Background: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT, hereafter abbreviated SCT) is a comprehensive medical terminology used for standardizing the storage, retrieval, and exchange of electronic health data. Some efforts have been made to capture the contents of SCT as Web Ontology Language (OWL), but these efforts have been hampered by the size and complexity of SCT. -/- Method: Our proposal here is to develop an upper-level ontology and to use it as the basis for defining the terms in SCT (...) in a way that will support quality assurance of SCT, for example, by allowing consistency checks of definitions and the identification and elimination of redundancies in the SCT vocabulary. Our proposed upper-level SCT ontology (SCTO) is based on the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS). -/- Results: The SCTO is implemented in OWL 2, to support automatic inference and consistency checking. The approach will allow integration of SCT data with data annotated using Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry ontologies, since the use of OGMS will ensure consistency with the Basic Formal Ontology, which is the top-level ontology of the OBO Foundry. Currently, the SCTO contains 304 classes, 28 properties, 2400 axioms, and 1555 annotations. It is publicly available through the bioportal. -/- Conclusion: The resulting ontology can enhance the semantics of clinical decision support systems and semantic interoperability among distributed electronic health records. In addition, the populated ontology can be used for the automation of mobile health applications. (shrink)

This study is an effort to determine the status of Christian feminist theology in Pakistan and discusses the issues and challenges of patriarchal control of Church and religious, political, social, and minority issues faced by Christian women in Pakistan. It traces the history of Christian feminist theology in Pakistan as well. This qualitative study looks at important texts written on Christian theology, Christian feminism, and history of Church in Pakistan and also presents findings of in-depth interviews with women associated with (...) Church in Pakistan. (shrink)

Most of the IoT-based smart systems require low latency and crisp response time for their applications. Achieving the demand of this high Quality of Service becomes quite challenging when computationally intensive tasks are offloaded to the cloud for execution. Edge computing therein plays an important role by introducing low network latency, quick response, and high bandwidth. However, offloading computations at a large scale overwhelms the edge server with many requests and the scalability issue originates. To address the above issues, an (...) efficient resource management technique is required to maintain the workload over the edge and ensure the reduction of response time for IoT applications. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a metaheuristic and nature-inspired Artificial Bee Colony optimization technique that effectively manages the workload over the edge server under the strict constraints of low network latency and quick response time. The numerical results show that the proposed ABC algorithm has outperformed Particle Swarm Optimization, Ant Colony Optimization, and Round-Robin Scheduling algorithms by producing low response time and effectively managing the workload over the edge server. Furthermore, the proposed technique scales the edge server to meet the demand of high QoS for IoT applications. (shrink)

I defend external world realism. I assume that the principle of inference to the best explanation is justified: roughly, a hypothesis that provides a better explanation of the total evidence is more probable than one that does not. I argue that the existence of a world of spatial objects provides a systematic explanation of the spatial contents of visual experience, and that it provides a better explanation than traditional skeptical hypotheses. This paper thus pursues the explanationist strategy of Laurence BonJour (...) and Jonathan Vogel. It is an improved, more compelling defense, for at least two reasons. First, the attention to spatial properties, and in particular to what I call perspectival projections, makes the explanatory power of the realist hypothesis much more vivid and concrete. Second, the argument preserves and elucidates much that seems correct in the explanationist arguments others have offered while avoiding significant problems and shortcomings. (shrink)

Historiography; historians; Arab countries.

This paper examines the ethical agency of artificial general intelligence (AGI). In many studies, the ethical agency of AGI is divided into four categories: 1) Ethical-impact agents, 2) Implicit ethical agents, 3) Explicit ethical agents, and 4) Full ethical agents. This paper will deploy a critical-analytical method to examine the fourth category, namely full ethical agents in AGI. If AGI is possible, such intelligence would have many capabilities, and therefore, there would be many ethical concerns. This categorization of ethical agency (...) has been repeatedly used by researchers, and there is a need for re-examination. The results of this study show that if AGI is possible, it should be placed in the category of a full ethical agent. However, such a full ethical agent has two characteristics: first, this agent can learn human ethical principles or infer other ethical principles from them; however, it should not be assumed that it considers human ethical principles to be its ethical principles; and second, this agent can form its own goals and ethical principles, and these principles may be different from or contrary to human ethical principles. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the different strategies the Bard uses in order to evoke sympathy in the reader for Macbeth who is so persistent in the path of evil. What strategy does Shakespeare use in order to provoke such a deep emotional response from his readers? By using paradoxes in the play, the Bard creates a world of illusion, fear and wild imagination. The paradoxical world in Macbeth startles us into marvel and fear, challenges our commonly held opinions, and (...) reshapes our thought in the process (Platt 8). As the text involves the reader in the formation of illusion and the simultaneous formation of the means whereby the illusion is punctured, “reading reflects the process by which we gain experience. Once the reader is entangled, his own preconceptions are continually overtaken so that the text becomes his present while his own ideas fade into the past. As soon as it happens, he is open to the immediate experience of the text” (Iser, The Implied Reader 290). Mesmerised by Macbeth’s powerful imagination and poetic language, the reader engages in a dialogical interaction with the play and eventually finds light in the murky world of the text. Regardless of Macbeth’s diabolical world, the reader ventures into it, shares it with him and ultimately wakes up from its dizzying stupor. In reading Macbeth, the reader leaves behind the familiar world of his experience in order to participate in the adventure the text offers him. The edifying effect of the tragedy in the end is the reward the reader reaps after eventually waking up from the nightmarish dream of the text. (shrink)

