Background:Suicide remains an important cause of premature deaths and draws much media attention. However, unsafe reporting and portrayal of suicides by the media have been associated with increased risk of suicidal behavior. Current evidence suggests that media capacity-building could potentially prevent suicide. However, there are still knowledge gaps in terms of a lack of data on effective strategies for improving awareness and safe reporting of suicide-related media content. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a workshop conducted with members (...) of the media community on the safe reporting of suicide-related content.Methods:An interventional single-arm pre and post pilot study was conducted on a sample of the Malaysian media community recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. The media safe reporting workshop was conducted by a suicide prevention expert with a media industry background. Thirty participants completed a self-reported evaluation questionnaire on their awareness and knowledge of reporting on suicide-related media content; before and after the interventional workshop.Results:There was a significant difference between the total scores before and after the intervention, with a large effect size. Post-intervention scores were significantly improved in 8 items, namely those related to the reporting of: (i) the content of any suicide note; (ii) headlines with methods of suicide; (iii) headlines with the location of suicide; (iv) cases of suspected suicide despite the unconfirmed cause of death; (v) suicide news to cater to readers’ interests; (vi) cause of suicide; (vii) details of the location of suicide; and (viii) the negative impact to media community when reporting suicide stories. In particular, there was an improvement in the majority of items for people from the media community with no lived experience of suicidal behavior.Conclusion:The media safe reporting workshop is a potentially effective intervention for improving awareness and knowledge measures relating to safe reporting on suicide among the media community, with a more pronounced effect in those without lived experience of suicidal behavior. Limitations in the sample size, generalizability, short-term evaluation, and lack of a control group warrant future larger, longer-term controlled, and more representative studies. (shrink)

This experiment investigated the effect of format (line vs. bar), viewers’ familiarity with variables, and viewers’ graphicacy (graphical literacy) skills on the comprehension of multivariate (three variable) data presented in graphs. Fifty-five undergraduates provided written descriptions of data for a set of 14 line or bar graphs, half of which depicted variables familiar to the population and half of which depicted variables unfamiliar to the population. Participants then took a test of graphicacy skills. As predicted, the format influenced viewers’ interpretations (...) of data. Specifically, viewers were more likely to describe x–y interactions when viewing line graphs than when viewing bar graphs, and they were more likely to describe main effects and “z–y” (the variable in the legend) interactions when viewing bar graphs than when viewing line graphs. Familiarity of data presented and individuals’ graphicacy skills interacted with the influence of graph format. Specifically, viewers were most likely to generate inferences only when they had high graphicacy skills, the data were familiar and thus the information inferred was expected, and the format supported those inferences. Implications for multivariate data display are discussed. (shrink)

We review methods for economic evaluation recently developed in health economics by focusing on the epistemic and non-epistemic values they embody. The emphasis is on insights into valuing health,...

We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe. We first state our allegiance to scientific realism, and discuss what insights about it cosmology might yield, as against "just" supplying scientific claims that philosophers can then evaluate. In particular, we discuss: the idea of laws of cosmology, and limitations on ascertaining the global structure of spacetime. Then we review some of what is now known about the early (...) universe : meaning, roughly, from a thousandth of a second after the Big Bang onwards. The rest of the paper takes up two issues about primordial cosmology, i.e. the very early universe, where "very early" means, roughly, much earlier than one second after the Big Bang: say, less than 10^{-11} seconds. Both issues illustrate that familiar philosophical threat to scientific realism, the under-determination of theory by data---on a cosmic scale. The first issue concerns the difficulty of observationally probing the very early universe. More specifically, the difficulty is to ascertain details of the putative inflationary epoch. The second issue concerns difficulties about confirming a cosmological theory that postulates a multiverse, i.e. a set of domains each of whose inhabitants cannot directly observe, or otherwise causally interact with, other domains. This again concerns inflation, since many inflationary models postulate a multiverse. For all these issues, it will be clear that much remains unsettled, as regards both physics and philosophy. But we will maintain that these remaining controversies do not threaten scientific realism. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that an undesirable feature of a theoretical or phenomenological model is that salient observables are sensitive to values of parameters in the model. But in what sense is it undesirable to have such ‘fine-tuning’ of observables? In this paper, we argue that the fine-tuning can be interpreted as a shortcoming of the explanatory capacity of the model: in particular it signals a lack of a particular type of explanatory depth. The aspect of depth that we probe (...) relates most closely to a lack of sensitivity to changes in parameters associated with such models. In support of this argument, we develop a schema—for models that arise broadly in physical settings—that quantitatively relates fine-tuning of observables to a lack of depth of explanations based on these models. We apply our schema in two different settings in which, within each setting, we compare the depth of two competing explanations. The first setting involves explanations for the Euclidean nature of spatial slices of the universe today: in particular, we compare an explanation provided by the big-bang model of the early 1970s with an explanation provided by a general model of cosmic inflation. The second setting has a more phenomenological character, where the goal is to infer from a limited sequence of data points, using maximum entropy techniques, the underlying probability distribution from which these data are drawn. In both of these settings we find that our analysis favors the model that intuitively provides the deeper explanation of the observable of interest. We thus provide an account that relates two ‘theoretical virtues’ of models used broadly in physical settings—namely, a lack of fine-tuning and explanatory depth—and argue that finely tuned models sacrifice explanatory depth. (shrink)

