Although humanity, by comparison with the other animals, possesses a distinctive capacity for relationship with God, Christian soteriology is infiltrated by anthropocentrism, rooted in biblical literalism and an imperviousness to the theological implications of evolution, that implies unwarranted limits to the saving work of Christ and the exclusion of the vast majority of sentient creatures from salvation. Given the church’s recognition that humanity gradually evolved from nonhuman forms of animal life and Catholicism’s pan-en-theistic, sacramental vision of creation, this article argues that the death and resurrection of Jesus may be salvific for nonhuman animals who have endured the reality of a fallen world and who, depending on the capacity for loving relationships with which God has endowed their species, could participate in the state of heaven and even theosis. The article envisages a diversity of forms of participation in theosis, corresponding to the diversity that characterizes creation.

This study presents a multiproxy reconstruction of terrestrial hydroclimate variability, natural fire occurrence, and vegetation dynamics from the Gonggeomji paleolake in central South Korea, covering the last deglaciation (ca. 17–10 ka). Pollen-based quantitative estimates of mean annual temperature and precipitation, combined with palynomorph assemblages, sedimentary charcoal, and lithological data, reveal strong linkages between climate forcing, ecological change, and fire regimes. During Heinrich Stadial 1, cold and dry conditions—driven by weakened Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and an intensified East Asian winter monsoon—fostered the dominance of boreal conifer forests, reduced vegetation cover, and increased fire frequency and soil erosion. The Bølling-Allerød interstadial was marked by rapid warming, higher humidity, and expansion of warm-temperate deciduous forests. This trend was briefly reversed during the Younger Dryas, which brought cooler conditions and renewed fire activity, although moisture levels remained moderate. Postfire ecological recovery followed a classical successional sequence, with bryophytes and herbs preceding arboreal taxa. These patterns indicate strong ecological resilience under favorable hydroclimatic conditions. The Gonggeomji record highlights the role of both high-latitude and tropical forcings in modulating East Asian monsoon dynamics on multi-centennial timescales. This study provides important insight into vegetation–climate–fire interactions and contributes a valuable inland Korean perspective to global last deglaciation climate reconstructions.

This article offers an in-depth analysis of the creative activity of the Grupo de Experimentación Musical (GEM) within the Argentine musical scene of the late 1960s. Led by Gerardo Gandini, GEM emerged as a collective of composers who explored the timbral potential of both traditional instruments and everyday objects. The study examines the group’s methodology of guided and free improvisation, paying particular attention to its productive reception of foreign improvisation ensembles. Drawing on cultural history, reception theory, and interviews, the article shows how GEM’s young composers reinterpreted avant-garde techniques from European and North American traditions. It also considers the individual contributions of the members and their reception of figures such as Larry Austin, Earle Brown, John Cage, Luis de Pablo, Edgard Varèse, and Iannis Xenakis. The article concludes that GEM’s strategies were rooted in avant-garde compositional procedures and in dialogue with contemporary improvisational practices abroad.

Hume argued that all inductive reasoning presupposes the uniformity of nature. He further argued that there was no successful non-circular argument for this uniformity presumption, hence, inductive reasoning was rationally unjustified. Here I apply the widely discussed Copernican principle and Gott’s delta-t method to argue that the observed uniformity of nature will almost certainly continue into the near future, and will quite probably continue into the distant future. Copernican reasoning uses only the observed duration of a phenomenon to predict its future duration, so this reasoning is non-circular. It also does not involve positing nomic necessary connections, as do many other attempts to answer Hume’s challenge. Copernican reasoning is controversial, as are many of its applications, but the application to Hume’s problem is one that even most critics of the Copernican principle should accept. If Copernican reasoning is ever applicable, it is applicable here. This opens up the possibility of using Copernicus to answer Hume.

