Features of threatening cues and the associated context influence the perceived imminence of threat and the defensive responses evoked. To provide additional knowledge about how the directionality of a threat (i.e. directed-towards or away from the viewer) might impact defensive responses in humans, participants were shown pictures of a man carrying a gun (threat) or nonlethal object (neutral) directed-away from or towards the participant. Cardiac and electrodermal responses were collected. Compared to neutral images, threatening images depicting a gun directed-towards the (...) participant induced sustained bradycardia and an increased electrodermal response, interpreted as immobility under attack. This defensive immobility reaction is evoked by high perceived threat and inescapable situations and indicates intense action preparation. Pictures of guns directed-away from the participant induced shorter bradycardia and no significant modulation of the electrodermal response compared to neutral pictures, which might be consistent with the perception of a less threatening situation. The results show that the directionality of threat stimuli is a key factor that prompts different patterns of defensive responses. (shrink)

Background: The castor bean is a large grassy or semi-wooden shrub or small tree. Any part of the castor plant parts can suffering from a disease that weakens the ability to grow and eliminates its production. Therefore, in this paper will identify the pests and diseases present in castor culture and detect the symptoms in each disease. Also images is showing the symptom form in this disease. Objectives: The main objective of this expert system is to obtain appropriate diagnosis of (...) the disease. Methods: In this paper, the expert system is designed for the ability of agricultural engineers to detect and diagnose disease of castor like as: seeding blight, alternaria blight, cercospora leaf spot, powdery mildew and wilt. This system presents the disease symptoms, survival and spread, favorable conditions and image for each disease. Clips and Delphi expert system languages are used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The expert system in the diagnosis of castor diseases was assessed by farmers and agricultural engineers and they were satisfied and accepted with its quality of performance. Conclusions: The expert system is easy for farmers and people have experience in the plant of castor to detect and diagnosis the symptoms that may face this plant from several disease. (shrink)

The minimal perimeter enclosing N planar regions, each being simply connected and of the same area, is an open problem, solved only for a few values of N . The problems of how to construct the configuration with the smallest possible perimeter E and how to estimate the value of E are considered. Defect-free configurations are classified and we start with the naïve approximation that the configuration is close to a circular portion of a honeycomb lattice. Numerical simulations and analysis (...) that show excellent agreement to within one free parameter are presented; this significantly extends the range of values of N for which good candidates for the minimal perimeter have been found. We provide some intuitive insight into this problem in the hope that it will help the improvement in future numerical simulations and the derivation of exact results. (shrink)

The studies presented here apply the concept of entitativity in order to understand how belonging to a particular geographical area – neighborhood - can determine the way others organize information and form impressions about area’s residents. In order to achieve this objective, three studies were carried out. The first study aims to verify if a neighborhood varies in terms of perceived entitativity, and identify the physical and social characteristics of the neighborhoods that are more strongly associated with the perception of (...) entitativity. The Study 2 and 3 used an experimental paradigm to explore how people’s perceptions of neighborhoods’ entitativity influenced their impressions of residents. To activate stereotypes, Study 2 used the name of real neighborhoods, and Study 3 employed only a set of pictures of unknown neighborhoods. The results show that the neighborhoods vary significantly with the regard to the perception of entitativity, and a set of physical attributes of place were strongly related with entitativity. The results showed that, independent of stimuli, the neighborhoods perceived as highly entitative, the supposed residents were subject to more extreme and quicker trait judgments, supported by greater confidence on the part of perceivers. Study 3 also reported that in highly entitative neighborhoods, the perceivers transferred more traits from the group to individual members. These results provide strong evidence that physical structure of neighborhoods imply different entitatity judgments that influences the way in which residents are perceived. (shrink)

Restorativeness is defined as the potential of the environment to re-establish certain cognitive capacities related to human information processing. The most frequently used instrument for evaluating the restorativeness of places is the Perceived Restorativeness Scale, proposed by Hartig and colleagues (1991). Later on, shorter versions of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale were proposed. The aim of this work is to evaluate the discriminatory capacity of the original and of a shorter Spanish version of the PRS, considering urban settings previously selected for (...) having different level of restorativeness, according to expert’s criteria. The study involved 244 students and used a 3 x 2 mixed experimental design, with two independent variables: Restorativeness of a place (between-subjects), which was manipulated by showing pictures of settings selected with varying levels of restorativeness (high, medium, low), and length of the scale (within-subjects), which was manipulated by asking subjects to fill in both the original and a shorter version of the PRS. The order of presentation of the two scales was counterbalanced. Results show an appropriate reliability for both version of the scale. Items of being-away, fascination, and coherence of the shorter scale correlate more strongly with the corresponding factor of the original scale, compared to the others factors. Both scales produce similar values for the perceived restorativeness of the different places, except for places with low restorativeness. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

