There is evidence of continued food insecurity and malnutrition in Pakistan despite significant progress made in terms of food production in recent years. According to “Vision 2030” of the Planning Commission of Pakistan, about half of the population in the country suffers from absolute to moderate malnutrition, with the most vulnerable being children, women, and elderly among the lowest income group. The Government of Pakistan has been taking a series of policy initiatives and strategic measures to combat food insecurity issues. (...) These range from increasing production to food imports, implementation of poverty reduction strategies, nutritional improvement programs, as well as provision of social safety nets. The article aims to instill some fresh thinking into the debate regarding the challenges of food security. It underscores the limitations of hitherto policy response, and suggests crucial measures to improve the present grim scenario. Policy makers, planners, practitioners, and academicians in countries with comparable socio-political and economic setup can view this discussion as a case study and may apply the findings in their domain accordingly. (shrink)

We investigate computable subshifts and the connection with effective symbolic dynamics. It is shown that a decidable Π01 class P is a subshift if and only if there exists a computable function F mapping 2ℕ to 2ℕ such that P is the set of itineraries of elements of 2ℕ. Π01 subshifts are constructed in 2ℕ and in 2ℤ which have no computable elements. We also consider the symbolic dynamics of maps on the unit interval.

Utility of third party funding is an undeniable fact, especially where a party is under financial strain, yet its increased usage in private arbitration has given rise to a number of substantive and procedural issues. In view of this, the present paper attempts to map the growing utility or otherwise of the mechanism of third party funding, and analyses its various nuances and legal sustainability within the framework of international arbitration. Further, an attempt is made to analyse the ways and (...) means of ameliorating the utility of third party funding and for enhancing its acceptance in the global arbitration community. (shrink)

South Asia is one of the most densely populated regions of the world, where despite a slow growth, agriculture remains the backbone of rural economy as it employs one half to over 90 percent of the labor force. Both extensive and intensive policy measures for agriculture development to feed the massive population of the region have resulted in land degradation and desertification, water scarcity, pollution from agrochemicals, and loss of agricultural biodiversity. The social and ethical aspects portray even a grimmer (...) picture of the region with growing poverty mainly, amongst small farmers, food scarcity, and overall poor quality of life. This article reviews the historical perspective of agriculture development in the region and gives a panoramic view of the policy initiatives and their environmental as well as social and ethical spin-offs. The aim is to explore the environmental and ethical dimensions of the agricultural development in South Asia and recommend a holistic approach in formulating plans and programs to combat environmental degradation, hunger, and poverty resulting from unsustainable agricultural practices. (shrink)

If the physical mind is located in quantized space of the brain then how does the physical mind become the self? This remains an unresolved problem. It can be restated as how mental representations or mental states get their informational contents, and of doing so in terms of the natural functions brain states have? We call these natural brain functions not teleosemantic functions, but rather teleological functions. This is because teleosemantics portrays mental representations which must have informational contents that track (...) “operational explanations of cognitive capacities” while teleological functions do not as they are hidden in quantized space, suggesting that mind is physical. Specifically teleonomic capacities have been built into us by natural selection, which naturally leads to a teleogical notion of function. Our claim is that teleofunctionality as unification of mental states has natural functions that carry intrinsic dispositions that may be broadly defined as ‘subjectivity’ or intrinsic information content of mental states. Mental states have intrinsic dispositions to change their functions, producing correspondences to the world that includes further layers of subtlety hidden in quantized space. How does intrinsic information self-replicate content in cases of mental misrepresentation? The putative special virtue of teleosemantics and its ability to give a theory of error through ‘uncertainty’ is discussed based on a teleological functionalist epistemology. (shrink)

The Canadian residential sector contributes approximately 80 megatons of GHGs to the environment yearly. With the ratification of Kyoto Protocol, Canada has committed to reduce its 1990 GHG emission levels by at least 5% between 2008 and 2012. To meet this target, Canada must evaluate and exploit all feasible means to reduce fossil fuel energy consumption and GHG emissions. Test-case Canadian houses were modeled in the building-energy simulation software ESP-r. Requisite housing stock data were extracted from Canada's residential end-use energy (...) surveys. Photovoltaic and wind-turbine energy systems were assessed for their contribution to electricity generation and GHG savings. Typical household electrical consumption versus renewable electricity generation was assessed to estimate the GHG reduction, cost saving in electricity, and the impact of these technologies on single detached houses. With the use of net-metering, 100% of electricity requirements can be met by these technologies in certain cases, resulting in significant reductions in GHG emissions. (shrink)

