The range and use of ecosystem services provided by urban sacred sites has hardly been considered in studies of urban ecology, sustainability and human wellbeing. This paper examines the perceived ecosystem services supplied by green spaces or gardens associated with places of religious worship and appreciated by worshippers in a mid-sized town in South Africa. A questionnaire with open, closed...

Sacred lotus is rich in biologically active compounds, particularly benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs). Here, we report on isolation of genes encoding (S)-norcoclaurine synthase (NCS) in sacred lotus, which is a key entry-enzyme in BIA biosynthesis. Seven NCS genes, designated NnNCS1 through NnNCS7, were identified in the sacred lotus genome, and five are located next to each other within a 83...

In 1992 in a historic move, the Church of England voted to allow women’s ordination to priesthood and in 1994 the first women priests started to be ordained. Despite much research interest, the experiences of priests who are mothers to dependent children have been minimally investigated. Based on in-depth interviews with seventeen mothers ordained in the Church, this paper will focus on how the...

the concept of decision making, factors influencing it and the related outcomes have always attracted researchers. the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of sacred values on decision making, decision difficulty and the resulting negative emotions. thus, a sample of 288 students from the university of guilan were chosen as subjects and were required to complete a standard questio...

Our experience and our reaction to all things beautiful is made possible by our unique ability to subconsciously recognize geometric order from transitory chaos. At this level, the perfection inherent in a Greek temple or a painting by Da Vinci is not simply because it is made of a particular material or hue but because the harmonic proportions contained in their design are bound by the laws of...

William Osler is quoted as saying, "Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life-the poetry of the commonplace, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs."(1) A family physician reflects how he continues to derive sustenance from having cared ...

We present a toolchain for computational research consisting of Sacred and two supporting tools. Sacred is an open source Python framework which aims to provide basic infrastructure for running computational experiments independent of the methods and libraries used. Instead, it focuses on solving universal everyday problems, such as managing configurations, reproducing results, and bookkeeping....