This article investigates the extent to which the emerging trend of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening products represents a re-articulation of Western colonial concerns with environmental pollution and racial degeneracy into concern with gendered vulnerability. This emerging market is a multibillion dollar industry anchored in the USA, but expanding globally. Do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening products purport to address the needs of those looking to fight the visible signs of ageing, often promising to remove hyper-pigmented age spots from women’s skin, and replace it with (...) ageless skin, free from pigmentation. In order to contextualize the investigation of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening practice and discourse, this article draws from the literature in colonial commodity culture, colonial tropical medicine, the contemporary anti-ageing discourse, and advertisements for anti-ageing skin-whitening products. First, it argues that the framing of the biomedicalization of ageing as a pigmentation problem caused by deteriorating environmental conditions and unhealthy lifestyle draws tacitly from European colonial concerns with the European body’s susceptibility to tropical diseases, pigmentation disorders, and racial degeneration. Second, the article argues that the rise of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening commodities that promise to whiten, brighten, and purify the ageing skin of women and frames the visible signs of ageing in terms of pigmentation pathology. (shrink)

Western moral and political theorists have devoted much attention to the victimization of women by non-western cultures. But, conceiving injustice to poor women in poor countries as a matter of their oppression by illiberal cultures yields an imcomplete understanding of their situation.

Intersectionality has become a significant intellectual approach for those thinking about the ways that race, gender, and other social identities converge in order to create unique forms of oppression. Although the initial work on intersectionality addressed the unique position of black women relative to both black men and white women, the concept has since been expanded to address a range of social identities. Here we consider how to apply some of the theoretical tools provided by intersectionality to the clinical context. (...) We begin with a brief discussion of intersectionality and how it might be useful in a clinical context. We then discuss two clinical scenarios that highlight how we think considering intersectionality could lead to more successful patient–clinician interactions. Finally, we extrapolate general strategies for applying intersectionality to the clinical context before considering objections and replies. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of internationally acceptable codes of ethics within the context of an Egyptian nurse’s PhD studies. Theoretical work, including gaining ethical approval for the project, took place in the UK, while the data collection phase of the study was done in Egypt. This highlighted areas where the Arab Muslim interpretation of some ethical principles, especially around the issue of gaining informed consent, differed from that currently accepted in British research ethics. The authors argue that it may (...) not be possible, or even desirable, to standardize codes of ethics globally in areas such as academic research. Ethical principles develop from a unique mix of culture and religion. It may be more important to develop cultural competence that includes the ability to understand and respect the way in which ethical principles are interpreted by various societies. (shrink)

Las aminas biógenas son compuestos nitrogenados de pequeño tamaño con actividad biológica que se forman por la descarboxilación enzimática de ciertos aminoácidos. Las aminas biógenas se encuentran presentes en todos los seres vivos, en los que participan en procesos biológicas de gran importancia. Sin em­bargo, debido al metabolismo de algunos microorganismos, estos compuestos se pueden acumular en alimentos en concentraciones elevadas, constituyendo un riesgo para la salud de los consumido­res. Para que las aminas biógenas alcancen estas concentraciones elevadas en los (...) alimentos se requiere, como condición indispensa­ble, la presencia de microrganismos productores, por lo que se han desarrollado diferentes métodos para detectar la presencia de los mismos. Entre estos métodos, aquellos basados en técnicas inde­pendientes de cultivo, como la PCR, presentan ventajas como su gran especificidad, el hecho de ser rápidos y de fácil realización, y que en muchos casos ni siquiera es necesario un tratamiento previo de la muestra, lo que facilita su incorporación a las plantas de elabo­ración. En este trabajo se describen algunos de los métodos dispo­nibles en la actualidad para la detección de microorganismos pro­ductores de aminas biógenas, así como sus posibles aplicaciones. (shrink)

Faith development theory has evolved as a prominent theoretical perspective during the past three decades to explain different ways of relating to religious beliefs and worldviews. Recent revisions of the theory have elaborated on these characteristic ways as religious styles namely the fundamentalist, mutual, individuative-systemic, and dialogical. The present study developed an Urdu version of its principal measure, i.e., Faith Development Interview, to analyze twelve cases of Muslims of various religious affiliations within Islam in Pakistan. Four case studies representative of (...) each faith style are presented in detail. The cases are compared to analyze Islamic faith in terms of faith development theory and to understand fundamentalism in a Muslim context. The findings support faith development theory as a comprehensive paradigm to address the varieties of faith orientations in Islam. Implications for future research with larger samples in highly religious and collectivistic cultures are discussed. (shrink)

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition By MuhannaElias, xiii + 214 pp. Price HB £30.00. EAN 978-0691175560.

