Abstract: Background: In spite of the fact that computers continue to improve in speed and functions operation, they remain complex to use. Problems frequently happen, and it is hard to resolve or find solutions for them. This paper outlines the significance and feasibility of building a desktop PC problems diagnosis system. The system gathers problem symptoms from users’ desktops, rather than the user describes his/her problems to primary search engines. It automatically searches global databases of problem symptoms and solutions, and (...) also allows ordinary users to contribute exact problem reports in a structured manner. Objectives: The main goal of this Knowledge Based System is to get the suitable problem desktop PC symptoms and the correct way to solve the errors. Methods: In this paper the design of the proposed Knowledge Based System which was produced to help users of desktop PC in knowing many of the problems and error such as : Power supply problems, CPU errors, RAM dumping error, hard disk errors and bad sectors and suddenly restarting PC. The proposed Knowledge Based System presents an overview about desktop PC hardware errors are given, the cause of fault are outlined and the solution to the problems whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Knowledge Based System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed PC desktop troubleshooting Knowledge Based System was evaluated by IT students and they were satisfied with its performance. (shrink)

Differences That Matter challenges existing ways of theorising the relationship between feminism and postmodernism which ask 'is or should feminism be modern or postmodern?' Sara Ahmed suggests that postmodernism has been allowed to dictate feminist debates and calls instead for feminist theorists to speak (back) to postmodernism, rather than simply speak on (their relationship to) it. Such a 'speaking back' involves a refusal to position postmodernism as a generalisable condition of the world and requires closer readings of what postmodernism (...) is actually 'doing' in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Sara Ahmed hence examines constructions of postmodernism in relation to rights, ethics, subjectivity, authorship, meta-fiction and film. (shrink)

Buildings energy consumption is growing gradually and put away around 40% of total energy use. Predicting heating and cooling loads of a building in the initial phase of the design to find out optimal solutions amongst different designs is very important, as ell as in the operating phase after the building has been finished for efficient energy. In this study, an artificial neural network model was designed and developed for predicting heating and cooling loads of a building based on a (...) dataset for building energy performance. The main factors for input variables are: relative compactness, roof area, overall height, surface area, glazing are a, wall area, glazing area distribution of a building, orientation, and the output variables: heating and cooling loads of the building. The dataset used for training are the data published in the literature for various 768 residential buildings. The model was trained and validated, most important factors affecting heating load and cooling load are identified, and the accuracy for the validation was 99.60%. (shrink)

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical (...) recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

We consider countable so‐called rich subsemigroups of ; each such semigroup T gives a variety CPEAT that is axiomatizable by a finite schema of equations taken in a countable subsignature of that of ω‐dimensional cylindric‐polyadic algebras with equality where substitutions are restricted to maps in T. It is shown that for any such T, if and only if is representable as a concrete set algebra of ω‐ary relations. The operations in the signature are set‐theoretically interpreted like in polyadic equality set (...) algebras, but such operations are relativized to a union of cartesian spaces that are not necessarily disjoint. This is a form of guarding semantics. We show that CPEAT is canonical and atom‐canonical. Imposing an extra condition on T, we prove that atomic algebras in CPEAT are completely representable and that CPEAT has the super amalgamation property. If T is rich and finitely represented, it is shown that CPEAT is term definitionally equivalent to a finitely axiomatizable Sahlqvist variety. Such semigroups exist. This can be regarded as a solution to the central finitizability problem in algebraic logic for first order logic with equality if we do not insist on full fledged commutativity of quantifiers. The finite dimensional case is approached from the view point of guarded and clique guarded (relativized) semantics of fragments of first order logic using finitely many variables. Both positive and negative results are presented. (shrink)

Programming artificial intelligence to make fairness assessments of texts through top-down rules, bottom-up training, or hybrid approaches, has presented the challenge of defining cross-cultural fairness. In this paper a simple method is presented which uses vectors to discover if a verb is unfair or fair. It uses already existing relational social ontologies inherent in Word Embeddings and thus requires no training. The plausibility of the approach rests on two premises. That individuals consider fair acts those that they would be willing (...) to accept if done to themselves. Secondly, that such a construal is ontologically reflected in Word Embeddings, by virtue of their ability to reflect the dimensions of such a perception. These dimensions being: responsibility vs. irresponsibility, gain vs. loss, reward vs. sanction, joy vs. pain, all as a single vector. The paper finds it possible to quantify and qualify a verb as fair or unfair by calculating the cosine similarity of the said verb’s embedding vector against FairVec—which represents the above dimensions. We apply this to Glove and Word2Vec embeddings. Testing on a list of verbs produces an F1 score of 95.7, which is improved to 97.0. Lastly, a demonstration of the method’s applicability to sentence measurement is carried out. (shrink)

