Search Results (28)

Life evolved under a persistent 1 g field that is continuous, ubiquitous, and directionally structured. Here, we synthesize evidence across evolutionary biology, mechanobiology, and genome architecture to propose gravity as a mechanical boundary condition that helped canalize the emergence of complex multicellularity. Order-of-magnitude considerations indicate that gravity-derived hydrostatic loads can fall within force/pressure regimes relevant to nuclear and chromatin mechanosensitivity when transmitted through adhesion–cytoskeleton–LINC–lamina coupling. Comparative genomic and imaging frameworks suggest that complex animals increasingly rely on volumetric genome organization (packing domains and higher-order 3D architectures) that supports durable transcriptional memory and stable differentiated cell identities. Integrating these concepts with altered-gravity experiments, we argue that microgravity and hypergravity perturb chromatin topology and region-level transcription in rapid, largely reversible patterns consistent with a mechanically defined 1 g reference state. We advance a boundary-condition thesis: gravity is not a sole driver but a stable reference that likely contributed to the evolvability and long-term robustness of mechanogenomic architectures required for high-dimensional differentiation and tissue homeostasis. Full article

This study contributes to research on teacher education and professional identity formation. Drawing on a longitudinal corpus of 2311 thesis titles produced between 1989 and 2024 within a single teacher education context, the analysis conceptualises titles as institutionally regulated academic practices through which students position themselves in relation to teaching, research, and professional knowledge. Methodologically, the study employs a thesis title analysis combining document analysis with discourse analytic sensitivity. Titles were coded along four analytical dimensions: thematic orientation, professional versus academic orientation, level of discursive abstraction, and implied student positioning. Rather than assuming a linear progression from practice-oriented to academic work, the analysis foregrounds parallel, hybrid, and non-linear patterns over time. The findings show that thesis titles consistently maintain strong connections to professional practice while increasingly incorporating analytical and abstract framings. Hybrid titles, which combine concrete teaching contexts with academic problematisation, emerge as a stable and recurring pattern. These titles reflect a liminal identity position in which student teachers negotiate professional relevance and academic legitimacy. These findings have implications for supervision practices and research-based learning design in teacher education programmes. Full article

This article draws on my doctoral research, Reconciliation Rescue: An Original Blak Comedy Series and Aboriginal Cultural Perspectives on Humour, to examine how Aboriginal humour operates as a mode of resistance, truth-telling, and cultural continuity. My thesis consists of two components Reconciliation Rescue, an original scripted Blak comedy series, and an accompanying exegesis that situates the work within broader discussions of Aboriginal sovereignty, identity, and the politics of reconciliation. In this article, I extend that research to demonstrate how Aboriginal voices, when centred in comedic storytelling, challenge colonial paradigms and reframe national narratives. Grounded in my lived experience as an Aboriginal woman and my longstanding creative practice, I explore the ways in which Aboriginal humour addresses intergenerational trauma, racism, and stereotypes. I contrast the collectivist values and relational worldviews of Aboriginal cultures with the individualism of Whitestream society, arguing that humour particularly the oration of humorous storytelling has long served as a powerful tool of healing, resilience, and community cohesion. This distinctive form of ‘Blak Humour’ confronts harmful assumptions, empowers our people, and strengthens cultural identity. By reflecting on the development of Reconciliation Rescue and the principles that shape First Nations comedic expression, this article illustrates how Aboriginal comedy can act as an educational and transformative force. It highlights humour’s potential to foster understanding, unsettle entrenched power structures, and contribute meaningfully to more culturally informed and socially just approaches to reconciliation in Australia. Full article

Drawing upon a meticulous delineation of pure consciousness’s fundamental and necessary features—including unstructuredness, maximal simplicity, selflessness, awareness as such, zero-perspective, and the absence of specific phenomenal qualities—this article asserts that a full-fledged experience of pure consciousness is attainable within the psychedelic state. Critically, this psychedelic manifestation is argued to be phenomenologically indistinguishable in its core properties from pure consciousness accessed via meditative practices. Consequently, this finding not only problematizes, but actually directly refutes Metzinger’s thesis, which posits meditation as the sole “best and most natural candidate” for achieving pure consciousness. Moreover, this work champions a soft phenomenological perennialism. This perspective navigates a middle ground between rigid perennialism and radical constructivism, underscoring the identical phenomenological core shared by all pure consciousness experiences, including those induced by psychedelics. This exploration further posits that psychedelic pure consciousness experiences can yield significant epistemic insights into the fundamental nature of consciousness, the self, and reality. Beyond this, a systematic phenomenology of pure consciousness is demonstrated to offer profound contributions to our understanding of certain religious–spiritual concepts such as God. Nonetheless, while acknowledging naturalistic critiques, a significant caveat is issued: extreme caution is warranted regarding religious–spiritual interpretations gleaned from such phenomenologies. Ultimately, the paper underscores the burgeoning importance of a spiritual naturalistic interpretation of pure consciousness. Full article

