Search Results (131)

(1) Background: This article aims to understand the forms and elements through which the inhabitants of the city of Medellin have configured their subjectivity in the context of the application of neoliberal policies in the last two decades. In this way, we can approach the frameworks of understanding that constitute a fundamental part of the individuation processes in which the incorporation of their subjectivities is evidenced in neoliberal contexts that, in the historical process, have been converging with authoritarian, antidemocratic and neoconservative elements. (2) Method: A qualitative approach with a hermeneutic-interpretative paradigm was used. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 41 inhabitants of Medellín who were politically identified with right-wing or center-right positions. Data analysis included thematic coding to identify patterns of thought and points of view. (3) Results: Participants associate success with individual effort and see state intervention as an obstacle to development. They reject redistributive policies, arguing that they generate dependency. In addition, they justify authoritarian models of government in the name of security and progress, from a moral superiority, which is related to a negative and stigmatizing perception of progressive sectors and a negative view of the social rule of law and public policies with social sense. (4) Conclusions: The naturalization of merit as a guiding principle, the perception of themselves as morally superior based on religious values that grant a subjective place of certainty and goodness; the criminalization of expressions of political leftism, mobilizations and redistributive reforms and support for policies that establish authoritarianism and perpetuate exclusion and structural inequalities, closes roads to a participatory democracy that enables social and economic transformations. Full article

Throughout the generations, traditional academic writing skills development has taught students in socio-human programs to express their knowledge and thoughts with an evidence-based foundation, helping them make a special connection with their professional fields. However, a lack of digital learning and writing resources in this process has been identified. This study of the social work field connects digital academic writing, social protection functionality, and research innovations, identifying and exploring open-access (OA) educational and social resources for social work higher education (SWHE). Applying content analyses to online documents and websites, we identified key terms characteristic of social work, following a standard approach on formulating research questions, identifying categories, creating a code book, sampling, and measuring information. The research questions were as follows: How is digital academic writing being developed in social work education programs in Romanian universities? Where do researchers, students, teachers, and professionals gather OA digital information and data for academic innovation? What kind of OA information and data are contained in websites for academic writing? We also used OA socio-educational resource analysis to derive digital, evidence-based, and academic writing codes. The frequencies of these elements in documents and websites were examined. Professional samples of four OA documents and five academic and non-academic Romanian websites with extensions were processed. Furthermore, information from a non-academic official website concerning social protection functionality was observed, identified, and measured. We concluded that academic writing is not included as an independent course in the curricula of Romanian social work programs at universities; this topic is rarely researched. Digital and evidence-based education is also a marginalized topic in socio-human scientific resources. OA information, laws, reports, and statistics were identified. Information on scientific research, academic–non-academic partnerships, descriptions of good practices, and human resources information was lacking. In conclusion, this study contributes to increasing productivity and developing digital academic skills in social work education and research. Full article

The so-called Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) describes the land (אֶרֶץ) almost as a human being. In biblical scholarship on this law-text, the land has often been explained as an independent agent and more powerful than even the human beings that are present in the text. This paper will use social network analysis to test these conclusions and provide a more detailed account of the role of the land. The paper sets out to develop a social network model of the Holiness Code by including all interactions among human/divine participants and physical space. The paper then explores how human/divine participants relate to space, and it is shown that the participant roles are closely connected to access to space. Afterwards, the social role of the land is scrutinized by exploring each of its relationships, and by conducting a cluster analysis to understand the structural properties of the network. It is shown that the land is not as central and agentive as is usually thought but, rather, that the land plays a secondary role as a vulnerable character in need of protection. The paper is concluded by reflections on the potential of social network analysis for understanding character roles in literature. Full article

