In their paper titled “Proposed Principles for International Bioethics Conferencing: Anti-Discriminatory, Global, and Inclusive,” Jecker et al. eloquently present essential principles for Internati...

Cho and Martinez-Martin (2023) provide a thoughtful analysis of the epistemological and ethical implications of digital twin (DT) technology in biomedical research. However, they overlook the profo...

The article by Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) argues that there are inconsistencies in our ethical frameworks regarding the use of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and polygenic scores for identifyi...

Background Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) provides important benefits yet raises ethical concerns. We surveyed Canadian pregnant women and their partners to explore their views regarding pressure to test and terminate a pregnancy, as well as other societal impacts that may result from the routinization of NIPT.Methods A questionnaire was offered (March 2015 to July 2016) to pregnant women and their partners at five healthcare facilities in four Canadian provinces.Results 882 pregnant women and 395 partners completed the survey. 64% of women (...) anticipated feeling no pressure to take the test if it were offered routinely, and 39% were not concerned about routinization leading to increased pressure to terminate a pregnancy of a fetus with Down Syndrome. Regarding other social concerns possibly resulting from routinization, pregnant women were most concerned regarding a reduction in resources available for people with Down Syndrome and their families and least concerned regarding a decrease in the population of people with Down Syndrome.Conclusions Our findings reflect the concerns expressed by pregnant women and their partners, both personal (pressure to test, pressure to terminate) and societal (e.g., regarding potential negative impact on people with disabilities and their families). Even if most women were not concerned about feeling pressured to test due to NIPT routinization, a large minority express concerns that should not be taken lightly. Moreover, a majority of respondents were concerned regarding pressure to terminate pregnancies due to NIPT routinization as well as regarding most societal impacts they were queried on, especially the possible future reduction in resources available for people with DS and their families. Canadian policy-makers should consider these potential negative ramifications of NIPT and ensure that appropriate social policies accompany its implementation. (shrink)

BackgroundThe clinical introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidies is currently transforming the landscape of prenatal screening in many countries. Since it is noninvasive, safe and allows the early detection of abnormalities, NIPT expanded rapidly and the test is currently commercially available in most of the world. As NIPT is being introduced globally, its clinical implementation should consider various challenges, including the role of the surrounding social and cultural contexts. We conducted a qualitative study with healthcare professionals in Lebanon (...) and Quebec as case studies, to highlight the relevance of cultural contexts and to explore the concerns that should be taken into account for an ethical implementation of NIPT.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 healthcare professionals (HCPs), 10 from each country, practicing in the field of prenatal screening and follow up diagnostic testing, including obstetricians and gynecologists, nurses, medical geneticists and, genetic counselors. We aimed to 1) explore HCPs’ perceptions and views regarding issues raised by NIPT and 2) to shed light on ways in which the introduction of the same technology (NIPT) in two different contexts (Lebanon and Quebec) raises common and different challenges that are influenced by the cultural norms and legal policies in place.ResultsWe identified challenges to the ethical implementation of NIPT. Some are common to both contexts, including financial/economic, social, and organizational/ educational challenges. Others are specific to each context. For example, challenges for Lebanon include abortion policy and financial profit, and in Quebec challenges include lobbying by Disability rights associations and geographical access to NIPT.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the need to consider specific issues related to various cultural contexts when developing frameworks that can guide an ethically sound implementation of NIPT. Further, they show that healthcare professional education and training remain paramount in order to provide NIPT counseling in a way that supports pregnant women and couples’ choice. (shrink)

We envisage a black hole perturbed by a force-free magnetic field outside and attempt to determine its structure. We suppose the metric that describes this black hole is of the static spherical type, that is Schwarzschild, and the energy–momentum tensor emanating from an FFMF source perturbs this background metric, in this regard one can imagine a magnetic accretion disk around the black hole. By solving the equations for such a configuration, we will show that in addition to modifying the diagonal (...) elements of the background metric, we will also see the non-zeroing of the off-diagonal elements of the general metric, one of the immediate consequences of which will be a static to stationary transition. (shrink)

Medical sciences have developed in India from time immemorial. This paper presents a detailed outlook of the development of these techniques in medieval India and Indo-Central Asia. The different authors, works and techniques of that time are recalled and compared in order to provide an overall view of this barely known tradition.

