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

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

Total quality; commerce; economics; religious aspects; Islam; Islamic ethics.

There is a growing global interest in social responsibility and sustainability across all sectors. Other than economic performance, stakeholders are now also concerned about the social and environmental impacts of corporations. Additionally, stakeholders are obtaining a higher salience level and expect organisations to operate sustainably. The banking sector has not been an exception, as banks can have significant impact on their customers, employees, and society in various ways. Given the intertwined links of Islam and ethical principles, it is expected that (...) Islamic banks will show a high level of commitment towards social responsibility (SR) and ethical practices. The current study investigates this issue by examining the annual reports of three fully-fledged Islamic commercial banks in Indonesia over the period of 2007 to 2011. It was found that only two of the investigated banks had continuous improvement in their SR disclosure. Additionally, it was revealed that the highest disclosures have been for ‘corporate vision’ and ‘board of directors and top management’, while the lowest disclosures were evident for ‘environment’ and ‘product, services and fair dealing with supply chain’. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has badly affected the social, physical, and emotional health of workers, especially those working in the healthcare sectors. Drawing on social exchange theory, we investigated the effects of participative leadership on employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors among frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we examined the moderating role of a leader’s behavioral integrity in strengthening the relationship between participative leadership, and employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. By using a two-wave time-lagged design and (...) data collected from 244 healthcare workers, a moderated hierarchal regression was implemented to test the proposed hypotheses. As hypothesized, participative leadership predicted employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. The leader’s behavioral integrity strengthened the relationship between participative leadership and employees’ thriving and moderated the relationship between participative leadership helping behaviors. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The λσ-calculus adds explicit substitutions to the λ-calculus so as to provide a theoretical framework within which the implementation of functional programming languages can be studied. This paper generalises the λσ-calculus to provide a linear calculus of explicit substitutions, called xDILL, which analogously describes the implementation of linear functional programming languages.Our main observation is that there are non-trivial interactions between linearity and explicit substitutions and that xDILL is therefore best understood as a synthesis of its underlying logical structure and the (...) technology of explicit substitutions. This is in contrast to the λσ-calculus where the explicit substitutions are independent of the underlying logical structure. (shrink)

Sporadic efforts have been made to introduce computational thinking methods into K-12 education in Palestine, but these have been held back by the challenging educational environment. However, a recent in-service training initiative, funded and organized by the Ministry or Education of Palestine, constitutes a significant effort to embed computational thinking in K-12 practice. The middle school teachers who participated in the training course were invited to participate in the present study, and 38 did so. A qualitative approach involving both interviews (...) with teachers and classroom observations was used in data collection. All the teachers agreed to be observed in their classrooms, while 20 of the 38 also agreed to participate in the interviews. The findings showed that teachers of a range of topics, including social sciences and languages, employed computational thinking skills in teaching their students, but they were confronted by a number of challenges, including technical infrastructure and support, and a lack of time to prepare CT classes and space in the curriculum to deliver them. The results indicate that the most appropriate action to support teachers’ delivery of CT would be to provide peer exchanges and expert coaching in the integration of CT in the curriculum. (shrink)

Peter the Venerable (d. 1156) is often acclaimed as an early proponent of interfaith understanding for his having commissioned detailed studies of the scriptures of other faiths. This paper considers whether or not such praise is justified by examining Peter the Venerable‘s representations of Islam‘s primary sources.

The study intends to investigate the relationship between work stress and job insecurity, as well as technological changes and job insecurity, with job satisfaction acting as a mediator. The study was conducted among Pakistani retail industry employees using survey questionnaires distributed online and in stores. The sample was composed of 262 retail workers from the FMCG and shopping mall industries. The responses were screened using the statistical software tool SPSS, and hypotheses were examined through SMART-PLS. The findings show that work (...) stress has a strong relationship with job insecurity; additionally, the relationship appears to be statistically significant. This demonstrates that many technological changes cause high levels of job insecurity because employees fear that they will be unable to cope with the changing environment. Furthermore, the mediating mechanism of job satisfaction was found to be significant, as employees with lower levels of satisfaction reported higher levels of insecurity, aiding in the narrowing of the gap in this section of the study. The study also has practical implications because the results show that the retail industry needs to act quickly to make sure workers do not worry about losing their jobs, especially now that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire. (shrink)

Badawī, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān; Arab philosophers; biography.

