Activities of daily living are usually defined as skills needed in typical daily self-care. Instrumental activities of daily living are more complex skills beyond basic self-care, and their measurement evaluates how individuals function in their homes, workplaces, and outdoor environments. The skills that pertain to IADLs are exposed to dysfunctions resulting from aging or illness. Reductions in those skills may begin to cause problems with independence but these problems can be solved with the (...) help of others - for example, family members, social workers, and nurses. (shrink)

Measurement of ability or inability to perform activities of daily living is important to in describing the functional status of a person and then implementing an intervention. Evaluations of ADLs are mainly used in nursing and in rehabilitation of people with disabilities and the elderly. Measuring ability to perform ADLs is crucial for the management of healthcare in aging societies. It is important to understand differences between categories of ADLs and challenges in their evaluation that are connected (...) to the roles of family members. (shrink)

The chapter aims to introduce an integrated approach to concepts of smart cities and age-friendly cities and communities. Although these ideas are widely promoted by the European Union and the World Health Organisation, they are perceived as separate. Meanwhile, these concepts are closely intermingled in theory and practise concerning the promotion of healthy and active ageing, a universal design, usability and accessibility of age-friendly environments, reducing of the digital divide and robotic divide, and reducing of older adults’ social isolation. The (...) conclusion underlines the need for participatory creation of ambient assisted living technologies and applications with older adults and the need for advocacy to promote AAL in the context of the silver economy especially in the Central and Eastern Europe. (shrink)

There is widespread recognition at universities that a proper understanding of science is needed for all undergraduates. Good jobs are increasingly found in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine, and science now enters almost all aspects of our daily lives. For these reasons, scientific literacy and an understanding of scientific methodology are a foundational part of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science provides an accessible introduction to the main concepts and methods of scientific reasoning. With the help (...) of an array of contemporary and historical examples, definitions, visual aids, and exercises for active learning, the textbook helps to increase students’ scientific literacy. The first part of the book covers the definitive features of science: naturalism, experimentation, modeling, and the merits and shortcomings of both activities. The second part covers the main forms of inference in science: deductive, inductive, abductive, probabilistic, statistical, and causal. The book concludes with a discussion of explanation, theorizing and theory-change, and the relationship between science and society. The textbook is designed to be adaptable to a wide variety of different kinds of courses. In any of these different uses, the book helps students better navigate our scientific, 21st-century world, and it lays the foundation for more advanced undergraduate coursework in a wide variety of liberal arts and science courses. Selling Points Helps students develop scientific literacy—an essential aspect of _any_ undergraduate education in the 21 st century, including a broad understanding of scientific reasoning, methods, and concepts Written for all beginning college students: preparing science majors for more focused work in particular science; introducing the humanities’ investigations of science; and helping non-science majors become more sophisticated consumers of scientific information Provides an abundance of both contemporary and historical examples Covers reasoning strategies and norms applicable in all fields of physical, life, and social sciences, _as well as_ strategies and norms distinctive of specific sciences Includes visual aids to clarify and illustrate ideas Provides text boxes with related topics and helpful definitions of key terms, and includes a final Glossary with all key terms Includes Exercises for Active Learning at the end of each chapter, which will ensure full student engagement and mastery of the information include earlier in the chapter Provides annotated ‘For Further Reading’ sections at the end of each chapter, guiding students to the best primary and secondary sources available Offers a Companion Website, with: For Students: direct links to many of the primary sources discussed in the text, student self-check assessments, a bank of exam questions, and ideas for extended out-of-class projects For Instructors: a password-protected Teacher’s Manual, which provides student exam questions with answers, extensive lecture notes, classroom-ready Power Point presentations, and sample syllabi Extensive Curricular Development materials, helping any instructor who needs to create a Scientific Reasoning Course, ex nihilo. (shrink)

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be (...) referred to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed. (shrink)

In this paper we examine how the use of robots in caring for elders can impact the meaningfulness of elders’ lives. We present a framework for understanding ‘meaningfulness in life’, and then apply that framework in discussing ways in which the use of robots to assist in activities of daily living can preserve, enhance or undermine the meaningfulness of elders’ lives. We conclude with a discussion of if and how having false beliefs about companion robots can affect (...) meaningfulness in the life of the person having those false beliefs. (shrink)

As evidence of the unintended consequences of industrial farm animal production continues to mount, it is becoming increasingly clear that, far from being a trivial matter of personal preference, eating is an activity that has deep moral and spiritual significance. Surprising as it may sound, the simple question of what to eat can prompt Christians daily to live out their spiritual vision of Shalom for all creatures--to bear witness to the marginalization of the poor, the exploitation of the oppressed, (...) the suffering of the innocent, and the degradation of the natural world, and to participate in the reconciliation of these ills through intentional acts of love, justice, mercy, and good stewardship. The aim of this work is to understand the cultivation of more intentional "compassionate eating" habits as a form of engaged Christian discipleship that responds to a wide array of practical, moral, and spiritual problems affecting all aspects of creation--human, animal, and environmental. The guiding suggestion is that compassionate eating is a spiritual discipline that offers a symbolically significant and practically effective way to live in faithful anticipation of the "peaceable kingdom" described in Judeo-Christian creation and redemption narratives. (shrink)

This chapter discusses three types of sociable robots for older adults: robotic caregivers ; robotic friends ; and sex robots. The central argument holds that society ought to make reasonable efforts to provide these types of robots and that under certain conditions, omitting such support not only harms older adults but poses threats to their dignity. The argument proceeds stepwise. First, the chapter establishes that assisting care-dependent older adults to perform activities of daily living is integral to (...) respecting dignity. Here, the argument establishes the vital role that carebots-of-the-future might play in aged societies as the supply of working age adults falls shy of demand. Next, the chapter extends this analysis to designing friendbots for socially isolated older adults. The argument holds that reasonable efforts to provide access to friendbots for socially isolated adults is also a future societal responsibility. Finally, the chapter applies similar reasoning to show that societies ought to make reasonable efforts to support sexual capabilities for older adults who want to be sexual but are bereft of sex partners. The argument draws on capability accounts of justice to show that when central human capacities, such as bodily integrity; intimate relationships; and the use of senses, imagination and thought, are at risk of falling below a threshold level, society should intercede. (shrink)

The dominant response to Peter Singer’s defense of an extremely demanding duty of aid argues that an affluent person’s duty of aid is limited by her moral entitlement to live her own life. This paper argues that this entitlement provides a basis not for limiting an affluent person’s duty of aid but rather for the claim that she too is wronged by a world marked by widespread desperate need; and the wrong she suffers is a distinctive one: the activation of (...) a duty of aid so demanding that it dominates her life, crowding out her own valuable projects and involvements. (shrink)

Philosophers have been contemplating the nature of the mind for centuries and have produced mountains of intricate jargon, thought experiments, and views, that map a landscape of interminable disputes. One such dispute is between philosophers who believe that the mind can be explained as a mechanism and philosophers who insist it cannot. In this paper I take a look at this dispute and argue that it is unique in philosophy and a key to the nature of the mind.

