As stated above, the process of the regionalization of Confucianism was symbolically raising the banner of unofficial Confucian schools in a regionally dispersed situation. This resulted in a refreshing contrast to the unified characteristics of Han Confucianism. The consolidation of a position of united imperial authority during the Han had led to Confucian discourse becoming official ideology, with wandering Confucians being absorbed into the political center of gravity, and the use of a single authority to solve any given question. An (...) examination of this process from the viewpoint of spatial and geographical distribution, demonstrates that the process of transmission was from a "wider area" to a "single place" . During the Han the cultural focus was concentrated in northern regions such as Qi, Lu, Liang [this is the state Wei—Ed.], and Song. Their locations were mutually overlapping with the political centers of gravity. At the same time, the cultural focus was invariably in the regions where Confucian activities were most concentrated. This was coterminous with the territorial limitations of the domination of the Han. A question emerges therefrom: with the post-Han south-north cultural migration, did the mutual interaction between the political and cultural centers have a defining influence on the spatial composition of the stratum of Confucian scholars? (shrink)

This study examines the emergence and evolution of madrasa as a specific organizational form of higher learning from a comparative-historical perspective. The article begins by discussing how the madrasa emerged and which factors contributed to its rise and spread among the Islamicate political regimes during the Middle Ages and afterwards. Then, it provides a comparison between the medieval European university and the madrasa, with particular attention to the characteristics of the legal systems on which they were founded and the influences (...) of the political environment on the respective institutions. It is argued that the differences in the legal tradition and the political authority structures may help us to grasp why madrasa and university produced different outcomes in terms of internal governance and institutional autonomy. The short discussion of the Ottoman case, where madrasas functioned as the main higher learning institutions at least until the adoption of the Western-style educational institutions from the 18th century, is presented as an illustrative case to test these assumptions. (shrink)

As an advanced network calculation mode, cloud computing is becoming more and more popular. However, with the proliferation of large data centers hosting cloud applications, the growth of energy consumption has been explosive. Surveys show that a remarkable part of the large energy consumed in data center results from over-provisioning of the network resource to meet requests during peak demand times. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem by constructing a dynamic energy-efficient resource management scheme. As (...) a way of saving energy as well as maintaining cloud user’s quality of experience, the scheme presents a multitier cloud architecture by configuring physical machines into two pools: a hot pool and a warm pool. Each PM is configured with a resource search engine that finds an available virtual machine for the request, and a synchronous sleep mechanism is introduced to the warm pool. To analyze the end-to-end performance of the cloud system’s service with the proposed scheme, we establish a hybrid queueing system composed of three stochastic submodels by using a matrix-geometric solution. Accordingly, the average latency of requests and the energy-saving rate of the system are derived. Through numerical results, we show the influence of the synchronous sleep mechanism on the system performance. Moreover, from the perspective of economics, we build a system cost function to study the trade-off between different performance measures. An improved Salp Swarm Algorithm is presented to minimize the system cost and optimize the sleep parameter. (shrink)

In the ninth century (A.H.) the number of Sufis and their sects increased due to Timurids’ attention to Sufis, and as a consequence convents (Khaneqa) became one of the most important economical and political centers. Excessive wealth and spiritual influence of Sufis leaders particularly Sheikhs of Naqshbani kingdom result in Sufism power being twice as much so that, Timurid kings and Sultans used their spiritual influence to legitimize their rules and tried not only to respect and honor (...) them but also, to construct and operate their Khaneqas. Close relationship between Naqshbani’s leaders and Timurid Sultans had a great influence on most country’s affairs, particularly education and training as most of removal and installations in the field of educational affairs were under their views. In this survey, the impact of Naqshbandi’s Sheikhs on educational process during Timurid period was investigated and analyzed by citing library references and implementing analytical-descriptive method. (shrink)

Presently, most studies focus on the minimization of the costs and negative social effects of the location of construction waste recycling centers; however, the influence of the location on future operation is usually ignored. Aiming at solving these problems, a location model for the maximization of service reliability was devised. Service reliability includes the recycling reliability of the construction waste and the delivery reliability of the recycled product. Through maximizing service reliability, the location deviation as a result of (...) arrival delay is expected to be reduced and the service reliability improved. Then, two important parameters in our model were solved on the basis of correlative mathematical theories. Finally, an example was implemented to verify our location optimization model. A genetic algorithm was used to obtain optimal solutions, and the solutions were analyzed. Through establishing a location optimization model, a possible better solution to location problems may be obtained to help in implementing location selection for recycling centers. (shrink)

This paper aims to improve knowledge about the main factors influencing firm environmental commitment, by examining empirically the relationship between public support for R&D for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their investment in environmental protection. The empirical analysis was developed using a sample of 1594 Spanish firms, and a binary logistic regression to evaluate the existence of dependency relationships between the analyzed variables. The results show that those companies receiving direct funding from local public entities and those collaborating with (...) research centers and universities, invest more in environmental actions to protect the natural ecosystem. The paper contributes to the academic literature by analyzing the main factors that influence the SMEs environmental commitment. Moreover, showing practitioners and policy makers the effectiveness of different types of financial support depending on the origin of the funds and the form of action taken; showing managers the advantages of collaborating with public administrations, as well as with other research organizations, to obtain better ECSR results. (shrink)

Firm managers play an important role in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. Education is emerging as the key factor in developing a sense of moral responsibility amongst the business students who will eventually become company managers and decision makers. The aim of this research is, thus, twofold. First, to analyze the existence of a direct positive correlation between university students’ perception of CSR and its impact on business performance; and second, to examine the extent to which two (...) factors (advantages brought by CSR and responsibilities toward stakeholders) act as mediation variables in the aforementioned correlation. The analysis was performed with a sample of 390 business‐related university students. Amongst the potential contributions made by this study we can highlight the possibility of knowing future managers’ way of thinking and of knowing the aspects where educational centers might improve their CSR teaching. (shrink)

Nursing work centers around attending to a person's health during many of life's most vulnerable moments, from birth to death. Given the high‐stakes nature of this work, it is essential for nurses to critically reflect on their individual and collective impact, which can range from healing to harmful. The purpose of this paper is to use a philosophical inquiry approach and a critical lens to explore the potential influence of critical pedagogy (how we learn what we learn) on (...) nursing praxis (why we do what we do) with the aim of disrupting stigma and discrimination within the profession. This paper draws on the works of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and bell hooks to alert readers to particular windows of opportunity where an intentional adoption of critical pedagogy in nursing praxis may help the profession think differently about two important and related topics: relational violence and peer‐led knowledge mobilization. As a practice‐based and theoretically grounded profession, nurses often strive to bridge the theoretical with the practical and the individual with the systemic. Thus, developing a robust and philosophically rooted disciplinary body of knowledge is particularly important to help us defensibly grapple with the notions of truth and ethics that shape our work's very essence and impact. (shrink)