Heart disease is the deadliest disease and one of leading causes of death worldwide. Machine learning is playing an essential role in the medical side. In this paper, ensemble learning methods are used to enhance the performance of predicting heart disease. Two features of extraction methods: linear discriminant analysis and principal component analysis, are used to select essential features from the dataset. The comparison between machine learning algorithms and ensemble learning methods is applied to selected features. The different methods are (...) used to evaluate models: accuracy, recall, precision, F-measure, and ROC.The results show the bagging ensemble learning method with decision tree has achieved the best performance. (shrink)

Background: Equity as a basic human right builds the foundation of all areas of primary healthcare, especially prenatal care. However, it is unclear how pregnant women and their care providers perceive the equitable prenatal care. Objective: This study aimed to explore Iranian women’s and care providers’ perceptions of equitable prenatal care. Research design: In this study, a qualitative approach was used. Individual in-depth unstructured interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of pregnant women and their care providers. Data were analyzed (...) using inductive content analysis method. Participants and research context: A total of 10 pregnant women and 10 prenatal care providers recruited from six urban health centers across Ahvaz, a south western city in Iran, were participated in the study. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee affiliated to Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. The ethical principles of voluntary participation, confidentiality, and anonymity were considered. Findings: Analysis of participants’ interviews resulted in seven themes: guideline-based care, time-saving care, nondiscriminatory care, privacy-respecting care, affordable comprehensive care, effective client–provider relationships, and caregivers’ competency. Conclusion: The findings explain the broader and less discussed dimensions of equitable care that are valuable information for the realization of equity in care. Understanding and focusing on these dimensions will help health policy-makers in designing more equitable healthcare services for pregnant women. (shrink)

Logic was revered in the thirteenth century, perhaps more highly than it has been revered before or since. In the Muslim East, logic was an integral part of the syllabus of schools and found to be especially helpful for legal studies. It was at this time that The Canons of Logic was composed by Najm al-Din al-Katibi, a scholar of the Shafi'i school of law. The Rules of Logic is the most widely read introduction to logic in the Arabic-speaking world. (...) It has probably enjoyed a longer shelf-life than any other logic textbook ever written, having been in use by madrasa students from the early fourteenth century up until the present day. Building on the theories of Avicenna, al-Razi, and other pioneers of logic, al-Katibi discusses the many pitfalls of building arguments and setting out unambiguous claims in natural language. The enduring nature of the text is a testament to al-Katibi and his impact on concepts of formal discourse and argument. This new translation of The Canons of Logic provides new life to an influential text that has shaped the work of scholars of logic for centuries. (shrink)

The contribution of women to China’s economic growth and development cannot be overemphasized. Women play important social, economic, and productive roles in any economy. China remains one of the countries in the world with severe gender inequality and sex ratio at birth (SRB) imbalance. Severe gender inequality and disenfranchisement of girls with abnormally high sex ratios at birth reflect deep-rooted sexism and adversely affect girls’ development. For China to achieve economic growth, women should not be ignored and marginalized so that (...) they can contribute to the country’s growth, but the sex ratio at birth needs to be lowered because only women can contribute to growth. Thus, this study empirically predicts an asymmetric relationship between gender inequality, sex ratio at birth and economic growth, using NARDL model over the period 1980–2020. The NARDL results show that increases in gender inequality and sex ratio at birth significantly reduce economic growth in both the short and long term, while reductions in gender inequality and sex ratio at birth significantly boost economic growth in both the short and long term. Moreover, the results show the significant contribution of female labor force participation and female education (secondary and higher education) to economic growth. However, infant mortality rate significantly reduced economic growth. Strategically, the study recommends equal opportunities for women in employment, education, health, economics, and politics to reduce gender disparities and thereby promote sustainable economic growth in China. Moreover, policymakers should introduce new population policy to stabilize the sex ratio at birth, thereby promoting China’s long-term economic growth. (shrink)

