The Continual Cultural, Societal and Religious Relevance of Augustine’s City of God

In every culture and society there are basic fundamental, relevant aspects that are at the core of that society and culture. It is through one of Christianity’s greatest Bishops and writer, St. Augustine, and his work The City of God that his metaphor of the heavenly and the Earthly City examines some the most fundamentally profound aspects to a society and culture. It is through examining The City of God that one can see how profoundly and fundamentally influential and relevant these aspects of civil obedience, natural law, justice, virtue, free will and grace are in medieval history and religion. Furthermore in such an evaluation of The City of God it is evident that Augustine’s work of the City of God and these fundamentally influential and relevant cultural and societal aspects in medieval times are arguably equally as influential and revenant in modern times, society and culture as they were during St. Augustines day and Medieval times, culture and society

The Filibuster: A Means to Preserve the Voice of “We the People”

The Senatorial practice of the filibuster has a long history of being an established fixture in the U.S. Senate. The filibuster, a senatorial tool and tactic of extended or unlimited debate has a constitutional basis, reason and purpose. The filibuster when implemented in accordance with its constitutional basis can maintain the checks and balance of governmental institutions, preserve true representation of “We the People”, protect the individual liberties of the American citizen and the rights of the minority. Thus without the preservation of the filibuster the Senate’s ability to conduct their legislative and representative responsibilities on the behalf of their constituents they represent would be in severe jeopardy. Consequently, the Senate must take the position of doing its due diligence to preserve and sustain the fundamental practice of the filibuster for the American citizenry for whom they represent.

THE GREAT SCHISM: The Great Divide of the West, the East and Christianity

The historical tapestry of Medieval Europe was woven together with numerous profoundly influential threads. One of the most fundamental woven threads in the tapestry of this era was the thread of religion, the church and the Christian faith. An intrinsic part to this religious thread in the Medieval tapestry was the immensely profoundly transforming event of the Great Schism in 1054. The Great Schism in its own religious right was one of the most single profoundly fundamental and influential events that resulted in the transformation of a religion, culture and history. Moreover the Great Schism laid the foundation, paved the way and was the religious prequel of Martin’s Luther’s Protestant Reformation. Thus the Great Schism of 1054 had extensive, influential political, cultural, social, religious and historical consequences. The Great Schism’s legacy of disunion would be evident in the church, the Christian faith and religion for many generations to come.

COMMUNITY PREFERENCES FOR TYPES OF BUSINESSES: A CASE STUDY OF THREE COUNTIES

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

The Electoral College: A Constitutional Needle in a Political Hay Stack

In examination of the constitutional and political institution of the Electoral College the research shows that throughout American politics and history the Electoral College always had and has a role of great political and historical influence. Furthermore the Electoral College has also been a source of much political and constitutional debate. This is an intriguing constitutional needle in a political hay stack for the simple fact that something appears to be insignificant and inconsequential until its time for the national presidential election to roll around every four years. Thus the Electoral College takes front and center of the national political stage as the collective national eyes are all on the presidential race and the ever so magical number of 270. How the Electoral College factors into American politics has been the subject of much political discussion relevant to how the president is elected, how the American public’s voice is represented and how democratic of a political institution or representative system is the Electoral College. Through the sands of time of American history there has been camps of voices echoing concerns about the constitutional needle in a political hay stack of the Electoral College and its influential role in American politics

Resolution of the type material of the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758 (Proboscidea, Elephantidae)

The understanding of Earth’s biodiversity depends critically on the accurate identification and nomenclature of species. Many species were described centuries ago, and in a surprising number of cases their nomenclature or type material remain unclear or inconsistent. A prime example is provided by Elephas maximus, one of the most iconic and well-known mammalian species, described and named by Linnaeus (1758) and today designating the Asian elephant. We used morphological, ancient DNA (aDNA), and high-throughput ancient proteomic analyses to demonstrate that a widely discussed syntype specimen of E. maximus, a complete foetus preserved in ethanol, is actually an African elephant, genus Loxodonta. We further discovered that an additional E. maximus syntype, mentioned in a description by John Ray (1693) cited by Linnaeus, has been preserved as an almost complete skeleton at the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence. Having confirmed its identity as an Asian elephant through both morphological and ancient DNA analyses, we designate this specimen as the lectotype of E. maximus

