The purpose of this study is to examine the link between English foreign language teacher’s professional identity and employee success via mediating role of critical thinking. Further, we examined the moderating role of leader motivational language between employee professional identity and critical thing and also indirect effect on employee success via critical thinking. We collected data from Chinese MNC’s school by using time lagged study design. We used hierarchical linear regression for direct hypotheses and Hayes PROCESS model’s for mediation, moderation, (...) and mediation moderation analysis. The results show that there is positive relation between employee’s professional identity and teacher’s success. Further, critical thinking mediates the link between professional identity and employee success. The results of the moderated mediation analysis show that critical thinking mediated the interaction of employee’s professional identity and leader’s motivational language on teacher’s success. (shrink)

The question of whether females tend to act more ethically or risk-averse compared to males is an interesting ethical puzzle. Using a large sample of US firms over the 1992–2014 period, we investigate the effect that the gender of a chief executive officer has on earnings management using classification shifting. We find that the pre-Sarbanes–Oxley Act period was characterized by high levels of classification shifting by both female and male CEOs, but the magnitude of such practices is, surprisingly, significantly higher (...) in firms with female CEOs than in those with male CEOs. By contrast, our results suggest that following the passage of the punitive SOX Act, classification shifting by female CEOs declined significantly, whilst it remained pervasive in firms with male CEOs. This suggests that the observable differences in financial reporting behavior between male and female CEOs seem to be because female CEOs are more risk-averse, but not necessarily more ethically sensitive than their male counterparts are. The central tenets of our findings remain unchanged after several additional checks, including controlling for alternative earnings management techniques, corporate governance mechanisms, CEO and chief financial officer characteristics and propensity score-matching. (shrink)

The truth of every human being is the end his life with death, and this leads to leaving assets and funds for those after him and can lead to hate between the heirs, it has made a point of Islamic law on all aspects of life, including the subject of the inheritance of the deceased. The main problem is how to get the knowledge of the basics of inheritance. This paper reviews work done in the use of expert system software (...) to calculate inheritance in Islam. A proposed expert system was designed and developed using CLIPS language to calculate the inheritance in Islam. (shrink)

An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is a computer system that offers an instant, adapted instruction and customized feedback to students without human teacher interference. Reciting "Tajweed" the Holy Quran in the appropriate way is very important for all Muslims and is obligatory in Islamic devotions such as prayers. In this paper, the researchers introduce an intelligent tutoring system for teaching Reciting "Tajweed". Our "Tajweed" tutoring system is limited to "Tafkhim and Tarqiq in TAJWEED" the Holy Quran, Rewaya: Hafs from ‘Aasem. (...) The system was evaluated by reciting teachers and students, and the results were auspicious. (shrink)

Before 1972 Somalia had no official writing system for its language. In spite of this, those who bred animals (camels, cattle, sheep, and goats) and who, owing to a lack of water in the country were forced to become nomads, had an authentic oral tradition that found its voice in a rich oral literature. This was well and truly oral in that it was composed, memorized, and passed on without having to resort to any type of writing or other means (...) of communication or recording. Many of these genres are typical of any oral tradition: various dance or work songs, fairy stories and other tales, riddles, sayings, proverbs, and so on. (shrink)

One of the important issues in mobile robots is finding the position of robots in space. This is normally achieved by using a sensor to locate the position of the robot. However, relying on more than one sensor and then using multisenor data fusion algorithms tends to be more reliable than just using a reading from a single sensor. If these sensors provide inconsistent data, catastrophic fusion may occur, and thus the estimated position of the robot obtained will be less (...) accurate than if an individual sensor is used. This article uses an approach that relies on combining modified Bayesian fusion algorithm with Kalman filtering to estimate the position of a mobile robot. Two case studies are presented to prove the efficiency of the proposed approach in estimating the position of a mobile robot. Both scenarios show that combining fusion with filtering provides an accurate estimate of the location of the robot by handling the problem of uncertainty and inconsistency of the data provided by the sensors. (shrink)

