’ recent territorial relationships. The twofold outcomes of the study show, on the one hand, that the investigated sample still experiences criticalities in fully expressing and communicating its potentialities and values in the current scenario and, on the other hand, that mapping technologies can concretely contribute to the museum sector’s innovation by examining its territorial relationships, in line with the current conceptual evolution, also with possible implications on museums’ quality assessment. Full article

Pregnancy and transition to motherhood are significant experiences accompanied by manifold changes, particularly during times of crisis, such as exposure to traumatic events, which involve further levels of complexity and vulnerability. This is especially true for Arab women in Israel, considering the interactions between their physical, mental, and social environments, and their impact on health during pregnancy and childcare in wartime. This study sought to examine the experience of Arab women in Israel, who experienced intersectional marginalization as women in a traditional patriarchal society who belong to a minority group, during the perinatal period, following the events of 7 October 2023, and the subsequent Israel–Hamas war. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with ten participants in different stages of pregnancy and young mothers to infants up to a year old. The thematic analysis revealed four main themes: The impact of the war on intrapersonal identity; The impact within the couple’s relationship identity; The impact on family identity; Socio-political identity. Shining a spotlight on the experiences of Arab women in Israel and their daily functioning in the current complex reality reveals unique challenges, encompassing profound feelings of fear, anxiety, and imposed silence. Deepening the understanding of marginalized women’s experiences can help policymakers in the field of women’s health to design tailored adaptations in health policies for Arab women from minority groups, navigating the complexities of transitioning to motherhood during periods of social instability and wartime challenges. Full article

Ionospheric tomography, an effective method for reconstructing 3-D electron density, is traditionally pictured by 3-D IED (ionospheric electron density) slices to express ionospheric disturbances, which may overlook the critical information in 3-D spherical manifold space. Here, we develop a novel visualization framework that integrates tomography reconstruction with a spherical latitude–longitude grid system, enabling the comprehensive characterization of 3-D IED dynamic evolution in 3-D manifold spherical space. Through this method, we visualized two cases: the Hualien earthquake on 2 April 2024 and the geomagnetic storm on 24 April 2023. The results demonstrate the evolution of the electron density during earthquake and geomagnetic storms in the real 3-D space, showing that seismic events induce bottom-up IED negative anomalies localized near epicenters, while geomagnetic storms trigger top-down depletion processes, with IED propagating from higher altitudes in the real 3-D manifold space. Compared to the conventional slice, our visualization model can visualize the characteristics, with the coverage area being observed to increase with the altitude within the same geospatial coordinates. This framework can advance the identification of ionosphere anomalies by enabling the precise differentiation of anomaly sources. This work bridges gaps in geospatial modeling by harmonizing ionospheric tomography with Earth system grids, offering a feasible solution for analyzing multi-scale ionospheric phenomena. Full article

The detection of adverse events—for example, convulsive epileptic seizures—can be critical for patients suffering from a variety of pathological syndromes. Algorithms using remote sensing modalities, such as a video camera input, can be effective for real-time alerting, but the broad variability of environments and numerous nonstationary factors may limit their precision. In this work, we address the issue of adaptive reinforcement that can provide flexible applications in alerting devices. The general concept of our approach is the topological reinforced adaptive algorithm (TOREADA). Three essential steps—embedding, assessment, and envelope—act iteratively during the operation of the system, thus providing continuous, on-the-fly, reinforced learning. We apply this concept in the case of detecting convulsive epileptic seizures, where three parameters define the decision manifold. Monte Carlo-type simulations validate the effectiveness and robustness of the approach. We show that the adaptive procedure finds the correct detection parameters, providing optimal accuracy from a large variety of initial states. With respect to the separation quality between simulated seizure and normal epochs, the detection reinforcement algorithm is robust within the broad margins of signal-generation scenarios. We conclude that our technique is applicable to a large variety of event detection systems. Full article

On 1–3 May 2023, severe hydro-meteorological events occurred in the Italian Emilia-Romagna region. Such events caused extensive flooding, landslides, isolation of many areas, evacuation of many families, and severe damage to infrastructure, agriculture, buildings, and essential services. Several municipalities were affected, thousands of civilians had to be evacuated, and losses of life occurred. The consequences beyond the recorded immediate impacts on infrastructure and life were impressive, and extended to the regional economy, specifically in the Fruit Valley, where, in addition to immediate yield losses, long-term damage to orchard production is expected due to persistent flooding. The civil and cultural building heritage has also been heavily affected, both in the countryside and in inhabited centers. Some of the damage, direct and indirect, caused by flooding on buildings will also see an evolution in the medium- to long-term that needs to be addressed. This paper analyzes the manifold aspects of such an atmospheric phenomenon and its impacts to understand the potential increasing occurrence of similar events in the climate change context. Full article

