Search Results (546)

Sociotechnical systems (STSs) are generally assumed to be systems that incorporate humans and technology, strongly depending on a sustainable equilibrium between the following nondeterministic social context ingredients: social structures, roles, and rights, as well as the designers’ Holy Grail, the deterministic nature of the underlying technical system. The fact that the relevant social concepts are more mature than the supporting technologies qualifies the digital transformation of sociotechnical systems as a reengineering rather than an engineering endeavor. Preserving the social mission throughout the digital transformation process in varying social contexts is mandatory, making the digital twins (DT) methodology application a contemporary research hotspot. In this research, we combined continuous transformation STS theory principles, an observer-based system-of-sociotechnical-systems (SoSTS) architecture model, and digital twinning methods to address common STS context representation challenges. Additionally, based on model-driven systems engineering methodology and meta-object-facility principles, the research specifies the universal meta-concepts and meta-modeling templates, supporting the creation of arbitrary sociotechnical systems’ external context digital twins. Due to the inherent diversity, significantly influenced by geopolitical, economic, and cultural influencers, a higher education external context specialization illustrates the reusability potentials of the proposed universal meta-concepts. Substituting higher-education-related meta-concepts and meta-models with arbitrary domain-dependent specializations further fosters the proposed universal meta-concepts’ reusability. Full article

Background/Objectives: Holy basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum L.) essential oil exhibits antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anesthetic activities, mainly due to eugenol, methyl eugenol, and β-caryophyllene. However, its clinical application is limited by poor water solubility, instability, and low bioavailability. This study developed and compared two delivery systems, self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems (SNEDDS) and microemulsions (ME), to enhance their stability and fish anesthetic efficacy. Methods: The optimized SNEDDS (25% basil oil, 8.33% coconut oil, 54.76% Tween 80, 11.91% PEG 400) and ME (12% basil oil, 32% Tween 80, 4% sorbitol, 12% ethanol, 40% water) were characterized for droplet size, PDI, zeta potential, pH, and viscosity. Stability was evaluated by monitoring droplet size and PDI over time and by determining the retention of eugenol, methyl eugenol, and β-caryophyllene after storage at 45 °C. Fish anesthetic efficacy was tested in koi carp (Cyprinus carpio var. koi). Results: SNEDDS maintained a small droplet size (~22.78 ± 1.99 nm) and low PDI (0.188 ± 0.088 at day 60), while ME showed significant size enlargement (up to 177.10 ± 47.50 nm) and high PDI (>0.5). After 90 days at 45 °C, SNEDDS retained 94.45% eugenol, 94.08% methyl eugenol, and 88.55% β-caryophyllene, while ME preserved 104.76%, 103.53%, and 94.47%, respectively. In vivo testing showed that SNEDDS achieved faster anesthesia (114.70 ± 24.80 s at 120 ppm) and shorter recovery (379.60 ± 15.61 s) than ME (134.90 ± 4.70 s; 473.80 ± 16.94 s). Ethanol failed to induce anesthesia at 40 ppm and performed poorly compared to SNEDDS and ME at other concentrations (p < 0.0001). Conclusions: SNEDDS demonstrated superior physical stability and fish anesthetic performance compared to ME. These findings support SNEDDS as a promising formulation for delivering holy basil essential oil in biomedical and aquaculture applications. Full article

With good reason, Vatican II encourages the Eastern ecclesial realities to preserve and, if necessary, to rediscover their own traditions (also, even if not only, for ecumenical reasons). There are, however, certain aspects of the heritage of the Eastern Churches that require urgent revision in a spirit of consistency with the teachings of the Council. This is undoubtedly the case with regard to the anti-Jewish elements so specific to the entire Christian tradition (more or less generalised insults and judgments; substitutionary and appropriative perspectives; a purely instrumental use of the Jewish scriptures) and, in the absence of full reception of the Council, still reflected in the public prayers of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church, to the detriment of that spirit of respect, fraternity, and dialogue theoretically embraced throughout the Catholic world today. In the light of Nostra aetate §4 and the subsequent developments that flowed from it, I shall try in this contribution to outline some possible criteria for reforming the offices of Holy Week, aiming to show that—at least in this particular case—it is not enough merely to refer to the OE, let alone to use it to justify a comfortable tendency towards inertia. Apart from the fact that it is this very Decree that speaks of a possible and necessary organic progress, we cannot ignore the more general spirit of renewal of the Council and its other documents (the NA, the SC, the DV, the GS). The challenge would be to engender a creative fidelity, which—while preserving the best of tradition—surpasses certain of its contingent elements. Full article

