Background: Meditation is gaining recognition as a tool to impact health and well-being. Samyama is an 8-day intensive residential meditation experience conducted by Isha Foundation requiring several months of extensive preparation and vegan diet. The health effects of Samyama have not been previously studied. The objective was to assess physical and emotional well-being before and after Samyama participation by evaluating psychological surveys and objective health biomarkers.Methods: This was an observational study of 632 adults before and after the Isha Samyama retreat. (...) All participants were invited to complete surveys. Controls included household significant others. Surveys were completed at baseline, just before Samyama, immediately after Samyama, and 3 months later to assess anxiety, depression, mindfulness, joy, vitality, and resilience through validated psychometric scales. Voluntary blood sampling for biomarker analysis was done to assess hemoglobin, HbA1c, lipid profile, and C-reactive protein. Primary outcomes were changes in psychometric scores, body weight, and blood biomarkers.Results: Depression and anxiety scores decreased from T1 to T3, with the effect most pronounced in participants with baseline depression or anxiety. Scores at T4 remained below baseline for those with pre-existing depression or anxiety. Vitality, resilience, joy, and mindfulness increased from T1 to T3. Body weight decreased by 3% from T1 to T3. Triglycerides were lower from T2 to T3. Participants had lower HbA1c and HDL at T2, and lower CRP at all timepoints compared with controls.Conclusions: Participation in the Isha Samyama program led to multiple benefits. The 2-month preparation reduced anxiety, and participants maintained lower anxiety levels at 3 months post-retreat. Physical health improved over the course of the program as evidenced by weight loss and improved HbA1C and lipid profile. Practices associated with the Samyama preparation phase and the retreat may serve as an effective way to improve physical and mental health. Future studies may examine their use as an alternative therapy in patients with depression and/or anxiety.Clinical Trial Registration:www.ClinicalTrials.gov, Identifier: 1801728792. Registered retrospectively on 4/17/2020. (shrink)

While the existing literature focuses on the disclosure of social information mainly by large companies, this paper concentrates on the disclosure of social information by small- and medium-sized companies (SME) listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in the U.K. The paper investigates the prevalent view that SMEs are unlikely to report social information due to their financial constraints and the perception that they have very little social conduct on which to report. Our overall evidence illustrates that, contrary to this (...) view, SMEs report social information regardless of their financial constraints, most likely in the same manner as large companies do, because they realise the significance of social reporting in establishing and retaining their corporate reputation. (shrink)

Theoretically, corporate social responsibility should be embedded in corporate governance structures. This paper presents evidence that this is not the case for listed UK companies. Our evidence shows that in the presence of less stringent regulatory requirements, companies tend to disclose less social information in comparison to mandatory governance information. The observed positive association between social and governance information disclosure levels provides supporting evidence that companies with more transparent governance structures tend to be socially conscientious. The paper also empirically shows (...) that the level of social information disclosure tends to vary with the size and industrial affiliation of companies, providing further evidence that listed UK companies are still treating social information as a tool to project a legitimate image. (shrink)

This article seeks to address the problem of the ‘resource consumption bottleneck’ of creating legal semantic technologies manually. It describes a semantic role labeling based information extraction system to extract definitions and norms from legislation and represent them as structured norms in legal ontologies. The output is intended to help make laws more accessible, understandable, and searchable in a legal document management system.

(THIS PAPER NEEDS A CORRECTION) Satisfaction is a complex concept which has a key role in each individual’s everyday life and impacts their behavior. Abraham Maslow (1943) suggested a framework [1] to study human motivation, which was a starting point towards developing the quality of life(QOL) theory. On that article, he described a hierarchy of human needs, that is generally consist of fundamental needs which are required for human survival, and environment dependent ones, like society, safety and etc. In this (...) study, we are trying to represent a tangible mathematical model for assessing the sense of need for water in terms of the available source of water. On this very subject, M. Joseph Sirgy [2] states that ”From a human developmental perspective, QOL goals can be defined as satisfaction of human developmental needs in a community or society”. Accordingly, in the first section we propose a model for the water needs of an individual. In the second section, we continue the discussion by checking the behavior of the model on a given population, and each time by assuming that we have two out of three involved factors, we try to suggest an estimation for the other one. (shrink)