The human need for belonging and identity (stemming from the need for belonging) is strong. This article begins by discussing these needs, drawing on the theories of Abraham Maslow and Erik Erikson. Forceful societal trends in the early twenty-first-century world have been creating a new societal context that tends to disrupt historical, relatively simple trajectories of identity formation. These trends are then subsumed under two megatrends that operate in the contemporary world. The first is globalisation, evident in the world since c.1990 as “Globalisation 3.0”. One outcome of Globalisation 3.0 is identity flux. Around 2015, a trend of deglobalisation became evident around the world. Populism is one of the manifestations of this counter-trend, a manifestation that is also visible in identity formation patterns. Education, citizenship educationin particular, has long been looked up to as instrument of political socialisation and identity formation, and these counter-trends tend to impact it, as well. The thesis of this article is that citizenship education, as it is presented in the education systems of the contemporary world, could be deemed to be anachronistically simple and hence requires adaptations in response to the exigencies of this new, changed global context. Finally, we suggest some guidelines for a reconceptualised citizenship education attuned to the exigencies of the new unfolding global context. Full article

Revealing the complex system of transboundary conflicts would help to understand the behavior of states and anticipate potential actions that would collectively reflect the state doctrine. However, a specific approach to the state political doctrine (SPD) for governing transboundary water has not been formalized. The core academic contribution of this research is to formalize the structure of the SPD for transboundary water, which might assist in fostering water cooperation and peacebuilding in one of the most conflict-prone regions—the Middle East and South Africa—by examining the upstream countries’ behavior. Case studies include Turkey in the Euphrates–Tigris Basins, Israel in the Jordan River Basin, and Ethiopia in the Nile River Basin. The theoretical framework presents a new paradigm that systematically links a state’s essential drivers, political philosophy, and potential actions, employing the Hegelian dialectic of thesis–antithesis–synthesis and the three Doctrines of Being, Essence, and Concept to articulate the state’s behavior and its indispensable core principles for survival. It is integrated with Arnold Toynbee’s challenge-and-response theory to analyze upstream motives. This study reviewed 328 documents and pieces of literature alongside 105 expert discussions. The key findings include the three upstream countries embracing different SPDs to address specific challenges at the state level, where Turkey employs the Water-Bank Doctrine, Israel utilizes the Identity-Seeking Doctrine, and Ethiopia adopts the Nation Rise Power Doctrine. Besides the critical external challenges that limit water availability, such as the impact of climate change, the time factor is a crucial key to shifting the bargaining power and impacting the adopted SPD, thereby affecting water diplomacy and regional water cooperation. Full article

Although spirituality and religiosity are related, they are not identical phenomena. Based on the results of previous research, we hypothesized that, of the two dimensions of spirituality—transcendence proper (TP) and spiritual openness (SO)—only the former would be a significant positive predictor of religiosity operationalized as centrality of religiosity (COR). This study included 343 participants aged 18 to 82 years (M = 32.18, SD = 10.84), who completed Scale of Spiritual Transcendence and Centrality of Religiosity Scale questionnaires. Structural equation modeling revealed that, when TP and SO were controlled for simultaneously, both predictors were significant. However, while the associations of TP with COR were strong and positive, SO turned out to be a significant but negative predictor of each aspect of COR. This suggests that spirituality can encompass elements that are negatively associated with traditional religiosity and supports the thesis that spirituality is a broader construct than religiosity. Full article

