Book Review: Risking Christ for Christ\u27s Sake

A review of Risking Christ for Christ\u27s Sake: Towards an Ecumenical Theology of Pluralism by M.M. Thomas

Book Review: River of Compassion: A Christian Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita

A review of River of Compassion: A Christian Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita by Bede Griffiths

Book Review: Inter-Faith Dialogue and World Community

A review of Inter-Faith Dialogue and World Community edited by Ch. Sreenivasa Rao

SPEEDY: An Eclipse-based IDE for invariant inference

SPEEDY is an Eclipse-based IDE for exploring techniques that assist users in generating correct specifications, particularly including invariant inference algorithms and tools. It integrates with several back-end tools that propose invariants and will incorporate published algorithms for inferring object and loop invariants. Though the architecture is language-neutral, current SPEEDY targets C programs. Building and using SPEEDY has confirmed earlier experience demonstrating the importance of showing and editing specifications in the IDEs that developers customarily use, automating as much of the production and checking of specifications as possible, and showing counterexample information directly in the source code editing environment. As in previous work, automation of specification checking is provided by back-end SMT solvers. However, reducing the effort demanded of software developers using formal methods also requires a GUI design that guides users in writing, reviewing, and correcting specifications and automates specification inference.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2014, arXiv:1404.578

Complementation between mouse Mfn1 and Mfn2 protects mitochondrial fusion defects caused by CMT2A disease mutations

Mfn2, an oligomeric mitochondrial protein important for mitochondrial fusion, is mutated in Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) type 2A, a peripheral neuropathy characterized by axonal degeneration. In addition to homooligomeric complexes, Mfn2 also associates with Mfn1, but the functional significance of such heterooligomeric complexes is unknown. Also unknown is why Mfn2 mutations in CMT2A lead to cell type–specific defects given the widespread expression of Mfn2. In this study, we show that homooligomeric complexes formed by many Mfn2 disease mutants are nonfunctional for mitochondrial fusion. However, wild-type Mfn1 complements mutant Mfn2 through the formation of heterooligomeric complexes, including complexes that form in trans between mitochondria. Wild-type Mfn2 cannot complement the disease alleles. Our results highlight the functional importance of Mfn1–Mfn2 heterooligomeric complexes and the close interplay between the two mitofusins in the control of mitochondrial fusion. Furthermore, they suggest that tissues with low Mfn1 expression are vulnerable in CMT2A and that methods to increase Mfn1 expression in the peripheral nervous system would benefit CMT2A patients

Viewpoint: Religious Fundamentalism and Pluralism in India

Much has been written and said in recent months about religious fundamentalism and pluralism in India. However, in order to understand what is currently going on in India with regard to these two phenomena, a third really needs to be brought into the picture -- communalism. Indeed, one could well argue, though I have neither the time nor the space here, that the fundamentalisms of India -- whether Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian -- were conceived in communally perceived times of crisis. Basically fundamentalist movements in India are critiques of contemporary ways of life and look to a future, determined by the past, where the true believer is twice blessed with true faith and secular power. They are defensive movements which resort to a selective retrieval of the tradition and, in the process, its redefinition

Forest and Village: Popular Hindu-Christian Encounter

The realization that what is commonly spoken of as Hinduism is in reality an elite Brahmanical religion is so ubiquitous that there is no need to argue the point here. Similarly, Christianity has generally been understood in terms of classical Western theological and philosophical thought. This being the case, it is hardly surprising that until relatively recently what has been understood as the encounter and interaction of Christianity and Hinduism has been, in fact, an encounter and interaction of what we might speak of as the elite great traditions in both religious systems. Yet the fact remains that in India approximately 75-80% of the Christian community do not come from the high caste or elite stratum of Indian society. Indeed, many of us have for some time now been astounded by the extent to which attempts to document and understand the encounter and interaction of Christianity with Hinduism in India, including the Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin, have concentrated almost exclusively on the interaction of the classical theological and philosophical elements of the Christian tradition with similar elements of the Hindu tradition