For the safe and economical construction of embankment dams, the mechanical behaviour of the rockfill materials used in the dam’s shell must be analyzed. The characterization of rockfill materials with specified shear strength is difficult and expensive due to the presence of particles greater than 500 mm in diameter. This work investigates the feasibility of using an extreme gradient boosting computing paradigm to estimate the shear strength of rockfill materials. To train and validate the proposed XGBoost model, a total of (...) 165 databases obtained from the literature are chosen. The XGBoost model was compared against support vector machine, adaptive boosting, random forest, and K-nearest neighbor models described in the literature. XGBoost beats SVM, RF, AdaBoost, and KNN models in terms of performance evaluation metrics such as coefficient of determination, Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient, and error in the root mean square ratio to the standard deviation of the measured data. The results demonstrated that the XGBoost model has the highest prediction performance with, followed by the SVM model with, RF, the AdaBoost model with and the KNN model with. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted to ascertain the impact of each investigated input parameter. This study demonstrates that the established XGBoost model for estimating the shear strength of rockfill materials is reliable. (shrink)

Research suggests that ethical leadership influences employees’ behavior and organizational functioning. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of ethical leadership in the improvement of employees’ innovative performance. Specifically, this research developed and tested a framework about the intermediating mechanism of social capital in the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ innovative performance. The current study integrated assumptions of social learning and social exchange theories, which postulate that the leadership has a direct effect on the employees’ (...) conduct, principally through role modeling and the reciprocal landscape. Data were collected through in-person administered questionnaire-based survey from 297 employees working in the manufacturing sectors of Pakistan. The conceptual model of our research was analyzed applying Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results exhibited that the ethical leadership plays an important role in fostering employees’ innovative performance. The present study also found that social capital plays an intermediating role between the ethical leadership and employees’ innovative performance relationship. The current study contributed to the leadership and innovation literature and provided insights in examining the ethical leadership-employees’ innovative performance relationship through the intermediating mechanism of social capital. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Malaysia’s 13th general election in 2013 was the final election where the longest-serving elected government in the world, Barisan Nasional, regained power, before it was ousted after over six decades of authoritarian rule in 2018. In a country that practises parliamentary democracy but simultaneously observed close cooperation between the then ruling coalition and the mainstream press, this paper shows the micro-politics of the driving force of the coalition, United Malays National Organisation – specifically, how anxiety regarding the maintenance of (...) their privileged and empowered Malay position dominated the national narrative during the GE13 campaign. Focusing on editorial journalistic genres in four paid-for Malay-language newspapers, I illustrate the typical politics of fear that characterises much of Malaysian right-wing rhetoric – the ways in which racial and religion issues are provoked. The in-depth representational analysis, via the Discourse-historical Approach’s nomination and predication strategies, also suggests the normalisation of nationalistic and racist rhetoric, which primarily works with ‘fear’: fear of change, of loss of privilege, of the future, of other races; in principle, almost anything can be constructed as a threat to ‘Us’, an imagined homogenous people inside a well-protected territory through the discursive construction of such in-groups and out-groups. (shrink)

