Due to the lack of empirical measures of consumer rights in developing countries in particular, this research aimed to tackle this issue in the context of Jordan. The research adopted a triangulated methodology of initial inductive research work followed by a deductive research approach, implemented empirically. Data were collected from 660 consumers, using a mall intercept method. Multiple statistical techniques were employed for data analysis, using SPSS-23 and a structural equation model. Three key findings emerged from the current research work. (...) First, the results identified six fundamental consumer rights. These were: right to safety; right to be informed; right to be heard; right to choose; right to privacy; and right to redress. These rights were measured on 29 items, based on confirmatory factor analysis results. Second, the status of perceived consumer rights in the study area was not very satisfactory, reflecting a public discontent due to poor consumerism. Third, no significant differences were noticed in consumers’ perception regarding their rights due to their demographic factors. In view of the overall findings, the current authors made several recommendations to both marketing practitioners and public policy makers to improve the quality of consumer rights in the study area. The main contribution of the current research was the development and validation of a measuring scale of consumer rights based on 29 measuring items, structured in six categories. (shrink)

In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, for predicting the category of a tumor was developed and tested. Taking patients’ tests, a number of information gained that influence the classification of the tumor. Such information as age, sex, histologic-type, degree-of-diffe, status of bone, bone-marrow, lung, pleura, peritoneum, liver, brain, skin, neck, supraclavicular, axillar, mediastinum, and abdominal. They were used as input variables for the ANN model. A model based on the Multilayer Perceptron Topology was established and trained using (...) data set which its title is “primary tumor” and was obtained from the University Medical Centre, Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia Test data evaluation shows that the ANN model is able to correctly predict the tumor category with 76.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

This paper describes an Intelligent Tutoring System for helping users with ADO.NET called ADO-Tutor. The Intelligent Tutoring System was designed and developed using (ITSB) authoring tool for building intelligent educational systems. The user learns through the intelligent tutoring system ADO.NET, the technology used by Microsoft.NET to connect to databases. The material includes lessons, examples, and questions. Through the feedback provided by the intelligent tutoring system, the user's understanding of the material is assessed, and accordingly can be guided to different difficulty (...) level of exercises and/or the lessons. The Intelligent Tutoring System was evaluated by a group of users and the results were more than satisfactory in terms of the quality of the material and the design of the system. (shrink)

This article explores how legal treatises (rasāʾil) were essential sites for the development and expansion of Islamic legal schools’ (madhāhib) positions. The rasāʾil, along with legal dicta (fatāwā)—besides legal commentaries (shurūḥ) and manuals (mutūn)—were among the prime loci where jurists contended with rapid social, political, and economic changes. Although these legal treatises were written to address specific sociolegal issues, I argue that the treatise—as a separate genre—provided a creative space for jurists to reaffirm, restate, or advance a new opinion in (...) the school. These legal treatises were carefully considered and extensively referenced in the authoritative works of the school for their updated legal positions, practical utility for judges in courts, and relevance for official policy purposes. To demonstrate this dynamic, I present a close reading of two legal treatises by Maḥmūd Efendī al-Ḥamzāwī (d. 1887), a key Ḥanafī authority and judge, and the muftī of Damascus (1867–1887). The first covers the issue of criminal law procedures in Islamic/Ottoman courts and the second addresses the topic of hunting with rifles. Both treatises expanded the legal positions of the Ḥanafī school by incorporating new justifications, qualifications, and information. They offer an essential perspective on the status of this genre of legal writing through an exposition of a range of emerging issues in the late nineteenth century. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that populist politics and social media pose a serious threat to our concept of truth. Philosophical pragmatists, who are typically thought to regard truth as merely that which is 'helpful' for us to believe, are sometimes blamed for providing the theoretical basis for the phenomenon of 'post-truth'. In this book, Sami Pihlström develops a pragmatist account of truth and truth-seeking based on the ideas of William James, and defends a thoroughly pragmatist view of humanism which gives (...) space for a sincere search for truth. By elaborating on James's pragmatism and the 'will to believe' strategy in the philosophy of religion, Pihlström argues for a Kantian-inspired transcendental articulation of pragmatism that recognizes irreducible normativity as a constitutive feature of our practices of pursuing the truth. James himself thereby emerges as a deeply Kantian thinker. (shrink)

This book examines the issue of moral realism from a pragmatist point of view, drawing attention to our human practices of ethical evaluation and deliberation. It defends the essentially ungrounded and humanly fundamental place of ethics in our thought and action. Ethics must remain beyond justification and ubiquitous in our human form(s) of life.

