This paper endeavors to understand the research landscape of finance research in Vietnam during the period 2008 to 2020 and predict the key defining future research directions. Using the comprehensive database of Vietnam’s international publications in social sciences and humanities, we extract a dataset of 314 papers on finance topics in Vietnam from 2008 to 2020. Then, we apply a systematic approach to analyze four important themes: Structural issues, Banking system, Firm issues, and Financial psychology and behavior. Overall, there (...) have been three noticeable trends within finance research in Vietnam: (1) assessment of financial policies or financial regulation, (2) deciphering the correlates of firms’ financial performances, and (3) opportunities and challenges in adopting innovations and ideas from foreign financial market systems. Our analysis identifies several fertile areas for future research, including financial market analysis in the post-COVID-19 eras, fintech, and green finance. (shrink)

In _ Plato's Camera_, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to (...) which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures. (shrink)

Critical Thinking as Applied Epistemology: Relocating Critical Thinking in the Philosophical Landscape.

In Genesis we are told that God gathered the waters into one place, in order to let the dry land appear, which He called earth, while the waters were called seas. In the Netherlands, this process took more than a single day, and it was the work of man. Gradually, a cultivated landscape emerged out of diffuse nature. In the course of centuries, the Dutch determined the conditions that allowed different aspects of nature to present themselves. This process is (...) described as a moral geography in the sense that different types of landscape are read as a manifestations of different moral attitudes towards nature, whereas concrete landscape interventions are interpreted as instances of moral criticism directed towards the activities and values of previous generations. At present, this process is being reversed, as diffuse, wetland nature is experiencing a come-back. (shrink)

Metaphysics is, historically as well as systematically, mostly taken to be the inquiry into reality, insofar it is considered to be: (1) the totality of everything there is; (2) of everything that exists; or (3) what is fundamental. This paper sets out to analyze the relation between all three metaphysical core notions and sketch the landscape of metaphysical theories that emerges from it. Taking The Fundamental, The Existent, and Totality to be the domains corresponding to each metaphysical object of (...) inquiry, it is argued that they stand in the settheoretical relations of: The Fundamental ⊆ The Existent ⊆ Totality. This general structure allows for a plurality of more detailed structures when we differentiate between the ones that treat at least two notions as extensionally equal and those that take them to be proper subsets. Furthermore, reductive and inflationary strategies between equating two of the notions will be differentiated, allowing for a detailed sketch of the landscape of metaphysical theories and their views on the nature of reality. In closing, it is argued that the metaphysical structure allowing for most differentiation in metaphysical status is to be preferred as it allows to adequately capture metaphysical disputes, constituting evidence for the importance of each metaphysical notion and a short plea against their conflation. (shrink)

Facing marginalization under the Awami League and historical stigma, the BNP’s recent outreach to India signals a pivotal shift. This commentary explores how the BNP seeks to establish legitimacy, distance itself from past associations, and connect with a younger electorate by advocating for democratic principles, social justice, and individual empowerment. It argues that a renewed commitment to ethical leadership and social justice will allow the BNP to bridge socio-economic divides and appeal to a disillusioned, younger electorate. This reorientation could shape (...) a more inclusive, equitable political landscape, offering a foundation for Bangladesh’s democratic future. (shrink)

In this article, we’ll be looking to see if any landscape has an ambience. In doing so, we first highlight what in the landscape is opposed to ambience, namely detachment and distance, and then indicate that it is thanks to this detachment that the viewer’s participation in the landscape is possible as ambience. In this way, we attempt to show that any landscape, taken in an narrow aesthetic sense, implies a complementary double operation of withdrawal and (...) fusion, contemplation and atmosphere, but that it cannot be totally identified with an atmosphere, however holistic it may be. (shrink)

If, as Lefebvre argues, every society produces its own social space, then modernity might be characterized by that (anti-)social and instrumental space epitomized and idealized in Le Corbusier's writings. This repetitively patterned space consumes and regulates the differences between places and people; it encapsulates a normalizing morality that seeks to reduce all differences to an economic order of the Same. Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of 'difference' can both help explain the operation of this (im)moral landscape and offer the possibility of (...) alternative post-modern social spaces that might produce and respect Otherness. In this sense Lefebvre's work is an incipient 'difference ethics'. (shrink)

In Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective (2018), Professor van Eemeren suggests that it might be worthwhile for pragma-dialectics and informal logic to join forces, given that there is a “considerable amount of common ground” between the two. In this paper, we explore that common ground by considering both the ways logic is understood and incorporated in the pragma-dialectical model and the ways informal logic has developed since its inception in the 1970s. In the process of our investigation, we present a (...) view of the landscape of argumentation in which the subject matter of informal logic is situated relative to theories of argumentation. (shrink)

