Digitisation of research data is widely increasing all around the world because it needs more and development of enormous digital technologies. Data curation services are starting to offer many libraries. Research data curation is the collective invaluable and reusable information of the researchers. Collected data preservation is more important. The majority of the higher education institutes preserved the research data for their students and researchers. It is stored for a long time using various formats. (...) It is called research data preservation. Without proper research data management plan and implementation cannot curate the research data. The aim of the study is to identify the Asian Library and Information Science (LIS) faculties’ experiences in the research data preservation and curation during their research. Data management, curation and preservation all are interlinked. For reuse of the research data; data curation is an essential role. For this research, we adopted a survey method and an online questionnaire was shared with 1400 LIS professionals, belonging to the Asian region but the completed study respondents are 125 university faculties from various Asian countries. The study findings are 76.8 per cent generated statistical data followed by 58.4 per cent textual files. By far, the most preferable data analysis tool is Microsoft Excel 82.4 per cent. Moreover, the result shows that generated data is mostly stored by personal computers and laptop hard disks. This study concludes LIS faculties having adequate skills and knowledge on data curation and preservation even though they are expecting more services from their academic institute …. (shrink)

Historic preservation, which is a vital act for conveying people’s understanding of the past, such as events, ideas, and places to the future, allows people to preserve history for future generations. Additionally, since the historic properties are currently concentrated in urban areas, an urban-oriented approach will contribute to the issue. Hence, public awareness is a key factor that paves the way for this conservation. Public history, a history with a public audience and special methods of representation, can serve society (...) in this regard. Historical video games, which get their game objectives from the past, can be considered a form of public history, raising people’s awareness and letting them gain historical experience. While plenty of studies focused on this content with various approaches, this study takes the topic under consideration with a player-oriented focus. The research uses the Steam video game digital distribution service database to explore the existing historical games based on their genre, player scale, dimension, VR compatibility attributes, and player rating. The database includes 1,148 games published between 2002 and 2022, filtered as historical by Steam tags and sorted by player review. For the data collection, the study uses the Octoparse web scraping tool for data extraction, and for the data analysis, it uses RapidMiner Studio data mining software. The study aims to provide a framework applicable to the development of commercially playable historical video games contributing to heritage preservation by raising public awareness in the context of public history. (shrink)

Seeking to preserve electronically encoded evidence implies that an incident or event has occurred requiring fact extrapolation for presentation, as proof of an irregularity or illegal act. Whether target data are in transit or at rest, it is critical that measures be in place to prevent the sought information from being destroyed, corrupted or becoming unavailable for forensic investigation.

This study aims to describe the cultural strategy of the Buginese people of Pagatan (one of ethnic group in Indonesia) in preserving their local wisdom living in a multicultural society. This research was conducted using qualitative descriptive method through three methods of data collection i.e. in-depth interview, observation and literature involving community leaders and ordinary people as informants. The historical-interpretative method was used to analyze the Data. The findings from this study indicate that the people of Buginese-Pagatan use (...) two strategies to preserve their Buginese identity in a pluralistic society i.e. the strategy of interaction patterns and the use of ethnic symbols. In the strategy of interaction patterns, they implement adaptive and inclusive interaction patterns. This strategy is represented by the mastery and the use of regional languages in addition to the Buginese language, cross-ethnic marriages, and participation in social activities. While in the strategy of using ethnic symbols, they form a distinct identity from the one existing in Sulawesi. This strategy is represented by the use of ethnic symbols such as wearing Bodo clothes, bone cap in the rituals of marriage and moving in new houses, preserving the ancient model of Buginese house for settlement, and forming a new cultural identity called Maccera Tasi. This research has identified local values preserved and held by its people as cultural strategies in building a harmonious society. We believe that the cultural strategies are useful not only to form a united, dignified and civilized local community of Indonesia, but also to serve as a model for other cultures to preserve their local wisdom. (shrink)

Many global catastrophic risks are threatening human civilization, and a number of ideas have been suggested for preventing or surviving them. However, if these interventions fail, society could preserve information about the human race and human DNA samples in the hopes that the next civilization on Earth will be able to reconstruct Homo sapiens and our culture. This requires information preservation of an order of magnitude of 100 million years, a little-explored topic thus far. It is important that a (...) potential future civilization will discover this information as early as possible, thus a beacon should accompany the message in order to increase visibility. The message should ideally contain information about how humanity was destroyed, perhaps including a continuous recording until the end. This could help the potential future civilization to survive. The best place for long-term data storage is under the surface of the Moon, with the beacon constructed as a complex geometric figure drawn by small craters or trenches around a central point. There are several cost-effective options for sending the message as opportunistic payloads on different planned landers. (shrink)

In this work it is shown how absolute simultaneity of spatially distinct events can be established by means of a general criterion based on isotropically propagating signals and how it can be consistently preserved also when operating with Lorentz-like coordinate transformations between moving frames. The specific invariance properties of these transformations of coordinates are discussed, leading to a different interpretation of the physical meaning of the transformed variables with respect to their prevailing interpretation when associated with the Lorentz transformation. On (...) these basis, the emission hypothesis of W. Ritz is then applied to justify the outcomes of the Fizeau experiment, thanks to the introduction of an additional hypothesis regarding the influence of turbulence on the refractive index of the moving fluid. Finally, a test case to investigate the validity of either the Galilean or the Relativistic velocity composition rule is presented. Such test relies on the aberration of the light coming from celestial objects due to the motion of the observer, and on the analysis of the results obtained by applying the two different formulas to process the data of the observed positions, as measured in the moving frame, in order to determine the actual un-aberrated location of the source. (shrink)

