BackgroundInstitutional review boards (IRBs) are formally designated to review, approve, and monitor biomedical research. They are responsible for ensuring that researchers comply with the ethical guidelines concerning human research participants. Given that IRBs might face different obstacles that cause delays in their processes or conflicts with investigators, this study aims to report the functions, roles, resources, and review process of IRBs in Saudi Arabia.MethodThis was a cross-sectional self-reported survey conducted from March 2021 to March 2022. The survey was sent to (...) 53 IRB chairpersons and the administration directors (or secretary) across the country through email after receiving verbal consent. The validated survey consisted of eight aspects: (a) organizational aspects, (b) membership and educational training, (c) submission arrangements and materials, (d) minutes, (e) review procedures, (f) communicating a decision, (g) continuing review, and (h) research ethics committee (REC) resources. A total of 200 points indicated optimal IRB functions.ResultsTwenty-six IRBs across Saudi Arabia responded to the survey. Overall, the IRBs in this study scored a total of 150/200 of the points on the self-assessment tool. Relatively newer IRBs (established less than ten years ago) conducted meetings at least once in a month, had annual funding, had more balanced gender representation, tended to score higher than older IRBs. The organizational aspect score was the lowest among all items in the survey (14.3 score difference, p-value < 0.01). The average turnaround time for expedited research from proposal submission to final decision was 7 days, while it was 20.5 days for the full committee review.ConclusionSaudi IRBs performed generally well. However, there is room for focused improvement with respect to extra resources and organizational issues that require closer evaluation and guidance from the regulatory bodies. (shrink)

Introduction: Cognitive behavioral therapy for children and adolescents has shown efficacy in treating different psychiatric disorders. It has been added to multiple clinical guidelines as the first-line treatment. However, despite more studies of its efficacy, CBT is underutilized in clinical settings due to a lack of rigorous training programs and qualified CBT therapists. The limited knowledge of parents in this intervention and their negative attitudes toward it have been considered as possible reasons.Methods: This is a cross-sectional survey-based study among 464 (...) Saudi parents living in Riyadh city. We aimed to evaluate the preference, knowledge, and attitudes of Saudi parents toward CBT for their children. We compared the difference in the level of knowledge and attitudes toward CBT in relation to the characteristics of parents. An online questionnaire that included 39 questions was carefully reconstructed from four validated scales, approved by an expert panel, and piloted. Participants were recruited to participate through online social media.Results: Saudi parents had average knowledge about CBT; however, they had positive attitudes toward the therapy itself and its role in treating the behavioral issues of children. Male participants showed better knowledge than female participants. Participants with higher education and those with high income had more favorable attitudes toward CBT than others.Conclusion: The knowledge of parents is considered inadequate and indicated the need for more awareness and perhaps mass education. In contrast, they maintained positive attitudes and were interested in evidence-based treatment, with more preference toward non-psychopharmacological interventions. (shrink)

Understanding the relationship between obesity and fast food consumption encompasses a broad range of individual level and environmental factors. One theoretical approach, the health capability framework, focuses on the complex set of conditions allowing individuals to be healthy. This qualitative study aimed to identify factors that influence individual level health agency with respect to healthy eating choices in uniformly constrained environments. We used an inductive qualitative research design to develop an interview guide, conduct open-ended interviews with a purposive sample of (...) 14 student fast food workers, and analyze the data. Data analysis was conducted iteratively during the study with multiple coders to identify themes. Emergent themes included environmental influences on eating behaviors and internal psychological factors. A localized, embedded approach to analyzing the factors driving the obesity epidemic is needed. Addressing contextual interactions between internal psychological and external environmental factors responds to social justice and public health concerns, and may yield more relevant and effective interventions for vulnerable communities. (shrink)

This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women.

The vast majority of contributions to the literature on spirituality in nursing make extravagant claims about transcendence, eternity, the numinous, higher powers, higher levels of existence, invisible forces, cosmic unity, the essence of humanity, or other supernatural concepts. Typically, these assertions are made without the support of argument or evidence; and, as a consequence, alternative ways of theorizing ‘spirituality’ have been closed off, while the lack of consistent scholarship has turned the topic into a metaphysical backwater. In this paper, I (...) adopt a different premise, rejecting unsupported claims, and surveying the ‘spirituality’ terrain from a naturalistic and reductionist perspective. I argue that, if we rid ourselves of non‐naturalistic assumptions, we will discover theoretical and clinical resources in health psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology, and pharmacopsychology – resources which confirm that it is possible to conceptualize the study of existential concerns, and how health professionals might respond to them, in a properly scientific manner. In order to illustrate the potential usefulness of these resources, I will take palliative care as an example. (shrink)