We embed an object with a singular horizon structure, reminiscent of (but fundamentally different from, except in a limiting case) a black hole event horizon, in an expanding, spherically symmetric, homogeneous, Universe that has a positive cosmological constant. Conformal representation is discussed. There is a temperature/pressure singularity and a corresponding scalar curvature singularity at the horizon. The expanding singular horizon ultimately bounds the entire spacetime manifold. It is is preceded by an expanding light front, which separates the spacetime affected by the singularity from that which is not yet affected. An appropriately located observer in front of the light front can have a Hubble–Lemaître constant that is consistent with that currently observed. Full article

In relativity, the Newtonian concepts of velocity and acceleration are observer-dependent quantities that vary with the chosen frame of reference. It is well established that in the comoving frame, cosmic expansion is currently accelerating; however, in the rest frame, this expansion is actually decelerating. In this paper, we explore the implications of this distinction. The traditional measure of cosmic acceleration, denoted by q, is derived from the comoving frame and describes the acceleration of the scale factor a for a 3D space-like homogeneous sphere. We introduce a new parameter $q_E$ representing the acceleration experienced between observers within the light cone. By comparing $q_E$ to the traditional q using observational data from Type Ia supernovae (SN) and the radial clustering of galaxies and quasars (BAO)—including the latest results from DESI2024—our analysis demonstrates that $q_E$ aligns more closely with these data. The core argument of the paper is that $\Lambda$—regardless of its origin—creates an event horizon that divides the manifold into two causally disconnected regions analogous to conditions inside a black hole’s interior, thereby allowing for a rest-frame perspective $q_E$ in which cosmic expansion appears to be decelerating and the horizon acts like a friction term. Such a horizon suggests that the universe cannot maintain homogeneity outside. The observed cosmological constant $\Lambda$ can then be interpreted not as a driver of new dark energy or a modification of gravity but as a boundary term exerting an attractive force, akin to a rubber band, resisting further expansion and preventing event horizon crossings. This interpretation calls for a reconsideration of current cosmological models and the assumptions underlying them. Full article

This paper proposes a decentralized adaptive event-triggered fault-tolerant cooperative control (ET-FTCC) scheme for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) with actuator faults and external disturbances under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The multiple UAVs and UGVs have a larger search radius, which is important in both the civilian and military domains. The different dynamics between UAVs and UGVs result in unbalanced interactions in the communication topologies, which increases the complexity of cooperative control. DoS attacks are conducted in both sensor and control channels. The dynamic models of UAVs and UGVs are introduced firstly, and the unified heterogeneous multiagent system model with actuator faults is established. The composite observer is designed to obtain the information of state and lumped disturbance, which is used to design the controller. In order to save the limited communication network resources, the event-triggered mechanism is introduced. The transformed error is presented by using the prescribed performance function (PPF). Then, the sliding-mode manifold is presented by combining the event-triggered control scheme to achieve the tracking purpose with actuator faults, external disturbances, and DoS attacks. Based on the Lyapunov function approach, the tracking errors are bounded within the prescribed boundary. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis of the simulation results. This study can enhance the security and reliability of heterogeneous multiagent systems, providing technical support for the safe operation of unmanned systems. This paper mainly solves the FTCC problem of second-order nonlinear heterogeneous multiagent systems, and further research is needed for the FTCC problem of higher-order nonlinear heterogeneous multi-agent systems. In addition, the system may encounter multiple cyber attacks. As one of the future research works, we can extend the results of this paper to high-order nonlinear systems under multiple cyber attacks, which contain DoS attacks and deception attacks, and achieve fault-tolerant cooperative control of heterogeneous multiagent systems. Full article

In recent years, the frequency and intensity of global extreme weather events have gradually increased, leading to significant changes in urban rainfall patterns. The uneven distribution of rainfall has caused varying degrees of water security issues in different regions. Accurately grasping the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of rainfall is crucial for understanding the hydrological cycle and predicting the availability of water resources. This study collected rainfall data every five minutes from 62 rain gauge stations in the main urban area of Kunming City from 2019 to 2021, constructing an unsupervised hybrid dimensionality reduction-clustering (HDRC) model. The model employs the Locally Linear Embedding (LLE) algorithm from manifold learning for dimensionality reduction of the data samples and uses the dynamic clustering K-Means algorithm for cluster analysis. The results show that the model categorizes the rainfall in the Kunming area into three types: The first type has its rainfall center distributed on the north shore of Dian Lake and the southern part of Kunming’s main urban area, with spatial dynamics showing the rainfall distribution gradually developing from the Dian Lake water body towards the land. The second type’s rainfall center is located in the northern mountainous area of Kunming, with a smaller spatial dynamic change trend. The water vapor has a relatively fixed and concentrated rainfall center due to the orographic uplift effect of the mountains. The third type’s rainfall center is located in the main urban area of Kunming, with this type of rainfall showing smaller variations in all indicators, mainly occurring in May and September when the temperature is lower, related to the urban heat island effect. This research provides a general workflow for spatial rainfall classification, capable of mining the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of regional rainfall based on extensive data and generating typical samples of rainfall types. Full article