Biocidal agents such as formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde are able to inactivate several coronaviruses including SARS‐CoV‐2. In this article, an insight into one mechanism for the inactivation of these viruses by those two agents is presented, based on analysis of previous observations during electron microscopic examination of several members of the orthocoronavirinae subfamily, including the new virus SARS‐CoV‐2. This inactivation is proposed to occur through Schiff base reaction‐induced conformational changes in the spike glycoprotein leading to its disruption or breakage, which can (...) prevent binding of the virus to cellular receptors. Also, a new prophylactic and therapeutic measure against SARS‐CoV‐2 using acetoacetate is proposed, suggesting that it could similarly break the viral spike through Schiff base reaction with lysines of the spike protein. This measure needs to be confirmed experimentally before consideration. In addition, a new line of research is proposed to help find a broad‐spectrum antivirus against several members of this subfamily. (shrink)

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have ushered in a transformative phase in artificial intelligence (AI). Unlike conventional AI, LLMs excel in facilitating fluid human–computer d...

Sociological studies of culture have made significant progress on conceptual clarification of the concept, while remaining comparatively quiescent on questions of measurement. This study empirically examines internal conflicts (or “infighting”), a ubiquitous phenomenon in political organizing, to propose a “resinous culture framework” that holds promise for redirection. The data comprise 674 newspaper articles and more than 100 archival documents that compare internal dissent across two previously unstudied lesbian and gay Marches on Washington. Analyses reveal that activists use infighting as a (...) vehicle to engage in otherwise abstract definitional debates that provide concrete answers to questions such as who are we and what do we want. The mechanism that enables infighting to concretize these cultural concerns is its coupling with fairly mundane and routine organizational tasks. This mechanism affords one way to release the culture concept, understood here as collective self-definitions, from being “an amorphous, indescribable mist which swirls around society members,” as it was once provocatively described. (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)

What happens when a patient-interfacing conversational artificial intelligence system (CAI)—AI that combines natural language understanding, processing, and machine-learning models to autonomously...

Undeniably, the greatest way for a Moslem to be closer to Allah, is recitation of Holy-Quran approves with the method conveyed from Messenger of Allah Mohammed from the feature of speech points of letters and the intrinsic and fleeting characteristics of the letters, So, there is a persistent need to teach all Moslems the science of Tajweed Al-Quran. ITS (Intelligent Tutoring System) is computer software that supplies direct and tailored training or response to students without human teacher interfering. The main (...) target of ITS is smoothing the learning process using the wide-ranging facilities of computer. The proposed system will be implemented using the ITSB Authoring tool. In this thesis, the researcher presents an intelligent tutoring system for teaching Reciting Al-Quran "Tajweed" with Rewaya: Hafs from ‘Aasem by the way of Shatebiyyah. It was a novel idea that the researcher combined the science of Tajweed Al-Quran and the science of artificial intelligence in his thesis. The researcher arranged the material into chapters, lessons, examples then, added all these to the proposed system. He also added questions, right answers and the level of difficulty for each lesson. He prepared an exam for each chapter and a final exam to test the knowledge of the learner in the whole material. The system was evaluated by teachers and students in reciting science and the outcome of the assessment was encouraging and promising. (shrink)

Diabetes is a major public health issue that affects the nations of our time to a large extent and is described as a non-communicable epidemic. Diabetes mellitus is a common disease where there is too much sugar (glucose) floating around in your blood. This occurs because either the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin or the cells in body have become resistant to insulin. The concentration in this paper is on diagnosis diabetes by designing a proposed expert system. The main goal (...) of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosing of the illness, dealing with it quickly, and tips for permanent treatment whenever possible is given out. SL5 object expert system language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. (shrink)

