Statistical distributions have great applicability for modeling data in almost every applied sector. Among the available classical distributions, the inverse Weibull distribution has received considerable attention. In the practice of distribution theory, numerous methods have been studied and suggested/introduced to increase the flexibility level of the traditional probability distributions. In this paper, we implement different distribution methods to obtain five new different versions of the inverse Weibull model. The new modifications of the inverse Weibull model are called the logarithm transformed-inverse (...) Weibull, a flexible reduced logarithmic-inverse Weibull, the weighted TX-inverse Weibull, a new generalized-inverse Weibull, and the alpha power transformed extended-inverse Weibull distributions. To illustrate the flexibility and applicability of the new modifications of the inverse Weibull model, a biomedical data set is analyzed. The data set consists of 108 observations and represents the mortality rate of the COVID-19-infected patients. The practical application shows that the new generalized-inverse Weibull is the best modification of the inverse Weibull distribution. (shrink)

The extended neoteric ranked set sampling plan proposed by Taconeli and Cabral has proven to outperform many one stages and two stages ranked set sampling plans when estimating the mean and the variance for different populations. Therefore, in this paper, the likelihood function based on ENRSS is proposed and used for estimation of the parameters of the inverted Nadarajah–Haghighi distribution. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted to assess the performance of the proposed likelihood function, and the efficiency of (...) the estimated parameters based on ENRSS is compared with the well-known ranked set sampling plan and some of its modifications. These modifications include the extended ranked set sampling plan and the neoteric ranked set sampling plan. The results as foreseeable were very satisfactory and gave similar results to Taconeli and Cabral’s 2019 results. (shrink)

Probability distributions play an essential role in modeling and predicting biomedical datasets. To have the best description and accurate prediction of the biomedical datasets, numerous probability distributions have been introduced and implemented. We investigate a novel family of lifetime probability distributions to represent biological datasets in this paper. The proposed family is called a new flexible logarithmic- X family. The suggested NFLog- X family is obtained by applying the T- X method together with the exponential model having the PDF m (...) t = e − t. Based on the NFLog- X approach, a three parameters probability distribution, namely, a new flexible logarithmic-Weibull distribution is introduced. The method of maximum likelihood estimation is adopted for estimating the parameters of the NFLog- X family. In the end, we examine three different biological datasets in order to give a thorough numerical research that illustrates the NFLog-Wei distribution. Comparisons are made between the analytical goodness-of-fit metrics of the suggested distribution. We made comparison with the alpha power transformed Weibull, exponentiated Weibull, Weibull, flexible reduced logarithmic-Weibull, and Marshall–Olkin Weibull distributions. After performing the analyses, we observe that the proposed method outclassed other competitive distributions. (shrink)

Open Compositionality: Towards a Methodology of Language offers a fresh view into human languages as supermodular, highly interactive cognitive capacities allowing for human unique thought and communication. It is a novel account of semantics as decision-making in tandem with the cognition first methodology.

Coference papers from the X National Seminar of Theory and History of the Art carried out in Medellín to address certain implications that the question entails, for both art and philosophy. For art: Why and since when do we think that art without aesthetics is something reprehensible or desirable? For philosophy: Is it irremovable or not the turn that the philosophical aesthetic took towards the experience of art from the eighteenth century? At the heart of these questions is a basic (...) concern: Who needs more aesthetics (taste, pleasure, beauty): art or human life?. (shrink)

Our focus has been on the role of early cry as a commanding source of information about infant pain and distress that requires interpretation by an adult caregiver. Its inherent ambiguity may offer an adaptive advantage, as resolution requires adult presence and scrutiny of other behavioral, physical, and contextual factors.

The extended reduced Kies distribution, which is an asymmetric flexible extension of the reduced Kies distribution, is the subject of this research. Some of its most basic mathematical properties are deduced from its formal definitions. We computed the ExRKD parameters using eight well-known methods. A full simulation analysis was done that allows the study of these estimators’ asymptotic behavior. The efficiency and applicability of the ExRKD are investigated via the modeling of COVID-19 and milk data sets, which demonstrates that the (...) ExRKD delivers a better match to the data sets when compared to competing models. (shrink)