How is it possible for David Hume to be both withering skeptic and constructive theorist? I recommend an answer like the Pyrrhonian answer to the question how it is possible to suspend all judgment yet engage in active daily life. Sextus Empiricus distinguishes two kinds of assent: one suspended across the board and one involved with daily living. The first is an act of will based on appreciation of reasons; the second is a causal effect of appearances. (...) Hume makes the same distinction, only he extends the sort of assent involved in daily life to theoretical matters as well. He is a skeptic both in finding no reason to grant the first sort of assent and in being subject to the second. (shrink)

The activities of man and other beings on a daily basis have been the primordial antecedence for the negative changes experienced in the environment today. Nature in its rudimentary state was harmless and friendly to man and its inhabitants. But owing to the egocentric approaches of man towards the environment, fundamentally for the purpose of earning a living and advancing development, man manipulates every available resources to his favor including the environment. These egomaniacal demeanor has propelled the (...) once harmless nature to react against human beings, causing socio-economic and psychological damages. Climate change to this end has been defined as a change in oceans, land surfaces and ice sheets occurring overtime scales of decades or longer. It expresses itself in the evidence differentiation from the usual sun radiation, volcanoes, internal virility in climate system or human system. The twenty first century is facing the boomerang of the human seeds sown on the climate. It becomes imperative for Africans to align with the rest of the world in fashioning out an approach to tackle climate change and other related environmental issues, and curb the present and predicted damages. To this end the paper proposes Innocent Asouzu’s complementary Noetic Propaedeutic principle as the viable prognosis towards fostering environmental peace, mutual co-existence with all other beings within the horizon to bring about solution to climate change. The paper explores the philosophical methods of analysis and prescription in its research. (shrink)

Russia took the advantage of the contribution of the Armenian armed organizations in order to possess Istanbul, straits around it, Eastern Anatolia, to weaken Turkey, to be strengthen in the Southern Caucasus, organized the rebellion of the Armenians living in Turkey against the government. Russian ruling circles put forward the Armenian matter in order to take advantage of them. Armenians involved in the war to create their own government by obtaining the territory including Van, Bitlis, Tigranakert, Erzurum, Kharberd and (...) Sebastya, as well as Cilicia from Turkey, to solve their Armenian problem. But in fact, Russia, France and England tried to blow to Turkey pretending to try for building an independent Armenian government. The grade of contribution of Armenian military units in the First World War can be characterized as following: 1. Creating the Armenian volunteer units. 2. Establishing the regular battalions and infantry regiments and forming the national corpuses. The organizations of Hnchak and Dashnaksutyun actively participated in creating the Armenian volunteer units. Dashnaks mobilized 40 000 people to destroy the Turkish people. They established tens of khumbas. The Armenian volunteer units were commanded by Andranic Ozanyan, Dro, Amazasp, Keri, Checho, Vardan and others terrorists. Armenian volunteer units which were supposed to move in 4 directions, should act in the directions where the Armenian people were densely populated. These 4 Armenian volunteer units fight against Turks in all important combat operations from Sarigamish to Erzurum. The same time Russian army and Armenians triggered the rebellion of the local population against the Turkish government. 50000 of Armenians were fighting in French, England and USA armies. The Eastern legion of Armenians was established in French army on November 1916. On November 15, 1918, the Eastern Legion was named Armenian legion. The number of the Armenians in the legion riched to 4000. In the beginning of 1916, there was an announcement about subordination of the military detachments to army and establishment of infantry regiments based on that. Establishment of the separate Armenian corpus started at the end of December 1917. In 1917, 8 Armenian shooter regiments were established. From the mentioned 8 regiments two Armenian shooter divisions, the special Armenian division of Andranic, 3 infantry brigades of western Armenians in the Southern Caucasus region, some guerrilla troops in Erevan, Igdir guerrilla infantry and rider regiments, Zeytun regiment in Tbilisi were established. At present, Armenia often raises false claims such as the "Armenian genocide" in the parliaments of the world, trying to confirm this lie. This research proves that Armenians betrayed the Ottoman state during the First World War and also committed Turkish genocides. (shrink)

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, global (...) warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the AIDS epidemic (AIDS being spread by modern travel). All these global problems, involving preventable deaths of millions, have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act without acquiring the capacity to act wisely. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that the basic intellectual aim becomes, not knowledge merely, but rather to help humanity acquire the capacity to resolve conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways. The revolution we need would affect every branch and aspect of academic inquiry. The basic intellectual task of academia would be to articulate our problems of living (personal, social and global) and propose and critically assess possible solutions, possible actions. This would be the task of social inquiry and the humanities. Tackling problems of knowledge would be secondary. Social inquiry would be at the heart of the academic enterprise, intellectually more fundamental than natural science. On a rather more long-term basis, social inquiry would be concerned to help humanity build cooperatively rational methods of problem-solving into the fabric of social and political life, so that we may gradually acquire the capacity to resolve our conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways. Natural science would change to include three domains of discussion: evidence, theory, and aims – the latter including discussion of metaphysics, values and politics. Academia would actively seek to educate the public by means of discussion and debate. These changes all come from demanding that academia cure its current damaging structural irrationality, so that reason – the authentic article – may be devoted to promoting human welfare. (shrink)

This is an applied study endeavour with the aim of exploring the specific role of survivalist retail entrepreneurship in job creation and poverty reduction. Two hundred (200) subjects were sampled using snowballing technique. Structured questionnaires as well as semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data. 182 usable questionnaires were analysed with the help of SPSS version 23. The results indicate that retail entrepreneurship is evolving in Khayelitsha, especially when one does not only focus on spaza shops, but looks at the (...) entire survivalist retail industry. This sector is capable of creating jobs, reducing poverty and aiding economic growth of the country even more, should measures to boost motivation levels and self-efficacy of the entrepreneurs emerge. These measures, among others could include support programmes for survivalist entrepreneurial ventures that present greater potential for growth and job creation. Part of the support programmes should include business skills training (such as simple bookkeeping practices and human resource management). Importantly, this study is the first of its kind in the community of Khayelitsha; an emerging black-populated township in South Africa, indicating a new vista for retail entrepreneurship research. (shrink)

This article explores the meeting of two approaches towards philosophy and education: the philosophy for children approach advocated by Lipman and others, and Schmid’s philosophical concept of Lebenskunst. Schmid explores the concept of the beautiful or good life by asking what is necessary for each individual to be able to develop their own art of living and which aspects of life are significant when shaping a good and beautiful life. One element of Schmid’s theory is the practical application of (...) philosophy through the notions of Bildung, reflection, prudence and practical wisdom, as well as the requirement for each individual to take responsibility for actively shaping their life as an artwork. In this sense, each person is the artist responsible for living their own beautiful life. We argue that there are useful parallels between Schmid’s concept of the art of living and P4C, such as the ideal of a holistic philosophy that is “lived.” The pragmatic approach of P4C focuses on the embodied learner who practices critical, caring and creative thinking. Both P4C and Schmid’s theory are reminiscent of the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom, which allows for an approach to an education for life that prepares students to develop their own art of living. (shrink)