What makes it the case that an utterance constitutes an illocutionary act of a given kind? This is the central question of speech-act theory. Answers to it—i.e., theories of speech acts—have proliferated. Our main goal in this chapter is to clarify the logical space into which these different theories fit. -/- We begin, in Section 1, by dividing theories of speech acts into five families, each distinguished from the others by its account of the key ingredients in illocutionary acts. Are (...) speech acts fundamentally a matter of convention or intention? Or should we instead think of them in terms of the psychological states they express, in terms of the effects that it is their function to produce, or in terms of the norms that govern them? In Section 2, we take up the highly influential idea that speech acts can be understood in terms of their effects on a conversation’s context or “score”. Part of why this idea has been so useful is that it allows speech-act theorists from the five families to engage at a level of abstraction that elides their foundational disagreements. In Section 3, we investigate some of the motivations for the traditional distinction between propositional content and illocutionary force, and some of the ways in which this distinction has been undermined by recent work. In Section 4, we survey some of the ways in which speech-act theory has been applied to issues outside semantics and pragmatics, narrowly construed. (shrink)

This paper examines existing frameworks for understanding domestication and proposes a domestication landscape framework. Driven by the selection pressures of captivity and/or mutualism within a domesticator-dominated environment, domestication is the generations-long multidirectional process through which a domesticate accumulates new genetic and behavioral traits, potentially causing reproductive isolation between wild and domestic forms of the domesticate organism. Rather than understanding domestication as fixed states in a wild/domestic binary, domestication can be best understood as a dynamic multidimensional process of growing and (...) declining domesticator influence on a domesticate’s genes and behavior. The categories, of wild, feral, tame, and domestic exist as blurry regions within a two-dimensional landscape that species will traverse at variable speeds. An organism’s path will vary depending on its environment and the particular domestication relationship at play. Domestication occurs through two potential pathways, either through captivity or through mutualism, though both may no longer be required once a domesticate’s dependence on the domesticator becomes clearly established. For the purposes of domestication, captivity requires intentional containment and resource dependence or reproductive control. When driven by mutualism, the domestication process does not require intent and, thereby, can occur with non-human domesticators. Alongside the coordinative consensus principle, the domestication landscape model can help achieve more functional pluralism between disciplines within domestication studies when organisms’ levels of genetic and behavioral influence are provided. Finally, this model suggests that while dingoes may have at one point been domesticated, it may be appropriate to view them as wild and perhaps even native organisms. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine how weather phenomena affect the landscape, not only in terms of its visual or geomorphological appearance, but also by modifying the emotional disposition that the landscape evokes. By adopting an atmospheric perspective, I intend to demonstrate that each landscape possesses its own mood (Stimmung), closely linked to the atmospheric-climatic events that unfold within it. My hypothesis is that such phenomena, due to their pervasiveness on a sensory level, can produce (...) a real metamorphosis of the landscape, which also extends to the affective qualities that the landscape ‘radiates’, and which therefore do not primarily depend on the perceiver. My analysis is structured into two parts. In the first part, a) I attempt to prove that meteorological and climatic atmospheres, due to their extra-psychic nature, cannot be explained in empathic-projective terms; and b) I propose understanding the landscape as an expressive whole whose ‘emotional physiognomy’ changes according to the atmospheres that pass through it. In the second part, I support my argument with a literary example to show how the fundamental emotional tone (Grundstimmung) of the landscape can change radically following the manifestation of a specific atmospheric phenomenon. (shrink)

The rapid rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ has fundamentally disrupted traditional Hollywood film financing models. This paper examines the financial impacts of these platforms on Hollywood's established funding mechanisms, highlighting how they have reshaped revenue streams, investment patterns, and risk management strategies. By leveraging data analytics and financial modelling, this study explores how traditional studios and new media companies have adapted their financing strategies to align with the evolving digital landscape. Additionally, the paper delves into (...) the implications of these shifts for future film production and distribution, offering insights into how data-driven decision-making increasingly influences investment choices in the entertainment industry. Through a comprehensive analysis, this research provides a deeper understanding of the interplay between technology and finance in shaping the future of Hollywood. (shrink)

