The ways that parted: Jews, Christians, and Jewish-Christians ca. 100-150 CE

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

Dancing, Clapping, Meditating: Jewish and Christian Observance of the Sabbath in Pseudo-Ignatius

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

Antipodal Texts: B. Eruvin 21b-22a and Mark 7:1-23 on the Tradition of the Elders and the Commandment of God

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

Jewish Observance of the Sabbath in Bardaiṣan’s Book of the Laws of Countries

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

Germ-Line Gene Editing and Congressional Reaction in Context: Learning From Almost 50 Years of Congressional Reactions to Biomedical Breakthroughs

On December 18, 2015, President Obama signed into law a policy rider forestalling the therapeutic modification of the human germ line. The rider, motivated by the science’s potential unethical ends, is only the most recent instance in which the legislature cut short the ongoing national conversation on the acceptability of a developing science. This essay offers historical perspective on what bills were proposed and passed surrounding four other then-developing scientific breakthroughs—Recombinant DNA, in vitro fertilization, Cloning, Stem Cells—to better analyze how Congress is, and should, regulate this exciting and promising science

On operad structures of moduli spaces and string theory

Recent algebraic structures of string theory, including homotopy Lie algebras, gravity algebras and Batalin-Vilkovisky algebras, are deduced from the topology of the moduli spaces of punctured Riemann spheres. The principal reason for these structures to appear is as simple as the following. A conformal field theory is an algebra over the operad of punctured Riemann surfaces, this operad gives rise to certain standard operads governing the three kinds of algebras, and that yields the structures of such algebras on the (physical) state space naturally.Comment: 33 pages (An elaboration of minimal area metrics and new references are added

Sabbath Law and Mishnah Shabbat in Origen De Principiis

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

The Name of the Ruse: The Toss of a Ring to Save Life and Honor

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

Sensitivity of electrophysiological activity from medial frontal cortex to utilitarian and performance feedback.

A recent study has reported the observation in humans of an event-related brain potential component that is sensitive to the value of outcomes in a gambling task. This component, labeled medial frontal negativity (MFN), was most pronounced following monetary losses as opposed to monetary gains. In this study, we investigate the relationship between the MFN and the error-related negativity (ERN), a component elicited by feedback indicating incorrect choice performance. We argue that the two components can be understood in terms of a recently proposed theory that predicts the occurrence of such scalp negativities following stimuli that indicate that ongoing events are worse than expected. The results from two experiments using a gambling task demonstrate that the sensitivity of the MFN/ERN to the utilitarian and performance aspect of the feedback depends on which aspect is most salient. The results are consistent with the view that the two components are manifestations of the same underlying cognitive and neural process