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

We motivate and introduce a new method of abduction, Matrix Abduction, and apply it to modelling the use of non-deductive inferences in the Talmud such as Analogy and the rule of Argumentum A Fortiori. Given a matrix $${\mathbb {A}}$$ with entries in {0, 1}, we allow for one or more blank squares in the matrix, say a i,j =?. The method allows us to decide whether to declare a i,j = 0 or a i,j = 1 or a i,j =? (...) undecided. This algorithmic method is then applied to modelling several legal and practical reasoning situations including the Talmudic rule of Kal-Vachomer. We add an Appendix showing that this new rule of Matrix Abduction, arising from the Talmud, can also be applied to the analysis of paradoxes in voting and judgement aggregation. In fact we have here a general method for executing non-deductive inferences. (shrink)

Religions; Islam; relations; Christianity; Judaism; Christianity and other religions; Other (Philosophy); religious aspects; Islam.

The article presents the conceptualization of philosophical education, in the context of which the evolution of the development of society from informational to smart society takes place. The purpose of the article is to reveal the conceptualization of philosophical education in the context of the idea of a smart society and to show that philosophical education does not stand still but develops along with the development of science and technology, which requires the development of a conceptual and categorical apparatus. Research (...) objectives: to show the development of philosophical knowledge, in the context of which new innovative ideas are ripening; to reveal that the concept of a smart society is based on the expectation or belief in the ability of modern smart technologies to positively influence social processes and lead to a new qualitative state of all social life, which is called a smart society; to prove that much in solving all these problems depends on the state of education, including philosophical and ideological, not only developing our cognitive abilities, but also forming a responsible and demanding attitude to goal setting, the choice of basic life values. Analysis of recent research and publications, which presents a solution to this problem. We rely on the works of I.Ardashkin, V.Voronkova, M.Kastels, O.Kivlyuk, K.Korsak, A.Lazarevich, R.Oleksenko, O.Punchenko, which in one way or another reflected the problem of the formation of a smart society. The research methodology is the dialectical, historical, systemic, informational methods, which allowed to penetrate deeply into the evolution of philosophical knowledge that is not in mass, but develops with the development of science, technique and technology. The result of research - based smart society the development of information and computer technologies that lead to breakthrough technologies and innovative development It is noted that the proposed reorganization of the system of social-humanitarian education in the universities of the Republic of Belarus intended to raise to the level of philosophical training of domestic specialists. (shrink)

Mishel Fuco not only influenced the consciousness of modern West, but changed the modus of thinking, the way of perception of many traditional notions, transformed the opinions about the reality, history, person. Philosopher’s principle research programme which attaches the entirety to his works is “archeology of knowledge” programme, the search of human knowledge’s original layers. Let us mark that all Fuco’s works in 1960s are devoted to main aim: to clear up the conditions of historical origin of different mental aims (...) and social institutions in the culture of the Modern Time. Though in the whole this common aim remained for Fuco invariable, but the level on which he realizes his research search is changing constantly and rather logically. Relations of power, and to be more exact,accumulations of power and knowledge, social and cognitive which define all the aggregate of specific possibilities of culture in each given historical period. More than that the philosopher offers the particular prospects of sight of modern society and precisely totality of power relations, its ubiquitous nature and specific productivity which produces itself in each moment in any point or rather in any attitude from one point to another. From Fuco’s point of view the power is everywhere and not because it involves everything but because it comes from everywhere. The power is productive in that degree in which it is not associated with one definite imperious instance but pierces all kinds of activity in society, putting on its indelible stamp, developing under definite angle and due to this factit causes products, produced by them. The power induces and at the same time determines the fact which appears as a result of its inducement. The thirst of supremacy, which surrounds the individual and is focused on it as on the center of its use of force, comes out as a defining sign. It should be noticed that Fuco’s conception of power is not reduced to the understanding it as anonymous impersonal net of relations, piercing all society. It is supplemented by power treatment,coming out in “designed” look of definite imperious structure or imperious institute. (shrink)