In this paper we contribute to “sociology in bioethics” and help clarify the range of ways sociological work can contribute to ethics scholarship. We do this using a case study of an innovative neurotechnology, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and its use to attempt to diagnose and communicate with severely brain-injured patients. We compare empirical data from interviews with relatives of patients who have a severe brain injury with perspectives from mainstream bioethics scholars. We use the notion of an “ethical (...) class='Hi'>landscape” as an analogy for the different ethical positions subjects can take—whereby a person’s position relative to the landscape makes a difference to the way they experience and interact with it. We show that, in comparison to studying abstract ethics “from above” the ethical landscape, which involves universal generalizations and global judgements, studying ethics empirically “from the ground,” within the ethical landscape foregrounds a more plural and differentiated picture. We argue it is important not to treat empirical ethics as secondary to abstract ethics, to treat on-the-ground perspectives as useful only insofar as they can inform ethics from above. Rather, empirical perspectives can illuminate the plural vantage points in ethical judgments, highlight the “lived” nature of ethical reasoning, and point to all ethical vantage points as being significant. This is of epistemic importance to normative ethics, since researchers who pay attention to the various positions in and trajectories through the ethical landscape are unlikely to think about ethics in terms of abstract agency—as can happen with top-down ethics—or to elide agency with the agency of policymakers. Moreover, empirical perspectives may have transformative implications for people on the ground, especially where focus on the potential harms and benefits they face brings their experiences and interests to the forefront of ethical and policy discussion. (shrink)

In recent years, more and more mines have been left idle, and the formed mine wasteland has become a visual pollution of the urban landscape, and the study of landscape design of mine parks has become a focal topic. To address this issue, the sample of this study was selected from Xuzhou Anran Mountain Quarry Abandoned Quarry, to enhance the ecological environment and landscape value of the site through the sample's naturalistic style design and performance. The goal (...) of the study is to explore the innovative design and performance of naturalistic style in the landscape of Xuzhou abandoned quarry park. Methods of this study: observation forms, questionnaires and interview forms, relevant cases and other research methods were used to analyse the overview of mine transformation in China, the landscape characteristics, ecological status and problems of Xuzhou mine wasteland. The design strategy of naturalistic style in the landscape of Xuzhou mine park is proposed.The results of the study show that (1) mine rehabilitation. China's big cities have more mine rehabilitation, and the proportion of cases in small cities is relatively small. (2) Characteristic aspects. Abandoned mines in Xuzhou are characterised by serious ecological damage and chaotic and dilapidated site landscapes. (3) Design strategy. It should be carried out from the ecological restoration and management of the site environment, the aesthetic expression of naturalistic landscape, and the use of natural elements and natural materials. In addition, through the in-depth analysis of the sample landscape design, the originally desolate abandoned mine was transformed into a naturalistic style landscape space, adopting ecological and cultural strategies. The results of the study contribute to the ecological and economic development of the region, and also provide theoretical and practical guidance for the rehabilitation of other mines in China. (shrink)

In recent years, more and more mines have been left idle, and the formed mine wasteland has become a visual pollution of the urban landscape, and the study of landscape design of mine parks has become a focal topic. To address this issue, the sample of this study was selected from Xuzhou Anran Mountain Quarry Abandoned Quarry, to enhance the ecological environment and landscape value of the site through the sample's naturalistic style design and performance. The goal (...) of the study is to explore the innovative design and performance of naturalistic style in the landscape of Xuzhou abandoned quarry park. Methods of this study: observation forms, questionnaires and interview forms, relevant cases and other research methods were used to analyse the overview of mine transformation in China, the landscape characteristics, ecological status and problems of Xuzhou mine wasteland. The design strategy of naturalistic style in the landscape of Xuzhou mine park is proposed.The results of the study show that (1) mine rehabilitation. China's big cities have more mine rehabilitation, and the proportion of cases in small cities is relatively small. (2) Characteristic aspects. Abandoned mines in Xuzhou are characterised by serious ecological damage and chaotic and dilapidated site landscapes. (3) Design strategy. It should be carried out from the ecological restoration and management of the site environment, the aesthetic expression of naturalistic landscape, and the use of natural elements and natural materials. In addition, through the in-depth analysis of the sample landscape design, the originally desolate abandoned mine was transformed into a naturalistic style landscape space, adopting ecological and cultural strategies. The results of the study contribute to the ecological and economic development of the region, and also provide theoretical and practical guidance for the rehabilitation of other mines in China. (shrink)

The central claim of the volume in which this chapter appears (*Fermented Landscapes*, ed. Colleen C. Myles, Univ. of Nebraska Press 2020) is that the chemical process of fermentation supplies an apt metaphor for understanding certain kinds of landscape change. The kinds of landscape change in question are, fortuitously, those often occasioned by commercial processes centered around fermentation itself: the commercial production of beer, wine, spirits, cider, cheese, and related fermented products. But what makes this metaphor apt? Which (...) kinds of landscape change are most fruitfully conceptualized as exhibiting “fermentation,” and how do they differ from other sorts of landscape change? What is it about fermentation-centered industries that effects fermentation-modeled landscape change, and when (if ever) do these industries contribute to other, different forms of landscape change? Is there any essential reason why fermentation-centered industries should create in their environs processes of transformation usefully characterized in terms of ferment? Or is this little more than a happy linguistic coincidence? In short: how much mileage do we get from this metaphor? This chapter offers a number of considerations germane to an evaluation of the “fermented landscapes” research paradigm—considerations to which readers may wish to remain alert as they study the contributions in this volume. (shrink)