In The Piano Tuner of EarthQuakes, the Quay Brothers' second feature, the sensual form and the meta-artistic content are truly interweaved, and the siblings' staple animated materials become part of the theme itself. Using Michel Serres's argument in Les cinq sens, I address the relationship between the Quays intermedial animation and the way the art forms of music, painting, theatre and sculpture are used to captivate the film viewer's sensorium in the same way that some of the characters are fascinated (...) by the evil Droz, a scientist and failed composer who manipulates machines and people alike, among them Felisberto, a meek piano tuner with the ability to stir the natural elements. I further proceed to posit the entire film as an intended allegory of animation on the Quays part. Their haptic construction of a three-dimensional world which they control artistically is replicated in the film in Droz's and Felisberto's activities vis-à-vis Malvina van Stille, an abducted opera diva who is kept in a suspended animation state and several hydraulic automata with musical resounding properties, some of them made up of an uncanny assortment of body parts. The artificial life of these creatures is contrasted, in two ways, with their physical reality as beings that exist in the world: first, via Serres's sensorial strategy to transform a body into a conscious entity, an embodiment I call 'Corpo-Reality', and second, by resorting to Deleuze and Guattari's theory of the body without organs in its advocacy of 'hard' nature and the rejection of a rigid assortment of body parts. The paradoxical organic objectivity of the 'marionettized' Malvina is pitted against the seemingly subjective doings of the mechanical automata, especially an android woodcutter. However, just as in the story things are not what they seem, and the automata actually reflect the 'real' world of Felisberto's tuning of them, so the film itself can be a 'crystal-image', offering itself to the senses of the spectator. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to carve out a political understanding of the Muslim identity. The Muslim identity is shaped within a religious mold. Inseparable from this religious understanding is a political one that is valuable in its own right in order to secure any sustainable possibility of participating politically as Muslims within a democratic liberal democracy, such as the United States. Here I explore not the historical or theological formation of the Muslim identity, rather a metaphysical understanding of (...) it, in order to mobilize politically while avoiding the traps of essentialism. I begin with a brief overview of the early understandings of the term “identity politics” in the United States. Moving beyond interest-based movements I explore María Lugones' particular understanding of the self as multiplicitous. I then offer examples of the Muslim identity within the context of a social movement and individualist claims, in order to draw out the political aspects of the Muslim identity. In the final section I argue that the theological criteria that define “who counts as a Muslim” is a crucial aspect of how many Muslims may understand their identity as Muslims. However, I claim that in order to avoid the traps of marginalization of Muslim minorities, one must understand oneself as a multiplicitous political agent and that, furthermore, such an understanding is not at odds with Islam or one's own understanding of their identity as Muslim. (shrink)

Dans cet article nous proposons une définition de l’éthique de la gestion et nous en identifions les conditions à travers une revue de la littérature. Nous postulons par la suite que l’éthique de la gestion diffère selon qu’il s’agit d’organisations publiques ou d’organisations privées. Nous montrons en effet que pour l’organisation privée, l’éthique est un engagement subjectif qui permet de pallier les lacunes d’une gestion instrumentale sans remettre en question les finalités premières de l’organisation. Tandis que pour l’organisation publique, l’éthique (...) a une essence positive et se trouve orientée vers la recherche de compromis sur les finalités mêmes de l’organisation. (shrink)

How do we know that what has happened to us is a microaggression? I claim in this chapter that our understanding about how we perceive microaggression is grounded in the cultivation and critical reflection about experiences of people who occupy marginalized social locations. My aim is to explore the nature of epistemic harms of microaggression in order to highlight how they diminish the microaggressed’s ability to generate and participate in making knowledge claims. I differentiate between the primary (direct) harm of (...) microaggressive acts, and the secondary epistemic harms that occur in the aftermath of the microaggression, particularly when the microaggressed attempts to convey their experience to others. I conclude with an analysis of the two secondary harms in hopes that it helps us explore a possible avenue of resistance to the epistemic harms of microaggression. (shrink)

