This essay investigates a particular form of “affection” that has been neglected by the phenomenological tradition. This particular phenomenon is often referred to as the vibe, vibrations, or some variation thereof. This essay rearticulates “the vibe” as bodily emanation: human beings emanate feeling that is experienced by and through our bodies. My study of bodily emanation begins with Edmund Husserl’s notion of affectivity and then moves to Eugene T. Gendlin’s notion of the sentient body. This discussion (...) enables my own argument: Our bodies do not simply respond to the world in a sentient fashion, but also solicit sentience from one another. This solicitation of sentience is the basis of bodily emanation. I explicate bodily emanation through two realms of experience: the pre-conscious and the conscious. The first realm designates the manner in which our bodies summon emanation from one another in a continuous, multilateral fashion. Such preconscious solicitation precedes our conscious control and recognition. The second realm designates our ability to willfully project and direct particular vibes for particular purposes. This latter realm is what most people think of when they refer to “the vibe.” In general, this essay provides a detailed account of a particular phenomenon that most of us experience, but do not fully consider or attend to. (shrink)

Breaking bad news (BBN) to parents whose newborn has a major disease is an ethical dilemma. In Saudi Arabia, BBN about newborns is performed according to the parental preferences that have been reported from non-Arabic/non-Islamic countries. Saudi mothers' preferences about BBN have not yet been studied. Therefore, we aimed to elicit the preferences of Saudi mothers about BBN concerning newborns. We selected a convenience sample of 402 Saudi mothers, aged 18-50 years, who had no previous experience with BBN. We selected (...) them via a simple number-randomization scheme from the premises of a level III Saudi hospital between October of 2009 and January of 2011. We used a hypothetical situation (BBN about trisomy 21) to elicit their preferences about BBN concerning newborns via a structured verbal questionnaire composed of 12 multiple-choice questions. We expressed their preferences as percentages (95% confidence interval), and we used the Kendall's W test (W) to assess the degree of agreement in preferences. The Saudi mothers preferred that BBN be conducted with both parents together (64% [60-69]), albeit with weak levels of agreement (W = 0.29). They showed moderate agreement in their preferences that BBN should be conducted early (79% [75-83], W = 0.48), in detail (81% [77-85], W = 0.52), in person (88% [85-91], W = 0.58), and in a quiet setting (86% [83-90], W = 0.53). With extremely weak agreement, they preferred to have a known person present for support during BBN (56% [51-61], W = 0.01), to have close bodily contact with their babies (66% [61-70], W = 0.10), and to have no another patients present (64% [59-68], W = 0.08). They showed moderate levels of agreement in their desires to detail, in advance, their preferences about process of BBN by giving a reversible, written informed consent that could be utilized for guidance, if needed (80% [76-84], W = 0.36). In our experience, Saudi mothers' preferences about BBN concerning newborns are varied, suggesting that a "one-size-fits-all" approach is inappropriate. A reversible, written informed consent detailing their preferences about BBN that would be kept in their medical records and utilized for guidance, if needed, may be the best solution, given this level of diversity. These findings merit further study. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to investigate the variants of directionality implied in visual hieratic texts as religious markers in the sacrosphere, which are substantially expressed in the form of a wayside shrine/cross. The methodological underpinnings for this project rely on the proposed semiotactics : the investigative perspective modeled after phonotactics – a branch of phonology investigating the restrictions on and the possibilities of phoneme combinations in languages. The study draws on digital documentation of wayside shrines, crosses, and sacrality (...) markers on houses collected by the author in various European countries, focusing in particular on the material collected in the area of present Slovakia, Ukraine, Austria, Slovenia, and the region of the Beskid Mountains in Poland. It shows how bodily hexis is inscribed into the phenomenology of a wayside shrine through particular types of hierophanic dynamics. The study also focuses on the aspect of headedness and markedness in the nano-structure of a sign, surfacing as directionality in the conceptualization of the religious sphere by particular communities. (shrink)