The idea of the subject as a construct, of various external influences, was not new to the cultural and literary circles in the 1980s when DeLillo published White Noise. In the second half of the twentieth century, post-structuralist and postmodern theories unsettled the established ideas of the humanist tradition like the concept of the subject. The idea that the subject is constituted by external factors posed a challenge to the modernist notion of the subject as authentic and independent consciousness. Influenced (...) by post-structuralist and postmodern theories, novelists in post-war America, especially during and after the 1980s, portrayed their protagonists (the subjects) as textual constructs rather than authentic heroic figures we often find in modernists’ works of art. DeLillo engages with technological developments and sociocultural changes in post-war America and explores how such developments/changes influence an individual’s subjectivity. Critics have described Jack Gladney, the protagonist of White Noise, as a late-modernist displaced to negotiate the postmodern landscape. This study, which is purely of scholarly interest, attempts to show how Gladney vacillates between the notions of modernist authentic subject and the de-centred postmodern subject created textually. This article also attempts to explore how DeLillo’s fiction engages with the idea of the subject during the 1980s. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article proposes a theoretical framework for thinking systematically about Muslim males’ involvement in criminality, derived from the philosophy of critical realism. This theoretical framework is deployed to explore primary data from life story interviews with 17 Muslim male offenders in a way that explains the role of structural and cultural factors, as well as individual agency, in participants’ involvement in crime at a range of ‘emergent’ ontological levels. As well as factors in common with offending by young males (...) generally, such as absent role models at home, experiences of socio-economic marginalization, the presence of hypermasculine hegemonic masculinities on the street and an inadequate experience of school, ‘unserious’ religion and ‘religious’ justifications for involvement in crime are factored into the ontology of the male Muslim offender as rendering some young Muslim males particularly vulnerable to offending. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore social media marketing activities and their impact on consumer intentions. This study also analyzes the mediating roles of social identification and satisfaction. The participants in this study were experienced users of two social media platforms Facebook and Instagram in Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. We used an online community to invite Facebook and Instagram users to complete the questionnaire in the designated online questionnaire system. Data were (...) collected from 353 respondents, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Results show that SMMAs have a significant impact on the intentions of users. Furthermore, social identification mediates the relationship between social media activities and satisfaction, and satisfaction mediates the relationship between social media activities and the intentions of users. This will help marketers how to attract customers to develop their intentions. This is the first novel study that used SMMAs to address the user intentions with the role of social identification and satisfaction in the context of Pakistan. (shrink)

_One of the enduring queries in the development of human intellectual thought is, "What is human nature?" What does it mean to be a human tends to be defined by all disciplines, including religion? We all need theories about what makes people tick in order to predict how they will respond to their environment in various situations. Indeed, how we view human nature affects a number of things. People utilize it in their private lives to govern their daily routines, manage (...) their relationships, raise their children, and influence others. Additionally, our policies in areas of collective social life like politics, law, and education are influenced by how we view human nature. Steven Pinker critically explains the modern view of human nature and its theoretical presuppositions in his widely read book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Pinker contends that this contemporary account of human nature faces significant challenges in light of recent developments in the fields of biology, genetics, evolution, and the brain sciences. Because it is built on axioms that we cannot accept in light of the advancements in science over the past few decades, the current theory of human nature is conceptually unsound. This research performs a comparative analysis between Pinker’s View of Human Nature and Dupré’s Critique of Evolutionary Psychology on the principles which serve as the foundation for the influential idea of human nature, and contributes significantly in our contemporary intellectual life._. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the axiology of techniques in the environmentalist discourses of degrowth through the lens of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon. This fertile articulation shows, first, that degrowth discourses evaluate techniques only based on their uses; second, it explains why such an axiology, praxeological rather than technological, is unable to influence technical progress. Beginning with Simondon, I show in particular that degrowth thinking ignores the distinction between information and energy within technical realities. Yet, this distinction is necessary if (...) we wish to link the study of techniques and ecology in a constructive way. (shrink)

In this research article, we presented the idea of intuitionistic fuzzy incidence graphs along with their certain properties. The number of operations including Cartesian product, composition, tensor product, and normal product in an IFIGs are also investigated. The method to compute the degree of IFIGs obtained by CP, composition, tensor product, and the normal product is discussed. Some important theorems to calculate the degree of the vertices of IFIGs acquired by CP, composition, tensor product, and normal product are elaborated. An (...) application of CP and composition of two IFIGs in the textile industry to find the best combinations of departments expressing the highest percentage of progress and the lowest percentage of nonprogress is provided. A comparative analysis of our study with the existing study is discussed. Our study will be beneficial to comprehend and understand the further characteristics of IFIGs in detail. Another advantage of our study is that it will be helpful to find the maximum percentage of progress and minimum percentage of nonprogress in different departments of universities, garment factories, and hospitals. (shrink)

This work situates the Qur’anic story of Moses’ meeting with Khiḍr in an ever-expanding network of intercultural and interreligious ideas about knowledge, humility, and spiritual excellence, where Moses and Khiḍr are seen as representing the ẓāhir and the bāṭin, respectively.