This study has proposed to apply change leadership as a vehicle forward for sustaining the growth of the tourism industry to eradicate poverty through the Pakistani tourism industry. Applying a mixed method approach, this article has attempted to uncover the role a change leader can play to help achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goals of poverty reduction. In this study, one of the authors interviewed stakeholders of the tourism industry to find out the major drivers of the industry and (...) identify the leadership style that may prove to be effective in the said industry. In the next phase of the study, a survey method approach was used where different tourism companies and hotel chains were included for analysis. The study aimed to check employee’s perception of change leadership and its impact on their resilience and ultimately the sustainable organization performance of companies’ operationalizing in the sector with moderating impact of sustainable tourism attitude in times of a crisis. In total, 430 full-time workers in the tourism industry were contacted for a self-administered survey achieving a response rate of 83%. The findings of the study confirmed that in the presence of a change leader, the process of adaptation to sudden changing situations amidst financial crises, pandemic, and climatic change, becomes bearable and employees can cope with the work situations without pushing them to quit the industry. The study has a significant contribution toward a rapidly growing and focused industry, which can play a major role in the economy of any country leading toward job creation and poverty reduction. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article presents an overview of the Portuguese transposition of the European Directive on Good Clinical Practice (2001/20/e) concerning scientific and academic debates on bioethics and clinical investigation. Since the Directive was transposed into Portuguese law by its National Assembly, the bureaucracy of clinical trials has been ever more complex. Despite demands for swift application processes by the Pharmaceutical industry, supported by the European Parliament, the Directive's transcription to the national law has not always delivered the expected outcome. However, (...) this has led to an increased number of applications for clinical trials in Portuguese hospitals. In this article I revise bioethical publications and decree‐laws enabling an informed appraisal of the anxieties and prospects for the implementation of the clinical trials Directive in Portugal. This article also places the European Directive in the field of sociology of bioethics, arguing that Portuguese bioethical institutions differ from those of the US, and also from Northern European counterparts. The main divergence is that those people in Portugal who claim expertise in ‘legal’ bioethics do not dominate either the bureaucratic structure of research or ethics committees for health. Even experts in the applied ethics field now claim that ‘professional bioethicists do not exist’. The recent creation of a national Ethics Committee for Clinical Investigation (CEIC) in line with the European Directive on Good Clinical Practice (GCP) will not change the present imbalance between different professional jurisdictions in the national bioethical debate in Portugal. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of the present mode of capitalist democracy from the ethico-moral viewpoint. The crisis of values is identified as the great bane of free market-led globalization. This trend has aggravated worldwide inequality, promoted terrorism and violence, created psychological anomie and triggered eco logical disasters. Only a few business interests in the wealthier economies are gaining at the expense of humankind. The moral dimension of the government's role has been undermined by such profit-making free market gospel. The (...) author contends that more than beingjust secular, democracy is a pre-social moral force and, as such, is perceived more proximately in the religious temper of a non-industrial society than in a mass industrial society. In the latter democracy is almost a farce with the periodic ritual of public voting as its main act. The paper castigates the global economy and global media which cleverly mastermind our lives, and pleads for a change of values which will make humans self-conscious and will restore their autonomy. (shrink)

The underlying objective of this project is to examine the ways in which the exclusionary status of Muslim Americans remains unchallenged within John Rawls’s version of political liberalism. Toward this end, I argue that the stipulation of genuine belief in what is reasonably accessible to others in our society is an unreasonable expectation from minorities, given our awareness of how we are perceived by others. Second, using the work of Lisa Schwartzman, I show that Rawls’s reliance on the abstraction of (...) a closed society legitimizes the exclusion of citizens with marginal social locations. And finally, applying Charles Mills’s critique of ideal theory, I argue that Rawls’s idealization of a posture of civic friendship detracts from a discussion of equally significant societal values while sustaining existing social hierarchies. (shrink)

Sería fácil afirmar que el objetivo de este texto es humanizar a los pájaros, concluir lecciones sobre los humanos a partir de su relación con ellos o utilizarlos como excusa para hablar de nosotros, pero Habitar como pájaro no hace nada de eso. De hecho, logra algo más minucioso, complejo y profundo: recoger sonidos y añadir opuestos. Así, el contrapunto como técnica melódica para conjugar voces es fundamental para entender el rigor y el detalle del libro, no sólo porque es (...) en sí mismo su estructura (las partes son acordes y cada capítulo tiene su acompañamiento, su siguiente sonido), sino también porque es un texto articulado a partir del discanto entre biólogos y ornitólogos, quienes han entendido (o intentado entender) a los pájaros a lo largo de la historia. Dado que el contrapunto es es- tructura y técnica, se lee un compromiso total con el cantar y el decir común. (shrink)