Agriculture has long struggled to reconcile production with biodiversity conservation. Industrial farming practices that erode structural complexity within crop fields and across entire landscapes, as well as widespread pesticide use, have resulted in declining insect abundance and diversity globally. Recognition of socio-environmental consequences have spurred alternative pest management paradigms such as integrated pest management (IPM) and conservation biological control (CBC), which emphasize ecology as the scientific foundation for a sustainable agriculture. However, adoption of these approaches at scales large enough to (...) impact biodiversity has been slow, particularly in industrialized countries. Landscape-scale management is an integral component of ecological agriculture, making pest control and biodiversity conservation collective problems that require coordination among multiple stakeholders. The extent to which farmers recognize and act upon this perspective is not well studied. Through literature synthesis and a case study of Southern Wisconsin, I analyze factors shaping farmer adoption of insect and landscape management practices through the lens of constrained choice. I argue that multiple overlapping institutions (social networks, market forces, science and technology, and political-legal systems) co-produce farmer behaviors and landscape structure, largely to the detriment of ecological pest control and biodiversity. Wisconsin farmers' entomological concerns largely overlook beneficial insect species and eschew landscape thinking. Ultimately, slowing agricultural drivers of insect biodiversity declines will likely require large-scale coordination and political-economic change. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates the possible impact of the Charter on the relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union and national constitutional courts. While it is premature to provide a definitive assessment of the kind of collaboration that these courts will develop, it is crucial to identify a number of features of the new landscape that will influence the direction in which the relationship between the CJEU and constitutional courts will evolve. This article discusses several reasons (...) that may result in better or a higher number of judicial interactions, as well as factors that may create tension or cause problems in the relationship between the CJEU and national constitutional courts. As such, it offers a framework that may help us to understand future post-Charter judgments by these courts setting out how they conceive their engagement with their counterpart on fundamental rights issues. (shrink)

From Joan Lindsay and cinematic master Peter Weir to Ted Kotcheff and Warwick Thornton, over past decades authors, screenwriters and filmmakers have produced films that depict the vast Australian landscape—simply referred to as terra nullius during colonial times by settlers literally confronting a continent vastly different from anything they were culturally and geographically accustomed to—as mysterious, impenetrable and ominous. Just like the dark cold of Scandinavia lends itself perfectly to contemporary Nordic Noir, the Australian New Wave or Australian Film (...) Revival of the 1970s and 1980s saw the release of films that encapsulated the eeriness of this largely rugged, arid and windswept continent, which opens up possibilities for anything to happen within those very, limitless, territories. This article analyses Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Kotcheff’s horror flick par excellence Wake in Fright (1971); "the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence" and with a TV-series remake in 2017, and Thornton’s more recent portrayal of Aboriginal misery and poverty Samson and Delilah (2009) set against a hostile urban backdrop, from a Foucauldian perspective. In its theoretical framework it also draws primarily on Freud. Heterotopia is used as a term to refer to strange, bewildering spaces that are disturbing and undecipherable—also described as “an unimaginable space, representable only in language, and as a kind of semimythical real site” (as articulated in Knight, 2017, 141). Foucault’s concept is applied in a cinematic context and used in conjunction with Freud’s notion of the uncanny as a feeling of uneasiness; or, as has been explained in his seminal text “The Uncanny” (1919), “that class of the terrifying that leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.” We argue that these eerie, fear-induced screened narratives represent a nation whose weather-beaten, freedom-loving yet at heart anxiety-ridden people are most definitely a product of their environment. (shrink)

This essay reviews the place and role of Public Service Media (PSM) in promoting social justice in the changing digital media landscape through the ethos of diversity. Media diversity – the value and practice of including varied viewpoints, social groups, voices, and channels or outlets in media – has long been a declared pillar of PSM organizations worldwide. However, current changes in the digital media landscape and the growing extension of PSM organizations to digital platforms require re-reading the (...) premise of promoting media diversity as a tool for social justice. This essay identifies a paradox. On one hand, online media appear to accommodate a greater range of diverse voices and players, particularly in the PSM ecosystem. At the same time, these very same online spaces jeopardize diversity, as the increasing practices of personalization, algorithmic curation, and platformization often reduce diversity of representations, voices, and exposure to content, thereby hindering opportunities for social justice and equality. This essay shines a spotlight on this nexus of conflicting mechanisms. The essay begins with in-depth definitions of the two somewhat convoluted terms diversity and social justice. This section includes a review of global perspectives on PSM organizations, and the long-standing value of diversity promoted through them for decades. We then review the impact and changes identified in PSM platforms worldwide in light of the digital turn in the media field. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of the inherent tension between mechanisms that promote and hinder diversity online. Throughout this discussion, we raise questions about the practical dimensions of using online media to promote social justice through diversity. It provides a useful starting point for considering the intersection of Public Service Media, online platforms, diversity, and social justice. Thus, the essay will serve academic scholars studying social justice on a conceptual level as well as practitioners and stakeholders in the media industry at large, and PSM in particular, seeking to practically promote social justice. (shrink)