Cet article présente, dans une première partie, les fondements éthiques de la gestion de crise qui s’apparentent au pragmatisme et à l’écologie humaniste et s’appliquent dans une approche systémique axée sur l’apprentissage et le dialogue. Dans une deuxième partie, il discute de quelques questions éthiques dans le domaine de la sécurité civile en s’appuyant principalement sur les observations empiriques de l’auteur au Québec. Dans le cadre de sa mission en tant que boursier du Programme canadien de bourses de la Francophonie, (...) l’auteur termine par un examen des défis culturels relatifs à son aspiration d’établir une éthique et une culture de gestion de crise dans son pays, l’Égypte. (shrink)

Psychiatric examinations in official institutions of the Brazilian government include examinations of individual convicts – some of whom are highly dangerous – carried out by court decision. These individuals are taken handcuffed under police escort from penitentiaries to the examination site. In most Brazilian states, medical examiners or experts adopt the basic procedure of asking the police officers to remove the handcuffs from the convict for the examination to be carried out. This article analyzes, from the bioethical standpoint, the behavior (...) of 49 forensic psychiatrists in eight Brazilian states in relation to procedures adopted as protection measures against any possible danger posed by their examinees. In the context of a developing country, where sophisticated protection means are not available, the practice of keeping convicts handcuffed during such examinations is compared to other measures and more advisable alternatives are discussed from the ethical standpoint. Considering the dilemma between showing minimum respect for the autonomy of examinees and ensuring the security of examiners, the need to adopt equitable procedures based on the recognition of the different needs of examiners and examinees is addressed. (shrink)

One of the most remarkable manifestations of social cohesion in large-scale entities is the belief in a shared, distinct and ancestral past. Human communities around the world take pride in their ancestral roots, commemorate their long history of shared experiences, and celebrate the distinctiveness of their historical trajectory. Why do humans put so much effort into celebrating a long-gone past? Integrating insights from evolutionary psychology, social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, political science, cultural history and political economy, we show that the cultural (...) success of historical myths is driven by a specific adaptive challenge for humans: the need to recruit coalitional support to engage in large scale collective action and prevail in conflicts. By showcasing a long history of cooperation and shared experiences, these myths serve as super-stimuli, activating specific features of social cognition and drawing attention to cues of fitness interdependence. In this account, historical myths can spread within a population without requiring group-level selection, as long as individuals have a vested interest in their propagation and strong psychological motivations to create them. Finally, this framework explains, not only the design-features of historical myths, but also important patterns in their cross-cultural prevalence, inter-individual distribution, and particular content. (shrink)

The intellectual legacy of Confucianism has loomed large in efforts to understand China's past, present, and future. While Confucian ethics has been thoroughly explored, the question remains: what exactly is Confucian political thought? Classical Confucian Political Thought returns to the classical texts of the Confucian tradition to answer this vital question. Showing how Confucian ethics and politics diverge, Loubna El Amine argues that Confucian political thought is not a direct application of Confucian moral philosophy. Instead, contrary to the conventional view (...) that Confucian rule aims to instill virtue in all members of society, El Amine demonstrates that its main aim is to promote political order. El Amine analyzes key aspects of the Confucian political vision, including the relationship between the ruler and the people, the typology of rulers, and the role of ministers and government officials. She also looks at Confucianism’s account of the mechanisms through which society is to be regulated, from welfare policies to rituals. She explains that the Confucian conception of the political leaves space open for the rule of those who are not virtuous if these rulers establish and maintain political order. She also contends that Confucians defend the duty to take part in government based on the benefits that such participation can bring to society. Classical Confucian Political Thought brings a new understanding to Confucian political theory by illustrating that it is not chiefly idealistic and centered on virtue, but rather realistic and driven by political concerns. (shrink)