Many cultures relate fragrances to the spiritual sphere. In Western culture, Christian tradition tends to present olfaction as a ‘spiritual’ and incorporeal sense. Moreover, Catholic religion traditionally attributes to some saints the capacity to emanate celestial fragrances that operate as indexical signs of their exceptional spiritual quality. This particular spiritual gift is known as osmogenesis. Although psychoanalysis and a part of contemporary scholarship and culture tend to place odors and olfaction at the core of bodily life, the parallel and (...) antithetic trend of connecting odors to the sphere of sacredness, spirituality and immateriality remains widespread: traces of this imagery can be found not only in figurative art and literature, but also in the communication strategies adopted by numerous brands to present their perfumes. By reconstructing and discussing some of the main features of the imaginary involving odors and spirituality, both inside and outside the circumscribed sphere of religion, this paper shows that the connection between fragrances and spirit unquestionably remains a relevant esthetic value in relation to olfactory perception in contemporary culture. (shrink)

Sufferers of eating disorders often hold false beliefs about their own body size. Such beliefs appear to violate norms of rationality, being neither grounded by nor responsive to appropriate forms of evidence. I defend the rationality of these beliefs. I argue that they are in fact supported by appropriate evidence, emanating from proprioceptive misperception of bodily boundaries. This argument has far‐reaching implications for the explanation and treatment of eating disorders, as well as debates over the relationship between rationality and (...) human psychology. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘flesh of the world’ speaks to an embodied connection to the spaces we inhabit deeply, primally, elementally. Flesh suggests water and its circulations, air and its respirations, earth and its conformations, fire and its inspirations. Flesh speaks to our bodily relations with the elements of a more-than-human world. This paper explores the felt imperative to these relations where, as Merleau-Ponty put it, ‘all distance is traversed’ and wherein movement arises not specifically in the body, but in the (...) nexus and intertwining of bodily engagement with the world. There is a primacy to movement that registers in the living body in its carnal ties to the elements of the world’s flesh. The ‘radical reflection’ on the ‘flesh of the world’ to which this analysis aspires in turn bears upon the general field of gestural reciprocities and connections, providing the insight that intimate gestures of the flesh, such as the embrace, are primordial attunements, motions of rhythm and reciprocity, that emanate from the world in identification with it. The embrace is fundamentally, elementally, a gesture of landscape dwelling. A phenomenology of elemental motions provides the textual reminder that to be at home in various landscapes means to know what it is to be embraced corporeally, sensually, within the human and especially the more-than-human folds of the world. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 1 May 2006. (shrink)

This article discusses the complex space of the city as an urban milieu of vitality. On the skin of the city, a permanent change of its physical and physiognomic appearance takes place. The alternation of urban “faces” is constituted situationally in the structures and wrinkles of the skin. However, characteristic features of urban quarters do not only appear visually; they become bodily felt and are perceptible as holistic impressions, emanating from atmospheric “vital qualities”. Therefore, lively urban districts are discussed (...) as “body islands” in urban space. Seen from this vitalistic perspective, the city is not only a world of rational actors—as it is common ground in the social sciences—but also an unpredictable space of performativity. (shrink)

“I can smell you”—spoken as a factive statement, it is jarring and if uttered to a stranger it seems transgressive. Telling someone you see them generates a sense of affirming their identity, but your smell is private. Perhaps smell isn’t the lead sense, but what I hope to make clear throughout this chapter is that our sense of smell allows us to perceive aspects of our own and other’s identity. The chapter aims to show that our unconscious perception of the (...) smell of ourselves and others partially constitutes the foundations for our sense of self. We are immersed within an invisible sea of odourous chemical currents, some derived from our environment with its everyday flux of objects while other odourous plumes derive from the humanity encompassing us. People have a rich bouquet of smells generated from the volatile chemical compounds emanating from them, including their bodily odours (BO), their adorned perfumes, and associated environmental smells from their abode hitchhiking on their person. As individuals we have a smell that is composed from these ranges of odours that allows us to recognize ourselves as an olfactory entity distinct from someone else’s BO bouquet. However, if forced to introspectively report our own smell we would be befuddled. We aren’t often aware of smelling ourselves (unless we are worried about stinking), and we have trouble recollecting the last time we volitionally engaged in exploratorily sniffing someone else. Thus, establishing a weak constitution relation between smelling and our sense of self is challenging. What will need to be revealed is something that escapes our daily awareness and introspective access, that is, that we are continually perceiving our own and other people’s smells. Moreover, these qualitative states occur outside of conscious awareness and yet generate an underlying aspect of our sense of self. Aside from jostling our intuitions about the foundations of our sense of self the evidence surveyed might also require reconceptualizing the conscious versus unconscious distinction in accommodating the nature of our olfactory self and other smelling. (shrink)

In Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricœur does not provide us with a clear definition of collective memory. In this article, we will try to show how it could nevertheless be described, based on the same text, as the capacity for recognition, by way of reciprocal attribution, memories that are engraved in temporal spaces and are shared with our neighbors and, through them, with strangers. To verify this hypothesis, we will analyse Ricœur’s reflection on architecture as public memory’s engraving into space, presented (...) for the first time in the text “Architecture et narrativité.” Lastly, we will consider imagination and bodily memory, i.e. habit emanating from the act of inhabiting, as the conditions of possibility for the crystallization of memories in shared places. (shrink)

Descartes argued that the passions of the soul were immediately felt in the body, as the animal spirits, affected by the movement of the pineal gland, spread through the body. In Leibniz the effect of emotions in the body is a different question as he did not allow the direct interaction between the mind and the body, although maintaining a psychophysical parallelism between them. -/- In general, he avoids discussing emotions in bodily terms, saying that general inclinations, passions, pleasures (...) and pains belong only to the mind or to the soul (NE II, xxi, §72). He is also keen to point out that our passions derive mostly from our bodies. However, like Spinoza (Ethics III, prop. XI, Scholium) he thought that some emotions such as joy can produce pleasures which can be described also in bodily terms. For example, in a short memoir Felicity he says that music can be a pleasure for the ears and symmetry can be a pleasure for the eyes. These more intellectual emotions are actions in the sense that they represent perfection emanating from their source, the absolutely perfect being, that is, God. The feeling of perfection may produce a state of well-being which concerns both the soul and the body. -/- In my paper I will trace instances of Leibniz’s remarks on how these kind of emotions affect the body. I will also discuss the different ways the body gives rise to passions in the soul. My primary source is Nouveaux essais, book II, chapter xx and xxi, but I will also discuss various other writings by Leibniz. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:116 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Der Begriff des Lebens bei Plotin. By Grigorios Ph. Kostaras. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1969. Pp. ix+139. DM 36) In his excellent book, The Concept of Life in Plotinus, Mr. Grigorios Ph. Kostaras presents the thesis that it is the problem of life which lies at the center of the thought of Plotinus, that it permeates it in its entirety and that he views all (...) other philosophical problems from its perspective. The two main metaphysical questions of Greek philosophy, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and "What then is man?" appear in a new light when seen from this central concept. The result is a universe which is like a living organism, a unity in its multiplicity whose many forms of life are held together by one life principle, the soul. Human life, the human soul is part of this organism and therefore able to find in it its greatest bliss. The soul, for Plotinus, is the necessary condition that there be life. It is the ground of all macrocosmic and microcosmic entities, being essentially movement, it is the creative and formgiving principle of all that is, it is the law of life. The reduction of the many to the one seemed to Plotinus a logical necessity if man is to grasp the origin and continuity of the cosmos. His new reality, "The One," fills this logical need. Out of its perfection and fullness emanates Mind (Nous) "like light from the sun." This gives rise to the soul as its logos and substance. The physical universe is the result of the soul's movement towards "the Other," matter on which it imprints the forms of the intelligible world.thus shaping and ordering the world as we know it. In this activiO/ the soul remains one and whole; the "many," the concrete life forms of reproduction and perception appear as a result of its relation to matter. What makes for this creative, formgiving activity which is its movement away from the One and lqous, from identity towards diversity, from eternity to time? The Plotinian answer, as Mr. Kostaras sees it, is both exuberant and tragic. The soul becomes the shaper of all there is through its striving towards freedom and independence and its joy in the manifold appearances which its relation to matter brings about. The soul's biological movement then is an affirmation and celebration of temporal life as one of its manifestations. Yet, at the same time, this movement is unfree since it follows a need the soul cannot avoid. Thus it means estrangement from its true life of the logos. The soul is isolated and "sick" of which the incessant movement of becoming, of changing from one form of life to another is the result. It leads a negative or pseudo life. Suffering, then, must be inextricably joined to the beauty of temporal life. True life, therefore, is the life of the mind. It is life as the soul's movement toward itself rather than the outer world, life become conscious of itself, leading out of the sensible world, back to identity with Nous and ultimately with the One. In this, its highest movement, the soul severs itself from time. In it there is no past nor future but an eternal Now, no moving image but reality itself. Such is the ground and explanation of the universe, the metaphysical framework within which man may choose his being. As microcosm within the macrocosm, he is a composite of Nous, soul-substance and bodily nature. The relation between these three principles forms the ground of human life; the manner in which man chooses to link them to one another makes for the differences between the modes of life of human beings. The movement of the human soul towards the outer world and its absorption in becoming means the realization of man as bodily being only. His life is ruled by perceptions and the beliefs based upon them. His feelings are uncontrolled, his mind inactive. He lives the life of the fleeting moment, a mere shadow of its reality. Just as the soul or life principle of the cosmos links the intelligible to the sensible... (shrink)

