Search Results (1,606)

This article explores how the photographic practice of Polish contemporary artist Krzysztof Marchlak draws on the visual language of early modern Italian painting. The main goal of the article is to highlight how historical iconography connected to the representations of St Sebastian is reimagined today in a contemporary photographic context. Krzysztof Marchlak’s exploration of the male nude explicitly bridges contemporary queer art with the visual traditions of the Renaissance and antiquity. His photographs reinterpret canonical forms such as contrapposto poses, the central placement of the male figure, and decorative motifs echoing mythological and sacred iconography, offering a critical re-reading. Full article

This article examines the role of visual and plastic art as a key instrument for constructing and interpreting cultural space. The study synthesizes a corpus of diverse theoretical works on the interaction between art and landscape, systematizes the principal issues within the field, and proposes avenues for further discussion. It investigates how art not only reflects but also physically, visually, and semantically transforms the landscape. Functioning as a mediator between spiritual, material, and symbolic realities, art creates distinctive forms of spatial experience. Through artistic practices, the aesthetics of a landscape are formed, along with visual and semantic codes, and new centers and loci that alter the perception of the environment. On a theoretical level, the research draws upon the semiotics of space, the philosophy of art, and the concept of landscape as text. The mechanisms through which landscape is endowed with meaning—via architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature—are examined, with a focus on narrative and symbolic modes of artistic interpretation. Particular attention is paid to art as a tool for shaping cultural memory, from memorial complexes to heritage museums, which become spaces of a different temporality and “reservations” of meaning. The cultural landscape is a site of interaction between the sacred and the profane, tradition and innovation, and elite and mass art. Art forms the codes for reading the landscape, translating visual characteristics—color, form, the vertical, the horizontal—into the realm of cultural significance. Thus, art is presented as a form of world reconstruction: an instrument for the spiritual and semantic appropriation of space, one that transforms the landscape into a text perpetually rewritten by culture. Full article

Background/Objectives: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most frequent skin cancer in Caucasian populations. While dermoscopy supports diagnosis, accurate subtype classification requires histopathology. Line-field confocal optical coherence tomography (LC-OCT) offers high resolution, adequate penetration, and three-dimensional imaging, bridging the gap between dermoscopy and histopathology. This study assessed the concordance between LC-OCT and histopathology for BCC criteria and subtypes. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 127 histopathologically confirmed BCCs from the Departments of Dermatology and Pathology, Hôpital Erasme, Brussels. LC-OCT images and corresponding histopathological slides were evaluated. Objective analysis used a predefined checklist of LC-OCT criteria compared with histopathology. Subjective analysis consisted of independent side-by-side assessments of global resemblance by three observers with varying expertise. Concordance rates and κ statistics were calculated. Results: The objective analysis showed the highest concordance (≥80%) for lobules, blood vessels, bright cells, lobule location, and dermal-epidermal junction disruption. Intermediate concordance (50–80%) was found for hemispheric morphology, outer bright rim, stromal stretching, and parakeratosis. Inner dark rim and palisading showed low concordance (<50%). Subjective evaluations demonstrated strong resemblance between LC-OCT and histopathology (overall concordance 81.1%), ranging from 86.6% to 98.4% across observers. Interobserver agreement was slight overall (κ = 0.10, p = 0.02), with one moderate pairwise κ (0.41). Conclusions: LC-OCT demonstrates good concordance with histopathology for key diagnostic and subtype-discriminating BCC features. Despite variability in subtle criteria, the findings support LC-OCT as a clinically relevant tool for non-invasive diagnosis and management of BCC. Full article

This study aims to understand how religious affective content in the digital realm influences epistemic authority, social imaginaries, and religious beliefs among young adults (individuals between 18 and 35) with a university education and who identify as Christian, Hindu, or Muslim in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Data indicate the growing role of digital platforms as epistemic sources for religious maintenance, while families, private sacred-text teachings, religious leaders, and the community continue to serve as primary sources. Cultural capital, such as higher education and social skills, does not necessarily make respondents psychologically or emotionally resilient to be able and effectively deal with moral distrust and hate speech on social media. In daily life individuals feel cross-pressured between their religious attitudes, and secular educational institutions and government agencies who promote liberal values while perceiving religion as a threat, despite not consistently adhering to those liberal values themselves. Hence, this experienced injustice in the city, enhanced by the negative framing of religion in digital media, may influence the social judgement of individuals and the processes of alienation, polarization and radicalization. Full article