Most readings of Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North have focused on Mustafa Saeed and the nameless narrator, both male characters, and they have largely avoided a politically radical reading of the novel. This article attempts to present the female character, Hosna, as the revolutionary par excellence, following Lacan and Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Antigone. Th rough Žižek’s distinction between the act and action, this article argues that Hosna’s deed at the end of the novel, murder and suicide, (...) is not just an action out of hopelessness but rather an act that aims to make a new social order possible. We will try to connect Žižek’s distinction between act and action to Benjamin’s distinction between divine violence and mythic violence and Lacan’s idea of “Th ing-directed desire” (Marc De Kesel 245). By doing so, this article aims to put the extreme violence of Hosna in a new light and argues against the readings that simply ignore her act as an extreme form of violence and fail to see it in a broader framework of philosophical and sociological understanding. (shrink)

This study applied an artifact-centric view to investigate the consequences of enterprise social media usage. It investigates how enterprise social media usage influences employee creativity. A moderated mediation model is developed based on social exchange theory. The empirical sample of 238 employees is used to test the proposed model. Results of the empirical analysis performed using PROCESS macro of SPSS indicate that enterprise social media usage positively impacts employee creativity via the mediating mechanisms. Furthermore, social media usage frequency negatively moderates (...) this impact of enterprise social media usage on employee creativity via leader-member exchange. Interestingly, the empirical analysis reveals that the impact of enterprise social media usage frequency strengthens the indirect effect that enterprise social media usage has on employee creativity via perceived support for innovation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOn 4 September 2015 asylum seekers who got stranded in Budapest’s Keleti train station began a march to cross the Austrian border. Their aim was to reach Germany and Sweden where they believed their asylum claims would be better received. In this article, I argue that the march should be characterized as an act of civil disobedience. This claim may seem to contradict common convictions regarding acts of civil disobedience as well as asylum seekers. The most common justifications are given (...) with reference to moral rights of citizens and concerns for enhancing justice or democracy within states. Asylum seekers are not members of the European public. How can they be entitled to break the law? I first show that the march displays features of a paradigm case of civil disobedience. Then, I identify moral reasons for asylum seekers to carry out the march acceptable from both strong and weak cosmopolitan perspectives. After that, I point out its corrective, stabilizing and democracy-enhancing roles in the European political landscape. I conclude by emphasizing that conceptualizing the march as an act of civil disobedience is significant in recognizing asylum seekers as political agents making claims within an evolving framework of refugee protection. (shrink)

In this article, I present a critique of Robert Geraci's Apocalyptic artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, drawing attention to certain shortcomings which become apparent when the analytical lens shifts from religion to the race–religion nexus. Building on earlier work, I explore the phenomenon of existential risk associated with Apocalyptic AI in relation to “White Crisis,” a modern racial phenomenon with premodern religious origins. Adopting a critical race theoretical and decolonial perspective, I argue that all three phenomena are entangled and they should (...) be understood as a strategy, albeit perhaps merely rhetorical, for maintaining white hegemony under nonwhite contestation. I further suggest that this claim can be shown to be supported by the disclosure of continuity through change in the long‐durée entanglement of race and religion associated with the establishment, maintenance, expansion, and refinement of the modern/colonial world system if and when such phenomena are understood as iterative shifts in a programmatic trajectory of domination which might usefully be framed as “algorithmic racism.”. (shrink)

This study investigates structural influence of the Madrassah system on effectiveness of its students in terms of civic health, system thinking and professional development. The researchers constructed the instrument of survey after rigorous literature review, frequent interaction with scholars, clerics and policy makers. The survey was administrated to 600 Madrassah’s students from different schools of thought. By applying T-test and Kruskal Waliss Rank Test for measurement of effectiveness and Structural Equation Modeling methodology the researchers has explored the relationship between the (...) variables, and later analyzed with the help of selected model. Findings of the study demonstrate that education system followed in Madrassahs does not seem to be effective and need-based in contemporary times. Indicators of Madrassah structure such as curriculum and openness negatively influences the students while peda­gogy positively influences the effectiveness of students of Madrasah in Pakistan. In the end, it is recommended that curriculum and pedagogy of Madrassah should be reformed and updated in accordance with knowledge-based economy. This will not only upgrade the poor segment of society but also bring together the variety of individuals close enough to understand each other. (shrink)

