By studying letters written to the dead published in the popular Israeli press between 1997 and 2014, this paper examines the practices that constitute communicative acts toward a deceased person ...using interpersonal and mass media, in order to embody the recipiency of the dead. Using an analytical framework that draws on media ecology, communication theory, and discourse analysis, the paper demonstrates how the epistolary and mass media rhetoric operate to reconstruct the performance of the dead as an addressee. By exploring this understudied phenomenon and revisiting core notions of communication in light of written technologies, distance, and death, the paper argues that this communicative constellation, as a whole, is a performative act that offers a “communicative resurrection” to the dead.
Abstract
According to theological consensus at least from the thirteenth century, at the End of Times our body will be resurrected and reunited with our soul. The resurrected body, although ...numerically identical to our present one, will be quite different: it will possess clarity, agility, subtility, and the inability to suffer. It is the last of these characteristics that will be of most concern in the present article. There are two reasons why impassibility presents a problem in the medieval framework. The first has to do with how to characterize impassibility more precisely; the second arises because at first it may seem that impassibility is not metaphysically possible at all. The article will look at three attempts to tackle these problems: those of Thomas Aquinas, Durand of St.-Pourçain, and Peter of Palude. As the article aims to show, looking at how causal powers work on the New Earth may shed some light on how medieval thinkers thought they worked on the present one.
Following Trump Myers, William R.
Theology today (Ephrata, Pa.),
07/2019, Volume:
76, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article traces how premillennial theology replaced postmillennialism and prepared the way for evangelical identification with Trump’s negative worldview. It suggests, following The Altars Where ...We Worship, multiple ways postmodern humans meet basic human impulses. It details how such “altars” end up serving in markedly religious ways. Using Ninian Smart’s seven categories, it suggests how Trump and those who follow him fit what might be a “new” religion. Finally, the article relates how Moltmann’s understanding of resurrection gives Christians a place to stand in this Trumpian era.
The present study was carried out to examine the impact of a conceptual change model of instruction on philosophical understanding of resurrection (Ma’ad) among male eleventh graders in Kermanshah. ...This quasi-experimental research had a pretest posttest control group design. The statistical population of the study comprised all male eleventh grade students in Kermanshah. For the purpose of sampling, 120 students were selected through random multi-stage cluster sampling method and were randomly assigned to four groups of 30 (two experimental and two control groups). The instrument included a self-devised questionnaire whose content validity was confirmed by experts. In addition, the reliability of the measure was computed to be 0.86 using Kuder-Richardson coefficient. The obtained data were analyzed via analysis of covariance. Results showed that a conceptual change model of instruction had a significant effect on students’ philosophical understanding of resurrection. More specifically, the effect of the pretest was significant and through the elimination of this effect, a significant difference was observed between control and experimental groups concerning philosophical understanding of resurrection.
Plants can regenerate new individuals under appropriate culture conditions. Although the molecular basis of shoot regeneration has steadily been unraveled, the role of age-dependent DNA methylation ...status in the regulation of explant regeneration remains practically unknown. Here, we established an effective auxin/cytokinin-induced shoot regeneration system for the resurrection plant
Boea hygrometrica
via direct organogenesis and observed that regeneration was postponed with increasing age of donor plants. Global transcriptome analysis revealed significant upregulation of genes required for hormone signaling and phenylpropanoid biosynthesis and downregulation of photosynthetic genes during regeneration. Transcriptional changes in the positive/negative regulators and cell wall-related proteins involved in plant regeneration, such as ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL5 (HY5), LATERAL ORGAN BOUNDARIES DOMAIN, SHOOT-MERISTEMLESS, and WUSCHEL, were associated with the regeneration process. Comparison of DNA methylation profiling between leaves from young seedlings (YL) and mature plants (ML) revealed increased asymmetrical methylation in ML, which was predominantly distributed in promoter regions of genes, such as
HY5
and a member of
ABA-responsive element (ABRE) binding protein/ABRE binding factor
, as well as genes encoding glycine-rich cell wall structural protein, CENTRORADIALIS-like protein, and beta-glucosidase 40-like essential for shoot meristem and cell wall architecture. Their opposite transcription response in ML explants during regeneration compared with those from YL demonstrated the putative involvement of DNA methylation in regeneration. Moreover, a significant lower expression of DNA glycosylase-lyase required for DNA demethylation in ML was coincident with its postponed regeneration compared with those in YL. Taken together, our results suggest a role of promoter demethylation in
B. hygrometrica
regeneration.
•A “resurrected” population of Daphnia pulicaria is examined.•The mechanisms of tolerance to chlorpyrifos are evaluated using biochemical assays.•Phase I biotransformation is largely responsible for ...the variation in sensitivity.•Resurrection ecology is useful for examining microevolutionary shifts in physiology.