This article explores Lebanese Christian digital presence within the framework of Sacred Algorithms: Religion in the Digital Age. In a society marked by economic collapse, migration, and religious plurality, digital platforms have become vital arenas for Christian witness, reshaping authority, belonging, and mission. The emergence of online clerical and lay initiatives shows how spiritual authority today is hybrid: rooted in sacramental legitimacy yet co-constructed through algorithmic visibility. The study develops four lines of analysis: the rise of digital spiritual authority in Lebanon and its negotiation within local and diaspora contexts; the ethical and theological challenges of surveillance and religious freedom in fragile environments; the successes and limitations of digital engagement, including the impact on parish life; and a theology of digital witness framed by proximity, synodality, solidarity, and mission in a multi-religious society. The Lebanese case highlights that algorithms are not neutral but powerful gatekeepers of religious presence. The central question is whether digital witness can remain faithful to the Gospel’s call to proximity, community, and transformation without being reduced to metrics of popularity and visibility. Full article

This paper places La Casa de las Golondrinas, a Pre-Columbian rock image site, in its Kaqchikel Maya cultural context. This is an exploration of both the cultural situation of the paintings and the meaning of a selection of the images. A comparison of sacred locations in contemporary use in the Kaqchikel highlands to the prehistoric locations of La Casa de las Golondrinas reveals that the same features are present in both the contemporary and Pre-Columbian milieu. Further comparisons show that there is a concordance of themes in the Pre-Columbian rock art with those found in the Kaqchikel ethnographic studies. Some of the matters covered are portals to the spiritual world, mythological deities and other spiritual beings, sacrifice and ritual celebrations, and the quincunx, which defines the sacred world’s four corners and center. This paper discusses a variety of single images and image clusters pertaining to seasonal rituals and creation using ethnographic information by Kaqchikel Maya archaeological and cultural scholars, the Popul Vuh, and sources on Maya cosmology and art. Full article

This paper critically explores Kṛṣṇanāṭṭam, a Sanskrit ritual dance-theater tradition from Kerala, as a product of socio-political and religious transformations in early modern South India. Conceived in the mid-17th century by the Zamorin King Mānavēda, author of the Sanskrit text Kṛṣṇagīti, Kṛṣṇanāṭṭam was both a devotional offering to Lord Kṛṣṇa and a strategic expression of ritual sovereignty. Rooted in Kṛṣṇa bhakti (devotion), the tradition reflects how religious performance was mobilized to assert political legitimacy, particularly amid rivalry with regional powers such as Travancore. The Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple, situated in the Malabar region of northern Kerala and central to the performance of Kṛṣṇanāṭṭam, emerged as a vital sacred space where royal patronage, ritual authority, and caste hierarchy intersected. The performance’s exclusivity restricted to Hindu audiences within temple premises reinforced patterns of spatial control and caste-based exclusion. Institutional support codified the tradition, sustaining it across generations within a narrow sociocultural framework. With the decline of Zamorin rule and the onset of colonialism, Kṛṣṇanāṭṭam faced structural disruptions. Colonial interventions in temple administration, landholding, and religious patronage weakened its ritual foundations. Guruvayur’s transformation into a public devotional center reflected wider shifts in ritual ecology and sacred geography under colonial modernity. In both the colonial and postcolonial periods, Kṛṣṇanāṭṭam struggled to survive, nearly facing extinction before its revival under the Guruvayur temple’s custodianship. By examining Kṛṣṇa devotion, royal ambition, caste dynamics, and colonial transformation, this paper offers a critical lens on Kerala’s evolving religious and cultural landscapes. Full article

Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is a transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research project around Sámi cosmology and the act of giving voice to indigenous reclamation of sacred spaces. The Sámi are the indigenous people of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is a hybrid fusion between textile art, music, poetry and theology, aiming at taking part in the decolonizing processes of indigenous people’s lands and cultures in Scandinavia. Practice-based artistic research is characterized by the fact that the research process proceeds by and through the act of artistic making. The artistic process is the core, and research methodologies and theoretical perspectives are built around it, functioning as a supporting framework. Reflective writing is used as means to get access to transpersonal depths of the creative process. Reflections upon different aspects of the artwork are developed and, simultaneously, on how it can be a seen as a vehicle for indigenous voices in order to be heard in sacred spaces of our time. Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is an artistic performance that functions as a ceremonial act of giving voice, a liberation from the silence of the colonized past. Full article