Credit relations in Muslim societies have attracted significant scholarly attention across disciplines due to the prohibition of interest. In the Ottoman Empire, renowned for its vast resources, the presence of sophisticated credit mechanisms alongside its strong Muslim identity has often been perceived as paradoxical. While this apparent contradiction has been extensively studied, the perception and legitimacy of these credit mechanisms within Islamic law, particularly in English-language scholarship, remains underexamined. This study addresses this gap by analyzing bayʿ al-wafāʾ, a significant financing mechanism in which asset ownership is temporarily transferred to a lender in exchange for a loan, with the understanding that the asset will be returned upon full repayment. This transaction, employed for centuries across diverse regions as an interest-avoiding solution, has been extensively debated within Hanafi jurisprudence. This research chronologically examines bayʿ al-wafāʾ’s integration into Hanafi legal thought from its emergence through the 18th-century Ottoman Empire, drawing on primary sources across various genres of Hanafi legal literature. The findings reveal that bayʿ al-wafāʾ could not be categorized within existing Islamic contract frameworks. Instead, it is recognized as a contract with unique provisions deriving legitimacy from custom and necessity. This study illuminates both how this transaction achieved legal and legitimate status within Hanafi jurisprudence and, more broadly, demonstrates the dynamic evolution of Islamic law within the Hanafi school from the 10th to 18th centuries. Through this analysis, this study demonstrates how the paradoxical challenge of providing interest-free financing was resolved within the framework of Islamic legal principles. Full article

The “Jiugao 酒誥” chapter of the Shangshu 尚書 is a proclamation on wine ethics, ordered by the Duke of Zhou for Kangshu to disseminate among the people. It marks the earliest system of laws and regulations concerning wine usage in Chinese history. In this chapter, the Duke of Zhou analyzed drinking from the perspectives of ethical philosophy and political dynamics, closely associating it with ethical codes, moral values, and political order. He criticized King Zhou of Shang for “drunkenness leading to national ruin” and detailed three ethical codes to regulate drinking practices. The Duke of Zhou established the ethical foundation of the Western Zhou Dynasty, incorporating the theory of wine virtue, and constructed its comprehensive political order. This exerted a profoundly lasting impact on Confucius and later Confucian scholars concerning the mandate of heaven and political thought, forming the basis of China’s political and cultural ethos for millennia. Full article

With the intensification of the global energy crisis, the application of air-source transcritical CO₂ heat pumps has attracted increasing attention, especially in cold regions. Existing research mainly focuses on the evaluation of steady-state performance while paying less attention to the dynamic characteristics of the system during the actual operation process. In order to deeply study the dynamic performance of the air-source transcritical CO₂ heat pump system under the winter climate conditions in the Yan‘an area, this study established a system simulation model with multiple parameter inputs and systematically analyzed the influences of ambient temperature, discharge pressure, and inlet and outlet water temperatures on the heating capacity and COP. The research starts from both dynamic and steady-state perspectives, revealing the variation law of system performance with environmental temperature and conducting a quantitative analysis. As the ambient temperature rose from −11 °C to 2 °C, the COP of the system increased by approximately 15% and exhibited significant dynamic response characteristics, indicating that the increase in ambient temperature significantly improved system efficiency. At different ambient temperatures, the optimal discharge pressure increased with the rise in temperature. At the highest ambient temperature (2 °C), the optimal discharge pressure was 11.7 MPa. Compared with the optimal discharge pressure of 11.0 MPa at −11 °C, the performance improved by nearly 13.3%. Through the dynamic simulation method, theoretical support is provided for the optimization of energy-saving control strategies in cold regions, and thoughts are offered regarding the application of transcritical CO₂ systems under similar climatic conditions. Full article

This paper interprets Stanisław Lem’s novella Professor A. Dońda as a thought experiment. In the novella, Lem proposes Dońda’s law, a formulation that allows for a sophisticated theory of creation, at once theological and scientific. This is based on the equivalence of mass-energy-information and on the existence of Dońda’s barrier, which limits the accretion of knowledge. The novella is discussed in the context of Lem’s conception of the art of writing as the art of translating—in this case, translating theological issues into the language of physics and computer science. The result of this translation, which is effectively a thought experiment, is that even if man were to discover the real mechanism of the creation of the world, neither the existence of God nor the non-existence of God could be unambiguously deduced from understanding the mechanism. The protagonist of the novella articulates a theory of being whose initial premise and fundamental category is the concept of error. The paper provides a thorough analysis of the issues raised by the novella and a discussion of genre. The discussion broadens to include the context of contemporary theories in physics, mainly the mass-energy-information principle (MEIE) and the information catastrophe. Full article