We describe a strategy for integration of data that is based on the idea of semantic enhancement. The strategy promises a number of benefits: it can be applied incrementally; it creates minimal barriers to the incorporation of new data into the semantically enhanced system; it preserves the existing data (including any existing data-semantics) in their original form (thus all provenance information is retained, and no heavy preprocessing is required); and it embraces the full spectrum of (...) class='Hi'>data sources, types, models, and modalities (including text, images, audio, and signals). The result of applying this strategy to a given body of data is an evolving Dataspace that allows the application of a variety of integration and analytic processes to diverse data contents. We conceive semantic enhancement (SE) as a lightweight and flexible process that leverages the richness of the structured contents of the Dataspace without adding storage and processing burdens to what, in the intelligence domain, will be an already storage- and processing-heavy starting point. SE works not by changing the data to which it is applied, but rather by adding an extra semantic layer to this data. We sketch how the semantic enhancement approach can be applied consistently and in cumulative fashion to new data and data-models that enter the Dataspace. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the way people engage with politics around the world: how citizens consume news, how they view the institutions and norms, how civic groups mobilize public interests, how data-driven campaigns are shaping elections, and so on (Ho & Vuong, 2024). Placing people at the center of the increasingly AI-mediated political landscape has become an urgent matter that transcends all forms of institutions. In this essay, we argue that, in this era, it is necessary to look (...) beyond certain limited notions of democracy and broaden our views of what it means to put people at the heart of political governance. Thus, we introduce some key features of a very, if not the most important concept, in East Asian political culture, ‘people as roots (of the state)’ or (dân bản in Vietnamese and 民本 in Chinese) . We propose that a more culturally sensitive analysis, which takes into account the diverse interpretations of people-centeredness within different political cultures, can provide valuable insights for researchers and leaders worldwide. Indeed, as the sociologist Shmuel Eisenstadt succinctly puts, modernity does not and should not correspond to Westernization. (shrink)

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. -/- Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they (...) propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. -/- The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments. (shrink)

This paper addresses the always online behavior of the data owner in proxy re- encryption schemes for re-encryption keys issuing. We extend and adapt multi-authority ciphertext policy attribute based encryption techniques to type-based proxy re-encryption to build our solution. As a result, user authentication and user authorization are moved to the cloud server which does not require further interaction with the data owner, data owner and data users identities are hidden from the cloud server, and re-encryption (...) keys are only issued to legitimate users. An in depth analysis shows that our scheme is secure, flexible and efficient for mobile cloud computing. (shrink)

Trees belong to humanity’s heritage, but they are more than that. Their loss, through catastrophic fires or under business-as-usual, is devastating to many forms of life. Moved by this fact, we begin with an assertion that heritage can have an active role in the design of future places. Written from within the field of architecture, this article focuses on structures that house life. Habitat features of trees and artificial replacement habitats for arboreal wildlife serve as concrete examples. Designs of such (...) habitats need to reflect behaviours, traditions and cultures of birds, bats, and other animals. Our narrative highlights the nonhuman aspect of heritage, seeking to understand how nonhuman stakeholders can act as users and consumers of heritage and not only as its constituents. Our working definition states that more-than-human heritage encompasses tangible and intangible outcomes of historical processes that are of value to human as well as nonhuman stakeholders. From this basis, the article asks how the established notions of heritage can extend to include nonhuman concerns, artefacts, behaviours and cultures. As a possible answer to this question, the hypothesis tested here is that digital information can (1) contribute to the preservation of more-than-human heritage; and (2) illuminate its characteristics for future study and use. This article assesses the potential of three imaging technologies and considers the resulting data within the conceptual framework of more-than-human heritage, illuminating some of its concrete aspects and challenges. (shrink)

Cloud storage's scalability, accessibility, and affordability have made it essential in the digital age. Data security and privacy remain a major issue due to the large volume of sensitive data kept on cloud services. Traditional encryption is safe but slows data recovery, especially for keyword searches. Secure, fine-grained access control and quick keyword searches over encrypted data are possible using attribute-based keyword search (ABKS). This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security (...) in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. (shrink)

Cloud storage's scalability, accessibility, and affordability have made it essential in the digital age. Data security and privacy remain a major issue due to the large volume of sensitive data kept on cloud services. Traditional encryption is safe but slows data recovery, especially for keyword searches. Secure, fine-grained access control and quick keyword searches over encrypted data are possible using attribute-based keyword search (ABKS). This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security (...) in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. After a thorough investigation, the article shows how these methods may boost cloud storage system performance, security, and usability. Tests show that improved ABKS speeds up search searches and lowers storage costs, making it a viable cloud storage alternative. Exploring sophisticated machine learning algorithms for predictive search improvements and strengthening ABKS against emerging security vulnerabilities are future research priorities. (shrink)

Businesses and people outsource database to realize helpful and low-cost applications and administrations. In arrange to supply adequate usefulness for SQL inquiries, numerous secure database plans have been proposed. In any case, such plans are helpless to protection leakage to cloud server. The most reason is that database is facilitated and handled in cloud server, which is past the control of information proprietors. For the numerical extend inquiry (“>”, “<”, etc.), those plans cannot give adequate protection security against viable challenges, (...) e.g., security spillage of measurable properties, get to design. Besides, expanded number of questions will definitely spill more data to the cloud server. In this paper, we propose a two-cloud engineering for secure database, with a arrangement of crossing point conventions that give security conservation to different numeric-related extend questions. Security analysis shows that privacy of numerical information is strongly protected against cloud providers in our proposed scheme. (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were placed on digital contact tracing. Digital contact tracing apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as further waves of COVID-19 tear through much of the northern hemisphere, these apps are playing a less important role in interrupting chains of infection than anticipated. We argue that one of the reasons for this is that most countries have opted for decentralised apps, which cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users (...) of likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Centralised apps, in contrast, have the potential to do this. But policy making was influenced by public debates about the right app configuration, which have tended to focus heavily on privacy, and are driven by the assumption that decentralised apps are “privacy preserving by design”. We show that both types of apps are in fact vulnerable to privacy breaches, and, drawing on principles from safety engineering and risk analysis, compare the risks of centralised and decentralised systems along two dimensions, namely the probability of possible breaches and their severity. We conclude that a centralised app may in fact minimise overall ethical risk, and contend that we must reassess our approach to digital contact tracing, and should, more generally, be cautious about a myopic focus on privacy when conducting ethical assessments of data technologies. (shrink)