Anorexia nervosa is among the most lethal psychiatric conditions. Online pro-anorexia (“pro-ana”) communities may frame starvation and restriction in moral or spiritual terms. This study explored how pro-ana discourse on X (formerly Twitter) encodes values, spirituality, and identity through language, with attention to clinical practice. A dataset of 2396 English-language tweets (2020–2025) was collected using dual criteria (pro-ana hashtags plus eating-disorder keywords). Only U.S.-based English tweets were included to maintain linguistic and cultural coherence with LIWC-22 norms and counseling frameworks developed in U.S. contexts. Tweets were separated into three corpora (full, hashtags, and tweet bodies) and analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2022 (LIWC-22), supplemented with custom spirituality and pro-ana dictionaries, and keyword/keyness analysis against a 36-billion-token web reference corpus. Religious language appeared consistently higher in hashtags compared with tweets and Twitter norms. Tweets contained more authenticity and self-disclosure, while hashtags functioned as collective markers of identity and practice. Body and food terms were strongly elevated, and affiliation terms appeared comparatively suppressed. Keyness analysis identified distinctive items such as prayer fast, fasting prayer (Luke), OMAD fast, hunger hurt, and I’m punching, illustrating how sacred, cultural, and diet-related slogans were combined within pro-ana discourse. Pro-ana rhetoric may function as a sacralized identity frame that can provide existential meaning to disordered practices. These findings contribute to behavioral science by highlighting how online communities linguistically construct health-related identities and values. They also suggest that effective clinical interventions should address eating disorders not only at behavioral and cognitive levels but also at the level of values and spirituality. Full article

The Philippine brown deer (Rusa marianna Desmarest, 1822) is a tropical cervid increasingly threatened by hunting and habitat loss. It is endemic to the Philippine archipelago, now listed as Endangered under the Philippine Red List and as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List. This study examined the cultural sensitivities and perspectives of the Mandaya Indigenous peoples through in-depth interviews with 29 Indigenous experts and community observations from Davao Oriental, Philippines. In Mandaya cosmology, the brown deer is known as Yatag ni Magbabaya, or a gift from the Creator, and is regarded as an integral part of Mandaya culture and the ancestral lands. The brown deer is a sacred species and an indigenous food source, and its hunting is a Mandaya tradition passed down through generations. Anthropogenic disturbances remain the leading threats against the brown deer, including forest clearing and indiscriminate hunting. Poverty is also a critical driver of hunting pressures, inducing many community members to depend on forest resources and products. The causal layered analysis revealed that human-deer interactions shape local perspectives on conservation, providing insights into the effectiveness of national protection policies. In addition, the futures triangle envisions a sustainable brown deer population to address food security and economic challenges. The research findings call for culturally sensitive conservation strategies and contextualised community education that align with the Mandayas’ traditions and values. Their engagement ensures that conservation goals are met while addressing the community’s socio-economic needs. This study also emphasises the urgent need to reassess the brown deer conservation status to inform protection and management decisions. Full article

Background/Objectives: Point-of-care testing (POCT) is increasingly adopted in primary healthcare to facilitate rapid screening and monitoring of chronic conditions. Ensuring that its analytical quality is comparable to central laboratory testing is crucial for safe and effective implementation. This study aims to rigorously evaluate the analytical performance of the Allegro POCT system against established central laboratory reference methods to determine its suitability for decentralized healthcare settings. Methods: We assessed the correlation, concordance, and bias of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), glucose (GLUC), total cholesterol (CHOL), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), triglycerides (TRIG), creatinine (CREA), and C-reactive protein (CRP). Using a cohort of 100 residual patient samples, measurements from the Allegro POCT system were compared against reference methods on the Atellica CH 930 Analyzer and TOSOH G8 system. The statistical analysis was performed using Deming regression, Bland–Altman plots, and Pearson correlation. Results: HbA1c and GLUC demonstrated strong linearity and correlation (Pearson’s r = 0.9863 and r = 0.9994, respectively). A slight positive bias was noted for HbA1c at higher concentrations. In the lipid panel, CHOL showed a significant positive bias (mean bias +14.2 mg/dL), while TRIG exhibited a substantial negative bias (mean bias −37.0 mg/dL) and wide limits of agreement. HDL and CREA showed good linearity but only moderate agreement. CRP demonstrated excellent concordance with the reference method (Pearson’s r = 0.9955) and minimal bias. Conclusions: The Allegro system exhibits acceptable analytical performance for GLUC and CRP, rendering it suitable for decentralized use. HbA1c and CREA performance is adequate, though caution is advised due to observed biases. However, the significant biases for CHOL and TRIG underscore the indispensable role of central laboratory oversight in any POCT program. Rigorous initial validation and continuous quality monitoring under a robust governance framework are essential to ensure the reliability and clinical utility of POCT. Full article