A history of colonization inflicts psychological, physical, and structural disadvantages that endure across generations. For an increasing number of Indigenous Australians, environmental epigenetics offers an important explanatory framework that links the social past with the biological present, providing a culturally relevant way of understanding the various intergenerational effects of historical trauma. In this paper, we critically examine the strategic uptake of environmental epigenetics by Indigenous researchers and policy advocates. We focus on the relationship between epigenetic processes and Indigenous views of (...) Country and health—views that locate health not in individual bodies but within relational contexts of Indigenous ontologies that embody interconnected environments of kin/animals/matter/bodies across time and space. This drawing together of Indigenous experience and epigenetic knowledge has strengthened calls for action including state-supported calls for financial reparations. We examine the consequences of this reimagining of disease responsibility in the context of “strategic biological essentialism,” a distinct form of biopolitics that, in this case, incorporates environmental determinism. We conclude that the shaping of the right to protection from biosocial injury is potentially empowering but also has the capacity to conceal forms of governance through claimants’ identification as “damaged,” thus furthering State justification of biopolitical intervention in Indigenous lives. (shrink)

Legal scholars have been inspired by the dialogic approach and rallied around it as the solution to constitutional conflict in domestic constitutional orders and the transnational legal landscape. This paper aims to show that the gravitation towards judicial dialogue in contemporary constitutional theory misses the point, given the ambiguities surrounding it. My investigation reveals that the dialogic approach does not succeed in guiding the inter-departmental or inter-regime interactions in a way that no single power would exert unilateral domination. The (...) emergence of judicial supremacy in both national and transnational constitutional orders further suggests that underlying those ostensible examples of judicial dialogue is a transfigured conception of sovereignty. As it is the rise of judicial sovereignty that drives the move towards judicial dialogue in contemporary constitutional developments, I suggest that legal scholars shift focus of attention from the idea of dialogue to the enhanced judicial role in the new constitutional era. (shrink)

A room of their own: the social landscape of infant sleep This paper draws on findings of a study in which new and experienced mothers’ caregiving practices were investigated, in order to examine social perspectives of infant sleep. Health professionals who work to support early parenting and promote child health and well‐being provide guidance to their clients concerning infant sleep cares. Currently, advice is predominantly informed by understandings and strategies derived from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) risk reduction campaigns (...) and behavioural training models. The social context of caregiving is a significant if somewhat neglected perspective. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that in sleep arrangements, a complex social locale is revealed, an elaboration of carers’ values and understandings about infants as developing persons, juxtaposed with their own desires and needs. Tensions between child‐centred nurturing and adult‐focused concerns are expressed and reconciled in caregiving. These understandings may assist health professionals to develop proactive and responsive practices in the area of early childrearing support. (shrink)

The twelve contributors to Looking for Los Angeles focus on dramatic shifts in the urban landscape, important moments in the city's architectural history, and the role of the image in this mecca of image makers.

Virtue Rediscovered: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Moral Landscape explores the nature and position of virtue ethics within the contemporary moral landscape and in so doing develops a more complicated framework for ethical theorizing.

Abstract:There is an established narrative in which the world shrinks, distances are overcome and rendered insignificant, and the near and the far lose their salience as means of orientation and understanding. Yet, within this narrative, new distances are equally felt and observed to have opened up. New distances between and amongst us, multiplying distances of indifference, incomprehension and antagonism. And felt distances also between ourselves and ‘land’ and ‘nature’—a sense of separation, alienation and loss which it then becomes imperative, ethically (...) and environmentally, to overcome.In this general context, this article asks: is it possible to sense distance more positively? Given the scope of the topic, the article aims primarily to offer key frameworks and avenues for rethinking distance. In two initial sections I consider distance in terms of ethics and spatialities respectively. Then, in a lengthier third and final discussion, I turn to landscape specifically as a venue for thinking distance anew. Notions of apartness and alienation are, it can be argued, historically stitched into Western visual art traditions of landscape. In Robin Kelsey's terms, landscape names a “fantasy of not belonging to the totality of life of a terrestrial expanse.” But, drawing in particular upon Jean-Luc Nancy's account of landscape as uncanny and estranged spatiality, I will argue that the distances of not-belonging are actually the signature elements of landscape's distinction as a mode of experience, imagination and presentation. (shrink)

