The subject of time has long been a subject of fascination by philosophers and researchers alike: What is it? How can it be measured? Is it connected to the larger metaphysical meaning of life (e. g. eternal life, absorption, reincarnation, etc.)? Having some standard measurement of time became a pressing contemporary issue in the Victorian Era as international traveling and communications became more typical. Also, the prominent role of evolution as propagated by Charles Darwin’s ‘Theory of Natural Selection’ questioned the long accepted Christian beliefs in the biblical ‘Creation’. This forced Victorians to seriously consider the subjects of origin and chronology. It was into this shifting and modernist environment that the Theosophical Society was established emerging out of Spiritualism. H. P. Blavatsky, along with Henry S. Olcott and several other founding members, formed this organization as a means of discovering hidden truths and learning practical occult methods and exercises. Indisputably, Blavatsky was one of the leading forces of this Society and her natural intellect combined with her vast, occult writings brought about one of the most distinctive and philosophical doctrines in the Theosophical belief system — a soteriological view of time. Using her philosophy of time, Blavatsky was able to create the ultimate Victorian mythos that could combine science and world religions into one unified and religious modernist system. This thesis will diachronically study Blavatsky’s writings on time, soteriology and chronology. It will begin in the early days when her philosophy was largely borrowed from comparative mythographers, and trace her writings up until the late 1880s when it became mixed with Hindu and Buddhist notions of time and salvation. While studying the evolution of time and its role in Blavatsky’s teachings is the focal point of this study, the secondary purpose is to examine this system as a Victorian mythology that typified the time period along with its hopes, fears and social anxieties.

Focusing primarily on a number of small Heathen communities known as ‘kindreds’ and their ‘kith’ near Ottawa, Toronto and Montréal in Canada, this thesis approaches Heathenry as a potential means of ‘everyday’ self- and world-making. It examines the ways in which the ‘virtuous’ words and deeds of my interlocutors helped them to actively effect certain formations of self and world, and attempts to capture the significance of Heathenry as a practical process of formative interpersonal engagement and self-fashioning. Paying special attention to the ‘playful’ character of this process, it explores Heathenry as an aesthetic and ethical project of self-making – a project that produces and underpins particular kinds of ‘excellence’ and ‘authentic’ subjects. Emphasizing the creative poiesis entailed in this project, my thesis explores the ways in which Heathenry enables people to locate and orient themselves within a shared field of potentiality as subjects and agents questing for a ‘virtuous self’. I argue that both the end and means of this quest entails a reorientation in people’s aesthetic sensibility and personal ethical quality. The thesis concludes by illustrating how this highly personalized yet shared process of self formation facilitates people’s continuing journey to become increasingly ‘worthy’ Heathen subjects; that is, selves realized through their own virtuous acts of narrative objectification and those of others. As skillful and skillfully fashioned subjects, I suggest that my informants became able to experience their own potential virtuous development as a development of the ‘cosmos’ itself – a development, that is, of the very realms their quests embodied and manifested, and throughout which their virtuous selves came to be projected.

No description available.

Gegen niedergelassene Kassenärzte wurden Ermittlungsverfahren wegen Bestechlichkeit im geschäftlichen Verkehr seit dem obiter dictum des Oberlandesgerichts Braunschweig im Jahr 2010 eingeleitet. In dieser Arbeit wird die Frage der Anwendbarkeit des § 299 Strafgesetzbuch auf den Vertragsarzt diskutiert. Zudem werden entsprechende Lösungsansätze nach geltendem bzw. zu schaffendem Recht dargestellt. Im Ergebnis gelten die Vertragsärzte nicht als geschäftlich Beauftrage der Krankenkassen bzw. Amtsträger. Es sollte jedoch auf das besondere „Vertragsverhältnis“ zwischen Arzt und Patient, das letztlich auf Vertrauen gründet, Rekurs genommen werden. Wenn gegenseitiges Vertrauen besteht, wird sich der Arzt in seinen diagnostischen und therapeutischen Entscheidungen nicht an seinen eigenen wirtschaftlichen Interessen bzw. Vorteilen orientieren, sondern sich zum Wohle des Patienten vom Facharztstandard unter Berücksichtigung des Wirtschaftlichkeitsgebots leiten lassen.