It's time to engage with human society as a society. It seems that the individualistic age in which we live has exhausted itself. It is time to take a collective mental account of the way we live, the relationship between people and society, and what social structure we need." "The importance of human society, and offers various suggestions for improving the existing social structure, while emphasizing the failures in the economy related to the existing socio-economic system, which led to the (...) recent economic crisis. The book is intended to stimulate thought on social issues. - translation from the back cover. (shrink)

The existence of a topological double-covering for the GL(n, R) and diffeomorphism groups is reviewed. These groups do not have finite-dimensional faithful representations. An explicit construction and the classification of all\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $$\overline {SL} $$ \end{document}(n, R), n=3,4 unitary irreducible representations is presented. Infinite-component spinorial and tensorial\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $$\overline {SL} $$ \end{document} fields, “manifields”, are introduced. Particle content of the ladder manifields, as given by (...) the\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $$\overline {SL} $$ \end{document}(3, R) “little” group, is determined. The manifields are lifted to the corresponding world spinorial and tensorial manifields by making use of generalized infinite-component frame fields. World manifields transform w.r.t. corresponding\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $$\overline {Diff} $$ \end{document} representations, which are constructed explicitly. (shrink)

“CHN≓ (1966)was an algebraic algorithm which reproduced and extended the predictions of the “non-interacting≓ quark model in the asymptotic high-energy region. It wus formulated within the conceptual framework of on- mass- shell physics and of the complex angular-momentum plane. Prior to the advent of the standard model, it was reinterpreted in terms of the Melosh transformation relating “current≓ to “constituent≓ quarks. It is now lied up to the QCD paradigm.

We relate personal encounters of three kinds with geometrical approaches in the development of a relativistic quantum field theory of the fundamental interactions—including interactions with Nathan Rosen. We characterize the geometrical structures involved and discuss the more recent attempts to develop a unified theory based on a Klein-Kaluza contraction of the eightfold extended supergravity.

We review the issues of nonseparability and seemingly acausal propagation of information in EPR, as displayed by experiments and the failure of Bell's inequalities. We show that global effects are in the very nature of the geometric structure of modern physical theories, occurring even at the classical level. The Aharonov-Bohm effect, magnetic monopoles, instantons, etc. result from the topology and homotopy features of the fiber bundle manifolds of gauge theories. The conservation of probabilities, a supposedly highly quantum effect, is also (...) achieved through global geometry equations. The EPR observables all fit in such geometries, and space-time is a truncated representation and is not the correct arena for their understanding. Relativistic quantum field theory represents the global action of the measurement operators as the zero-momentum (and therefore spatially infinitely spread) limit of their wave functions (form factors). We also analyze the collapse of the state vector as a case of spontaneous symmetry breakdown in the apparatus-observed state interaction. (shrink)

Schrödinger's approach was analytical, but it is equivalent to an algebraic treatment. We review the evolution of group theory as a physical tool and its application to the Hilbert space of Schrödinger's eigenstates. Special emphasis is put on recent results relating to the relativistic quantized string.

Every person has his/her own unique signature that is used mainly for the purposes of personal identification and verification of important documents or legal transactions. There are two kinds of signature verification: static and dynamic. Static(off-line) verification is the process of verifying an electronic or document signature after it has been made, while dynamic(on-line) verification takes place as a person creates his/her signature on a digital tablet or a similar device. Offline signature verification is not efficient and slow for a (...) large number of documents. To overcome the drawbacks of offline signature verification, we have seen a growth in online biometric personal verification such as fingerprints, eye scan etc. In this paper we created CNN model using python for offline signature and after training and validating, the accuracy of testing was 99.70%. (shrink)

In their article, Friesen et al. (2023) discuss two challenging roles the IRBs are playing: protecting research participants from research-related risks and promoting inclusion of diverse populatio...