Tuition and government funding does not adequately support the mission of many colleges and universities, and increasingly, corporations are responding to this need by making payments to institutions of higher learning with significant contracted expectations, including influence of the curriculum and content of college courses. One large, public banking corporation, BB&T, has funded grants to more than 60 colleges and universities in the United States to address what the corporation refers to as the “moral foundations of capitalism.” These grants (...) vary in size but average $1.1 million and typically require design of a new course that includes discussion of Atlas Shrugged, one of the novels of the author Ayn Rand. With many of the participating universities, the agreement with BB&T also stipulates the creation of chaired faculty positions, library reading rooms, designated capitalism centers, speaker series, scholarships, and the distribution of free student copies of Atlas Shrugged. Several ethics concerns about these grants, including their threat to academic freedom, are discussed in this article, as well as the need for focused guidance for university administrators regarding the temptation of large donations with attached questionable expectations. (shrink)

In this essay, I aim to identify and analyze the influence of Cartesian dualism on Rembrandt's pictorial representations of the self. My thesis is that Descartes and Rembrandt share concerns about philosophy's exploration of human nature, concerns rooted in mind–body dualism. Descartes's corpus bears witness to a growing skepticism about the relation between matter and extension. Likewise, Rembrandt's anatomy lessons lead the viewer to question the value of treating humans as scientific objects. I suggest that by reexamining Rembrandt's work (...) in light of the mind–body problem we generate a fuller understanding of Rembrandt's artistic critique and expression and Descartes's mature scientific thinking and abiding influence. My analysis centers on four Rembrandt paintings: The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp (1632); The Descent from the Cross (1632–1633); The Sacrifice of Abraham (1635); and The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Joan Deyman (1656). (shrink)

In this commentary we describe findings in normal human subjects and in patients with visual hemineglect that support the importance of higher-level influences on saccade generation during visual exploration. As the duration of fixations increases with increases in the cognitive demand of the task, the timing of exploratory saccades is controlled more by centers of cognitive and perceptual processing at levels 4 and 5 than by reflex-like automatic processes at level 3. In line with this, unilateral frontal eye field (...) lesions impair systematic, intentional saccadic exploration of visual scenes, causing prolonged fixations and contralesional hemineglect, but leave visually triggered reflexive saccades largely intact. (shrink)

Career development is a lifelong process that starts in infancy and is shaped by a number of different factors during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Even though career development is shaped through life, relatively little is known about the predictors of occupational aspirations in childhood. Therefore, in the present work we investigate how the stereotypicality of a mother’s occupation influences her young child’s communal occupational aspirations and communal orientation. We conducted two studies with young children. Study 1 included 72 mother–child dyads (...) recruited from childcare centers in Northern Norway. Study 2 included 106 mother–child dyads recruited from Norwegian elementary schools. Results from Study 1 showed that the stereotypicality of mothers’ occupation was related to their children’s communal occupational aspirations and children’s communal orientation. In contrast to our predictions and results from Study 1, the stereotypicality of mothers’ occupation was not significantly related to children’s communal occupational aspirations nor their communal orientation in Study 2. In both studies, we found no relationship between mothers’ gender attitudes or share of child care and children’s communal occupational aspirations. The results are discussed in terms of parents’ influence on children’s development of occupational aspirations. (shrink)

The workshop – presented by the director of a new center and the coordinator of an alliance intended to amplify and extend the influence of an established center – focused on the challenges involved in founding, growing, and sustaining centers for business ethics within university business schools. The discussion draws on experience at the Center for Business and Society, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, and the Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College and Bentley’s Alliance for Ethics (...) & Social Responsibility. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest being given to dysfunctional customer behavior in multiple service sectors, it is unclear how and why different types of dysfunctional customer behavior affect frontline employees’ emotional labor during the service interactions. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, we propose a conceptual model in which verbal abuse, disproportionate demand, and illegitimate complaint differentially influence frontline employees’ emotional labor strategies. Further, the boundary conditions of these relationships are considered by introducing perceived organizational support and customer orientation as (...) moderators. Using survey data from 436 frontline employees of five call centers in China, hypotheses were tested through a hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicated that verbal abuse and illegitimate complaint exerted positive effects on surface acting. Particularly, these positive effects were weaker when frontline employees perceived organizational support was high. Also, verbal abuse’s positive effect on surface acting was weaker when frontline employees’ customer orientation was high. Customer’s verbal abuse, disproportionate demand, and illegitimate complaint negatively influenced frontline employees’ deep acting. The negative effect of disproportionate demand on deep acting was weaker when perceived organizational support was high. However, when frontline employees’ customer orientation was high, the negative effects of disproportionate demand and illegitimate complaints on deep acting were weaker. (shrink)

The Xing Zi Ming Chu 性自命出 presents a distinctive account of human dispositions that centers on the spontaneous arising of affects like joy and sadness. This focus on emotion grounds a particular conception of the function of music and ritual that gives music a central role in self-cultivation. Although the account of human dispositions in XZMC was ultimately overshadowed by the opposing views of Mengzi 孟子 and Xunzi 荀子 and the question of whether our dispositions are good or bad, (...) its views remained central for Ru 儒 philosophy of music. The first three parts of the essay trace the development of the ideas appearing in XZMC through the “Discourse on Music” chapter of the Xunzi and parts of the Yueji 樂記. The fourth section highlights the distinctiveness of XZMC’s account through a contrast with the views of Mengzi and Xunzi. The essay concludes by examining the ways in which, in accounting for ritual and music, both the Mengzi and Xunzi employ views like those of the XZMC, even if those are in tension with their core philosophical theories. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical companies routinely engage physicians, particularly those with prestigious academic credentials, to deliver “educational” talks to groups of physicians in the community to help market the company's brand-name drugs.Although presented as educational, and even though they provide educational content, these events are intended to influence decisions about drug selection in ways that are not based on the suitability and effectiveness of the product, but on the prestige and persuasiveness of the speaker. A number of state legislatures and most academic (...) medical centers have attempted to restrict physician participation in pharmaceutical marketing activities, though most restrictions are not absolute and have proven difficult to enforce. This article reviews the literature on why Speakers' Bureaus have become a lightning rod for academic/industry conflicts of interest and examines the arguments of those who defend physician participation. It considers whether the restrictions on Speakers' Bureaus are consistent with principles of academic freedom and concludes with the legal and institutional efforts to manage industry speaking. (shrink)

This scientific article is devoted to the study of the features of mediatization of the socio-political sphere in modern Ukrainian society. Using methodological approaches, the author proposes to clarify the main theoretical principles underlying the study of mediatization.The article identifies and classifies the key factors that influence the process of mediatization in Ukrainian society. Special attention is paid to the impact of the Internet, information warfare, media space and “new media” on the socio-political sphere.Applying content analysis of reports of (...) analytical centers of Ukraine, the author identifies and systematizes specific signs of mediatization of Ukrainian society. Analyzing these features, the article examines the impact of mediatization on the socio-political landscape of the country and identifies potential challenges and opportunities that arise in connection with this process. It has been proven that the progress of the technical component of the mediatization process entails both the emergence of new opportunities and significant threats to national security. It was established that the development of “new mass media” leads to a gradual increase in the role of messengers as sources of reliable information and the displacement of other (non-digital) ways of information dissemination. Initiatives unrelated to state intervention and self-regulation mechanisms in the information sphere are singled out as one of the most effective means of combating disinformation.The final part of the article provides recommendations regarding state regulation of the mediatization process in Ukrainian society. The author reveals the essence of the institution of public diplomacy as a potential means of strengthening national security in the context of the information society. The author points to the need for effective regulation, balanced protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens in the media environment, and also emphasizes the importance of developing media literacy among the population. The article offers a valuable contribution in the context of understanding the process of mediatization of the socio-political sphere in Ukrainian society and provides practical recommendations aimed at ensuring the sustainable development of this process.Keywords: Inte. (shrink)