Gegen niedergelassene Kassenärzte wurden Ermittlungsverfahren wegen Bestechlichkeit im geschäftlichen Verkehr seit dem obiter dictum des Oberlandesgerichts Braunschweig im Jahr 2010 eingeleitet. In dieser Arbeit wird die Frage der Anwendbarkeit des § 299 Strafgesetzbuch auf den Vertragsarzt diskutiert. Zudem werden entsprechende Lösungsansätze nach geltendem bzw. zu schaffendem Recht dargestellt. Im Ergebnis gelten die Vertragsärzte nicht als geschäftlich Beauftrage der Krankenkassen bzw. Amtsträger. Es sollte jedoch auf das besondere „Vertragsverhältnis“ zwischen Arzt und Patient, das letztlich auf Vertrauen gründet, Rekurs genommen werden. Wenn gegenseitiges Vertrauen besteht, wird sich der Arzt in seinen diagnostischen und therapeutischen Entscheidungen nicht an seinen eigenen wirtschaftlichen Interessen bzw. Vorteilen orientieren, sondern sich zum Wohle des Patienten vom Facharztstandard unter Berücksichtigung des Wirtschaftlichkeitsgebots leiten lassen.

The primary objective of this thesis is to argue that the Books of Jeu (in the Bruce Codex) and the Pistis Sophia (the Askew Codex) are the product of a hitherto largely unrecognized religious group or community emerging from the dynamic religious climate of the first four centuries of the Common Era. It presents evidence that they have their own coherent system of theology, cosmology and soteriology, and demonstrates the strong ties that bind the individual tractates contained within these texts to one another. Chapter One provides a brief introduction to the history of the manuscripts, discusses methodology, presents definitions and a short thesis outline, and delivers a review of literature on the subject. Chapter Two examines each of the texts under consideration, giving a brief overview of their contents; arguments are presented for their chronological order, the exclusion of certain texts and fragments from the wider codices, and reasons these texts should be considered products of a religious group as opposed to being pure literary products of individual thinkers. Chapter Three traces the cosmology from the earliest to the latest of the texts, outlining shifts that take place and proposing explanations for these changes within an overall developmental framework. Chapter Four examines the roles of individual figures from the earliest to the latest texts; it demonstrates that although on the surface these roles may seem to change, their underlying nature remains constant, supporting the notion that they are the products of a group with a consistent underlying system. Chapter Five analyses the profusion of diagrams found in the two Books of Jeu, breaking them down into categories based on their nature and use as expressed by the texts. It further demonstrates that such images had a precedent in the religious and cultural atmosphere of Greco-Roman society. Chapter Six discusses potential outside religious influences present in these texts, and shows that while they are highly syncretistic, outside ideas are always incorporated within the existing framework of the group’s system: conflicting notions are subordinated to the existing theology and soteriology. The thesis concludes that these texts represent evidence of a practicing religious group that remained active over a period of time, producing multiple texts by multiple authors, adapting to a changing religious climate but maintaining the ideas that remained central to their underlying theological and soteriological system.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in the United States that affects men today. To better treat this disease accurate biomarkers and successful therapeutic treatments are needed. A novel approach to understand the mechanisms behind prostate cancer tumor formation lies in identifying dysregulated micro-RNAs (miRNAs), which are a class of small (18-24 nucleotides) non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression posttranscriptionally by either inhibiting protein synthesis or signaling messenger-RNA for degradation. Multiple miRNAs were discovered in our highly tumorigenic and metastatic prostate cancer progression model M12 cell line compared to its weakly tumorigenic P69 parental cell line. Various analyses such as human panel analyses, single-miR analyses and patient tumor biopsy samples were analyzed to determine dysregulated miRNAs that contributed to the progression and metastasis of prostate cancer. Together with performing experiments to identify miRNAs, a de novo next generation sequencing approach was applied to identify miRNAs naturally present in biological fluids of normal and healthy subjects. Since, these miRNAs are highly dysregulated in many diseases, including cancer, they can act as potential biomarkers or therapeutic targets to improve treatments for prostate cancer. Essential miRNAs studied for this research were miR-17-3p that is known to target the ErbB2 mRNA; miR-299-5p that directly targets osteopontin (OPN) mRNA, and miR-147b that directly targets many mRNAs, such as COL4A2, ALDH5A1, NDUFA4, SDHD, and IER5. A wide range of miRNAs were identified in six biological fluids: venous blood, menstrual blood, vaginal fluid, semen, saliva, and feces. There were some miRNAs that were common to all 6 body fluids, some unique to each body fluid, and some miRNAs that literature suggested could potentially be biomarkers or normalizers for body fluid characterization.