The political posture often encouraged in liberatory movements is that of urgency. Urgency is based on the idea that if oppressed peoples do not act “now,” then their fate is forever sealed as subordinates within social and political power hierarchies. This paper focuses on a contrasting political posture, termed presence of mind, motivated by the current political atmosphere of distrust and disenfranchisement in which some Muslim-Americans find themselves. Presence of mind is defined as the ability to critically unpack visceral affective (...) responses to injustice—giving special consideration to power structures, one’s social location, and relationships—and then to asses an appropriate response in virtue of that consideration that best upholds our commitments. This paper argues that cultivating presence of mind acknowledges the complexities of the Muslim-Americans’ identity while providing a posture that allows the resistor to best represent their political commitments. (shrink)

La démarche de cette analyse part de l’étonnement de l’oubli de la question sociale dans les relations en Afrique, étonnement dans la mesure où les différentes luttes d’émancipation posaient la nécessité pour l’Afrique de se penser elle-même, de se dire elle-même et d’agir par elle-même. Les indépendances acquises, on a constaté que la différence sociale a amené à un mépris de ceux qui se trouvent dans des positions défavorisées et dont on fait dériver leur identité de leur position sociale. Ainsi, (...) dans la société ivoirienne, celui qui n’a rien est qualifié de rienneux. Celui qui n’a pas réussi sa vie est appelé non plus un looser, mais un zéro. L’analyse du médiocre par le philosophe camerounais Ébénezer Njoh Mouellè ne relie pas le comportement de cet homme à sa situation sociale et s’inscrit, ici encore, dans une confusion entre identité et position sociale, l’auteur faisant dériver la première de la seconde. En partant d’une critique du concept de médiocrité chez Njoh Mouellè, cette étude vise à relever d’une part l’impensé de la philosophie contemporaine africaine – la souffrance de l’homme à qui on refuse les conditions d’une vie réussie – et d’autre part les voies possibles pour supprimer le mépris et transformer la non-considération en reconnaissance. (shrink)

La démarche de cette analyse part de l’étonnement de l’oubli de la question sociale dans les relations en Afrique, étonnement dans la mesure où les différentes luttes d’émancipation posaient la nécessité pour l’Afrique de se penser elle-même, de se dire elle-même et d’agir par elle-même. Les indépendances acquises, on a constaté que la différence sociale a amené à un mépris de ceux qui se trouvent dans des positions défavorisées et dont on fait dériver leur identité de leur position sociale. Ainsi, (...) dans la société ivoirienne, celui qui n’a rien est qualifié de rienneux. Celui qui n’a pas réussi sa vie est appelé non plus un looser, mais un zéro. L’analyse du médiocre par le philosophe camerounais Ébénezer Njoh Mouellè ne relie pas le comportement de cet homme à sa situation sociale et s’inscrit, ici encore, dans une confusion entre identité et position sociale, l’auteur faisant dériver la première de la seconde. En partant d’une critique du concept de médiocrité chez Njoh Mouellè, cette étude vise à relever d’une part l’impensé de la philosophie contemporaine africaine – la souffrance de l’homme à qui on refuse les conditions d’une vie réussie – et d’autre part les voies possibles pour supprimer le mépris et transformer la non-considération en reconnaissance. (shrink)

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has gained significant popularity in recent years across borders due to the increased investigation and penalties under the law. The following case is a real-life case that highlights the main provisions of the FCPA. Using cases in teaching an auditing or ethics course is much needed to develop students’ professional judgment, critical and analytical thinking skills and communication skills. Presently, there are a few cases that address the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its effect (...) on financial reporting and auditor responsibilities about illegal acts. The Armor Holdings case is interesting and information is publicly available regarding the circumstances that describe the bribery act, lack of whistle-blower protection, the tone at the top, and the accounting treatment. In addition, the increase in actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission under the FCPA since 2010 heightens the relevance of this case and underscores the need for students to learn the skills necessary to ensure compliance with FCPA and related key regulations such as the Sarbanes Oxley and the Dodd Frank Act. Therefore, cases like this one provide a rich tool to navigate topics and enforce students’ learning of client’s illegal actions and their consequences. These skills are invaluable in practice. (shrink)

