This paper explores the representation of Laji’een and Muhajireen in Jordan News Agency. It uses the headlines of a 2.5 million word corpus of Arabic news articles in a time span of 5 years from 2012 to 2016. Chronologically analyzing the headlines shows a change in the representation of and attitudes towards refugees and migrants over the investigated period. The analysis of the headlines shows that 2012 starts with providing the assistance to the refugees then at a later stage of (...) 2012 and in 2013 and 2014, the language is shifted to calling for assistance to the country to contribute to solving the problem. In 2015, the language is changed to be more alerting about the scarce in funding. In 2016, the headlines have changed the focus to Europe due to the migration of the refugees. This motivates the National News Agency of Jordan to highlight the suffering of Europe because of the refugees despite having the capacity and resources to host the migrant refugees. The paper concludes that language in general, and the language of media in particular can change the attitudes of people and governments toward critical issues and phenomena like migration and asylum. (shrink)

BackgroundOrgan donation has become one of the most effective ways to save lives and improve the quality of life for patients with end-stage organ failure. No previous studies have investigated the preferences for the different consenting options for organ donation in Egypt. This study aims to assess Egyptians’ preferences regarding consenting options for posthumous organ donation, and measure their awareness and acceptance of the Egyptian law articles regulating organ donation.MethodsA cross sectional study was conducted among 2743 participants over two years. (...) Each participant was required to rank eleven consenting options from 1 to 11, and to report his awareness and acceptance of the seven articles of the Egyptian law of organ donation.Results47% of the participants expressed willingness to donate their organs after death. This percentage increased to 78% when consenting options were explained to participants. “Informed consent by donor only” was the most preferred type of consent for one third of respondents. Awareness of the law articles regulating organ donation was relatively low ranging from 56% to 23%.ConclusionCurrently, around half of the Egyptian population agree to posthumous organ donation. This percentage could be increased significantly by raising the awareness about how the process of donation could be regulated and how the patient’s right of decision could be protected. (shrink)

Street vendors are prominent on public streets and in traditional markets in most developing countries. They raise significant problems for public authorities, residents, pedestrians, and formal retailers. Their informal business is problematic, leading to conflicts and sometimes violence. Moreover, unlicensed street vendors employ children and women and are accused of counterfeiting and drug trading. However, they participate in reducing poverty and unemployment. The current data article aims to formulate a public perception on the problematic issue of street vending pervasiveness by (...) describing a survey dataset on street vending and its main driving factors. Street vending has traditionally be examined by linking it with one or more determinants; thus, the dataset covers poverty, lack of education, immigration, unemployment, urban culture, low-income consumption, resistance, and lack of microfinance as latent constructs. Five measurable variables are introduced that reflect each construct. All variables are measured via seven-point Likert scales. Using a Google Form, 425 responses were collected that reflect the attitudes of the general public in Baghdad, Iraq. This dataset is useful for research on socio-economic problems; more specifically, it introduces reliable measurement models for street vending and the eight factors driving it. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between urban culture and street vending. Prior research on this topic is limited and inconclusive. Therefore, we have proposed an integrated model to test the positive effect of urban culture on street vending using multiple mediations of consumption patterns, resistance, and microfinance. We tested a sample of 425 responses that reflect the public opinion in Baghdad, Iraq. These responses were collected between September and November 2018. A partial least squares–based structural equation modeling is employed to (...) test the validity of measurement models and the significance of the entire structural model, predictive power, and mediation analysis. We found that resistance mediates the effect of urban culture on street vending; low-income consumption and resistance sequentially mediate the effect of urban culture on street vending, while resistance mediates the effect of a lack of microfinance on street vending. The direct impact of culture on street vending is not significant, and a lack of microfinance positively influences the pervasiveness of trading on streets. This study contributes to the extant literature as it proposed and tested a novel and comprehensive model to analyze the relationship between urban culture and street vending, simultaneously examining the effects of culture, consumption, resistance, and microfinance on street vending. (shrink)