1: Placebo effect sometimes plausibly has powerful effects. 2: Buddhism philosophy holds that every living animal is sentient, and has a consciousness and killing them is bad for the killer and freeing them is good somehow. Consciousness may involve some aspects of quantum mechanism as Roger Penrose’s Orch OR' theory of consciousness pointed out. -/- 3: Although previous studies show that there is no “demonstrable effects of distant intercessory prayer. Anecdotal cases of a special kind of Buddhist activity of (...) freeing captive animals in huge amount seem to have powerful therapeutic effects on severe and terminal patients. We want test it experimentally. 4: The cunning point that exceeds previous stuies is, it’s reasonable to consider there may be collective and superpositional effects of this activity due to the likely quantum mechanism of consciousness, and it may play as a sort of magnifying glass that shows a discernible placebo effect. -/- 5:We recruit a considerable number of patients that are terminally ill and the doctors said they can not help them anymore and have double-blind experiments of the above idea.The statistics may show some anomalous distribution. Ethical concerns shall take into consideration. (shrink)

Is reality the basis of everything or has reality itself an other basis? What makes reality – not the real things – to be active, to exist? The question of what is real seems to be an easy question, because in our daily lives we are and must be naive realists. We ourselves, the things around us, the world, the facts, all that is real. there must be several concepts of reality if we want to say that not only (...) physical or material things of everyday life are real, e. g. numbers, π, Dr. Faustus, thoughts, emotions and other things. On the other hand, given the difference of classical physics and modern physics, we see that even that form of knowledge, which seems to be most responsible for reality, natural science, cannot give the desired uniqueness in terms of what itself wants or needs to understand as real. Alternatively, when we see that nothing can be and nothing can be real without being in a world, and when we understand the world as the order of things, which I call worldI , then this leads us to the speculative answer that it is exactly the “unreal” worldI which is the reason why the everyday reality, worldI I , is real. The worldI is the basis for the reality of our empirical worldI I . The considerations presented here have nothing to do with the idealistic conception of possibility, founded in the power of the subject, nor with the existential concept of potentiality, founded in the Entwurf des Daseins. (shrink)

Schröedinger’s question “what is life?” was a real challenge for the scientific community and this still remains as an opened question, because in spite of the important advances in various scientific branches like philosophy, biology, chemistry and physics,, each of them assesses life from its particular point of view to explain the life’ characteristic features, so not a coherent and well structured general model of life was reported. In this paper life is approached from informational perspective, starting from earlier Draganeacu's (...) philosophic concepts, showing that actually life is structured by matter and information. Therefore, it is analyzed carbon-matter properties on the basis of which the living structures are composed, giving rise not only of a considerable number of carbon-based compounds, but serving now beside silicon, as an useful material for micro/nanostructure applications. Such specific properties refers to the high ability of carbon to associate/dissociate in chemical reactions regulated/facilitated by informational (Bit unit) YES/NO bistable mechanisms to form macro/small molecules with complementary properties, reactive info-functional pathways of transduction, relaying, amplification, integration, spreading, modulation, activation and positive/negative feedback reactions, like in the informational microelectronic/microsystems circuits. It is argued that the negentropy invoked earlier in Schrödinger's analysis is a consequence of informational-assisted structuration/organization of the cell and human organism. From the analysis of inter/intra-communication mechanisms in the cell and comparing with the outcomes described by the Informational Model of Human Body, it is deduced that, the living organisms operate on the basis of three main streaming circuits assuring the living functions: (1) the metabolic matter-related circuit; (2) the operative informational circuit; (3) the epigenetic informational circuit for the gradual integration of information in the central informational structure – DNA. It is founded on these bases the Informational Model of the Living Structures, and the Informational System of the Living Structures (ISLS), with similar functions on the entire living scale size, from unitary to multicellular living structures, composed by seven informational systems, namely [CASI (center of acquisition and storing of information), CDC (center of decision and command), IRSS (info-reactive sentient system), MIS (maintenance info-system), GTS (genetic transmission system), IGG (info-genetic generator) and IC (info-connection)]ISLS, and are identified the specific functions of each of them. The living structures operate thus like self-“polarized" bipolar info-matter informational devices by means of the stand-by metabolic matter-related circuit, and react/respond to the external/internal informational stimuli, which modulate their functionality, returning an external reaction signal (“attitude"), for adaptation and survival. (shrink)

After the WHS inscription of the Historic Centre of Macau in 2005, the relationship between citizens of Macau and their heritage is not distanced. Most of these monuments remain functional for religious and social purposes and are actively engaged in public commercial activities such as the annual Macau Light Festival. Several historic houses have been transformed into either a permanent library or a museum where people can experience various events. With such frequent interaction, these monuments are more than just (...) heritage to locals; they are the venues where people’s daily lives are attached. However, this familiarity will cause a paradox in preservation since losing the distance might mean being unable to deliver the message of protection. It would be difficult to find a balance between preservation and reuse of heritage. This paper will use the Historic Centre of Macau as a case study to discuss the types of adaptive reuse in Macau and propose potential risks of these approaches. (shrink)

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, global (...) warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these global problems have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act, via science and technology, without also acquiring the capacity to act wisely. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that the basic intellectual aim becomes, not knowledge merely, but rather wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. The revolution we require would put problems of living at the heart of the academic enterprise, the pursuit of knowledge emerging out of, and feeding back into, the fundamental intellectual activity of proposing and critically assessing possible actions, policies, political programmes, from the standpoint of their capacity to help solve problems of living. This revolution would affect almost every branch and aspect of academic inquiry. (shrink)

Listening effort helps explain why people who are hard of hearing are prone to fatigue and social withdrawal. However, a one-factor model that cites only effort due to hardness of hearing is insufficient as there are many who lead happy lives despite their disability. This paper explores other contributory factors, in particular motivational arousal and pleasure. The theory of rational motivational arousal predicts that some people forego listening comprehension because they believe it to be impossible and hence worth no effort (...) at all. This is problematic. Why should the listening task be rated this way, given the availability of aids that reduce its difficulty? Two additional factors narrow the explanatory gap. First, we separate the listening task from the benefit derived as a consequence. The latter is temporally more distant, and is discounted as a result. The second factor is displeasure attributed to the listening task, which increases listening cost. Many who are hard of hearing enjoy social interaction. In such cases, the actual activity of listening is a benefit, not a cost. These people also reap the benefits of listening, but do not have to balance these against the displeasure of the task. It is suggested that if motivational harmony can be induced by training in somebody who is hard of hearing, then the obstacle to motivational arousal would be removed. This suggests a modified goal for health care professionals. Don’t just teach those who are hard of hearing how to use hearing assistance devices. Teach them how to do so with pleasure and enjoyment . (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of agency and intentionality in the context of the free-energy principle. The free-energy principle is a system-theoretic framework for understanding living self-organizing systems and how they relate to their environments. I will first sketch the main philosophical positions in the literature: a rationalist Helmholtzian interpretation (Hohwy 2013; Clark 2013), a cybernetic interpretation (Seth 2015b) and the enactive affordance-based interpretation (Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014; Bruineberg et al. 2016) and will then show how agency and (...) intentionality are construed differently on these different philosophical interpretations. I will then argue that a purely Helmholtzian is limited, in that it can account only account for agency in the context of perceptual inference. The cybernetic account cannot give a full account of action, since purposiveness is accounted for only to the extent that it pertains to the control of homeostatic essential variables. I will then argue that the enactive affordance-based account attempts to provide broader account of purposive action without presupposing goals and intentions coming from outside of the theory. In the second part of the paper, I will discuss how each of these three interpretations conceives of the sense agency and intentionality in different ways. (shrink)