Este artigo apresenta uma tradução da hermenêutica sobre a unicidade de Deus de um capítulo (sura) do Alcorão, de acordo com o pensamento de Avicena (Ibn Sῑnā). É o capítulo denominado capítulo do Monoteísmo, cujo número é 112 no Alcorão. Antes, porém, há uma introdução sobre o que representou o Alcorão nos primórdios do Islã e a sua influência no desenvolvimento da filosofia e da teologia em terras do Islã. Nesse texto, pode ser constatado que, na doutrina islâmica, o primeiro (...) fundamento e o mais rigoroso é a unicidade de Deus. É sobre isso que este artigo discorre. This paper presents a translation of the hermeneutics of the oneness of God from chapter (sura) 112 of the Qur'an (the Chapter on Monotheism), according to the thought of Avicenna (Ibn Sῑnā). First, however, there is an introduction which presents the Qur'an in the early days of Islam, as well as its influence on the development of philosophy and theology in Islamic lands. It may be noted in this text that the first and most rigorous foundation is Islamic doctrine is the oneness of God. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma tradução da hermenêutica sobre a unicidade de Deus de um capítulo (sura) do Alcorão, de acordo com o pensamento de Avicena (Ibn Sina). É o capítulo denominado capítulo do Monoteísmo, cujo número é 112 no Alcorão. Antes, porém, há uma introdução sobre o que representou o Alcorão nos primórdios do Islã e a sua influência no desenvolvimento da filosofia e da teologia em terras do Islã. Nesse texto, pode ser constatado que, na doutrina islâmica, o primeiro (...) fundamento e o mais rigoroso é a unicidade de Deus. É sobre isso que este artigo discorre. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma comparação conceitual entre a obra De anima, de Aristóteles, e a concepção das faculdades da alma no Kitáb al-Nafs – edição árabe – (Livro da Alma, De anima), de Ibn Sina (Avicena), com o intuito de mostrar similitudes e in#uências de Aristóteles sobre o pensamento de Ibn Sina, nessa temática. Destaca, ainda, como e a época em que o estagirita foi recebido em terras do Islã, indicando o seu primeiro receptor, o &lósofo Al-Kindi, assim como, de (...) modo pormenorizado, uma comparação sobre a de&nição de alma dada pelos dois &lósofos, e as três espécies de alma, com ênfase para o conceito de alma racional. Apresenta, também, a estrutura de cada uma das obras. (shrink)

The effect of arousal safety has been analyzed on purchase intention, then attitude towards the advertisement and attitude towards the brand have been incorporated as intervening variables between the relationships. The interaction effect of self-monitoring and message arguments have also been taken in to consideration for better understanding of the consumer’s response. The data has been gathered from 206 respondents by using purposive sampling method. The research instrument was comprised of summated rating/additive scale and semantic differential scaling. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (...) has been applied after the application of preliminary tests on the data. Structure Equation Modeling and moderation and mediation analysis have also been applied to test the hypotheses. Arousal safety in the advertisements shape consumers response and it proved to be a fully mediated model. Self-monitoring also probes the relationship. Message arguments haven’t had any affect as moderator, hence can be used as a focal predictor. The study is a starting point for future research to provide a coherent methodology for capturing the necessary data, processing the underlying information and evaluating the effects of arousal safety in advertisements. The study extends the field of advertising in the direction of arousal safety effects. In comparison to previous research, empirical evidence on the arousal safety in television advertising and purchase intention in relation with moderating and mediating variables is provided. (shrink)

Arguably the most prolific and most widely read philosopher of our time, Slavoj Zizek has made indelible interventions into many disciplines of the so-called human sciences that have transformed the terms of discussion in these fields. Although his work has been the subject of many volumes of searching criticism and commentary, there is no assessment to date of the value of his work for the development of these disciplines. _Zizek Now_ brings together distinguished critics to explore the utility and far-ranging (...) implications of Zizek's thought and provide an evaluation of the difference his work makes or promises to make in their chosen fields. As such, the volume offers chapters on quantum physics and Zizek's transcendentalist materialist theory of the subject, Hegel's absolute, materialist Christianity, postcolonial violence, eco-politics, ceremonial acts, and the postcolonial revolutionary subject. Contributors to the volume include Adrian Johnston, Ian Parker, Todd McGowan, Bruno Bosteels, Erik Vogt, Verena Conley, Joshua Ramey, Jamil Khader, and Zizek himself. (shrink)