The data analyzed in this paper are part of the results described in Bueno et al. (2000). Three cytogenetics endpoints were analyzed in three populations of a species of wild rodent – Akodon montensis – living in an industrial, an agricultural, and a preservation area at the Itajaí Valley, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The polychromatic/normochromatic ratio, the mitotic index, and the frequency of micronucleated polychromatic erythrocites were used in an attempt to establish a genotoxic profile of each (...) area. It was assumed that the three populations were in the same conditions with respect to the influence of confounding factors such as animal age, health, nutrition status, presence of pathogens, and intra- and inter-populational genetic variability. Therefore, any differences found in the endpoints analyzed could be attributed to the external agents present in each area. The statistical models used in this paper are mixtures of negative-binomials and Poisson variables. The Poisson variables are used as approximations of binomials for rare events. The mixing distributions are beta densities. The statistical analyzes are under the bayesian perspective, as opposed to the frequentist ones often considered in the literature, as for instance in Bueno et al. (2000). (shrink)

I defend J. L. Austin's direct realism against the colour delusion argument by employing epistemic logic to demonstrate that perceiving colours does not necessitate an intermediary such as sense-data, thus preserving the directness of perception.

This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. After a thorough investigation, the article shows how these methods may boost cloud storage system performance, security, and usability. Tests show that improved ABKS speeds up search searches and lowers storage costs, making it a viable cloud storage alternative. Exploring sophisticated machine learning algorithms for predictive search (...) improvements a. (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)

Traditional encryption is safe but slows data recovery, especially for keyword searches. Secure, fine-grained access control and quick keyword searches over encrypted data are possible using attribute-based keyword search (ABKS). This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. After a thorough investigation, the article shows how these methods may boost cloud storage system (...) performance, security, and usability. Tests show that improved ABKS speeds up search searches and lowers storage costs, making it a viable cloud storage alternative. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an explosion of empirical data concerning arithmetical cognition. In this paper that data is taken to be philosophically important and an outline for an empirically feasible epistemological theory of arithmetic is presented. The epistemological theory is based on the empirically well-supported hypothesis that our arithmetical ability is built on a protoarithmetical ability to categorize observations in terms of quantities that we have already as infants and share with many nonhuman animals. It is argued here (...) that arithmetical knowledge developed in such a way cannot be totally conceptual in the sense relevant to the philosophy of arithmetic, but neither can arithmetic understood to be empirical. Rather, we need to develop a contextual a priori notion of arithmetical knowledge that preserves the special mathematical characteristics without ignoring the roots of arithmetical cognition. Such a contextual a priori theory is shown not to require any ontologically problematic assumptions, in addition to fitting well within a standard framework of general epistemology. (shrink)

The amount of data to which a human is exposed has increased over time. The Delude is defined here as an individual that is overwhelmed by various incoherent and false assertions that data contains. This writing is a philosophical study that reflects on the epistemic conditions in which knowledge is accumulated. It is obvious that large amounts of falsehood, when regarded as truth, can induce heavy damage to anyone's intellect. -/- Frequently, a faulty mental state is induced by (...) corrupt knowledge. "The Delude" is an individual predisposed to accept as true large amounts of incoherent and false opinions. Understanding the complex conditions that induce a person to become 'a delude' is important; it is probable that these conditions will trigger a sad, miserable, and even an anti-social life. -/- The following are quotes from the text: -/- • The concept of the “delude” forwards the inference that man is not guaranteed rationality; man is merely capable of being rational. • What typically the deluded fool says is not right or even wrong; it is downright stupid. • At times, facts are in front of us; the blind can't see them, the deaf can't hear them, and the deluded fool can't believe them! • Delude: an individual who regards his own mental fascinations as reality, and is predisposed to strongly dedicate his or her entire life to a single idea which can be useful or destructive to his or her own life. • A generally accepted opinion is not, on that basis, guaranteed valid or a proof of its accuracy; equally, it is not proof of its falsity. The writing was reviewed by KIRKUS REVIEWS and also has a stared review from the ForeWord REVIEWS: -/- • In many instances, Gondor’s descriptions conjure a human image to the reader’s mind—i.e., “Extremism,” Gondor warns, “is a direct consequence of a highly deluded mind,” and particularly in politics and religion, he says, the delude can be a dangerous, unsettling force. – KIRKUS REVIEWS. -/- • According to Gondor, deludes tend to be conservative in their beliefs and convinced that their opinions are irrevocably true, despite evidence to the contrary. – ForeWord REVIEWS. -/- • Gondor believes that this narrow view comes from ingrained prejudices and limited cognitive ability, and he asserts that deluded people lack the capacity to objectively consider opposing or multiple perspectives. Consequently, they cling to the positions they understand with single-minded determination and often become radical advocates of those opinions. For example, an avid environmentalist who argues adamantly for the preservation of old-growth forests but also drives a large gas-guzzling and polluting truck through those same woods would be considered a delude. – ForeWord REVIEWS. -/- Fun reading, loaded with many ideas. You can download a PDF copy from this website, or can get a printed copy on Amazon. (shrink)