The heart of Dewey’s call to humanize techno-industrial civilization was to conceive science and technology in the service of aesthetic consummations. Hence his philosophy suggests a way to reclaim and affirm technology on behalf of living more fulfilling lives. He remains a powerful ally today in the fight against deadening efficiency, narrow means-end calculation, “frantic exploitation,” and the industrialization of everything. Nonetheless, it is common to depict him as a philosopher we should think around rather than with. The first (...) section of this essay explores his philosophy of technology and environment in light of Bacon, Heidegger, and Borgmann. Most of the techno-industrial and vocational activities which we pretend are “instrumental,” Dewey argued, actually reduce “to a very minimum the esthetic aspect of experiences had in the course of the daily occupation.” It is argued that, insofar as cooperative intelligence can guide the direction of technological development, it does not honor contemplative life if we abdicate or downgrade that responsibility. The second section of this essay explores Dewey’s instrumentalism as a critique of vicious intellectualism. It is argued that, for Dewey, genuine progress serves the aesthetic dimension of experience. This assertion contrasts with the most common interpretive error among both critics and admirers of Dewey, namely that he is mostly a champion of science. Moreover, critics of Dewey’s instrumentalist theory of inquiry often mistake it as (a) an attack on any conception of intrinsic value, or (b) an attempt to collapse the value of means into the value of ends. In Dewey’s view, we habitually look for progress in the wrong place because we carry around with us some big idea of a final and ultimate good for measuring it. In his view, the ameliorative expansion of significance that emerges from our dealings with perplexing situations is the only place progress can really be found. (shrink)

India is the leading producer of fruits worldwide. The major problem after citrus fruits consumption is their peel that are hazardous to our environment and mainly regarded as a solid waste however, they are rich sources of fibres, large amount of Vitamin C, phenolics and flavonoids which are best agents of antioxidant. In this paper, we have discussed about the orange peel waste which has many beneficial roles in our daily life. Citrus peel has the highest number of Phytochemicals (...) such as flavonoids, terpenoids, quinolines and having highest antioxidant activity as compared to the pulp and seed as well as identified from the extraction. The different Phytochemicals test analysis have been discussed in this paper (steroids testing, saponins testing) and different antioxidant test used to check the antioxidant activity of the citrus fruit peel extract are Hydrogen peroxide scavenging test, Nitric oxide scavenging test, DPPH test etc. The main objective of this paper is that the higher antioxidant activity of different mixture of Citrus fruit peel can help to reduce the generation of free radicals and can act as an anti-proliferative agent. The search for novel drugs and alternative medicine especially against cancer has led to increased research in medicinal plants. This review also indicated that Citrus peels contains antioxidant compounds which could be exploited as value added products in the food and cosmetic industry. (shrink)

As individuals we often face complex issues about which we must weigh evidence and come to conclusions. Corporations also have to make decisions on the basis of strong and compelling arguments. Legal practitioners, compelled by arguments for or against a proposition and underpinned by the weight of evidence, are often required to make judgments that affect the lives of others. Medical doctors face similar decisions. Governments make purchasing decisions—for example, for expensive military equipment—or decisions in the areas of public or (...) foreign policy. These issues involve many arguments on all sides of difficult debates. These issues involve understanding the arguments of others and being able to make objections and provide rebuttals to objections. Students in universities deal with arguments all the time. A major purpose of a university education—regardless of subject matter—is to teach students how to read, understand, and respond to complex arguments. The ability to do this makes for highly employable, adaptable, and reflectively critical individuals. We often call the skill of marshaling arguments and assessing them “critical thinking.” All universities claim to instill the skill of critical thinking in their graduates and routinely note this in their advertising and promotional documents. This short paper outlines one way this skill can be taught. (shrink)

The term unemployment is defined by the International Labour Organization (2010) as the scenario where people are without jobs and have been actively looking for work within the past four weeks. Unemployment has been a bone of contention the world over but due to its high prevalence in Zimbabwe, its effects have been grossly perceived in the various age groups ranging from 18-60 as citizen’s fall far below the daily living wage in the country due to unemployment (ZimStat, (...) 2012). The effects of unemployment are severely negative and this is further worsened by the high inflation rates in Zimbabwe thus leaving unemployed citizens living in squalor or abject poverty unable to afford food, cover school and hospital expenses making unemployed youths resort to crime such as theft and prostitution. The writing below will vividly portray the costs of unemployment in Zimbabwe from an individual, social and socio-political perspective. (shrink)

I argue that the science of the soul only covers sublunary living things. Aristotle cannot properly ascribe ψυχή to unmoved movers since they do not have any capacities that are distinct from their activities or any matter to be structured. Heavenly bodies do not have souls in the way that mortal living things do, because their matter is not subject to alteration or generation. These beings do not fit into the hierarchy of soul powers that Aristotle relies (...) on to provide unity to ψυχή. Their living consists in their activities, not in having a capacity for activity. (shrink)

The paper addresses claims that Aristotle's notion of happiness is inconsistent given his expositions of happiness in Book I and Book X of NE. It argues that such claims are rooted in the erroneous conclusion that Aristotle defines happiness in Book I as living a "good life", and an unwarranted assumption that when Aristotle identifies happiness with contemplation, he has a professional philosopher in mind and contemplation as an activity one engages in leisurely and as a means of intellectual (...) conditioning. It further argues that happiness as Aristotle understands it is a reward for cultivating virtuous character and though everyone has the capacity for it, only few will attain happiness since it requires exertion and effort and many are unwilling to prioritize such acquisition. (shrink)

Current knowledge of the RNA world indicates 2 different genetic codes being present throughout the living world. In contrast to non-coding RNAs that are built of repetitive nucleotide syntax, the sequences that serve as templates for proteins share—as main characteristics—a non-repetitive syntax. Whereas non-coding RNAs build groups that serve as regulatory tools in nearly all genetic processes, the coding sections represent the evolutionarily successful function of the genetic information storage medium. This indicates that the differences in their syntax structure (...) are coherent with the differences of the functions they represent. Interestingly, these 2 genetic codes resemble the function of all natural languages, i.e., the repetitive non-coding sequences serve as appropriate tool for organization, coordination and regulation of group behavior, and the nonrepetitive coding sequences are for conservation of instrumental constructions, plans, blueprints for complex protein-body architecture. This differentiation may help to better understand RNA group behavioral motifs. (shrink)

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, global (...) warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these global problems have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act, via science and technology, without also acquiring the capacity to act wisely. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that the basic intellectual aim becomes, not knowledge merely, but rather wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. The revolution we require would put problems of living at the heart of the academic enterprise, the pursuit of knowledge emerging out of, and feeding back into, the fundamental intellectual activity of proposing and critically assessing possible actions, policies, political programmes, from the standpoint of their capacity to help solve problems of living. This revolution would affect almost every branch and aspect of academic inquiry. (shrink)