Luck (2009) argues that gamers face a dilemma when it comes to performing certain virtual acts. Most gamers regularly commit acts of virtual murder, and take these acts to be morally permissible. They are permissible because unlike real murder, no one is harmed in performing them; their only victims are computer-controlled characters, and such characters are not moral patients. What Luck points out is that this justification equally applies to virtual pedophelia, but gamers intuitively think that such acts are not (...) morally permissible. The result is a dilemma: either gamers must reject the intuition that virtual pedophelic acts are impermissible and so accept partaking in such acts, or they must reject the intuition that virtual murder acts are permissible, and so abstain from many (if not most) extant games. While the prevailing solution to this dilemma has been to try and find a morally relevant feature to distinguish the two cases, I argue that a different route should be pursued. It is neither the case that all acts of virtual murder are morally permissible, nor are all acts of virtual pedophelia impermissible. Our intuitions falter and produce this dilemma because they are not sensitive to the different contexts in which games present virtual acts. (shrink)

This study examines the conflict strategies used in the highly adversarial and popular Arabic-language talk show broadcasted weekly on Al-Jazeera satellite channel, known as Al-Ittijah Al-Mu’aakis 'The Opposite Direction'. The study identifies the conflict strategies and verbal conflict expressions and approaches them in the light of Interactional Sociolinguistics. The analysis of three episodes debating three different topics shows that disputants used several types of strategies including "impoliteness", "aggravated impoliteness", topic restriction, lengthy holding of the floor, and sarcasm. The speakers' bald-on-record (...) expressions of disagreement are expected as a result of the controversial and polemical nature of the show, which creates fierce competition between the two guests to present their arguments in an aggressive way. (shrink)

The Cistercian Jaume Janer († after 1506) was the most prolific student of Pere Daguí, the first professor in the Lullist Studium on Majorca, and became himself, by royal privilege from the Crown of Aragon, the leader of a similar institution in Valencia. Janer’s and Daguí’s brand of Lullism embraced elements from Scotism. In particular, Janer in three of his works discussed the system of distinctions put forward by Peter Thomae, one of Duns Scotus’s early followers. This preoccupation with Scotist (...) distinction theory remained a doctrinal centerpiece of eclectic Lullism at least until the second half of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

A natural starting point for theories of perceptual states is ordinary perception, in which a subject is successfully related to her mind-independent surroundings. Correspondingly, the simplest theory of perceptual states models all such states on perception. Typically, this simple, common-factor relational view of perceptual states has received a perfunctory dismissal on the grounds that hallucinations are nonperceptual. But I argue that the nonperceptual view of hallucinations has been accepted too quickly. I consider three observations thought to support the view, and (...) argue that all three are dealt with equally well by an alternative view, illusionism, on which hallucinations do involve perception. Since this is so, adopting a common-factor relational view of all perceptual states remains a tenable option. (shrink)

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system on (...) the performance of students. (shrink)

How do we assign values to virtual items, which include virtual objects, properties, events, subjects, worlds, environments, and experiences? In this article, I offer a framework for answering this question. After considering different value theses in the literature, I argue that whether we think these theses mutually exclusive or not turns on our view about the number of value-salient kinds virtual items belong to. Virtual monism is the view that virtual Xs belong to only one value-salient kind in relation to (...) X. Virtual pluralism is the view that they belong to more than one value-salient kind. I argue for two claims. First, virtual monism is mistaken. Minimally some virtual Xs are Xs, while others are not. Second, dualistic virtual pluralism is also mistaken because it is too coarse grained. Instead, I argue for fourfold pluralism: virtual items either represent an original's properties or reproduce essential properties and do so to lesser or greater extents. This gives us four value-salient kinds of virtual X: virtual reproductions, simulations, representations, and simulacra of X. I apply this view to various debates in the literature and conclude with a discussion of less basic hybrid kinds. (shrink)

The gamer’s dilemma offers three plausible but jointly inconsistent premises: (1) Virtual murder in video games is morally permissible. (2) Virtual paedophelia in video games is not morally permissible. (3) There is no morally relevant difference between virtual murder and virtual paedophelia in video games. In this paper I argue that the gamer’s dilemma can be understood as one of three distinct dilemmas, depending on how we understand two key ideas in Morgan Luck’s (2009) original formulation. The two ideas are (...) those of (1) occurring in a video game and (2) being a virtual instance of murder or paedophelia. Depending on the weight placed on the gaming context, the dilemma is either about in-game acts or virtual acts. And depending on the type of virtual acts we have in mind, the dilemma is either about virtual representations or virtual partial reproductions of murder and paedophelia. This gives us three dilemmas worth resolving: a gaming dilemma, a representation dilemma, and a simulation dilemma. I argue that these dilemmas are about different issues, apply to different cases, and are susceptible to different solutions. I also consider how different participants in the debate have interpreted the dilemma in one or more of these three ways. (shrink)