In his article, Ismaili M’hamdi argues that a neutralist approach in public health policy might turn into a gap that separates citizens who endure preventable poor conditions from the state...

Nagappan, Kalokairinou, and Wexler (2021) raised a serious ethical question: Are off-label practices or direct-to-consumer medical devices offered to public exempted from clinical or research gover...

The definition of “personality” and related concepts is both unclear and not unified among medical, scientific, humanities and social sciences experts (i.e., essentialist, dynamic view of self, nar...

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 25-27.

J'appelle ‘morale', dans le sens le plus général du mot, l'ensemble des règles qui doivent diriger l'activité libre de l'homme. Toutes dérivent d'un principe commun, par une méthode commune ; toutes répondent, dans l'une des voies ouvertes à l'activité humaine, à la question : Qu'est-ce qui doit être? Ce qui doit être, c'est ce qui est conforme à une fin rationnelle, ce qui est rationnellement souhaitable. Pourtant, les philosophes ne s'accordent pas sur l'essence du devoir-être et des divergences apparaissent entre (...) eux quant à la définition du devoir-être. Désigne-t-il une loi morale, un idéal, un ordre transcendant ou même un droit? (shrink)

Especially nice models of intuitionistic set theories are realizability models $V$, where $\mathcal A$ is an applicative structure or partial combinatory algebra. This paper is concerned with the preservation of various choice principles in $V$ if assumed in the underlying universe $V$, adopting Constructive Zermelo–Fraenkel as background theory for all of these investigations. Examples of choice principles are the axiom schemes of countable choice, dependent choice, relativized dependent choice and the presentation axiom. It is shown that any of these axioms (...) holds in $V$ for every applicative structure $\mathcal A$ if it holds in the background universe.1 It is also shown that a weak form of the countable axiom of choice, $\textbf{AC}^{\boldsymbol{\omega, \omega }}$, is rendered true in any $V$ regardless of whether it holds in the background universe. The paper extends work by McCarty and Rathjen. (shrink)

There has been a spurt in both fundamental and translational research that examines the underlying mechanisms of the human microbiome in psychiatric disorders. The personalized and dynamic features of the human microbiome suggest the potential of its manipulation for precision psychiatry in ways to improve mental health and avoid disease. However, findings in the field of microbiome also raise philosophical and ethical questions. From a philosophical point of view, they may yet be another attempt at providing a biological cause for (...) phenomena that ultimately cannot be so easily localized. From an ethical point of view, it is relevant that the human gut microbiome comprises data on the individual’s lifestyle, disease history, previous medications, and mental health. Massive datasets of microbiome sequences are collected to facilitate comparative studies to identify specific links between the microbiome and mental health. Although this emerging research domain may show promise for psychiatric patients, it is surrounded by ethical challenges regarding patient privacy, health risks, effects on personal identity, and concerns about responsibility. This narrative overview displays the roles and advances of microbiome research in psychiatry and discusses the philosophical and ethical implications of microbiome big data and microbiome-based interventions for psychiatric patients. We also investigate whether these issues are really “new,” or “old wine in new bottles.”. (shrink)

Since 1961, the experimental exploration at the fundamental level of physical reality has surprised physists by revealing to them a highly geometric scenery. Like Einstein's (classical) theory of gravity, the “standard model,” describing the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interaction, testifies in favor of Plato's reported allegation.

Many studies have attempted to identify measures that predict reading abilities. The results of these studies may be inclined to over-identification of children considered at risk in kindergarten but who achieve parity in reading by the end of first grade. Therefore, the current study sought to analyze the specific cognitive and linguistic predictors of reading accuracy and reading speed separately. Additionally, the study examined if it is possible to use empirically validated measures to distinguish between children who are not ready (...) to learn how to read in kindergarten but manage to acquire reading skills by the end of first grade, and those who continue to exhibit difficulties. The study followed 98 kindergarteners aged 4 years 10 months to six years from three different schools, who were taught how to read in kindergarten. Multiple measures of general cognitive skills, linguistic abilities, and reading abilities were measured at three different points in time: the beginning of kindergarten, the end of kindergarten, and the end of first grade. The study found that most of the children with good literacy and cognitive abilities learned how to read by the end of kindergarten. The analysis revealed a significant difference in cognitive abilities, such as executive functions and memory, which distinguished between the ability to acquire fluent reading and accurate reading. The study was able to successfully distinguish between “children with difficulties” and “un-ready” children. These results have various implications, especially in regard to the identification of and intervention with kindergarten children at risk for reading disabilities. (shrink)