University based academic Research Ethics Boards (REB) face the particularly difficult challenge of trying to achieve representation from a variety of disciplines, methodologies and research interests. Additionally, many are currently facing another decision – whether to have students as REB members or not. At Ryerson University, we are uniquely situated. Without a medical school in which an awareness of the research ethics review process might be grounded, our mainly social science and humanities REB must also educate and foster awareness of (...) the ethics review process throughout the academic community. Our Board has had and continues to have students as active members. While there are challenges to having students as Board members, these are clearly outweighed by the advantages, for both the academic community and the future of ethically sound research in the social sciences and humanities. Moreover, the challenges are often based on misconceptions and can be easily overcome through increased education and understanding of the research ethics review process by the academic community at large. The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the experiences, advantages and challenges of having students as REB members. The advantages of having students as REB members include the following: (1) Students are the proposed participants in many of our reviewed protocols and student members may illuminate unique issues of participation. (2) Students are active and highly engaged members of the REB. (3) Having students on the REB enhances awareness of research ethics within the University. (4) Student REB members have an opportunity to mentor other students and provide leadership for both undergraduate and graduate students. (5) Students are more vigorously recruited than faculty members and often apply for student positions with enthusiasm and preparation. (6) In creating an atmosphere of excellence in research, engaging students at the beginning of their research career will help in creating tomorrow’s leaders in research and research ethics. The challenges of having students as REB members include the following: (1) Faculty members may be uneasy regarding the prospect of students reviewing protocols. (2) Faculty members may be concerned about confidentiality and respect with students reviewing faculty research protocols. (3) There may be an increased burden for students who serve as members on an REB. (4) There is concern that students will offer less continuous service to the REB. (5) There is a common misconception that students do not have the experience to carry out ethical reviews. While there are challenges from faculty members and others regarding having students as REB members, these challenges are often based on misconceptions about the nature of the REB work and the ethics review process in general. These challenges are also often based on the misconception of the ethics review process as one of peer review and evaluation, instead of a community-based and inclusive process. Having student members is a long-term strategy for both overcoming the misconceptions of the REB as a “necessary evil” and for fostering an awareness of the imperative for ethically sound research in the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Repeatedly performing a submaximal motor task for a prolonged period of time leads to muscle fatigue comprising a central and peripheral component, which demands a gradually increasing effort. However, the brain contribution to the enhancement of effort to cope with progressing fatigue lacks a complete understanding. The intermittent motor tasks closely resemble many activities of daily living, thus remaining physiologically relevant to study fatigue. The scope of this study is therefore to investigate the EEG-based brain activation patterns in healthy subjects (...) performing IMT until self-perceived exhaustion. Fourteen participants repeated elbow flexion contractions at 40% maximum voluntary contraction by following visual cues displayed on an oscilloscope screen until subjective exhaustion. Each contraction lasted ≈5 s with a 2-s rest between trials. The force, EEG, and surface EMG data were simultaneously collected. After preprocessing, we selected a subset of trials at the beginning, middle, and end of the study session representing brain activities germane to mild, moderate, and severe fatigue conditions, respectively, to compare and contrast the changes in the EEG time-frequency characteristics across the conditions. The outcome of channel- and source-level TF analyses reveals that the theta, alpha, and beta power spectral densities vary in proportion to fatigue levels in cortical motor areas. We observed a statistically significant change in the band-specific spectral power in relation to the graded fatigue from both the steady- and post-contraction EEG data. The findings would enhance our understanding on the etiology and physiology of voluntary motor-action-related fatigue and provide pointers to counteract the perception of muscle weakness and lack of motor endurance associated with ADL. The study outcome would help rationalize why certain patients experience exacerbated fatigue while carrying out mundane tasks, evaluate how clinical conditions such as neurological disorders and cancer treatment alter neural mechanisms underlying fatigue in future studies, and develop therapeutic strategies for restoring the patients' ability to participate in ADL by mitigating the central and muscle fatigue. (shrink)

Acts of violence arising from hatred, racism, and bigotry have no place in a world of civility. The brutal attacks on Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, leaving 51 dead and 49 injured, can never be justified. Through adopting Van Dijk's ideological square of 'Us. vs. Them' [3], the present study uncovers the impact statements of the attacks' survivors and victims' families, denouncing the severity of the event and expressing the shattering effects of the attacks on self, (...) society, and humanity at large. Over a period of three days, about 90 people delivered their statements in the High Court in Christchurch. The data were compiled through YouTube videos and news articles that reported the testimonies. The findings showed that the overall discursive strategy used in the impact statements is that of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. Such presentations are realized by focusing on the positive aspects of the ingroup members represented by the attacks' survivors, victims' families, and people of New Zealand on the one hand, and the negative characteristics of the out-group members represented by the terrorist, on the other. As the paper sends a strong message for accepting 'otherness' and rejecting antagonism, it is of significance to readers and researchers in inter-faith dialogue, human rights, equality, freedom, and justice. (shrink)

The fault ride-through capability and fault current issues are the main challenges in doubly fed induction generator- based wind turbines. Application of the bridge-type fault current limiter was recognized as a promising solution to cope with these challenges. This paper proposes a nonlinear sliding mode controller for the BFCL to enhance the FRT performance of the DFIG-based WT. This controller has robust performance in unpredicted voltage sag level and nonlinear features. Theoretical discussions, power circuit, and nonlinear control consideration of the (...) SMC-based BFCL are conducted, and then, its performance is verified through time-domain simulations in the PSCAD/EMTDC environment. To reduce the chattering phenomenon and decrease the reaching time, it used the exponential reaching law for designed SMC. Also, the SMC-based BFCL performance is compared with the conventional and PI controller-based BFCL for both symmetrical and asymmetrical short-circuit faults. Simulation results reveal that the SMC-based BFCL provides better performance compared with the conventional and PI controller-based BFCL to enhance the FRT. (shrink)