A graph’s entropy is a functional one, based on both the graph itself and the distribution of probability on its vertex set. In the theory of information, graph entropy has its origins. Hex-derived networks have a variety of important applications in medication store, hardware, and system administration. In this article, we discuss hex-derived network of type 1 and 2, written as HDN 1 n and HDN 2 n, respectively of order n. We also compute some degree-based entropies such as Randić, (...) ABC, and G A entropy of HDN 1 n and HDN 2 n. (shrink)

Se ha dicho que para entender una literatura lo mejor es leer sus obras, y no lo que sobre ella se ha dicho o escrito. Este artículo, en cuatro partes, es un intento de estudiar las nuwashshahat y sus kharjas, basado solamente, dentro de lo posible, en los textos con los que contamos. El artículo llega a tres conclusiones, no del todo nuevas para mis lectores: 1. Si bien las nuwashshahat fueron producto de la tradición literaria clásica árabe, su desarrollo (...) se enlaza inevitablemente con factores específicos, políticos y sociales, del medio andalusí. 2. La kharja es una salida de 'ingenio' o 'ingeniosa', zarf o hazl, al final de la nuwashshahat. Sea cual fuere su propósito de haber existido antes de las nuwashshahat, las kharjas de voz femenina en lengua romance, al igual que sus equivalentes árabes, tenían como función suministrar el mismo requisito de zarf al final de la nuwashshahat la. 3. La reacción de Ibn Saná al-Mulk bacía la kharja fue en gran medida una reacción psicológica, y no una respuesta literaria bien ponderada. La mejor manera de saber lo que Ibn Saná al-Mulk pensaba de las nuwashshahat es leer las que él mismo compuso, y no lo que opinó sobre la kharja. (shrink)

Basado enteramente en pruebas internas, este estudio se propone mostrar que el manuscrito único del Dīwān de Ibn Quzmān, publicado en edición facsímil por David de Gunzburg en 1896, es una copia dictada. Se indica también que el copista, a quien con frecuencia se ha culpado de introducir en el texto popular andaluz correcciones o clasicismos, no estaba bien equipado para desempeñar tal papel. Si bien era un calígrafo de primera categoría, se aducen pruebas de que su conocimiento del árabe (...) no estaba a la altura de la calidad de su caligrafía. El estudio muestra que él fue el responsable de una amplia gama de problemas textuales que ha dejado perplejos a sucesivos editores del Dīwān. En marcado contraste, se muestra que Ibn Quzmān poseía un dominio magistral de la lengua árabe y de las tradiciones-árabes clásicas. Al parecer también había adquirido un alto grado de 'aculturación' en la lengua romance. Además de ofrecer las pruebas en que se basan estos asertos, el estudio constituye un ejemplo ilustrativo de cómo estas pruebas pueden ayudar a una mejor lectura e interpretación del Dīwān de Ibn Quzmān. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Māzarī al-Tamimī (d. 536/1141) was one of the last jurists who lived in North Africa before the fall of al-Andalus. He is the author of Izāḥ al-Mahsūl, which is considered to be an important turning point in the formation of the uṣūl al-fiqh structure of Mālikī jurisprudence. The lack of studies on the uṣūl al-fiqh of al-Māzarī, who had considerable knowledge in the fields of ḥadīth, fiqh, theology, medicine, and fatwā, made this study necessary. This study examines al-Māzarī's understanding of (...) uṣūl through his work Izāḥ al-Mahsūl in the field of uṣūl al-fiqh. Izāḥ al-Mahsūl is al-Māzarī's commentary on the Shāfiʿī scholar al-Juwaynī's (d. 478/1085) al-Burhan fi uṣūl al-fiqh on uṣūl al-fiqh. The commentary on al-Juwaynī's al-Burhān is one of the fundamental texts of Shāfiʿī usūl al-fiqh. In his commentary on this important work, al-Māzarī followed his teacher al-Juwaynī's subject classification and systematization and applied the method of the mutakallim in writing uṣūl al-fiqh. Although it bears similarities with his teacher's work, this commentary, even in its incomplete form, is an independent work with the opinions and evaluations it includes. Al-Māzarī did not hesitate to oppose his teacher in the work and put forward his own method of ijtihād. Izāḥ al-Mahsūl, which is the subject of this study, is an important example of the influence of Shāfiʿī uṣūl al-fiqh on Mālikī uṣūl al-fiqh in terms of method and content. With this work, the Mālikī uṣūl al-fiqh literature and texts were modelled after Izāḥ al-Mahsūl. This work, which was a source for post-Māzarī Mālikī jurists, is also the subject of this study because it contains the traces of the Shāfiʿī-Mālikī interaction in Islamic jurisprudence. Within the scope of the study, the principles that stand out in al-Māzari's understanding of uṣūl al-fiqh in his work Izāḥ al-Mahsūl were tried to be identified. In this way, it is aimed to reveal on which issues the Mālikī uṣūl al-fiqh is based. It is impossible for al-Māzarī's understanding of uṣūl al-fiqh cannot to be influenced by the intellectual and political environment in which he grew up. With this in mind, we have tried to briefly touch upon al-Māzarī's life, his teachers, his works, and the intellectual and political atmosphere of the Maghreb region during his lifetime. We have tried to understand the impact of all the details of his life on al-Māzarī's scholarly life and his uṣūlism in particular. In addition, determining the prominent elements of al-Māzarī's understanding of uṣūl is also important in terms of understanding the jurisprudential structure in the Maghreb region and illuminating the region in terms of Islamic legal history. This study aims to present al-Māzarī's understanding of uṣūl in terms of its basic features. Thus, it aims to shed light on al-Māzarī's contribution to the Mālikī understanding of uṣūl al-fiqh and its literature. The document analysis method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. In this context, the textual analysis was applied by comparing al-Māzarī's views with those of his teacher al-Juwaynī, by whom he was influenced. (shrink)

