Josephus: The Historian and the Bandit By Brent Shaw

https://www.academia.edu/165288318/Josephus_The_Historian_and_the_Bandit?email_work_card=title Bandits and banditry provide critical barometric readings for the nature of state power. For the whole range of Graeco-Roman antiquity, the historian Josephus offers us the single most continuous and coherent historical narrative that might reveal some of the conceptual apparatus with which this type of power was seen at the time. ...

The Charism of the Christian Left: Dissidence as Habit in a Time of Bi-polar Theopolitics By Neena Mahadev

https://www.academia.edu/74338359/The_Charism_of_the_Christian_Left_Dissidence_as_Habit_in_a_Time_of_Bi_polar_Theopolitics Through ethnography of recent peaceful dissent by Catholic and Protestant activists, life histories, and a reading of a postcolonial archive of contextually grounded liberation theology, I explore the theopolitics of grace that fuels the habits and habitus of Sri Lanka's ecumenical left. Pluralistic and indigenised forms of Christianity emerged in the era of decolonisation and nationalisation and were emboldened by Vatican II. Distinguishing ecumenical Christian pluralism from evangelical Christian expansion in the region, this article historicises Cold War religiosity, drawing out 'bi-polar' contrasts of politically left and right forms of Christian grace. In doing so, I situate religious pluralism within the convulsive era of class and ethnic-based insurrections in Sri Lanka. Analysing the 'catholicity' , civic nationalism, and post-nationalist self-conceptions held by Sri Lanka's Christian left, I argue that the 'something extra' of grace can be fruitfully understood as the cultural accretions and theo-political formations that accrue through localised emplacements of global Christianity. ...

Brian C. Wilson (Western Michigan University), Margo Kitts (ed.), Violence, Conspiracies, and New Religions: A Tribute to the Work of James R. Lewis, 2024. Chapter: Carole M. Cusack, ‘Invented Religions and the Law: The Significance of Colanders, Hoods, and Pirate Costumes’, pp. 129-148. By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/165227144/Brian_C_Wilson_Western_Michigan_University_Margo_Kitts_ed_Violence_Conspiracies_and_New_Religions_A_Tribute_to_the_Work_of_James_R_Lewis_2024_Chapter_Carole_M_Cusack_Invented_Religions_and_the_Law_The_Significance_of_Colanders_Hoods_and_Pirate_Costumes_pp_129_148?email_work_card=title Violence, Conspiracies, and New Religions is a memorial volume in honor of the well- known and prolific scholar of new religious movements, James R. Lewis (1949–2022).

The Temple of Allat, Hatra Preliminary Conservation Activities with Remarks on Architecture By Andrea Squitieri

https://www.academia.edu/165277962/The_Temple_of_Allat_Hatra_Preliminary_Conservation_Activities_with_Remarks_on_Architecture?email_work_card=title by MASSIMO VIDALE, ENRICO FOIETTA, STEFANIA BERLIOZ, ADIB FATEH ALI, ANDREA SQUITIERI with contributions by C. USAI AND G. BARELLA Nell'ambito dei progetti "Damage assessment and first aid interventions to the World Heritage Site of Hatra after DAESH occupation" (2020), "First aid intervention to the World Heritage Site of Hatra after DAESH occupation" (2021-2022), e "Urgent restoration activities and conservation plan for the WHS of Hatra" (2022-2024) finanziati dalla fondazione The International alliance for the protection of heritage (ALIPH), Ginevra, e attuati da ISMEO, Roma, questo rapporto tecnico illustra le condizioni delle rovine del Tempio di Allat di Hatra, uno degli edifici religiosi più impressionanti del santuario interno, così come si presentavano nel 2020, poco dopo la fine dell'occupazione DAESH-ISIS. Vengono riassunte le azioni di conservazione urgenti attuate per restaurare le sculture vandalizzate, illustrandone i risultati conseguiti, nonché le prime azioni protettive volte a fermare o mitigare il degrado architettonico continuo e devastante. Inoltre, vengono presentate alcune osservazioni preliminari sull'architettura del complesso templare e su alcune delle importanti modifiche che subì nel tempo, che, secondo la letteratura disponibile, sembrano collocarsi alle ultime fasi di vita della città. In the framework of the projects "Damage assessment and first aid interventions to the World Heritage Site of Hatra after DAESH occupation" (2020), "First aid intervention to the World Heritage Site of Hatra after DAESH occupation" (2021-2022), and "Urgent restoration activities and conservation plan for the WHS of Hatra" (2022-2024) funded by The International alliance for the protection of heritage (ALIPH), Geneve, and implemented by ISMEO, Rome, this technical report illustrates the conditions of the ruins of Hatra's Temple of Allat, one of the most impressive religious buildings of the inner sanctuary, as we found it in 2020, shortly after the end of the DAESH-ISIS occupation. It summarizes the urgent conservation actions implemented to restore vandalized sculptures, their final results, and the first protective actions meant to halt or mitigate ongoing and ruinous architectural decay. Furthermore, we present some preliminary observations on the architecture of the temple complex and on some of the important modifications it underwent in time, which, according to the available literature, should date back to the city's last phases of life. ...