There are a lot of research studies that look at "fake news" from an Arabic online source, but they don't look at what makes those fake news spread. The threat grows, and at some point, it gets out of hand. That's why this paper is trying to figure out how to predict the features that make Arabic online fake news spread. It's using Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, and Random forest of Machine Learning to do this. Online news stories that were (...) made up were used. They are found by using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency. The best partition for testing and validating the prediction was chosen at random and used in the analysis. So, all three machine learning classifications for predicting fake news in Arabic online were done. The results of the experiment show that Random Forest Classifier outperformed the other two algorithms. It had the best TF-IDF with an accuracy of 86 percent. Naive Bayes had an accuracy rate of 84%, and Logistic Regression had an accuracy rate of 85%, so they all did well. As such, the model shows that the features in TF-IDF are the most essential point about the content of an online Arabic fake news. (shrink)

The literature describes religious coping as an important predictor of mental well-being. Present study is aimed at extending this knowledge by assessing whether specific religious coping regulates specific cognitive emotional responses to improve well-being during Covid pandemic, an extreme international event with significant impacts on individuals and communities. A sample of young adults responded to self-report measures of negative and positive religious coping, positive reappraisal, self-blaming, and mental well-being. Results revealed that positive religious coping was a positive predictor of mental (...) well-being and positive reappraisal mediated this positive link. Also, gender and physical health status significantly interacted with positive reappraisal to predict mental well-being in these mediational associations. More specifically, indirect effects of positive reappraisal were positive and significant for men and for participants with better physical health compared with women and those with poor physical health. However, negative religious coping was not a significant correlate of mental well-being but a positive correlate of self-blame. Results suggest that positive religious coping facilitates positive regulation of emotions for improved mental well-being in young adults and particularly young men. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the alarming phenomenon of violent extremism in university campuses. It probes why education fails to prevent violent extremism in this case? Drawing on Robert Cox’s distinction of problem solving and critical theories, the paper examines policy discourses that aim to prevent violent extremism through education. It is observed that dominant policy discourses take up problem solving approaches to prevent/counter violent extremism and fail to take into account the broader structural violence that feeds extremist ideologies. The counter (...) violent extremism policies largely view education as a means to control thinking rather than develop it. Such policies hinder the development of critical consciousness in students that can provide effective defence against extremism. Hence, there is a need to rethink education to counter extremism. Subsequently, the paper shifts its focus to Pakistan, where education has remained a central concern of counter extremism policies since 9/11. Based on 13 expert interviews, I explore higher education practices in Pakistan from practitioners’ perspective. The practitioners point out multiple problems of educational status quo that need to be addressed to counter extremism on campus effectively. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the significance of an intersectional lens when it comes to our conversations surrounding the #MeToo movement, in particular the way that such a lens helps us in recognizing narratives of sexual assault and harassment that are not typically viewed as such. The mainstream discourse on #MeToo in the United States has been quite exclusionary when it comes to women who are non-dominantly situated within societal structures. In particular, this paper looks at how Muslim American women’s (...) issues surrounding sexual assault and harassment are presented as exotic and a function of their religion and culture, further narrowing what is considered worthy of attention within the discourse of the #MeToo movement. I argue that one such instance of sexual harassment that isn’t seen as such, is hijab snatching within particular contexts. Furthermore, I argue that a lack of an intersectional lens results in not only privileging certain harmful voices under the guise of inclusivity, but even when invaluable voices are allowed to enter mainstream discourse, they are often the sort that sidestep issues of Western imperialistic practices, Islamophobia, racialization of Muslims, etc. I highlight the dangers of speaking for others, especially in ways that attribute sexual violence experienced by Muslim women to their cultures and/or their men. I argue that acknowledging these dangers is in itself a crucial part of an inclusive conversation on #MeToo. (shrink)

This article looks at the inadequacy of space available to women in the two most holy sites for all Muslims: Masjid al-Haram in Makkah and Masjid an-Nabawi in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. I argue that religious discourse, shaped by geopolitical factors, has framed piety for women primarily in terms of modesty, such that a woman is often considered a good Muslim if she is visible only within her female community but invisible to the larger society. Furthermore, I argue that the allocation (...) of meager space affects not only the perception of women's religious standing in society, but also women's own perception about their moral selves. The article claims that by being relegated to small sections within religious spaces, women's collective worship is evident neither to the community at large nor can it be fully experienced by individual women, thus placing obstacles in women's path to seek to closeness to God. (shrink)