The present study examined how the pre-war debate of the US decision to invade Iraq (in March 2003) was discursively constructed in the US/British mainstream newspaper opinion/editorial (op/ed) argumentation. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical discourse analysis and argumentation theory, I problematised the fallacious discussion used in the pro-war op/eds to build up a ‘moral/legal case’ for war on Iraq based on adversarial (rather than dialogical) argumentation. The proponents of war deployed ‘instrumental rationality’ (ends-justify-means reasoning), ‘ethical necessity’ (Bush’s ‘Preemption Doctrine’) (...) and ‘humanitarian virtue’ (the bombing of Iraq to ‘save’ Iraqis from Saddam’s pestilent tyranny) to justify the pending invasion of Iraq. Their arguments intertextually resonated with Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ rhetoric in a way that created a form of indexical association through ‘recontextualisation’. The type of arguments marshalled by the pro-war op/ed commentators uncritically bolstered the set of US official ‘truth claims’ and ‘presuppositions’. (shrink)

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the work's major themes, such as the connection between meaning and use, the (...) nature of concepts, thought and intentionality, and language games. Bringing together leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars, it offers a genuinely critical approach and demonstrating Wittgenstein's relevance for contemporary philosophy. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the later Wittgenstein, in addition to those interested in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Let 1 n. We show that the class NrnCAβ of n-dimensional neat reducts of β-dimensional cylindric algebras is not closed under forming elementary subalgebras. This solves a long-standing open problem of Tarski and his co-authors Andréka, Henkin, Monk and Németi. The proof uses genuine model-theoretic arguments.

La traducción de la obra principal de Maimónides, la Guía de los descarriados, del árabe al hebreo tuvo repercusiones amplias y prolongadas. Provocó una crisis social en el seno de las comunidades judías en dominios cristianos, abrió las puertas al conocimiento de la filosofía de Averroes y de Aristóteles entre los judíos, y dio lugar a una corriente averroísta judía, y a su oposición. Dado que Algacel representa una posición tradicional contraria a la filosofía, y combatida por Averroes, hahlane sostiene (...) que el interés dentro de la comunidad judía por Algacel es debido su utilidad en la polémica interna contra Averroes y Maimónides. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines a mechanism, namely organizational social capital, through which self-sacrificial leadership is related to two types of employee behaviours: organizational citizenship behaviours and counterproductive behaviours. The results of two different studies in Egypt showed that self-sacrificial leadership is positively related to OSC which, in turn, is positively related to OCBs and negatively related to CPBs. Overall, the findings suggest that self-sacrificial leaders are more likely to achieve desirable employee behaviours through improving the quality (...) of social relationships among employees. (shrink)

Deductive inference seems to reveal semantic connections between their premise(s) and conclusion that were there all along. This looks inconsistent with Wittgenstein's later views on meaning. The paper argues that W's treatment of aspects suggests a Wittgensteinian treatment of deduction that accommodates the troublesome phenomenon without conceding its force.

In recent years, scholars have sought to investigate the impact that ethical leaders can have within organisations. Yet, only a few theoretical perspectives have been adopted to explain how ethical leaders influence subordinate outcomes. This study therefore draws on social rules theory (SRT) to extend our understanding of the mechanisms linking ethical leadership to employee attitudes. We argue that ethical leaders reduce disengagement, which in turn promotes higher levels of job satisfaction and organisational commitment, as well as lower turnover intentions. (...) Co-worker social undermining is examined as a moderator of the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement, as we suggest that it is difficult for ethical leaders to be effective when co-worker undermining prevails. To test the proposed model, questionnaires were administered to 460 nurses in Romanian hospital settings over three time points separated by two-week intervals and the hypotheses were tested using generalised multilevel structural equation modeling (GSEM) with STATA. The findings revealed that ethical leadership has a beneficial effect on employee attitudes by reducing disengagement. However, the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement was moderated by co-worker social undermining, such that when undermining was higher, the significance of the mediated relationships disappeared. These results suggest that while ethical leaders can promote positive employee attitudes, their effectiveness is reduced in situations where co-worker undermining exists. (shrink)