Internet-of-Things (IoT) creates a significant impact in spectrum sensing, information retrieval, medical analysis, traffic management, etc. These applications require continuous information to perform a specific task. At the time, various intermediate attacks such as jamming, priority violation attacks, and spectrum poisoning attacks affect communication because of the open nature of wireless communication. These attacks create security and privacy issues while making data communication. Therefore, a new method autoencoder deep neural network (AENN) is developed by considering exploratory, evasion, causative, and priority (...) violation attack. The created method classifies the transmission outcomes used to predict the transmission state, whether it is jam data transmission or sensing data. After that, the sensing data is applied for network training that predicts the intermediate attacks. In addition to this, the channel access algorithm is used to validate the channel for every access that minimizes unauthorized access. After validating the channel according to the neural network, data have been transmitted over the network. The defined process is implemented, and the system minimizes different attacks on various levels of energy consumption. The effectiveness of the system is implemented using TensorFlow, and the system ensures the 99.02% of detection rate when compared with other techniques. (shrink)

In this paper I will evaluate Ali’s dissolution of the gamer’s dilemma. To this end the dilemma will be summarized and Ali’s dissolution formulated. I conclude that Ali has not dissolved the dilemma (at least not fully).

1. Ḥāshīyat al-Ṣabbān ʻalá al-Sharḥ al-Ṣaghīr lil-Mullawī ʻalá al-Sullam al-murawnaq -- 2. Taqrīrāt Ḥasan ibn Riḍwān al-Ḥusaynī.

Recently there is an increasing technological development in intelligent tutoring systems. This field has become interesting to many researchers. In this paper, we present an intelligent tutoring system for teaching information security. This intelligent tutoring systems target the students enrolled in Advanced Topics in Information Security in the faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. Through which the student will be able to study the course and solve related problems. An evaluation of the intelligent tutoring systems (...) was carried out and the results were promising. (shrink)

Miqdādī Iṣfahānī, ʻAlī - Correspondence ; Islamic ethics ; Sufi poetry, Persian.

Turkah, Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb Allāh, active 14th century. Qawāʻid al-tawḥīd. - Criticism and interpretation ; Turkah Iṣfahānī, ʻAlī ibn Muḥammad, 1368 or 1369-1431 or 143; Tamhīd al-qawāʻid - Criticism and interpretation ; Sufism - Early works to.

The goal of this study is to explore the cultural worldview of the prominent contemporary Arab poet and critic, Adonis (b. 1935). Adonis was one of the first thinkers to question the notion of tura>th (cultural heritage) and to consider it the main cause behind the backwardness of the Arab people of today. Better known as a poet, Adonis’s role as a cultural critic deserves to be highlighted. The present study aims to remedy this by analyzing and criticizing his position (...) on tura>th which was based on a deconstructive reading of foundational texts. His goal was to prove that tura>th was illogical and a hindrance to modernity or creativity. To better understand Adonis’s view on tura>th , this study investigates it against his intellectual and ideological background, and analyzes it in the light of primary texts. It concludes that, as a secular deconstructionist, Adonis sees inherited tura>th as a “text” retaining a static/dynamic dualism, and tries to show that the static elements of tura>th , which always appear stable, logical and capable of achieving progress, actually make it otherwise. He argues that divine revelation is responsible for the predominance of the static aspect of tura>th and hence represents an obstacle to human creativity and progress. For this reason, it must be deconstructed, paving the way for replacement of the static, i.e., religious elements, with dynamic or secular elements, which alone can enable the reconstruction of civilization. But, in the process, Adonis may, by replacing the religious with the secular, merely be setting in place a new static dimension. (shrink)

Davidson’s later philosophy of language has been inspired by Wittgenstein’s Investigations, but Davidson by no means sympathizes with the sceptical problem and solution Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein. Davidson criticizes the sceptical argument for relying on the rule-following conception of meaning, which is, for him, a highly problematic view. He also casts doubt on the plausibility of the sceptical solution as unjustifiably bringing in shared practices of a speech community. According to Davidson, it is rather success in mutual interpretation that explains (...) success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. I will argue that Davidson’s objections to the sceptical problem and solution are misplaced as they rely on a misconstrual of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view. I will also argue that Davidson’s alternative solution to the sceptical problem is implausible, since it fails to block the route to the sceptical problem. I will then offer a problematic trilemma for Davidson. (shrink)

Mullā ‘Alī Nūrī was an indispensable link in the transmission ofMullā Sadrā’s teachings and an important commentator of his works.In my article, I’ll focus on one of them – a short treatise, entitled“Basīt al-haqīqa wa wahdat al-wujūd,” which deals with the modes ofthingness and existence in general, and the socalled“illuminative relation” in particular.The most significant statements Nūrī makes in this brief work consistin the identification of thingness with existence and the “breath of theMerciful” with the “illuminative relation”. I intendto examine (...) these two important points and the employedargumentation in detail, showing how Nūrī exploited some ideas,current in the Kalām and theoretical Sufism, to the benefit of thedoctrine of Mullā Sadrā. (shrink)