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...) number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as (...) a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon. (shrink)

This book is the culmination of over twenty years of work toward a pedagogical theory that promotes experiential learning of model-laden theory and inquiry in science.

In this paper, Taylor series is used to solve neutrosophic multi-objective programming problem (NMOPP). In the proposed approach, the truth membership, Indeterminacy membership, falsity membership functions associated with each objective of multi-objective programming problems are transformed into a single objective linear programming problem by using a first order Taylor polynomial series. Finally, to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method, a numerical experiment for supplier selection is given as an application of Taylor series method for solving neutrosophic multi-objective programming problem (...) at end of this paper. (shrink)

Etienne Balibar, Olivier Bloch, Jean-Claude Bourdin, Isabelle Garo, Alain Gigandet, Pascale Gillot, Annie Ibrahim, Irène Pereira et André Tosel se penchent dans cet ouvrage sur les problèmes et les perpectives induites par le matérialisme althusserien. " Jamais un coup de dés n'abolira le hasard ". Althusser fait un bref commentaire de cette célèbre sentence mallarméenne dans un texte de 1982 - Le courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre. II y conclut que l'histoire n'est que la révocation permanente du fait (...) accompli par le "fait à accomplir" sans qu'on sache à l'avance ni jamais, ni où, ni comment. Affaire de jeu de dés à jeter sur la table vide... Ainsi est déterminée une position en philosophie et en politique, assiette inédite qui en appelle à l'aléatoire et se donne comme un " chantier " ouvert à nos explorations. De fait, les catégories du sujet, de l'aliénation, de la dialectique, de l'idéologie, sont bradées ou ébranlées au profit du processus hasardeux et de la vicissitude des formes. Pourtant, ni le primat de la lutte des classes ni la thèse de la matérialité objective du monde ne sont sacrifiés au nouvel horizon de la conjoncture. Il se peut qu'il y ait deux voies du matérialisme, aussi légitimes l'une que l'autre - matérialisme de la nécessité et matérialisme de la rencontre. Gageons que ce dernier puisse faire que les éléments vivants d'un ensemble politique"s'accrochent " entre eux et au tout de telle sorte que ce qui est vrai en théorie le soit aussi en pratique. (shrink)

Segmentation of the medical image plays a significant role when it comes to diagnosis using computer aided system. This article focuses on the human corneal endothelium’s health, which is one of the filed research interests, especially in the human cornea. Various pathological environments fasten the extermination of the endothelial cells, which in turn decreases the cell density in an abnormal manner. Dead cells worsen the hexagonal design. The mutilated endothelial cells can no longer revive back and that gives room for (...) neighbouring cells to migrate and expand so that they can fill in the space. The latter results in cell elongation that is unpredictable as well as increase in size and thinning. Cell density and shape are therefore considered major parameters when it comes to explaining the health condition attributed to corneal endothelium. In this study, medical feature extraction was obtained depending on the segmentation of the endothelial cell boundary, and the task of segmentation of such objects especially the thin, transparent, and unclear cell boundary is considered challenging due to the nature of the image capture during endothelium layer examination by ophthalmologists using confocal or specular microscopy. The resulting image suffers from various issues that affect the quality of the image. Low quality is due to non-uniformity of illumination and the presence of a lot of noise and artefacts resulting from high amounts of distortion, and most of these limitations are present because of the nature of the imaging modality. Usually, images contain certain kind of noise and also continuous shadow. Furthermore, the cells are separated by poor border, thereby leading to great difficulty in the segmentation of the images. The irregular shape of cell and also the contrast of such images seem to be low as they possess blurry boundaries with diverse objects existing in addition to the lack of homogeneity. The main aim of the study is to propose and develop a totally automatic, robust, and real-time model for the segmentation of endothelial cells of the human cornea obtained by in vivo microscopy and computation of different clinical features of endothelial cells. To achieve the aim of this study a new scheme of image enhancement was proposed such as the Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalisation technique to enhance contrast. After that, a new image denoising technique called Wavelet Transform Filter and Butterworth Bandpass for Segmentation is used. Subsequently, brightness level correction is applied by using the moving average filter and the CLAHE to reduce the effects of the non-uniform image lighting produced as a result of the previous step. The main aim of this article is the segmentation of endothelial cells, which involves precise detection of the endothelial contours. So a new segmentation model was proposed such that the shape of the cells will be extracted, and the contours were highlighted. This stage is followed by clinical feature extraction and uses the features for diagnosis. In this stage, several relevant clinical features such as pleomorphism mean cell perimeter, mean cell density, mean cell area, and polymegathism are extracted. The role of these clinical features is crucial for the early detection of corneal pathologies as well as the evaluation of the health of the corneal endothelium layer. The findings of this study were promising. (shrink)