In the absence of a fundamental theory that precisely predicts values for observable parameters, anthropic reasoning attempts to constrain probability distributions over those parameters in order to facilitate the extraction of testable predictions. The utility of this approach has been vigorously debated of late, particularly in light of theories that claim we live in a multiverse, where parameters may take differing values in regions lying outside our observable horizon. Within this cosmological framework, we investigate the efficacy of top-down anthropic reasoning (...) based on the weak anthropic principle. We argue contrary to recent claims that it is not clear one can either dispense with notions of typicality altogether or presume typicality, in comparing resulting probability distributions with observations. We show in a concrete, top-down setting related to dark matter, that assumptions about typicality can dramatically affect predictions, thereby providing a guide to how errors in reasoning regarding typicality translate to errors in the assessment of predictive power. We conjecture that this dependence on typicality is an integral feature of anthropic reasoning in broader cosmological contexts, and argue in favour of the explicit inclusion of measures of typicality in schemes invoking anthropic reasoning, with a view to extracting predictions from multiverse scenarios. (shrink)

تشخيص فكري ومعرفي لمفهوم الأسرة ومكانتها في الفكر الإسلامي، وتفحّصٌ علمي ومنهجي لأسس البناء الأسري ومقاصده، وكشفٌ عن تأثير التحوّلات الاجتماعية في الأسرة والتحديات التي تواجهها، وتتبعٌ لانعكاسات الفكر الغربي في المنظومة القيمية للأسرة، وتبيّنٌ لبعض التجارب والخبرات في مجال المحافظة على دور الأسرة، لا سيما بعد هيمنة النموذج المعرفي الغربي، ومحاولة طمسه للخصوصيات الثقافية والمجتمعية. حاولت بحوث هذا الكتاب أن تجيب عن تساؤلات معرفية ومجتمعية مهمة مثل: ما أهم التحديات التي تواجه الأسرة المسلمة في الراهن المعاصر وكيفية مواجهتها، وما (...) التغيرات التي طرأت على الأسرة المسلمة في ظل التطورات والتسارعات المجتمعية والاقتصادية والتقنية إلخ، وما التصوّر الإسلامي لدور الأسرة في بناء المجتمع، وما دور مؤسسات المجتمع المدني في الحد من تأثير الاستلاب الثقافي، وما الإسهام الذي قدمته حركات الإصلاح الإسلامية في مجال المحافظة على الدور المحوري للأسرة في تشكيل الشخصية الإسلامية القادرة على تفعيل النهوض الحضاري؟ وقد أسهم المشاركون في هذا العمل الجماعي، الذين بلغ عددهم واحداً وعشرين باحثاً، في محاورة هذه الأسئلة المعرفية، وفي التأسيس لمنظومة معرفية مجتمعية قادرة على الإسهام في البناء الحضاري، وفي توجيه دفة الأسرة بما ينسجم مع التوجيهات الربانية والفطرة الإنسانية. (shrink)