Goal-oriented requirements modeling approaches aim to capture the intentions of the stakeholders involved in the development of an information system as goals and tasks. The process of constructing such goal models usually involves discussions between a requirements engineer and a group of stakeholders. Not all the arguments in such discussions can be captured as goals or tasks: e.g., the discussion whether to accept or reject a certain goal and the rationale for acceptance or rejection cannot be captured in goal models. (...) In this paper, we apply techniques from computational argumentation to a goal modeling approach by using a coding analysis in which stakeholders discuss requirements for a Traffic Simulator. We combine a simplified version of a traditional goal model, the Goal-oriented Requirements Language (GRL), with ideas from argumentation on schemes for practical reasoning into a new framework (RationalGRL). RationalGRL provides a formal semantics and tool support to capture the discussions and outcomes of the argumentation process that leads to a goal model. We also define the RationalGRL development process to create a RationalGRL model. (shrink)

Aim Facebook is an increasingly popular online social networking site. The purpose of this study was to describe the Facebook activity of residents and fellows and their opinions regarding the impact of Facebook on the doctor–patient relationship. Methods An anonymous questionnaire was emailed to 405 residents and fellows at the Rouen University Hospital, France, in October 2009. Results Of the 202 participants who returned the questionnaire (50%), 147 (73%) had a Facebook profile. Among responders, 138 (99%) displayed their real name (...) on their profile, 136 (97%) their birthdates, 128 (91%) a personal photograph, 83 (59%) their current university and 76 (55%) their current position. Default privacy settings were changed by 61% of users, more frequently if they were registered for >1 year (p=0.02). If a patient requested them as a ‘friend’, 152 (85%) participants would automatically decline the request, 26 (15%) would decide on an individual basis and none would automatically accept the request. Eighty-eight participants (48%) believed that the doctor–patient relationship would be altered if patients discovered that their doctor had a Facebook account, but 139 (76%) considered that it would change only if the patient had open access to their doctor's profile, independent of its content. Conclusions Residents and fellows frequently use Facebook and display personal information on their profiles. Insufficient privacy protection might have an impact the doctor–patient relationship. (shrink)

Psychopathy refers to a range of complex behaviors and personality traits, including callousness and antisocial behavior, typically studied in criminal populations. Recent studies have used self-reports to examine psychopathic traits among noncriminal samples. The goal of the current study was to examine the underlying factor structure of the Self-Report of Psychopathy Scale–Short Form (SRP-SF) across complementary samples and examine the impact of gender on factor structure. We examined the structure of the SRP-SF among 2,554 young adults from three undergraduate samples (...) and a high-risk young adult sample. Using confirmatory factor analysis, a four-correlated factor model and a four-bifactor model showed good fit to the data. Evidence of weak invariance was found for both models across gender. These findings highlight that the SRP-SF is a useful measure of low-level psychopathic traits in noncriminal samples, although the underlying factor structure may not fully translate across men and women. (shrink)