Twitter is a virtual social network where people share their posts and opinions about the current situation, such as the coronavirus pandemic. It is considered the most significant streaming data source for machine learning research in terms of analysis, prediction, knowledge extraction, and opinions. Sentiment analysis is a text analysis method that has gained further significance due to social networks’ emergence. Therefore, this paper introduces a real-time system for sentiment prediction on Twitter streaming data for tweets about the coronavirus pandemic. (...) The proposed system aims to find the optimal machine learning model that obtains the best performance for coronavirus sentiment analysis prediction and then uses it in real-time. The proposed system has been developed into two components: developing an offline sentiment analysis and modeling an online prediction pipeline. The system has two components: the offline and the online components. For the offline component of the system, the historical tweets’ dataset was collected in duration 23/01/2020 and 01/06/2020 and filtered by #COVID-19 and #Coronavirus hashtags. Two feature extraction methods of textual data analysis were used, n-gram and TF-ID, to extract the dataset’s essential features, collected using coronavirus hashtags. Then, five regular machine learning algorithms were performed and compared: decision tree, logistic regression, k-nearest neighbors, random forest, and support vector machine to select the best model for the online prediction component. The online prediction pipeline was developed using Twitter Streaming API, Apache Kafka, and Apache Spark. The experimental results indicate that the RF model using the unigram feature extraction method has achieved the best performance, and it is used for sentiment prediction on Twitter streaming data for coronavirus. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus disease is regarded as one of the most imminent disease outbreaks which threaten public health on various levels worldwide. Because of the unpredictable outbreak nature and the virus’s pandemic intensity, people are experiencing depression, anxiety, and other strain reactions. The response to prevent and control the new coronavirus pneumonia has reached a crucial point. Therefore, it is essential—for safety and prevention purposes—to promptly predict and forecast the virus outbreak in the course of this troublesome time to have (...) control over its mortality. Recently, deep learning models are playing essential roles in handling time-series data in different applications. This paper presents a comparative study of two deep learning methods to forecast the confirmed cases and death cases of COVID-19. Long short-term memory and gated recurrent unit have been applied on time-series data in three countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, from 1/5/2020 to 6/12/2020. The results show that LSTM has achieved the best performance in confirmed cases in the three countries, and GRU has achieved the best performance in death cases in Egypt and Kuwait. (shrink)

In MacIntyre’s view, the agent in order to have a consistent identity should be able to narrate a story about her life, which relates the different episodes of her life together. This story should explain the transition between these episodes. This story is based on the notion of the good of human beings. A notion of the good should be present in the agent’s life to give a direction to her life. This integrity forms an identity for the agent. We (...) intend to challenge this narrative view of identity in this paper. We will argue in this paper that though identity is formed in the eye of others, it does not need to be constituted in a unified narrative form, i.e., the agent does not need to place all episodes of her life in narrative order and have a consistent and unified account of her life, which includes her life from birth to death. Rather, shorter-term episodes of time suffice for identity formation. We will appeal to some findings of empirical psychology and neuroscience to support our claim. (shrink)

In MacIntyre’s view, the agent in order to have a consistent identity should be able to narrate a story about her life, which relates the different episodes of her life together. This story should explain the transition between these episodes. This story is based on the notion of the good of human beings. A notion of the good should be present in the agent’s life to give a direction to her life. This integrity forms an identity for the agent. We (...) intend to challenge this narrative view of identity in this paper. We will argue in this paper that though identity is formed in the eye of others, it does not need to be constituted in a unified narrative form, i.e., the agent does not need to place all episodes of her life in narrative order and have a consistent and unified account of her life, which includes her life from birth to death. Rather, shorter-term episodes of time suffice for identity formation. We will appeal to some findings of empirical psychology and neuroscience to support our claim. (shrink)

According to the World Health Organization, female genital cutting affects millions of girls and women worldwide, particularly on the African continent and in the Middle East. This paper presents a plausible, albeit hypothetical, clinical vignette and then explores the legal landscape as well as the ethical landscape physicians should use to evaluate the adult patient who requests re-infibulation. The principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, justice, and autonomy are considered for guidance, and physician conscientious objection to this procedure is discussed as well. (...) Analyses of law and predominant principles of bioethics fail to yield a clear answer regarding performing female genital cutting or re-infibulation on an adult in the United States. Physicians should consider the patient’s physical, mental, and social health when thinking about female genital cutting and should understand the deep-rooted cultural significance of the practice. (shrink)