Studies assessing potential differences in trace element status among vegans, lacto-ovo-vegetarians (LOV), and omnivores (OMN) are largely lacking. In this cross-sectional study, urinary levels of 12 elements were analysed in 38 vegans, 37 LOV, and 40 OMN. After adjustment for covariates, non-creatinine-adjusted arsenic levels were lower in LOV (-54%) and vegans (-54%) compared to OMN (p = 0.009). Compared to OMN, vegans (but not LOV) had lower mercury (-48%; p = 0.028) and higher cadmium levels (+42%; p = 0.023). Other elements (aluminium, cobalt, copper, lead, molybdenum, nickel, thallium, tin, and zinc) were similar between groups. Analyses normalised to urinary creatinine confirmed lower arsenic levels in LOV (-63%) and vegans (-59%; p<0.001), but suggested similar mercury and cadmium levels in OMN, LOV, and vegans, higher cobalt in LOV (+53%; p = 0.035), and higher copper in vegans (+17%; p = 0.040). Trends (non-significant after adjustment for multiple testing) were noted for nickel (LOV: +119%), cobalt (vegans: +43%), and zinc (vegans: -26%; compared to OMN). LOV and vegans had similar urinary levels (p ≥0.207). Urinary creatinine levels were similar across all groups (p ≥0.912). Eight additional elements were not detected (bismuth, gold, indium, iridium, palladium, silver) or were detected only in a few samples (platinum, zirconium). Overall, LOV and vegans exhibited a lower arsenic burden than OMN. A higher cadmium and lower mercury burden in vegans was not confirmed in creatinine-adjusted analyses. Similar studies are warranted to validate results. Biomonitoring studies may benefit from considering vegetarian status, particularly for arsenic exposure.

The following article presents a hitherto unknown kābı̄n (marriage contract) text in the New Persian language from a manuscript originally kept in Beijing, now held in Taipei. The text is both an important monument of the Christian Early New Persian linguistic community and a testimony of the social life of such communities along the Silk Road in the pre-Mongol period. Arabic borrowings could be a clue that dates the text to the tenth or eleventh centuries. The text represents an important witness to the permanence of the Iranian custom of the dowry payment combined with the Syriac Christian wedding ritual of the Church of the East. The New Persian in the fragment points to the history of early language forms functioning in pre-Mongol non-Muslim communities.

This article aims to reconstruct the social history of norms against the apology for fascism since 1945, focusing on the public debate and the consequences of these norms in Italian society. The primary sources are case law and media debate. This study aims to examine how non-militant Italians perceived the threat posed by fascism and related movements, and how their attitudes towards antifascist legislation evolved over time. By examining case studies highlighting the evolution of non-militant Italian society’s position towards neofascism, the article assesses whether there has been a dialogue between society and the courts.

Distributed ledgers – decentralized databases maintained by network consensus – are often modeled as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to capture the causal structure of data addition. Although blockchain systems like Bitcoin use linear chains, alternatives such as tangle in IOTA employ random DAGs. In such mechanisms each new transaction approves multiple predecessors selected through a randomized process. Prior work has established a fluid-limit approximation of the tangle’s growth, governed by a delay differential equation. In this paper we go beyond the fluid limit by analyzing the next-order behavior. We show that the fluctuations around the deterministic limit converge to a Gaussian process and derive a stochastic delay differential equation (SDDE) that describes this next-order approximation.

In recent years, the through-wall imaging (TWI) systems have garnered tremendous interest due to their potential applications in surveillance, search–rescue operations, and security monitoring, enabling the detection and visualization of objects behind opaque obstacles such as walls. The multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) TWI system has been developed to detect hidden targets behind walls. MIMO-based TWI considerably reduces the time it takes to scan the walls. This study presents an experimental evaluation of a MIMO-based TWI system using a dataset of targets with varying dielectric properties placed at uniform and nonuniform distances behind a wall. The B-scan data are collected for different types of targets for contrast target detection. To effectively suppress clutter and enhance target detectability, we employed a range of advanced signal processing techniques, including singular value decomposition (SVD), SVD-based noise subspace exploitation, the optimum shrinkage algorithm, and background subtraction using data-driven thresholding. The target-to-clutter ratio of the final image was computed to evaluate the effectiveness of each clutter removal technique and to facilitate a comparative analysis of the results. The imaging results demonstrated that the system could detect single and multiple targets, including those composed of different materials.