Background:Promoting patients’ rights is essential for defining the standards of clinical services within a country. Given their responsibilities, nurses can be the primary target for research to investigate the issue of patients’ rights within a healthcare system. As such, assessing the knowledge of nurses about patients’ rights is an essential step toward improving the quality of healthcare in limited resource settings like Sudan.Objectives:We aimed to assess the level of knowledge about patients’ rights among the nursing staff at Friendship Teaching Hospital (...) in Sudan.Methods:This hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried out at the Friendship Teaching Hospital in Sudan. We surveyed the totality of nurses (95) at the hospital using an amended survey. The data were analyzed in SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics.Ethical consideration:The study was approved by the Research Unit of Khartoum Ministry of Health and the Hospital administration. All respondents gave verbal consent prior to participating in the study.Results:Only 48.4% of the participants knew about the existence of the Sudanese Charter of patients’ rights. Nonetheless, our analysis found that 65.8% of nurses had acceptable level of knowledge (scored more than 75% of the total knowledge score) of patients’ rights, and none of the participant scored less than 50% of the total knowledge score. Finally, we found no statistical association between the knowledge score and demographic data, educational level, whether the participant knows about the existence of the Charter or not and a number of other factors.Conclusion:Nurses’ lack of knowledge about the existence of the Sudanese Charter of patients’ rights adopted in 2009 rights confirms the need for further efforts by Ministry of Health to promote the document. Furthermore, further research is needed to investigate the disconnect between nurses’ lack of knowledge about the existence of the charter and their awareness of the rights within the charter as well as the actual implementation of rights. (shrink)

Contributing to the efforts to foster business postgraduate students development toward becoming responsible business leaders is the goal of this study by examining the state of responsible management education in business postgraduate programs in Sudan. We examined perceptions and attitudes toward responsible management and its education among postgraduate-level students and constructed a comprehensive framework appropriate for developing responsible management education programs in under-developed countries. This study’s data were gathered via a structured questionnaire answered by 106 postgraduate business students from the (...) largest four Sudanese business schools and facilities. The students were distributed among the management, finance, and marketing fields. The students exhibited affirmative corporate social responsibility perceptions and attitudes with a heightened focus on acting ethically and a diminished focus on financial considerations. A key lesson learned from this study is the need for the continued development of CSR and general ethics across business school curriculums in Sudan. (shrink)

Los más diversos teóricos de la modernidad suelen presentar este período como un proceso continuo de desarrollo tecnológico y económico, progreso en las artes y las ciencias, expansión de la democracia y racionalización de las instituciones y las costumbres. Sin embargo, persisten las contradicciones del capitalismo, el colapso de la civilización es inminente y el Pueblo no vive ni ha vivido en la modernidad tal y como sus teóricos la describen. Esto es tanto más cierto en nuestro país, habitado por (...) una suerte de magdaleniense o pre-Tartessos lleno de cacharritos con iconos, llamadas, avisos, avatares, tamagotchies, móviles y juegos online integrados sin la menor discrepancia sobre una capa de rituales del año de la polka, fetiches, incienso, lágrimas, sangre, joyas, ofrendas, sacrificios, reliquias de miembros de santos y matriarcas fenicio-neolíticas devenidas madres de Cristo al tiempo que supporters del equipo de fútbol local. El ultrarracionalismo se presenta como un nuevo método y movimiento filosófico cuya voluntad es afrontar los desafíos del futuro sin dejar de hacer justicia a esta auténtica marejada de lo grotesco. (shrink)

Migration is a global phenomenon growing in scope, and it can be associated with negative emotions such as sense of impending loss, fear of the unknown, and anxiety about those left at home. The objective of this exploratory study was to examine psychological distress and homesickness among Sudanese migrants in the United Arab Emirates. Participants were 1444 Sudanese migrants. The Second Version of the Dundee Relocation Inventory was used to assess homesickness, and the 28-item General Health Questionnaire was used to (...) measure psychological distress, depressive and anxiety symptoms, somatic symptoms, and social dysfunction. The results showed that older age and longer duration of residence in the UAE were associated with lower levels of homesickness, psychological distress, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Further, homesickness was associated with higher psychological distress, somatic symptoms, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Women and unemployed migrants had higher psychological distress, somatic symptoms, and depressive and anxiety symptoms compared with men and those employed, respectively. Being unmarried was associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms and homesickness, while those married or divorced/widowed showed lower levels of depressive symptoms and homesickness. It was concluded that there is a need to tackle unemployment among migrants in the UAE and address family reunion issues. (shrink)