Carole M. Cusack, Rethinking Richard II: Religiously Tolerant, Politically Revolutionary, Renaissance Prince? By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/165250339/Carole_M_Cusack_Rethinking_Richard_II_Religiously_Tolerant_Politically_Revolutionary_Renaissance_Prince?email_work_card=title Richard II’s life and reign ended in brutal deposition and murder engineered by his first cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV after him. As a medieval king, he was a failure: childless, he left no heir; intransigent, he had few allies and fewer friends; and deeply absorbed in crafting a personal mythology, he neglected the needs of his subjects. Well aware of his royal power, he razed Shene Palace in 1394 after the death of his wife and soulmate Anne of Bohemia. Alien though his life necessarily is, in the twenty-first century Richard II has become more attractive to researchers. It has been proposed that he was an English Renaissance prince, a Cosimo di Medici type creating a culturally advanced court, characterised by magnificent art, literature and architecture. This lecture evaluates his life and afterlife with particular attention paid to the material cultural legacy of his reign, such as the tradition of royal portraiture his inaugurated, his refurbishment of Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey, and his role in the rich culture of poets and literary artists (like Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower) that flourished during his reign. ...

Real-time hydroponic plant disease detection using YOLOv11n on edge devices Parth Aeron, Nitish Wani, Clera Tribhuvan, Vinaya Gohokar, Rupali Kute Volume 2, Issue 1

https://www.academia.edu/journals/academia-ai-and-applications/articles?source=journal-top-nav Hydroponic farming offers a sustainable alternative to traditional agriculture but is highly prone to rapid disease transmission due to its shared water systems. Timely detection of plant diseases is critical to prevent widespread crop loss. In this research, the YOLOv11n object detection model was evaluated in detail for the purpose of real-time hydroponic plant disease detection, and its accuracy, inference speed, power consumption, and resource utilization were compared through various edge devices such as Raspberry Pi 5 (Raspberry Pi Holdings, Cambridge, UK), NVIDIA Jetson Nano (NVIDIA Co., Santa Clara, CA, USA), and AMD Radeon Vega 8 (AMD Micro Devices, Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA). The results not only confirm the applicability of light-weighted and quantized deep learning models for planting disease detection at early stages in controlled hydroponic environments but also give practical knowledge for hardware-model trade-offs in the context of sustainable edge AI-based smart farming systems.

Alkali-treated corn straw and polypropylene fibers in cementitious composites Nicolas Ferreira Lovato, Vinício Cecconello Volume 3, Issue 1

https://www.academia.edu/journals/academia-materials-science/articles?source=journal-top-nav The search for sustainable solutions in civil construction has driven the use of natural fibers to replace synthetic fibers, leading to a reduction in environmental impact and the reuse of agricultural waste. Therefore, this work investigates the performance of cementitious composites reinforced with the addition of 1% corn straw and polypropylene fibers, and the effect of hybridization of these fibers in cementitious composites. To this end, corn straw was cut and subjected to alkaline treatment with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) to remove impurities, reduce water absorption, and improve adhesion to the cementitious matrix. Consistency index, density in fresh and hardened states, capillary water absorption, flexural tensile strength, and axial compression strength tests were performed at 7, 28, and 42 days, in addition to scanning electron microscopy (SEM-FEG) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) at 28 days for the mixes containing corn fiber and synthetic fiber. The results demonstrated that the addition of treated fibers showed good performance in terms of workability, reduced water absorption, and increased toughness of the cementitious composites at 7 days, highlighting the efficiency of the alkaline treatment with Ca(OH)2. At 28 and 42 days, a reduction in performance was observed compared to the mixes with lower corn straw fiber content, pointing to a possible degradation of the fiber due to the alkaline medium. It is concluded that the use of treated natural fibers presents technical viability and environmental benefits, representing a promising alternative for the production of sustainable cementitious composites.