The main purpose of this paper is to investigate constructively the relationship between proximal convergence, uniform sequential convergence and uniform convergence for sequences of mappings between apartness spaces. It is also shown that if the second space satisfies the Efremovic axiom, then proximal convergence preserves strong continuity.

A natural extension theorem for strongly continuous mappings, the morphisms in the category of apartness spaces, is proved constructively.

The paper deals with proximal convergence and Leader's theorem, in the constructive theory of uniform apartness spaces.

An axiomatic development of the theory of apartness and nearness of a point and a set is introduced as a framework for constructive topology. Various notions of continuity of mappings between apartness spaces are compared; the constructive independence of one of the axioms from the others is demonstrated; and the product apartness structure is defined and analysed.

We investigate separation properties for neighbourhood spaces in some details within a framework of constructive mathematics, and define corresponding separation properties for quasi-apartness spaces. We also deal with separation properties for spaces with inequality.

In the constructive theory of uniform spaces there occurs a technique of proof in which the application of a weak form of the law of excluded middle is circumvented by purely analytic means. The essence of this proof-technique is extracted and then applied in several different situations.

The theory of apartness spaces, and their relation to topological spaces (in the point–set case) and uniform spaces (in the set–set case), is sketched. New notions of local decomposability and regularity are investigated, and the latter is used to produce an example of a classically metrisable apartness on R that cannot be induced constructively by a uniform structure.

The relation between near continuity and sequential continuity for mappings between metric spaces is explored constructively. It is also shown that the classical implications “near continuity implies sequential continuity” and “near continuity implies apart continuity” are essentially nonconstructive.

In the constructive theory of uniform spaces there occurs a technique of proof in which the application of a weak form of the law of excluded middle is circumvented by purely analytic means. The essence of this proof—technique is extracted and then applied in several different situations.

We extend the concept of apartness spaces to the concept of quasi-apartness spaces. We show that there is an adjunction between the category of quasi-apartness spaces and the category of neighbourhood spaces, which indicates that quasi-apartness is a more natural concept than apartness. We also show that there is an adjoint equivalence between the category of apartness spaces and the category of Grayson’s separated spaces.

Uniform sequential continuity, a property classically equivalent to sequential continuity on compact sets, is shown, constructively, to be a consequence of strong continuity on a metric space. It is then shown that in the case of a separable metric space, uniform sequential continuity implies strong continuity if and only if one adopts a certain boundedness principle that, although valid in the classical, recursive and intuitionistic setting, is independent of Heyting arithmetic.

In recent years, the microfinance industry has received a substantial amount of cross-border funding from both public and private sources. This funding reflects the increasing interest in microfinance as part of a more general trend towards socially responsible investments. In order to be able to secure sustained interest from these investors, it is important that the microfinance industry can show evidence of its contribution to reducing poverty at the bottom of the pyramid. For this, it is crucial to understand under (...) what conditions microfinance institutions are able to reduce poverty. This paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the relationship between the extent to which social capital formation is facilitated within different societies and the financial and social performance of MFIs. This focus on social capital formation is important, because in many cases MFIs use group loans with joint liability to incentivize asset-poor borrowers to substitute the lack of physical collateral by their social capital. Hence, the success of a large part of the loan relationship between MFIs and their borrowers depends on the social capital those borrowers can bring into the contract. We carry out a cross-country analysis on a dataset containing 100 countries and identify different social dimensions as proxies for how easy social capital can be developed in different countries. We hypothesize that microfinance is more successful, both in terms of their financial and social aims, in societies that are more conducive to the development of social capital. Our empirical results support our hypothesis. (shrink)

Trafficking in persons is a multi-sided phenomenon accompanying the current migration flows, therefore, the actions that must be undertaken in order to prevent, combat the phenomenon as well as to assist the victims of trafficking require a large partnership between all the actors involved: international organisations, governmental institutions and representatives of civil society. The special psychological, ethical issues raised especially by trafficking prevention and assistance to victims make the church and various religious organisations play a very important role in the (...) corresponding networks at both international and national level. Even if the integration of the church in the networks fighting against trafficking in persons has been quite largely addressed worldwide, there are but few studies undertaken in Romania in this area. Our paper opens the room for dialogue among the researchers interested in this topic from an interdisciplinary perspective to discuss the possibilities to establish sustainable partnerships between the state and the church against rafficking in persons. With this aim in view, we have first carried out a quantitative analysis of the scope and dynamics of trafficking in persons in Romania focusing on the victims’ profile by exploitation type. The main socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, schooling, area of origin) have been considered in order to identify the vulnerability factors related to the risk involved by trafficking, both at national and regional level. We have also examined the responses in legislative and institutional terms, with a special emphasis on the collaboration between the state and the church in preventing and combating trafficking in persons. Of special relevance are the conclusions resulted from the field research undertaken in the area covered by the Diocese of Maramures and Satu Mare. (shrink)