Tahâvî (v. 321/ 933), hicrî üçüncü asrın sonları ile dördüncü asrın başlarında yaşamış Hanefî fakihidir. Tahâvî’nin daha çok muhaddis olarak tanınmasına rağmen hadis ve fıkha derin vukufiyeti, her iki alana da temas eden hadis-sahâbî kavlî münasebetini onun üzerinden incelemeyi daha anlamlı kılmaktadır. Müctehid fakihlerin hüküm istinbâtında başvurduğu sahâbî kavlî, Hz. Peygamber’e dayanması bakımından semâ/tevkif ihtimali bulunan bir delildir. Bu sebeple sahâbî kavlini sünnet birlikte değerlendirmenin lüzumu ortaya çıkmaktadır. Ayrıca Tahâvî’nin sahâbî kavli ile sünnet arasında net bir ayırım yapmaması, Hanefî usûlünün (...) teşekkül süreci açısından önemlidir. Tahâvî, ictihad usûlü anlayışında sahâbî kavline deliller hiyerarşisinde Kur’an, sünnet ve icmâdan sonra yer vermektedir. Eserlerindeki tercihleri dikkate alındığında Tahâvî, sahâbî kavlini tevkife hamlettiği yerlerde sünnet olarak değerlendirmektedir. Hatta sahâbî kavli ve uygulamasının icmâa dönüştüğü durumda sünneti neshedebilecek mertebede gördüğü anlaşılmaktadır. Tahâvî ictihadî olan, re’y ve te’vil ifade eden sahâbî kavlini ise mutlak delil almayıp bu durumdaki sahâbî kavli karşısında kıyasa gitmektedir. Tahâvî’nin sünnete ve sahâbî kavline bakışı birlikte değerlendirildiğinde dönemin hadis anlayışı gereği, sünnetin çerçevesini sahâbe ve tâbiûn kavillerini dahil ederek geniş kapsamda ele aldığı anlaşılmaktadır. Erken dönem Hanefî usûlünde sahâbî kavli hakkında Tahâvî’nin görüşlerinin incelendiği araştırmada metin incelemesi ve analizi yöntemi kullanılmış; Tahâvî’ye ait eserler ile erken dönem Hanefî usûl-i fıkıh eserleri mukâyeseli olarak ele alınmıştır. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We have several objectives in this article. Firstly, we return to the category of semiosphere due to its dialectical and polysemic character, but we also introduce some reflections in order to analyze more complex cultural productions. In this same sense, the category of internal and external semiotic border allows us to present the cultural, intercultural, and transcultural translation problems that are articulated with the dynamic changes of every culture. Secondly, we examine the category of culture and articulate it with (...) the no-culture, with the anti-culture, which would lead to propose three types of semiosphere: cultural semiosphere, noncultural semiosphere, and anti-cultural semiosphere, which introduce controversial aspects that must be considered. Thirdly, we study Iuri Lotman’s latest approaches on the unpredictable in cultural processes, assuming assumptions of complexity and transdisciplinarity that are present in all his work. (shrink)

Mediante el presente trabajo, se pretende hacer hincapié en aspectos más o menos subjetivos, más o menos arbitrarios, que de alguna manera determinaron la visión general y generalizada que tenía, y en parte sigue teniendo, Occidente, Nosotros, sobre Oriente, Ellos, los árabes. Esta visión, imagen más bien ficticia y creada no siempre de forma inocente, será la que configure las posturas y relaciones que hoy en día rigen el acercamiento entre las diferentes culturas. Un aspecto fundamental e imprescindible de esta (...) interacción cultural vendría de la mano de la traducción, disciplina que, por su propia esencia, será la que reproduzca al Otro según su universo conceptual y sus intereses, en definitiva, según su ideología. En las últimas décadas, la recepción de la literatura árabe por medio de la traducción se ha visto muy menguada, lo que se debe esencialmente a la imagen negativa que en Occidente se tiene de la misma. Debido a los estereotipos de antaño, en muchos casos exagerados todavía más, la literatura árabe no es tenida en cuenta como lo que es, Literatura, sino más bien como un corpus de estudios e informes técnicos sobre la sociedad del otro. La idea de que el árabe no tiene nada que ofrecer a nivel intelectual, está totalmente arraigada, tanto que todo acercamiento, toda traducción, debe tenerlo muy en cuenta y actuar en consecuencia. (shrink)