Objective Some researchers claim that the quality of informed consent of clinical research participants in developing countries is worse than in developed countries. To evaluate this assumption, we reviewed the available data on the quality of consent in both settings. Methods We conducted a comprehensive PubMed search, examined bibliographies and literature reviews, and consulted with international experts on informed consent in order to identify studies published from 1966 to 2010 that used quantitative methods, surveyed participants or parents of paediatric participants (...) in actual trials, assessed comprehension and/or voluntariness, and did not involve testing particular consent interventions. Forty-seven studies met these criteria. We compared data about participant comprehension and voluntariness. The paucity of data and variation in study methodology limit comparison and preclude statistical aggregation of the data. Results and Discussion This review shows that the assertion that informed consent is worse in developing countries than in developed countries is a simplification of a complex picture. Despite the limitations of comparison, the data suggest that: (1) comprehension of study information varies among participants in both developed and developing countries, and comprehension of randomisation and placebo controlled designs is poorer than comprehension of other aspects of trials in both settings; and (2) participants in developing countries appear to be less likely than those in developed countries to say they can refuse participation in or withdraw from a trial, and are more likely to worry about the consequences of refusal or withdrawal. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the Seljuk cultural code in the cultural landscape of the Crimea. The object of the study is the Seljuk style in the decorative and applied arts and architecture of the Crimea. The article uses the following methods: culturological (ontological and semiotic) analysis in deciphering the meanings of Seljuk elements, the method of historicism in the ontology of Seljuks in the Crimea, the method of analysis of previous studies, the method of synthesis in the (...) identification of ethnic signs. The article discusses the following aspects of the topic: The semantics of the Seljuk code in the cultural landscape of the Crimea is revealed, examples and ways of applying Seljuk stylistics in decorative and applied art and architectural decor of modern and postmodern are considered. 1. The multinational cultural landscape of Crimea consists of the cultures of ethnic groups that inhabited the Crimea in different periods. The leading marker of the definition and self-determination of ethnic groups is religion and folk mythology, embodied in national traditions. A clear example demonstrating ethnic identity and its continuity is folk art. 2. The appearance of the Seljuks in Crimea and the wide spread of the Seljuk style, which has become one of the main components of the "Crimean style" in modern and postmodern architecture, is not accidental and is due to centuries-old ethnic migrations and the mutual influence of cultures. The Seljuk style, therefore, ceases to be purely ethnic, and becomes part of the cultural landscape of the Crimea, used in the decor regardless of the ethnic origin of the author / owner. 3. A special contribution of the authors to the study is the identification and justification of the Seljuk code as one of the main ones in the Crimean stylistics. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the semiotic and stylistic analysis of the Seljuk code in the cultural landscape of the Crimea. (shrink)

Tri Hita Karana is a traditional Balinese philosophy that emphasizes the importance of balance in the relationships between humans and God, humans and others, and humans and the natural environment. Although this principle underpins many aspects of life, its application in architectural and urban planning often faces various challenges. This research identifies the gap between traditional principles and the demands of modern development. A qualitative case study approach was used in Kedonganan Traditional Village, Kuta, Bali, employing in-depth interviews and direct (...) observation methods. The results of the study show that the people of Kedonganan Traditional Village still uphold customs and cultural traditions, which are implemented in various aspects of daily life, including religious activities, mutual cooperation, and environmental management. Collaboration between the government and traditional communities has proven effective in maintaining ecological, social, and spiritual balance. Additionally, the findings indicate that cultural, architectural and landscape elements remain relevant and functional in community life. The implications of this research highlight the importance of integrating Tri Hita Karana values into development policies to achieve sustainable balance. (shrink)

A wide range of archaeological finds is rapidly expanding our knowledge of the pre-Islamic cultural milieu and the political structures of the Arabian Peninsula during Late Antiquity, and thereby of the Qurʾān’s cultural context. This material can offer a complementary reading to the literary accounts on pre-Islamic Arabia, which were mostly composed outside of Arabia or long after the late antique period. There is a growing need to make the recent exciting discoveries of scholars working on the Qurʾān and Arabia (...) more widely accessible to historians who may not have a solid background in archaeology and epigraphy. As such, the ERC project “The Qur'an as a Source for Late Antiquity” (QaSLA) organized a conference, titled “Epigraphy, the Qur'an, and the Religious Landscape of Arabia”, which took place in Tübingen on 8 – 10 September 2022. The three-day international conference brought together specialists in epigraphy as well as scholars of the Qurʾān to explore how recent epigraphic and archaeological findings and research have been changing our understanding of the Qurʾān and the Arabian religious, cultural, and political landscape. Accordingly, the conference sought to integrate new archaeological finds with ongoing studies on the genesis of the Qurʾān, its Arabian background, and the broader cultural milieu of pre-Islamic Arabia with a special focus on the dawn of Islam. The conference also featured an important contribution by Peter Webb on pre-Islamic poetry, another neglected corpus of inquiry into the history of pre-Islamic Arabia. Aiming to foster discussion between scholars, each panel was paired with a specialist on the Qurʾān or the wider history of Arabia. (shrink)

