Contents 1. Introduction 2. Cosmological lessons from earlier centuries 3. From nebulae to galaxies 4. The emergence of the idea of expansion 5. The principal cosmological models of the first half of the century 6. The discovery of background radiation and some implications 7. The COBE results and the analysis of the fluctuations 8. Changes in the epistemological status of cosmological research...

Religion played a prominent role in the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) that followed the brutal Pacific War (1941–1945). Officially, the occupiers were to promulgate religious freedom, separate religion from the state, and encourage the Japanese people to develop a ‘desire for religious freedom’. Promulgating religious freedom was the easy part. Separating religion from the state withou...

Understanding the beliefs and knowledge related to women's sexuality is important when working with unique religious groups in order to provide culturally appropriate care. An exploratory, descriptive qualitative study generated knowledge, beliefs, and practices related to menstruation, ovulation, and family planning among Low German-speaking (LGS) Mennonite women (n = 38). There is a pervasive...

Is it possible to talk about God without either misrepresentation or failing to assert anything of significance? The article begins by reviewing how, in attempting to answer this question, traditional theories of religious language have failed to sidestep both potential pitfalls adequately. After arguing that recently developed theories of metaphor seem better able to shed light on the nature o...

ramadan fasting during the month of ramadan is a religious obligation, practiced by millions of people around the world. ramadan fasting is essentially a fundamental change in lifestyle for one lunar month. this type of fasting may have significant effects on lipid profile. although there is no scientific consensus about the effects of fasting on cardiovascular risks such as changes in lipid pr...

This article examines the changing association between higher education and reporting no religious affiliation in the United States. I argue that increases in higher education have led to a decline in the individual-level effect of college education on religious non-affiliation. Results from hierarchical age-period-cohort models using more than three and a half decades of repeated cross-section...

every kind of theorization and progress modeling, wether contiousely or uncontiousely, is based on and benefited from the epistemological, cosmological, anthropological, axiological foundations. for the iranian islamic model of progress, however, it is compulsary to recognize and refer to its own speculative understructures and use them intentionaly and exactly to produce the  best possible mod...

Using information on thousands of books written in the medieval Islamic world, I document a sustained decline in innovative intellectual production starting in the 12th century CE. I show that this decline coincides with an increase in the percentage of books dedicated to religious topics and in the proportion of authors employed in religious occupations. These findings are consistent with hist...