We review the mathematical theory ofSL(n, R) and its double-covering group $\overline {SL} (n,R)$ , especially forn = 2, 3, 4. After discussing a variety of physical applications, we show that $\overline {SL} (3,R)$ provides holonomic curved space (“world”) spinors with an infinite number of components. We construct the relevant holonomic “manifield” and discuss the gravitational interaction of a proton as an example.

Biobanking is a relatively new concept in Egypt. Building a good relationship with different stakeholders is essential for the social sustainability of biobanks. To establish this relationship, it is necessary to assess the attitude of different groups towards this concept. The objective of this work is to assess the knowledge, attitude, and opinions of Egyptian patients towards biobanking issues. We designed a structured survey to be administered to patients coming to the outpatient clinics in 3 university hospitals in Egypt. The (...) survey included questions estimating the level of knowledge about the term “Biobank”, together with questions about the attitudes and opinions about related issues. Two hundred and fifty-nine patients participated in the survey. Eighty-one percent of participants reported that they never heard about the term before. About 85% expressed that they would be willing to donate their samples for research and about 87% thought that sample donation did not contradict their religious beliefs. Fifty eight percent were willing to participate in a genetic research project, 27.8% supported sharing their sample with pharmaceutical companies, and 32.4% agreed to share their samples with institutions abroad. Although there is limited knowledge about biobanking among Egyptian patients, many had a positive attitude towards sample donation and didn’t show religious concerns against it. However, they showed concerns regarding participation in genetic research and with sharing their samples across borders or with pharmaceutical companies. Public education about biobanking is possible, taking into consideration the specific cultural and legal framework in Egypt. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore the socio-cultural aspects of e-learning delivery in Saudi universities from the perspectives of universities’ instructors and expert designers from the Ministry of Education. More specifically, this study examined the opportunities and challenges faced in the development of online learning environments at Saudi universities from a socio-cultural perspective. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research study addressed pervasive socio-cultural challenges connected to e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia. Data collection methods consisted of 28 in-depth insider expert interviews as well (...) a thematic analysis of documents related to socio-cultural aspects of e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia. Findings Findings from the data analysis uncovered two main thematic areas connected to e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia, namely, culture and female access to e-learning. Research limitations/implications This research contributes original knowledge to international online learning research about the social and cultural complexity connected to online learning development in Saudi Arabia, as well as in other areas of the Arabic world where similar e-learning development initiatives are underway. Practical implications This research contributes original knowledge to international online learning research about the social and cultural complexity connected to online learning development in Saudi Arabia, as well as in other areas of the Arabic world where similar e-learning development initiatives are underway. Social implications This research contributes unique knowledge about the social and cultural complexity connected to online learning development in Saudi Arabia, as well as in other areas of the Arabic world where similar e-learning development initiatives are underway. Originality/value The interaction between Saudi culture and online learning has nurtured a unique learning model that adapts to cultural values to provide a quality learning experience. (shrink)

Carrion and dung odours of various flowers have traditionally been considered an adaptation for attracting the flies and beetles that pollinate them. While we accept the role of such odours in pollinator attraction, we propose that they may also have another, overlooked, anti‐herbivore defensive function. We suggest that such odours may deter mammalian herbivores, especially during the critical period of flowering. Carrion odour is a good predictor for two potential dangers to mammalian herbivores: (1) pathogenic microbes, (2) proximity of carnivores. (...) Similarly, dung odour predicts faeces‐contaminated habitats that present high risks of parasitism. These are two new types of repulsive olfactory aposematic mimicry by plants: (1) olfactory feigning of carcass (thanatosis), a well‐known behavioural defensive strategy in animals, (2) olfactory mimicry of faeces, which also has a defensive visual parallel in animals. (shrink)