Three new versions of Wason’s 2-4-6 rule discovery task incorporating error rates or feedback of uncertainty reduction, inspired by the error-statistical account in philosophy of science, were employed. In experiments 1 and 2, participants were instructed that some experimenter feedback would be erroneous. The results showed that performance was impaired when there was probabilistic error. In experiment 3, participants were given uncertainty reduction feedback as they generated different number triples and the negative effects of probabilistic error were not observed. These (...) findings are informative not only about rule discovery tasks in general but also about contexts of inference under uncertainty. (shrink)

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are (...) numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities. (shrink)

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are (...) numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la recepción argentina de los governmentality studies , particularmente con los denominados anglofoucauldians . En esta dirección, nos referimos, inicialmente a los “deslizamientos” y “sobreentendidos” implicados en la traducción local de la perspectiva que examinamos. En segundo lugar, en un nivel más teórico y general, abordamos las limitaciones que supone la analítica del gobierno entendida en términos de la descripción de unas racionalidades políticas. En este punto, proponemos un modo alternativo, aunque complementario, de (...) reflexión sobre las prácticas discursivas de gobierno. Para ello, nos nutrimos de las elaboraciones provenientes del análisis materialista del discurso. Finalmente, en las conclusiones reflexionamos acerca del Sur como posición enunciativa desde la cual contribuir al debate teórico-conceptual sobre el problema del gobierno y la gubernamentalidad. (shrink)

This paper suggests that time could have a much richer mathematical structure than that of the real numbers. Clark & Read (1984) argue that a hypertask (uncountably many tasks done in a finite length of time) cannot be performed. Assuming that time takes values in the real numbers, we give a trivial proof of this. If we instead take the surreal numbers as a model of time, then not only are hypertasks possible but so is an ultratask (a sequence which (...) includes one task done for each ordinal number—thus a proper class of them). We argue that the surreal numbers are in some respects a better model of the temporal continuum than the real numbers as defined in mainstream mathematics, and that surreal time and hypertasks are mathematically possible. (shrink)

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are (...) numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities. (shrink)

Drawn on love, compassion and forgiveness, nonviolence is an inspirational value to humanity. From the historic movements led by Gandhi and then Martin Luther King Jr, to the recent Arab Spring in Egypt as also the impact of Anna Hazare's call for anti-corruption struggle further confirm the critical importance of non-violence as a cementing ideological force in present times.

When addressing the Muslim women question, one of the problematic issues is the centrality of a religious tradition or a political ideology as a primary subject of inquiry. Muslim women are seen as the embodiment of a singular tradition or ideology, as in the case of Turkey, where the contemporary headscarf-wearing women are represented as ‘Islamist’. In this project, I aim to problematise this stereotyping categorisation through ontological conceptualisations, inspired by the French thinker Gilles Deleuze. To implement the relational ontology (...) of Deleuze, I examine headscarf contestations in Turkey through interviews conducted in two women’s organisations in Turkey: Capital City Women’s Platform (Baskent Kadin Platformu) and Hazar. I argue that the world constantly ‘becomes’ through flows of relations between multiple elements; therefore, it is a multiplicity, an intensity and fractured. With this Deleuzian ontology in mind, I consider the quotidian physical, material and social resources of my interviews with the aim of elucidating relations between a female body and the commodities produced by multiple socio-economic and political factors in Turkey. Then I address a Deleuzian understanding of categorisations such as class, gender, race and ideology. These categorisations, for Deleuze, are aggregations of multiplicities and fluidities forming specific fixations according to a range of ascribed characteristics, such as income, education, employment or dress codes. In this regard, I conclude that the label ‘Islamist’ restrains the relational and multiple characters of headscarf practices within a unifying category by attributing certain features to particular embodiments and materials. (shrink)

The history of Iraq in the twentieth century, and perhaps the Middle East more broadly, is punctuated by an intellectual shift that has, for the most part, escaped the attention of scholars. It might be characterized as a shift from a problem of representation introduced by the rise of left-wing politics, to a problem of experience created by its failure. This shift registers in the work of writers and artists, where the depiction of the social world gave way to an (...) exploration of states of being. The paradigm for that turn inward in modern art was set by the artist Kadhim Haidar, in a series of paintings exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, in 1965, under the title The Epic of the Martyr [Malḥamat al-shahīd]. The paintings reconstructed imagery from the mourning processions that annually commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, al-Husayn. This paper argues that the ritual imagery contains a grammar of experience, forged in the early history of Islam, that linked justice to a state of being, and that the transposition of the imagery into painting activated that grammar in the artwork. (shrink)