The Word Is An Angel Of The Mind: Angelic And Temple Imagery In The Theology Of John Mansur, The Damascene.

This dissertation looks at the scriptural images of angel and temple, as they occur in key works by John Damascene: on the Heresies, chapter 100 On the Ishmaelites; Three Treatises on the Divine Images, and on the Orthodox Faith. Angelic and temple imagery forms an important core which holds together liturgy, ascesis, and theophany. These types of images constitute a consistent mode for understanding theology and anthropology. As part of revelation, they are important in the early Islamic context. Angel and temple imagery were used by John Damascene to push back against Islamic revelation claims and Islamic challenges to the centrality of these images from an older, more developed and ascetic way of dealing with the imagery of Jewish and Christian revelation. As such, John Damascene must argue in a way which reinforces both the biblical images and the sense of the hermeneutic propriety of worshipping Christ through images and other sacramental means. Christ himself as divine, and God expressed in his Will creating and provident, is defended by the claim for the Image within the Trinity. In the context of both Islamic and Iconoclastic claims to a better understanding of Divine Law, either through Quran or Old Testament, John Damascene consistently tries to show Christian belief and practice as adhering to the Law as properly understood in Christ. In doing so, he ends up more powerfully affirming matter, sense (especially vision), and the body. As regards the body, John Damascene consistently moves in the direction of asserting something bodily about God, definitely proclaiming angels as in some sense bodily and focusing on the theological import of Christ\u27s incarnate enthronement and theophany. For John Damascene, both angel and temple work in tandem as icons, meeting places, and accompaniment of theophany for the Christian. These images help to emphasize human refinement and purification through ascesis and virtue, understood as movement to greater vision and participation in the place of God\u27s appearance and human exaltation, in Christ

Reduced risk of Plasmodium vivax malaria in Papua New Guinean children with Southeast Asian ovalocytosis in two cohorts and a case-control study

BACKGROUND: The erythrocyte polymorphism, Southeast Asian ovalocytosis (SAO) (which results from a 27-base pair deletion in the erythrocyte band 3 gene, SLC4A1Delta27) protects against cerebral malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum; however, it is unknown whether this polymorphism also protects against P. vivax infection and disease. METHODS AND FINDINGS: The association between SAO and P. vivax infection was examined through genotyping of 1,975 children enrolled in three independent epidemiological studies conducted in the Madang area of Papua New Guinea. SAO was associated with a statistically significant 46% reduction in the incidence of clinical P. vivax episodes (adjusted incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.54, 95% CI 0.40-0.72, p>0.0001) in a cohort of infants aged 3-21 months and a significant 52% reduction in P. vivax (blood-stage) reinfection diagnosed by PCR (95% CI 22-71, p = 0.003) and 55% by light microscopy (95% CI 13-77, p = 0.014), respectively, in a cohort of children aged 5-14 years. SAO was also associated with a reduction in risk of P. vivax parasitaemia in children 3-21 months (1,111/microl versus 636/microl, p = 0.011) and prevalence of P. vivax infections in children 15-21 months (odds ratio [OR] = 0.39, 95% CI 0.23-0.67, p = 0.001). In a case-control study of children aged 0.5-10 years, no child with SAO was found among 27 cases with severe P. vivax or mixed P. falciparum/P. vivax malaria (OR = 0, 95% CI 0-1.56, p = 0.11). SAO was associated with protection against severe P. falciparum malaria (OR = 0.38, 95% CI 0.15-0.87, p = 0.014) but no effect was seen on either the risk of acquiring blood-stage infections or uncomplicated episodes with P. falciparum. Although Duffy antigen receptor expression and function were not affected on SAO erythrocytes compared to non-SAO children, high level (<90% binding inhibition) P. vivax Duffy binding protein-specific binding inhibitory antibodies were observed significantly more often in sera from SAO than non-SAO children (SAO, 22.2%; non-SAO, 6.7%; p = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: In three independent studies, we observed strong associations between SAO and protection against P. vivax malaria by a mechanism that is independent of the Duffy antigen. P. vivax malaria may have contributed to shaping the unique host genetic adaptations to malaria in Asian and Oceanic populations. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summar

Duffy receptor expression on erythrocytes as measured by mAb Fy6 on SAO and non-SAO cells (left panel) and binding of PvDBPII to its' receptor on SAO and non-SAO cells (right panel).

<p>Each spot represents analysis of 5×10⁵ erythrocytes from a single donor.</p

Associations between SAO and prevalence of <i>P. vivax</i> and <i>P. falciparum</i> infection in infants 3–21 mo.

a<p>Infections diagnosed by post-PCR LDR-FMA.</p>b<p>Infections diagnosed by expert LM.</p>c<p>AORs with analyses adjusted for the following variables: IPTi treatment group, insecticide treatment bednet usage, village of residence.</p><p>PR, prevalence rate.</p

Associations between SAO and incidence of malaria during follow-up in infants 3–21 mo.

a<p>IRR-AHRs with analyses adjusted for the following potential confounders: gender, village of residence, average bednet usage, season of recruitment, and IPTi treatment group.</p><p>PYAR, person year at risk.</p

Associations between SAO and to first <i>Plasmodium spp.</i> infection during follow-up in children 5–14 y.

a<p>Infections diagnosed by post-PCR LDR-FMA.</p>b<p>Infections diagnosed by expert LM.</p>c<p>AHRs with analyses adjusted for the following significant confounders: <i>P. vivax</i>, presence of LM+ Pv infection at baseline; <i>P. falciparum</i>, distance from residence to local health centre; <i>P. malariae</i>, none.</p>d<p>AHRs with analyses adjusted for the following significant confounders: <i>P. vivax</i>, age >9 y; <i>P. falciparum</i>, distance from residence to local school elementary school+LDR-FMA positive Pf infection at baseline; <i>P. malariae</i>, distance from residence to local health centre and to local elementary school.</p>e<p>As LM-positive <i>P. malariae</i> infection were observed among SAO children, confidence interval could not be estimated and <i>p</i>-value obtained by log-rank test.</p

Time-to-first blood-stage infections with different Plasmodium species in SAO (dashed) and non-SAO children (solid).

<p>Kaplan-Meier Curves with log-rank test for difference.</p

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7