The current study investigated correlations among gifted students’ academic performance; emotional, social, analytical, creative, and practical intelligence; and their implicit theories of intelligence. Furthermore, it studied the effect of gender and grade on these variables. The participants included 174 gifted fifth and sixth grade students, comprising 53.4% male and 46.6% female. The following analytical, creative, and practical intelligence tests were administered: Aurora Battery, the emotional intelligence scale, the implicit theories of intelligence scale, and an assessment scale of students’ performances. The (...) results revealed significant correlations among academic performance, kinds of intelligence, and implicit theories of intelligence. There were no significant differences between the male and female students in these measures. There were, however, significant differences between the fifth and sixth grade students, with the sixth-grade students showing higher levels of all kinds of intelligence, except emotional intelligence. Moreover, the results indicated that the intelligence measures were non-significantly affected by either gender or gender–grade interaction. Overall, our results showed that most types of intelligence are related to giftedness, and that there were no gender differences among gifted students on measures of intelligence. (shrink)

In the 1940s, Georges Canguilhem has established the concept of biological normativity on the level of the organism in his key work on “ The Normal and the Pathological ”. We would like to present a contemporary analysis of Canguilhem’s work, set it in context with more recent results from the field of complexity and immunology, and evaluate the problematic whether normativity is a genuine capacity of the organism. Based on Canguilhem’s conditions of the definition of biological normativity, we show (...) that the immune system as one of the complex systems of the living equally shares the capacity to be normative. We will then conclude that normativity can also be conceptually independently displayed on the level of complex systems of the living. (shrink)

Abstract: Potatoes are edible tubers, available worldwide and all year long. They are relatively cheap to grow, rich in nutrients, and they can make a delicious treat. The humble potato has fallen in popularity in recent years, due to the interest in low-carb foods. However, the fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals it provides can help ward off disease and benefit human health. They are an important staple food in many countries around the world. There are an estimated 200 varieties of (...) potatoes, which can be classified into a number of categories based on the cooked texture and ingredient functionality. Using a public dataset of 2400 images of potatoes, we trained a deep convolutional neural network to identify 4 types (Red, Red Washed, Sweet, and White).The trained model achieved an accuracy of 99.5% of test set, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach. (shrink)

Legal tech is growing, and its growth provokes anxieties about the future of the legal profession as such. In this article, we examine the impact of legal tech on the central role of lawyers at law firms in crafting an imagined ‘right legal answer’ by drawing on Duncan Kennedy’s suggestion that a claim to the rightness of one’s legal propositions is a central characteristic of the legal profession. We first ask how changes in the organisation of legal services affect the (...) ability of lawyers at law firms to produce that ‘right legal answer’. While legal tech only exacerbates already ongoing processes of eradication of routine tasks, we find that it continues to mask the role of ideology in arriving at a right legal answer under a new layer of technological projection. Second, we ask how lawyers’ ability to produce ‘the right legal answer’ is affected by, first, expert systems and, second, a legal tech application named Bryter, representing a no-code system. We find that expert systems do not permit to uphold the unity of the lawyer required for Kennedy’s model of the right legal answer, but that no-code systems as Bryter do so. No-code systems can be reduced to a slogan: Have the lawyer, but evict her ideological temptations more efficiently than before! (shrink)

Peace, the article shows, is achieved by culturally evolved institutions that incentivize positive-sum relationships. We propose that this insight has important consequences for the design of human social cognition. Cues that signal the existence of such institutions should play a prominent role in detecting group membership. We show how this accounts for previous findings and suggest avenues for future research.