Breaking bad news (BBN) to parents whose newborn has a major disease is an ethical dilemma. In Saudi Arabia, BBN about newborns is performed according to the parental preferences that have been reported from non-Arabic/non-Islamic countries. Saudi mothers' preferences about BBN have not yet been studied. Therefore, we aimed to elicit the preferences of Saudi mothers about BBN concerning newborns. We selected a convenience sample of 402 Saudi mothers, aged 18-50 years, who had no previous experience with BBN. We selected (...) them via a simple number-randomization scheme from the premises of a level III Saudi hospital between October of 2009 and January of 2011. We used a hypothetical situation (BBN about trisomy 21) to elicit their preferences about BBN concerning newborns via a structured verbal questionnaire composed of 12 multiple-choice questions. We expressed their preferences as percentages (95% confidence interval), and we used the Kendall's W test (W) to assess the degree of agreement in preferences. The Saudi mothers preferred that BBN be conducted with both parents together (64% [60-69]), albeit with weak levels of agreement (W = 0.29). They showed moderate agreement in their preferences that BBN should be conducted early (79% [75-83], W = 0.48), in detail (81% [77-85], W = 0.52), in person (88% [85-91], W = 0.58), and in a quiet setting (86% [83-90], W = 0.53). With extremely weak agreement, they preferred to have a known person present for support during BBN (56% [51-61], W = 0.01), to have close bodily contact with their babies (66% [61-70], W = 0.10), and to have no another patients present (64% [59-68], W = 0.08). They showed moderate levels of agreement in their desires to detail, in advance, their preferences about process of BBN by giving a reversible, written informed consent that could be utilized for guidance, if needed (80% [76-84], W = 0.36). In our experience, Saudi mothers' preferences about BBN concerning newborns are varied, suggesting that a "one-size-fits-all" approach is inappropriate. A reversible, written informed consent detailing their preferences about BBN that would be kept in their medical records and utilized for guidance, if needed, may be the best solution, given this level of diversity. These findings merit further study. (shrink)

Medical paternalism has long been a common medical practice. However, patient autonomy in healthcare has been recently adopted by doctors and patients alike. This study explored whether doctors and patients in a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia preferred autonomy or paternalism in shared decision‐making. A total of 118 participants (51 patients requiring total knee replacement, owing to stages 3–4 of osteoarthritis, and 67 doctors) from the Eastern province, Saudi Arabia. responded to a 17‐question category‐based questionnaire involving four scales of (...) autonomy. Descriptive statistics and chi‐square test results revealed that in this hospital, patients preferred a paternalistic approach toward their medical care along with a full disclosure of the risks related to surgical procedures. We recommend health education regarding the specific autonomy subscales (doctor knows best, patient should decide, right to non‐participation, and obligatory risk information), and the implementation of protocols that protect patients' rights and enhance personal autonomy. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to formulate a theory of self-transformation based on Avicenna’s psychology. The research method used is descriptive qualitative analysis. Self-transformation is the process of changing the soul quality as to produce better changes in perception and behavior. The background of the research includes the weaknesses of the existing self-transformation methods; Avicenna’s psychology directs the soul to perfect the transformation; Avicenna’s psychology does not discuss his self-transformation theory explicitly; Avicenna has a better formulation of self-transformation theory (...) than Aristotle implicitly; and it provides alternative self-transformation method. (shrink)

The medieval Islamic solutions to the liar paradox can be categorized into three different families. According to the solutions of the first family, the liar sentences are not well-formed truth-apt...

English summary: What is color? Are colors real properties of the world around us, or are they the secondary effects on our senses by the objects around us. Christophe Al-Saleh explores this contemporary philosophical debate over colors, objectivism, and subjectivism. French description: Il existe un ecart entre la conception familiere et commune des couleurs et la conception scientifique, la premiere y voyant spontanement des proprietes reelles du monde qui nous entoure, la seconde mettant en doute cette realite: les couleurs (...) ne seraient jamais que des effets secondaires consecutifs a l'affection de notre sensibilite par les objets qui nous entourent. C'est dans ce contexte que s'inscrit le debat philosophique contemporain sur les couleurs, entre l'objectivisme (les couleurs sont des proprietes presentes dans le monde) et le subjectivisme (les couleurs sont des productions subjectives). (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;Two elements in Kripke's notion of "rigid designation" are distinguished: "genuine reference", which has to do with the semantic function of a singular term, and "rigid designation", which has to do with the behaviour of a singular term in modal contexts. Accordingly, the discussion is divided into two parts. ;In Part I, arguments from functionalism against "genuine reference" are considered and rejected, but it is claimed that certain Cartesian (...) arguments constitute a formidable objection against this notion. Therefore, while descriptivism must be rejected "genuine reference" is too strong as an alternative. "Weak reference" is suggested as the required notion, and some of its characteristics are delineated. ;In Part II, the problems concerning the contingent a priori and the necessary a posteriori arising from the second element in Kripke's notion are discussed, depending on whether the names involved are ordinary proper names, or "descriptive" names. Evans' arguments concerning descriptive names are considered, and it is argued that, because of a new distinction between deep vs. superficial rigidity, Davies and Humberstone fail in formulating them more exactly; but the informal arguments, though inconclusive, are intuitive. As for ordinary proper names, and on the basis of conclusions reached in Part I, the case for contingent a priori truths involving such names is undermined. In the case of necessary a posteriori truths involving ordinary proper names, the strategies of denying the necessity or the a posteriority of the examples are discussed, and found wanting. However, since there are reasons from other areas for denying the coincidence of the necessary and the a priori, Kripke's examples do not call for a radical departure from currently held views. (shrink)

