A New Awakening: An New Baptist Church for Liberty, North Carolina

Baptist church architecture in the United States today is losing its uniqueness. Baptist history and heritage have lost their architectural expression. Church architecture in general has become increasingly non-denominational, responding to all faiths, and sadly Baptists have yielded to this trend. There is a pressing need to re-discover those qualities and characteristics unique to Baptists and to determine how they can influence and strengthen Baptist church architecture. Research into the nature of religion and its theoretical practical, and sociological impact on religious man and his places of worship will serve as a foundation for more detailed investigations into church architecture. Baptist history, traditions, liturgies, beliefs, doctrines, philosophies, and theologies as well as historical and contemporary examples of Baptist churches and their forms, shapes, and arrangements will be thoroughly examined in an effort to find liturgical and architectural elements unique to Baptists. The design proposal examines the Baptist worship space and its supporting components. It attempts to integrate Christian worship, Christian education, and Christian fellowship, and provide a place for Baptists to grow emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually in the presence of God. It explores the Baptist church\u27s role as a spiritual institution, indeed, as the House of God

Tracing Hyperobjects: Digital Deep Mapping in the Anthropocene

Agency in the Anthropocene is premised on knowledge of a situation which challenges human comprehension through its complexity and exceeds the spatio-temporal limits of individual, human-scale experience. It hints at a scale and entanglement of factors that likewise defy conventional mapping and spatial methods. Timothy Morton offers the hyperobject as a description of such objects, and proposed new speculative and phenomenological strategies for their exploration. This raises a complex and daunting question: how can challenges of perceiving–and mapping–the forces at work at more-than-human scale be effectively addressed? In this paper, we propose a digitally-expanded notion of ‘Deep Mapping’ as a potential methodology for sensing the contours of the hyperobject: a tracing or palpation of objects of knowledge which exceed the individual. In previous cultural moments, strategies such as Fredric Jameson’s ‘cognitive mapping’ have offered pathways for agency through spatial exploration and ordering of complex situations, though often at the expense of temporality. Deep mapping, conversely, temporalises the act of mapping through narrativisation, but is typically localised and deliberately limited in scale. We argue that the use of digital strategies to augment the deep map can transcend individual and local experience, and provides access to an understanding of the object by opening cognition to its many hidden dimensions, at spatial and temporal scales both above and below those available to human perception. If narrative can be used to reveal the psychological and cultural depths hidden in geographical space, then digital methods such as GIS and data visualisation can be used to demonstrate the way these depths are themselves part of higher-order temporal and spatial patterns. By combining the two, it is possible to ameliorate the deficiencies of other approaches to mapping the multiplicity of agencies at play in environmental perception while simultaneously accepting the finitude of knowledge possible of a hyperobject

In vivo contrast free chronic myocardial infarction characterization using diffusion-weighted cardiovascular magnetic resonance.

BackgroundDespite the established role of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) in characterizing chronic myocardial infarction (MI), a significant portion of chronic MI patients are contraindicative for the use of contrast agents. One promising alternative contrast free technique is diffusion weighted CMR (dwCMR), which has been shown ex vivo to be sensitive to myocardial fibrosis. We used a recently developed in vivo dwCMR in chronic MI pigs to compare apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps with LGE imaging for infarct characterization.MethodsIn eleven mini pigs, chronic MI was induced by complete occlusion of the left anterior descending artery for 150 minutes. LGE, cine, and dwCMR imaging was performed 8 weeks post MI. ADC maps were derived from three orthogonal diffusion directions (b = 400 s/mm2) and one non-diffusion weighted image. Two semi-automatic infarct classification methods, threshold and full width half max (FWHM), were performed in both LGE and ADC maps. Regional wall motion (RWM) analysis was performed and compared to ADC maps to determine if any observed ADC change was significantly influenced by bulk motion.ResultsADC of chronic MI territories was significantly increased (threshold: 2.4 ± 0.3 μm2/ms, FWHM: 2.4 ± 0.2 μm2/ms) compared to remote myocardium (1.4 ± 0.3 μm2/ms). RWM was significantly reduced (threshold: 1.0 ± 0.4 mm, FWHM: 0.9 ± 0.4 mm) in infarcted regions delineated by ADC compared to remote myocardium (8.3 ± 0.1 mm). ADC-derived infarct volume and location had excellent agreement with LGE. Both LGE and ADC were in complete agreement when identifying transmural infarcts. Additionally, ADC was able to detect LGE-delineated infarcted segments with high sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV. (threshold: 0.88, 0.93, 0.87, and 0.94, FWHM: 0.98, 0.97, 0.93, and 0.99, respectively).ConclusionsIn vivo diffusion weighted CMR has potential as a contrast free alternative for LGE in characterizing chronic MI

Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice: Implications for the Relationship Between Science and Religion

This paper examines the role of awe and wonder in scientific practice. Drawing on evidence from psychological research and the writings of scientists and science communicators, I argue that awe and wonder play a crucial role in scientific discovery. They focus our attention on the natural world, encourage open-mindedness, diminish the self (particularly feelings of self-importance), help to accord value to the objects that are being studied, and provide a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. I will flesh out implications of the role of awe and wonder in scientific discovery for debates on the relationship between science and religion. Abraham Heschel argued that awe and wonder are religious emotions because they reduce our feelings of self-importance, and thereby help to cultivate the proper reverent attitude towards God. Yet metaphysical naturalists such as Richard Dawkins insist that awe and wonder need not lead to any theistic commitments for scientists. The awe some scientists experience can be regarded as a form of non-theistic spirituality, which is neither a reductive naturalism nor theism. I will attempt to resolve the tension between these views by identifying some common ground

Supplementary information files for An iron ore-based catalyst for producing hydrogen and metallurgical carbon via catalytic methane pyrolysis for decarbonisation of the steel industry

Supplementary files for article An iron ore-based catalyst for producing hydrogen and metallurgical carbon via catalytic methane pyrolysis for decarbonisation of the steel industry Experiments to investigate the catalytic pyrolysis of methane using an iron ore-based catalyst were carried out to optimize catalytic activity and examine the purity of the carbon produced from the process for the first time. Ball milling of the iron ore at 300 rpm for varying times – from 30 to 330 minutes – was studied to determine the effect of milling time on methane conversion. Optimal milling for 270 minutes led to a five-fold increase in methane conversion from ca. 1% to 5%. Further grinding resulted in a decline of methane conversion to 4% shown by SEM to correspond to an increase in particle size caused by agglomeration. Data from Raman and Mössbauer spectroscopy and H2 temperature programmed reduction indicated a change in phase from magnetite to maghemite and hematite (at the particle surface) as the grinding time increased. Analysis of the carbon produced as a byproduct of the reaction indicated a highly pure material with the potential to be used as an additive for steel production. </p

Use of human visual attention cues by Olive baboons (Papio anubis) in a competitive task

The ability of four olive baboons (Papio anubis) to use human gaze cues during a competitive task was investigated; the baboons were allowed to remove only the non-fixated one of two simultaneously presented food items. Three baboons successfully learned to exploit the human’s head orientation as a cue to obtain a food item, and one individual also learned to use eye direction alone. As the baboons did not receive prior training with gross gestural cues, their performance suggests that the competitive paradigm may be more conducive to gaze monitoring in nonhuman primates than the standard object-choice paradigm. However, the baboons were insensitive to whether the experimenter could actually perceive the food item and therefore use of visual orientation cues may not be indicative of visual perspective-taking abilities in baboons. Performance was disrupted by the introduction of a screen and objects to conceal the food items, and to a lesser degree by the absence of movement in cues presented

Why Do We Need Maths in Medicine?

Maths is a crucial part of medicine. All the graphs, equations, statistics, and general maths we learn at school help us to understand important aspects of human and veterinary medicine, biology, and science in general. People always think that biology and chemistry are important for doctors, nurses, midwives, scientists, and all the other people involved in medicine and healthcare-related jobs, but in fact maths is also vital. So, whether you are thinking of becoming a doctor, hoping to invent medical technologies, or just wishing to understand treatments you get as a patient, understanding the maths behind medicine is crucial. This article explores how we check whether someone has a disease such as coronavirus or heart disease, how we predict and measure how many people will be affected by various diseases, and how maths is used to treat patients and prevent the spread of contagious diseases. While people are generally aware that sciences like biology and chemistry are important for jobs in the medical field, many may not realize that maths is also vital for most of these jobs. This article looks at some of the ways we use maths in medicine. If you want to become a doctor, veterinary surgeon, nurse, midwife, medical scientist, or to have any job related to healing people and animals, or even if you just want to be an informed patient, knowledge of maths is quite important

Constructing quantum games from symmetric non-factorizable joint probabilities

We construct quantum games from a table of non-factorizable joint probabilities, coupled with a symmetry constraint, requiring symmetrical payoffs between the players. We give the general result for a Nash equilibrium and payoff relations for a game based on non-factorizable joint probabilities, which embeds the classical game. We study a quantum version of Prisoners' Dilemma, Stag Hunt, and the Chicken game constructed from a given table of non-factorizable joint probabilities to find new outcomes in these games. We show that this approach provides a general framework for both classical and quantum games without recourse to the formalism of quantum mechanics.Comment: 20 pages, no figure, accepted for publication in Physics Letters