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in (...) the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a shift away from traditional truth-conditional accounts of meaning towards non-truth-conditional ones, e.g., expressivism, relativism and certain forms of dynamic semantics. Fueling this trend is some puzzling behavior of modal discourse. One particularly surprising manifestation of such behavior is the alleged failure of some of the most entrenched classical rules of inference; viz., modus ponens and modus tollens. These revisionary, non-truth-conditional accounts tout these failures, and the alleged tension between the behavior of modal vocabulary and classical (...) logic, as data in support of their departure from tradition, since the revisionary semantics invalidate some of these patterns. I, instead, offer a semantics for modality with the resources to accommodate the puzzling data while preserving classical logic, thus affirming the tradition that modals express ordinary truth-conditional content. My account shows that the real lesson of the apparent counterexamples is not the one the critics draw, but rather one they missed: namely, that there are linguistic mechanisms, reflected in the logical form, that affect the interpretation of modal language in a context in a systematic and precise way, which have to be captured by any adequate semantic account of the interaction between discourse context and modal vocabulary. The semantic theory I develop specifies these mechanisms and captures precisely how they affect the interpretation of modals in a context, and do so in a way that both explains the appearance of the putative counterexamples and preserves classical logic. (shrink)

Complex environmental problems require well-researched policies that integrate knowledge from both the natural and social sciences. Epistemic differences can impede interdisciplinary collaboration, as shown by debates between conservation biologists and anthropologists who are working to preserve biological diversity and support economic development in central Africa. Disciplinary differences with regard to 1) facts, 2) rigor, 3) causal explanation, and 4) research goals reinforce each other, such that early decisions about how to define concepts or which methods to adopt may tilt research (...) design and data interpretation toward one discipline’s epistemological framework. If one of the contributing fields imposes a solution to an epistemic problem, this sets the stage for what I call disciplinary capture. Avoiding disciplinary capture requires clear communication between collaborators, but beyond this it also requires that collaborators craft research questions and innovate research designs which are different from the inherited epistemological frameworks of contributing disciplines. (shrink)

According to Milner and Goodale’s dual visual systems (DVS) theory, a division obtains between visual consciousness and motor action, in that the visual system producing conscious vision (the ventral stream) is distinct from the one guiding action (the dorsal stream). That there would be this division is often taken (by Andy Clark and others) to undermine the folk view on how consciousness and action relate. However, even if this division obtains, this leaves open the possibility that con- scious ventral information (...) is often transmitted to the uncon- scious dorsal stream and then used to guide action, a possibility seeming to preserve a significant role for consciousness in action. This article assesses this possibility. In course of doing so, we will review those arguments recently having been made against the DVS view on how visual consciousness and action relate (ones due to, e.g., Briscoe and Schwenkler, or Schenk and McIntosh). What we will find is that, if we properly analyze the data upon which these arguments are based, we are still left with the impression that the DVS view is largely correct; i.e., it is only rarely that visual experience guides action. (shrink)

Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How should we build a logic that predicts which of these arguments are good? Because imperatives aren’t truth apt and so don’t stand in relations of truth preservation, this technical question gives rise to a foundational one: What would be the subject matter of this logic? I argue that declaratives are used (...) to produce beliefs, imperatives are used to produce intentions, and beliefs and intentions are subject to rational requirements. An argument will strike us as valid when anyone whose mental state satisfies the premises is rationally required to satisfy the conclusion. For example, the above argument reflects the principle that it is irrational not to intend what one takes to be the necessary means to one’s intended ends. I argue that all intuitively good patterns of imperative inference can be explained using off-the-shelf formulations of our rational requirements. I then develop a formal-semantic theory embodying this view that predicts a range of data, including free-choice effects and Ross’s paradox. The resulting theory shows one way that our aspirations to rational agency can be discerned in the patterns of our speech, and is a case study in how the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action can be mutually illuminating. (shrink)