The emergence of ethical concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has led to an explosion of high-level ethical principles being published by a wide range of public and private organizations. However, there is a need to consider how AI developers can be practically assisted to anticipate, identify and address ethical issues regarding AI technologies. This is particularly important in the development of AI intended for healthcare settings, where applications will often interact directly with patients in various states of vulnerability. In this (...) paper, we propose that an ‘embedded ethics’ approach, in which ethicists and developers together address ethical issues via an iterative and continuous process from the outset of development, could be an effective means of integrating robust ethical considerations into the practical development of medical AI. (shrink)

Causal finitism, the view that the causal history of any event must be finite, has garnered much philosophical interest recently—especially because of its applicability to the Kalām cosmological argument. The most prominent argument for causal finitism is the Grim Reaper argument, which attempts to show that, if infinite causal histories are possible, then other paradoxical states of affairs must also be possible. However, this style of argument has been criticized on the grounds of (i) relying on controversial modal principles, and (...) (ii) providing a false diagnosis of the paradoxes involved. In this paper, I develop a new kind of Grim Reaper argument immune to these criticisms. I show that, by using insights from the literature on time travel, causal finitists should instead argue that infinite causal histories are problematically inexplicable, as they entail the possibility of unexplained foiling mechanisms. The fruits of this paper are that (i) a novel supporting argument for the Kalām is developed, and (ii) along the way of building this argument, it is shown that the literatures on time travel and causal finitism are deeply and intimately connected. (shrink)

The Successive Addition Argument (SAA) is one of the key arguments espoused by William Lane Craig for the thesis that the universe began to exist. Recently, Malpass, Mind, 131(523), 786–804 (2021) has developed a challenge to the SAA by way of constructing a counterexample that originates in the work of Fred Dretske. In this paper, I show that the Malpass-Dretske counterexample is in fact no counterexample to the argument. Utilizing a distinction between properties of members and properties of collections, I (...) argue that Malpass’ counterexample has no bearing on the soundness of the SAA. I also develop a novel parity argument against Malpass’ argument that I demonstrate can only be resolved by way of the aforementioned analysis. (shrink)

In this article, I compare two varieties of abduction as reconstructive models for analysing discovery. The first is 'Hansonian abduction', which is based on N. R. Hanson's formulations of abduction. The other is 'Harmanian abduction', the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) model, formulated especially by Gilbert Harman. Peter Lipton has analysed processes of discovery on the basis of his developed form of Harmanian abduction. I argue that Hansonian abduction would, however, be a more apt model for this purpose. As (...) an example, I reconstruct, in a Hansonian manner, Ignaz Semmelweis's research on childbed fever and compare it to the IBE reconstruction of Lipton. I argue that Hansonian abduction is in accordance with Lipton's aim of taking into account the distinction between actual and potential explanations on the one hand, and between likely and lovely explanations on the other. I maintain that a developed version of Hansonian abduction combined with loveliness gives an important, new conceptual means for analysing processes of discovery. (shrink)