Ancient Arabic literature dealt with linguistic sciences such as sarf, nahiw, belagha and Islamic sciences such as fıqh, hadith and tafsîr. This is known to the elite and the common people. But what is hidden and forgotten is that Arabic literature also includes the foundations and rules of modern sciences such as sociology and economics. Among the ancient Arabic literature is the writing of Maqamat, which holds an important position among the masterpieces of Arabic literature. For this reason, it is (...) important to study the writing of Maqamat from the perspective of the various disciplines of Islamic sciences and modern sciences. This study deals with fıqh and economic issues within the framework of Al-Hariri’s famous book, Maqamat. The aim of the study is to reveal the fıqh and economic aspects of Makamat writing through Hariri's Makamat as an exemplary study. The approach followed by the study is to select three maqama from Al-Hariri’s book, which contained fifty complete maqama, and to search for what is in them of fıqh and economics. Accordingly, the study includes three main headings, and in these three headings, fıqh, farâid (inheritance law) and economic issues are discussed, respectively. Although the science of farâid (inheritance law) is a branch of fıqh, it is singled out for mention independently because it has its own rulings. The study examined the jurisprudential aspect of the Maqamat in the thirty-second maqama called “the Tayyibi Maqamat,” the aspect related to the science of farâid in the fifteenth maqama called “the Faradiya Maqamat,” and the economic aspect in the forty-ninth maqama called “the Sassanid Maqamat.” The method followed by Hariri in her book is to present the issues in the form of stories through two fictional characters, Haris bin Hammam and Abu Zayd, whom she chose as mirrors reflecting the two opposing identities of the society. Abu Zaid appears in different forms and in various clothes. He sometimes appears as a beggar who deceives and a thief who betrays, and at other times as a preacher who advises and a scholar who guides. Rather, he is an imaginary character that Hariri put in place. Wherever he went, he met Al-Harith bin Hammam and the strange and adventurous incident begins, or he appears as a person from whom Al-Harith narrated the incident and the story. Harith is the person who always warns his against bad things, orders his to do good, and sometimes condemns his if he does evil. The results obtained in the study are, first of all, the determination that the Makâmât writing deals with the subjects of the science of fiqh as in the thirty-second makama and the subjects of the science of farâid (inheritance law) as in the fifteenth makama and the subjects of economics as in the forty-ninth makama. It is seen that some of the principles put forward by Adam Smith years later were also present in the Maqamat literature centuries ago. The fact that fiqh views are according to the Shafi'i sect shows that the Shafi'i sect was widespread in the region at that time. Additionally, as can be understood from the forty-ninth makama, there is also a profession of begging in the society where Hariri lives. The study also reveals the society's interest in, submission to, and acceptance of moral principles at that time, and shows that the Arabic language reached its peak during this period. (shrink)

An eye-opener and a head-scratcher, this set of fifty exercices de style offers an oblique and learned introduction to a great classic of ludic literature dating from the twelfth century, the Maqamat of al-Hariri. Each of the fifty tales of the trickster Abu Zayid, some or perhaps all of which contain or are constituted by one or more formal restrictions, is here presented in the form of a pastiche of some familiar or exotic register of writing in English. We (...) can only admire Cooperson for having taught himself to channel Chaucer, Woolf, and Twain, to parrot Singaporean, Nigerian, and Indian English, to compose in dramatic form and in verse, and to riff off Austen as well as a dictionary of law.... What is frustrating to readers is that our translator-imposter does not let us play the game. He explains each exercise and justifies his approach to it in a prefatory note, then adds footnotes, a bibliography, and a glossary of the “dialect” chosen. We are not even allowed to play guess-the-author! The aim of the elaborate and scholarly apparatus attached to these imitative imitations is to give a hint—a necessarily and unapologetically misleading one—of the pleasure and value of the medieval Arabic for its first and later readers.The problem is that pastiche is not only an entertaining exercise. It typically serves a purpose located somewhere between mockery and homage, and sometimes plays both ends against the middle. Cooperson, however, is not mocking Dickens or Gibbon, even less the al-Hariri he clearly admires beyond all others. Consequently, the nonparticipant reader becomes ever more baffled as to what the game is really for. Surely it cannot be intended only to show us how clever and knowledgeable Mr. Cooperson is? Which he certainly is, but not beyond tripping over his own skipping rope. For example, the prisoner's constraint used in the middle of a pastiche of Dickens, when implemented in the way it was defined by its inventor Paul Fournel, excludes the letter z and also cannot accommodate the tilde of señor—and Dickens would have written bade for the past tense of bid. The more you read, the less you smile, the more you quibble as you are drawn into a surely unintended game of spot-the-blooper.It takes genius to write like someone else, which is why the people who get away with it for real use a battery of extratextual devices to deceive (think of Guilleragues, Ossian, Chatterton, Kuzma Proutkov, Romain Gary... ). Cooperson is not seeking to deceive (yet how can a pastiche not gesture toward deception?), but he is not actually offering fifty linked stories by fifty different hands either. What he has produced with the help of his distinguished préfacier, two editors, and a bevy of consultants is a curiously unidentifiable literary object, and quite possibly the only one of its kind.Two statements made by the translator in his introduction disturb me. He says he avoided using most twentieth-century literary models and references in order not to run into copyright issues. This is a declaration of submission to the Copyright Monster invented and unleashed by publishers in flagrant disregard of the laws of the UK, the US, and the EU, all of which allow parody and pastiche without permission of the copyright holder. Second, he “takes seriously the argument that privileged users of Standard English have no business imitating... the speech varieties associated with less privileged communities.” In all times other than our own, the privileged did not deign to use “less privileged” forms of speech (unless they were Victor Hugo), but if now they do not even dare, we can still guess what will happen. The less privileged will seek to use more privileged forms of speech, just as Anglo-Saxon serfs aped Norman French until they ended up speaking English. More recently, wealthy corporations have sought to own whole programming languages by extending the reach of copyright law; perhaps “less privileged communities” are now about to use similar weapons to protect their linguistic turf. We must object as noisily as we can to attempts to enclose public goods by corporations, by self-defining communities, or by any other entities. We would all be the poorer if they should ever succeed. (shrink)