For many countries instrumental music tuition in secondary schools is a ubiquitous event that provides situated and personalized instruction in the learning of an instrument. Opportunities and methods through which teachers operate during the COVID-19 outbreak challenged music educators as to how they taught, engaged, and interacted with students across online platforms, with alarm over aerosol dispersement a major factor in maintaining online instrumental music tuition even as students returned to “normal” face to face classes. This qualitative study investigated the (...) practices employed by instrumental music educators in secondary schools in Melbourne, Australia, analyzing teacher perspectives to music tuition amidst the restriction of interaction with students remotely via online means. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed music educational approaches that fostered connection, empathy and receptiveness to relationship-building, guiding students in slower and deeper learner-centered approaches, asserting pedagogical practices that reinforced and promoted interpersonal connectedness in and through musical experience and discovery. These findings provide a framework for how music educators can facilitate connection, motivation and student autonomy generating personal meaning and commitment to music making and the learning relationship, which can translate to significant student learning and value in the learning music. Exploring teachers’ pedagogical practices and behaviors within this dyadic teacher-student relationship is a significant addition to the literature, enabling the consideration of the type of connective behaviors required to stimulate and develop long-term interest in music. (shrink)

Recent developments in the natural and social sciences have brought great benefits to humanity, both in terms of our material wellbeing and our intellectual and conceptual capacities. Yet, despite a broad ethical consensus and highly developed innate faculties of reason and conscience, there seems to be a significant discrepancy between how we ought to behave and how we actually behave, leading to a disregard for the dignity of human persons across the globe. This book suggests that the problem arises from (...) various misunderstandings of the nature of the self and that the solution could lie in adopting a holistic concept of the human person within the context of a carefully cultivated ethical literacy. It argues that the ideas of the Iranian philosopher Ostad Elahi (1895–1974) provide a powerful and compelling alternative to the dominant post-Enlightenment understanding of selfhood, education and morality. (shrink)

This article considers the concept of the utopia from the point of view of garden design. It begins with an evocation of the `Jardin de Julie', the literary garden described in Rousseau and acutely analysed by Louis Marin. It then passes to a series of actual gardens created by the French contemporary designer Bernard Lassus, in which the use of landscape effects is seen as achieving similar dislocations of space and incitements to the imagination.

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in Bangladesh's academic landscape has ignited concerns about potentially eroding students' creative writing and critical thinking abilities. While AI offers efficient and personalized learning, there is a looming risk of students using it as a shortcut to success. Educators and policymakers must emphasize the cultivation of writing skills and critical thinking while guiding students to recognize the limitations of AI. While plagiarism checking is crucial for academic integrity, it often falls short in acknowledging students' (...) originality. Natural Language Processing (NLP) emerges as a promising solution, augmenting plagiarism detection by comprehending context, nuances, and novel expressions. This paper proposed a model based on NLP that can incorporate a robust token identification mechanism into AI tools used by the students. A unique identification token is generated at the time of system login and stored in a publicly accessible resource, acting as a distinct marker for user activity. These identification tokens support a plagiarism detection system that continually reviews and compares activity records. It also enables a thorough examination of user involvement across various academic supplementary tools, such as academic writing, presentation creation, image generation, etc. (shrink)

In Games: Agency as Art, Thi Nguyen has given us a deep and compelling picture of agency as much more layered, volatile, environment-dependent and discontinuous than it appears in most philosophical accounts. Games ‘inscribe … forms of agency into artifactual vessels’.1 1 When we play a game, we take up a form of agency, including a set of motivations, values and goals, which has been artificially provided by the game. Our purpose in playing, in the kinds of gameplay that interest (...) Nguyen, is to have the aesthetic experience of first-personally exercising the kind of agency sculpted by the game. As we move in and out of gameplay, we take up and drop values, motives, and goals that are provided to us by the game. Games can expand our autonomy and the richness of life by allowing us to practice different forms of agency, taking on different ends for the aesthetic experience of striving to meet them. While I am on board with these central moves of Nguyen’s book, in this essay I will argue that the situation is substantially messier than Nguyen portrays it as being. Game play, I will claim, is inextricably embedded and entangled in its larger social, material and cultural context. Conversely, I will argue, everyday life is routinely sculpted in ways Nguyen claims are distinctive of games. (shrink)

Multifunctionality poses significant challenges for human brain mapping. Cathy Price and Karl Friston argue that brain regions perform many functions in one sense and a single function in another. Thus, neuroscientists must revise their “cognitive ontologies” to obtain systematic mappings. Colin Klein draws a different lesson from these findings: neuroscientists should abandon systematic mappings for context-sensitive ones. I claim that neither account succeeds as a general treatment of multifunctionality. I argue that brain areas, like genes or organs, are multifunctional in (...) different ways. I call this the “functional heterogeneity hypothesis.” I contend that different multifunctional parts require different mapping strategies. (shrink)

