This qualitative research examines the phenomenon of online romance fraud, exploring it from contrasting perspectives. The study engaged two distinct groups of participants: (1) fraudsters actively involved in online romance scams (commonly referred to as “Sakawa Boys”) and (2) police officers with experience in investigating and policing internet crimes. We explore the usefulness of neutralization techniques in interpreting data within the cultural context of individuals’ subjective experiences. Thematic analysis of data reveals that both offenders and police officers employ (...) certain neutralization techniques, such as denial of responsibility, condemnation of the condemners, and appeals to higher loyalties, to justify their conduct. In particular, online romance offenders invoke higher loyalties, rationalizing their actions as reparative justice for colonial exploitation and framing their fraud as a means of reclaiming wealth unjustly taken during colonial rule. The findings suggest that participants perceive the enduring legacy of colonialism as a key factor driving the production of cybercrime. This research contributes to the scant body of direct testimonies from romance fraud offenders, which are significantly rarer than those from police officers, providing valuable insights into this global phenomenon. Methodologically and theoretically, this research contributes to understanding the global phenomenon of scammers targeting individuals worldwide. (shrink)

This study used an emic approach to examine the dynamics of online romance fraud, focusing on the migration of offenders from Nigeria to Ghana. We collected data through qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Ghanaian police officers and Nigerian law enforcement officers were consulted for their perspectives. Thematic analysis revealed key findings, including the migration patterns of Nigerian offenders to Ghana and the institutionalisation of scamming enterprises. These findings shed light on the transnational and structural factors (...) driving online romance fraud in West Africa, highlighting both its global reach and the local mechanisms sustaining these criminal networks. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of regional and international cybercrime dynamics, offering valuable insights to inform policy and law enforcement strategies. (shrink)

This study examines whether the delegated monitoring of main banks effectively decreases severe agency problems. For example, this includes accounting fraud in bank-dominated corporate governance. In this context, the fraud triangle specifies the three main factors of opportunity, incentive, and rationalization. Main banks may reduce the factor of opportunity through actions such as monitoring, which plays a moderating role by reducing the potential for managerial misconduct, whereas, the incentive factor may be enhanced through the subsequent pressure that influences managers to (...) force turnover when they do not repay debts. The potential influence that the main banks have on the fraud rationalization factor may be stronger in firms that are more dependent on main-bank borrowing. This study analyzed data from publicly listed firms in Japan for the period between 2008 and 2016 to determine how main-bank relationships affected accounting fraud, thus allowing an assessment of delegated monitoring practices. Findings showed that main-bank relationships were helpful for reducing accounting fraud, suggesting its overall effectiveness in delegated monitoring. Results also showed that large audit firms did not necessarily prevent accounting fraud, which implies that main banks can employ their own monitoring as a substitute for the roles typically played by these firms. Here, the main policy implication is that main-bank relationships may strengthen business ethics in the context of bank-dominated corporate governance. In conclusion, the continued analysis of bank monitoring may benefit stakeholders while strengthening business ethics in bank-centered economies. (shrink)

The Neuroscience Institute of Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders’s “Gift of Hope” Tissue Donor Program is a volunteer programme for people who wish to donate their brain when they die for neuroscience research into schizophrenia. Organ donation for purposes of research differs from transplant donation in a number of ways, most notably the absence of a single recipient. Within a particular community, however, the single recipient is replaced by a sense of shared experience and preventing suffering in others. Donors have an (...) investment in the research. (shrink)

How closely do the theoretical notions of 'metaphor' and 'allegory' developed by ancient rhetoricians reflect the practice of classical writers? This question is tackled through eleven new essays by a team of distinguished academics. Ancient theories of metaphor are compared with twentieth century alternatives; theory is tested against practice; and allegory - a distinctive though neglected feature of ancient literature and philosophy - is explored against the background of the rhetoricians' claim that it is one form of metaphor.

Le « Yoga Nidra » est le sommeil yogique : un état où tout l’organisme musculaire, nerveux, psychique, se trouve dans un état de parfaite détente, mais où la conscience reste vigilante. Une vigilance paisible et silencieuse, qui conduit à une rencontre et à une réconciliation avec soi-même. La conscience atteint un état de plénitude. Dennis Boyes a expérimenté cette pratique en Inde et a remarqué qu’elle constituait aussi une excellente méthode de relaxation, notamment pour les personnes hyper-sensibles ou surmenées. (...) Ce livre est le résultat de plusieurs années d’expériences de l’auteur et de ses élèves. Le lecteur y trouvera une progression de cette méthode, depuis un niveau superficiel jusqu’à une relaxation profonde, qui est en même temps source d’enrichissement de l’être. (shrink)

A collection of essays exploring the relationship between Plato and the poet Hesiod. The volume covers a wide variety of thematic angles, brings new and sometimes surprising light to a large range of Platonic dialogues, and represents a major contribution to the study of the reception of archaic poetry in Athens.

According to a report in Athenaeus , the qualities of Erosled the Stoic Zeno to make him the tutelary god of his ideal state:Pontianus said that Zeno of Citium took Eros to be the god of love and freedom, and even the provider of concord, but nothing else. This is why he said in his Republic that Eros was the god who contributed to the safety of the city.