A goal of expanding life over time, space, and substrate requires that we look beneath the surface of technology and the universal norms placed on human nature to a vision of its future that could be realized. There is a visible fracturing of the personal and social behaviors of its hybrid users – a process that we might call data‐clatter. While life expansion seeks the continuation of persons over time and space and beyond the physical body, there is no current (...) method for backing up the brain and transferring its processes outside the biological system. The objectives of life expansion include developing a whole‐body prosthesis as both a device for mobility and sensory perception and a system that streams cognitive functions. These systems would provide the biosphere for biological systems of humans and the cybersphere for computational systems of digital persons. (shrink)

This article explores the link between CEOs’ language and hubristic leadership. It is based on the precepts that leaders’ linguistic utterances provide insights into their personality and behaviours; hubris is associated with unethical and potentially destructive leadership behaviours; if it is possible to identify linguistic markers of CEO hubris then these could serve as early warnings sign and help to mitigate the associated risks. Using computational linguistics, we analysed spoken utterances from a sample of hubristic CEOs and compared them with (...) non-hubristic CEOs. We found that hubristic CEOs’ linguistic utterances show systematic and consistent differences from the linguistic utterances of non-hubristic CEOs. Demonstrating how hubristic leadership manifests in CEO language contributes to wider research regarding the diagnosis and prevention of the unethical and potentially destructive effects of hubristic leadership. This research contributes to the wider study of hubris and unethical leadership by applying a novel method for identifying linguistic markers and offers a way of militating against the risk of unethical and destructive CEO behaviours induced or aggravated by hubristic leadership. (shrink)

A wide-ranging exploration of the Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, a mystical Jewish tradition from late antiquity, including a discussion of the possible cultural context of this material's creators.

Besides Dracula, Ceauşescu, and Nadia Comăneci, monasteries constitute a permanent Romanian brand, inextricably linked in every foreign visitor's mind to Romanianness. Specific to Moldavia and Bucovina—the Eastern and Northern parts of Romania—these monasteries have attracted visitors for the past 500 years. The person visiting a sacred site is transformed from being merely a tourist into a pilgrim. The painting “The Ladder towards Heaven” at the Pângăraţi Monastery, for example, highlights the importance of the mental and physical involvement of the tourist-pilgrim (...) as an interactive participant in the process of self-discovery. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to discuss both the concept of secularism among the Ottoman intellectuals and the principle of secularism during the period of the Turkish Republic based on ideas rather than practice. We can analyze “secularism in Turkey” in two separate periods of time: First, “The Ottoman Empire and Secularism” which discusses the ideas of secularism before the foundation of the Turkish Republic, and second “A Brief Analysis of the Turkish Republic and the Principle of Secularism” (...) in which the idea of secularism related to the ideology of the state in the course of the Turkish Republic are shortly examined. In this article, we generally state the consistent development of secularism practiced in Turkey. (shrink)

