This article compares the sections on the qualities desirable in a wife in Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn and Bar Hebraeus’s Ethicon, which the West Syrian writer modeled on al-Ghazālī’s work. The article first establishes that al-Ghazālī based his profile of the ideal wife on a jurisprudential discussion of the topic by his teacher, Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, expanding it, however, by adding anecdotes from Sufi literature and reasoned arguments on how “the good wife” will best facilitate her husband’s devotion (...) to God. The article then moves to consider how Bar Hebraeus appropriates, reconfigures, and reframes as Christian teaching al-Ghazālī’s discussion. Finally, the article argues that the similarity between the two texts demonstrates that both carve out a particular notion of male piety intelligible and resonant in their different religious traditions and in the broader monotheistic culture of the premodern Middle East. (shrink)

What are the processes, from conception to adulthood, that enable a single cell to grow into a sentient adult? Neuroconstructivism is a pioneering 2 volume work that sets out a whole new framework for considering the complex topic of development, integrating data from cognitive studies, computational work, and neuroimaging.

The computations involved in statistical learning have long been debated. Here, we build on work suggesting that a basic memory process, chunking, may account for the processing of statistical regularities into larger units. Drawing on methods from the memory literature, we developed a novel paradigm to test statistical learning by leveraging a robust phenomenon observed in serial recall tasks: that short‐term memory is fundamentally shaped by long‐term distributional learning. In the statistically induced chunking recall (SICR) task, participants are exposed to (...) an artificial language, using a standard statistical learning exposure phase. Afterward, they recall strings of syllables that either follow the statistics of the artificial language or comprise the same syllables presented in a random order. We hypothesized that if individuals had chunked the artificial language into word‐like units, then the statistically structured items would be more accurately recalled relative to the random controls. Our results demonstrate that SICR effectively captures learning in both the auditory and visual modalities, with participants displaying significantly improved recall of the statistically structured items, and even recall specific trigram chunks from the input. SICR also exhibits greater test–retest reliability in the auditory modality and sensitivity to individual differences in both modalities than the standard two‐alternative forced‐choice task. These results thereby provide key empirical support to the chunking account of statistical learning and contribute a valuable new tool to the literature. (shrink)

Public health agencies regularly survey randomly selected anonymous students to track drug use, sexual activities, and other risk behaviors. Students are unidentifiable, but a recent project that i...

A distinction is commonly drawn between continuous sedation until death and physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Only the latter is found to involve killing, whereas the former eludes such characterization. I argue that continuous sedation until death is equivalent to physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia in that both involve killing. This is established by first defining and clarifying palliative sedation therapies in general and continuous sedation until death in particular. A case study analysis and a look at current practices are provided. This is followed by a (...) defense of arguments in favor of definitions of death centering on higher brain (neocortical) functioning rather than on whole brain or cardiopulmonary functioning. It is then shown that continuous sedation until death simulates higher brain definitions of death by eliminating consciousness. Appeals to reversibility and double effect fail to establish any distinguishing characteristics between the simulation of death that occurs in continuous sedation until death and the death that occurs as a result of physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Concluding remarks clarify the moral ramifications of these findings. (shrink)

The present study addresses the fluid transport behaviour of the flow of gold -copper /biomagnetic blood hybrid nanofluid in an inclined irregular stenosis artery as a consequence of varying viscosity and Lorentz force. The nonlinear flow equations are transformed into dimensionless form by using nonsimilar variables. The finite-difference technique is involved in computing the nonlinear transport dimensionless equations. The significant parameters like angle parameter, the Hartmann number, changing viscosity, constant heat source, the Reynolds number, and nanoparticle volume fraction on the (...) flow field are exhibited through figures. Present results disclose that the Lorentz force strongly lessens the hybrid nanofluid velocity. Elevating the Grashof number values enhances the rate of blood flow. Growing values of the angle parameter cause to reduce the resistance impedance on the wall. Hybrid nanoparticles have a superior wall shear stress than copper nanoparticles. The heat transfer rate is amplifying at the axial direction with the growing values of nanoparticles concentration. The applied Lorentz force significantly reduces the hybrid and unitary nanofluid flow rate in the axial direction. The hybrid nanoparticles expose a supreme rate of heat transfer than the copper nanoparticles in a blood base fluid. Compared to hybrid and copper nanofluid, the blood base fluid has a lower temperature. (shrink)

The time taken to react voluntarily to a stimulus is far longer than can be accounted for by ordinary processes of nerve conduction and synaptic delay, and varies unpredictably from trial to trial. Though random, the distribution of reaction times usually follows a relatively simple law, which in turn can be explained by the LATER model, in which a decision signal, representing belief in the existence of the target, rises in response to incoming sensory evidence from an initial value to (...) a criterion level at which action is initiated. But the rate of rise fluctuates randomly from trial, to an extent that cannot be explained by sensory noise at the input. These conclusions, confirmed by recording from neurons in the frontal eye fields, suggest that the randomness of reaction time is due to a deliberate, gratuitous, neural process which confers certain biological advantages as well as having implications for general ideas about the nature of ‘free will'. (shrink)