'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy (...) in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays written by leading experts in honour of Christopher Rowe, and inspired by his groundbreaking work in the exegesis of Plato. The authors represent scholarly traditions which are sometimes very different in their approaches and interests, and so rarely brought into dialogue with each other. This volume, by contrast, aims to explore synergies between them. Key topics include: the literary unity of Plato's works; the presence and role of his contemporaries in his dialogues; the function (...) of myth (especially the Atlantis myth); Plato's Socratic heritage, especially as played out in his discussions of psychology; his views of truth and being. Prominent among the dialogues discussed are Euthydemus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, Theaetetus, Timaeus, Sophist and Laws. (shrink)

A debate between Proclus and Damascius over whether intellect ‘remembers’ the forms in contemplating them is explained by Professor Adamson as a disagreement over the nature of memory looking back to Plato and Aristotle. But I argue that it is rather symptomatic of a disagreement stretching back through Plotinus to Middle Platonism over the nature of the intellect. This gives the debate its urgency; and it coheres better with the fact that, Plato and Aristotle aside, there is vanishingly little evidence (...) in ancient philosophy for a thematized interest in memory. (shrink)

Aetius 2.24.1 includes a reference to the ‘corona’ apparent during a total solar eclipse, and suggests a theory, also discernible in Plutarch, that it is a case of the optical phenomenon known as a ‘halo.’.

In chapters 30–1 of the de Stoicorum repugnantiis, Plutarch sets out to show that the Stoics involve themselves in self-contradiction if they claim that their philosophy allows them an intelligible notion of providence. In the first place, he says, this is so because the traditional boons which men expect to receive from the gods do not benefit them at all if they do not have wisdom. Indeed, the fool uses all things badly, so that to give him anything at all (...) without giving him virtue should be positively harmful to him. Yet the gods never give virtue to anyone so, on this score, they benefit no one either. (shrink)

L'analyse d'un corpus exhaustif des verbes espagnols montre que les suffixes infinitivaux -er et -ir dans cette langue sont en distribution complémentaire : c'est la forme phonologique de la voyelle préthématique qui en détermine le choix. Nous montrons qu'une analyse en termes de métaphonie ne rend pas compte de leur distribution, et proposons une solution en termes d'harmonie vocalique progressive : les suffixes infinitivaux -er et -ir sont des allomorphes d'un même morphème ; leur sélection dépend du timbre de la (...) voyelle préthématique. (shrink)

The concept of the axial age, initially proposed by the philosopher Karl Jaspers to refer to a period in the first millennium BCE that saw the rise of major religious and philosophical figures and ideas throughout Eurasia, has gained an established position in a number of fields, including historical sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of religion. We explore whether the notion of an “axial age” has historical and intellectual cogency, or whether the authors who use the label of a (...) more free-floating “axiality” to connote varied “breakthroughs” in human experience may have a more compelling case. Throughout, we draw attention to ways in which uses of the axial age concept in contemporary social science vary in these and other respects. In the conclusion, we reflect on the value of the concept and its current uses and their utility in making sense of human experience. (shrink)

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Scheinerman (2023) proposes a Citizen’s Jury on human germline genome editing (HGGE) to promote more inclusive public engagement, agenda setting and governance. She argues these juries should work...

This book traces, for the first time, a revolution in philosophy which took place during the early centuries of our era. It reconstructs the philosophical basis of the Stoics' theory that fragments of an ancient and divine wisdom could be reconstructed from mythological traditions, and shows that Platonism was founded on an argument that Plato had himself achieved a full reconstruction of this wisdom, and that subsequent philosophies had only regressed once again in their attempts to "improve" on his achievement.

Phaedo of Elis was well-known as a writer of Socratic dialogues, and it seems inconceivable that Plato could have been innocent of intertextuality when, excusing himself on the grounds of illness, he made him the narrator of one of his own: the "Phaedo". In fact the psychological model outlined by Socrates in this dialogue converges with the evidence we have (especially from fragments of the Zopyrus) for Phaedo's own beliefs about the soul. Specifically, Phaedo seems to have thought that non-rational (...) desires were ineliminable epiphenomena of the body, that reason was something distinct, and that the purpose of philosophy was its 'cure' and 'purification'. If Plato's intention with the "Phaedo" is to assert the separability and immortality of reason (whatever one might think about desire and pleasure), then Phaedo provides a useful standpoint for him. In particular, Phaedo has arguments that are useful against the 'harmony-theorists' (and are the more useful rhetorically speaking since it is only over the independence of reason that Phaedo disagrees with them). At the same time as allying himself with Phaedo, however, Plato is able to improve on him by adding to the demonstration that reason is independent a proof that it is actually immortal. (shrink)

"The idea for this book arose in connection with the Workshop on Semantic functions of complementizers in European languages, which we organized in October 28-29, 2011, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Around two thirds of the book chapters are elaborations on contributions to this workshop, the remaining one third arose independently of the workshop.".

Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) is a rare lysosomal storage disorder treated with bone marrow transplantation or enzyme replacement therapy with laronidase, a high-cost orphan drug. Laronidase was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency in 2003 and by the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency in 2005. Many Brazilian MPS I patients have been receiving laronidase despite the absence of a governmental policy regulating access to the drug. Epidemiological and treatment data concerning MPS I (...) are scarce. This study aims to present a demographic profile of Brazilian patients with MPS I, describe the routes of access to laronidase in Brazil, and discuss associated ethical issues relating to public funding of orphan drugs. (shrink)