Chakras are a basic concept of yoga but typically are ignored by scientific research on yoga, probably because descriptions of chakras can appear like a fanciful mythology. Chakras are commonly considered to be centers of concentrated metaphysical energy. Although clear physiological effects exist for yoga practices, no explanation of how chakras influence physiological function has been broadly accepted either in the scientific community or among yoga scholars. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that yoga is based on (...) subjective experience, and practitioners often shun objective descriptions. This essay builds on earlier work hypothesizing that intercellular gap junction connections provide a physiological mechanism underlying subtle energy systems described in yoga as well as other disciplines such as acupuncture. Three physical aspects of chakras are distinguished that are integrated through gap junction mechanisms and are proposed to have arisen during embryological development. Furthermore, electrical conductance associated with a high concentration of gap junctions could generate phenomena that, when subjectively experienced, have the radiant qualities attributed to chakras. This theory provides a scientific rationale for previously unexplained details of chakra theory and offers a new orientation to conceptualizing and studying such subjective phenomena. (shrink)

Miguel de Unamuno’s theory of tragic sentiment is central to understanding his unique contributions to religious existential thought, which centers on the production of perhaps the most unavoidable and distinctive kind of human feeling. His theory is rightly attributed with being influenced by the gestational thought of, inter alios, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, but within these pages I should like to suggest a peculiar kinship between seemingly strange bedfellows, namely, between Unamuno and Immanuel Kant. Although the relationship between Unamuno (...) and Kant is conflicted, ranging from clear indications of influence to expressions of antipathy, there has been relatively little comparative research done on these two thinkers. Moreover, this scant literature has mainly explored connections between Unamuno’s existential thought and Kant’s first two Critiques. In these works, however, feelings are regarded as inclinations and thus receive no serious consideration. In what follows, I therefore juxtapose Unamuno’s analysis of tragic feeling in The Tragic Sense of Life with Kant’s discussion of the feelings of beauty and the sublime in the Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

This is one of a series of reports of a case study of the convergence of molecular neurobiology and cognitive studies of Pavlovian conditioning. Here, I examine a fundamental disagreement between major centers of research representing each of these two domains and analyze it in terms of a hybrid historical, sociological, and philosophical concept of effective scientific communication. The specific example considered is found to fall short of the criteria for effective communication because of the absence of explicit, published (...) reciprocity in the exchange of critical appraisal of results and in requests for reformulation of investigative priorities, research designs, and criteria of scientific adequacy. The situation is dramatized and a remedy proposed by means of an imaginary dialogue linking the two research centers. The paper raises a number of key issues. (1) means for appraising the epistemic status of explanations putatively linking domains in the absence of effective scientific communication; (2) the influence of socially contingent features of the cognitive perspectives of the relatively small number of scientific translators responsible for such communication between domains; and (3) the status of dialogues of the sort presented here, e.g., as idealized philosophical critique or conjectural history of the future of science. (shrink)

This is one of a series of reports of a case study of the convergence of molecular neurobiology and cognitive studies of Pavlovian conditioning. Here, I examine a fundamental disagreement between major centers of research representing each of these two domains and analyze it in terms of a hybrid historical, sociological, and philosophical concept of effective scientific communication. The specific example considered is found to fall short of the criteria for effective communication because of the absence of explicit, published (...) reciprocity in the exchange of critical appraisal of results and in requests for reformulation of investigative priorities, research designs, and criteria of scientific adequacy. The situation is dramatized and a remedy proposed by means of an imaginary dialogue linking the two research centers. The paper raises a number of key issues. means for appraising the epistemic status of explanations putatively linking domains in the absence of effective scientific communication; the influence of socially contingent features of the cognitive perspectives of the relatively small number of scientific translators responsible for such communication between domains; and the status of dialogues of the sort presented here, e.g., as idealized philosophical critique or conjectural history of the future of science. (shrink)

In The Empire of Chance, historians of science Gigerenzer et al. argue that statistical thinking has been “second to no other area of scientific endeavor” in its influence on “modern life and thought”. This article describes how quantitative descriptions of risk associated with industrialization and technological change became part of the mentality of ordinary Americans. It explains why Americans began counting accidents, tells what kinds of accidents they counted and how they counted them, and shows how statistical representations of (...) risk were used to justify prescriptions for public policy and individual behavior. On this frontier of the empire of chance, safety experts and self-styled “practical statisticians” were the principal colonizers. Distant from the centers of academic statistical science, they compromised rigorous scientific standards of methodology and accurate prediction in order to make convincing arguments outside their circles of expertise. To convey their point of view to audiences who were not literate in the field of statistics, they created a public language that conveyed statistical ideas through metaphors, graphic representations, and other rhetorical devices. They also engaged non-experts in collecting and analyzing data and, by the 1920s, even used quantitative self-measurement as a device to convince members of the public to alter their own risk-taking behaviors. (shrink)

In the United States, clinical interventions such as epidurals, intravenous infusions, oxytocin, and intrauterine pressure catheters are used almost routinely in births in the hospital setting, despite evidence that the overutilization of such interventions likely plays a key role in increasing the need for cesarean section (CS). In 2010, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 32.8 percent of births in the U.S. were by CS. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has reported that CS (...) increases avoidable maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. To increase understanding of what might motivate the overuse of CS in the U.S., we investigated the factors that influenced women’s decision making around childbirth, because women’s conscious and unconscious choices about giving birth could influence whether they would choose or allow delivery by CS.In this article, we report findings about women’s decisions related to place of birth—at home or in a hospital. We found that choosing a place of birth was significant in how women in our study attempted to mitigate their perceptions of the risks of childbirth for themselves and their infant. Concern for the safety of the infant was a central, driving factor in the decisions women made about giving birth, and this concern heightened their perceptions of the risks of childbirth. Heightened perceptions of risk about the safety of the fetus during childbirth were found to affect women’s ability to accurately assess the risk of using clinical interventions such as the time of admission, epidural anesthesia, oxytocin, or cesarean birth, which has important implications for clinical practice, prenatal education, perinatal research, medical decision making, and informed consent. (shrink)