Presently, there is armed conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Armed conflict has adversely affected the social, economic and educational development of Darfur, Sudan. Purpose of this study is to know the impact of armed conflict on managerial behavior of the principals of secondary schools in Darfur, Sudan. In this study, the impact of armed conflict on performance of the secondary school principals was analyzed in perspective of their managerial behavior. Based on the findings of the study significant impact of armed conflict (...) was found on the managerial behavior of the principals. It was found that principals coordinated with the staff in activities of the school but were frightened and unable to perform their administrative and managerial duties freely and independently. There was communication gap between the principals, teachers and parents. The principals did not possess the skills to maintain school budget & finance properly. It was concluded that the principals need administrative and managerial training. Government of Sudan may establish academies of Educational Administration & Management to impart training to the principals of secondary schools and to take steps to control the existing armed conflict. (shrink)

Our study explores the relationship between psychological contract (fulfillment/violations) and voice behavior (promotive/prohibitive). The study encourages promoting the development of positive voice behavior since the promotive voice behavior of employees would help the organization to grow and improve as per industry standards especially during the upcoming hi-tech era. If the knowledge workers do not show positive voice behavior, it is difficult for organizations to compete and sustain in such an era of digitalization. A cross-sectional survey was conducted for the assessment/validation (...) of the model. Data was collected through a single self-reported questionnaire, filled out by the 89 employees of two private banks, working in 8 different branches. Further, the relationships among variables have been analyzed using structure equation modeling. Results show a strong and positive relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and promotive voice behavior whereas a negative relationship is indicated upon the violations and breach of psychological contract. Job satisfaction/dissatisfaction was also tested as mediators between these variables. Future researchers may test the same in different geographical locations and demographic conditions, whereas various personality traits may also be tested since voice behavior is an individual decision. The study represents the first of its kind on the said topic especially in the Pakistani context. (shrink)

Thoughts of Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, a prominent Indonesian author and ulama, on Islamic ethics.

In this article, we discuss the current trend of authoritarianism in the Islamic world, especially as embodied in the institution of taqlîd, whereby a lay person blindly follows a religious scholar. We will compare this to the mystical tradition of Ibn ‘Arabî as well as the early esoteric Shî’ite tradition, where a much more “rebellious” type of Islam was offered and provided purviews of pluralism and universalism that challenge authoritarian closures of interpretation in relationship with God. By way of further (...) comparison, we will also attend to the writings of some liberal and pluralistic thinkers in the Muslim world. Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness?-Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols. (shrink)

This study presents the circuitous route taken in an attempt to identify an assessment mechanism for evaluating the impact of STS courses. After initially developing a survey that faculty felt only allowed for the measurement of student opinions about the impact of required STS general education courses, the faculty at Clemson University identified Aikenhead and Ryan's Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) as an instrument that, when used with the scoring guide created in this project, might be able to assess the sophistication (...) of students views about science and technology in society. The results from administering the pre- and post-VOSTS surveys in one STS course revealed no significant differences when comparing the sophistication of students' views about STS before and after the course. These findings demonstrate that, among other considerations discussed in the manuscript, it will be difficult to find a way of assessing STS courses that can be used for the diverse courses meeting the requirement. (shrink)

Essai sur les traités philosophiques de Cicéron et leurs sources grecques.--La polémique de la nouvelle académie contre le stoīcisme.--Miskaweih, sa philosophie morale et ses sources.

A contemporary to Thomas Aquinas in Latin Catholic Italy, and with a parallel motivation to stabilize each his own civilization in its flux and storm, 'Abd Allah Baydawi of Ilkhan Persia wrote a compact and memorable Arabic Summation of Islamic Natural and Traditional Theology. With the same strokes of his pen he presented the Islamic version of the Science of Theological Statement, bafflingly called "Kalam" while familiarly embracing "Theology". Baydawi's Tawali'al-Anwar min Matal'al-Anzar (Rays of Dawnlight Outstreaming from Far Horizons of (...) Logical Reasoning), with Mahmud Isfahani's commentary, is a formidably clear logical and mental vision of mankind's final completion as a spiritual structure in Islam. Reality - in nature's Possible mode, in an apodictic Divine mode, and in humanity's heroic Prophetic mode - comprises man's Worldview and is the Theme of the Baydawi/Isfahani discourse. The Edifice of Man and Humanity's evanescent Evidence within it are both hugely arresting and moving. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004121027). (shrink)