This review will focus on how ethnic consumption of foods such as shiitake, ginseng, turmeric, black seeds, berries, rosemary, moringa and holy basil can help act as antioxidants and immune modulators in fighting many diseases. We will investigate how these foods act on pathways like Nrf2/Keap1 to increase endogenous antioxidant capacity and help in reducing ROS production, based on publications found in PubMed between 1994 and 2024. In addition, we will show how these plants can cause immune system shifts by changing the makeup of the ratio of Th1/Th2 cells, reduce inflammation, and have antiangiogenic effects on cancer. This review will also show how plants can alter the gut microbiota and lead to a further decrease in oxidative stress. Overall, it will show how plants and their metabolites can potentially create a path forward for creating novel therapeutic approaches and help lead to an improved redox balance, support immune function, and enhance long-term health outcomes. Full article

This article explores Schipper’s scholarly contributions to the study of dongtian fudi (grotto heavens and blessed lands) and specifically situates this project in its broader intellectual context and Schipper’s own research. While Schipper was not the first to open discussions on this topic, his research in this direction still offers profound insights, such as the coinage of the concept of “Daoist Ecology” and his views on mountain politics. This article argues that Schipper’s work on dongtian fudi is a response to the school of Deep Ecology and its critics, and also a result of critical reflection on the modern dichotomy between nature and culture. In Schipper’s enquiry of dongtian fudi, the “mountain” stands as the central concept: it is not only the essential component of Daoist sacred geography, but a holistic site in which nature and society are interwoven, endowed with both material and sacred significance. Through his analysis of the Daoist practice of abstinence from grain (duangu), Schipper reveals how mountains serve as spaces for retreat from agrarian society and state control, and how they embody “shatter zones” where the reach of centralized power is relatively attenuated. The article also further links Schipper’s project of Beijing as a Holy City to his study of dongtian fudi. For Schipper, the former affirms the universality of the locality (i.e., the unofficial China, the country of people), while the latter envisages the vision of rewriting China from plural localities. Taken together, these efforts point toward a theoretical framework that moves beyond conventional sociological paradigms, one that embraces a total worldly perspective, in which the livelihoods of local societies and their daily lives are truly appreciated as a totality that encompasses both nature and culture. Schipper’s works related to dongtian fudi, though they are rather concise, still significantly broaden the scope of Daoist studies and, moreover, provide novel insights into the complexity of Chinese religion and society. Full article

The spatial genes of rural settlements show a lot of different traditional settlement traits, which makes them a great starting point for studying rural spatial morphology. However, qualitative and macro-regional statistical indicators are usually used to find and extract rural settlement spatial genes. Taking Yubei Village in the Nanxi River Basin as an example, this study combined remote sensing images, real-time drone mapping, GIS (geographic information system), and space syntax, extracted 12 key indicators from five dimensions (landform and water features (environment), boundary morphology, spatial structure, street scale, and building scale), and quantitatively “decoded” the spatial genes of the settlement. The results showed that (1) the settlement is a “three mountains and one water” pattern, with cultivated land accounting for 37.4% and forest land accounting for 34.3% of the area within the 500 m buffer zone, while the landscape spatial diversity index (LSDI) is 0.708. (2) The boundary morphology is compact and agglomerated, and locally complex but overall orderly, with an aspect ratio of 1.04, a comprehensive morphological index of 1.53, and a comprehensive fractal dimension of 1.31. (3) The settlement is a “clan core–radial lane” network: the global integration degree of the axis to the holy hall is the highest (0.707), and the local integration degree R3 peak of the six-room ancestral hall reaches 2.255. Most lane widths are concentrated between 1.2 and 2.8 m, and the eaves are mostly higher than 4 m, forming a typical “narrow lanes and high houses” water town streetscape. (4) The architectural style is a combination of black bricks and gray tiles, gable roofs and horsehead walls, and “I”-shaped planes (63.95%). This study ultimately constructed a settlement space gene map and digital library, providing a replicable quantitative process for the diagnosis of Jiangnan water town settlements and heritage protection planning. Full article