In Justification without Awareness (2006), Michael Bergmann presents a dilemma for internalism from which he claims there is “no escape”: The awareness allegedly required for justification is either strong awareness, which involves conceiving of some justification-contributor as relevant to the truth of a belief, or weak awareness, which does not. Bergmann argues that the former leads to an infinite regress of justifiers, while the latter conflicts with the “clearest and most compelling” motivation for endorsing internalism, namely, that for a belief (...) to be justified its truth must not be an accident from the subject’s perspective. Bergmann’s dilemma might initially seem to have the force of a knock-down argument against the classical foundationalist accounts he considers, if not against all forms of internalism. I argue, however, that the weak-awareness horn of Bergmann’s dilemma is unsuccessful. Classical foundationalists can hold on to the main motivation for internalism and avoid a vicious regress of justifiers. (shrink)

In the era of the “Sunnī Revival” and the couple of centuries following, scholars engaged in a large historiographical project aimed at rehabilitating the reputation of the Umayyad dynasty and Syria’s role in the early Islamic narrative. One of Ibn Kathīr’s historiographical missions in his history Kitāb al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya was specifically the defense of the Companions of the Prophet. As such, the narrative of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib required some manipulation to answer Shīʿī narratives that cast some of the most (...) important Companions (especially those associated with the Umayyads and Syria) in a rebellious light. This article explores the literary-narrative strategies Ibn Kathīr employs to alter the narrative so as to counteract the implications of the pro-ʿAlīd versions of the story he found in his sources, especially al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh al-Rusul wa-l-mulūk. (shrink)

ABD ve PKK ilişkisi genellikle popüler söylemlerde kendisine yer bulsa da, akademik bir çalışmaya konu olmamıştır. Akademik ilginin kapsamı ABD’nin PKK’yı terör listesine koyması ile sınırlı kalmış ve akademik çalışmalarda bu bilgi sıklıkla tekrarlanmıştır. PKK’nın ABD’yi nasıl gördüğü konusu ise PKK’nın Marksist bir terör örgütü olduğu tespitinin anlaşılması noktasında karşımıza çıkmış ve PKK’nın ABD emperyalizmine karşı geliştirdiği söylemin altı çizilmiştir. Bu dolaylı değinmelere rağmen, PKK’nın ABD’ye yönelik yaklaşımı detaylı bir çalışmaya konu olmadığı gibi bu yaklaşımın PKK için neden merkezi bir (...) noktada olduğunun açıklanması zahmetine de girilmemiştir. 2013 sonrası ABD’nin PKK’nın Suriye’deki uzantısı PYD/YPG ile işbirliğine gitmesi konuyu yeniden popüler hale getirdiği bir ortamda, Ali Balcı The PKK-Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s Regional Politics - During and After the Cold War başlıklı bir çalışma yayımladı. (shrink)

This article examines the development and critique of analogical arguments in the kalām tradition. There are two basic positions on analogical arguments: one holds that if analogical arguments yield certainty, then they are analyzable as deductive inferences, rendering the analogy itself redundant. Proponents of this view thus hold that if the analogy is useful at all, it will never yield the certainty demanded in the rational sciences; another holds that the analogy remains useful even when the argument is deductively sound, (...) either because the universal premise is epistemically dependent on the source case, or, because the source case is useful in dialectical contexts. The exploration of these themes will center around Juwaynī’s formalization and subsequent critique of analogical arguments in the kalām tradition. (shrink)

Ahmad Fardid, the 'anti-Western' philosopher known to many as the Iranian Heidegger, became the self-proclaimed philosophical spokesperson for the Islamic Republic, famously coining the term 'Westoxication'. Using new materials about Fardid's intellectual biography and interviews with thirteen individuals, Ali Mirsepassi pieces together the striking story of Fardid's life and intellectual legacy. Each interview in turn sheds light on Iran's twentieth-century intellectual and political self-construction and highlights Fardid's important role and influence in the creation of Iranian modernity. The Fardid phenomenon was (...) unique to the Iranian story, and yet contributed to a broader twentieth-century Heideggerian tradition that marked the political destiny of other countries under a similar ideological sway. Through these accounts, Mirsepassi cuts to the nerve of how deadly political 'authenticity movements' take hold of modern societies and spread their ideology. Combining a sociological framework with the realities of lived experience, he examines Iran's recent and astonishing upheavals, experiments, and mass mobilizations. (shrink)

Kripke in his famous book on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy argues, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that there can be no fact of the matter as to what a speaker means by her words, that is, no fact that can meet the Constitution Demand and the Normativity Demand. He particularly argues against the dispositional view, according to which meaning facts are constituted by facts about the speaker's dispositions to respond in a certain way on certain occasions. He argues that facts about dispositions (...) are finite and are incapable of constituting facts about what speakers mean by their words; they are also essentially descriptive, not prescriptive and thus, cannot meet the Normativity Demand. Hannah Ginsborg, one of the most important contemporary philosophers of language, has recently attempted to resist Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s arguments against by defending a new sort of reductive dispositionalism which can meet both demands at the same time. In this paper, I will argue that she would not be successful in her project. (shrink)