La présente étude se veut une réflexion exploratoire sur la recherche féminine. Elle s’appuie, d’une part, sur les écrits de plus en plus nombreux ces deux dernières décennies sur la question féminine, où la femme est autant productrice qu’objet d’analyse et, d’autre part, sur une expérience de cinq années menée au sein d’un groupe de recherche pluridisciplinaire multilingue spécialisé dans les études sur la femme. Il s’agit en l’occurrence du Groupe Universitaire d’Etudes Féminines (G.U.E.F..

The following review summarizes and examines Mark Solms's article Dreaming and REM Sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms, which argues why the understanding of REM sleep as the physiological equivalent of dreaming needs to be re-analyzed. An analysis of Solms's article demonstrates that he makes a convincing argument against the paradigmatic activation-synthesis model proposed by Hobson and McCarley and provides provocative evidence to support his claim that REM and dreaming are dissociable states. In addition, to situate Solms's findings in (...) concurrent research, other studies are mentioned that are further elucidated by his argument. [Solms]. (shrink)

This paper presents a robust, dynamic, and unsupervised fuzzy learning algorithm that aims to cluster a set of data samples with the ability to detect outliers and assign the numbers of clusters automatically. It consists of three main stages. The first stage is a pre-processing method in which possible outliers are determined and quarantined using a concept of proximity degree. The second stage is a learning method, which consists in auto-detecting the number of classes with their prototypes for a dynamic (...) threshold. This threshold is automatically determined based on the similarity among the detected prototypes that are updated at the exploration of a new data. The last stage treats quarantined samples detected from the first stage to determine whether they belong to some class defined in the second phase. The effectiveness of this method is assessed on eight real medical benchmark datasets in comparison to known unsupervised learning methods, namely, the fuzzy c-means, possibilistic c-means, and noise clustering. The obtained accuracy of our scheme is very promising for unsupervised learning problems. (shrink)

The positive role of religion in reducing prejudice has remained a neglected theme in Psychology of religion, concerning itself mostly with prejudice and fundamentalism. Recently, noting the absence of a positive antithesis to prejudice and fundamentalism, faith development theory presents xenosophia as going beyond mere tolerance to a creative engagement with other religious faiths to develop new insights and broaden one’s own worldview. The current research undertakes a study of Muslim faith contents to get insights into how these beliefs shape (...) construction of self in relation to other faith communities. Conducting inductive thematic analysis of faith development interviews from 12 Muslim participants from three major religious affiliations in Pakistan in an earlier research, the research analyzes a range of xenological patterns from xenophobia to xenosophia with associated potentials for inter-faith dialogue. Focusing on residents of a country with a dense Muslim population, the study carries implications for religious socialization and religious education in a globalized world. (shrink)

The problems of racism and racially motivated violence in predominantly African American communities in the United States are complex, multifactorial, and historically rooted. While these problems are also deeply morally troubling, bioethicists have not contributed substantially to addressing them. Concern for justice has been one of the core commitments of bioethics. For this and other reasons, bioethicists should contribute to addressing these problems. We consider how bioethicists can offer meaningful contributions to the public discourse, research, teaching, training, policy development, and (...) academic scholarship in response to the alarming and persistent patterns of racism and implicit biases associated with it. To make any useful contribution, bioethicists will require preparation and should expect to play a significant role through collaborative action with others. (shrink)

Wadud analyzes citizenship in theocratic states governed by Shari’ah, or Islamic law, states which do not traditionally envisage the equality of women. Against such theocratic systems, Wadud argues that the canonical Islamic tradition of jurisprudence is open to reinterpretation in light of changing conditions in Muslim societies. According to Wadud, the Qur’an does not restrict agency on the grounds of gender. The gender disparity that has developed in Islamic tradition and theory denies women the means of completing their duties before (...) Allah. Wadud calls upon all Muslims, female and male, to reform their societies so as to implement the equality inherent in the “tawhidic” Islamic paradigm, which stresses unity and harmony. (shrink)

Interview of Amina Kkhelufi, Kseniia Myroshnyk, Nataliia Reva with Natalia Viatkina.

Interview with Constantine Sigov, dedicated to the history of the "European Dictionary of Philosophies": from the emergence of an idea in the early 90's in France until the accomplishment of the Ukrainian edition in 2019.

Feminist scholarship on women in religious and right-wing social and political movements has moved from a reductive focus on causal or motivational factors to more sophisticated analyses explicating processes of agency and subject formation. With the aim of expanding and deepening this conceptual space, I will discuss some of my interactions with a group of women in the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, as we attempted to explore the complex meanings of ‘the modern’ that informed the self-understanding of my interviewees. My work (...) corroborates some of the contemporary scholarship on what is referred to as Political Islam in arguing that Islamist movements in Muslim societies are also the catalysts of modernization, rather than simply its interlocutors. This article argues that these processes of social and political organizing entail particular interrogations and the reconstituting of identities in ways that blur the line between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. On the one hand, we need to understand Jamaat women's self-construction as religious or pious women; on the other hand, we must grasp the specificity of their claims to act as modern subjects situated in the time of political and cultural modernity. (shrink)

Interview of Amina Khelufi, Kseniia Myroshnyk and Nataliia Reva with Natalia Viatkina.