There are two motivations commonly ascribed to historical actors for taking up statistics: to reduce complicated data to a mean value (e.g., Quetelet), and to take account of diversity (e.g., Galton). Different motivations will, it is assumed, lead to different methodological decisions in the practice of the statistical sciences. Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon are generally seen as following directly in Galton’s footsteps. I argue for two related theses in light of this standard interpretation, based on a (...) reading of several sources in which Weldon, independently of Pearson, reflects on his own motivations. First, while Pearson does approach statistics from this "Galtonian" perspective, he is, consistent with his positivist philosophy of science, utilizing statistics to simplify the highly variable data of biology. Weldon, on the other hand, is brought to statistics by a rich empiricism and a desire to preserve the diversity of biological data. Secondly, we have here a counterexample to the claim that divergence in motivation will lead to a corresponding separation in methodology. Pearson and Weldon, despite embracing biometry for different reasons, settled on precisely the same set of statistical tools for the investigation of evolution. (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to identify the religious factor in the teaching of transhumanism, to determine its role in the ideology of this flow of thought and to identify the possible limits of technology interference in human nature. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the idea of transhumanism. Originality. In the foreseeable future, robots will be able to pass the Turing test, become “electronic personalities” and gain political rights, although the question of the possibility of machine (...) consciousness and self-awareness remains open. In the face of robots, people create their assistants, evolutionary competition with which they will almost certainly lose with the initial data. For successful competition with robots, people will have to change, ceasing to be people in the classical sense. Changing the nature of man will require the emergence of a new – posthuman – anthropology. Conclusions. Against the background of scientific discoveries, technical breakthroughs and everyday improvements of the last decades, an anthropological revolution has taken shape, which made it possible to set the task of creating inhumanly intelligent creatures, as well as changing human nature, up to discussing options for artificial immortality. The history of man ends and the history of the posthuman begins. We can no longer turn off this path, however, in our power to preserve our human qualities in the posthuman future. The theme of the soul again reminded of itself, but from a different perspective – as the theme of consciousness and self-awareness. It became again relevant in connection with the development of computer and cloud technologies, artificial intelligence technologies, etc. If a machine ever becomes a "man", then can a man become a "machine"? However, even if such a hypothetical probability would turn into reality, we cannot talk about any form of individual immortality or about the continuation of existence in a different physical form. A digital copy of the soul will still remain a copy, and I see no fundamental possibility of isolating a substrate-independent mind from the human body. Immortality itself is necessary not so much for stopping someone’s fears or encouraging someone’s hopes, but for the final solution of a religious issue. However, the gods hold the keys to heaven hard and are unlikely to admit our modified descendants there. (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were put on digital contact tracing, using mobile phone apps to record and immediately notify contacts when a user reports as infected. Such apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as second waves of COVID-19 are raging, these apps are playing a less important role than anticipated. We argue that this is because most countries have opted for app configurations that cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users of (...) likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Mathematical modelling suggests that differently configured apps have the potential to do this. These require, however, that some pseudonymised data be stored on a central server, which privacy advocates have cautioned against. We contend that their influential arguments are subject to two fallacies. First, they have tended to one-sidedly focus on the risks that centralised data storage entails for privacy, while paying insufficient attention to the fact that inefficient contact tracing involves ethical risks too. Second, while the envisioned system does entail risks of breaches, such risks are also present in decentralised systems, which have been falsely presented as ‘privacy preserving by design’. When these points are understood, it becomes clear that we must rethink our approach to digital contact tracing in our fight against COVID-19. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to identify the obstacles facing the application of knowledge management and its impact on performance at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorei from the point of view of employees and to detect the differences between the average views of the study sample on the subject of the study according to some variables such as (gender, nature of work, Education Level, specialization, years of experience). The study followed the descriptive analytical method and the questionnaire as a tool for (...) study. It was distributed to 74 employees. After the questionnaire was distributed, the data was collected and coded and entered into the computer and processed statistically using the SPSS program. The study found that the percentage of approval of the obstacles to the application of knowledge management at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorei differed between few and large, and the relative weight of the axis was complete (68.2). The degree of awareness of the workers of the reality of performance excellence at the University of Palestine Technical-Kadoorei was between medium and very large. There is an impact of the constraints of the application of knowledge management on performance excellence at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorei. In light of the results of the previous study, the researchers recommended that the importance of knowledge management should be taken into account in order to raise the university's reputation and reputation at home and abroad and improve its services to students and the local community. And to promote the exchange of experiences and knowledge with local, regional and international universities in order to enhance the knowledge and preserve it and provide modern and sophisticated scientific techniques and use them in administrative and academic work at the university. (shrink)

There is a common assumption in the semantics of modal auxiliaries in natural language; in utterances of MOD φ , where MOD is a modal and φ is the prejacent, context determines the particular flavor of modality expressed by the modal. Such is the standard contextualist semantics of Kratzer and related proposals. This winds up being a problem, because there is a significant class of modals which have constraints on the admissible modal flavor that are not traceable to context. For (...) example, in MUST φ , subsentential properties of φ, like the aspectual class of the predicate in the prejacent, can affect the flavor of MUST. By encoding the above assumption into the semantics, such contextualist accounts fail to be able to explain, much less to predict, this pattern. Worse yet, attempts to exploit the resources of the theory in service of an explanation run afoul of important commitments of the view, like the hypothesis that modals have a uniform semantics. Given these circumstances, these data might seem like a justification for dispensing with the uniformity hypothesis. The present paper lays out the above problem in detail. Against the pessimistic view, I argue that the the contextualist account can in fact explain and predict these patterns while preserving the uniformity hypothesis. This requires adopting an amendment to the semantics of modals based on the work of Valentine Hacquard. Aside from maintaining the contextualist paradigm and preserving uniformity, the proposal also clarifies the role of context in the interpretation of modals. As it will turn out, the role of context ought to be circumscribed in its flavor-determining role for modals. (shrink)

Stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens (SESH) is a superposition of three different adaptive data arrays: biological, socio-cultural and technological modules, based on three independent processes of generation and replication of an adaptive information – genetic, socio-cultural and symbolic transmissions (inheritance). Third component SESH focused equally to the adaptive transformation of the environment and carrier of SESH. With the advent of High Hume technology, risk has reached the existential significance level. The existential level of technical risk is, by definition, (...) an evolutionary risk as possible leads to the genesis of disappearance of humanity as a species. The emergence of bioethics has to consider as a form of modern (transdisciplinary) scientific concept and sociocultural adaptation for regulate human identity in the global-evolutionary transformation and performs the function of self-preservation. (shrink)

The sense of agency, that is the sense that one is the agent of one’s bodily actions, is one component of our self-consciousness. Recently, Wegner and colleagues have developed a model of the causal history of this sense. Their model takes it that the sense of agency is elicited for an action when one infers that one or other of one’s mental states caused that action. In their terms, the sense of agency is elicited by the inference to apparent mental (...) state causation. Here, I argue that this model is inconsistent with data from developmental psychology that suggests children can identify the agent behind an action without being capable of understanding the relationship between their intentions and actions. Furthermore, I argue that this model is inconsistent with the preserved sense of agency in autism. In general, the problem is that there are cases where subjects can experience themselves as the agent behind their actions despite lacking the resources to make the inference to apparent mental state causation. (shrink)