In the last decades, researchers have been considering some fundamental issues such as energy saving, global warming, greenhouse emissions, and non-renewable energy to make models of house environmental standards to achieve a suitable consumption pattern for saving energy. In architecture, using natural energy is one of the essential pillars of design because it was one of the criteria of designing, which was considered on climate and geography, and it has been a high performance of climate adaptation in the modeling of (...) traditional houses. In this research, Azerbaijan is selected to evaluate the practical features of traditional Iranian houses designed in the cold climate, and criteria for developing sensible solutions to achieve a suitable design model for energy saving are provided. The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate and identify the features of climate design in traditional houses in a cold climate, which are suitable residential buildings for energy management, and to identify the components affecting energy saving. The data collection method is based on checklists, observation, considering the orientation, density, solar radiation angle in the region, documentary, analysis of maps, and adaptation of the architectural plan of the studied houses with the pattern of solar radiation in the area. This research discusses the design criteria for future structures and their adaptable measures based on the obtained results. Finally, it is declared that the traditional architectural design model follows the region’s climatic conditions, and considering the current climate and energies, traditional houses were designed; therefore, the best model for maximum use of available energy is climatic design. As a result, suggestions are made regarding residential architecture design to save energy. (shrink)

The medieval Islamic solutions to the liar paradox can be categorized into three different families. According to the solutions of the first family, the liar sentences are not well-formed truth-apt sentences. The solutions of the second family are based on a violation of the classical principles of logic (e.g. the principle of non-contradiction). Finally, the solutions of the third family render the liar sentences as simply false without any contradiction. In the Islamic tradition, almost all the well-known solutions of the (...) third family are inspired by the solution proposed by At_īr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 1265). Providing a logical analysis of his discussion of the liar paradox, I show that his solution is based on a conception of truth according to which every sentence signifies, usually among other things, its own truth. This makes Abharī’s solution of the same spirit as certain solutions that were later developed in the Latin tradition, in particular by John Buridan (d. 1358) and Albert of Saxony (d. 1390). (shrink)

Appealing to some analytic tools developed by contemporary analytic philosophers, I discuss Avicenna’s views regarding the problem(s) of linguistic and mental reference to non-existents, also known as the problem(s) of ‘empty intentionality’. I argue that, according to Avicenna, being in an intentional state directed towards an existing thing involves three elements: (1) an indirect relation to that thing, (2) a direct relation to a mental representation of that thing, and (3) a direct relation to the essence of that thing. Empty (...) intentionality does not involve the first element. Moreover, depending on the nature of the non-existent we are thinking about, the third element may not be involved either. Thus, the necessary element of being in an intentional state towards something is to be related to a mental representation of that thing. The nature of this representation may vary depending on the nature of the non-existent towards which our thought is directed. (shrink)

"Publié en 1994, traduit chez Vrin en 2007, L'esprit et le monde de John McDowell n'a cessé de susciter des débats dans le monde philosophique anglo-saxon, sur l'esprit, la connaissance, le langage et la nature, contribuant à définir de nouvelles questions. Pour la première fois, cette oeuvre, qui emprunte aussi bien à Wittgenstein, Strawson et Davidson qu'à Kant et Hegel, et tente de dépasser l'opposition traditionnelle entre la philosophie dite "continentale" et la philosophie dite "analytique", fait l'objet d'une lecture critique (...) en France. Les contributions ici rassemblées, ainsi que les réponses de John McDowell, font suite à une "première vague" de commentaires critiques qui lui furent adressés et qui le conduisirent à s'expliquer sur ses thèses et à en modifier légèrement quelques-unes (comme la thèse du contenu conceptuel de la perception). On trouvera ici, dans les différentes contributions, un éclairage sur les raisons et les portées de cette critique, et, dans les réponses, des formulations pour la plupart tout à fait inédites de McDowell."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

The intuition that we can think about non-existent objects seems to be in tension with philosophical concerns about the relationality of intentionality. Tim Crane’s psychologism removes this tension by proposing a psychologistic account of intentionality according to which intentionality is a purely non-relational notion. I argue that his account has counterintuitive consequences regarding our thoughts about existing objects, and as such is insufficiently plausible to convince us to reject the relationality of intentionality.