In extracting predictions from theories that describe a multiverse, we face the difficulty that we must assess probability distributions over possible observations, prescribed not just by an underlying theory, but by a theory together with a conditionalization scheme that allows for selection effects. This means we usually need to compare distributions that are consistent with a broad range of possible observations, with actual experimental data. One controversial means of making this comparison is by invoking the 'principle of mediocrity': that is, (...) the principle that we are typical of the reference class implicit in the conjunction of the theory and the conditionalization scheme. In this paper, I quantitatively assess the principle of mediocrity in a range of cosmological settings, employing 'xerographic distributions' to impose a variety of assumptions regarding typicality. I find that for a fixed theory, the assumption that we are typical gives rise to higher likelihoods for our observations. If, however, one allows both the underlying theory and the assumption of typicality to vary, then the assumption of typicality does not always provide the highest likelihoods. Interpreted from a Bayesian perspective, these results support the claim that when one has the freedom to consider different combinations of theories and xerographic distributions, one should favor the framework that has the highest posterior probability; and then from this framework one can infer, in particular, how typical we are. In this way, the invocation of the principle of mediocrity is more questionable than has been recently claimed. (shrink)

Current formal dialectical models postulate normative rules that enable discussants to conduct dialogical interactions without committing fallacies. Though the rules for conducting a dialogue are supposed to apply to interactions between actual arguers, they are without exception theoretically motivated. This creates a gap between model and reality, because dialogue participants typically leave important content-related elements implicit. Therefore, analysts cannot readily relate normative rules to actual debates in ways that will be empirically confirmable. This paper details a new, data-driven method for (...) describing discussants’ actual reply structures, wherein corpus studies serve to acknowledge the complexity of natural argumentation. Rather than refer exclusively to propositional content as an indicator of arguing pro/contra a given claim, the proposed approach to dialogue structure tracks the sequence of dialogical moves itself. This arguably improves the applicability of theoretical dialectical models to empirical data, and thus advances the study of dialogue systems. (shrink)

An approach to testing theories describing a multiverse, that has gained interest of late, involves comparing theory-generated probability distributions over observables with their experimentally measured values. It is likely that such distributions, were we indeed able to calculate them unambiguously, will assign low probabilities to any such experimental measurements. An alternative to thereby rejecting these theories, is to conditionalize the distributions involved by restricting attention to domains of the multiverse in which we might arise. In order to elicit a crisp (...) prediction, however, one needs to make a further assumption about how typical we are of the chosen domains. In this paper, we investigate interactions between the spectra of available assumptions regarding both conditionalization and typicality, and draw out the effects of these interactions in a concrete setting; namely, on predictions of the total number of species that contribute significantly to dark matter. In particular, for each conditionalization scheme studied, we analyze how correlations between densities of different dark matter species affect the prediction, and explicate the effects of assumptions regarding typicality. We find that the effects of correlations can depend on the conditionalization scheme, and that in each case atypicality can significantly change the prediction. In doing so, we demonstrate the existence of overlaps in the predictions of different "frameworks" consisting of conjunctions of theory, conditionalization scheme and typicality assumption. This conclusion highlights the acute challenges involved in using such tests to identify a preferred framework that aims to describe our observational situation in a multiverse. (shrink)

In the development field, one of the major shortcomings of mainstream development theories and models is their relative indifference toward environmental concerns. However, the worsening environmental catastrophes and the growing environmental consciousness led to the emergence of a new model of development known as "sustainable development." The proponents of sustainable development tend to explore the environmental costs of development activities, prescribe environment-friendly policies, suggest institutional and legal measures for environmental protection, and publicize the principles of sustainable through international forums and (...) publications. Despite this recognition of environment-development relationship, the model of sustainable development suffers from certain serious shortcomings that need to be addressed. This article begins with a brief discussion on various forms of environmental challenges to development, followed by an analysis of how the model of sustainable development articulates the environment-development linkages in both practical and intellectual terms. The final section of the paper critically examines the major limitations of the model in dealing with the environmental question, and makes some suggestions in this regard. (shrink)

We introduce a mathematical framework for quantifying fine-tuning in general physical settings. In particular, we identify two distinct perspectives on fine-tuning, namely, a local and a global perspective --- and develop corresponding measures. These measures apply broadly to settings characterized by an arbitrary number of observables whose values are dependent on an arbitrary number of parameters. We illustrate our formalism by quantifying fine-tuning as it arises in two pertinent astrophysical settings: in models where a significant fraction of the dark matter (...) in the universe is in the form of primordial black holes, and in scenarios that derive the fraction of protons in habitable dark-matter halos from underlying models of cosmic inflation. (shrink)

Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics. Muzzafar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 516. $89.50, £62 ; $29.50, £20.50.