This article examines the theological trajectories of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) on sanctification, union with Christ, and deification, situating their contributions within recent reappraisals of the doctrine of theosis in the academy. Though deification was universally affirmed by the early church and retained in various forms in medieval and early Protestant theology, post-Reformation Western Christianity marginalized this theme in favor of juridical and forensic soteriological categories. Against this backdrop, Nee and Lee offer a theologically rich, biblically grounded, and experientially oriented articulation of deification that warrants greater scholarly attention. Drawing from the Keswick Holiness tradition, patristic sources, and Christian mysticism, Nee developed a soteriology that integrates justification, sanctification, and glorification within an organic model of progressive union with God. Though he does not explicitly use the term “deification”, the language he employs regarding union and participation closely mirrors classical expressions of Christian theosis. For Nee, sanctification is not merely moral improvement but the transformative increase of the divine life, culminating in conformity to Christ’s image. Lee builds upon and expands Nee’s participatory soteriology into a comprehensive theology of deification, explicitly referring to it as “the high peak of the divine revelation” in the Holy Scriptures. For Lee, humans become God “in life and nature but not in the Godhead”. By employing the phrase “not in the Godhead”, Lee upholds the Creator–creature distinction—i.e., humans never participate in the ontological Trinity or God’s incommunicable attributes. Yet, in the first portion of his description, he affirms that human beings undergo an organic, transformative process by which they become God in deeply significant ways. His framework structures sanctification as a seven-stage process, culminating in the believer’s transformation and incorporation into the Body of Christ to become a constituent of a corporate God-man. This corporate dimension—often overlooked in Western accounts—lies at the heart of Lee’s ecclesiology, which he sees as being consummated in the eschatological New Jerusalem. Ultimately, this study argues that Nee and Lee provide a coherent, non-speculative model of deification that integrates biblical exegesis, theological tradition, and practical spirituality, and thus, present a compelling alternative to individualistic and forensic soteriologies while also highlighting the need for deeper engagement across global theological discourse on sanctification, union with Christ, and the Triune God. Full article

Many contemporaries considered the crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 as a significant moment in Salvation History. This article investigates how the reception of the Roman conquest of the city (70 CE) contributed to such an understanding. The important Benedictine exegete Rupert of Deutz (c. 1070–1129) refers to the Roman conquest in 79 passages within his opus, notably in his various biblical commentaries. This case study shows how the past event provided a rationale, exegetical and providential in nature, to understand three dimensions: (a) the role of the Jews, especially that it had been necessary to deprive them of the Holy Land; (b) the current situation of and purpose of Christians in the Holy Land; and (c) the End of Time, which was expected in Jerusalem, and which Rupert anchored already significantly in his own present. His commentary on John’s Revelation even asserted that the Roman conquest had opened the sixth of seven seals (Rev. 6:12). Therefore, the Apocalypse had been ongoing since 70 CE—but only in the Holy Land, a fact that made it necessary for Christians to travel there. The article thus demonstrates that biblical commentaries are potent sources for both crusade studies and historical research in general. Full article