The increasingly ubiquitous use of technology has led to the concomitant rise of intensified data collection and the ethical issues associated with the privacy and security of that data. In order to address the question of how these ethical concerns are discussed in the literature surrounding the subject, we examined articles published in IEEE Security and Privacy, a magazine targeted towards a general, technically-oriented readership spanning both academia and industry. Our investigation of the intersection between the ethical and technological dimensions (...) of privacy and security is structured as a bibliometric analysis. Our dataset covers all articles published in IEEE Security and Privacy since its inception in 2003 to February 06, 2014. This venue was chosen not only because of its target readership, but also because a preliminary search of keywords related to ethics, privacy, and security topics in the ISI Web of Knowledge and IEEE Xplore indicated that IEEE Security and Privacy has published a preponderance of articles matching those topics. In fact, our search returned two-fold more articles for IEEE Security and Privacy than the next most prolific venue. These reasons, coupled with the fact that both academia and industry are well-represented in the authorship of articles makes IEEE Security and Privacy an excellent candidate for bibliometric analysis. Our analysis examines the ways articles in IEEE Security and Privacy relate ethics to information technology. Such articles can influence the development of law, policy and the future of information technology ethics. We employed thematic and JK-biplot analyses of content relating privacy and ethics and found eight dominant themes as well as the inter-theme relationships. Authors and institutional affiliations were examined to discern whether centers of research activity and/or authors dominated the overall field or thematic areas. Results suggest avenues for future work in critical areas, especially for closing present gaps in the coverage of ethics and information technology privacy and security themes particularly in the areas of ethics and privacy awareness. (shrink)

Although eye tracking has been used extensively to assess cognitions for static stimuli, recent research suggests that the link between gaze and cognition may be more tenuous for dynamic stimuli such as videos. Part of the difficulty in convincingly linking gaze with cognition is that in dynamic stimuli, gaze position is strongly influenced by exogenous cues such as object motion. However, tests of the gaze‐cognition link in dynamic stimuli have been done on only a limited range of stimuli often characterized (...) by highly organized motion. Also, analyses of cognitive contrasts between participants have been mostly been limited to categorical contrasts among small numbers of participants that may have limited the power to observe more subtle influences. We, therefore, tested for cognitive influences on gaze for screen‐captured instructional videos, the contents of which participants were tested on. Between‐participant scanpath similarity predicted between‐participant similarity in responses on test questions, but with imperfect consistency across videos. We also observed that basic gaze parameters and measures of attention to centers of interest only inconsistently predicted learning, and that correlations between gaze and centers of interest defined by other‐participant gaze and cursor movement did not predict learning. It, therefore, appears that the search for eye movement indices of cognition during dynamic naturalistic stimuli may be fruitful, but we also agree that the tyranny of dynamic stimuli is real, and that links between eye movements and cognition are highly dependent on task and stimulus properties. (shrink)

Ernest Nagel played a key role in bridging the gap between American philosophy and logical empiricism. He introduced European philosophy of science to the American philosophical community but also remained faithful to the naturalism of his teachers. This paper aims to shed new light on Nagel’s intermediating endeavors by reconstructing his philosophical development in the late 1920s and 1930s. This is a decisive period in Nagel’s career because it is the phase in which he first formulated the principles of his (...) naturalism and spent a year in Europe to visit the key centers of logical empiricism. Building on a range of published and unpublished papers, notes, and correspondence—including hundreds of pages of letters to his close friend Sidney Hook—I reconstruct Nagel’s philosophical development, focusing especially on the philosophical influence of John Dewey, Morris R. Cohen, Rudolf Carnap, and Hans Reichenbach. (shrink)

Centering Theory (CT) as articulated by Grosz et al. (1995) is a theory intended to model some of the factors that influence local coherence in a discourse. The idea is that at any one time there are a number of entities that are at the center of attention. Each utterance n that makes up a discourse potentially has two sorts of discourse ‘centers’, an ordered set of forward-looking centers, Cf(uttn), that provide potential links to upcoming utterances, and (...) a single backward-looking center, Cb(uttn), that links back to the previous utterance, in the sense that it is identical to one of the members of the set of forward-looking centers of the previous utterance. Roughly, one can think of Cb(uttn) as the current topic of the conversation. The members of the set Cf(uttn) on the other hand are the entities mentioned in the utterance and which are candidates to become the next topic of conversation. The members of Cf(uttn) are ranked in order of their salience. The most highly ranked member of Cf(uttn) is the preferred center, Cp(uttn), and ideally it will become the backward-looking center of the next utterance, Cb(uttn+1). When Cb(uttn) is the most highly ranked member of Cf(uttn), this indicates that it will continue to be the topic of conversation in the next utterance. If this does indeed happen, we have what is known in CT as a CONTINUE transition. When some entity other than Cb(uttn) is the most highly ranked member of Cf(uttn), an upcoming topic shift is signaled. This situation is known in CT as a RETAIN. A topic shift following a RETAIN will be a SMOOTH SHIFT. If the topic shifts to an entity that is neither the preferred center of the current nor of the previous utterance, then the shift will be a ROUGH.. (shrink)

The spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the North Africa and al-Andalus in the west, to the Chinese borders and the Indian Subcontinent in the east, helped Muslims to establish close contact with many different cultures. One of the consequences of this is that both the increase in scientific accumulation and the emergence of new needs in military, financial and similar aspects accelerated the studies on geography. Islamic geographers of the first period, not only did they describe the (...) cities to which they travelled but also they depicted the cities about which they could collect data. These first works, which can be considered as a kind of written maps, have some common features, although they are written in different geographies and revealed by different schools. One of these common points is the terminology that they used in depictions of cities. This terminology suggests that there was a common city typology among Muslim geography scholars that stands out in the depiction of cities. In this study, particularly we will try to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works.SummaryThe depictions of settlements which were designated as madīna in the works of the medieval Muslim geographers have some common characteristics. One of them is the terminology used by the authors in depictions of cities. In this study, particularly I tried to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works. Then, a common city typology which is prominent in the depiction of cities among the Muslim geography scholars has been put forward. The structural elements that are considered to constitute this typology also revealed the topographic elements of a city at that time.The cities conquered by muslims had a great impact on the emergence of the terminology used by Muslim geographers in depicting cities. I can say that especially Persian influence; the cities in Iran, Khurāsān which were captured from the Sāsānians and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr districts was effective. However, geography writers did not restrict using this terminology for only these regions, they also had continued to use in depiction of other regions such as North Africa and al-Andalus. This means that a common language and terminology emerged and started to be used.Geography authors point to five main elements that I have examined in separate titles while describing Islamic cities that they called "madīna". These are kuhandiz, shahristān, rabad, the part so-called “the adjacent agricultural fields / agricultural fields surrounded by wall” by us and the last part rustāq connected to main city center. Depending on ways of development of cities, these elements sometimes developed from inside to out, in other words from center to environment, sometimes surrounded by independent walls and sometimes adjacent to each other. However, a city did not have to have all these elements at the same time. This situation was totally related to development level of city, and the cities which had all these elements were the military, administrative and economically developed centers of the period. From the methodical point of view, it should be noted that the examples given in the study were selected from among the other cities in order to ensure that to understand the subject in best way and ensure that the silhouette on the city typology is seen better. Because it is possible to find examples of each element in all city depictions of Islamic geography writers. Kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, and rustāq are the elements that can be seen in the pre-Islamic period. It is possible to think of the Islamic period as a period in which these words were conceptualized, new madīnas and rabads were formed, surrounded by walls and rabads were gradually transformed into madīnas. In geography texts, it is seen that there is a concept confusion between kuhandiž and buildings named qalʿa, ḥiṣār and ḥiṣn. However, as some writers hade tried to emphasize, "kuhandiz" had been using for these structures which were previously known as fortress (especially ḥiṣn or qalʿa) due to their proportion to shahristāns / madīnas of city centers, and were notably seen in the regions of Khurāsān and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr. Kuhandižs represent the centers of pre-Islamic cities and were continued to be used for the same purpose in the early Islamic period. But, these old areas were gradually abandoned due to the development of new parts of settlement under Muslim administration. Shahristāns were residential areas where the majority of people lived. With the Islamic period, the word “shahristān” had been terminologically changed to “madīna” and use of this concept by scientific circles was gradually disappeared in time. At this point, it is one of the issues to be considered in the examination of geography works that the use of “madīna” in Arabic both for the concept of the city in which we examine the structural elements in this article, and for “shahristān” which is one of the elements of the city.As it is understood from the geographical texts, madīna was continued to be established by Muslims in cities for centuries. These are also examples of change in cities as a result of development and housing activities after the conquests. However, we don’t have much information in the geography works about the cities which had more than one shahristān /madīna before the inhabit of Muslims. As far as we can reach, the only example in our resources with multiple madīnas/shahristān belonging to the pre-Islamic period is Bukhara.As in the developed cities of the period such as Bukhara, Samarqand, Marw and Balkh, it is seen a generaly circular fortification wall which usually surrounded main center of cities including kuhandizs, madīnas/ shahristān and mostly later rabads. So, it is more appropriate to consider the areas between these walls and other parts of city (kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, rabad) as an independent element because of the fact that they were lands with determined borders and were defined by separate concepts. I have used “adjacent agricultural area” for this element for now. Thus, this area constitutes one of the structural elements of the cities.Rustāqs were parts of Persian-Sāsānian urbanization and land administration, and had continued to be partially implemented during the Islamic period. They were the source of livelihood of the cities from foundation stage and were an indispensable tool of the society based on agriculture in that ages. Depending on size, the cities could have dozens of them. As can be seen in the case of Balkh, the rustāḳs especially connected to the big city centers were not composed of one or several villages. Moreover, these rustāqs could contain big settlements called madīna which were their centers. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest are rampant in the American medical community. Today it is not uncommon for doctors to refer patients to clinics or labs in which they have a financial interest (40% of physicians in Florida invest in medical centers); for hospitals to offer incentives to physicians who refer patients (a practice that can lead to unnecessary hospitalization); or for drug companies to provide lucrative give-aways to entice doctors to use their "brand name" drugs (which are much more expensive (...) than generic drugs). In Medicine, Money and Morals, Marc A. Rodwin draws on his own experience as a health lawyer--and his research in health ethics, law, and policy--to reveal how financial conflicts of interest can and do negatively affect the quality of patient care. He shows that the problem has become worse over the last century and provides many actual examples of how doctors' decisions are influenced by financial considerations. We learn how two California physicians, for example, resumed referrals to Pasadena General Hospital only after the hospital started paying $70 per patient (their referrals grew from 14 in one month to 82 in the next). As Rodwin writes, incentives such as this can inhibit a doctor from taking action when a hospital fails to provide proper service, and may also lead to the unnecessary hospitalization of patients. We also learn of a Wyeth-Ayerst Labs promotion in which physicians who started patients on INDERAL (a drug for high blood pressure, angina, and migraines) received 1000 mileage points on American Airlines for each patient (studies show that promotions such as this have a direct effect on a doctor's choice of drug). Rodwin reveals why the medical community has failed to regulate conflicts of interest: peer review has little authority, state licensing boards are usually ignorant of abuses, and the AMA code of ethics has historically been recommended rather than required. He examines what can be learned from the way society has coped with the conflicts of interest of other professionals --lawyers, government officials, and businessmen--all of which are held to higher standards of accountability than doctors. And he recommends that efforts be made to prohibit and regulate certain kinds of activity (such as kickbacks and self-referrals), to monitor and regulate conduct, and to provide penalties for improper conduct. Our failure to face physicians' conflicts of interest has distorted the way medicine is practiced, compromised the loyalty of doctors to patients, and harmed society, the integrity of the medical profession, and patients. For those concerned with the quality of health care or medical ethics, Medicine, Money and Morals is a provocative look into the current health care crisis and a powerful prescription for change. (shrink)

Contacts between Polish historians, French historians and French centers of historiography – espcially with the prestigious milieu of Fernand Braudel's Annales – were unusual and extraordinary in comparison with other forms of scientific cooperation with foreign countries: both with the West and the “friendly countries.” Because of the undeniable uniqueness of these relations many scholars from various countries claim that the annalistic methodology “influnced” Polish historiography. What is characteristic, however, is that these statements are most often completely a priori. (...) This paper is a reflection on the nature of the methodological influence of one historical school on the other and discusses such a possibility, taking into consideration models of circulation of ideas proposed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jerzy Maternicki. It is also an attempt at answering whether historical sciences are able to freely interfere on a supra-national level or whether they are by nature characterized by provincialism, understood here as a limitation to national frameworks outside of which they cannot be understood. (shrink)

: Regionalism is a key element in narratives pertaining to the rise of the formal Muslim law schools. It is generally believed that these legal schools were influenced by the customary practices of the prominent urban centers of the early 2nd/8th century. Such assumptions are rooted in the Muslim legal works themselves, which distinguish between the legal views of important regional centers. This article tests the purported regional associations of individual law schools by utilizing traditions pertaining to ritual (...) law to reconstruct the dominant practice of major Muslim cities of the early 2nd/8th century. In the process, it models a method for deriving historical information from newly datable legal source material. (shrink)

A cursory review of the philosophy of sport readily reveals that it is dominated by Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophical milieux, in the departments of philosophy and kinesiology, the centers of bioethics, and the faculties of health around the world. In France, however, with the exception of a few researchers working in the philosophy or sport, and within an analytical paradigm, the development of the subject has gone almost unnoticed. By contrast, the discipline of history of sport clearly moved away from (...) philosophy in France with the establishment of a separate field of study based on the Anglo-Saxon model from the work pioneer of Pierre Arnaud developed by Thierry Terret and other sports historians. Nevertheless, in French universities, faculties of philosophy have not been open to research in the philosophy of the body. The philosophy of sport is not taught as such in French Universities even if our generation pursues ways opened by Jacques Ulmann, Bernard Jeu, Bernard Guillemain, Michel Bernard, Jean-Michel Berthelot, Gilbert Andrieu, Bertrand During, André Rauch, Marie-Hélène Brousse, Françoise Labridy, and Georges Vigarello, among others, through their reflections on the philosophy of the body. This article discusses the influence of some of these authors, and especially of Georges Gusdorf, Michel Foucault, and Georges Snyders on the nature and prospects for the philosophy of sport in France. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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The article presents interpersonal relations and mutual influences between German logician Heinrich Scholz and Polish scholars, first of all Jan Łukasiewicz. The background for presenting these relationships consists of reflections on the development of logic in Poland and various conceptions of how to apply logic to philosophical issues. Firstly, Jan Łukasiewicz’s program of logicisation of philosophy and his search for allies is presented. Secondly, the forms of cooperation between Łukasiewicz and Scholz, as well as contacts between the latter and other (...) Polish scholars are sketched. Finally, forms of Scholz’s help to Polish friends during the tumultuous period of World War II are examined. The article provides also some reflections on the approach to logic in various European centers of analytic philosophy and historical comments on the continuity of philosophical and logical schools. (shrink)