One of William Lane Craig's key arguments for the finitude of the past is the Successive Addition Argument (SAA). Malpass (2021) has recently developed a novel challenge to the SAA, utilising a thought experiment from the work of Fred Dretske, which is meant to show that it is possible to count to infinity, to argue that there is a counterexample to the SAA's second premise. In this paper, I contend that the Malpass‐Dretske counterexample should not worry advocates of the SAA. (...) First, I argue that one objection Malpass considers—the Potential Infinite Objection—reveals an interesting fact: the SAA's second premise is unnecessarily strong and can be weakened whilst still yielding the same conclusion. Second, I show how another one of the objections considered by Malpass—the Accumulation Objection—is successful, provided some clarification to the SAA's premises. The upshot of both analyses is that we generate two ‘new’ Successive Addition arguments that not only move the dialectic forward, but shed light on deeper assumptions and motivating intuitions concerning the Kalām. (shrink)

Overlaps in form and meaning between morphologically related words have led to ambiguities in interpreting priming effects in studies of lexical organization. In Semitic languages like Arabic, however, linguistic analysis proposes that one of the three component morphemes of a surface word is the CV-Skeleton, an abstract prosodic unit coding the phonological shape of the surface word and its primary syntactic function, which has no surface phonetic content (McCarthy, J. J. (1981). A prosodic theory of non-concatenative morphology, Linguistic Inquiry, 12 (...) 373-418). The other two morphemes are proposed to be the vocalic melody, which conveys additional syntactic information, and the root, which defines meaning. In three experiments using masked, cross-modal, and auditory-auditory priming we examined the role of the vocalic melody and the CV-Skeleton as potential morphemic units in the processing and representation of Arabic words. Prime/target pairs sharing the vocalic melody but not the CV-Skeleton consistently failed to prime. In contrast, word pairs sharing only the CV-Skeleton primed reliably throughout, with the amount of priming being as large as that observed between word pattern pairs sharing both vocalic melody and CV-Skeleton. Priming between morphologically related words can be observed when there is no overlap either in meaning or in surface phonetic form. (shrink)

Classical Arabic poetry is replete with animal and fruit metaphors commonly used for endearment purposes. The comparative analysis of love metaphors in classical ghazal shows, however, a shift in the poetics of love from the use of animal metaphors in Badi poetry to the occurrence of fruit imagery in Bedouin ghazal. Based on a selection of classical Arabic love poetry, the paper traces the journey of love and sexuality to illustrate the conceptual change from the prevalence of the gazelle metaphor (...) in Bedouin ghazal of pre- and early Islam times to the emergence of fruit metaphors in Badi poetry of the Abbasid era. Evidenced in poetry, the metaphorical shit mirrors a change in the portrayal of women, who cease to be conceived as wild preys, fearing and fleeing male hunters to become exotic ripe fruits, waiting for the male to pick. Seemingly fortuitous, the shift in love imagery is reminiscent of sociocultural changes that help redefine the poetics of love in classical Arabic literature and inform gender dynamics in medieval Arabia. (shrink)

O artigo explora as fontes históricas da lenda O riso de Demócrito e o pranto de Heráclito, com destaque para a antiguidade greco-romana e para a modernidade renascentista. É realizado um estudo genealógico da referida lenda, seguido da análise de três obras: as Cartas do Pseudo-Hipócrates (c. século I d.C.) e os discursos oratórios de Antônio Vieira (Le lacrime d'Eraclito) e de Girolamo Cattaneo (Il riso di Democrito) (1674). Diante da tirania da felicidade que se impõe nas sociedades contemporâneas, o (...) resgate desse construto cultural milenar serve como locus de reflexão sobre prudencialidade ética e condição humana. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An ethical analysis of Jordan's Clinical Research Law, which became effective in 2001, was performed. Accordingly, this paper discusses the major components, key strengths and weaknesses of this law. As an initial effort, the Law addresses important aspects of research ethics and, hence, should serve as an example for other Arab Countries in the Middle East. Unique aspects of the Law include the requirement that those conducting any study have insurance that can compensate for research injuries and a system (...) of fines and punishments for noncompliance with the Law. There are, however, some key items missing in the Jordanian Law. For example, the Law does not mention the requirement of a favourable assessment of risks and benefits, the fair selection of subjects, or articles regarding the protection of the rights and welfare of children and other vulnerable subjects participating in research. The paper concludes with the suggestion that new amendments should be considered for future revisions of the Clinical Research Law in Jordan. (shrink)