A Theory of Universal Democracy empowers cultures and communities across the world to custom design democracy in consonance with their traditional values. For example, the book makes concrete proposals for Muslim countries to democratize their constitutions without accepting Western values and without violating the principles of Islamic law. More importantly, Universal Democracy further develops the idea of Free State, which the author first presented in his previous book, The Extinction of Nation-States (Kluwer, 1996). The proposed fusion of Universal Democracy and (...) Free State is designed to revolutionize the classical theory of government and to offer a new paradigm that accommodates both universality and uniqueness. Scholars, teachers and students of international law, constitutional law, legal theory, and Islamic law will find this book a source of valuable ideas. (shrink)

Chinua Achebe, the contemporary Nigerian novelist, is considered as one of the prominent figures in African anti-colonial literature. What makes his works specific is the way he approaches the issues of colonization of Africa in an objective manner and through an innovative language which aims at providing a pathology; a pathological reading meant to draw on the pre-colonial and colonial history without any presumptions so as to present the readers with possible alternative African discourses in future. His first novel Things (...) Fall Apart can be taken as the best representative of such a penchant in Achebe. The present study seeks to approach Things Fall apart by reflecting on those discursive features which have provided the ground for constructing such a pathological reading and an alternative to the colonial discourse. To this end, some key terms introduced by Homi Bhabha and Mikhail Bakhtin such as ‘hybridity’, ‘otherness’ and ‘polyphony’, constitute the cornerstone of this study. Presumably, such an innovative reading of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is to lead to a better understanding of his discourse and the efforts made by him to help the African readers figure out how to piece together what once fell apart; what they can rely on for building an independent future in the so-called postcolonial era. (shrink)

Teosofi Cemiyeti, 1875 yılında ABD’de kurulan bir modern ezoterik ve okültist harekettir. Cemiyetin doktrinel lideri gizemli bir kişilik olan Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’dir. Temelde Batı ezoterik ve okült geleneklerine yönelen Teosofi hareketi 1879 yılında Hindistan’a taşındı. Bu tarihten itibaren Teosofi literatürüne Hint öğretileri hâkim oldu. Bu anlamda cemiyet tam anlamıyla senkretik bir yapı sergiledi. Cemiyet reenkarnasyon ve karma başta olmak üzere Hint düşünce ve inanç dünyasının kavramlarını Batı’ya taşımada önemli rol oynadı. Ürettiği literatür birçok Batılının Doğu öğretilerini tanımasına vesile oldu. Mahatma (...) Gandhi dahi öz kültürünü tanımada Teosofi Cemiyeti’nin etkisini ifade etmiştir. Bugün Batı dünyasında Tibet’in egzotik ve mistik bir merkez olarak tanınmasında ise cemiyetin özel bir yeri vardır. Tüm bunların yanında cemiyet Hint öğretilerini yozlaştırdığı hususunda ciddi eleştiriler de almıştır. Bu çalışma Teosofi Cemiyeti’nin Doğu öğretilerini Batı’ya taşımadaki rolünü değerlendirmeyi amaçlamaktadır. (shrink)

Code of conduct in society according to Islam.

Ḥuqūq al-Islām.--Ḥuqūq al-vālidain.--Ādāb al-maʻ̄ashirat.--Ag̲h̲lāt̤ al-ʻulūm.

This collection of essays offers a panoramic plethora of responses to Shakespeare by both Western and Eastern critics, indicating that the Bard crosses all nationalities and deserves to be defined as a global writer, which is why he is easily appreciated, manipulated, translated, adapted, and interpreted by everyone everywhere. Divided into three parts, this volume deals with a wide range of issues on culture and multiculturalism, and hammers home the idea that the works of Shakespeare can be not only universally (...) understood, but also fully integrated into other cultures. (shrink)