We undeniably live in an information age—as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: ‘every age was an age of information, each in its own way’ (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. Natural (...) history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their ‘preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology… [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science’ (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed to appreciate how principles and practices that can be traced to Linnaeus constituted ‘a change in the nature of taxonomy from a local or limited folk communication system and later a codified folk taxonomy to a formal system of information science [that] marked a watershed in the history of biology’ (ibid.). A similar observation could be made about twentieth-century philosophy of biology, which mostly skipped over practical and epistemic questions about information management in taxonomy. The taxonomic themes that featured in the emerging philosophy of biology literature in the second half of the twentieth century were predominantly metaphysical in orientation. This is illustrated by what has become known as the ‘essentialism story’: an account about the essentialist nature of pre- Darwinian taxonomy that used to be accepted by many historians and philosophers, and which stimulated efforts to document and interpret shifts in the metaphysical understanding of species and (natural) classification (Richards 2010; Winsor 2003; Wilkins 2009). Although contemporary debates in the philosophy of taxonomy have moved on, much discussion continues to focus on conceptual and metaphysical issues surrounding the nature of species and the principles of classification. Discussions centring on whether species are individuals, classes, or kinds have sprung up as predictably as perennials. Raucous debates have arisen even with the aim of accommodating the diversity of views: is monism, pluralism, or eliminativism about the species category the best position to take? In addition to these, our disciplines continue to interrogate what is the nature of these different approaches to classification: are they representational or inferential roles of different approaches to classification (evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics, phylogenetic systematics)? While there is still much to learn from these discussions—in which we both actively participate—our aim with this topical collection has been to seek different entrypoints and address underexposed themes in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. We believe that approaching taxonomy as an information science prompts new questions and can open up new philosophical vistas worth exploring. A twenty-first century information science turn in the history and philosophy of taxonomy is already underway. In scientific practice and in daily life it is hard to escape the imaginaries of Big Data and the constant threats of being ‘flooded with data’. In the life sciences, these developments are often associated with the socalled bioinformatics crisis that can hopefully be contained by a new, interdisciplinary breed of bioinformaticians. These new concepts, narratives, and developments surrounding the centrality of data and information systems in the biological and biomedical sciences have raised important philosophical questions about their challenges and implications. But historical perspectives are just as necessary to judge what makes our information age different from those that preceded us. Indeed, as the British zoologist Charles Godfray has often pointed out, the piles of data that are being generated in contemporary systematic biology have led to a second bioinformatics crisis, the first being the one that confronted Linnaeus in the mid-18th century (Godfray 2007). Although our aim is to clear a path for new discussions of taxonomy from an information science-informed point of view, we continue where others in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science have already trod. We believe that an appreciation of biological taxonomy as an information science raises many questions about the philosophical, theoretical, material, and practical aspects of the use and revision of biological nomenclatures in different local and global communities of scientists and citizen scientists. In particular, conceiving of taxonomy as an information science directs attention to the temporalities of managing an accumulating data about classified entities that are themselves subject to revision, to the means by which revision is accomplished, and to the semantic, material, and collaborative contexts that mediate the execution of revisions. (shrink)

Many people go outdoors in winter for skiing, snowboarding, sledding, snowmobiling and some other activities that all fall within the realm of winter tourism. Winter tourism is a source of both personal and public health, and thus a source of prosperous living. Along with that, it is a conspicuous economic phenomenon that generates millions of dollars in annual revenue for stakeholders. Hence, this type of tourism is of top importance, and thus one of the main concerns to many (...) snowy destinations with high altitudes such as those in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. Stakeholders such as entrepreneurs, business professionals, state incumbents, and tourism, leisure, and sports scholars should benefit from both precedent and unprecedented principles and practices to cultivate the industry, and they should constantly seek to improve the winter tourism experience. Therefore, it is aimed to drive implications from the success of a cult winter tourism location MooserWirt in Sankt Anton herein by depending on a web-based examination. MooserWirt is an après-ski bar located in a world-famous village and ski resort called St Anton at the Arlberg Massif in Austria. The bar is open in winter seasons starting from early December to the end of April. It serves daily between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. up to three thousand people. The bar team starts serving food and beverage at 11 a.m. Then at 3:30 p.m., the bar’s magnate –DJ starts his ritual music party that captivates and amuses hundreds if not thousands of ski-goers. MooserWirt is regarded as one of the best après ski lodges throughout the world. Many people would ask for the principles of such a success. By depending on a web-based examination of the case, we can respond to that kind of a call with a few generic implications. First of all, one of the main features that makes the bar special seems to be its music parties. People mostly comment that the bar has a music mogul –DJ, and enjoyable mixtures of music that charm the audience. Furthermore, the bar has heretofore hosted the prominent TV show known as Après Ski Hits featuring various famed singers and bands on outdoor stage performance many times to commence the season. Secondly, many people acknowledge that the bar has an eye-catching menu with delightful foods and beverages of local ingredients with a reasonable tariff. Third, we deduce that the bar serves with an agile and friendly team that satisfies the customers in general. Various people appreciate the performance of the staff. Last but not least, the bar has an elegant architectural design with a comfortable ambiance enclosed by a typical winter landscape. Overall, MooserWirt is a quality locale as it commonly meets the expectations of skiers of an après-ski lodge. In conclusion, MooserWirt has been seemingly building up a tradition through quality over the decades. It is distinctive through product differentiation. It serves with dedicated personnel adhering to quality service that generates customer satisfaction, and it uses a powerful marketing strategy that leads to having worldwide visibility and being a mind-anchored brand with preeminence. (shrink)

