‘So, Is It True?’ Time to Embrace the Hermeneutical Turn in Catholic Religious Education in the Republic of Ireland

A key challenge for educational provision in the Republic of Ireland has been the need to develop appropriate approaches to religious education that are effective in terms of meeting the needs and rights of students in a democratic pluralistic society. At the centre of such discussions, although rarely explicitly recognised, is an attempt to grapple with the question of truth in the context of religious education. This paper argues that religious education, in attempting to engage with this evolving context, is challenged in two trajectories: (a) by approaches that operate from the presumption that objective truth exists and (b) by approaches that are sceptical of any claim to objective truth. It will be argued that proposals, such as those offered by active pluralists, to deal with religious truth claims in religious education are limited in terms of their capacity to adequately treat such claims and the demands that these carry for adherents. This paper argues for a hermeneutical treatment of the context for Catholic religious education in the Republic of Ireland, which is considered under the following headings: (1) irruptions from the periphery, (2) the theological matrix, (3) the status of religion, and (4) the position of students and teachers in religious education classes. From this it will be suggested that promoting religious education as a hermeneutic activity allows for a respectful engagement with competing truth claims.

SAEP: A Surrounding-Aware Individual Emotion Prediction Model Combined with T-LSTM and Memory Attention Mechanism

The future emotion prediction of users on social media has been attracting increasing attention from academics. Previous studies on predicting future emotion have focused on the characteristics of individuals’ emotion changes; however, the role of the individual’s neighbors has not yet been thoroughly researched. To fill this gap, a surrounding-aware individual emotion prediction model (SAEP) based on a deep encoder–decoder architecture is proposed to predict individuals’ future emotions. In particular, two memory-based attention networks are constructed: The time-evolving attention network and the surrounding attention network to extract the features of the emotional changes of users and neighbors, respectively. Then, these features are incorporated into the emotion prediction task. In addition, a novel variant LSTM is introduced as the encoder of the proposed model, which can effectively extract complex patterns of users’ emotional changes from irregular time series. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms five alternative methods. The SAEP approach has improved by approximately 4.21–14.84% micro F1 on a dataset built from Twitter and 7.30–13.41% on a dataset built from Microblog. Further analyses validate the effectiveness of the proposed time-evolving context and surrounding context, as well as the factors that may affect the prediction results.

Mediastinal tumours and pseudo-tumours: a comprehensive review with emphasis on multidisciplinary approach

The diagnosis of a mediastinal mass may be challenging for clinicians, since lesions arising within the mediastinum include a variety of disease entities, frequently requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Age and sex represent important information, which need to be integrated with imaging and laboratory findings. In addition, the location of the mediastinal lesion is fundamental; indeed, we propose to illustrate mediastinal diseases based on the compartment of origin. We consider that this structured approach may serve as hint to the diagnostic modalities and management of mediastinal diseases. In this review, we present primary mediastinal tumours in the evolving context of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools, with recently described entities, based on our own experience with >900 cases encountered in the past 10 years.

Cryptocurrencies, Evolution of Means of Payments and Validity of Monetary Principles

The paper explores the role, evolution and ruling principles of the concept of “money” in the 21st Century. In this continuously evolving context, cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology are widely considered the most relevant monetary innovations of the last decades. By means of a macro-founded logical-analytical approach combined with statistical evidence, the paper provides arguments: 1. dismissing the “innovation myth” behind cryptocurrencies because of de facto representing a comeback of the private issue of means of payments and, more problematically, seigniorage at its best; 2. confirming that crypto-tokens do not comply with basic, still ruling monetary principles; 3. suggesting that excess liquidity is already invested in crypto-markets (which are themselves “inflationary”, namely not backed by real value (i.e. GDP). The concrete risk is, once again in economic history, represented by facing a financial bubble.

Curriculum transformation to address the Sustainable Development Goals: A holistic approach for embedding gender in higher education

To better prepare a new generation of practitioners and thought leaders to meet the complex challenges highlighted in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), innovation is needed in the design and delivery of degree programmes. Gender inclusion and diversity are increasingly recognised as key tenets of Education for Sustainable Development. Energy access education in Africa provides an excellent context in which to explore ways of delivering gender inclusive Masters programmes and the curriculum transformations needed to address the dual challenges of SDG7 (energy access) and SDG 5 (gender equality). This paper explores the evolving context of gender mainstreaming in energy access education at Institutions of Higher Learning (IHLs) in Africa, drawing on a desktop study and interviews with 8 African Universities in the Transforming Energy Access Learning Partnership (TEA-LP). The paper calls for the adoption of a more holistic approach to mainstreaming gender in energy access education at IHLs, encompassing curriculum content, teaching methods, learning environments and the broader institutional enabling environment.

Architecture as palimpsest : a strategy of intermediacy

In much of historic preservation work, artefacts are primarily seen as documents of their time and bearing little relevance to how we design buildings and cities today. Consequently, architectural interventions separate the old and new work, unintentionally distancing historic buildings from their evolving context. There are layers of inspiration embedded within an existing site that can enrich architectural creations. The history of architecture is the story of built forms that have been altered and re-created to make space for the continuation of life. This thesis seeks an archtictural strategy that not only complements but also challenges and reveals the history and material character of the original intent, in order to create greater meaning for the historic building. As a hypothesis, the thesis project presents a schema for the conversion of century old public school in the City of Toronto into a contemporary art museum that demonstrates this strategy, arguing that engaging with the existing work can lead to new insights and meanings.

Architecture as palimpsest : a strategy of intermediacy

In much of historic preservation work, artefacts are primarily seen as documents of their time and bearing little relevance to how we design buildings and cities today. Consequently, architectural interventions separate the old and new work, unintentionally distancing historic buildings from their evolving context. There are layers of inspiration embedded within an existing site that can enrich architectural creations. The history of architecture is the story of built forms that have been altered and re-created to make space for the continuation of life. This thesis seeks an archtictural strategy that not only complements but also challenges and reveals the history and material character of the original intent, in order to create greater meaning for the historic building. As a hypothesis, the thesis project presents a schema for the conversion of century old public school in the City of Toronto into a contemporary art museum that demonstrates this strategy, arguing that engaging with the existing work can lead to new insights and meanings.