This important and comprehensive work of 18th-century Islamic religious thought written in Arabic by a pre-eminent South Asian scholar provides an extensive and detailed picture of Muslim theology and interpretive strategies on the eve of the modern period.

In Defeating Dr. Evil with Self-Locating Belief, Adam Elga proposes and defends a principle of indifference for self-locating beliefs: if an individual is confident that his world contains more than one individual who is in a state subjectively indistinguishable from his own, then he should assign equal credences to the hypotheses that he is any one of these individuals. Through a sequence of thought experiments, Elga in effect claims that he can derive the credence function that should apply in such (...) situations, thus justifying his principle of indifference. Here we argue, using a Bayesian approach, that Elga’s reasoning is circular: in analyzing the third of his thought experiments, he uses an assertion that is justifiable only if one assumes, from the start, the principle of indifference that he is attempting to justify. We agree with Elga that the assumption of equal credences is a very reasonable principle, in the absence of any reason to assign unequal credences, but we do not agree that the equality of credences can be so derived. (shrink)

We analyze the flow into inflation for generic "single-clock" systems, by combining an effective field theory approach with a dynamical-systems analysis. In this approach, we construct an expansion for the potential-like term in the effective action as a function of time, rather than specifying a particular functional dependence on a scalar field. We may then identify fixed points in the effective phase space for such systems, order-by-order, as various constraints are placed on the Mth time derivative of the potential-like function. (...) For relatively simple systems, we find significant probability for the background spacetime to flow into an inflationary state, and for inflation to persist for at least 60 efolds. Moreover, for systems that are compatible with single-scalar-field realizations, we find a single, universal functional form for the effective potential, $V$, which is similar to the well-studied potential for power-law inflation. We discuss the compatibility of such dynamical systems with observational constraints. (shrink)

Localizing content in neural networks provides a bridge to understanding the way in which the brain stores and processes information. In this paper, I propose the existence of polytopes in the state space of the hidden layer of feedforward neural networks as vehicles of content. I analyze these geometrical structures from an information-theoretic point of view, invoking mutual information to help define the content stored within them. I establish how this proposal addresses the problem of misclassification and provide a novel (...) solution to the disjunction problem, which hinges on the precise nature of the causal-informational framework for content advocated herein. (shrink)

On Islam related to democracy and politics in Indonesia.

: Hisbah is the most important institution in a society and nation.Enforcement parties are those who are directly involved in executing this. Incarrying out their duties, they bear heavy responsibility because it involvesthe rights of Allah and the rights of human. Hisbah implies theimplementation of al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf when it is clear thatit is abandoned, and wa-n-nahy ʿani-l-munkar when itis clear that it is done. This study is based on the concept of Hisbah in SharīʿahLaw which is of a general and (...) widespread aspect of enjoining good andpreventing evil. Literature reviews and library searches have been conductedintensively to clarify the principles of hisbah. Additionally, descriptiveand content analysis of textual content was done on the provisions of lawsand regulations as well as guidelines on the prevention of sharīʿah crimeparameters in Malaysia. In general, our country has implemented the conceptof hisbah in its own form without the branding of an institution specifically as“the institution of hisbah”. The roles and functions of hisbah are given to theSharīʿah Enforcement Division, Islamic Religious Department in the states. (shrink)