Eusebius of Caesarea drew heavily on pagan philosophy in developing the first Christian political theology. His quotations from Plato’s most political work, the Laws, are so extensive that they are treated as a manuscript authority by modern editors. Yet Eusebius’s actual use of the Laws is oddly detached from Plato’s own political intentions in that work, adapting it to a model of philosophical kingship closer to the Republic and applied to the emperor Constantine. For Eusebius the Laws mainly shows the (...) agreement of Christian and pagan morality, while his political theory centers on the establishment and maintenance of a Christian empire under a Christian emperor who is a philosopher-king. His view represents one of the fundamental political options in ancient Christianity, one that influenced later Byzantine political theology, but was largely rejected in the west. (shrink)

Availability of external funding influences the viability and structure of scientific fields. In the 1980s, structural changes in the manner in which external funds became available started to have an impact on materials science and engineering in the United States. These changes colluded with the search for a disciplinary identity of this research field inside the university. The solutions that arose were intended to find a mediating structure between external demands and resources and disciplinary orientation. Interviews with seventeen scientists in (...) seven universities revealed the impact in local university settings. The rise of research centers as new organizational units in universities can be linked to two periods. In the 1960s, expensive instruments stimulated unit formation; in the 1980s, the increase in application-related funding forced new administrative ways. It is shown that organizational changes also have an impact on disciplinary identity as witnessed by a strong increase in interdisciplinary materials Ph.D.s awarded. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) profoundly influences a number of societal structures today, including religious dynamics. Using Bernard Lonergan’s critical realism as a lens, this article investigates the intersections of AI and religious traditions in their shared pursuit of the common good. Beginning with Lonergan’s principle that humans construct their understanding through cognitive processes, we examine how AI-mediated realities align with or challenge traditional religious tenets. By delving into specific cases, we spotlight AI’s role in reshaping religious symbols, rituals, and even creating (...) novel spiritual meanings. Using Lonergan’s insights on the balance between subjectivity and objectivity, I analyze AI’s potential to both create new sacred spaces and challenge religious orthodoxy. The crux of the discussion centers on the negotiation between religious values and technological innovation, assessing how AI can bolster religious life while maintaining its core essence. Ultimately, this article underscores the importance of the common good in the age of AI-driven religious evolution. (shrink)

The main subject of this research is the specificity of I. E. Repin's perception of the dynamics of artistic-aesthetic tasks formed under the influence of changing modernity. In view of this, one of the compositional centers of the research is the history of relationship that developed between I. E. Repin and the artists of the “first wave of symbolism” – members of the association “The World of Art”. Special attention is given to the question of perception of I. (...) E. Repin by certain representatives of the avant-garde in 1910s. Developing in the range “attraction – negation”, full of dramatic and comic moments, the dialogue between Repin and younger generation indicates the hastiness of univocal view of realism and Art Nouveau as opposing imagery systems. For the first time, on the current level of scientific comprehension of the aesthetics of symbolism and neo-romanticism, the article analyzes the attitude of I. E. Repin towards the innovative imagery pursuits of the Art Nouveau artists. At the same time, the very concept of Art Nouveau is interpreted in two dimensions: as a certain milestone in the context of the development of the history of art of the late XIX – early XX century; and as an inner dynamic potential embedded by I. E. Repin in his works since the beginning of his creative path. Based on systematization of the artistic and documentary sources and the method of complex reconstruction of the views of Peredvizhniki and symbolist artists upon the objectives and nature of art, the author concludes that the poetics of art of Ilya Repin, synthesizing the ideas of time, tends to reflect a complicated and distinctive artistic image formed by realistic and idealistic principles. (shrink)

