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Topic Review
Biblical Cosmology
Biblical cosmology is the biblical writers' conception of the cosmos as an organised, structured entity, including its origin, order, meaning and destiny. The Bible was formed over many centuries, involving many authors, and reflects shifting patterns of religious belief; consequently, its cosmology is not always consistent. Nor do the biblical texts necessarily represent the beliefs of all Jews or Christians at the time they were put into writing: the majority of those making up Hebrew Bible or Old Testament in particular represent the beliefs of only a small segment of the ancient Israelite community, the members of a late Judean religious tradition centered in Jerusalem and devoted to the exclusive worship of Yahweh. The ancient Israelites envisaged a universe made up of a flat disc-shaped Earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below. Humans inhabited Earth during life and the underworld after death; there was no way that mortals could enter heaven, and the underworld was morally neutral; only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven. In this period too the older three-level cosmology in large measure gave way to the Greek concept of a spherical earth suspended in space at the center of a number of concentric heavens. The opening words of the Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1:1–26) sum up the biblical editors' view of how the cosmos originated: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"; Yahweh, the God of Israel, was solely responsible for creation and had no rivals, implying Israel's superiority over all other nations. Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy, concluded that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity. Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with the Logos (Word): "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1).
  • 3.3K
  • 11 Jan 2024
Topic Review
The Nara Palace Site
The Nara period in Japan was a short but volatile historical era that left behind a huge amount of cultural property across the country. Most of the related sites have been recognized by UNESCO as deserving of World Cultural Heritage status or are classified by the Japanese government as particularly important national heritage. This is especially true of the Nara Palace site, with its outstanding conservation achievements and reconstruction of Japanese architectural heritage.
  • 121
  • 11 Jan 2024
Topic Review
The Language of Deception
Digital forensic investigations are becoming increasingly crucial in criminal investigations and civil litigations, especially in cases of corporate espionage and intellectual property theft as more communication occurs online via e-mail and social media. Deceptive opinion spam analysis is an emerging field of research that aims to detect and identify fraudulent reviews, comments, and other forms of deceptive online content. 
  • 393
  • 09 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Exposures on the Learning of L2 Binomials
While both fish and chips and chips and fish are perfectly grammatical phrases in English, native speakers are much more likely to say the former than the latter. For second language learners, this poses a considerable challenge: they need to learn what grammatical utterances are more probable.
  • 130
  • 05 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Dutch Expedition to Southern Chile (1643)
The following article analyzes how the Dutch expedition to southern Chile during the 17th century (1642–1643) was narrated, in Dutch and in its translations into German, English, and Spanish, considering the interests of empires and the discursive differences that translational variations reveal. This transdisciplinary analysis, combining historiography, translation studies, and historical geography, consists of a critical reading of the original narration and a comparative reading of the aforementioned translations, and within them ethnographic representations made about the Mapuche-Huilliche people and the city of Valdivia and changes introduced by different translations are identified.
  • 688
  • 04 Jan 2024
Topic Review
AI-Based Conversational Large Language Models
The demand for psychological counselling has grown significantly in recent years, particularly with the global outbreak of COVID-19, which heightened the need for timely and professional mental health support. Online psychological counselling emerged as the predominant mode of providing services in response to this demand. The Psy-LLM framework, an AI-based assistive tool leveraging large language models (LLMs) for question answering in psychological consultation settings to ease the demand on mental health professions.
  • 171
  • 02 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Generative AI on Cultural Translation in Jewelry Design
The current proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) is prominently shaping the design industry. Generative AI, such as text-to-image and image-to-image models, has gained widespread use, notably for its efficiency and quality improvements. Leveraging AI image generators has shifted the designer’s focus from technical tasks to strategic decisions related to visual appeal, cognitive engagement, and emotional resonance. Furthermore, the challenges inherent in human–AI collaboration have been revealed, stemming from communication difficulties and the risk of fixating on specific details to stylistic constraints.
  • 225
  • 28 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Mimosa Kinetic Façade
In light of pressing global health concerns, the significance of indoor air quality in densely populated structures has been emphasized. The mimosa kinetic façade is an innovative design inspired by the adaptive responsiveness of the Mimosa plant to environmental stimuli. Traditional static architectural façades often hinder natural ventilation, leading to diminished air quality with potential health and cognitive repercussions. The Mimosa kinetic façade addresses these challenges by enhancing effective airflow and facilitating the removal of airborne contaminants. 
  • 147
  • 22 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Image Annotations in Cultural Heritage Platforms
Cultural heritage is one of many fields that has seen a significant digital transformation in the form of digitization and asset annotations for heritage preservation, inheritance, and dissemination. However, a lack of accurate and descriptive metadata in this field has an impact on the usability and discoverability of digital content, affecting cultural heritage platform visitors and resulting in an unsatisfactory user experience as well as limiting processing capabilities to add new functionalities. Cultural heritage institutions were responsible for providing metadata for their collection items with the help of professionals, which is expensive and requires significant effort and time. In this sense, crowdsourcing can play a significant role in digital transformation or massive data processing, which can be useful for leveraging the crowd and enriching the metadata quality of digital cultural content.
  • 147
  • 20 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Sense of Presence for Human Behavior Studies
Sense of presence is a key element of the user experience in the study of virtual environments. Understanding it is essential for disciplines, such as architecture and environmental psychology, that study human responses using simulated environments.
  • 126
  • 19 Dec 2023
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