We revisit the flight-to-quality and flight-from-quality occurrences vis-à-vis the stock-bond nexus across differing investment time scales in the COVID-19 era, using a novel technique hinged on a denoised frequency-domain transfer entropy. Our findings divulge that flights, both FTQ and FFQ, could be attained during stress periods. Generally, in the intermediate term of the COVID-19 pandemic, both Islamic and conventional bonds could act as safe havens, diversifiers, and hedges for international equities, and the same could be observed for international equities. We (...) reiterate empirically that flights may improve the financial system’s stability and robustness by allowing diversity to be effective when it is most required. The findings have financial and portfolio implications for investors considering how to deploy their investments in the COVID-19 era. Our findings may impact policymakers’ responses to changes in various asset classes, allowing them to better monitor financial markets and adjust macroeconomic policies. (shrink)

"The Uncertain Science" argues that sociology has not freed itself from the influence of philosophy, and specifically from the search for certainty. This "foundationalism" which is characteristic of Western thought has influenced both the method adopted by sociologists, and their research practices. The authors criticize sociology for its formalism, arguing that this blunts the radicalism of its project. To regain the radical and critical edge implicit in sociology, it is necessary to adopt a comparative and historical approach which interprets social (...) science as part of societal learning. In the first part of the book the authors trace formalism to central positions in Western philosophy and examine its impact on historiography, evolutionary social thought and positivist sociology. In the second part they examine the tensions between formalism and social theory in the work of Levi Strauss and Habermas. In part three they compare modernization theory to more recent descussions of "modernity" and "postmodernity", and show the elements of continuity between these apparently contrary positions. This book should be of interest to undergraduates in sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

We prove an Omitting Types Theorem for certain algebraizable extensions of first order logic without equality studied in [SAI 00] and [SAY 04]. This is done by proving a representation theorem preserving given countable sets of infinite meets for certain reducts of ?- dimensional polyadic algebras, the so-called G polyadic algebras (Theorem 5). Here G is a special subsemigroup of (?, ? o) that specifies the signature of the algebras in question. We state and prove an independence result connecting our (...) representation theorem to Martin's axiom (Theorem 6). Also we show that the countable atomic G polyadic algebras are completely representable (Corollary 16) contrasting results on cylindric algebras. Several related results are surveyed. (shrink)

Contributed articles chiefly on philosophy; memorial volume in honor of Mafizuddin Ahmed, b. 1927, professor of philosophy and writer from Rājshāhi District, Bangladesh; includes some articles on his life and work.

The paper distinguishes versions of the 'Agency theory of causation' and defends some of them against the charge of circularity.

SC, CA, QA and QEA denote the classes of Pinter's substitution algebras, Tarski's cylindric algebras, Halmos' quasi-polyadic algebras and quasi-polyadic equality algebras, respectively. Let ω ≤ α < β and let K ∈ {SC,CA,QA,QEA}. We show that the class of α -dimensional neat reducts of algebras in Kβ is not elementary. This solves a problem in [3]. Also our result generalizes results proved in [2] and [3].

The market relationships are being contested. This can be seen in the increasing number of alternative social experiments in the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ which propose to think out the present market relationships in a different way, in particular in establishing exchange value and in facilitating access to trade. These practical alternatives are supported by trends in academic circles that over the past three decades have opposed neoliberal capitalism and individualism in today's commercialised society. Calling for greater solidarity and social (...) justice in economic relationships, in particular, partisans of social and solidarity economics, identifying with these trends, demand new forms of exchange. The objective of this article is to re-examine these demands. What exactly do the SSE mean by ‘solidarity’ and ‘solidarity-based economy'? We would like to trace the contours of this theoretical and political project and to assess the practicability of the proposed alternative to neoliberal capitalism. (shrink)

The primary and secondary sources of Islamic law often assume a binary distinction between ijtihād and taqlīd, ignoring a third level of engagement with the sources, which was conceptualized by some jurists as forming a distinct category. In this article I discuss the evolution of the terms ijtihād, taqlīd, and ittibāʿ, using a conceptual-historical approach. I argue that the use of taqlīd to mean “precedent-following” did not emerge as a technical term until after the time of al-Shāfiʿī. The distinction between (...) precedent-following and verifiable-following did not appear in legal discourse until the time of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. I also demonstrate that there were three approaches to these terms in legal discourse after the time of Ibn Ḥanbal, with three groups of jurists defining them in ways that advanced their different visions of law-making. I conclude with a discussion of the debate over the meanings of these terms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

We survey various results on the relationship among neat embeddings (a notion special to cylindric algebras), complete representations, omitting types, and amalgamation. A hitherto unpublished application of algebraic logic to omitting types of first-order logic is given.