During the idea generation phase of the design process, designers often search for inspirations in external sources of information, such as photographs, written descriptions and physical examples. These sources have potential to enhance creative performance. However, they sometimes become too attached to particular ideas of external precedents or various examples. It refers to fixation which is identified as inadequate adoption of features from existing examples. Influence of the existing examples on creativity and fixation, specifically textual examples, have been discussed in (...) this research. -/- For the nature of design, researchers highlighted the restructuring process of design problem by new sources because the capabilities and boundaries of design problems are not defined very well. Further, the design problem is not knowable at any specific point. Design knowledge identifies itself by its ambiguity. Many models have been developed for design process. The various numbers of divided phases of the models can be seen as having two main areas: (1) idea generation phase (or “ideation”); (2) later phase for details. Idea generation plays an important role in the design process. It is the area of new and creative configurations on design. -/- Creativity is an integral part of the design process. Designers purpose to achieve original ideas to demonstrate their ability and unique designs. External stimuli or inspirational inputs play important roles to increase creativity. They can support moments of stimulation. Associations between information from memory and external stimuli can contribute to the creation of new meanings. Designers are widely influenced by their surroundings in daily lives. However, each stimulus may not be the part of a more creative result Even if designers want to utilize stimulus as an inspirational source, somehow it may fixate their mind to its surface features and they may lose potential creative contributions of the source. It is called fixation. There is much research that shows significant evidence of conformity effects across the design problems. -/- The given examples to designers may cause higher-level fixation and lower-level creativity or vice versa. Fixation may occur when example solutions are introduced, on the other hand, the designers may create more original ideas as well. There is a need for research to find ways to avoid fixation traps or reduce their adverse impact. Thus, this research focuses on variables of the given example. -/- The following claims show some research areas remained unclear: (1) Some researchers investigated textual examples as - one of the modalities of representation - but did not focus on forms of textual examples. (2) Much research has been conducted with examples which are selected by the researcher. Nevertheless, designers can also choose or produce their own stimuli. There is not much research on this possibility. In this context, my research focuses on the following two variables through two studies (Study 1 and 2): (1) forms of textual examples; (2) self-construction of textual examples. First, most of the studies in the literature have focused on visual presentation and there is not enough research on the content and form of the text. The study of textual examples has still not been awarded enough attention especially as various forms of text. Some forms of text are as follows: keyword, paragraph, sentence, poem. These observations lead me to the following research question: Which forms of textual example increase creativity and reduce fixation more? (Study 1). -/- Second, most of the studies regarding textual examples have used prose or keywords. The poems have been ignored. However, poems imply more meaning with fewer words. The structure of the poems enables more creative narratives than structure of prose. Because unusual organization of words stimulates the readers and draws their attention. This activates the creative performance of the reader. The surrealist poem is the extreme form of this activation. It is random assemblies with headlines and sentences which is cut from newspapers. Thus, novel meaning networks are formed. The method of creating a surrealist poem offers a new way of getting inspiration. It is termed as self-construction practice by this research. Through this method, designers create their own example from the given one. Reconstruction of the text may increase the creative process and prevent fixations from the given text. This suggestion led me to the following research question: If the designers write their own poem instead of a given poem (as a self-construction practice), can they internalize the textual example? In addition, does it produce more creative and less fixated designs? (Study 2). Two experimental studies were planned to partially answer the research questions, in which novice students of architecture were asked to solve two different design problems, under different conditions. All of the experimental sessions were conducted in a design education studio. The participants produced sketches and added a written explanation relating to their designs. Fluency, flexibility and repetition of key attributes were calculated by the researcher. -/- Originality, practicality, understanding of the task and quality were ranked by judges. Study 1 shows us tendencies of using various textual forms. Distinctions of keywords and of poems have appeared among them. This emphasizes the role of keyword and poem in the design process as inspirational sources and provides many tips for their potential use. The keyword also leads to a high degree of fixation. However, a low degree of fixation is observed when poems are presented as inspirational examples. -/- In Study 2, the self-constructed poem seems to support develop more successful design ideas from many perspectives. In the context of the surrealist poem, writing and reading the surrealist poem trigger the designers’ imagination. At first, the words and lines of poems seem unrelated to each other and designers try to relate them and solve the puzzle of meaning. Hence, novel meaning networks are formed. It indicates that surrealist poems are able to activate the creative performance of the designers. Writing their own surrealist poems ,as a self-construction practice, motivated designers to begin to produce by having fun. Motivated designers have stimulated themselves to produce creative ideas. In other words, the self-construction process may be added to the design process models in the earlier part of the idea generation phase which is called as pre-design and warm-up phase. This earlier phase makes designers highly motivated and they internalized the given examples. -/- Following the conclusions, several implications and recommendations for the design process and education are discussed. (shrink)

For the last several years I have made the daily newspaper the pedagogical center piece of my philosophy seminar. This essay begins by describing the variations, themes, and logistics of this approach. The essay then offers several arguments in support of the value of this approach. The first argument references measurable indicators of success. A second argument contends that by “going live” with philosophical concepts, the newspaper-centered approach is uniquely well-positioned to motivate and excite the philosophy student. A third (...) argument claims that the newspaper-centered approach is well-positioned to construct an individualized bridge between the student and the world of philosophy. (shrink)

While it is largely agreed upon that solidarity is a kind of unity among persons, this agreement is short-lived – for if solidarity involves unity, what kind of unity is this? That is, does solidarity coalesce around shared identity or simply fellow-feeling? Shared action or fate? Or is solidarity merely a matter of commitment to a particular cause to achieve certain ends? Below, I look to examples of Mutual Aid to reject a piece-meal model of solidarity (where solidarity is this (...) but not that) in favor of a more pluralistic account. The notion of solidarity need not be constrained, all or nothing, by a specific strain of interpretation. Instead, we should recognize that solidarity is a matter of variety and degree. (shrink)

This study investigated the experiences of Physical Science teachers who were not specialized in their field. Twelve out-of-field Physical Science teachers, selected via purposive sampling from the Schools Division of Baybay City, participated in the transcendental phenomenological study. For data collection and subsequent thematic analysis using Colaizzi's seven steps, in-depth semi-structured interviews were utilized. Five metaphors describe the study's findings in the form of emergent themes. The first theme is the Chameleon teacher described as an adaptable teacher, analogous to a (...) chameleon that alters its coloration to blend into its surroundings. Developing a resilient mindset is the second aspect, symbolized by the Phoenix Within, which signifies the capacity to triumph over challenges. Thirdly, the Symphony of Knowledge symbolizes teachers' and learners' synergistic partnership and active participation throughout the educational journey. The fourth theme, the Gardener of Knowledge, compares an educator to a conscientious gardener who nurtures their development and that of their students. Crossing Unfamiliar Territory is another theme that examines Physical Science teachers' difficulties when instructing outside their field. As a result, the experiences of these teachers mitigate the issue at hand, thus positively impacting the student's academic development. Sustaining resilience in the face of adversity was inexplicably enhanced through implementing fostering strategies and cultivating a positive mindset. Similar to the adverse encounters, they must confront the obstacles posed by their lack of pedagogical expertise, content knowledge, and struggles. The favorable and unfavorable experiences of physical science teachers who did not specialize in their field provided them professional development opportunities. They underscored the value of maintaining a positive outlook. (shrink)

One of the most important features of contemporary Western societies is the rise of pluralism. Whereas theism used to serve as a common ground to discuss the truth-claims of religion, this approach seems to have lost much of its plausibility. What I want to argue in this article is that philosophy of religion as a critical intellectual activity still cannot do without the notion of religious truth, but also that it needs to redefine this truth in an existential way, i.e. (...) by interpreting religions as concrete ways of life. In this paper I develop this idea of religious truth by interpreting religions as traditions of wisdom, being a kind of truth that is able to orientate humans’ lives without being swayed by the issues of the day. In order to substantiate my interpretation I discuss three fundamental aspects of wisdom, viz. the fact that it rests on a broadened idea of reason, the way in which it discovers the universal in the particular, and the insight that all life-orientations are based on a principle that is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate. (shrink)