Dervish lodges and cults were among the important elements of the Ottoman social life and in those times, they had spread to nearly all city centers, towns and villages. Dervish lodges served as non-formal educational institutions for people from all ages and all segments of the society. In addition to education, these structures also played important roles in political, economic, social and military life of the Ottoman Empire. In general, wise people and scholars contributed to the development and dissemination (...) of Islamic sciences in general, and specifically, mystic thought. As a matter of fact, it was determined that there were a great number of Dervish lodges that were founded or supported by shaykh al-Islam (the chief justice), kādī (judge), scholars and mudarrisīn (teachers) in the history of sufism. One of them was Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which was founded in the 16th Century by Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who belonged to the Ilmiya class (d. 998/1590). Until today no detailed studies have been conducted on lodges, which continued their existence until 1925. For this reason, this article will be the first study that deals with the dervish lodges in the light of archive sources. In this article, which was written to shed light on the course of our sufi cultural history, the prominent names, shaykhs and physical status of the Dervish lodges, especially Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who was the founder of these lodges, will be dealt with.Summary: Our country, which hosts scientific moral centers like dervish lodges, school, madrasa and masjids, has a rich historical cultural treasure. As it is already known, the above-mentioned institutions had an important place in the life of Ottoman social life. Dervish lodges and madrassas were considered as science and wisdom centers because there is no distinction between zāhir (exterior) and bātin (interior) in our tradition. Under then-present conditions, the institutions that were needed most were supported. In this sense, the sultans and scholars cared about the dervish lodges, which were the places where sciences were studied contributing to the construction of these structures. One of these was Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which was founded in the center of Eyupsultan by the Ottoman man of letter, poet and scholar, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi (d. 998/1590).Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge is located in the Debbaghane/Tabakhane (Tannery) district in the center of Eyupsultan. As Suleyman Çelebi stated, “the valiant ones worked in the Tannery”. For this reason, it is possible to say that there were tanners among the disciples and followers of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge.Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge was built by Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who belonged to the scholar class in the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who served as a professor in various madrasahs, served as a kādī in cities like Konya, Kutahya and Istanbul. Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was called “Mullah” because of his madrasah origin and “Çelebi” because of being a member of the scholar class. For this reason, dervish lodge in question was known as Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge in his honor. Sources mention the religious, knowledgeable and modest personality of Mehmed Vusuli Efendi. In this sense, the establishment of a dervish lodge by someone from the scholar class is important in terms of being a sign of the togetherness of dervish lodges and madrasahs in the Ottoman Empire. In addition to his scientific personality, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was also an important figure who wrote works both as prose and as poetry, and made some translations into Turkish. In addition to the Dervish Lodges mentioned here, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi also established mosques and public baths in various places in Istanbul and was interested in charity works. Cemaleddin Server Revnakoglu stated that he was given the nickname “FındıklıÇelebi” because he had established a mosque in Fındıklı District.Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was the son-in-law of Aise Hubbi Hatun (d. 997/1589), who was one of the lady poets of the 16th century divan literature. Aise Hubbi Hatun was the granddaughter of Kanuni Sultan Suleyman’s foster brother Yahya Efendi from Beşiktaş. Aise Hubbi Hatun was also the wife of Semsi Çelebi, who was one of the grandchildren of Aksemseddin. In this sense, Aise Hubbi Hatun was a person who served in the palace during the reign of Selim II. According to the sources, Mullah Çelebi was appointed to a post that was as high as being the kādī of Istanbul with the help of Aise Hubbi Hatun, who was one of the prominent figures of the palace. For this reason, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was also known as “Hubba/Hubbi Mullah”.In the present study of ours on Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, one of the most prominent lady poets was Serife Zubeyde Fitnat Hanım (d. 1194/1780). In the sources, some authors discussed whether Fitnat Hanım’s tomb was in Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge. Since there is no inscription on it, the tomb of Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was assumed to belong to Fitnat Hanım. Actually, in the past, Istanbul Tombs and Museums Directorate hung a plate saying that the tomb in question belonged to Fitnat Hanim. However, Bilgin Turnalı revealed that the tomb of Fitnat Hanım was not in the Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge in his article with the title “The Tomb of the Poet Fitnat Hanım”.The archive sources, which we can examine on Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, generally belong to the 18th century and onwards. For this reason, the information on the establishment years of the Dervish Lodge was not determined fully. However, some of the archive sources reported some revenues of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge. For example, it was recorded in the archives that payments were made to this Dervish Lodge in Muharramiya activities. As it is known, ceremonies were held in the Ottoman Palace in the month of Muharram, which was the initial month of the Hijri calendar, and a number of people and institutions in Istanbul and its surroundings were paid by the Sultan under the name of “Muharramiyya”.In Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, there were some prominent shaykhs like Mahmud Efendi and Nureddin Efendi. For example, since Mahmud Efendi had a lot of influence on the lodge, it was named after him for a period of time. Another prominent shaykh in the above-mentioned dervish lodge was Nureddin Efendi. As a matter of fact, he was closely interested in the maintenance and repair works of the dervish lodge and the activities related to the cults, and applied to Evkāf-i Humāyūn many times for repair works. Mehmed Esref Sabri Efendi, who was the shaykh before the last one in this dervish lodge, contributed to the training of many people of cult, especially Saadeddin Ceylan, who was the shaykh of Haki Baba Lodge. The last shaykh of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge was Hafiz Hussein Kamil Efendi, who was the son-in-law of Mehmed Esref Sabri Efendi.When the physical condition of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge is examined, it is understood that it was ruined in some periods in the history due to erosion; and for this reason, it had renovations. It was determined that Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which belonged to the Kadiriyye cult, remained until the last period of the Ottoman Empire; however, after the closure of the dervish lodges in 1925, it disappeared rapidly. In our present day, two tombs that belong to Mehmed Vusuli Efendi and Aise Hubbi Hatun and a graveyard where the members of the lodge were buried are left behind from this Dervish Lodge. As it is known, Dervish Lodges had an important place in the religious, scientific, political and economic life of the Ottoman society. In this article, which was planned to examine the Ottoman sufi culture, the historical course of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, its founder, shaykhs, physical location, etc. were discussed in the light of the archive sources. (shrink)

A far-reaching reinterpretation of Plato’s Timaeus and its engagement with time, eternity, body, and soul that in its original French edition profoundly influenced Derrida The Tomb of the Artisan God provides a radical rereading of Timaeus, Plato’s metaphysical text on time, eternity, and the relationship between soul and body. First published in French in 1995, the original edition of Serge Margel’s book included an extensive introductory essay by Jacques Derrida, who drew on Margel’s insights in developing his own concepts of (...) time, the promise, the world, and khōra. Now available in English with a new preface by Margel, this engagement with Platonic thought proceeds from two questions that span the history of philosophy: What is time? What is the body? Margel’s twinned interrogation centers around Plato’s concept of the demiurge (divine artisan or craftsman): its body, its anthropomorphic attributes, its productive capacities and regulatory functions in the ordering/organization/assembling of the world. He posits that this paradoxical figure is not merely a cosmological metaphor for the living body but also the site of its destruction, dissolution, and disappearance. Torn between the finite and the infinite, being and becoming, the concept of demiurge also poses metaphysical questions about time, time before time, and the end of time. The ontological status of the demiurge’s body, Margel argues, would become increasingly decisive in the history of philosophy, particularly in Christianity and the dogma of incarnation. (shrink)

The article is updated by several circumstances, which the authors reflect on. In their opinion, there are 1) obvious and external threats — violations of freedom of conscience in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, which arose as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and 2) internally hidden and potential dangers for freedom of religions of Ukrainian citizens. The well-known examples of discrimination of believers of certain faiths in the so-called DPR-LPR and Crimea given by the authors are constantly (...) updated. Relevant monitoring and analytical reports are prepared by both Ukrainian and international experts. They submitted these reports to international human rights organizations, including the rights for Freedom of Religion and Belief. Despite such convincing documented materials, separate accusations have recently appeared against Ukraine, which allegedly violates freedom of religion in the territory under its control. Some are trying to prove that Ukraine, taking advantage of the war situation and referring to the spiritual dangers for Ukraine from those religious organizations whose centers are in the aggressor country, threatens some churches, thereby violating the Constitution and the Law on Freedom of Conscience, which guarantee for all citizens, regardless of from their religious affiliation, freedom of religion. The authors refute these narratives lashed out by Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. Such negative conclusions, which express concern about the situation in Ukraine regarding freedom of conscience and religion, influence on the world public, experts on issues of freedom of conscience, religious organizations, spoil the image of Ukraine as a country with high level of freedom of conscience even among European countries. Religious freedom, as the authors conclude, needs protection today, but they call for separating real threats from imaginary ones and clearly defining who persecutes, whom he/she persecutes and where persecutes. Ukraine is consistent in its intentions to protect the rights of people and communities, to protect the freedoms of believers and their organizations. (shrink)

The novel COVID-19 infection has spread all over the world and is still generating a lot of issues at different levels. There is a lack of control in disease early diagnosis and rapid evolution, which impacts both the medical and the economic system. Young gastroenterologists should adapt to overcome current difficulties and continue their life and general training. This is a multi-center national study, which aims to assess the general perspective of young gastroenterologists from six university centers in Romania (...) regarding their current training and the psychological effect the pandemic has on their life and job. An online survey with 58 items was distributed using Google Forms, and quality of life and anxiety were assessed. The validated instruments 15D and endler multidimensional anxiety scales were used. All analyses were performed using SPSS 25. Of the 174 gastroenterologists approached, 96 responded. A majority of the respondents were residents in gastroenterology, and 40.6% were male. The pandemic influenced the number of examined patients as well as young gastroenterologists’ endoscopy training. Health-related quality of life was negatively associated with the level of anxiety generated by the cognitive component of anxiety as a state, the new and ambiguity of the state, and how threatened the respondent felt. The level of anxiety was moderate, and no difference was found between the physicians working in a designated hospital or not. General caution should be considered for young gastroenterologists’ training, and continuous observation should be done to ensure better mental health on the current evolution. These findings would need to be verified in larger-sample studies and in different types of specialties. (shrink)