Avicenna believes that God must be understood in the first place as the Necessary Existent. In his various works, he provides different versions of an ingenious argument for the existence of the Necessary Existent—the so-called Proof of the Sincere —and argues that all the properties that are usually attributed to God can be extracted merely from God's having necessary existence. Considering the centrality of tawḥîd to Islam, the first thing Avicenna tries to extract from God's necessary existence is God's oneness. (...) The aim of the present Element is to provide a detailed discussion of Avicenna's arguments for the existence and unity of God. Through this project, the author hopes to clarify how, for Avicenna, the Islamic concept of monotheism is intertwined with the concept of essential existence. (shrink)

adr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498) has proposed a solution to the liar paradox according to which the liar sentence is a self-referential sentence in which the predicate ‘false’ is iterated. Discussing the conditions for the truth-aptness of the sentences with nested and iterated instances of the predicates ‘true’ and/or ‘false’, Dashtakī argued that the liar sentence is not truth-apt at all. In the tradition of Arabic logic, the central elements of Dashtakī's solution—the self-referentiality of the liar sentence and the implicit (...) iteration of the predicate ‘false’—were initially highlighted in two earlier solutions proposed by Naīr al-Dīn al-ūsī (d. 1274) and Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 1322), respectively. Here I investigate all three solutions and show that Dashtakī's solution can be taken as a synthesis of the other two. None of these solutions seems to be convincing at the end of the day. Nevertheless, all of them include significant logical and philosophical insights. In particular, although Dashtakī's solution is not itself compelling, it is only a few steps away from a promising solution. The appendix to this paper includes translations of the relevant passages. (shrink)

This study explored the impact of financial literacy on potential entrepreneurs' intent in Saudi Arabia. It also examined saving behavior as a mediator in the relationship between financial literacy and entrepreneurial intention. The study's data were collected by an online questionnaire sent to a sample of 270 potential entrepreneurs at Abqaiq Applied College, affiliated with King Faisal University. Data analysis was done using partial least squares structural equation modeling. According to the findings, there is no direct relationship between financial literacy (...) and entrepreneurial intent. However, it has been reported that saving behavior can mediate between financial literacy and entrepreneurial intent. (shrink)

In an illuminating article, Dimitri Gutas has tried to show that Avicenna's theory of knowledge should be understood within a full-blown empiricist framework very similar to that of John Locke.1 Gutas' argument is based on an analysis of Avicennian 'principles of syllogism'2. The principles of syllogism are those judgments and propositions that form the irreducible and axiomatic foundations of syllogisms and definitions.3 Avicenna categorizes these principles based on how we accept and acknowledge the truth of them. This categorization appears, with (...) some slight modifications, in many places in Avicenna's oeuvre, for example in the Kitāb al-Burhān of al-Šifā',4 and the logic parts of... (shrink)

ABSTRACT W.L. Craig has argued that the universe has a beginning because (1) the infinitude of the past entails the existence of actual infinite multitudes of past intervals of time, and (2) the existence of actual infinite multitudes is impossible. Puryear has rejected (1) and argued that what the infinitude of the past entails is only the existence of an actual infinite magnitude of past time. But this does not preclude the infinitude of the past, Puryear claims, because there can (...) be no justification for the claim that actual infinite magnitudes are impossible. I argue, against Puryear, that there can be such a justification. I claim, nevertheless, that, for reasons entirely different from Puryear’s, the finitude of the past cannot be established based either on the impossibility of actual infinite multitudes or on the impossibility of actual infinite magnitudes. My arguments in this paper draw on insights from al-Kindī and Avicenna. (shrink)

W.L. Craig has argued that the universe has a beginning because (1) the infinitude of the past entails the existence of actual infinite multitudes of past intervals of time, and (2) the existence of actual infinite multitudes is impossible. Puryear has rejected (1) and argued that what the infinitude of the past entails is only the existence of an actual infinite magnitude of past time. But this does not preclude the infinitude of the past, Puryear claims, because there can be (...) no justification for the claim that actual infinite magnitudes are impossible. I argue, against Puryear, that there can be such a justification. I claim, nevertheless, that, for reasons entirely different from Puryear’s, the finitude of the past cannot be established based either on the impossibility of actual infinite multitudes or on the impossibility of actual infinite magnitudes. My arguments in this paper draw on insights from al-Kindī and Avicenna. (shrink)