This article examines Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel’s concept of “Torah and Work” (Torah va’avoda) as a central tenet of Religious Zionism. Rabbi Amiel, a prominent ideologue of the Mizrahi movement who served as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv (1936–1945), viewed the integration of spirituality and materiality as representing complete Judaism. Using Hegelian dialectics, Amiel explained his approach: the thesis (spirit) and antithesis (matter) unite to form a synthesis (complete Judaism). He argued that exile transformed Jewish identity from a multidimensional biblical identity to a one-dimensional rabbinical identity focused solely on spirituality. Religious Zionism aimed to restore Judaism to its original completeness. Amiel criticized both ultraorthodox Jews who embraced only the spiritual aspect (Torah) and secular Jews who embraced only the material aspect (work), asserting that only “the complete matter, not half the matter” represents authentic Judaism. He boldly claimed that partial perspectives constitute idolatry. The article explores Amiel’s position on “Hebrew labor”, which he viewed as a national commandment without limitation, contrary to the ultraorthodox view that restricted it to charity considerations. His relationship with labor movements and socialism is also examined—he identified commonalities between Judaism and socialism while highlighting fundamental differences. In 1938, Rabbi Amiel established “Hayishuv Hahadash”, Israel’s first yeshiva high school combining religious and secular studies, as a practical manifestation of his vision of complete Judaism integrating Torah and work. Amiel’s critical stance toward various groups—including Religious Zionism, ultraorthodoxy, and secular Zionism—stemmed from his commitment to revitalizing biblical Jewish identity that harmoniously combines Torah study and productive labor. Full article

This article aims to formulate a philosophical problem that is grounded upon the Pan-Abrahamic nature of early Islam, focusing on the implications that this has for understanding the identity of the contemporary Islamic community. This philosophical problem—termed the Pan-Abrahamic Problem—is structured around the examination of Prophet Muhammad’s leadership and the inclusivity of the early Islamic community, as proposed by Fred Donner in the form of the Pan-Abrahamic Thesis. The formulation of this philosophical problem is presented through the lens of the philosophical criteria of continuity and connectedness of aims (doctrine) and organisation, as proposed by Richard Swinburne. This philosophical problem will, thus, offer a challenge against traditional exclusivist narratives within Islam, ultimately aiming to emphasise the inclusive and pluralistic foundation of the religion and the significance of this for the contemporary Islamic identity. Full article

The image is a particularly valuable data carrier in medical forensic and forensic analyses. One of the analyses, as mentioned above, is to assess whether a graphically captured object is the same object examined in reality. This is a complicated process due to perspective foreshortening, making it difficult to determine the scale and proportion of objects in the frame, as well as the subsequent correct reading of their actual measurements. This paper presented a method for the 3D reconstruction of silhouettes of people recorded in a photo or video, with the aim of identifying these people through subsequent comparative studies. The authors presented an algorithm for dealing with graphic evidence, using the example of the analysis of spatial correlation of the silhouette of the perpetrator of the actual event (recorded via CCTV footage) with the silhouette of the suspect (scanned in 3D in custody). In this paper, the authors posed the thesis that the isometric (devoid of perspective foreshortening) display mode that 3D platforms offer, and the animation of the figure to the desired identical poses, provides the possibility of not only obtaining linear measurements of the person but also of orthophotographic visualization of body proportions, allowing their comparison with another silhouette, which is difficult to achieve in perspective view of the studied image. Full article

There is a close relationship between the size and property of a reservoir and the production and capacity. Therefore, in the process of oil and gas field exploration and development, it is of great importance to study the macro distribution of oil–gas reservoirs, the inner structure, the distribution of reservoir parameters, and the dynamic variation of reservoir characteristics. A reservoir model is an important bridge between first-hand geologic data and other results such as ground stress models and fracture models, and the quality of the model can influence the evaluation of the sweet spots, the deployment of a horizontal well, and the optimization of the well network. Reservoir facies modeling and physical parameter modeling are the key points in reservoir characterization and modeling. Deep learning, as an artificial intelligence method, has been shown to be a powerful tool in many fields, such as data fusion, feature extraction, pattern recognition, and nonlinear fitting. Thus, deep learning can be used to characterize the reservoir features in 3D space. In recent years, there have been increasing attempts to apply deep learning in the oil and gas industry, and many scholars have made attempts in logging interpretation, seismic processing and interpretation, geological modeling, and petroleum engineering. Traditional training image construction methods have drawbacks such as low construction efficiency and limited types of sedimentary facies. For this purpose, some of the problems of the current reservoir facies modeling are solved in this paper. This study constructs a method that can quickly generate multiple types of sedimentary facies training images based on deep learning. Based on the features and merits of all kinds of deep learning methods, this paper makes some improvements and optimizations to the conventional reservoir facies modeling. The main outcomes of this thesis are as follows: (a) the construction of a training image library for reservoir facies modeling is realized. (b) the concept model of the typical sedimentary facies domain is used as a key constraint in the training image library. In order to construct a conditional convolutional adversarial network model, One-Hot and Distributed Representation is used to label the dataset. (c) The method is verified and tested with typical sedimentary facies types such as fluvial and delta. The results show that this method can generate six kinds of non-homogeneous and homogeneous training images that are almost identical to the target sedimentary facies in terms of generation quality. In terms of generating result formats, compared to the cDCGAN training image generation method, traditional methods took 31.5 and 9 times longer. In terms of generating result formats, cDCGAN can generate more formats than traditional methods. Furthermore, the method can store and rapidly generate the training image library of the typical sedimentary facies model of various types and styles in terms of generation efficiency. Full article