There are two ways that we might respond to the underdetermination of theory by data. One response, which we can call the agnostic response, is to suspend judgment: "Where scientific standards cannot guide us, we should believe nothing". Another response, which we can call the fideist response, is to believe whatever we would like to believe: "If science cannot speak to the question, then we may believe anything without science ever contradicting us". C.S. Peirce recognized these options and suggested (...) evading the dilemma. It is a Logical Maxim, he suggests, that there could be no genuine underdetermination. This is no longer a viable option in the wake of developments in modern physics, so we must face the dilemma head on. The agnostic and fideist responses to underdetermination represent fundamentally different epistemic viewpoints. Nevertheless, the choice between them is not an unresolvable struggle between incommensurable worldviews. There are legitimate considerations tugging in each direction. Given the balance of these considerations, there should be a modest presumption of agnosticism. This may conflict with Peirce's Logical Maxim, but it preserves all that we can preserve of the Peircean motivation. (shrink)

According to Conciliationism, rationality calls for a removal of dissenting opinions – in the end, the disagreement should lead to skepticism toward the disputed proposition for all the involved parties. However, psychological data regarding group inquiry indicates that groups with dissenting members are more successful in their inquiry with respect to the disputed propositions. So, according to the psychological data, rationality calls for preserving dissent – disagreement should be embraced as a great tool for getting at true beliefs. (...) In this paper I analyze this apparent conflict. (shrink)

It may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the life and work of the Arts Master that he discusses the Eucharist at all. As he likes to remind us, theological topics are generally out of his wheelhouse. Even so, in his Questions on the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle (QM) 4.6, Buridan takes the sacrament of the Eucharist as a key data point in his discussion of Aristotle’s Categories. In the Eucharist, the accidents of the bread and wine—their color, (...) texture, and so on—remain intact, but the underlying substance is transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Accordingly, God can preserve accidents independent of their underlying substance. Therefore, for our part we can use accidental terms, like whiteness, without connoting any substances, like communion bread. Moreover, it follows that, contrary to Aristotle, substance and the accidental categories are not the most general genera. Instead, being (ens) is, as Buridan concludes. Here, I trace Buridan’s thought on the metaphysical and semantic matters of substance in light of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is for him not only a theological truth, but a metaphysical and semantic datum as well. I conclude by asking why Buridan did not take any and all questions about the Eucharist to be out of his ken. What does this tell us about his attitude toward theology? This paper also includes, as an appendix, the first ever English translation of the question under discussion (QM 4.6): “Does the term being (ens) signify substances and accidents by one single concept or notion?”. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the “Standard View” of the semantics of ‘I’—according to which ‘I’ is a pure, automatic indexical—from a challenge posed by “deferred reference” cases, in which occurrences of ‘I’ are (allegedly) not speaker-referential, and thus non-automatic. In reply, I offer an alternative account of the cases in question, which I call the “Description Analysis” (DA). According to DA, seemingly deferred-referential occurrences of the first person pronoun are interpreted as constituents of a definite description, whose operator scopes (...) over an open sentence Rxy—where R is a contextually selected relation ranging over pairs of people and objects. The role of intentions is thus limited to the determination of R, which is posterior to the fixation of the reference of ‘I’. In support of the DA I present evidence that, in the cases in question, the (Determiner) phrase containing ‘I’ behaves in relevant ways like a description. I show that the DA can account for the problematic examples, while preserving the simplicity of the standard semantics of ‘I’. Finally, I examine a rival account of the data, offered by Nunberg (Linguist Philos 16:1–43, 1993), and argue for the superiority of the DA. (shrink)

In the contemporary era of urban design, the advent of big data and digital technologies has ushered in innovative approaches to exploring urban spaces. This study focuses on the application of Augmented Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR) technologies in the metropolitan areas of Houston and Amsterdam. These technologies create immersive 'Phygital Installations' that blend physical and digital elements, effectively capturing people's perceptions and enhancing urban design proposals. By fostering human-centered planning, AR and XR technologies make urban design more (...) interactive and accessible to the public. Houston, with its rapid industrial growth and diverse socio-economic landscape, provides a unique setting to examine the impacts of these technologies on urban form and socio-environmental dynamics. In contrast, Amsterdam, with its rich historical layers and socio-cultural diversity, offers insights into the integration of AR/XR technologies in urban planning, particularly in the realm of historical preservation and contemporary urban development. This research contributes to the emerging field of AR/XR in urban design by highlighting the transformative potential of these technologies in enhancing the understanding and engagement in urban design and spatial planning. (shrink)

One way in which bioethicists can benefit the medical community is by clarifying the concept of disorder. Since insurance companies refer to the DSM for whether a patient should receive assistance, one must consider the consequences of one’s concept of disorder for who should be provided with care. I offer a refinement of Jerome Wakefield’s hybrid concept of disorder, the harmful dysfunction analysis. I criticize both the factual component and the value component of Wakefield’s account and suggest how they might (...) be improved. I propose that the factual component should be statistical variation analyzed in multilevel and chronological compilations of physiological data. I propose that the value component should prioritize the individual’s authority regarding the experience of suffering from a physiological condition. My account preserves the insight of using a factual and a value component while avoiding the problems that Wakefield’s original account faces. (shrink)