This article argues that Georg Simmel's ideas on secrecy can shed new light on current debates around the relevance or otherwise of privacy as a protection against surveillance interventions. It suggests an interactional approach to privacy, and considers it as a dynamic process which redefines the boundary between what information should be disclosed and what information should be concealed in every social interaction. Simmel argues that this "natural" process relies on the identification of the interlocutor: her psychological/emotional involvement in the (...) relationship, her social position in society and the representation of her expectations. Recent empirical examples show that this interactional perspective may have the potential to reconcile differing privacy accounts, by linking theoretically different levels that are factually distinct: privacy as a collective fact, as a contextual integrity, and as an individual fact. (shrink)

: This article aims to promote mediation as an alternative disputeresolution mechanism to deal with interreligious skirmishes taking place inMalaysia. This is in view of the increasing statistics of interreligious disputesreported in the media. The reason for recommending interreligious mediationis due to its constructive nature in peacebuilding initiatives and its successfulstories across the globe. The article discusses the potential actors of religiousmediators and their requirements as well as the processes and conditions for asuccessful mediation. The article also highlights the need (...) for certified trainingto make a credible mediator. Using mainly textual research, the article managedto gather and analyse the meaning and concept, historical background and thestructure of mediation. Since mediation is new in Malaysia, the article foundthat the government’s role is crucial in its institutionalization; hence the articleproposes that the Ministry of National Unity leads the initiative. (shrink)

This research examines the descriptive and textual contexts of the Rashidun caliphs Hazrat Abu Bakr (d. 13/634), Hazrat Omar (d. 23/644), Hazrat Othman (35/656) and Hazrat Ali (d. 40/661) in the examples of signatures. However, it examines the general contexts of these signatures and aims to relate these detachment examples with their senders who have the qualifications of authority, eloquence and justice. These signature texts must be handled with full grace, awareness, forethought and responsibility, without any additions or reductions to (...) the text by the recipient. The research deals with the production area of signature and examines the forms of expression in terms of the interpretation and testify (istishad) included in these texts. In addition to these features, the research has applied to the texts of signature, which express a certain treatise, in order to express their expressions and to reveal the rhetorical aspects and textual differences they contain. As a result of the research, it has been seen that the Rashidun caliphs wrote the texts of signature with such qualities as wisdom, persuasion, lacotical (îcâz), suggestion, concentration, open-mindedness and avoidance of closedness, and in accordance with a goal. As a result of the research, it was seen that the signatures revolved around a pattern of focusing and concentrating on the meaning, combining the filtered beautiful words and the clarity of the wording and the literary aspect of the meaning. Finally, the caliphs used these signatures in line with a certain goal to solve many political and social issues. (shrink)

Determining optimal units of representing morphologically complex words in the mental lexicon is a central question in psycholinguistics. Here, we utilize advances in computational sciences to study human morphological processing using statistical models of morphology, particularly the unsupervised Morfessor model that works on the principle of optimization. The aim was to see what kind of model structure corresponds best to human word recognition costs for multimorphemic Finnish nouns: a model incorporating units resembling linguistically defined morphemes, a whole-word model, or a (...) model that seeks for an optimal balance between these two extremes. Our results showed that human word recognition was predicted best by a combination of two models: a model that decomposes words at some morpheme boundaries while keeping others unsegmented and a whole-word model. The results support dual-route models that assume that both decomposed and full-form representations are utilized to optimally process complex words within the mental lexicon. (shrink)

Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position (...) perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience. (shrink)

The proposed framework can benefit from integrating predictive processing into the explanation of déjà vu which corresponds to interrupted prediction. Déjà vu is also accompanied by familiarity. However, considerable ambiguity is inherent in familiarity, which necessitates elaboration of this construct. Research findings on involuntary autobiographical memories and déjà vu show discrepancies, and clustering these constructs can be counterproductive for research.