Large language models (LLMs) have shown impressive general-purpose language capabilities, but their application in specialized domains such as healthcare and law remains limited due to two major challenges, namely, a lack of deep domain-specific knowledge and the inability to incorporate real-time information updates. This paper focuses on addressing these challenges by introducing parameter-sensitive low-rank adaptation (LoRA) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), named SensiLoRA-RAG, a two-stage framework designed to enhance LLM performance in domain-specific question-answering tasks. In the first stage, we propose a parameter-sensitive LoRA fine-tuning method that efficiently adapts LLMs to specialized domains using limited high-quality professional data, enabling rapid and resource-efficient specialization. In the second stage, we develop a chain-of-thought RAG mechanism that dynamically retrieves and integrates up-to-date external knowledge, improving the model’s ability to reason with current information and complex domain context. We evaluate our framework on tasks in the medical and legal fields, demonstrating that SensiLoRA-RAG significantly improves answer accuracy, domain relevance, and adaptability compared to baseline methods. Full article

Ge Hong, a religious thinker, has a philosophy of life that integrates Confucianism and Daoism that is reflected in his theory of human nature and destiny. It is embodied in several related concepts. First, “human nature and destiny are inherently natural”. This means that human nature and destiny are inevitable and determined. On the one hand, Ge Hong denied this concept to demonstrate the possibility of immortality; on the other hand, he accepted it in terms of whether an individual could become an immortal. This gave his thought a distinct dualist feature. Second, the “law of human nature and destiny” served as the foundation for discussing the rationality of the cultivation of immortality during the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ge Hong also used the law to demonstrate the rationality of the way to immortality. Third, the essence of the way to immortality can be presented through the theory of human nature and destiny, which is to transform humans into immortals through certain means, known as “transforming life and destiny”. Full article

In an ongoing series of interviews, Challenges Advisory Board member and Nova Institute for Health Fellow Alan C. Logan meets with thought leaders, scientists, scholars, healthcare professionals, artisans, and visionaries concerned about health at the scale of individuals, communities, and the planet. Here, Dr. Pragya Mishra responds to a set of questions posed by Challenges. Dr. Mishra, a legal academician and one of the few global scholars with a PhD specifically in neurolaw, is at the forefront of research examining the intersection of law and brain sciences. As a concept and developing field, the promise of neurolaw is that it will lead to a more equitable and less punitive justice system, one based on objective science rather than prescientific assumptions of blameworthiness and willpower. Here, Dr. Mishra reflects on the promises and pitfalls of neurolaw, the growing challenges to the free will assumptions held by the courts, and her work in a field that epitomizes a transdisciplinary effort. She discusses the place of contemplative practices within neurolaw, with special emphasis on the hope of rehabilitation. Dr. Mishra describes neurolaw through a holistic lens, one that embraces future possibilities and the shaping of evidence-based policy changes. While planetary health embraces justice as a broad term, it has paid little attention to the criminal justice system. Discussions of neurolaw are important to the ethical frameworks of planetary health. Neurolaw, as Dr. Mishra explains, is at the heart of the many interconnected challenges of our time. Full article

This article examines Iceland’s scheme for educational exemptions based on religion, life philosophies, or personal convictions, comparing it with the schemes used in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Despite curricular reforms promoting inclusivity, Christian favouritism persists in Icelandic schools, often embedded in traditions classified as cultural rather than religious. The requirement for “valid arguments” in Iceland’s exemption process raises concerns over the law’s ambiguity and potential conflict with human rights law, specifically, the European Court of Human Rights’ emphasis on individual thought and conscience. This lack of clarity may deter parents and pupils from seeking exemptions and infringe upon privacy and religious freedom rights. The study underscores the need to refine exemption schemes to better protect individual rights while upholding educational integrity. It advocates for ongoing research into the right to be exempted in the Icelandic context. Full article