This article reinterprets the reverse of the Codex Cospi, a Postclassic Central Mexican manuscript. Challenging long-standing views that the iconography in its plates refers to hunting rituals or protective ceremonies against poisonous animals, the article argues that they instead record ritual protocols for the presentation of offerings to divine effigies enshrined in temples. Through a comparison with other codices, archaeological data, and historical sources, the article proposes that the anthropomorphic figures depict temple images of deities, while the surrounding elements encode offerings of blood, aromatic, and coloring substances intended to be deposited before these images in prescribed quantities and sequences. Situating this imagery within Mesoamerican practices of communication with the divine, the article suggests that the reverse of the Codex Cospi functioned as a ritual manual complementing its divinatory obverse. Finally, it considers the possibility that the reverse has been produced in the workshop of a modest, possibly rural community, thereby illuminating the social context of this rare manuscript.

Microwave hyperthermia (HT) is a promising adjunct therapy for breast tumors. This study investigates gold nanoparticle (GNP)-enhanced HT through three-dimensional electromagnetic (EM) simulation of a realistic breast phantom containing an embedded 5 mm tumor, excited by an eight-element fractal octagonal ring antenna (FORA) array operating at 2.45 GHz. A 5.85 nM concentration of 21 nm peptide-capped GNPs confined to the tumor region produces a 65–75$\%$ increase in peak specific absorption rate (SAR) and improves the target-to-breast quotient by 39–47$\%$ across both optimization methods, without introducing additional hotspots in healthy tissue. Two complementary optimization strategies are compared: Python-based genetic algorithm (GA) post-processing and direct optimization within CST. The Python/GA approach achieves a six- to seven-fold reduction in computational time (22–24 vs. 145–158 minutes), enabling rapid treatment planning for varying tumor geometries and nanoparticle concentrations. Baseline thermal modeling confirms that tumor temperatures reach 43–45$^\circ$C, within the therapeutic window for HT. These results demonstrate that GNPs effectively enhance EM energy focusing within the tumor region. The FORA antenna delivers the microwave energy, while the GNPs modify the target’s dielectric profile to selectively boost energy absorption-confining the heat to the tumor while safeguarding adjacent healthy tissue.’ Overall, this work provides computational evidence supporting the feasibility of GNP-enhanced microwave HT, while highlighting key optimization trade-offs between computational efficiency and protection of healthy tissue.

Continually confronted with myriad threats, transnational drug-trafficking organizations (TDTOs) employ different strategies to mitigate risk. In this article, we focus on the political consequences of these risk-mitigation strategies, and offer a theoretical framework through which to understand them. We start from the premise that TDTOs are not inherently political actors. Nonetheless, as illegal enterprises with access to considerable financial resources, TDTOs are (if often inadvertently) capable of shaping politics in important ways if and when they invest in protection, provided by both state and nonstate actors. When these trafficking groups invest in protection, they are capable, firstly, of determining who is able to access political power and, secondly, of affecting how political power is exercised, reshaping the institutions used to govern society—though above all at the subnational level. We provide illustrative evidence for our framework from the Colombian city of Medellín.

Transcatheter closure is the preferred treatment for type 2 atrial septal defects. Device retrieval for embolisation or malpositioning is rarely necessary and can often be performed percutaneously. However, transcatheter retrieval of Occlutech Figulla Flex II atrial septal defects occluders >16 mm can be very difficult, and it has even been stated to be impossible in the literature. Its right atrial hub is ball shaped so that snare devices could slip off when retrieving a large device into a sheath, necessitating the use of multiple snare or other retrieval devices. We present three paediatric cases (four procedures in total) of successful > 16 mm Occlutech atrial septal defect occluder retrieval using a single Multi-Snare® device.