: It is demonstrated here that despite apparent differences and their adherence to two different schools of thought, Suhrawardi's epistemology is essentially Ibn Sinian, and even his theory of "knowledge by Presence" ('ilm al-huduri), which is considered to be uniquely his, is at least inspired by Ibn Sina. I argue that Ibn Sina's peripatetic orientation and Suhrawardi's ishraqi perspective have both maintained and adhered to the same epistemological framework while the philosophical languages in which their respective epistemologies are discussed are (...) different. (shrink)

Gay neighborhoods across the United States are de-concentrating in today’s so-called “post-gay” era as sexual minorities assimilate into the mainstream and disperse across the city. This context creates a problem of measurement. If by “culture” we mean to say a particular way of life of a group or subgroup of people like sexual minorities, and if that way of life is blending with other aspects of the metropolis, then how can we detect distinct urban sexual cultures? In this article, I (...) use 125 interviews with Chicago residents to propose a two-pronged strategy. First, gay neighborhoods continue to house anchor institutions, despite ongoing residential out-migrations. These are the primary engines of community building, and they locate the material culture of a group in a specific place. Commemorations serve as a second indicator for a culture, and they too put meanings into form. Although it is a fact of city life that all neighborhoods change, anchors and commemorations are analytic devices that scholars can use to observe urban sexual cultures. More generally, they provide a framework for how to measure the shifting geographic profile of a historically stigmatized group as it experiences positive change in public opinion. (shrink)

Nazariyat, Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences, issued twice a year in English and Turkish (Nazariyat İslam Felsefe ve Bilim Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi), is a refereed international journal. It publishes original studies, critical editions of classical texts and book reviews on Islamic philosophy, kalām, theoretical aspects of Sufism and the history of sciences. The goal of Nazariyat is to contribute to the discovery, examination and reinterpretation of the theoretical traditions in the history of Islamic thought, by giving (...) special attention to the post-classical period of it. **ISSN: 2148-8088 E-ISBN: 2547-9415**. (shrink)

Coming out, or the disclosure of a minority identity, features prominently across disciplines, including several subfields of sociological research. In the context of sexuality, theoretical arguments offer competing predictions. Some studies propose that coming out is increasingly an unremarkable life transition as the stigma associated with non-heterosexualities attenuates, while others posit entrenched discrimination. Rather than testing these theories or providing incremental evidence in support of one position, we use 52 in-depth interviews with recently-out individuals to explain how identity disclosures in (...) the present moment can validate plural possibilities. Our findings show that ambivalence is the core narrative which animates the contemporary coming out process. Respondents identify three interpretive frameworks that structure their experience of sexuality as at once incidental and central: generational differences, identity misrecognitions, and interfacing with institutions. We also detail a fourth theme, intersectionality, which shows the analytic limits of ambivalence in the coming out process. These patterns suggest more broadly that sexuality, like ethnicity, may provide symbolic resources—“distinguishing but not defining”—in the service of crafting a modern sexual self. (shrink)

The novel pandemic called “Coronavirus Disease 2019”, as a global public health emergency and global threat, has affected many countries in unpredictable ways and impacted on physical activity behaviors to various extents. Specific populations including refugees, asylum seekers, and prisoners, are vulnerable groups with multiple complex health needs and worse health outcomes with respect to the general population worldwide and at high risk of death from the “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus type 2”. Governments around the world have been implementing (...) preventive healthcare policies, including physical and social distancing, isolation, and confinement, to mitigate against the burden imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak. This pandemic period is characterized by reduced or lack of movement. During this period of lockdown, PA can represent an immunotherapy and a preventative approach to avoid the harmful effects of inactivity due to the pandemic. Moreover, PA could be prescribed to improve the immune system of specific populations, which particularly experience the condition of being confined. The present narrative review discusses the potential impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on these specific populations’ health status and the importance of performing PA/exercise to reduce the deleterious effects of COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we aim to provide useful recommendations on PA/exercise for these specific populations to maintain their level of independence, physical, and mental health as well as their wellbeing. (shrink)

Emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention as well as motivating action and behavior. This attentional and executive control is intimately linked to learning processes, as intrinsically limited attentional capacities are better focused on relevant information. Emotion also facilitates encoding and helps retrieval of information efficiently. However, the effects of emotion on learning and (...) memory are not always univalent, as studies have reported that emotion either enhances or impairs learning and long-term memory retention, depending on a range of factors. Recent neuroimaging findings have indicated that the amygdala and prefrontal cortex cooperate with the medial temporal lobe in an integrated manner that affords (i) the amygdala modulating memory consolidation; (ii) the prefrontal cortex mediating memory encoding and formation; and (iii) the hippocampus for successful learning and long-term memory retention. We also review the nested hierarchies of circular emotional control and cognitive regulation (bottom-up and top-down influences) within the brain to achieve optimal integration of emotional and cognitive processing. This review highlights a basic evolutionary approach to emotion to understand the effects of emotion on learning and memory and the functional roles played by various brain regions and their mutual interactions in relation to emotional processing. We also summarize the current state of knowledge on the impact of emotion on memory and map implications for educational settings. In addition to elucidating the memory-enhancing effects of emotion, neuroimaging findings extend our understanding of emotional influences on learning and memory processes; this knowledge may be useful for the design of effective educational curricula to provide a conducive learning environment for both traditional “live” learning in classrooms and “virtual” learning through online-based educational technologies. (shrink)

Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the temporal universe of contemporary capitalism? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness. This entails a departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial speculation, in favour of an existential account that begins instead with the (...) cosmology of money and debt. We argue that finance capital’s fixation on the future has produced a very specific form of apocalyptic imagination, characteristic of financial society and built on a libidinal economy of leverage. Rather than offering an ecstatic end to the global process of financialization, financial eschatologies bind the contemporary subject to debt and indebtedness to the very end: an endless apocalypse, premised on the ends of finance itself. (shrink)

The UNESCO research projects focusing on The Silk Routes and The Slave Routes were launched at just the right time to remind us that globalization is not a novel dimension of the history of humanity. Not only am I among those who analyze capitalism as a worldwide system from its very inception, but I have also found it pertinent to recall that prior to the sixteenth century, societies were not at all isolated from one another but rather competing within regional (...) systems (and perhaps within one global system). To underestimate this fact is to condemn ourselves to a misunderstanding of the very dynamics of change within societies. At the same time, I maintain that in the history of the world, capitalism represents a qualitative rupture that had its beginnings around 1500. Accordingly I emphasize the distinction that must be made between the integrated structure of the worldwide capitalist system and the protocapitalist elements that are to be found in earlier societies; I also underline the specificity of the contrast between centers and peripheries, which is unique to global capitalism and which differs from previous forms of polarization. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines describe modular standards that journals can adopt to promote open science. The TOP Factor is a metric to describe the extent to which journals have adopted the TOP Guidelines in their policies. Systematic methods and rating instruments are needed to calculate the TOP Factor. Moreover, implementation of these open science policies depends on journal procedures and practices, for which TOP provides no standards or rating instruments.MethodsWe describe a process for assessing journal policies, procedures, and (...) practices according to the TOP Guidelines. We developed this process as part of the Transparency of Research Underpinning Social Intervention Tiers Initiative to advance open science in the social intervention research ecosystem. We also provide new instruments for rating journal instructions to authors, manuscript submission systems, and published articles according to standards in the TOP Guidelines. In addition, we describe how to determine the TOP Factor score for a journal, calculate reliability of journal ratings, and assess coherence among a journal’s policies, procedures, and practices. As a demonstration of this process, we describe a protocol for studying approximately 345 influential journals that have published research used to inform evidence-based policy.DiscussionThe TRUST Process includes systematic methods and rating instruments for assessing and facilitating implementation of the TOP Guidelines by journals across disciplines. Our study of journals publishing influential social intervention research will provide a comprehensive account of whether these journals have policies, procedures, and practices that are consistent with standards for open science and thereby facilitate the publication of trustworthy findings to inform evidence-based policy. Through this demonstration, we expect to identify ways to refine the TOP Guidelines and the TOP Factor. Refinements could include: improving templates for adoption in journal instructions to authors, manuscript submission systems, and published articles; revising explanatory guidance intended to enhance the use, understanding, and dissemination of the TOP Guidelines; and clarifying the distinctions among different levels of implementation.Research materials are available on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/txyr3/. (shrink)