The last stop on the Muslim pilgrimage is the Kaʻba. Like all other holy and religious places, the Kaʻba has survived due to the repairs it has undergone since its construction. However, the Kaʻba has been rebuilt at times when it was destroyed for various reasons. Since the interruption of the pilgrimage would undermine the legitimacy of the caliph, Muslims attached great importance to rebuilding the Kaʻba in such cases. The Kaʻba was last rebuilt by the Ottoman Sulṭān Murād IV after the flood of 1039/1630. However, the rebuilding process has not been without its controversies. Although the Ottoman Empire attempted to rebuild the Kaʻba out of necessity, some scholars objected to this initiative. Ibn ʻAllān, one of the leading Shafiʻi muftis of Mecca, followed the rebuilding work day by day and did not hesitate to intervene when necessary. Riḍwān Agha, who carried out the rebuilding of the Kaʻba, was able to overcome Ibn ʻAllān’s objections with fatwas from the muftis of the four sects (four Sunni schools of law) and thus completed the building work. After the Kaʻba was rebuilt, Turkish works on its history began to be produced. In this way, the public was informed that the Kaʻba could be rebuilt if necessary, and attempts were made to anticipate and prevent any potential reactions. This study aims to contribute to the history of the Kaʻba by analysing its rebuilding after the flood of 1039/1630 through debates between scholars (ʻulamāʼ) and administrators (umarāʼ) during this period. Access to the details of this issue from the works of the ʻulamāʼ who witnessed the rebuilding makes this paper unique. Full article

The subject of this article is the centuries-old religious heritage of Vilnius. The aim of the article is to analyse this heritage and its reflection in the gaze of tourists. In particular, it focuses on selected Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, and Karaite sites. The methods used in the empirical study include the analysis of reviews posted on the Tripadvisor website by tourists from different countries who visited five selected sites: (1) St. Anne’s Church, (2) Holy Spirit Orthodox Church, (3) Evangelical Lutheran Church, (4) Vilnius Choral Synagogue, and (5) Kenesa. The authors employed the method of desk research, which involves the analysis of existing data. The selection of objects was made by indicating the most commented sites of a given religious tradition for which the most comments were received. In the light of the pervasive influence of social media, it is noteworthy to observe the contemporary representation of multi-religious Vilnius that is disseminated through this medium. Urban sacred spaces are not only places of worship of interest to religious people, including local and foreign pilgrims. Furthermore, they constitute an attractive urban heritage for a significant number of cultural tourists. Committed tourists, including cultural tourists, meticulously document their impressions in various forms of narrative, offering either endorsement or criticism of a particular object. In this manner, they also interpret elements of the heritage in the local urban space. Full article

The relationship between Scripture and the Liturgy remains one of the most extensively debated subjects in theological discourse. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, a divided Christendom witnessed the rise of a dichotomy between Scripture and Liturgy, as well as between the Word and the Sacrament. This dichotomy, however, is absent from the patristic thought, which perceives the unity and complementarity between Scripture and Liturgy, owing to their shared belonging to the one life of the Church—broadly defined as Tradition—and to the way they are understood and experienced as interconnected modes through which the singular Mystery of Jesus Christ is communicated to the faithful. The present study aims to demonstrate this unity by drawing on a substantial body of patristic writings, highlighting the fact that the life of the Church is one and is lived both as the rule of faith and the rule of prayer, and that through it, one and the same Christ communicates Himself to the faithful both through the Word and through the Holy Sacraments. For the Church Fathers, the Christian faith is not an abstract doctrine about Christ, but a real and personal encounter and communion with Him in the life of the Church. This patristic approach may offer a starting point for contemporary Christianity in addressing the current liturgical crisis and in rethinking and renewing future ecumenical dialogue. Such renewal presupposes a movement beyond secular formalism and nominalism, which have fostered excessive conceptualization and an antithetical view of Scripture and Liturgy, Word and Sacrament. Full article