Focusing on a specific interaction between physics and economics, this study delves into the realm of econophysics and investigates the birth, evolution, and practical applications of this interdisciplinary field. This study explores the influence of Newton’s laws, the concept of gravity, and, more generally, mechanical physics on the development of economic thought. It examines the application of Newtonian principles in interpreting economic dynamics, with a particular focus on the contributions of neoclassical economists and Isard’s gravitational model, offering insights into the intricate dynamics of economic equilibrium in complex systems. Finally, these concepts are situated within the broader debate between determinism and indeterminism in the social sciences. Full article

Utilitarianism is a theory of morality and law that aims for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. The two names that come to mind when utilitarianism is mentioned in Western thought are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the founders of the theory. Although this theory emerged in Western philosophy, theories that appeal to the concept of utility as the standard of rightness of moral and legal actions can be found in almost every tradition of thought. One of these traditions is Islamic philosophy. In particular, the theory of maṣlaḥa, which is one of the most important legal theories of Islamic legal thought, is a theory that accepts the concept of utility as a fundamental principle. In this article, we focus on the theory of maṣlaḥa of Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī, one of the most prominent thinkers of the theory of maṣlaḥa. Our aim in this article is to point out the similarities and differences between maṣlaḥa theory and utilitarianism, thereby drawing attention to the functionality of the concept of utility as a standard of right or wrong for ethics and law, regardless of society and period. Full article

In fourth-generation district heating systems (DHSs), the supply temperature of modern heat sources such as heat pumps and waste heat can potentially be reduced by mixing in hot water from combustion-based producers, thereby increasing efficiency and facilitating integration into networks with unrenovated buildings. However, this approach introduces the risk of thermo-hydraulic oscillations driven by mixing dynamics, transport delays, and mass flow adjustments by consumers. These oscillations can increase wear and cost and may potentially lead to system failure. This study addresses the asymptotic stability of multi-supplier DHSs by combining theoretical analysis and practical validation. Through linearization and Laplace transformation, we derive the transfer function of a system with two suppliers. Using pole-zero analysis, we show that transport delay can cause instability. We identify a new control law, demonstrating that persisting oscillations depend on network temperatures and low thermal inertia and enabling stabilization through careful temperature selection, thorough choice of the slack supplier, or installation of buffer tanks. We validate our findings using dynamic simulations of a nonlinear delayed system in Modelica, highlighting the applicability of such systems to real-world DHSs. These results provide actionable insights for designing robust DHSs and mitigating challenges in multi-supplier configurations by relying on thoughtful system design rather than complex control strategies. Full article

High chromium cast iron (HCCI) is widely used in the manufacturing of equipment parts in the fields of mining, cement, electric power, metallurgy, the chemical industry, and paper-making because of its excellent wear and corrosion resistance. Although the microstructure and properties of HCCI can be modified by controlling the casting and heat treatment process, alloying is still the most basic and important method to improve the properties of HCCI. There are about 14 common alloying elements in HCCI, among which nickel, copper, and manganese are typical austenite stabilizing elements, which can increase austenite content and matrix electrode potential. The addition of elements such as silicon, nitrogen, boron, and rare earth (RE) is often small, but it has a significant effect on tailoring the microstructure, thereby improving wear resistance and impact toughness. It was thought that after years of development, the research on the role of the above elements in HCCI was relatively complete, but in the past 5 to 10 years, there has been a lot of new research progress. Moreover, the current development situation of HCCI is still relatively extensive, and there are still many problems regarding the alloying of HCCI to be further studied and solved. In this paper, the research results of austenitic stabilizing elements and modifying elements in HCCI are reviewed. The existing forms, distribution law of these elements in HCCI, and their effects on the microstructure, hardness, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance of HCCI are summarized. Combined with the current research situation, the future research and development direction of HCCI alloying is prospected. Full article