The numerous effects of climate change on the urban environment over the past decades have urged many planning professionals to implement the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Higher education institutions (HEIs) bear particular responsibility for sustainability-aware designers able to implement specific measures in this field. This paper presents a typology of design solutions for urban contexts intended to implement Sustainable Development Goal 11, which refers to making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, which can be included in university curricula. The study presents a comprehensive source base of possible interpretations of sustainability guidelines in architectural, landscape, and transport solution design and can be used to guide and assess projects in these fields. Solutions identified and analyzed were grouped into four dimensions related to sustainability aspects (accessibility, ecology, functionality, and identity). The framework proposed was developed based on the teaching experience of thesis design projects and practice-based workshop course projects featured in the curricula of first and second cycle Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Transport programs taught at the Cracow University of Technology, Poland. The projects were prepared as a part of workshop-based public consultations for a real-world project—the construction of a transport hub in Hrubieszów, Poland. The most complex implementation of various individual sustainable design solutions was linked to the interdisciplinarity of the design team and the broadest public participation spectrum. Full article

The goal of this research was to gain a holistic understanding of factors that support or inhibit graduate student success, with a particular interest in the experiences of underrepresented minorities, females in STEM, and first-generation college students. The Graduate Student Success Survey (GSSS) was developed and validated with 537 M.S. and Ph.D. students at a research-intensive university in the southeastern United States. Guided by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and informed by salient factors described in the literature and published surveys, items were developed to measure students’ perceptions of imposter syndrome, microaggressions, microaffirmations, mentoring, sense of belonging, financial support, and mentor relationships. This manuscript details the development of these items and validation of the GSSS with full- and part-time thesis-based graduate students across twelve colleges, six of which were STEM-focused. Validity and reliability were tested with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, resulting in a survey with seven subscales. Findings revealed significant differences in these graduate students’ experiences based on their gender identity, racial and ethnic group, citizenship status, and program area. The findings of this study report the experiences of graduate students at one institution. However, the validated survey and the recommendations resulting from the findings could be used to scaffold student success and provide insight for faculty and administrators on how to better support students. Full article

Abstract Expressionism has been influenced heavily by the popular theory of America’s undying, progressive spirit, originally conceived by Frederick Jackson Turner and given its most potent form in Western films. Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” was embodied in stories of John Wayne and other cowboy heroes taming the supposed edges of civilization. The mythic West as constructed by Turner and these films cemented American identity as one of exploration and innovation, with the notable condition of Indigenous Americans ceding their sovereignty. While Abstract Expressionism was commonly connected to the mythic West through the origin stories of Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still, the critical understanding of this movement as the height of painterly achievement built on Native American precedents evinces a deeper connection to Turner’s popular Frontier theory. As critics like Clement Greenberg cast flatness as the last frontier of painting, and as artists like Pollock and Barnett Newman claimed Native American ritual practices as a part of their aesthetic lineage, Abstract Expressionism proved as effective as Hollywood Westerns in corroborating and perpetuating the idea of America’s frontier spirit. Full article

Defenders of the identity thesis maintain that God’s moral perfection is reducible to and identical to His love. Unfortunately, this thesis overlooks the fact that, biblically, God‘s righteousness comprises both His love and justice. Moreover, divine justice is, in some significant measure, retributive in nature. This is especially evident in God’s eschatological punishment of the wicked, which can be justified only on retributive grounds. Such a retributive punishment cannot be attributed to love but is the just desert of the wicked. Full article