Theology, tragedy, and suffering in nature: toward a realist doctrine of creation

This dissertation proposes the adoption of the concept of tragedy as a theological category, as a way to address the traditional problem of suffering in the natural world, customarily known as the problem of natural evil. The theological utilization of the concept of tragedy enables a Christian doctrine of creation to remain accountable to the structures and processes of the natural world, including evolutionary development. Many traditions evince an awareness of the intractability of suffering in nature and there have been various religious responses to it. Within some Christian communities, the discovery by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) of evolution by natural selection proved disruptive to established ways of addressing that issue. This disruption has been especially significant in the area of theological interpretations of creation. This is the case in part because of the way evolutionary theory reveals the role of starvation, predation, and constrained stochasticity in the development of ecosystems and organisms. Theological responses to evolution within the Christian tradition have typically failed to come to terms with these features of biological evolution. However, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), Donald MacKinnon (1913-1994), and Rowan Williams (b. 1950) have, in different ways, shown how theological interpretations of tragedy can achieve a high degree of realism in regard to suffering, respecting the unique characteristics of individual experiences while situating suffering in a theologically meaningful frame of reference. These thinkers have also identified an awareness of tragedy within the Christian tradition itself, particularly as it is reflected in liturgical practices. This dissertation employs these insights to address the issue of suffering in the natural world, in order to contribute to a realist Christian doctrine of creation. The theological category of tragedy does not solve the problem of natural evil. But it has the double virtue of attending closely to the specifics of the natural world and maintaining a principled tension between experiences of suffering and Christian claims about the possibility of redemption

Criteria used by social workers in assessing movement in groups

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

“What if There's Something Wrong with Her?”‐How Biomedical Technologies Contribute to Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare

While there is a steadily growing literature on epistemic injustice in healthcare, there are few discussions of the role that biomedical technologies play in harming patients in their capacity as knowers. Through an analysis of newborn and pediatric genetic and genomic sequencing technologies (GSTs), I argue that biomedical technologies can lead to epistemic injustice through two primary pathways: epistemic capture and value partitioning. I close by discussing the larger ethical and political context of critical analyses of GSTs and their broader implications for just and equitable healthcare delivery

Pre- and Postnatal Fine Particulate Matter Exposure and Childhood Cognitive and Adaptive Function

Increasing evidence exists for an association between early life fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure and several neurodevelopmental outcomes, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, the association between PM2.5 and adaptive and cognitive function remains poorly understood. Participants included 658 children with ASD, 771 with a non-ASD developmental disorder, and 849 population controls from the Study to Explore Early Development. Adaptive functioning was assessed in ASD cases using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS); cognitive functioning was assessed in all groups using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). A satellite-based model was used to assign PM2.5 exposure averages during pregnancy, each trimester, and the first year of life. Linear regression was used to estimate beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals, adjusting for maternal age, education, prenatal tobacco use, race-ethnicity, study site, and season of birth. PM2.5 exposure was associated with poorer VABS scores for several domains, including daily living skills and socialization. Associations were present between prenatal PM2.5 and lower MSEL scores for all groups combined; results were most prominent for population controls in stratified analyses. These data suggest that early life PM2.5 exposure is associated with specific aspects of cognitive and adaptive functioning in children with and without ASD

Fault Tolerance in Protein Interaction Networks: Stable Bipartite Subgraphs and Redundant Pathways

As increasing amounts of high-throughput data for the yeast interactome become available, more system-wide properties are uncovered. One interesting question concerns the fault tolerance of protein interaction networks: whether there exist alternative pathways that can perform some required function if a gene essential to the main mechanism is defective, absent or suppressed. A signature pattern for redundant pathways is the BPM (between-pathway model) motif, introduced by Kelley and Ideker. Past methods proposed to search the yeast interactome for BPM motifs have had several important limitations. First, they have been driven heuristically by local greedy searches, which can lead to the inclusion of extra genes that may not belong in the motif; second, they have been validated solely by functional coherence of the putative pathways using GO enrichment, making it difficult to evaluate putative BPMs in the absence of already known biological annotation. We introduce stable bipartite subgraphs, and show they form a clean and efficient way of generating meaningful BPMs which naturally discard extra genes included by local greedy methods. We show by GO enrichment measures that our BPM set outperforms previous work, covering more known complexes and functional pathways. Perhaps most importantly, since our BPMs are initially generated by examining the genetic-interaction network only, the location of edges in the protein-protein physical interaction network can then be used to statistically validate each candidate BPM, even with sparse GO annotation (or none at all). We uncover some interesting biological examples of previously unknown putative redundant pathways in such areas as vesicle-mediated transport and DNA repair

Risk Factors for Nipah Virus Encephalitis in Bangladesh1

Patients in Goalando were likely infected by direct contact with fruit bats or their secretions, rather than through contact with an intermediate host

Rental Insights A COVID-19 Collection

This Collection offers insights from twenty of Australia’s leader academics and thinkers into the survey results of 15,000 Australian rental households. The Collection draws on data from The Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset funded by the Australian Research Council in partnership with six Australian universities as well an additional AHURI funded COVID-19 module