The considerable attention to financial interests in clinical research has focused mostly on academic medical centers, even though the majority of clinical research is conducted in community practice settings. To fill this gap, this article maps the practices and policies in 73 community hospitals and several hundred specialized facilities around the country for reviewing clinical investigators’ financial relationships with research sponsors. Community hospitals face a substantially different mix of issues than academic medical centers do because their physician researchers (...) are usually not employees, and more of their studies are later-phase, multicenter trials. Accordingly, community physicians stand to benefit personally from per capita payments, but they tend to have less direct influence over research findings when compared with their academic peers. These and other contrasts require separate guidance for community-based organizations that takes into account their particular needs, circumstances, and institutional capacities. (shrink)

This paper explores how the social and affective lives of people with marginalized social identities are particularly affected by digital influences. Specifically, the paper examines whether and how social media enables LGBTQ+ people to experience feelings of belonging. It does so by drawing on literature from digital epistemology and phenomenology of the digital, and by presenting and analyzing the results of a qualitative study consisting of 25 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. The interviews were conducted to explore the social media experiences (...) of LGBTQ+ people through an empirical framework informed by both phenomenology and social epistemology, particularly feminist standpoint theory. The paper emphasizes the importance of positionality and the epistemic value of research that centers marginalized perspectives and employs an anti-oppressive research approach, and focuses on understanding the digital experiences of LGBTQ+ people from within their marginalized perspective. (shrink)

Evidence for a dichotomy between the planning of an action and its on-line control in humans is reviewed. This evidence suggests that planning and control each serve a specialized purpose utilizing distinct visual representations. Evidence from behavioral studies suggests that planning is influenced by a large array of visual and cognitive information, whereas control is influenced solely by the spatial characteristics of the target, including such things as its size, shape, orientation, and so forth. Evidence from brain imaging and neuropsychology (...) suggests that planning and control are subserved by separate visual centers in the posterior parietal lobes, each constituting part of a larger network for planning and control. Planning appears to rely on phylogenetically newer regions in the inferior parietal lobe, along with the frontal lobes and basal ganglia, whereas control appears to rely on older regions in the superior parietal lobe, along with the cerebellum. Key Words: action; apraxia; control; illusions; optic ataxia; PET; planning; reaching;. (shrink)

Background Moral distress is a common challenge among professional nurses when caring for their patients, especially when they need to make rapid decisions. Therefore, leaving moral distress unconsidered may jeopardize patient quality of care, safety, and satisfaction. Aim To estimate moral distress among nurses. Methods This systematic review and meta-analysis conducted systematic search in Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, ISI Web of Knowledge, and PsycInfo up to end of February 2022. Methodological quality of included studies was assessed using the Newcastle Ottawa checklist. (...) Data from included studies were pooled by meta-analysis with random effect model in STATA software version 14. The selected key measure was mean score of moral distress total score with its’ 95% Confidence Interval was reported. Subgroup analyses and meta-regressions were conducted to identify possible sources of heterogeneity and potentially influencing variables on moral distress. Funnel plots and Begg’s Tests were used to assess publication bias. The Jackknife method was used for sensitivity analysis. Ethical consideration The protocol of this project was registered in the PROSPERO database under decree code of CRD42021267773. Results Eighty-six manuscripts with 19,537 participants from 21 countries were included. The pooled estimated mean score of moral distress was 2.55 on a 0–10 scale [95% Confidence Interval: 2.27–2.84, I2: 98.4%, Tau2:0.94]. Publication bias and small study effect was ruled out. Moral distress significantly decreased in the COVID-19 pandemic versus before. Nurses working in developing countries experienced higher level of moral distress compared to their counterparts in developed countries. Nurses' workplace (e.g., hospital ward) was not linked to severity of moral disturbance. Conclusion The results of the study showed a low level of pooled estimated score for moral distress. Although the score of moral distress was not high, nurses working in developing countries reported higher levels of moral distress than those working in developed countries. Therefore, it is necessary that future studies focus on creating a supportive environment in hospitals and medical centers for nurses to reduce moral distress and improve healthcare. (shrink)

Heart rate variability (HRV), the change in the time intervals between adjacent heartbeats, is an emergent property of interdependent regulatory systems that operate on different time scales to adapt to challenges and achieve optimal performance. This article briefly reviews neural regulation of the heart, and its basic anatomy, the cardiac cycle, and the sinoatrial and atrioventricular pacemakers. The cardiovascular regulation center in the medulla integrates sensory information and input from higher brain centers, and afferent cardiovascular system inputs to adjust (...) heart rate and blood pressure via sympathetic and parasympathetic efferent pathways. This article reviews sympathetic and parasympathetic influences on the heart, and examines the interpretation of HRV and the association between reduced HRV, risk of disease and mortality, and the loss of regulatory capacity. This article also discusses the intrinsic cardiac nervous system and the heart-brain connection, through which afferent information can influence activity in the subcortical and frontocortical areas, and motor cortex. It also considers new perspectives on the putative underlying physiological mechanisms and properties of the ultra-low-frequency (ULF), very-low-frequency (VLF), low-frequency (LF), and high-frequency (HF) bands. Additionally, it reviews the most common time and frequency domain measurements as well as standardized data collection protocols. In its final section, this article integrates Porges' polyvagal theory, Thayer and colleagues' neurovisceral integration model, Lehrer et al.'s resonance frequency model, and the Institute of HeartMath's coherence model. The authors conclude that a coherent heart is not a metronome because its rhythms are characterized by both complexity and stability over longer time scales. Future research should expand understanding of how the heart and its intrinsic nervous system influence the brain. (shrink)

The Second World War and its associated political events of a national and global scale brought new circumstances, which was considerably influenced the development processes of Tehran. During World War II, Iran hoped that Washington would keep Britain and the Soviet Union from seizing control of the country’s oil fields. In 1951 and 1952 Truman worked with Iranian Prime Minister, though unsuccessfully, to regain some of those lost oil rights for Iran. By the late 1950s and President Kennedy’s presidency, he (...) used aid as leverage for social reform. During the early years of 1960s, the Kennedy Administration was urging its allies in the third world to carry out necessary reforms in order to prevent popular discontent and enhance the dominant ideology of ‘modernism’. In 1968, a major piece of legislation, the Urban Development and Renewal Act, enabled the municipality to implement Tehran’s Comprehensive Plan (TCP 1968), which integrated all the elements of a 1960s’ American city such as the separation of functions, highways, suburbs, shopping centers and housing area. The export of these American cities principles can only be understood from the background of the Cold War period, in which the east and west were both competing for cultural colonization of Middle Eastern strategically important cities like Tehran. During this period, the new developments supported by the oil boom of 1970s, were built in different forms to constitute an expanding metropolis. In 1974, the second “International Congress of Architecture” with the theme of “Toward a Quality of Life” held at Persepolis and brought together all leading world architects and planners to review Iran’s progress in its professional response to the challenges posed by increasing oil revenues. This research aims to represent the export of planning as a political means of cultural colonization of the Third World during the cold war period. (shrink)