On 6 February 2023, near Kahramanmaraş in south-central Türkiye, an event underscored the vulnerability of cities to seismic activity, revealing a lack of preparedness for substantial shocks. The contributing factors are manifold, yet fundamentally, the collapse of buildings and infrastructure can be attributed to an underestimated capacity for meticulous settlement planning (location) and the adoption of advanced techniques for resilient construction (structure). Regrettably, as has been investigated by many research works, ordinary urban planning in Türkiye hardly finds ways to integrate the vulnerability analysis for settlement expansion, which includes the full integration of geological characteristics with the analysis of building sensitivity. With this work, we wanted to build a composite risk index based on earthquake vulnerability, hazard amplification map, and exposure. We designed the composite index in Izmir’s basin, Türkiye’s third most populated city, to answer the question: What if a destructive earthquake strikes this densely settled area? The results illustrates how the coupled integration of digital data on geology with settlements and infrastructure in a Geographic Information System environment can be used to produce risk maps and plan the anthropic system’s adaptation carefully. Findings demonstrate the city is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and identify priority areas for planning intervention, relocation, and renovation of buildings. Full article

We show that relativistic rotation transformations represent transfer maps between the laboratory system and a local observer on an observer manifold, rather than an event manifold, in the spirit of C-equivalence. Rotation is, therefore, not a parameterised motion on a background space or spacetime, but is determined by a particular sequence of tetrads related by specific special Lorentz transformations or boosts. Because such Lorentz boosts do not form a group, these tetrads represent distinct observers that cannot put together their local descriptions into a manifold in the usual sense. The choice of observer manifold depends on the dynamical situation under consideration, and is not solely determined by the kinematics. Three examples are given: Franklin’s rotation transformation for uniform plane rotation, the Thomas precession of a vector attached to an electron, and the motion of a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. In each case, at each point of its trajectory, there is a distinguished tetrad and a special Lorentz transformation that maps Minkowski space to the spacetime of the local observer on the curve. Full article

The paper presents an event-triggered higher-order sliding mode controller design. The event-triggering technique is the alternative approach to real-time controller execution, unlike the classic time-triggering technique, which is not time-dependable and is governed by the triggering policy. The technique is suitable for system resource relaxation in case of computation burden or network usage mitigation. The paper describes the stability analysis of the super-twisted sliding mode controller based on input-to-state stability notation. The stability analysis introduces a triggering policy related directly to the ultimate boundness of the system states and preselected sliding variables. The controller time execution with the selected triggering condition prevents the exhibition of the Zeno phenomena, where the minimal inter-event time of the controller has a positive non-zero lower bound. The minimal value of the inter-event time is related directly to the controller parameters and triggering bound, the selection of which is given with the derived stability conditions regarding the designer’s objective. Preventing the fast nonlinear controller execution, especially close to the sliding manifold, also alleviates the chattering phenomena effectively, which is a primal drawback, and limits the usage of the controller on various systems. The method’s efficiency is verified with the hardware-in-the-loop system, where the dynamic and robustness of the triggering approach are compared to the standard time-triggered execution technique. Full article

In this article, we develop a tentative philosophy to orchestrate and support possibilities for artful ageing. This effort argues that older adults need a broader range of opportunities to explore the manifold ephemeral, non-rational, and in-between elements of an ageing life. The philosophy is rooted in the notion that older adults need space (literally and metaphorically) to explore and process their existence and that engaging in such processes can entail emancipatory effects in everyday life. The perspective unfolded throughout the article is a philosophical venture, or, rather, a preliminary work, developing the concept of artful ageing as a tool applicable in rethinking and broadening the range of activities occurring in institutional settings dedicated to older adults. Furthermore, the perspective also presents a critical stance towards normative footings and biopolitical agendas embedded in current regimes of active ageing. Artful ageing represents the ambition to enable and support artful lives, events, and activities among residents and participants in care homes and other contexts. We argue that physical and existential spaces are closely intertwined entities and that initiatives aimed at maintaining adequate measures of openness, ambiguity, and sensory intimacy, i.e., events that allow for the experience of metaphorical cracks, can afford artful pockets in which to reside for a while, seek refuge, recharge, stray from the beaten track, and obtain an always partial feeling of emancipation. In qualifying the concept of artful ageing, we hope to open new avenues to contemplate and subsequently initiate activities for older adults that are not just orientated towards physical health in later life. At the same time, our ambition is to develop a critical perspective aimed at challenging existing notions of successful ageing in (re)invigorating the importance of artful processes and experiences as an element inherent to successful ageing, as well. Full article