Em nossa dissertação, estudamos o excerto da crônica Kitāb al-Kāmil fi l-ta\'rīkh, de Ibn al-Athīr, que relata os anos de governo de Nūr ad-Dīn. Nossa pesquisa é dividida em três partes. Na primeira, apresentamos o autor e sua obra, a origem e a composição da crônica, além do debate historiográfico sobre a obra. Na segunda, abordamos os gêneros retóricos da Retórica de Aristóteles e a aplicação de dois destes gêneros, epidítico e deliberativo, na composição do discurso de Ibn al-Athīr. Na terceira, realizamos uma síntese das definições de jihād tanto no Alcorão quanto nos tratados jurídicos muçulmanos e mostramos como o nosso autor se apropria deles para legitimar as ações de Nūr ad-Dīn e construir, por meio de seu discurso, a figura do biografado como um exemplo de governante. / In our dissertation, we study the extract of Ibn al-Athīr\'s chronicle, Kitāb al-Kāmil fi l-ta\'rīkh, reporting the years of Nūr ad-Dīn\'s governmet. Our research is divided into three parts. The first presents the author and his work, the chronicles origin and the composition, besides presenting the historiographical debate on the work. The second approachs the rhetoric genres of Aristotles Rhetoric and the use of two of these genres, epideictic and deliberative, at the construction of Ibn al-Athīr\'s discourse. The third discusses the definitions of jihād both at Coran and at muslims juridical treatises, indicating how our author uses them to legitimate Nūr ad-Dīn\'s action in order to elaborate him, through his discourse, as an example of ruler.

Religious charity is said to be one of the oldest phenomena which has been present in many societies and social welfare provision is one of the central aspects of religious charity. Although, religiously motivated welfare provision has an older history than nation state based welfare provision, with the advent of the modern welfare state social aid area has been taken -partially or totally- from the religious authorities. However starting with 80s and attracting considerable interest by 90s in contemporary world, religious themes, namely faith based organizations, have been visible again in social aid area. As a form of faith based welfare provision, Faith Based Organization (FBO) is the central concept of this study / particularly Islamist FBOs will be on the focus of this study. In that sense FBOs will be studied as a part in history of Islamist faith based welfare provision in Turkey. The central hypotheses of the thesis, FBOs are organizations fertilized by changing economic and political climate of 70s. Changing state religion relationships has a significant impact on FBO proliferation in Turkey. By combating through poverty FBOs have big problems in terms of financial accountability, permanency, trustworthiness and professionalism.

This study focuses on understanding the reasons for the consciousness emerged towards Judeo-Spanish starting from the late seventies. This consciousness was followed by the establishment of several institutions, centers and even departments at Universities mainly in Israel, later in Turkey and all over the world aimed at maintenance of Judeo-Spanish by perceiving it as the unique medium of the continuance of the Sepahardic cultural heritage. The mentioned awareness towards Judeo-Spanish has become salient through the rise and the encouragement of the creative writing produced on distinct ethnic communication platforms by several Judeo-Spanish speakers composing of both native speakers and the generation raised by them, the youngest of whom was born around 1945. As a result of the analysis of three ethnic communication platforms which consist of Judeo-Spanish part of Salom newspaper, Salom&rsquo / s entirely Judeo-Spanish supplement El Amaneser, and the on-line correspondence circle Ladinokomunita Yahoo Group, it is concluded that the activity based on recalling of memories regarding the past Sephardic life as a part of the recent creative writing activities in Judeo-Spanish present that the Jewish language is still internalized and represents &lsquo / we&rsquo / in the eyes of the remaining speech community. It can be argued that through the cultivation of Judeo-Spanish on the ethnic communication platforms, Sephardic identities are strengthened and even reconstructed in some cases. It is concluded that the recent creative writing in the Jewish language is crucial both to preserve and archive the Sephardic cultural heritage embedded in the Jewish language for the next generations.