The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

La messe sur le monde.--Trois histoires comme Benson.--La puissance spirituelle de la matière.--Pensées, choisies par Fernande Tardivel.

Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), a student of canon law who became a Catholic cardinal, was widely considered the most important original philosopher of the Renaissance. He wrote principally on theology, philosophy, and church politics. This volume makes most of Nicholas's other writings on Church and reform available in English for the first time.

In his book, 21 Lessons for the 21st century, the historian Yuval Noah Harari devoted a chapter to the question of whether traditional religions could provide any guidance in solving the momentous global problems confronting us today. He drew the rather negative conclusion that they do not have any constructive contribution to make in solving these problems. This article made an original contribution to scholarly research by, from the perspective of Christian Ethics, subjecting this recently expressed view of Harari to (...) critical scrutiny and by exploring the guidance the Christian church could offer in solving global problems we are faced with today, such as nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption. These research objectives were realised by addressing four questions: does the church have a responsibility to provide guidance in this regard? What is the nature of the guidance the church ought to provide? What are the factors hindering the church in providing such guidance? Which conditions need to be fulfilled for the church to provide meaningful guidance? The answers provided to these questions were substantiated by drawing on the findings of published Christian ethical and social scientific research. The conclusion drawn from the article is that the church could today provide meaningful moral guidance in solving global problems. It should then, however, depart from an unbiased understanding of the message of the Bible and effectively deal with certain hindrances preventing it from providing adequate moral guidance. (shrink)

ExcerptIn 1929, at the height of the conciliation process between the Italian State and the Catholic Church, sealed by the Lateran Treaty, Pope Pius XI referred to Mussolini as the man “sent by providence.”1 Conversely, in 1938, right in the middle of the clash between the Holy See and the Fascist government over the racial problem, Pius XI would say: “Today there is a mutual declaration of war between the Prime Minister and us. Mussolini might even win on some battlefields, (...) but one day he will be considered just like those peoples who won a battle but lost the war.”2. (shrink)

In this article the view that the Covid-19 pandemic – especially the lockdown that went hand in hand with it – revealed both the indispensability and fragility of morality was substantiated and the response of the church to the moral challenges posed by the pandemic discussed. Findings were based on information gained from South African media regarding the pandemic and the response to it in the South African context interpreted with the assistance of research in academic publications. Various respects in (...) which the pandemic underlined the indispensability of morality were discussed first. This was followed by a discussion of ways in which the pandemic also demonstrated the fragility of morality. The fragility of morality was traced back to the undermining influence of modern life on morality. Finally, the mixed record of South African churches in providing guidance on the moral challenges the Covid-19 pandemic posed, was noted. It was pointed out that the challenge remains to the church to provide moral guidance on life after the pandemic. The church would also have to effectively deal with the challenge to overcome the curtailment of its ability to provide such moral guidance in contemporary modern societies.Contribution: The contribution of the article lies in identifying the moral issues posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and in gauging the response of the church in the South African context to these issues. The challenges that remain to the church to also after the pandemic provide moral guidance and overcome obstacles in providing such guidance were also highlighted. (shrink)

The second of Nietzsche's UM, "On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life", is one of his most celebrated and influential works, profoundly shaping the work of Continental theorists such as Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Paul de Man. For all the immense attention paid to this little text, philosophers and scholars have focused mainly on Nietzsche's reflections on culture, overlooking the text's epistemological concerns. Jensen's commentary rectifies this omission and succeeds admirably not only in analyzing the often cryptic (...) and meandering arguments of the text, but also in contextualizing it in nineteenth-century debates about objectivity and teleology in history.In the first chapter, Jensen... (shrink)

This article sets out to describe how churches have responded and continue to respond to fast-changing urban environments in Pretoria Central and Mamelodi East, animating Henri Lefebvre’s sociological perspective of citadins or urban inhabitants. We make tentative interpretations and offer critical appreciation. Churches, which were historically separated from the city centre, now directly participate in claiming a right to the city. With necessary fluidity, churches express lived African urbanisms through informality, place-making, spatial innovation and everyday rituals. Though not exhaustive, the (...) article focuses on rituals shared among historic urban Christians and contemporary African urban Christians, namely prayer, listening to the Bible and worship. These rituals, when combined with the churches’ spatial innovation, to a certain degree contribute to place-making. (shrink)