A large class of the dynamical laws for causal sets described by a classical process of sequential growth yields a cyclic universe, whose cycles of expansion and contraction are punctuated by single ‘‘origin elements’’ of the causal set. We present evidence that the effective dynamics of the immediate future of one of these origin elements, within the context of the sequential growth dynamics, yields an initial period of de Sitter-like exponential expansion, and argue that the resulting picture has many attractive (...) features as a model of the early universe, with the potential to solve some of the standard model puzzles without any fine-tuning. (shrink)

The proposed work describes an approach for segmentation of activated sludge flocs from the microscopic images for monitoring wastewater treatment. The morphological features of flocs and filaments are related to the state of an activated sludge wastewater treatment plant and must be monitored for proper functioning. Hence, image processing and analysis could be a time-saving monitoring tool. To address this challenge, we propose a novel framework involving a multiphase edge detection algorithm based on information theory. The proposed framework is evaluated (...) and scrutinized critically considering the artifacts found in the photographs tested. To evaluate the segmentations, gold approximation of estimated truth images is created. In addition, the performance was subjectively evaluated for its potential for segmenting activated sludge images. Experimental results show that the proposed framework exhibits the good results and demonstrates its effectiveness. (shrink)

Examinations form part of the assessment processes that constitute the basis for benchmarking individual educational progress, and must consequently fulfill credibility, reliability, and transparency standards in order to promote learning outcomes and ensure academic integrity. A randomly selected question examination is considered to be an effective solution to mitigate sharing of questions between students by addressing replicated inter-examination questions that compromise examination integrity and sequential intra- examination questions that compromise examination comprehensivity. In this study, a Monte Carlo approach was used (...) to design six examination schemes for the purpose of generating and evaluating 600 RSQEs in order to investigate the effects of RSQE design on replicated inter-examination and sequential and intra-examination questions. Results revealed that the number of randomly selected questions from the pool and the number of sub-pools inversely affected the replication and sequencing of the examination questions. Thus, by designing the RSQE in many sub-pools, in equivalence to the number of examination questions and selecting only one question from each sub-pool, and updating the sub-pools after each examination, the passing of information can be prevented, ensuring the integrity of the examinations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning and scope of social responsibility in a state-owned enterprise. Is corporate social responsibility (CSR) a meaningful concept for a state-owned enterprise, as opposed to a privately-owned corporation, given that it is created with social as well as economic aims? To try to answer to this question, the case of Sonatrach, an Algerian oil company, is examined. The lack of statistical data does not allow an assessment of CSR actions undertaken by (...) this company since 2004. The analysis identifies two main obstacles to the effectiveness of CSR in state-owned enterprises: (a) the system of internal governance ischaracterized by a lack of control; (b) the competitive and social environment is characterized by a partial application of the logic of the market, which does not allow the optimal allocation of means. (shrink)

El presente artículo empieza con una breve exposición de los datos más significativos sobre la vida y obra del sufí almeriense Ibn al-‘Arīf (d. 536/1141). A continuación se habla de su formación filosófica y sufí. Finalmente, se reúnen y traducen diversos pasajes de Miftāḥ al-sa‘āda que hacen referencia a la filosofía y la mística. Se contrastan a la vez sus opiniones con anteriores sufíes andalusíes como Ibn Masarra e Ibn Jamīs de Évora.

The paper summarizes the main points of Quine's epistemology and philosophy of language: empiricism, holism, semantic behaviourism, inscrutability of reference, indterminacy of translation and the rejection of analyticity.

The risk of cigarette smoking plays a pivotal role in increasing the incidence rates of lung cancer. This paper sheds new light on modeling the impact of cigarette smoking on lung cancer evolution, especially genetic instability and the number of gene mutations in the genome of stem cells. To handle this issue, we have set up stochastic multi-stage models to fit the data set of the probabilities of current and former smokers from the Nurses’ Health Study cohort of females and (...) the Health Professionals Follow up Study cohort of men. Throughout this paper, we consider both mutation rates and clonal expansion rates as parameters in each compartment. For current and former smokers, three-driver mutations are most likely to take place in the progression of lung cancer under smoking risk. For current smokers, our findings reveal that two to sixteen gene mutations are required to obtain a cancerous cell among men and women in US. Moreover, two to six cancer-mutations are available in the pathway to lung cancer among former smokers who have quit smoking for more than ten years for both male and female patients. This highlights that cigarette smoking stimulates the number of driver mutations during lung tumorigenesis in both sexes. It is very crucial to examine the role of cigarette smoking in determining whether genomic instability is an early stage or late stage in the process of lung carcinogenesis. (shrink)