Ontologies are today being applied in almost every field to support the alignment and retrieval of data of distributed provenance. Here we focus on new ontological work on dance and on related cultural phenomena belonging to what UNESCO calls the “intangible heritage.” Currently data and information about dance, including video data, are stored in an uncontrolled variety of ad hoc ways. This serves not only to prevent retrieval, comparison and analysis of the data, but may also (...) impinge on our ability to preserve the data that already exists. Here we explore recent technological developments that are designed to counteract such problems by allowing information to be retrieved across disciplinary, cultural, linguistic and technological boundaries. Software applications such as the ones envisaged here will enable speedier recovery of data and facilitate its analysis in ways that will assist both archiving of and research on dance. (shrink)

A family of familiar linguistic tests purport to help identify when a term is ambiguous. These tests are philosophically important: a familiar philosophical strategy is to claim that some phenomenon is disunified and its accompanying term is ambiguous. The tests have been used to evaluate disunification proposals about causation, pain, and knowledge, among others. -/- These ambiguity tests, however, have come under fire. It has been alleged that the tests fail for polysemy, a common type of ambiguity, and one that (...) is at issue in philosophically interesting cases. Furthermore, the objection that the tests fail for polysemy is often taken to be an undeniable bit of linguistic data. -/- We argue that this is mistaken. The objection implicitly relies on controversial assumptions about how to account for copredicational sentences, in which a single argument is ascribed prima facie incompatible properties. Furthermore, on several viable theories of copredication, the objection fails. However, our discussion also reveals that even if ambiguity tests are preserved, they may be significantly harder to execute than previously thought. (shrink)

E-Government refers to the administration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to the procedures and functions of the government with the objective of enhancing the transparency, efficiency and participation of the citizens. E-Government is tough systems that require distribution, protection of privacy and security and collapse of these could result in social and economic costs on a large scale. Many of the available e-government systems like electronic identity system of management (eIDs), websites are established at duplicated databases and servers. An (...) established validation and management system could face a single failure point and the system is prone to Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS), denial of service attacks (DoS), malware and other cyber attacks. The execution of a privacy preserving and a secure decentralized system is enabled by the block chain technology. Here any third-party organizations do not have any control over the transactions of the Government. With the help of block chain technology, new and existing data are encapsulated within ledger or blocks, which are evenly distributed through the network in an enduring and sustainable way. The privacy and security of information are improved with the help of block chain technology, where distribution and encryption of data are performed through the total network. This analytical paper maps out the analysis of the security in the e-government system, utilizing the block chain technology that provides privacy and security of information and thereby enhancing the trust among the public sector. Qualitative and theoretical analysis is made for the proposed topic and implications of privacy and security of the proposed system is made. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to address the underrepresentation of Iranian women architects in historical narratives, exploring the perishable traces of their work and contributions to the field of architecture. Inspired by Carla Lonzi's call for women to consider their narrative incomplete and the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), I delve into the unique challenges Iranian women architects face and their impact on architectural history. I examine the historiographical review of Iranian women architects, their work, and their contributions (...) to the field, highlighting the importance of preserving and disseminating this often-overlooked knowledge. By investigating the current editorial challenges, I explore how archived material should be disseminated and the agency of such material in shaping a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative. Furthermore, I discuss the role of resources, archives, and new technologies in preserving and accessing the work of Iranian women architects. Considering data feminism and information visualization, I consider the implications of algorithms and digital technologies on accessing archived information and the potential for a more inclusive historical narrative. Through the lens of Iranian women architects, this paper contributes to the broader discussion on the representation and history of women in architecture by unearthing and preserving the perishable traces of their work. (shrink)

Principles help comparative psychologists select from among multiple hypotheses that account for the data. Anthropomorphic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal similarities while anthropectic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal differences. I argue that there is no way for the comparative psychologist on their own to justify their selection of one principle over the other. However, the comparative psychologist can justify their selection of one principle over the other in virtue of being members of comparative (...) psychology as a community. As it turns out, though, this justifies both competing principles: the community benefits most from competition between the two principles so comparative psychologists are justified in implementing the principles by which they can best contribute to the competition. Thus, I argue that common arguments to unify principle implementation in comparative psychology are defeated by the conservative arguments to preserve and foster competition. (shrink)

The paper analyses six ethical challenges posed by cloud computing, concerning ownership, safety, fairness, responsibility, accountability and privacy. The first part defines cloud computing on the basis of a resource-oriented approach, and outlines the main features that characterise such technology. Following these clarifications, the second part argues that cloud computing reshapes some classic problems often debated in information and computer ethics. To begin with, cloud computing makes possible a complete decoupling of ownership, possession and use of data and this (...) helps to explain the problems occurring when different providers of cloud computing retain or relinquish the right to use or own users‘ data. The problem of safety in cloud computing is coupled to that of reliability, insofar as users have to trust providers to preserve their data, applications and content in a reliable manner. It is argued that, in this context, data insurance could play an important role. Regarding fairness, the paper argues that cloud computing is already reshaping the nature of the Digital. Responsibility, accountability and privacy close the ethical analysis of cloud computing. In this case, the thesis is that the necessity to account for the actions of cloud computing users imposes delicate trade-offs between users‘ privacy and the traceability of their operations. (shrink)

Sleep has long been a topic of fascination for artists and scientists. Why do we sleep? What function does sleep serve? Why do we dream? What significance can we attach to our dreams? We spend so much of our lives sleeping, yet its precise function is unclear, in spite of our increasing understanding of the processes generating and maintaining sleep. We now know that sleep can be accompanied by periods of intense cerebral activity, yet only recently has experimental data (...) started to provide us with some insights into the type of processing taking place in the brain as we sleep. There is now strong evidence that sleep plays a crucial role in learning and in the consolidation of memories. Once the preserve of psychoanalysts, 'dreaming' is now a topic of increasing interest amongst scientists. With research into sleep growing, this volume is both timely and valuable in presenting a unique study of the relationship between sleep, learning, and memory. It brings together a team of international scientists researching sleep in both human and animal subjects. Aimed at researchers within the fields of neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology, this book will be an important first step in developing a full scientific understanding of the most intriguing state of consciousness. (shrink)