Fıkıh usulü alimlerinin genel kanaatine göre kıyas, bilgi üretmede kullanılan temel yöntemler arasında yer alır. Sünni mezhepler içerisinde kıyas karşıtlığı fikri ile temayüz eden Zâhirîliğin en önemli temsilcilerinden olan Endülüslü âlim İbn Hazm (öl. 456/1064), usûl ve fürû-i fıkha dair yazdığı eserlerle Zâhirî düşüncenin gelişimine ciddi katkılar sunmuştur. Bu çalışmada, İbn Hazm’ın fıkıh usulü açısından geçerliliğine şiddetle karşı çıktığı kıyasa, Hanefîlerin uygulamaları özelinde pratikte ne tür eleştiriler getirdiği hususuna odaklanılmıştır. Bu çerçevede Hanefîlere izafe ettiği temsil gücü yüksek bazı kıyas uygulamaları (...) seçilerek onun bu uygulamalar hakkındaki itiraz ve tenkitleri ortaya koyulmuş, ayrıca söz konusu meselelerde Hanefîlerin görüşleri kendi kaynakları üzerinden araştırılmıştır. İbn Hazm, Hanefîler başta olmak üzere kıyası benimseyen mezhepleri, kendi belirledikleri kaide ve şartlara riayet etmemekle, dolayısıyla kıyas yapmayı bilmemekle itham etmiştir. Çalışmada, İbn Hazm’ın bu hususta büyük ölçüde hasmı ilzam amaçlı cedelci bir yöntemi takip ettiği tespit edilmiştir. (shrink)

Asırlarca Tevrat’ın Musa tarafından yazılan vahiy mahsulü bir eser olduğuna inanıldı. Geleneksel Yahudiliğin günümüzde de devam ettirdiği bu inanç Batı dünyasında yapılan eleştirel çalışmalarla sorgulanmaya başlandı. Bu araştırmalarda, Tevrat’ın değişik zamanlarda yaşayan farklı isimler tarafından kaleme alınan bir eser olduğu ortaya konuldu. Bu eleştirel araştırmaların zirve noktasını Julius Wellhausen tarafından son şekli verilen ve Tevrat’ın dört farklı kaynaktan oluştuğunu ileri süren Dört Kaynak Hipotezi oluşturur. Çoğunlukla kabul gören bu görüşe, 1970’lerden itibaren yapılan bazı çalışmalarla ciddi anlamda itiraz edildi. Bu makalenin (...) konusu, Dört Kaynak Hipotezi’ne büyük ölçüde karşı çıkan ve Tevrat’ın üç temel kaynaktan oluştuğunu ileri süren Kanadalı araştırmacı John Van Seters’in (d. 1935) Tevrat eleştirisidir. Van Seters’in en dikkat çekici iddiası, Tevrat’ın kaynaklarından Yahvist metnin milattan önce altıncı yüzyılda Babil Sürgünü’nde yaşamış bir tarihçi yazar tarafından başta Tesniye olmak üzere Tesniyeci Tarih, peygamber kitapları ve Antik Yakın Doğu anlatıları dikkate alınarak yazıldığıdır. Çalışmada, Van Seters’in bu iddiası üzerinde durulacaktır. (shrink)

Internet of Things-based environments pose various challenges due to their anytime/anywhere computing, and the efficient cryptographic based key management is one of the major challenges in Internet of Things. The key management life cycle consists of initialization, key generation, key registration, key backup, key update, key recovery, and key revocation. Our contribution in this paper is to summarize the state-of-the-art key management schemes and techniques in different scenarios, such as mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, and the Internet of (...) Things environments. Further different issues related specifically to the Internet of Things environment are discussed and the causes and effects pertaining to the security breach for Internet of Things are identified. Furthermore, in this research work, we develop a novel permutation of threshold and identity-based key management schemes for the Internet of Things environment and have proposed future directions to counteract the attacks on confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and availability of security services in the Internet of Things environment and identified the two key management schemes, that is, identity and threshold schemes for Internet of Things, to resolve Internet of Things key management issues and maximum possible security services effective implementation. We evaluate our scheme with the help of mathematical and statistical techniques. (shrink)

On the branches of knowledge and epistemology from an Islamic perspective.

This work identifies the influence of chaos theory on fractional calculus by providing a theorem for the existence and stability of solution in fractional-order gyrostat model with the help of a fixed-point theorem. We modified an integer order gyrostat model consisting of three rotors into fractional order by attaching rotatory fuel-filled tank and provided an iterative scheme for our proposed model as a working rule of obtained analytical results. Moreover, this iterative scheme is injected into algorithms for a system of (...) integer order dynamical systems to observe Lyapunov exponents and a bifurcation diagram for our proposed fractional-order dynamical model. Furthermore, we obtained five equilibrium points, including four unstable spirals and one saddle node, using local dynamical analysis which acted as self-exciting attractors and a separatrix in a global domain. (shrink)