The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is "a sucker for free and fair elections," so "it warms my heart to watch" what happened in Lebanon in an election that "was indeed free and fair Ñ not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: (...) President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran." Crucially, "a solid majority of all Lebanese -- Muslims, Christians and Druse -- voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri," the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that "to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese -- not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel." We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections : "Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 -- and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing -- this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.". (shrink)

In this eleventh book of scilogs – called in-turns and out-turns –, one may find new and old questions and solutions, referring mostly to topics on Neutrosophy, but also Multispace, with miscellaneous addition of topics on Physics, Mathematics, or Sociology – email messages to research colleagues, or replies, notes about authors, articles, or books, spontaneous ideas, and so on. -/- Exchanging ideas with Prem Kumar Singh, Feng Liu, Nicolae Bălașa, Jimmy Quellet, Minodora Rușchița, Frank Gelli, A. R. Vătuiu, Victor Christianto, (...) Vladimir I. Rogozhin, Robert Neil Boyd, Akira Kanda, Stefan Spaarmann, Oliver Consa, Yabin Shao, Junle Zhuo, Nivetha Martin, Said Broumi, Jean Dezert, Erick González, Tomasz Witczak, B. De Baets, I. Couso, D. Dubois, L. Good, Mihaela Colhon, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Ihsan, Edeline Nancy, Shawkat Alkhazaleh, Shazia Rana, Vasantha Kandasamy, Santanu Acharjee, Mohamed Al-Shmrani, Parimala Manie, Mehmet Unver, Murat Olgun, Adel Aleidhri, Akira Kanda, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, Mircea Zărnescu, R. Tayebi Khorami, Arsham Borumand Saeid, Maisam Jdid, M. Abobala, Riad Hamido, Rafael Rojas, Esmaeil Zarei, Faisal Khan, Rouzbeh Abbassi, Adel Al-Odhari, Henry Garrett, Ackbar Rezaei, Saeid Jafari, Karthika Muthusamy, Harish Garg, Huda E. Khalid, Gonca D. Güngör, Muslim A. Noah Zainal, Fakhry Asad Agusfrianto, Madeleine Al-Tahan, Mariam Hariri, Yudi Mahatma, Masoud Ghods, Marco Brigliadori, Luis Enrique Aponte Pérez, Amr Mohammed, M. Aslam (in order of reference in the book). (shrink)

Zechariah Aldāhirī's maqāma collection, Sefer hamusar , is a literary work modeled on the Arabic Maqāmāt of al-Harīrī and the Hebrew Tahkemoni of Alharizi. Although largely fictional in nature, the work offers intriguing evidence of the transmission of kabbalistic thought to Yemen in the sixteenth century. This paper argues that Aldāhirī exploited the text's lighthearted belletristic framework to bring kabbalistic theosophy, literature, and liturgical customs to the attention of a largely uninitiated public in Yemen. But Aldāhirī also conveys an ambivalence (...) towards his project when he parodies the new taste for kabbalistic learning by embedding mystical ideas in complex narratives. (shrink)