This article concerns sound aesthetic preferences for European foreign languages. We investigated the phonetic-acoustic dimension of the linguistic aesthetic pleasure to describe the “music” found in European languages. The Romance languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, take a lead when people talk about melodious language – the music-like effects in the language (a.k.a., phonetic chill). On the other end of the melodiousness spectrum are German and Arabic that are often considered sounding harsh and un-attractive. Despite the public interest, limited research has (...) been conducted on the topic of phonaesthetics, i.e., the subfield of phonetics that is concerned with the aesthetic properties of speech sounds (Crystal, 2008). Our goal is to fill the existing research gap by identifying the acoustic features that drive the auditory perception of language sound beauty. What is so music-like in the language that makes people say “it is music in my ears”? We had 45 central European participants listening to 16 auditorily presented European languages and rating each language in terms of 22 binary characteristics (e.g., beautiful – ugly and funny – boring) plus indicating their language familiarities, L2 backgrounds, speaker voice liking, demographics, and musicality levels. Findings revealed that all factors in complex interplay explain a certain percentage of variance: familiarity and expertise in foreign languages, speaker voice characteristics, phonetic complexity, musical acoustic properties, and finally musical expertise of the listener. The most important discovery was the trade-off between speech tempo and so-called linguistic melody (pitch variance): the faster the language, the flatter/more atonal it is in terms of the pitch (speech melody), making it highly appealing acoustically (sounding beautiful and sexy), but not so melodious in a “musical” sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stories of Families with Chronically Ill Pediatric Patients during the War in UkraineVita VoloshchukFebruary 24th was a day that has left a mark in the memory and on the lives of every Ukrainian person. My husband and I work together [End Page E5] in a hospital. He had gone into work early to conduct a kidney transplant that had been scheduled for that day. Suddenly, whilst on my way (...) to work that morning, I heard a strange sound—it was an air-raid siren. Before that, I had never heard such a sound. I went through all the possible options of what it could be. Of course, watching the morning news had never been a habit either. The next thing that astonished me was that the taxi I had ordered was taking an unnaturally long time to turn up. When I got into the taxi, I noticed that the taxi driver was really upset and silent for half of the journey. He then said, “A war has begun...”“War? So? The war has been going on since 2014.”“You don’t understand,” he said. “Russia is launching missile attacks all over the territory of Ukraine; Russian troops are coming from the east and north of Ukraine. They want to capture the capital of Ukraine.” (Kyiv).Arriving at the hospital, I saw confused faces everywhere. The morning meeting began with a discussion of how we were to act in any possible situation that may occur. We were to discharge patients from the hospital, as many as possible. The arrangement of a bomb shelter began (although I didn’t even think that such a thing existed in our hospital), along with the strengthening of the hospital’s windows, and the increase of supplies such as medicine and food. Of course, the boy who expected a kidney transplant did not receive it because no one knew what to expect at any second or where a hostile Russian missile might hit, as Russian missiles hit not only military objects but residential buildings, hospitals, and memorials as well.Children who had to continue therapy remained in the hospital. As soon as we heard the sound of an air-raid siren, we had to go down into the bomb shelter. This happened 5-10 times per day. Families with palliative and chronically ill children began to call and ask for advice on how to proceed in such a situation. As many children were on artificial respiration devices, others needed oxygen therapy, and sputum of mucus from the upper respiratory tract. All this required uninterrupted power supplies and appropriate equipment. Later that day, a doctor from Poland called me and asked if our pediatric patients needed help, saying it would be better if they were moved to Poland, where they would be safer and have the correct equipment. We started organizing evacuations for chronically ill and palliative patients.Seven days after the war began, parents from other regions, where the situation was more dangerous, began calling, asking for help evacuating. The hospital began to work intensively round the clock. Some patients moved in, and others were evacuated abroad. Some did not want to go. They continued treatment in the hospital, which turned into a hub for patients who had come from more dangerous, occupied territories; patients who were forced to leave their motherland to continue treatment.Since the beginning of the war, I have been responsible for transferring palliative patients and other patients with gastrointestinal diseases abroad. After the massive invasion, everything changed in our country. It is important to say that during the war, Lviv is safer than any other Ukrainian city, still air-raid sirens often go off, and everyone needs to run immediately to shelters for their safety. Palliative patients need special care. It is very difficult to run with patients several times per day during an air-raid siren or live with these children for a long time (2-3 weeks) in shelters because of the explosions occurring around them.It is impossible to move some patients to safety because they need appropriate medical equipment or mechanical ventilation is necessary. In shelters, there are crowds, and the high risk of... (shrink)

Este artículo explora dos vías filosóficas de acercamiento a las imágenes iniciadas el siglo pasado. La primera, que denominamos metafísica, fue abierta por Bergson y desarrollada por Deleuze. La segunda, que clasificamos como fenomenológica, es iniciada por Sartre y completada por Merleau-Ponty. La posición central que ocupa la imagen en estas teorías permite el desarrollo de una nueva ontología que resuelve los problemas del dualismo y en la que el cine desempeña un papel principal.

It is shown, within constructive mathematics, that the unit ball B1 of the set of bounded operators on a Hilbert space H is weak-operator totally bounded. This result is then used to prove that the weak-operator continuity of the mapping T → AT on B1 is equivalent to the existence of the adjoint of A.