The evolution of tolerance to environmental contaminants in non-target taxa has been largely studied by comparing extant populations experiencing contrasting exposure. Previous research has demonstrated that “resurrected” genotypes from a population of Daphnia pulicaria express temporal variation in sensitivity to the insecticide chlorpyrifos. Ancient genotypes (1301–1646AD.) were on average more sensitive to this chemical compared to the contemporary genotypes (1967–1977AD.). To determine the physiological mechanisms of tolerance, a series of biochemical assays was performed on three ancient and three contemporary genotypes; these six genotypes exhibited the most sensitive and most tolerant phenotypes within the population, respectively. Metabolic tolerance mechanisms were evaluated using acute toxicity testing, while target-site tolerance was assessed via in vitro acetylcholinesterase (AChE) assays. Acute toxicity tests were conducted using i) the toxic metabolite chlorpyrifos-oxon (CPF-oxon) and ii) CPF-oxon co-applied with piperonyl butoxide (PBO), a known Phase-I metabolic inhibitor. Both series of toxicity tests reduced the mean variation in sensitivity between tolerant and sensitive genotypes. Exposure to CPF-O reduced the disparity from a 4.7-fold to 1.6-fold difference in sensitivity. The addition of PBO further reduced the variation to a 1.2-fold difference in sensitivity. In vitro acetylcholinesterase assays yielded no significant differences in constitutive activity or target-site sensitivity. These findings suggest that pathways involving Phase-I detoxification and/or bioactivation of chlorpyrifos play a significant role in dictating the microevolutionary trajectories of tolerance in this population.
An intricate quantum statistical effect guides us to a deterministic, non-causal quantum universe with a given fixed initial and final state density matrix. A concept is developed on how and where ...something like macroscopic physics can emerge. However, the concept does not allow philosophically crucial free will decisions. The quantum world and its conjugate evolve independently, and one can replace fixed final states on each side just with a common matching one. This change allows for external manipulations done in the quantum world and its conjugate, which do not otherwise alter the basic quantum dynamics. In a big bang/big crunch universe, the expanding part can be attributed to the quantum world and the contracting one to the conjugate one. The obtained bi-linear picture has several noteworthy consequences.
Abstract
Rapid evolution in annual plants can be quantified by comparing phenotypic and genetic changes between past and contemporary individuals from the same populations over several generations. ...Such knowledge will help understand the response of plants to rapid environmental shifts, such as the ones imposed by global climate change. To that end, we undertook a resurrection approach in Spanish populations of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana that were sampled twice over a decade. Annual weather records were compared to their historical records to extract patterns of climatic shifts over time. We evaluated the differences between samplings in flowering time, a key life-history trait with adaptive significance, with a field experiment. We also estimated genetic diversity and differentiation based on neutral nuclear markers and nucleotide diversity in candidate flowering time (FRI and FLC) and seed dormancy (DOG1) genes. The role of genetic drift was estimated by computing effective population sizes with the temporal method. Overall, two climatic scenarios were detected: intense warming with increased precipitation and moderate warming with decreased precipitation. The average flowering time varied little between samplings. Instead, within-population variation in flowering time exhibited a decreasing trend over time. Substantial temporal changes in genetic diversity and differentiation were observed with both nuclear microsatellites and candidate genes in all populations, which were interpreted as the result of natural demographic fluctuations. We conclude that drought stress caused by moderate warming with decreased precipitation may have the potential to reduce within-population variation in key life-cycle traits, perhaps as a result of stabilizing selection on them, and to constrain the genetic differentiation over time. Besides, the demographic behaviour of populations probably accounts for the substantial temporal patterns of genetic variation, while keeping rather constant those of phenotypic variation.
Plant populations vary over time as a result of the effects of environmental variation on life-cycle traits and genetic diversity. It is important to quantify how much populations actually change over time to better understand the response of plants to rapid environmental shifts. Our resurrection approach indicated that populations of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana exhibited substantial genetic changes over just a decade. Interestingly, such changes seemed to be mediated by the combination of the extent of warming and precipitation. Nevertheless, populations remained viable over time suggesting that plants may possess the means to cope with global climate change.
This publication deals with A Biblical Theology of Life based on the New Testament. It forms the second of a two volume publication on A Biblical Theology of Life. These two volumes trace the concept ...of life throughout Protestant canon, working with the final form of the biblical books in Hebrew (vol. 5) and Greek (vol. 6) Scripture. This is done by providing the reader with a book-by-book overview of this concept. This book concludes with a final chapter synthesising the findings of the respective investigations of the Old and New Testament corpora in order to provide a summative theological perspective of the development of the concept through Scripture. It is clear that life forms a central and continuous theme throughout the Biblical text. The theme begins with the living God that creates life, but is shortly followed by death that threatens life. Despite this threat, God sustains life and awakens life from death. The text concludes with the consummation depicting eternal life in the new heaven and earth. The biblical theological approach that has been taken entails a thematic approach as it investigates the concept of life, with contextual foci on what individual books of Scripture teach about life, joined diachronically with an investigation of the progressive use of the concept of life in Scripture, while providing a theology of Scripture as a whole investigating the concept of life in all sixty-six books of the Protestant canon.
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