Science is the basis for managing the affairs of life and human activities, and living without knowledge is a form of wandering and a kind of loss. Using scientific methods helps us understand the foundations of choice, decision-making, and adopting the right solutions when solutions abound and options are numerous. Operational research is considered the best that scientific development has provided because its methods depend on the application of scientific methods in solving complex issues and the optimal use (...) of available resources in various fields, private and governmental work in peace and war, in politics and economics, in planning and implementation, and in various aspects of life. Its basic essence is to use the data provided for the issue under study to build a mathematical model that is the optimal solution. It is the basis on which decision makers rely in managing institutions and companies, and when operations research methods meet with the neutrosophic teacher, we get ideal solutions that take into account all the circumstances and fluctuations that may occur in the work environment over time. One of the most important operations research methods is the linear programming method. Which prompted us to reformulate the linear models, the graphical method, and the simplex method, which are used to obtain the optimal solution for linear models using the concepts of neutrosophic science. In this research, and as a continuation of what we presented previously, we will reformulate the modified simplex algorithm that was presented to address the difficulty that we were facing when applying the direct simplex algorithm. It is the large number of calculations required to be performed in each step of the solution, which requires a lot of time and effort. (shrink)

Human emotional expressions can communicate the emotional state of the expresser, but they can also communicate appeals to perceivers. For example, sadness expressions such as crying request perceivers to aid and support, and anger expressions such as shouting urge perceivers to back off. Some contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) systems can mimic human emotional expressions in a (more or less) realistic way, and they are progressively being integrated into our daily lives. How should we respond to them? Do we have (...) reasons to reply to the appeals made by AI emotional expressions? In this paper, we examine the conditions under which AI emotional expressions could give us prudential or even moral reasons to change our behavior. We argue that these conditions do not depend on whether the emotional expression is genuine or not, but rather on the presence of features some of which can be implemented in emotive AI given our current level of technological development. We extract recommendations and warnings for the development of emotive AI. (shrink)

A startling amount of intelligent activity can be controlled without reasoning or thought. By tuning the perceptual system to task relevant properties a creature can cope with relatively sophisticated environments without concepts. There is a limit, however, to how far a creature without concepts can go. Rod Brooks, like many ecologically oriented scientists, argues that the vast majority of intelligent behaviour is concept-free. To evaluate this position I consider what special benefits accrue to concept-using creatures. Concepts are either necessary for (...) certain types of perception, learning, and control, or they make those processes computationally simpler. Once a creature has concepts its capacities are vastly multiplied. (shrink)

Recently, due to the rapid progress of computer technology, researchers develop an effective computer program to enhance the achievement of the student in learning process, which is Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Science is important because it influences most aspects of everyday life, including food, energy, medicine, leisure activities and more. So learning science subject at school is very useful, but the students face some problem in learning it. So we designed an ITS system to help them understand this subject (...) easily and smoothly by analyzing it and explaining it in a systematic way. In this paper, we describe the design of an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching science for grade seven to help students know the 7 characteristics for living things smoothly. The system provides all topics of living things and generates some questions for each topic and the students should answer these questions correctly to move to the next level. In the result of an evaluation of the ITS, students like the system and they said that it is very useful for them and for their studies. (shrink)

For several decades, there has been a debate in the philosophical literature concerning whether those of us who live in developed countries are morally required to give some of our money to aid agencies. Many contributors to this debate have apparently taken it that one may simply assume that the effects of the work such agencies do are overwhelmingly positive. If one turns to the literature on such agencies that has emerged in recent decades, however, one finds a number of (...) concerns about such agencies and the work they do that put that assumption in serious doubt. This situation raises a number of pressing questions, many of which have received little or no attention from philosophers. After articulating a number of those questions, I focus mainly on what I call the ‘Epistemic Question (for potential contributors to aid agencies)’: How can those of us who are not experts in international aid arrive at an estimate concerning the effects of the work aid agencies do that we have at least some good reason to believe accurate? (shrink)

One goal of this paper is to argue that autobiographical memories are extended and distributed across embodied brains and environmental resources. This is important because such distributed memories play a constitutive role in our narrative identity. So, some of the building blocks of our narrative identity are not brain-bound but extended and distributed. Recognising the distributed nature of memory and narrative identity, invites us to find treatments and strategies focusing on the environment in which dementia patients are situated. A second (...) goal of this paper is to suggest various of such strategies, including lifelogging technologies such as SenseCams, life story books, multimedia biographies, memory boxes, ambient intelligence systems, and virtual reality applications. Such technologies allow dementia patients to remember their personal past in a way that wouldn’t be possible by merely relying on their biological memory, in that way aiding in preserving their narrative identity and positively contributing to their sense of well-being. (shrink)

Recently, due to the rapid progress of computer technology, researchers develop an effective computer program to enhance the achievement of the student in learning process, which is Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Science is important because it influences most aspects of everyday life, including food, energy, medicine, leisure activities and more. So learning science subject at school is very useful, but the students face some problem in learning it. So we designed an ITS system to help them understand this subject (...) easily and smoothly by analyzing it and explaining it in a systematic way. In this paper, we describe the design of an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching science for 7th grade to help students know the 7 characteristics for living things smoothly. The system provides all topics of living things and generates some questions for each topic and the students should answer these questions correctly to move to the next level. An evaluation was done for checking the students and teachers satisfaction of the ITS. The results of the evaluation showed that the students and teachers liked the system and they said that the system is very useful for them and for their studies. (shrink)

This study analyzed the monitoring and evaluation of HIV/AIDS prevention programs in Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State, Nigeria. The study considered different levels of care/support and tested for locational variations in the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs. A descriptive survey research design was utilized. This study covered 596 public health employees (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and laboratory employees) in the study area. A sample of 239 respondents was chosen using the proportional stratified random sampling procedure. Data was (...) collected using a questionnaire constructed by the researchers and validated by specialists. Data gathered were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results indicated that HIV/AIDs programs have been successfully monitored/evaluated to a high extent. High rates of success in the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs are attributable to high rates of care/support provided to people living with HIV/AIDs. There was a significant variation in the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs based on the location of health facilities, with higher rates recorded for urban areas. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the monitoring/evaluation of HIV/AIDs prevention programs in the Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State had recorded a significant level of success. The study recommended, among others, that there should be even distribution of medical facilities, resources and personnel to both urban and rural areas to promote equity and access to materials needed to contain or mitigate the spread of the pandemic across all locations. (shrink)

In this essay I propose a new reading of Michel Foucault’s main thesis about biopower and biopolitics. I argue that organisation represents the neglected key to Foucault’s new conceptualisation of power as something that is less political and more organisational. This unique contribution was lost even on his closest interlocutors. Foucault’s work on power had a strong influence on organisation and management theory but interestingly not for the reasons I am proposing. In fact, although theorists in management and organisation studies (...) have emphasised power in relation to discipline, control and subjectivity they have overlooked the transformative meaning of Foucault’s organisation. His work on biopolitics has attracted opposition, too, as evidenced by the controversy sparked by Giorgio Agamben about Foucault’s biopolitics. From Agamben’s critique, it appears that Foucault’s notions of politics and power do not allow a deconstruction of the violence of the concentration camp. However, a critical reading of Primo Levi’s biographical narratives reveals the camp as a place where the prisoners’ability to organise their daily lives secured survival. To make sense of Levi’s revelation, I use John Dewey’s notion of habits as forms of organisation and reconnect it to Foucault’s organisation. A shared understanding of the objective conditions of human activity and experience highlights the similarities between Dewey’s pragmatism and Foucault’s pragmatic metaphysics. In the end, however, Foucault’s metaphysical background has caught up with him, pushing him away from his own most radical proposal that organisation was the new form of power and the new substance of politics. (shrink)