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Scholars studying the global diffusion of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) practices and the associated rise of privatized forms of economic governance have tended to shift attention away from the role of corporations in motivating these processes to the one played by nonbusiness forces seeking social control of corporations. We bring corporate power back in by turning the spotlight to the agency of business classes, the business entities capable of pursuing transcorporate, societal-level, macro-political endeavors. Building on a comparative investigation of two (...) of the world’s earliest mass CSR adoptions, in postwar Venezuela and Britain, we argue that business classes responding to anti-capitalist challenges were the original diffusers of CSR practices and, interrelatedly, promoters of CSR-based, privatized forms of regulation and governance. Organized by peak business associations, the purpose of these “business-class CSR mobilizations” was to weaken the state in its relation to corporations and increase the control of business over social trends. We discuss the contribution of our historical perspective and analytical approach to a more complete and balanced picture of the global rise of CSR in late capitalism. (shrink)

Our sense of entitlement influences our interactions and attitudes in a range of specific relational contexts, one of them being aging parents’ relationships with their adult children. This study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Sense of Relational Entitlement—aging parents toward their offspring, an 11-item questionnaire that assesses aging people’s sense of relational entitlement toward their children, and examine the associations of its subscales with related personality and mental health constructs. One thousand and six participants, aged 65–99, with (...) at least one child, completed the SRE-ao, Brief Symptom Inventory, Loneliness Scale, and General Belongingness scale. The SRE-ao demonstrated good construct structure using confirmatory factor analysis. Both SRE-ao subscales were significantly and positively associated with anxiety, depression, somatization and sense of loneliness and negatively with sense of belonging. When all variables were entered into a regression model, age, anxiety, and low sense of belonging, but not sense of loneliness, positively predicted both restricted and inflated sense of entitlement. Somatization negatively predicted inflated sense of entitlement. The SRE-ao is a reliable and valid scale that can be used in clinical practice and research to enhance our understanding of parent–child relationships throughout the lifespan. (shrink)

En el despliegue conceptual del movimiento que va íde la razón a la praxisî se parte aquí de algunas tesis de J ̧rgen Habermas relativas a la redefinición del concepto de racionalidad. A partir de Hans-Georg Gadamer, y de otros pensadores de corte hermenéutico como Paul Ricoeur, Isaiah Berlin, Michael Carrithers, se siguen diversas líneas teóricas relacionadas con el significado de las ciencias humanas, las relaciones entre ciencia y cultura, el valor de la tradición y el sentido de la historia.

Recently, several critics of the multiple realizability thesis have argued that philosophers have tended to accept the thesis on too weak grounds. On the one hand, the analytic challenge has problematized how philosophers have treated the multiple realization relation itself, claiming that assessment of the sameness of function and the relevant difference of realizers has been uncritical. On the other hand, it is argued that the purported evidence of the thesis is often left empirically unverified. This paper provides a novel (...) strategy to answer these worries by introducing a role for multiple realizability in the context of biological engineering. In the field of synthetic biology, bioengineers redesign the evolutionary realizations of biological functions, even constructing artificial chemical surrogates in the laboratory. I show how in the rational design approach to biological engineering, multiple realizability can function as a design heuristic in which the sameness of function and difference of realizers can be controlled. Although practically motivated, this engineering approach has also a theoretical, exploratory component that can be used to study the empirical limitations of multiple realizability. Successful realization of the engineering designs would amount to a concrete demonstration of multiple realizability, taking evidence for MRT beyond what is readily found in nature. (shrink)

This paper promotes critical realism as a suitable and fruitful philosophical foundation for the development and implementation of urban digital twins. The proliferation of a-theoretical digital twin research and practices, not declaring their philosophical positions, is threatening the scientific soundness of this new paradigm and offers little evidence for reflecting on the knowledge it produces. To address this issue, first, this paper uses focus group discussions to explore digital twin experts’ perceptions of digital twin best practices for urban management and (...) uncover the philosophical worldviews underlying these perceptions. A philosophical worldview is a general orientation about the world that is described in terms of ontological and epistemological assumptions and views on human nature. The inferred philosophical worldviews are then compared with critical realism principles, supporting the argument that critical realism provides a suitable philosophical foundation for digital twin practices in urban management envisaged by participating experts, as well as enhancing current forms of digital twin practice. (shrink)