Did you know that More’s Utopia was first translated into French in 1550, into Hungarian in 1910, into Mandarin in 1935, into Brazilian Portuguese in 1937, into Polish in 1947, and into Greek as late as 1970? Did you know that there were more translations of Utopia into French at the time of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution than at any other point in French history? That the readers of the second translation into Hungarian never got to know that (...) there was no private property on the island of Utopia? That there is a translation into Mandarin that, although it excludes most of the original paratexts, offers 191 individual illustrations and images? That the first direct translation into... (shrink)

To the contemporary critic, the question of whether Raphael Hythloday really existed is no doubt preposterous. We all know that he never existed and that his name indicates the tension Thomas More wanted to create between a messenger of God, and thus the conveyer of truth, and a nonsensical storyteller. However, the Portuguese historian Luís de Matos published widely, in the 1960s and the 1970s, on the topic. And his monumental work L’Expansion Portugaise dans la Littérature Latine de La Renaissance (...) testifies to a life of academic research partly devoted to trying to prove... (shrink)

The article traces the framing of Muslim Europeans as the continent’s Other by focusing on the silencing of queer Muslims within public debates around ‘Islam and homosexuality’. Ignoring class as a factor in the violence produced by the gentrification of urban spaces, the pitting of the gay community against the Muslim community posits the latter as a threat to the continent’s foundations that needs to be contained through forms of spatial governance in line with the neoliberal restructuring of the city. (...) Maintaining that this is a Europe-wide phenomenon, the article looks at Amsterdam as exemplifying the European metropole as a site of pseudo-homophile Islamophobia. Simultaneously, with activist groups like the queer of color collective Strange Fruit, it is also representative of the strategies of resistance developed by groups whose presence is virtually erased through culture clash discourses, namely queer Muslims. The article argues that an intersectional queer of color activism, as practiced by Strange Fruit, and a queer of color critique building on it, allows to undermine binaries from the Muslim/european dichotomy to the normative coming out narrative, invariably positioning queers of color as ‘not properly gay’. (shrink)

Medical billing has become so intertwined with patient care, that in order to be truly committed to the physician's telos of managing a patient's medical suffering, it is imperative that physician ought to reexamine many of the ethical considerations about billing.

This issue of Utopian Studies, which is meant, like the previous one, to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia, is divided into three sections.The first section, “Mapping Research in Utopian Studies,” offers an overview of research carried out in the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. Although the articles gathered in this section testify to the dynamics of this field of study in these countries, they also evince that research is being carried (...) out in different formats and that in some cases it is still emerging. Such is the case with the Czech Republic, where there are no organized groups focused on research in utopian... (shrink)

The political posture often encouraged in liberatory movements is that of urgency. Urgency is based on the idea that if oppressed peoples do not act “now,” then their fate is forever sealed as subordinates within social and political power hierarchies. This paper focuses on a contrasting political posture, termed presence of mind, motivated by the current political atmosphere of distrust and disenfranchisement in which some Muslim-Americans find themselves. Presence of mind is defined as the ability to critically unpack visceral affective (...) responses to injustice—giving special consideration to power structures, one’s social location, and relationships—and then to asses an appropriate response in virtue of that consideration that best upholds our commitments. This paper argues that cultivating presence of mind acknowledges the complexities of the Muslim-Americans’ identity while providing a posture that allows the resistor to best represent their political commitments. (shrink)

Meaning is a central concept of (bio)semiotics. At the same time, it is also a word of everyday language. Here, on the example of the world information, we discuss the “reduction-inflation model” of evolution of a common word into a scientific concept, to return subsequently into everyday circulation with new connotations. Such may be, in the near future, also the fate of the word meaning if, flexed through objectified semantics, will become considered an objective concept usable in semiotics. We argue (...) that reducing meaning to a technical term essentially synonymous to code and stripped of most of the original semantic field is not a necessary prerequisite for a meaningful application of the concept in semiotics and in biology. (shrink)