Avicenna believed in mathematical finitism. He argued that magnitudes and sets of ordered numbers and numbered things cannot be actually infinite. In this paper, I discuss his arguments against the actuality of mathematical infinity. A careful analysis of the subtleties of his main argument, i. e., The Mapping Argument, shows that, by employing the notion of correspondence as a tool for comparing the sizes of mathematical infinities, he arrived at a very deep and insightful understanding of the notion of mathematical (...) infinity, one that is much more modern than we might expect. I argue, moreover, that Avicenna’s mathematical finitism is interwoven with his literalist ontology of mathematics, according to which mathematical objects are properties of existing physical objects. (shrink)

Institutions significantly impact people’s attitudes and behaviors, both favorably and negatively. The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of several institutions on the intentions and decisions of Saudi entrepreneurs to start a business. Accordingly, the study on which this article is based used cross-sectional data of 3,376 respondents obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in 2016. The findings demonstrated that insufficient business legislations and policies have a detrimental impact on the ability to start small businesses. Furthermore, it (...) was discovered that the more media attention is given to successful entrepreneurs, the greater the likelihood of small businesses being established. Surprisingly, the typically high regard for successful entrepreneurs had no positive impact on the establishment of small businesses in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, there was no negative impact of fear of failure on the likelihood of starting small firms. Finally, the influence of control variables, such as age and gender, was also varied. Because the study was limited to the context of Saudi Arabia, future research could focus on expanding the analysis to other Gulf countries and including more institutions. (shrink)

Criticizing Richard Swinburne’s conception of God, John Hick argues that God cannot be personal because infinity and personhood are mutually incompatible. An essential characteristic of a person, Hick claims, is having a boundary which distinguishes that person from other persons. But having a boundary is incompatible with being infinite. Infinite beings are unbounded. Hence God cannot be thought of as an infinite person. In this paper, I argue that the Hickian argument is flawed because boundedness is an equivocal notion: in (...) one sense it is not essential to personhood, and in another sense—which is essential to personhood—it is compatible with being infinite. (shrink)

The Successive Addition Argument (SAA) is one of the arguments proposed by the defenders of the Kalām Cosmological Argument to support the claim that the universe has a beginning. The main premise of SAA states that a collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite. This premise is challenged by an argument originally proposed by Fred Dretske. According to Dretske’s Argument (DA), the scenario of a counter who starts counting numbers and never stops can provide a counterexample to (...) the main premise of SAA. I argue that neither DA nor its past-oriented counterpart—which discusses the scenario of a counter who has always been counting negative integers from the infinite past—can play a decisive role in our evaluation of the strength of the arguments that are intended to establish the finitude of the past based on the impossibility of an actually infinite number of successive additions. (shrink)

I will briefly argue that theological fatalism is not a genuine ‘theological’ problem, for it can be reduced to another alleged incompatibility that arises independently of the existence or non-existence of God. I will conclude that the way of arguing against the existence of God or His omniscience by appealing to theological fatalism is blocked for libertarian atheists.

Interest in leadership research is growing, however, the rate of leadership learning is slowing down due to the proliferation of new leadership constructs. The objective of the present meta-analysis is to address the significant shortcomings in prior meta-analytic research on newer genre leadership forms by utilizing a substantially greater number of studies and observations than in previous meta-analyses and examining the meta-analytic correlations among the newer genre leadership forms. The results of the present study indicate that the newer genre leadership (...) forms overlap to a greater degree than previously reported, while at the same time accounting for some degree of unique variance in the literature's most studied outcome variables; estimates of the relative contribution of each leadership form to the outcomes are provided, providing new insights into the distinctiveness of each leadership form. The findings suggest that pursuing an integrated theory and measure of newer genre leadership forms is a desirable future step for leadership research. (shrink)

Financial literacy has gained much attention amongst scholars, policymakers and other stakeholders due to its role in backing up investment decisions, improving personal financial management and increasing financial wellbeing. This study examines the influence of financial literacy on investment decisions with the moderating effect of the overconfidence behavioural bias. Data were collected from 180 respondents in Saudi Arabia using a questionnaire, and a convenience sampling technique was applied. The study’s findings were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (...) technique. It was found that financial literacy positively and significantly influenced investment decisions. Moreover, the results show that overconfidence positively affected investment decisions and that the relationship between financial literacy and investment decisions was positively and significantly moderated by overconfidence. (shrink)