During the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, stress and anxiety were pervasive among the masses due to high morbidity and mortality. Besides the fear of coronavirus was also particularly driven by social media. Many people started to look for faith and spiritual connections to gain comfort. The role of spiritual ties and religious beliefs in relation to coping with pandemic stress gained the attention of researchers in some parts of the world. This cross-sectional survey aimed at assessing the intensity (...) of stress and anxiety symptoms experienced by people and how much they were alleviated by employing spiritual connections. The study sample comprises 795 respondents with 52% males and 48% females living in Saudi Arabia. The brief online study questionnaire collected data about background variables, anxiety and stress scale from DASS-21, and items from the WHOQOL instrument assessed the use of spiritual beliefs to cope. Multiple regression models were tested to determine the role of spiritual connections after adjusting demographic variables. Results illustrated that after adjusting for gender and age, participants' anxiety symptoms decreased by units with each unit increase in the use of spiritual connections, and participants’ stress symptoms reduce by units with each unit increase in coping with spirituality. Additionally, females’ risk to experience anxiety and stress symptoms was more than males and, respectively. An increase in age decreases the likelihood of experiencing anxiety symptoms and stress symptoms by and units respectively. Findings support the protective role of spiritual connections despite small beta coefficients. The social and cultural context in Saudi Arabia favors deep-rooted connections with spirituality and faith. Our findings support that the reliance on spiritual connections helped older people to deal with exaggerated fear during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and reduces the risk of experiencing anxiety and stress symptoms. Females and younger participants were relatively vulnerable to developing these symptoms. We discussed these findings considering some recent studies that reported similar relationships and made recommendations for future research. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to defend a version of the view that ‘exist’ expresses primarily a property of individual objects, a property that each of them has. In the first section, I will distinguish the three main types of rival conceptions concerning the semantic status of ‘exist’ that will define the subsequent discussion. In the second section it will be shown that the best explanation of our overall use of ‘exist’ in natural language requires the treatment of ‘exist’ as (...) a predicate that can be applied to individual objects. The third section will be concerned with the problem of the semantic analysis of negative singular existential sentences that contain proper names. I will briefly defend a specific solution to this problem that makes use of a single-domain free logic. In the following sections, I will try to defend this view of existence in more detail. That is, I will deal with three different specific challenges that prima facie seem to speak against the proposed view and for some rival alternatives; and I will show how these challenges can be met. (shrink)

We introduce tame abstract elementary classes as a generalization of all cases of abstract elementary classes that are known to permit development of stability-like theory. In this paper, we explore stability results in this new context. We assume that [Formula: see text] is a tame abstract elementary class satisfying the amalgamation property with no maximal model. The main results include:. Theorem 0.1. Suppose that [Formula: see text] is not only tame, but [Formula: see text]-tame. If [Formula: see text] and [Formula: (...) see text] is Galois stable in μ, then [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is a relative of κ from first order logic. [Formula: see text] is the Hanf number of the class [Formula: see text]. It is known that [Formula: see text]. The theorem generalizes a result from [17]. It is used to prove both the existence of Morley sequences for non-splitting and the following initial step towards a stability spectrum theorem for tame classes:. Theorem 0.2. If [Formula: see text] is Galois-stable in some [Formula: see text], then [Formula: see text] is stable in every κ with κμ=κ. For example, under GCH we have that [Formula: see text] Galois-stable in μ implies that [Formula: see text] is Galois-stable in μ+n for all n < ω. (shrink)

A central debate in the philosophy of virtual reality (VR) focuses on the reality of virtual items. Broadly, there are two main disagreements. Some views accept a metaphysical orientation to VR, and disagree on the reality of virtual items. For instance, David Chalmers (Disputatio 9(46):309-352, 2017, Disputatio 11(55):453- 486, 2019, 2022) defends digitalism, the view that virtual items are real digital items. Neil McDonnell & Nathan Wildman (Disputatio 11(55):371-397, 2019), by contrast, defend fictionalism, which maintains that virtual items are unreal (...) fictions. Other views, like Grant Tavinor’s (2021), reject the metaphysical orientation, argu- ing that focusing on the reality of virtual items is a mistake. In what follows I evalu- ate these two disagreements. I argue that experiences of virtual items depend on episodes of picture perception. Recognizing this reveals that the current debates are either easily resolved in favor of one view, or are not disagreeing about the reality of virtual items, but about what virtual items are. (shrink)