_The human experience has long been characterized by a tension between two fundamental forces: the self-centered tendencies of our ego and the outward-stretching pull of empathy. In the contemporary world, where technology is rapidly amplifying both our individual power and interconnectedness, navigating this tension within an ethical framework has become more crucial than ever. This article argues that a paradigm shift is necessary, one that moves beyond a purely egoistic understanding of the self and redefines it through the lens of (...) empathy. Examining this redefinition through the prisms of neuroscience, moral philosophy, and technological development, we explore the potential for fostering an ethical landscape where individual progress thrives in tandem with collective well-being._. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate how morality, landscape and environmental pratice are related as played out in a dialogue between farmers and the planning apparatus. Differing views on landscape and nature reveal differing but ever present moral messages inscribed in the land. It is argued that constructions of past, present and future time produce moral messages about landscape and nature. The Jaeren district on the south-western coast of Norway serves as the empirical base for this paper.

This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and mountains are both geographic realities and imaginary realities. Many locales are considered powerful symbols of fear or desire. According to Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” This means that (...) class='Hi'>landscape is irreducibly historical since it portrays the material world mediated through human experience. It is also inevitably linked with issues of power because it provides the physical features upon which human beings draw and shape unique identities and distinct worldviews. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on empirically informed moral theory sketches the more important contributions to the field in the past several years. Attention is paid to experimental philosophy, the work of philosophers like Harman and Doris, and that of psychologists like Haidt and Hauser.

ABSTRACT This article aims to defend the dialogical nature of the landscape. Working in between the borders of the Bakhtinian philosophy of language and cultural studies on landscape, we defend that landscape study should not be studied without considering the cultural forms of communication in the different domains of social organization– the speech genres; that landscape is a semiotic encounter with a concrete otherness; that the interpreter who emerges when an area enters a relationship of representation (...) is necessarily characterized as a chronotope; that every landscape is a chronotopic representation; that cultural geography recognizes that the semiotic aspects of the landscape are as material as its morphology. We start from the hypothesis that landscape is a chronotopic representation that is always made possible by means of some speech genre, because it is always a communicative process, and an encounter with another in a situation of socially organized interrelation – it is concrete dialogue. To find the deeper meaning of a landscape, one must recognize and understand its material, historical, geographical, and dialogic nature. RESUMO O artigo objetiva defender a índole dialógica da paisagem. Trabalhando na fronteira entre a filosofia bakhtiniana da linguagem e os estudos culturais da paisagem, defendemos que a paisagem não seja estudada sem considerar as formas culturais de comunicação nos diferentes domínios da organização social – os gêneros discursivos; que toda paisagem é encontro semiótico com uma alteridade concreta; que o intérprete que emerge quando uma área entra em relação de representação é necessariamente caracterizado por um cronotopo; que toda paisagem é representação cronotópica; que a geografia cultural reconheça que os aspectos semióticos da paisagem são tão materiais quanto sua morfologia. Partimos da hipótese de que a paisagem é uma representação cronotópica que sempre se realiza através de algum gênero discursivo, pois sempre é um processo comunicativo e de encontro com o outro em uma situação de inter-relação socialmente organizada – é diálogo concreto. Para adentrar à profundeza de seus sentidos, precisa-se reconhecer e compreender sua índole material, histórica, geográfica e dialógica. (shrink)

(2003). No community without spectacle: A comment on Olwig's Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 263-265. doi: 10.1080/1090377032000114705.

In my article, I delineate Friedrich Nietzsche’s influence on Estonian intellectual landscape. As it turns out, this influence has been quite remarkable and extends from literature to politics. I start with outlining several orientations of the reception of Nietzsche’s thought in the world and then suggest that with one exception, all those orientations are to some extent also present in Estonian Nietzsche reception. Nietzsche’s reception in Estonia started rather early and one can say that he was somewhat known in (...) Tallinn as well as in Tartu even in his lifetime. The first attempt to translate one of his works into Estonian was made already in 1901. Till the Soviet occupation in 1940, Nietzsche’s thought was rather actively appropriated by Estonian writers, intellectuals and even politicians. In Soviet Union, Nietzsche was prohibited and his works were not freely accessible in public libraries. With the restoration of Estonia’s independence in the beginning of 90s, a new, fresh and active wave of Nietzsche reception also begun. New translations appeared and the reception was generally more faithful and philosophical than in the first period. (shrink)

A collection of photographs document the changing landscape of the manmade Salton Sea, from its beginnings formed by broken levees of the Colorado River, its heyday as a desert paradise, its overdevelopment and home to migrating birds, and its current state as an environmental battleground.