The next Area Bishop of Edmonton, in the diocese of London, will be Canon Anderson Jeremiah, Associate Dean (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and People) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University, it was announced on Wednesday.

He will be the first presbyter ordained in the Church of South India (CSI), a United Church, to be appointed as a bishop in the Church of England, and will be the fourth bishop in the C of E to have been born in India….

Dr Jeremiah is associate priest of St Paul’s, Scotforth, in the diocese of Blackburn, where he serves as the Bishop’s Adviser for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Affairs and is an Honorary Canon. He served on the Anti-Racism Taskforce, which preceded the creation of the Racial Justice Unit…, and, as Bishop of Edmonton, will take responsibility for the racial-justice portfolio in the London College of Bishops.

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Canon Anderson Jeremiah @TheOutsider40 said on his nomination as the next Bishop of Edmonton: "My personal experiences of exclusion and discrimination have formed my life, research, and ministry, and inspire me to embody the expansive hospitality of God."https://t.co/CMsEmPPKT7

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 21, 2023

Using a type of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, MIT researchers have discovered a class of compounds that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium that causes more than 10,000 deaths in the United States every year.

In a study appearing in Nature, the researchers showed that these compounds could kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) grown in a lab dish and in two mouse models of MRSA infection. The compounds also show very low toxicity against human cells, making them particularly good drug candidates.

A key innovation of the new study is that the researchers were also able to figure out what kinds of information the deep-learning model was using to make its antibiotic potency predictions. This knowledge could help researchers to design additional drugs that might work even better than the ones identified by the model.

“The insight here was that we could see what was being learned by the models to make their predictions that certain molecules would make for good antibiotics,” said James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering, a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and an institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “Our work provides a framework that is time-efficient, resource-efficient, and mechanistically insightful, from a chemical-structure standpoint, in ways that we haven’t had to date.”

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We are thrilled to announce the latest discovery by our partners at the Collins Lab: a novel class of antibiotics with activity against MRSA! Read more about the team's "explainable AI" approach underlying this groundbreaking discovery.https://t.co/o8PRSLULwM

— Phare Bio (@PhareBio) December 21, 2023

You can listen directly just above or you can download it also there.

David Cumbie of Church of the Apostles, Houston, called to be new rector of Holy Cross, Sullivan's Island #SouthCarolina https://t.co/0ylo4poNBE #parishministry #lowcountrylife #anglican #religion #faith #transition #leadership #marriage #family #children #texas #acna pic.twitter.com/oAsFYduwBZ

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) October 18, 2023

It’s no coincidence that ‘O Oriens’ is sung on the evening of the winter solstice, as darkness falls on the longest night of the year – the time when winter is at its deepest, but the year’s turning-point has come. In the antiphon and in the Old English poem, Christ is figured as the dawn and the returning sun, appearing in the time of greatest darkness, in the depth of the season the Anglo-Saxons called midwinter. In his De temporum ratione, Bede explains the traditional understanding of the relationship between the church year and the equinoxes and solstices:

very many of the Church’s teachers recount… that our Lord was conceived and suffered on the 8th kalends of April [25 March], at the spring equinox, and that he was born at the winter solstice on the 8th kalends of January [25 December]. And again, that the Lord’s blessed precursor and Baptist was conceived at the autumn equinox on the 8th kalends of October [24 September] and born at the summer solstice on the 8th kalends of July [24 June]. To this they add the explanation that it was fitting that the Creator of eternal light should be conceived and born along with the increase of temporal light, and that the herald of penance, who must decrease, should be engendered and born at a time when the light is diminishing.

Bede, The Reckoning of Time, trans. Faith Wallis (Liverpool, 2004), p. 87.

The medieval church attached profound importance to the solstices and equinoxes as signs of God’s power over time and the created world.

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'O Earendel, brightest of angels,
sent to mankind over middle-earth…'

On the winter solstice, the medieval antiphon 'O Oriens' is sung – an appeal for light in darkness. It inspired an Anglo-Saxon poem, which in turn inspired Tolkien's myth of Eärendil: https://t.co/ooFa8lQAzO pic.twitter.com/fSMjCOSPK5

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 21, 2023

Almighty and everliving God, who didst strengthen thine apostle Thomas with sure and certain faith in thy Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that our faith may never be found wanting in thy sight; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

21 décembre – Saint Thomas, apôtre

Incrédulité de saint Thomas, Arnould de Vuez, 1693
Primatiale saint-Jean, Lyon pic.twitter.com/nRaLOebI4K

— Schola Sainte Cécile (@scholastececile) December 21, 2021

O Lord Jesus Christ, before whose judgment-seat we must all appear and give account of the things done in the body: Grant, we beseech thee, that when the books are opened in that day, the faces of thy servants may not be ashamed; through thy merits, O blessed Saviour, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

A little bit of springtime on our shortest day. Today we turn towards the light. pic.twitter.com/rCFwbL3tZc

— 🌳Tree-lined🌳lanes🌳 (@LanesTree) December 21, 2023

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,
or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and pay your vows to the Most High;

and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

–Psalm 50:13-15

December #rainbow over the #LincsWolds #loveukweather pic.twitter.com/u23H1onleo

— ianW (@IanW1985) December 21, 2023