In Pakistan, as in many other societies, politico-religious movements or so-called Islamist fundamentalist movements are becoming an important site for women's activism as well as the harnessing of such activism to promote agendas that seem to undermine women's autonomy. This has become a concern for a growing feminist literature which from a variety of political and theoretical positions seeks to understand and explain the subject-position of Muslim women as politico-religious activists. This paper attempts a deconstructive reading of texts by leading (...) Pakistani feminist scholars as they attempt the difficult process of steering between fundamentalism and Orientalism in their accounts of ‘fundamentalist’ women in the political ideological space of Pakistan. (shrink)

Whether hailed for transitioning to the ballot box, or condemned for failing to hold elections, Africa’s postcolonial states exhibit profound contradictions in the arena of gender politics. Where reforms have been achieved, implementation remains minimal, as undemocratic state structures and uncivil societies alike lack the political will to change. This article addresses the emergence of feminism as an intellectual and political force for freedom that radically challenges the ongoing exploitation and oppression of women in Africa. It focuses on the contribution (...) of radical intellectuals to the theory and practice of women’s movements, arguing that the research, analysis, and activism they carry out defines them as a radical public intellectual cadre that continuously mobilizes with, by, and for women to pursue liberation for themselves as much as others. (shrink)

While lawyers' independence initially developed as a way of protecting lawyers and their clients from the power of the state, it is now also associated with the protection of the public interest from lawyers who are too close to their clients. In this context independence is seen as a way of ensuring that lawyers act ethically, that is, with regard to their overriding duty to the court and the administration of justice rather than according to sectional, personal or economic interests. (...) It has been noted in various contexts that lawyers who work closely with powerful clients may be less able to withstand client pressure and uphold their obligations to the administration of justice. In-house lawyers are seen as particularly vulnerable due to their position within the client's organisational structure. On the other hand some have argued that the position of in-house lawyers gives them greater potential to exercise independent judgment and influence the ethical behaviour of their organisation. This paper argues that the concept of independence is multi-faceted with the essential aspect being the capacity for independent judgment or independence of mind. This is supported by status, power and structural protections. The paper goes on to critically consider the courts' interpretations of independence of in-house counsel in the context of claims of client legal privilege (also known as legal professional privilege). The paper argues that the judicial tests reveal a number of different approaches with limited connection to core concepts of independence. (shrink)

Pezdek and Lam [Pezdek, K. & Lam, S. . What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “False memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition] claim that the majority of research into false memories has been misguided. Specifically, they charge that false memory scientists have been misusing the term “false memory,” relying on the wrong methodologies to study false memories, and misapplying false memory research to real world situations. We review each of these claims (...) and highlight the problems with them. We conclude that several types of false memory research have advanced our knowledge of autobiographical and recovered memories, and that future research will continue to make significant contributions to how we understand memory and memory errors. (shrink)

Volume 21, Issue 1, July 2018, Page 93-95.

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

The study of the chaotic dynamics in fractional-order discrete-time systems has received great attention over the last years. Some efforts have been also devoted to analyze fractional maps with special features. This paper makes a contribution to the topic by introducing a new fractional map that is characterized by both particular dynamic behaviors and specific properties related to the system equilibria. In particular, the conceived one dimensional map is algebraically simpler than all the proposed fractional maps in the literature. Using (...) numerical simulation, we investigate the dynamic and complexity of the fractional map. The results indicate that the new one-dimensional fractional map displays various types of coexisting attractors. The approximate entropy is used to observe the changes in the sequence sequence complexity when the fractional order and system parameter. Finally, the fractional map is applied to the problem of encrypting electrophysiological signals. For the encryption process, random numbers were generated using the values of the fractional map. Some statistical tests are given to show the performance of the encryption. (shrink)

This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students readi...

Deborah is a thirty-three-year-old who presented to labor and delivery at thirty-seven weeks gestation with complaints of contractions. Upon arrival, she explained that her fetus, Nathan, had been diagnosed with a “lethal” condition by her primary obstetrician. At twenty-two weeks gestation, an amniocentesis confirmed trisomy 13, a chromosomal abnormality leading to miscarriage or stillbirth in nearly one-half of affected pregnancies. During the admission process, Deborah voices the worry that due to Nathan's brain and heart structure, vaginal delivery could be traumatic (...) and cause him to suffer. Deborah wishes for him to have as painless and as dignified a death as possible; cesarean section, she feels, will achieve this. Yet with her history of three prior vaginal deliveries, normally progressing labor, and poor fetal prognosis that is unlikely to improve with cesarean delivery, there is no maternal or fetal indication for a cesarean section. Should the obstetrician proceed with a cesarean delivery despite knowing that it would expose the mother to surgical risks with little or no corresponding fetal or neonatal benefit? (shrink)