Twitter integrates with streaming data technologies and machine learning to add new value to healthcare. This paper presented a real-time system to predict breast cancer based on streaming patient’s health data from Twitter. The proposed system consists of two major components: developing an offline building model and an online prediction pipeline. For the first component, we made a correlation between the features to determine the correlation between features and reduce the number of features from the Breast Cancer Wisconsin Diagnostic dataset. (...) Two feature selection algorithms are recursive feature elimination and univariate feature selection algorithms which are applied to features after correlation to select the essential features. Four decision trees, logistic regression, support vector machine, and random forest classifier have been used on features after correlation and feature selection. Also, hyperparameter tuning and cross-validation have been applied with machine learning to optimize models and enhance accuracy. Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, and Twitter Streaming API are used to develop the second component. The best model with the highest accuracy obtained from the first component predicts breast cancer in real time from tweets’ streaming. The results showed that the best model is the random forest classifier which achieved the best accuracy. (shrink)

BackgroundPsychological distress/morbidity is amongst the primary reason for the cause of pain at multiple sites, its progression, and recovery. Though still not very clear if physical pain in the neck or the back may predict psychological morbidities or not. Thus, we investigated the association between combined neck or back pain and psychological distress/morbidity.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia, including 1,003 individuals. The questionnaire comprised of General Health Questionnaire-12 and some questions about neck and back pain. Data analysis (...) was done using statistical software SPSS version 26.0.ResultsThe results of the multivariate analysis revealed a significant positive association between neck/back pain status and total GHQ score. Having neck/back pain had almost a 2.5 times greater risk of psychological distress/morbidity. Further, females were more likely to have a higher risk of psychological distress/morbidity than males while adjusting for sociodemographic and clinical characteristics.ConclusionThe combination of neck and back pain was significantly associated with the Saudi population’s psychological problems. Therefore, the Saudi government needs to devise high-risk strategies and allocate adequate resources to the cause so that at-risk people can be shielded from the adverse complications arising from this condition in the long run. (shrink)

Low heart rate causes a risk of death, heart disease, and cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, monitoring the heart rate is critical because of the heart’s function to discover its irregularity to detect the health problems early. Rapid technological advancement allows healthcare sectors to consolidate and analyze massive health-based data to discover risks by making more accurate predictions. Therefore, this work proposes a real-time prediction system for heart rate, which helps the medical care providers and patients avoid heart rate risk in real (...) time. The proposed system consists of two phases, namely, an offline phase and an online phase. The offline phase targets developing the model using different forecasting techniques to find the lowest root mean square error. The heart rate time-series dataset is extracted from Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care. Recurrent neural network, long short-term memory, gated recurrent units, and bidirectional long short-term memory are applied to heart rate time series. For the online phase, Apache Kafka and Apache Spark have been used to predict the heart rate in advance based on the best developed model. According to the experimental results, the GRU with three layers has recorded the best performance. Consequently, GRU with three layers has been used to predict heart rate 5 minutes in advance. (shrink)

Concept originalism, recently introduced and defended by Sainsbury and Tye, Tye, and Sainsbury, holds that “atomic concepts are to be individuated by their historical origins, as opposed to their semantic or epistemic properties”. The view is immune to Gareth Evans’s “Madagascar” objection to the Causal Theory of Reference since it allows a concept to change its reference over time without losing its identity. The possibility of reference-shift, however, raises the problem of misleading belief reports. S&T try to tackle the problem (...) by strengthening the sufficient condition for a truthful belief report. We will argue that, first, their solution fails, second, and more importantly, their diagnosis of the root of the problem is misguided, third, two initially appealing ways out of the problem fail, and fourth, the prospect of finding a solution to the problem within CO is dim. The view opens the Pandora’s box of reference-shift, in a wide range of cases, without providing the necessary semantic means to take care of them. (shrink)

We conducted a systematic literature review on the ethical considerations of the use of contact tracing app technology, which was extensively implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rapid and extensive use of this technology during the COVID-19 pandemic, while benefiting the public well-being by providing information about people’s mobility and movements to control the spread of the virus, raised several ethical concerns for the post-COVID-19 era. To investigate these concerns for the post-pandemic situation and provide direction for future events, we (...) analyzed the current ethical frameworks, research, and case studies about the ethical usage of tracing app technology. The results suggest there are seven essential ethical considerations—privacy, security, acceptability, government surveillance, transparency, justice, and voluntariness—in the ethical use of contact tracing technology. In this paper, we explain and discuss these considerations and how they are needed for the ethical usage of this technology. The findings also highlight the importance of developing integrated guidelines and frameworks for implementation of such technology in the post- COVID-19 world. (shrink)

Concept of Avidyā in the Vedānta philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya; a study.

REVIEWS: This is a very helpful volume and a good addition to contemporary scholarship on the valuable and little-known Jaina contribution to philosophy. Prof.Nagin Shah has edited the book well, including clear introduction and a very complete index.