This paper presents the state of corporate social responsibility in Pakistan since it has been driven in the country by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, the UN Global Compact, and trade liberalization under the WTO. This study is based on responses obtained from 51 Pakistani companies and 20 MNCs. It was found that MNCs were found to be more socially responsible to customers, to suppliers in terms of their purchasing procedures, to the environment, to their employees, to the (...) community by contributing more to the community’s education and health, and in their greater commitment to ethics. Pakistani companies need to improve their performance on CSR to gain competitive advantage. (shrink)

Is corporate social responsibility linked to performance-related instrumentality or real moral concerns? Does CSR create resource advantages? Reasons for and results of CSR remain unclear. We choose a leading retail company in a Confucian, collectivist, and high power distance society and ask whether managers are naturally oriented toward societal actions. We study managerial perceptions regarding the importance and the performance of CSR in relation to other management factors. Drawing on Hunt's ) resource advantage theory, we find that the perceived importance (...) of CSR is only fair vis-à-vis other management factors, but its high performance makes it a core resource for the company. (shrink)

In Islam, the acquisition of knowledge is a form of worship. But human achievement must be exercised in conformity with God's will. Warnings against feelings of superiority often are coupled with the command to remain within the confines of God's laws and limits. Because of the fear of arrogance and disregard of the balance created by God, any new knowledge or discovery must be applied with careful consideration to maintaining balance in the creation. Knowledge must be applied to ascertain equity (...) and justice for all of humanity. Research in Islam must be linked to the broad ethical base set forth in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Whether embryonic stem cell research or cloning is ethically acceptable in Islam depends on the benefits derived from such applications. What is most important for the scholars is to adhere to the concepts of compassion, mercy, and benefit to everyone. (shrink)

This work represents Niklas Luhmann's definitive application of systems theory to the understanding of law. In it Luhmann reviews past attempts to create a theory of law and argues they all fail to capture how law operates in modern society. He presents an alternative, critical theory through analysing law as a system of communication.

The aim of this paper is to show that any process of benefit sharing that does not guarantee the representation and participation of women in the decision-making process, as well as in the distribution of benefits, contravenes a central demand of social justice. It is argued that women, particularly in developing countries, can be excluded from benefits derived from genetic research because of existing social structures that promote and maintain discrimination. The paper describes how the structural problem of gender-based inequity (...) can impact on benefit sharing processes. At the same time, examples are given of poor women’s ability to organise themselves and to achieve social benefits for entire communities. Relevant international guidelines (e.g. the Convention on Biodiversity) recognise the importance of women’s contributions to the protection of biodiversity and thereby, implicitly, their right to a share of the benefits, but no mechanism is outlined on how to bring this about. The authors make a clear recommendation to ensure women’s participation in benefit sharing negotiations by demanding seats at the negotiation table. (shrink)

Abstract.In Islam, the acquisition of knowledge is a form of worship. But human achievement must be exercised in conformity with God's will. Warnings against feelings of superiority often are coupled with the command to remain within the confines of God's laws and limits. Because of the fear of arrogance and disregard of the balance created by God, any new knowledge or discovery must be applied with careful consideration to maintaining balance in the creation. Knowledge must be applied to ascertain equity (...) and justice for all of humanity. Research in Islam must be linked to the broad ethical base set forth in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Whether embryonic stem cell research or cloning is ethically acceptable in Islam depends on the benefits derived from such applications. What is most important for the scholars is to adhere to the concepts of compassion, mercy, and benefit to everyone. (shrink)

Many question whether Islam and science can be compatible. In the first six hundred years of Islam, Muslims addressed all fields of knowledge available to them with unprecedented zeal and contributed immensely to the knowledge that became the precursor of the Renaissance in Europe. The Tatar invasion in the thirteenth century and the total destruction of Baghdad, the Muslim capital of knowledge and science, followed by the crusades, the ensuing hostility between East and West, and Western colonialism of Muslim countries (...) led to a distrust of all knowledge emanating from the West. Such distrust closed the doors to ijtihad, a dynamic method in Islamic jurisprudence for addressing change, new demands, and new acquired knowledge, even though the Qur'an challenges Muslims to think, contemplate, understand, comprehend, and examine everything around them—tasks that bring humankind closer to God as they find methods to apply God's laws of justice and equity to the benefit of all humankind. Islam is the religion of yusr (ease) and not ‘usr (hardship). The creation of the world was for human benefit and use. Innovation for such beneficial use and application is a must. (shrink)

