Elmhurst University

A growing consensus interprets the Pastoral phrasing mu iota & varsigma; gamma upsilon nu alpha iota kappa & varsigma; nu rho (1 Tim 3.2, 12; Titus 1.6) and nu & varsigma; nu delta rho & varsigma; gamma upsilon nu (1 Tim 5.8) in reference to church leaders and widows as 'spousal fidelity', despite this not being an intuitive approach to the phrases. This article contends that one-spouse traditions were widely enough known in the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds - especially once objections and misunderstandings are resolved - to render comprehensible a limitation to a single spouse. The univira traditions, for instance, apply to both women and men and include reference to faithfulness. The application of these traditions to widows was not a Christian innovation, lasted into the imperial era and influenced both Jews and early Christian authors. One-spouse traditions were also extant in the eastern part of the Empire. Some sectors of Judaism attest to such traditions. Jesus-sayings also prohibit remarriage. Lastly, the requirement for chi rho alpha iota to marry in 1 Tim 5.11, 14 does not contradict this qualification for 'real' widows (5.9) since they were likely 'virgin-widows', admonished to marry for the first time, and the Pastoral emphasis is on identifying those with less resources, requiring more extensive assistance from the churches. The Pastorals' insistence on a single marriage for officeholders and 'real' widows is yet another example of how Christ-believers are to be exemplars of, if not exceeding, the very best in Roman piety and marital values.

Graphs defined over a finite ring are well-studied in the literature. Due to their nature, these types of graphs connect several branches of mathematics, including algebra, number theory, matrix theory, and representation theory. In recent work, we studied U-unitary Cayley graphs over a finite commutative ring, which unifies several constructions of graphs with arithmetic origins. Among various structural graph-theoretic results on these graphs–such as their connectedness, primeness, and bipartiteness–we show that their spectra can be described via a certain supercharacter theory. Utilizing this spectral description, we are able to find some classes of gcd-graphs that possess perfect state transfer. In this article, we generalize this study to finite non-commutative rings, with a special focus on the case of the matrix rings with coefficients in a finite field. We show, in particular, that gcd-graphs over these matrix rings have no perfect state transfer.

Background Effective social communication is adapted to the context, the setting and the people involved. It is less clear how measures of adolescent social communication ability reflect these aspects of context. Social communication ability emerges from children's early experiences in varied contexts. Evidence is mixed on whether prior experience in the workplace, post-secondary education or independent living, is associated with social communication ability for those settings.Aims The purpose of the study was to empirically evaluate the associations between measures of adolescents' social communication ability, the context of assessment, and the examinee's prior experience in the context.Methods and Procedures One-hundred fifty 14-21-year-old adolescents, 59 with developmental disabilities, participated in a cross-sectional study. Researchers administered instruments to measure social communication for four post-school settings. They also collected reports of prior experience in those settings. Rasch analysis was used to derive both item difficulty and social communication ability measures. Researchers evaluated the association between experience in a context and social communication ability for that context using regression models.Outcomes and Results Social communication measures were highly correlated across contexts. Social communication ability was associated with experience in post-secondary education, as was experience living independently for participants reporting disabilities.Conclusions and Implications The results support conceiving of social communication as the ability to adapt one's communication to a context, an ability that is not bound to any one context. The varied findings on the association between prior experience in a context and social communication in that context can be interpreted as reflecting how difficult it is to learn the cues of that setting and generalize that learning to new situations, leading to potential differences in the amount and quality of experience required to successfully communicate in a context.WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on this subject For adolescents with communication disorders, developing social communication skills is important to their outcomes in adulthood. According to developmental models, social communication emerges from children's experiences in varied contexts. Different contexts elicit different language, but child measures of social communication ability from different contexts are correlated. What this study adds to existing knowledge Adolescent social communication ability measures for four post-school contexts were highly correlated. Experience in the post-secondary education context was associated with greater social communication ability for all adolescents, but only adolescents with developmental disabilities benefited from independent living experience. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Assessments of social communication across multiple contexts are likely to be correlated; the choice of contexts for assessment may be motivated by the student's goals and interests. The findings support offering programs designed to build adolescent social communication skills by providing experiences in independent living or post-secondary education.

Superconducting qubits show great promise for the realization of fault-tolerant quantum computing, but lossy, amorphous dielectrics limit current technology. Identifying highly crystalline and stoichiometric dielectrics with intrinsically low microwave loss is therefore a central materials challenge, yet experimentally validated platforms remain scarce. This work integrates a crystalline dielectric into a heteroepitaxial TiN/γ-Al_2O_3/TiN trilayer grown via pulsed laser deposition. Correlative high-resolution imaging, diffraction, and spectroscopy measurements confirm the single-crystal quality and chemical integrity of all layers, with minimal defects and limited anion interdiffusion across the oxide-nitride interfaces. Using microwave lumped-element resonators with parallel-plate capacitors, this work establishes an experimentally-measured upper bound for the dielectric loss of γ-Al_2O_3, which has a low intrinsic two-level system loss of δ_TLS^0 = (2.8 ± 0.1) × 10^-5. These results establish heteroepitaxial oxides on transition metal nitrides as an attractive materials platform for superconducting quantum circuits, particularly for integration into compact device architectures such as merged-element transmons and microwave kinetic inductance detectors.

Project-based learning pedagogies like Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) can help undergraduate students achieve scientific literacy and become acquainted with practical field methods in environmental science. CUREs are especially beneficial for students historically excluded from the sciences and in urban locations with limited opportunities for interaction with nature. This pedagogy can provide environmental benefits to the local community but restoration outcomes may not be met if students lack scientific expertise and are constrained by time and resources. The current research offers a novel, long-term case study of a five-year restoration-focused CURE that concurrently addresses two questions: 1.) Can using a CURE achieve intended course learning outcomes in scientific literacy? and 2.) Can a CURE increase biodiversity in a restored urban habitat? At a small private university, students worked to restore biodiversity to a campus bioswale by identifying and removing invasive plants and seeding appropriate natives. The formative assessments indicate that the CURE is effective at helping students achieve proficiency in scientific literacy while the vegetation surveys of the habitat indicate that biodiversity and floristic quality have started to increase. Therefore, the results demonstrate the feasibility and positive environmental impact of directly linking undergraduate instruction with habitat restoration. This study provides a scalable model for achieving beneficial ecological outcomes in urban environments while providing valuable research experiences for students, particularly those historically marginalized in STEM fields such as environmental science.