Holy basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum L.) is a medicinal herb rich in bioactive flavonoids with therapeutic properties. Traditional quantification methods rely on time-consuming and destructive extraction processes, whereas hyperspectral imaging provides a rapid, non-destructive alternative by analysing spectral signatures. However, effectively linking hyperspectral data to flavonoid levels remains a challenge for developing early detection tools before harvest. This study integrates deep learning with hyperspectral imaging to quantify flavonoid contents in 113 samples from 26 Thai holy basil cultivars collected across diverse regions of Thailand. Two deep learning architectures, ResNet1D and CNN1D, were evaluated in combination with feature extraction techniques, including wavelet transformation and Gabor-like filtering. ResNet1D with wavelet transformation achieved optimal performance, yielding an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.8246 and an accuracy of 0.7702 for flavonoid content classification. Cross-validation demonstrated the model’s robust predictive capability in identifying antioxidant-rich samples. Samples with the highest predicted flavonoid content were identified, and cultivars exhibiting elevated levels of both flavonoids and phenolics were highlighted across various regions of Thailand. These findings demonstrate the predictive capability of hyperspectral data combined with deep learning for phytochemical assessment. This approach offers a valuable tool for non-destructive quality evaluation and supports cultivar selection for higher phytochemical content in breeding programs and agricultural applications. Full article

Early modern theologians often cast female curiosity as both a moral flaw and an epistemic transgression. Aware of this suspicion, Teresa of Ávila professed to have renounced such dangerous impulses in her youth. Yet the persistent presence of curiosity in her writings suggests a strategic redeployment—one that fosters attentiveness and subtly renegotiates ecclesiastical authority as she actively advances reform within the Carmelite order. Through life-writing and scriptural exegesis, Teresa cultivates a disciplined appetite for knowledge: an appetite that outwardly conforms to, yet quietly subverts, doctrinal anxieties surrounding women’s intellectual desires. Her use of curiosidad moves fluidly between sacred and secular registers—sometimes connoting superficial fascination, at other times signaling a deeper, interior restlessness. Resisting reductive interpretation, Teresa reveals a sophisticated and self-aware engagement with a disposition both morally ambiguous and intellectually generative. The same culture that once feared her intellect would ultimately aestheticize it. After her death, Teresa’s relics were fragmented and displayed in Philip II’s Wunderkammer, transforming her once-condemned curiosidad into curiositas, an imperial collectible. Reading Teresa alongside her posthumous interpreters—Fray Luis de León and Miguel de Cervantes—this essay explores how her radical epistemological ambition reverberated through Spanish intellectual culture. Spanning this cultural arc—from sin to spectacle, from forbidden desire to sanctified display—Teresa emerges as a masterful theorist and activist reformer of spiritual authority. In these expansive roles, she reveals the immense and often contradictory power that curiosity wielded in the early modern world. Full article

The so-called Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) describes the land (אֶרֶץ) almost as a human being. In biblical scholarship on this law-text, the land has often been explained as an independent agent and more powerful than even the human beings that are present in the text. This paper will use social network analysis to test these conclusions and provide a more detailed account of the role of the land. The paper sets out to develop a social network model of the Holiness Code by including all interactions among human/divine participants and physical space. The paper then explores how human/divine participants relate to space, and it is shown that the participant roles are closely connected to access to space. Afterwards, the social role of the land is scrutinized by exploring each of its relationships, and by conducting a cluster analysis to understand the structural properties of the network. It is shown that the land is not as central and agentive as is usually thought but, rather, that the land plays a secondary role as a vulnerable character in need of protection. The paper is concluded by reflections on the potential of social network analysis for understanding character roles in literature. Full article

The theology of deification in the Christian tradition is fraught with misconceptions. Although it embodies the core teaching of the faith, it is not only a neglected theme of theology, but often critiqued as a Promethean distortion of the gospel and/or a semi-Pelagian heterodoxy. Hans Urs von Balthasar, through his examination of the teachings of the early Church Fathers, presents the doctrine in its Christocentric context, emphasizing its kenotic and inherently relational character. Deification is thus revealed as an antidote to the narrowly conceived notion of “justification” as salvation, which is rooted in a juridic understanding of God’s grace. Conceived as the dynamic incorporation of the believer into the life of Christ himself, deification is rightly understood as a present, existential process and thus far more than a mere eschatological hope. Full article