This study introduces and evaluates the GIBAC Learning Model, aimed at enhancing students’ mathematical communication skills in Indonesian secondary schools, achieving an impressive 30% increase in students’ mathematical communication skills as evidenced by the n-gain method and dependent t-test analysis. Grounded in cooperative learning theory and motivation, the model integrates local academic culture and promotes student independence, offering a promising avenue for educational advancement in Indonesia. Employing a Mixed Methods approach, data from three secondary schools were collected via cluster random (...) sampling, encompassing interviews, observations, expert assessments, and questionnaires. Analysis reveals the model’s effectiveness in improving mathematical communication skills, underscoring its relevance to Indonesian educational practices. Practical implications for teachers emphasize the integration of cultural aspects and student autonomy in mathematics education, thereby contributing to the advancement of educational literature through Indonesian innovation and cultural adaptation in pedagogical frameworks. (shrink)

Probability theory is important because of its relevance for decision making, which also means: its relevance for the single case. The propensity theory of objective probability, which addresses the single case, is subject to two problems: Humphreys’ problem of inverse probabilities and the problem of the reference class. The paper solves both problems by restating the propensity theory using (an objectivist version of) Pearl’s approach to causality and probability, and by applying a decision-theoretic perspective. Contrary to a widely held view, (...) decision making on the basis of given propensities can proceed without a subjective-probability supplement to propensities. (shrink)

This book examines all verses of the Quran involving knowledge related concepts. It begins with the argument that an analysis of the Quranic concept of ignorance points to epistemic virtues that can pave our way towards gaining knowledge and/or understanding. It deals with the Quranic concepts of perceptual, rational, and revelatory knowledge as well as understanding and wisdom in the light of recent discussions in Western analytic epistemology. It also argues that the relevant Quranic verses seem to involve concept of (...) an epistemic conscience whose proper exercise can yield knowledge or understanding. While not overlooking the Quranic emphasis on revelation as a source of knowledge, the book draws our attention to a remarkable overlap between some strains of contemporary virtue epistemology and Quranic approach to knowledge. It shows that the Quranic verses suggest a progressive sequence from propositional knowledge to understanding to wisdom. (shrink)

In retrospect, I think I was right to compose Natural Supernaturalism by relying on taste, tact, and intuition rather than on a controlling method. A book of this kind, which deals with the history of human intellection, feeling, and imagination, employs special vocabularies, procedures, and modes of demonstration which, over many centuries of development, have shown their profitability when applied to matters of this sort. I agree with Booth that these procedures, when valid, are in a broad sense rational, and (...) subject to analysis and some degree of definition. But the rules underlying such a discourse are complex, elusive, unsystematic, and subject to innovative modification; they manifest themselves in the intuitive expertise of the historian; and the specification of these rules should not precede, but follow practice. . . . After the fact, nevertheless, a book like Natural Supernaturalism is subject to close critical inquiry about its methods and rationale. I am grateful to Booth for opening up such an inquiry, and for doing so in a way that is not only disarming, but seems to me to be the most promising of useful results. That is, instead of adopting a prosecutorial stance, demanding: "Justify the rationality and probative force of what you have done; it looks dammed suspicious to me," he has adopted the friendly tactic of saying: "Your book, in my experience of it, has yielded discoveries that I want to call knowledge, by methods, however deviant from standard rubrics of valid reasoning, that it seems irrational to call non-rational. Let's set out to clarify what these methods are, and to see what grounds we can find for the claim that they provide warranted knowledge." M.H. Abrams' contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Deconstructive Angel" and "Behaviorism and Deconstruction: A Comment on Morse Peckham's 'The Infinitude of Pluralism'". (shrink)

This paper analyses the concept of justice that John Stuart Mill exposes in one of his main works: The Utilitarianism. The article states that this notion of justice, paradoxically to Mill’s spirit, can set up the foundations for a totalitarian society, instead of the liberal order that he promotes in his other main work, On liberty.

Francisco Fernández-Zarza Pérez conocido como Jano, fue un artista polifacético dentro del mundo publicitario y cinematográfico. Destacó por su versatilidad a la hora de retratar a las estrellas cinematográficas pertenecientes al “star-system” nacional e internacional durante la época de la posguerra y la transición española.Partiendo de la importancia del cartel como medio de transmisión del mensaje, pretendemos descubrir si sus carteles, entre los años 1940 y 1970, además de actuar como reclamo para dar a conocer las películas también actuaron como (...) reflejo de los estereotipos sociales mediante la representación de los roles femeninos. (shrink)