We examine the role of religiosity on the financing activities in both Islamic and conventional banks in Indonesian provinces by using five different measures of religiosity: number of Islamic schools, hajj application, number of Islamic seminary schools, number of Mosques, and number of certified halal products. Based on regression analysis, the results show that both Islamic and conventional banks provide more financing in religious provinces. Religiosity also helps in reducing the volume of non-performing financing. Our the results are still qualitatively (...) valid after taking into account endogeneity issue that emanates from omitted variables (i.e., unobservable beliefs, ideas, and attitudes), and possible reverse causality between religiosity and the total amount of financing at the province level. (shrink)

This article analyzes three approaches to resolving the classical Meno paradox, or its variant, the learning paradox, emphasizing Charles S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. Abduction provides a way of dissecting those processes where something new, or conceptually more complex than before, is discovered or learned. In its basic form, abduction is a “weak” form of inference, i.e., it gives only tentative suggestions for further investigation. But it is not too weak if various sources of clues and restrictions on the abductive (...) search are taken into account. We present three, complementary versions of abduction: as a sort of guessing instinct or expert-like intuition, where unconscious clues are important; as a form of inference, where a strategic point of view is essential; and as a part of distributed cognition and mediated activity, where the interaction with the material, social, and cultural environment is emphasized. Our starting point is Peirce’s own notion of abduction, but we broaden the perspective, especially to the direction of distributed cognition. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is a relationship between a person's degree of religiousness and corporate social responsibility orientation. A total of 411 managers and 506 students from seven universities were surveyed. The statistical analysis showed that religiousness does influence students' orientation toward the economic, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of business. It does not, however, have a significant impact upon the managers' attitudes. When the "low religiousness" students and managers were compared, differences were found with (...) respect to the economic, ethical, and philanthropic components of corporate social responsibility. Similar results were obtained when the "high religiousness" students and managers were compared. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

El presente trabajo aborda el problema de la infancia dentro de la filosofía mo- derna y contemporánea, así como la relación conceptual que ésta tiene con la literatura, en especial, con lo que se analiza como novela infantil y novela familiar. Con apoyo de algunas ideas de Deleuze y Guattari, así como de Schérer y Hocquenghem, a la par de fragmentos de novelas, se busca establecer una crítica a las nociones de ontología y libertad establecidas en torno a la infancia (...) por la modernidad. Esta crítica permitirá comprender la infancia y su posible emancipación como alternativa plástica para crear nuevas subjetividades o experiencias políticas dentro del mundo. (shrink)

This communique presents the Q-S synchronization of two nonidentical complex nonlinear hyperchaotic systems with unknown parameters. An adaptive controller based on adaptive integral sliding mode control and parameter update laws are designed to realize the synchronization and parameter identification to a given map vector. The aforementioned strategy’s employment demands the transformation of a system into a specific structure containing a nominal part and some unknown terms. An integral sliding mode controller is used to stabilize the error system by designing nominal (...) control accompanied by compensator control. For chattering suppression, a continuous compensator of smooth nature is used instead of conventional control. The stability of the proposed algorithm is established in an impressive way, using Lyapunov criteria. A numerical simulation is performed to illustrate the validity of the proposed synchronization scheme. (shrink)

This essay discusses some current challenges in academic publishing and interdisciplinarity, including interdisciplinary publishing, by referring to some recent experiences in the Finnish academic community. In particular, the recent “Publication Forum” exercise, organized in Finland by the Finnish Federation of Learned Societies, is briefly analyzed. Journal rankings play important roles but may also be used in problematic ways. Interdisciplinary research programs and institutes also need to consider their own challenges in contemporary academia.