Robust Ecosystem Demography (RED version 1.0): a parsimonious approach to modelling vegetation dynamics in Earth system models

A significant proportion of the uncertainty in climate projections arises from uncertainty in the representation of land carbon uptake. Dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) vary in their representations of regrowth and competition for resources, which results in differing responses to changes in atmospheric CO2 and climate. More advanced cohort-based patch models are now becoming established in the latest DGVMs. These models typically attempt to simulate the size distribution of trees as a function of both tree size (mass or trunk diameter) and age (time since disturbance). This approach can capture the overall impact of stochastic disturbance events on the forest structure and biomass – but at the cost of increasing the number of parameters and ambiguity when updating the probability density function (pdf) in two dimensions. Here we present the Robust Ecosystem Demography (RED), in which the pdf is collapsed onto the single dimension of tree mass. RED is designed to retain the ability of more complex cohort DGVMs to represent forest demography, while also being parameter sparse and analytically solvable for the steady state. The population of each plant functional type (PFT) is partitioned into mass classes with a fixed baseline mortality along with an assumed power-law scaling of growth rate with mass. The analytical equilibrium solutions of RED allow the model to be calibrated against observed forest cover using a single parameter – the ratio of mortality to growth for a tree of a reference mass (μ0). We show that RED can thus be calibrated to the ESA LC_CCI (European Space Agency Land Cover Climate Change Initiative) coverage dataset for nine PFTs. Using net primary productivity and litter outputs from the UK Earth System Model (UKESM), we are able to diagnose the spatially varying disturbance rates consistent with this observed vegetation map. The analytical form for RED circumnavigates the need to spin up the numerical model, making it attractive for application in Earth system models (ESMs). This is especially so given that the model is also highly parameter sparse

Styrene-Associated Health Outcomes at a Windblade Manufacturing Plant

Background: Health risks of using styrene to manufacture windblades for the green energy sector are unknown. Methods: Using data collected from 355 (73%) current windblade workers and regression analysis, we investigated associations between health outcomes and styrene exposure estimates derived from urinary styrene metabolites. Results: The median current styrene exposure was 53.6 mg/g creatinine (interquartile range: 19.5–94.4). Color blindness in men and women (standardized morbidity ratios 2.3 and 16.6, respectively) was not associated with exposure estimates, but was the type previously reported with styrene. Visual contrast sensitivity decreased and chest tightness increased (odds ratio 2.9) with increasing current exposure. Decreases in spirometric parameters and FeNO, and increases in the odds of wheeze and asthma-like symptoms (odds ratios 1.3 and 1.2, respectively) occurred with increasing cumulative exposure. Conclusions: Despite styrene exposures below the recommended 400 mg/g creatinine, visual and respiratory effects indicate the need for additional preventative measures in this industry

Self-similar stable processes arising from high-density limits of occupation times of particle systems

We extend results on time-rescaled occupation time fluctuation limits of the $(d,\alpha, \beta)$-branching particle system $(0<\alpha \leq 2, 0<\beta \leq 1)$ with Poisson initial condition. The earlier results in the homogeneous case (i.e., with Lebesgue initial intensity measure) were obtained for dimensions $d>\alpha / \beta$ only, since the particle system becomes locally extinct if $d\le \alpha / \beta$. In this paper we show that by introducing high density of the initial Poisson configuration, limits are obtained for all dimensions, and they coincide with the previous ones if $d>\alpha/\beta$. We also give high-density limits for the systems with finite intensity measures (without high density no limits exist in this case due to extinction); the results are different and harder to obtain due to the non-invariance of the measure for the particle motion. In both cases, i.e., Lebesgue and finite intensity measures, for low dimensions ($d<\alpha(1+\beta)/\beta$ and $d<\alpha(2+\beta)/(1+\beta)$, respectively) the limits are determined by non-L\'evy self-similar stable processes. For the corresponding high dimensions the limits are qualitatively different: ${\cal S}'(R^d)$-valued L\'evy processes in the Lebesgue case, stable processes constant in time on $(0,\infty)$ in the finite measure case. For high dimensions, the laws of all limit processes are expressed in terms of Riesz potentials. If $\beta=1$, the limits are Gaussian. Limits are also given for particle systems without branching, which yields in particular weighted fractional Brownian motions in low dimensions. The results are obtained in the setup of weak convergence of S'(R^d)$-valued processes.Comment: 28 page