The need for revolution in modern physics is a well known and often broached subject, however, the precision and success of current models narrows the possible changes to such a great degree that there appears to be no major change possible. We provide herein, the first step toward a possible solution to this paradox via reinterpretation of the conceptual-theoretical framework while still preserving the modern art and tools in an unaltered form. This redivision of concepts and redistribution of the (...) class='Hi'>data can revolutionize expectations of new experimental outcomes. This major change within finely tuned constraints is made possible by the fact that numerous mathematically equivalent theories were direct precursors to, and contemporaneous with, the modern interpretations. In this first of a series of papers, historical investigation of the conceptual lineage of modern theory reveals points of exacting overlap in physical theories which, while now considered cross discipline, originally split from a common source and can be reintegrated as a singular science again. This revival of an an older associative hierarchy, combined with modern insights, can open new avenues for investigation. This reintegration cross-disciplinary theories and tools is defined as the “Neoclassical Interpretation.” . (shrink)

Despite centuries of colonization in the Philippines, the traditional Filipino healing system has survived. However, as modern education has continued to spread and Western medicine has grown in influence, traditional healing practices have been pushed to the margins and labeled as unscientific or mere superstition. This also suggests that unrecorded information may be lost forever. For future generations to appreciate this rich cultural heritage, cultural mapping of traditional healers in a local community is necessary. Thus, the researcher explored, identified, documented, (...) and analyzed the cultural profile of the traditional healers in a local community. Specifically, he studied the (1) background information, (2) description of the intangible cultural heritage, (3) stories/narratives associated with traditional healing, (4) significance of the practice, (5) assessment of the practice, and (6) references/supporting documentation of the traditional healers. The study was conducted in one of the local communities in the province of Quezon. The research participants were selected using inclusion criteria, and 11 traditional healers served as the key informants of the study. This study also employed qualitative research through cultural mapping, and pertinent data were obtained using participant observation, documentation, and interview guides. Qualitative content analysis was used in analyzing the gathered data. The findings revealed that the traditional healers have diverse background information, reflected in the element types, the geographical location and range of the element, and the related domains of the intangible cultural heritage. Likewise, the description of the intangible cultural heritage gave a wide array of descriptions of the history of practice, occasion/season, processes, and procedures involved, beliefs associated, settings, aims, social functions, and cultural meaning, culture bearer/s and practitioner/s of the element, mode of transmission, list of significant tangible movable heritage used associated with the element and list of significant flora/fauna used associated with the element. Meanwhile, spiritual guides and supernatural claims, healing severe cases, and being accused of malpractice or maltreatment were some of the stories/narratives associated with the element. In addition, traditional healing has historical, aesthetic, scientific, social, socio-economic, socio-political, and spiritual significance. Moreover, the assessment of practice exposed the condition/status of traditional healing, which is in danger because of the elderliness of the traditional healers and because no one is accepting the knowledge and practices. Furthermore, the constraint, threat, issue, or challenge experienced by the traditional healers is making false accusations against them. Nevertheless, traditional healers have identified several safeguarding measures in their traditional healing practice. These are transmission through informal education, identification, documentation, research, promotion, enhancement, and revitalization. Finally, sacred texts, books, pictures, prayers, and saints are the references or supporting documentation used in traditional healing. Based on the findings and conclusions, it is recommended to utilize the two research outputs: “Kaalaman at Kasanayan: Cultural Profile of Traditional Healers,” a booklet, and “Tanging Healing,” a documentary film about traditional healing for the preservation of local heritage, community development, and heritage education. (shrink)

The article is based on an analysis of the works of the French historian Pierre Nora, who, trying to find a "true" history, comes to the opposition of history and memory. Outright political agitation and national imperatives are dominated in History, therefore history cannot be correct and objective. Instead of history, the philosopher believes, we should focus on the right memory. But when memory itself has been torn apart, it can only exist on the basis of "memory places" - mnemonic (...) places. The power of memory is preserved now in the places of memory that accumulate and preserve history. Places of memory have lost their physical or geographical meanings. Meaning and sense are made places of memory, important place for history. Due to the nature of the memory places, the multiplicities of their interpretations are the normal. And the past, therefore, became a poly semantic space, focused on the co-presence of many different versions of the interpretation of the same memorial structures (monuments, historical facts and events, texts of the past). Contrasting memory and history, P. Nora concludes about "the tyranny of memory (it is reminiscent of Reeker's statement). In his opinion, at any moment the memory is ready to lift history under itself, to "memorize" it, it deeply and dangerously distorts the meaning of words. Precisely because there is no collective memory, the places of memory appear that designed to compensate for its absence. When the space of memory disappears, mnemonic places appear. It is through mnemonic places (places of memory) as spaces that provide access to traditions, Nora moves from the present to the past. But the noble goal of finding the truth, of recreating traditions, has turned into honoring memory for political purposes, where the past has become the rhetorical construct of the present. Hence, the perception of truth is changing. Now, the truth is not in the "factuality" of the data, but in their "relevance". In the end, Nora makes a rather devastating conclusion for history- that the past has lost its meaning, the present historical consciousness gives meaning to all possible and valid versions of the past, and that official memory (politics of memory) is associated with practices of selective forgetting or memory. (shrink)