Several recent accounts of modeling have focused on the modal dimension of scientific inquiry. More precisely, it has been suggested that there are specific models and modeling practices that are best understood as being geared towards possibilities, a view recently dubbed modal modeling. But modalities encompass much more than mere possibility claims. Besides possibilities, modal modeling can also be used to investigate contingencies, necessities or impossibilities. Although these modal concepts are logically connected to the notion of possibility, not all models (...) are equal in their affordances for these richer modal inferences. This paper investigates the modal extent of selected models and argues that analyzing singular model-target pairings by themselves is typically not enough to explain their modal aptness or to identify the kinds of modalities they can be used to reason about. Furthermore, it is argued that some important concepts that are not explicitly modal - like biological robustness - can be understood modally through their relational nature to a background space of possibilities. In conclusion, it is suggested that the strategy of modal modeling is contrastive, situating particular possibilities in larger modal spaces and studying the structural relations within them. (shrink)

We prove the following main theorem: Let be an abstract elementary class satisfying the joint embedding and the amalgamation properties with no maximal models of cardinality μ. Let μ be a cardinal above the the Löwenheim‐Skolem number of the class. If is μ‐Galois‐stable, has no μ‐Vaughtian Pairs, does not have long splitting chains, and satisfies locality of splitting, then any two ‐limits over M, for, are isomorphic over M.

Critics of multiple realizability have recently argued that we should concentrate solely on actual here-and-now realizations that are found in nature. The possibility of alternative, but unactualized, realizations is regarded as uninteresting because it is taken to be a question of pure logic or an unverifiable scenario of science fiction. However, in the biological context only a contingent set of realizations is actualized. Drawing on recent work on the theory of neutral biological spaces, the paper shows that we can have (...) ways of assessing the modal dimension of multiple realizability that do not have to rely on mere conceivability. (shrink)

We present a self-contained exposition of the basic aspects of simple theories while developing the fundamentals of forking calculus. We expound also the deeper aspects of S. Shelah's 1980 paper Simple unstable theories. The concept of weak dividing has been replaced with that of forking. The exposition is from a contemporary perspective and takes into account contributions due to S. Buechler, E. Hrushovski, B. Kim, O. Lessmann, S. Shelah and A. Pillay.

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

This philosophical game changer looks critically at the Golden Rule in the context of game theory to see where it works and where it doesn’t, when it is applicable and when it isn’t. It shows you why knowing the difference can offer you a powerful way to transform your life from one driven by fear to one driven by love.

While most chemists agree on what is a metal and what is a non-metal there is a disagreement with respect to what is a metalloid and what is a transition metal. It is believed that this problem can be solved if two new terms are adopted: typical and less typical metals. These new terms will also help reconcile the European Periodic Table versus the North American regarding numbering of groups as well as the IUPAC numbering which could be as well (...) abandoned in favour of group names as will be shown in the manuscript. (shrink)

We present Saharon Shelah's Stability Spectrum and Homogeneity Spectrum theorems, as well as the equivalence between the order property and instability in the framework of Finite Diagrams. Finite Diagrams is a context which generalizes the first order case. Localized versions of these theorems are presented. Our presentation is based on several papers; the point of view is contemporary and some of the proofs are new. The treatment of local stability in Finite Diagrams is new.

By shedding light on accounts from unaccompanied Afghan asylum-seeking minors in Sweden who were child soldiers in Syria, this thesis explores and examines their narratives and their involvement in the civil war in Syria. The research aims to create a deeper understanding of how these children themselves made sense of their participation in the war by answering the following questions: How were the children approached by the recruiters? What kind of reasons for joining the war are put forward by the (...) recruiters and what strategies do the children encounter: a) economic; b) identity formation; c) social deprivation; d) feeling of vulnerability; e) militarization; f) mental development; g) ideology/ religious-sectarian; or all together? How do the children perceive these encounters and make sense of their recruitment to the Shiite Fatemiyoun Brigade? To which extent has the ideology of Shi’ism played an important role for them in joining the Syrian War? This is a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews which combines procedures from two approaches and techniques: an ethnographic approach and a narrative approach that explores the interviewees’ experiences in a period of time and also generates detailed insights. Despite the fact that none of the respondents testified for being recruited at gunpoint or having been ill-treated, the respondents emphasized that they were forced to join due to the bad circumstances they were living in. In addition, many similarities with other cases regarding child soldiering in several countries have been explored in this thesis, for instance factors related to the socio- economic context and the experiences that are related to the children’s development processes. Differences can be located in various details regarding ideologies and indoctrination since the respondents did not share the politico-religious purposes of the recruiters. (shrink)