An Apologetic for the Reliability of Biblical Doctrine from Pornography Addiction and Recovery

Sexual ethics (in general) and pornography (in particular) are incredibly hot topics in postmodern culture. The biblical sexual ethic, which was once normative across much of the Global West since the rise and spread of Christianity, is now viewed as outdated and oppressive in a postmodern culture that values individual freedoms above all else. No longer are institutions seen as trustworthy bastions of truth to help shape individuals into good people or proper citizens of a nation. Expert opinions are no longer sought out and used to shape and form the individuals’ thoughts on a given topic unless they support what the individual already believes. The individual is the supreme authority and the freedom to make choices in pursuit of an individual’s inner desires are seen as the highest good. Sexuality is one arena where individual choice has become an ideological battle ground. Specifically, an individual’s sexual choices are seen as a source of identity, to be explored to the uttermost, rather than being the exclusive purview of married couples for the purpose of procreation, community, comfort, and mutual pleasure. This change in perspective since the 1940s has practically eliminated sexual taboos with the notable exception of pedophilia. One extension of the sexualization of culture is the growing prevalence and acceptability of pornography in society. The development of hyper stimulating internet pornography has led to a high level of compulsive use by a significant number of individuals that, in many cases, is a form of addiction. The following argument will seek to demonstrate that modern research into pornography addiction and addiction recovery; when compared to the biblical doctrines regarding sexual activity, sin, and redemption; provide a holistic apologetic for the reliability of biblical doctrine as a whole and the Gospel specifically

El Qaraku o wilancha: Prácticas y creencias religiosas entre los mineros de Huanuni, Bolivia

En aquest treball exploro el procés de construcció de la deïtat el Tío, durant el període colonial a Bolívia, i analitzo les pràctiques i creences religioses contemporànies al voltant d’aquesta deïtat entre els miners de Huanuni, enfocant-me en el sacrifici ritual anomenat qaraku o wilancha. A través d’aquesta anàlisi busco mostrar que tant el procés de construcció cultural del Tío, com les pràctiques rituals, en aquest cas el qaraku, poden ser enteses com a camps de disputa de sentits i significats, en el context de relacions de poder desiguals, i on la “cultura popular” modela i és modelada en la seva interrelació amb la cultura dominant. (Llacs, 1993; Roseberry, 2007, Nugent i Gilbert, 2002).In this article, I explore the creation process of the Tío deity, in the colonial period in Bolivia, also, I analyze current believes and religious practices around the Tío among Huanuni miners, focusing on the ritual sacrifice named qaraku o wilancha. Through this analysis, I pretend to show that the cultural creation of the Tío, as well as the ritual practices, i.e. qaraku, could be understood as a contestation field of meanings and senses, in the context of unequal power relations, where “popular culture” shapes and is shaped in interrelation with dominant culture. (Lagos, 1993; Roseberry, 2007, Nugent y Gilbert, 2002).En este trabajo exploro el proceso de construcción de la deidad el Tío, durante el período colonial en Bolivia, y analizo las prácticas y creencias religiosas contemporáneas alrededor de de esta deidad entre los mineros de Huanuni, enfocándome en el sacrificio ritual denominado qaraku o wilancha. A través de este análisis busco mostrar que tanto el proceso de construcción cultural del Tío, como las prácticas rituales, en este caso el qaraku, pueden ser entendidas como campos de disputa de sentidos y significados, en el contexto de relaciones de poder desiguales, y donde la “cultura popular” moldea y es moldeada en su interrelación con la cultura dominante. (Lagos, 1993; Roseberry, 2007, Nugent y Gilbert, 2002)

On the flow separation mechanism in the inverse Leidenfrost regime

The inverse Leidenfrost regime occurs when a heated object in relative motion with a liquid is surrounded by a stable vapour layer, drastically reducing the hydrodynamic drag at large Reynolds numbers due to a delayed separation of the flow. To elucidate the physical mechanisms that control separation, here we report a numerical study of the boundary-layer equations describing the liquid-vapour flow around a solid sphere whose surface temperature is above the Leidenfrost point. Our analysis reveals that the dynamics of the thin layer of vaporised liquid controls the downstream evolution of the flow, which cannot be properly described substituting the vapour layer by an effective slip length. In particular, the dominant mechanism responsible for the separation of the flow is the onset of vapour recirculation caused by the adverse pressure gradient in the rearward half of the sphere, leading to an explosive growth of the vapour-layer thickness due to the accumulation of vapour mass. Buoyancy forces are shown to have an important effect on the onset of recirculation, and thus on the separation angle. Our results compare favourably with previous experiments.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, revised version submitted to J Fluid Mec

Infección por el virus de la leucemia felina (FeLV) y linfomas mediastínicos : dos casos clínicos

Se describen los hallazgos clínicos, radiológicos y analíticos en dos casos de gatos menores de dos años, que se presentaron con un cuadro clínico de caquexia, vómitos y disnea. En ambos casos las radiografías evidenciaron la presencia de masas intratorácicas; la analítica basada en test ELISA para FeLV y FIV y las necropsias efectuadas, parecen demostrar la relación existente entre gato joven, FeLV y el desarrollo de masas tumorales mediastínicas.The clinical, radiologycal and analytic discovery, are described in two cases of cats under two years of age which were presented with dyspnea, vomiting and caquexia. In both cases the radiographs showed the presence of intrathoracic masses; ELISA test for FeLV and FIV and the necropsy demostrated the relation of young cat and FeLV with the development of mediastinic tumoral masses

Estrategias didácticas para la construcción de conocimientos estadísticos

En este trabajo de investigación se presenta una guía de aprendizaje construida para utilizar una diversidad de herramientas tecnológicas y matemáticas como parte de una estrategia didáctica, estructurada en función de las necesidades de los estudiantes, donde se cuenta con una variedad de problemas contextuales y factibles, considerando una sociedad en crisis y cuya repercusión se proyecta en el proceso educativo. En la aplicación de ésta, se puede apreciar el hecho de la intencionalidad para utilizar las herramientas, las construcciones de conceptos estadísticos, la motivación del trabajo en equipo y los argumentos presentados por los estudiantes para dar significado a la media aritmética y la noción de variabilidad; como logran darle sentido a la toma de decisiones en forma empírica, basados en los efectos que presenta la inestabilidad de los datos

Deep Semi-Supervised and Self-Supervised Learning for Diabetic Retinopathy Detection

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the leading causes of blindness in the working-age population of developed countries, caused by a side effect of diabetes that reduces the blood supply to the retina. Deep neural networks have been widely used in automated systems for DR classification on eye fundus images. However, these models need a large number of annotated images. In the medical domain, annotations from experts are costly, tedious, and time-consuming; as a result, a limited number of annotated images are available. This paper presents a semi-supervised method that leverages unlabeled images and labeled ones to train a model that detects diabetic retinopathy. The proposed method uses unsupervised pretraining via self-supervised learning followed by supervised fine-tuning with a small set of labeled images and knowledge distillation to increase the performance in classification task. This method was evaluated on the EyePACS test and Messidor-2 dataset achieving 0.94 and 0.89 AUC respectively using only 2% of EyePACS train labeled images