L'Etat est généralement considéré, à tort comme une création des société occidentale. L'œuvre de Ibn Khaldoun, dans sa contribution innovante à la théorie de l'Etat montre au contraire combien essentiel est la nouveauté du rôle qu'il accorde au contrat social. C'est dans l'Etat que l'individu connaît son plus entier développement, le rôle du souverain n'étant pas de créer ou de promouvoir en l'homme une vie vertueuse, mais de le protéger de son propre égoïsme. Une telle mutation a eu aussitôt d'incalculables (...) répercussions dans le domaine du droit, comme celui du pouvoir. " L'Etat est à lui seul l'origine du Droit et de l'Autorité ". Cette conclusion a amené Ibn Khaldoun à envisager autrement le rapport du spirituel et du temporel. On mesure aujourd'hui l'importance de cette affirmation, qui malgré les événements qui défrayent les fragiles équilibres politiques à travers le monde, a grandement influencé le courant rationaliste arabe. L'auteur, s'appuyant sur l'œuvre d'Ibn Khaldoun, pose la question dans cet ouvrage, de l'évolution de la crise de l'Etat dans le monde arabo-musulman. (shrink)

An important, but relatively neglected, aspect of human theory of mind is emotion inference: understanding how and why a person feels a certain why is central to reasoning about their beliefs, desires and plans. The authors review recent work that has begun to unveil the structure and determinants of emotion inference, organizing them within a unified probabilistic framework.

In this article, I examine Slavoj Žižek’s Freudian-Hegelian interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus (1818), and argue that Žižek’s critique of Shelley’s ambiguous and contradictory attitude toward the French Revolution and its regime of terror remains central to the debates about the revolutionary and Enlightenment ideals today. For Žižek, Shelley employs the family myth not only to obfuscate the social reality of the French Revolution, but also to subvert the bourgeois family from within, through its transgressive sexual (...) politics. Although Shelley manages not simply to dismantle modernity, she expresses a radical commitment to a “pure Enlightenment subjectivity”. Nonetheless, Shelley fails to articulate the speculative identity of the Enlightenment and revolutionary terror. Žižek’s analysis of Shelley’s ambiguous position on emancipatory politics has major implications for his critique of Leftist debates about Muslim refugees in Europe and transgender sexuality. It is still urgent, Žižek correctly insists, to interrogate the ways in which identity politics and the human rights regime can be readily appropriated and commodified in late capitalism. (shrink)

Unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly quadcopters, have several medical, agriculture, surveillance, and security applications. However, the use of this innovative technology for civilian applications is still very limited in low-income countries due to the high cost, whereas low-cost controllers available in the market are often tuned using the hit and trial approach and are limited for specific applications. This paper addresses this issue and presents a novel proof of concept low-cost quadcopter UAV design approach using a systematic Model-Based Design method for (...) mathematical modeling, simulation, real-time testing, and prototyping. The quadcopter dynamic model is developed, and controllers are designed using Proportional Integral, and Derivative, Pole Placement, and Linear Quadratic Regulator control strategies. The stability of the controllers is also checked using Lyapunov stability analysis. For verification and validation of the design, Software-in-the-Loop, Processor-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-loop testing, and Rapid Control Prototyping have been performed. The V&V methods of the MBD approach showed practically valid results with a stable flight of the quadcopter prototype. The proposed low-cost POC quadcopter design approach can be easily modified to have enhanced features, and quadcopters with different design parameters can be assembled using this approach for a diverse range of applications. (shrink)

This paper suggests philosophical foundations for mixed methods research based on the philosophy of critical realism. In particular, it suggests that the critical realist idea of the primacy of ontology helps bridge the apparent paradigmatic gap between qualitative and quantitative research. It illustrates this foundational idea by showing why and how a multi-disciplinary team used a mixed methods approach to understand the significance of religion in prison through a multi-site study of religious conversion to Islam in prison and how this (...) gives a better account than a single method approach. The mixed method research design used in the project sets out a new way of mapping and understanding religious conversion and differences within a faith group that draws on the emancipatory potential of critical realist thought. (shrink)