Extracting predictions from cosmological theories that describe a multiverse, for what we are likely to observe in our domain, is crucial to establishing the validity of these theories. One way to extract such predictions is from theory-generated probability distributions that allow for selection effects---generally expressed in terms of assumptions about anthropic conditionalization and how typical we are. In this paper, I urge three lessons about typicality in multiverse settings. Because it is difficult to characterize our observational situation in the multiverse, (...) we cannot assume that we are typical : nor can we ignore the issue of typicality, for it has a measurable impact on predictions for our observations. There are spectra of assumptions about both conditionalization and typicality, which lead to coincident predictions for our observations, leading to problems of confirmation in multiverse cosmology. And moreover, when one has the freedom to consider competing theories of the multiverse, the assumption of typicality may not lead to the highest likelihoods for our observations. These three entwined aspects of typicality imply that positive assertions about our typicality, such as the 'principle of mediocrity', are more questionable than has been recently claimed. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare providers who are accountable for patient care safety and quality but who are not empowered to actualize them experience moral distress. Interventions to mitigate moral distress in the healthcare organization are needed. Objective: To evaluate the effect on moral distress and clinician empowerment of an established, health-system-wide intervention, Moral Distress Consultation. Methods: A quasi-experimental, mixed methods study using pre/post surveys, structured interviews, and evaluation of consult themes was used. Consults were requested by staff when moral distress was present. (...) The purpose of consultation is to identify the causes of moral distress, barriers to action, and strategies to improve the situation. Intervention participants were those who attended a moral distress consult. Control participants were staff surveyed prior to the consult. Interviews were conducted after the consult with willing participants and unit managers. Moral distress was measured using the Moral Distress Thermometer. Empowerment was measured using the Global Empowerment Scale. Results: Twenty-one consults were conducted. Analysis included 116 intervention and 30 control surveys, and 11 interviews. A small but significant decrease was found among intervention participants, especially intensive care staff. Empowerment was unchanged. Interview themes support the consult service as an effective mode for open discussion of difficult circumstances and an important aspect of a healthy work environment. Conclusions: Moral distress consultation is an organization-wide mechanism for addressing moral distress. Consultation does not resolve moral distress but helps staff identify strategies to improve the situation. Further studies including follow up may elucidate consultation effectiveness. (shrink)

Research teams have made considerable progress in treating absolute uterine factor infertility through uterus transplantation, though studies have differed on the choice of either deceased or living donors. While researchers continue to analyze the medical feasibility of both approaches, little attention has been paid to the ethics of using deceased versus living donors as well as the protections that must be in place for each. Both types of uterus donation also pose unique regulatory challenges, including how to allocate donated organs; (...) whether the donor / donor's family has any rights to the uterus and resulting child; how to manage contact between the donor / donor's family, recipient, and resulting child; and how to track outcomes moving forward. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to define some new operation laws for the trapezoidal linguistic cubic fuzzy number and Hamming distance. Furthermore, we define and use the trapezoidal linguistic cubic fuzzy TOPSIS method to solve the multi criteria decision making (MCDM) method. The new ranking method for trapezoidal linguistic cubic fuzzy numbers (TrLCFNs) are used to rank the alternatives. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify and prove the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Believing that p, assuming that p, and imagining that p involve regarding p as true—or, as we shall call it, accepting p. What distinguishes belief from the other modes of acceptance? We claim that conceiving of an attitude as a belief, rather than an assumption or an instance of imagining, entails conceiving of it as an acceptance that is regulated for truth, while also applying to it the standard of being correct if and only if it is true. We argue (...) that the second half of this claim, according to which the concept of belief includes a standard of correctness, is required to explain the fact that the deliberative question whether to believe that p is transparent to the question whether p. This argument raises various questions. Is there such a thing as deliberating whether to believe? Is the transparency of the deliberative question whether to believe that p the same as the transparency of the factual question whether I do believe that p? We will begin by answering these questions and then turn to a series of possible objections to our argument. (shrink)

This paper proposes two formal models for understanding real-life dialogues, aimed at capturing argumentative structures performatively enacted during conversations. In the course of the investigation, two types of discourse with a high degree of well-structured argumentation were chosen: moral debate and financial communication. The research project found itself confronted by a need to analyse, structure and formally describe large volumes of textual data, where this called for the application of computational tools. It is expected that the results of the proposed (...) research will make a contribution to formal systems modelling and the evaluation of communication from the point of view of argument soundness. (shrink)

Examining the coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election of the highest circulating New Zealand newspaper—the New Zealand Herald (NZH)—this study argues that this newspaper sets agenda against Donald Trump—the Republican Party candidate in the 2016 US election. Examining all news, editorials and photographs published in NZH, it discursively argues that this newspaper overshadowed and dehumanized Trump and especially his leadership ability. The other major candidate—the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton—was applauded in the coverage. The NZH repeatedly focused upon the (...) activities of Trump through news, views and images to dehumanize him. The repetition, therefore, does not necessarily mean that a particular media outlet favors a particular candidate. It also argues that the media outlet of a distant nation that cannot influence its reader to vote for a particular candidate may still set the agenda in favor of a candidate. (shrink)