What does Husserlian phenomenology have to offer feminist theory? More specifically, can we find resources within Husserl’s account of the living body ( Leib ) for the critical feminist project of rethinking embodiment beyond the dichotomies not only of mind/body but also of subject/object and activity/passivity? This essay begins by explicating the reasons for feminist hesitation with respect to Husserlian phenomenology. I then explore the resources that Husserl’s phenomenology of touch and his account of sensings hold for feminist theory. (...) My reading of Husserl proceeds by means of a comparison between his description of touch in Ideas II and Merleau-Ponty’s early appropriation of this account in the Phenomenology of Perception, as well as through an unlikely rapprochement between Husserl and Irigaray on the question of touch. Moreover, by revisiting the limitations in Husserl’s approach to the body—limitations of which any feminist appropriation must remain cognizant—I attempt to take Husserl’s phenomenology of touch beyond its initial methodologically solipsistic frame and to ask whether and how it can contribute to thinking gendered and racialized bodies. The phenomenology of touch, I argue, can allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and social-historical context. In opening up Husserl’s account of touch to other dimensions—intersubjective and affective—sociality is revealed as residing within, and structuring of, touch. Such touch can allow us to think embodiment anew. (shrink)

One question that leads us into aesthetics is: why does beauty matter? Or, what do aesthetic goods bring to my life, to make it a life that goes well? Or, how does beauty deserve the place we have evidently made for it in our lives? A theory of aesthetic value states what beauty is so as to equip us to answer this question. According to aesthetic hedonism, aesthetic values are properties of items that stand in constitutive relation to pleasure. Contemporary (...) versions of aesthetic hedonism don’t explain what makes aesthetic values aesthetic, but they do explain what makes them normative, stating what makes it the case that aesthetic value facts lend weight to what an agent should do, for the fact that acting yields pleasure is always a reason to act. This book introduces and defends an alternative to aesthetic hedonism. According to the network theory, aesthetic value facts lend weight to its being an achievement for an agent to act. Since agents achieve by acting in coordination with one another, the theory takes seriously the sociality of aesthetic activity. The main argument for the network theory is that it better explains six facts about aesthetic activity than does aesthetic hedonism. The book also discusses the relationship between aesthetic value and pleasure, the point and distinctive character of aesthetic discourse, and the metaphysics of aesthetic value. Two final chapters use the network theory to shed light on how aesthetic value matters to us as individuals and as members of collectives. (shrink)

The mythical bronze creature Talos (Greek: Τάλως) was worshiped initially as the god of light or the sun in the Hellenic Island of Crete. He is supposed to have lived in the peak Kouloukona of the Tallaia Mountains in the Gerontospelio cave. His relation towards bronze and fire and his continuous voyage circling the island of Crete most probably introduces the concept of the change of the four seasons. The sun was considered in the area of the South-East Mediterranean nations (...) as just judge, a guardian who monitors and judges from above all the actions of the commoners, a controller for the faithful application of laws in Crete [1]. Hesychios in his Lexicon notes that talos means sun and that the name Tallaios was initially attributed to Zeus [2]. The birth of the Olympian gods forged a new Pantheon and nomenclature forcing some of the old gods to fell into lower deities. This happened to Talos who soon became a mythical hero [1]. According to Apollodorus, the bronze creature was forged by the magnificent constructor Hephaestus as a gift to the mythical King Minoa to help him guard the island [3]. Although the verb “peritrohazo” (Greek: περιτροχαζω) was used, meaning a movement in a steady orbit (track), some depictions image him as a winged being. To protect the island, he was throwing rocks into unknown ships or in the case of a foreign landing he was burning with fire or with his flamed bronze body the intruders. He was holding copper plates with the laws of the island and his circle allowed him to pass all island sores three times daily [1,4-6]. Plato, speaks of him as a real person, suggesting he was the brother of King Rhadamanthys, thus a son of Zeus [5]. Talos may be considered as the token of the Cretan power, a symbol of technological development in the field of metalworking in prehistoric and Minoan times. An animated, programmed gigantic android to enforce its will. A primitive robot for basic actions having a power source, fire and ichor (Greek: ιχώρ) the sacred fluid in the vessels of the gods. The first manufactured being with his individual intelligence, a primary concept of artificial intelligence (AI) [7]. -/- Homer was the first to introduce the term automata (Greek: αυτόματα), to describe ingenious machines built by the supreme blacksmith god of invention and technology, God of metal and fire, Hephaestus, manufactured devices “acting of one’s own will” as the Hellenic word indicates [8]. Eons later, the humanoid automaton the “Automa cavaliere” (English: Automaton knight) appeared in the court of the nobleman and Duke of Milan Ludovico Maria Sforza. It was the year 1495, when Leonardo da Vinci presented his robotic knight, an innovative construction operated by a series of pulleys and cables, presenting though no individual mind. Although it was manufactured by a highly intelligent polymath, it could only be operated through an outer intelligence [9]. Advancements made during the Fourth Industrial Revolution allowed modern technology to manufacture intelligent machines to aid the field of invasive surgery. One of those most sophisticated devises is the da Vince Surgical Tower. -/- Launched in the setting of the 21st century, the DaVinci System is one of the most commonly employed tools/systems, which has prevailed in the field of robotic-assisted surgery [10]. One could claim that it practically reshaped the concept of surgery, providing doctors with immense capabilities, aiming towards the optimal post-operative outcome. Through visual augmentation, high resolution 3D video, enhanced precision and reduced complication rates [11] the DaVinci Si and the latest DaVinci Xi system have been implemented in a variety of surgeries, including but not limited to general, urologic, gynecologic, thoracic and even cardiac procedures; valve and coronary artery bypass graft operations [12,13]. Da Vinci is cleared globally for cardiosurgery and came in vogue to fulfill the dream of cardiac surgeons to operate in closet chest. It offers in patients the same benefits as those that open chest incision surgery procedures do [14]. -/- The more recent DaVinci Xi model was introduced to counteract commonly known drawbacks of the Si system, such as the inability to simultaneously manipulate the different abdominal quadrants [10]. It consists of four boom mounted robotic arms along with a mobile platform and a master console. The latter with the adaptable intraocular distance, the cushioned headrest, the modifiable arm bars and the flexible finger loops, is meticulously designed to meet the surgeon´s “demands” [12]. Every robotic arm has three degrees of freedom, which combined with the EndoWrist technology to imitate the delicate motion of the surgeon´s hand, acquires an extra seven degrees of freedom. Evidently, the combination of the user-friendly interface, the high-quality 3D intraoperative images, the multiple joints and sensors, as well as the surgeon himself, who can learn to handle the DaVinci Xi Surgical System in a relatively short period of time, has established the model in the surgical armamentarium, paving the way towards a continuously progressive future of minimally invasive and robotic surgery (Figure 1) [12]. -/- History testifies that the nomination of the AI surgical tower as da Vinci was wrongfully given to commemorate a majestic historical figure. It is clear that the mythical creature Talos which was fabricated by the ingenious god Hephaestus was the first true automaton in the line of AI origins. (shrink)