Gastric cancer is a significant health concern in East Asia, where early risk prediction is critical for prevention. However, the scarcity of single-hospital electronic health records (EHRs) data limits the applicability and generalizability of machine learning models. To address this challenge, we propose an ensemble transfer learning framework for gastric cancer prediction using structured EHRs in a data-scarce single-hospital setting. Three base models, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, and Deep Neural Network (DNN), were pretrained on a large-scale national dataset from the Republic of Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) and fine-tuned on a smaller institutional dataset from Kangdong Sacred Heart Hospital (KSHH). These fine-tuned models were combined via stacking ensemble learning with logistic regression as a meta-learner. The proposed model achieved strong performance with precision 0.78, recall 0.92, F1-score 0.83, accuracy 0.91, and AUC 0.93. For interpretability, permutation feature importance and Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) were applied. Smoking status, gender, and hypertensive disorder were identified as key predictors consistent with previous studies. This study demonstrates the successful application of transfer learning to overcome data scarcity in single-hospital structured EHRs. Furthermore, our stacking ensemble strategy outperformed the individual fine-tuned models, offering a generalizable framework for gastric cancer prediction in data-scarce clinical settings. Full article

Although similar, the terms ‘sacred text’ and ‘sacred scripture’ are not interchangeable. In my view, ‘sacred scriptures’ are physical materials that embody the transcendental words recognised as ‘sacred text’ in tangible form. Since the Abrahamic religions hold their scriptures in such high regard, the distinction between ‘sacred text’ and ‘sacred scripture’ becomes blurred within these traditions. By contrast, Indian religions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism seem to be more careful to maintain this distinction, as they attribute greater prestige to orality. Even when their sacred texts were written down, their main function was not usually to establish a connection between the author and the reader, i.e., to be read, but rather to be worshipped as relics. This article aims to introduce the Indian textual tradition as a possible counterpoint to the Judaeo-Christian approach. It provides a general overview of oral and manuscript culture in Indian religions and examines whether the high reverence attributed to the oral transmission, the lower prestige of the writing, and the worship of manuscripts can be understood as strategies to avoid those discrepancies, which are known as the ‘sins of reading’ (‘peccata lectionis’) in Western civilization. Full article

Engaged spiritualities face a central challenge: how to transform moments of transcendence into enduring forms of shared life under modern conditions of pluralism, critique, and expressive individualism. This article asks what enables certain forms of spiritual life to last while others fade. It offers an emergentist, systems-theoretical account of how sacred life endures by viewing religion as a self-organizing symbolic system in which meaning and communal practice continually reinforce one another. In plain terms, it examines how myth, ritual, and transformative experience interact to turn inspiration into a lasting sacred world. The study identifies this interaction as the metaperformative loop, a feedback process linking a named yet inexhaustible mystery, inherited ritual authority, and formative submission. The loop functions as the minimal ecological unit through which sacred systems engage and rebuild the symbolic environments that sustain them. At the micro scale, a comparative vignette of the Grateful Dead’s Deadhead community and its cultic offshoot, the Spinners, shows how episodic ecstasy can crystallize into a durable sacred world. At the meso scale, the paper examines contemporary “spiritual-but-not-religious” life as a test case in symbolic ecology and outlines four adaptive strategies (enclosure, membrane, micro-habitats, and drift) that explain why some spiritualities reproduce themselves across generations while others dissipate. Full article