This article revisits the controversy over the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s sympathetic, yet critical and provocative, views on Islam and fundamentalist terrorism as developed in his ‘A Glance on the Archives of Islam.’ Žižek, I argue, offers an original reading of the universality of Islam and its political potentiality, by reactualizing the originary impulse in Hegel’s dialectical analysis of Islam as endogenous to the series of monotheistic religions, without falling into the trap of either Hegel’s racist Orientalist, Eurocentric, and Islamophobic (...) views about Islam or their antithetical Islamocentric views. First, I show that Žižek rejects Hegel’s emphasis on both Islam’s temporal incongruity and the Islamic unique conception of an abstract and transcendent God. Instead, Žižek reloads Hegel’s dialectical views and manages to resolve the deadlock in Hegel’s approach to Islam that could not account for the universality of Islam. Second, I draw out the political aspect of Žižek’s philosophical analysis of Islam, by examining his claim that Islam is the most politicized religion today. Grounding the emergence of political Islam in the encroachment of modernization project on the Islamicate world, he notes the ambiguity about sacrifice (martyrdom and terrorism) in Islam and attributes the rise of Islamic extremism (violence) to the contradictions and impasses of the global capitalist system. (shrink)

Public university business schools appear to struggle in upholding their educational self. Corporate scandals linked to business graduates raise questions about the role of PUBS in the development of civilized societies. This study develops an ethical decision making model in the PUBS context based on moral theories and then empirically tests the model. The model hypothesizes that individuals’ moral philosophies in terms of egoism and utilitarianism as well as subjective norm in terms of peer influence affect their unethical behavioural intention. (...) Moreover, this study compares ethical levels between business students with those from other disciplines. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire from established public universities in Malaysia. The data was analysed using the Smart Partial Least Squares, a second generation structural equation modelling software, as well as the SPSS version 23. The results reveal that moral philosophies and subjective norm exert positive and significant effects on unethical behaviour intention. The study, however, found no significant effect with regard to unethical behaviours between business and non-business students. The authors argue that a university’s status may explain a student’s intentions towards ethics. Implications of the results and future research are proposed. (shrink)

Let G = V G, E G be a molecular graph, where V G and E G are the sets of vertices and edges. A topological index of a molecular graph is a numerical quantity which helps to predict the chemical/physical properties of the molecules. The Wiener, Wiener polarity, and the terminal Wiener indices are the distance-based topological indices. In this paper, we described a linear time algorithm that computes the Wiener index for acyclic graphs and extended this algorithm for (...) unicyclic graphs. The same algorithms are modified to compute the terminal Wiener index and the Wiener polarity index. All these algorithms compute the indices in time O n. (shrink)

This study aims to explore a demoethical model for sustainable development in modern society. It proposes an approach that focuses on organizing activities to improve sustainable development. Specifically, it presents a demoethical model relevant to Society 5.0 and Industry 5.0 organizations. The objective is to identify demoethical values that can drive sustainable development in the era of digitalization. Through a literature review and analysis, this study identifies key components of the demoethical model and provides practical recommendations for stakeholders involved in (...) digital transformation. The analysis of demoethical norms and phenomena, such as education, nurturing, mind, knowledge, science, and honest work, has enabled the identification of values that align with sustainable development in society. The results of the study demonstrate that the notion of a demoethical foundation for sustainability is rooted in the concept of spirituality as the basis for a new societal development scenario and its relationship with nature. The study shows that ideas about the demoethical basis of sustainability are based on the priority of spirituality as the basis of a new scenario for the development of society, as well as the integration of demographic, socio-economical, and ecological components in system-wide modeling. (shrink)

The decision to procreate—to have, raise, and nurture biological children—is almost never subject to moral scrutiny. In fact, most societies implicitly embrace and advance procreation, a view known as pronatalism: procreation is morally desirable, psychologically “normal,” and generally seen as a laudable life choice. Those who cannot procreate are understood to have suffered a severe loss, and having or desiring to have children is considered an important developmental marker of increasing maturity and progression toward adulthood.However, we argue that prospective parents (...) have a defeasible moral obligation to prioritize adoption over procreation as a means of satisfying their desire to become parents. This.. (shrink)