In spite of accruing concerted scholarly and managerial interest since the 1950s in corporate social responsibility (CSR), its implementation is still a growing topic as most of it remains academically unexplored. As CSR continues to establish a stronger foothold in organizational strategies, understanding its implementation is needed for both academia and industry. In an attempt to respond to this need, we carry out a systematic review of 122 empirical studies on CSR implementation to provide a status quo of the literature (...) and inform future scholars. We develop a research agenda in the form of an integrated framework of CSR implementation that pronounces its multi-dimensional and multi-level nature and provides a snapshot of the current literature status of CSR implementation. Future research avenues relating to multi-level studies, theoretically supported research models, developing economy settings, and more are recommended. Practitioners can also benefit through utilizing the holistic framework to attain a bird’s eye view and proactively formulate and implement CSR strategies that can be facilitated by collaborations with CSR scholars and experts. (shrink)

A foundational question in Luigi Pareyson Aesthetics is the ontological character of the formant form. This character is based on the following principle: the ontology of the formant form is in the action of inventiveness and is not in a static state. For the philosopher of formativity it is in this creative, ontological, persevering action that the artist invents the way of doing, unique in the formant form. This unique way of doing makes the work of art blossom as a (...) formed form. In this paper we will try to show both the invention of the way of doing and the work of which one has an image ratify the singularity of the formant form. If the inventor does the work at the same time he invents the formed form, the just form, it is not a matter of passivity or inertia, but an action of inventiveness. Therefore, one can say the artist's personality is not separated from the formant form, on the contrary, it emphasizes the inseparability of the concepts of making / inventing, formant form and person, without however, affecting neither the unity, nor the identity of the work. (shrink)

Freud's Project for a psychology presents a wide reflection on the concept of consciousness, which, in spite of certains difficulties, casts some light on how Freud then conceived the relations between consciousness, representation and language. The aim of this paper is to circumscribe the meaning of the concept of consciousness found in the Project for a psychology and to discuss some of its consequences for the way consciousness is approached later in Freudian metapsychology.No Projeto de uma psicologia, de 1895, está (...) exposta uma ampla reflexão sobre o conceito de consciência, a qual, embora apresente algumas dificuldades, permite esclarecer como a relação entre a consciência, a representação e a linguagem era pensada por Freud nesse momento. O objetivo deste artigo é circunscrever o sentido da noção de consciência presente no Projeto de uma psicologia e discutir algumas de suas implicações para o modo como a consciência será abordada nos desenvolvimentos posteriores da metapsicologia freudiana. (shrink)

Freud's Project for a psychology presents a wide reflection on the concept of consciousness, which, in spite of certains difficulties, casts some light on how Freud then conceived the relations between consciousness, representation and language. The aim of this paper is to circumscribe the meaning of the concept of consciousness found in the Project for a psychology and to discuss some of its consequences for the way consciousness is approached later in Freudian metapsychology.No Projeto de uma psicologia, de 1895, está (...) exposta uma ampla reflexão sobre o conceito de consciência, a qual, embora apresente algumas dificuldades, permite esclarecer como a relação entre a consciência, a representação e a linguagem era pensada por Freud nesse momento. O objetivo deste artigo é circunscrever o sentido da noção de consciência presente no Projeto de uma psicologia e discutir algumas de suas implicações para o modo como a consciência será abordada nos desenvolvimentos posteriores da metapsicologia freudiana. (shrink)

The year 2016 was unprecedented for the field of utopian studies: to mark five hundred years since the publication of Thomas More's Utopia, a variety of events were organized all over the world, from seminars, workshops, and conferences to fairs, festivals, performances, concerts, cycles of movies, exhibitions, book presentations, and special issues of academic and nonacademic journals. However, although the word utopia was used in the title or description of these events, they were not always directly related to More's masterpiece: (...) more than the text that originated the utopian literary tradition, it was the spirit of utopia, that hope that Ernst Bloch described in all its nuances, and its revolutionary power that... (shrink)

"I prithee, honest friend, lend me thy hand / To help me up; as for my coming down, / Let me alone, I'll look to that myself," says Thomas More to his executioner while mounting the scaffold on July 6, 1535. We are reading from Sir Thomas More, that complicated text that testifies to the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama. Supposedly written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and benefiting from the contribution of Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, and William Shakespeare, (...) the play celebrates Thomas More's sense of humor—a facet that is sometimes forgotten but which Marie-Claire Phélippeau, in her new biography of the English humanist, intentionally highlights. Phélippeau... (shrink)