With the increasing use of mobile devices and new technologies, electronic payments, such as near field communication mobile payments, are gaining traction and gradually replacing the currency-based cash payment methods. Despite multiple initiatives by various parties to encourage mobile payments, adoption rates in developing countries have remained low. The purpose of this research is to explore the prime determinants of NFC mobile-payment adoption intention and to develop a model of mobile payment adoption that includes perceived risk as one of the (...) major elements by extending the UTAUT2 theory components. An online survey was used to acquire data from 370 NFC mobile payments users for the current study. To validate the components and their correlations, structural equation modelling was implemented. According to the findings, performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, social influence, and facilitating conditions have substantial impacts on the consumers’ intentions to adopt NFC mobile payments. Effort expectancy and PR were reported to have no considerable effects on the adoption intention. In addition, INFC is revealed to be a major mediator between the associations of the actual adoption of NFC mobile payment with PE, HM, and SI. The findings of the study would assist providers and marketers in better understanding of the consumers’ behavior, designing effective marketing strategies to enhance the consumers’ positive intentions, and achieving the mass adoption of NFC mobile payments in different environmental contexts. (shrink)

(1992). The rituals of science: Comments on Abir‐Am (with response) Social Epistemology: Vol. 6, The Historical Ethnography of Scientific Rituals, pp. 373-387.

To provide basic health care services in rural areas is one of the major challenges for developing countries like Bangladesh because of lack of infrastructures and unavailability of qualified medical doctors in the villages. Telemedicine viewed as a new way of offering health care services that has the potential to overcome this problem. Author is a member of extended group at Dhaka University (DU) which has been developing telemedicine equipment and data acquisition software to promote telemedicine practice in Bangladesh. PC (...) based ECG equipment, Digital stethoscope, Digital microscope, Digital X-ray view box and some other essential medical equipment was developed for telemedicine services. The data acquisition software establishes an easy and appropriate patients to doctor interaction through a trained operator in a remote center that involve management and arrangement of consultation of a chosen and agreeing doctor by a patient. Upon establishing audio-visual connection between patient and doctor relevant physiological data from different diagnostic instruments will be uploaded securely in a dedicated web server which can be viewed real time using unique patient/doctor ID and password. Recently the Telemedicine group of DU and a local NGO named SAMAMA with support from Service innovation fund (SIF) of Prime Minister Office (PMO) of Bangladesh took the initiative to establish eight rural telemedicine centers and one expert center for the field trial of telemedicine in Bangladesh. The aim of this paper is to examine the ethical challenges of such health care system and our effort to overcome those problem before starting the field trial. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to establish an alternative doctor-patient relationship model and describe its importance in the case of the doctor-patient relationship in Bangladesh. There is a lot of diversity in the religious beliefs, social norms and values in Bangladesh. Likewise, the development of biological science as well as medical technology, the allocation of healthcare resources must be considered as an important issue. That is why the autonomy of both doctor and patient is a relational factor here. Besides, (...) the four traditional doctor-patient relationship models offered by Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Linda L. Emanuel are not beyond criticism. So, we need an ideal doctor-patient relationship model for Bangladesh to protect every patient’s autonomy which will give freedom to the patient in choosing their own treatment as well as which will not conflict with the patient’s social or cultural values. In this article, I have selected the relational model of autonomy as the method of alternative doctor-patient relationship model. Hopefully, this alternative model will work better since it considers care first concerning a patient’s autonomy. Besides, doctors would treat their patients as a ‘care seeker’ rather than ‘client’ or ‘customer’, and simultaneously, patients would perceive their physicians as ‘caregivers’. But, applying the relational model of autonomy in the case of doctor-patient relationship is more challenging in Bangladesh due to some obstacles like large numbers of population, illiteracy, insufficiency of skilled doctors and hospitals, corruption in medical sectors, social prejudices and so on. But, if we can overcome these problems, the relational model of autonomy will be considered as a suitable doctor-patient relationship model in Bangladesh. (shrink)

This essay examines the breast cancer accounts of four Arab female celebrities who have spoken out in public about their illness experience: the Egyptian TV presenter Basma Wahba and the actress Yasmine Ghaith, the Iraqi actress Namaa al-Ward, and the Lebanese pop singer Elissa. By reading their testimonies against the backdrop of critical literature on illness narratives and memoirs, as well as on cancer narratives and activism, the essay asks: how are the accounts of these women’s cancer diagnosis and treatment (...) disclosed and described? In what medium do they communicate and circulate their breast cancer experiences? What significance do these public disclosures have on challenging and breaking the Arab taboo of cancer? In conclusion, the essay argues that these women’s willingness to share their stories in public constitutes an important form of multimedia activist intervention—visual, sonic, and performative—that is playing a key role in the development of a breast cancer movement. (shrink)

This article focuses on the representation of female physical illness and disability in the works of two Arab women writers: Iraqi Alia Mamdouh’s Habbat al Naftalin [Mothballs] (1986) and Egyptian Salwa Bakr’s al ‘Arabah al Dhahabiyah la Tas‘ad ila al Sama’ [The Golden Chariot] (1991). It argues that the representation of female illness in these works centres upon the figure of the sick mother. Despite the limitations of this trope of illness, both novels offer a more complex illness narrative than (...) those of their Arab predecessors. By problematizing the representation of the sick woman/mother, both novels challenge the traditional role of the silent, sick female figure whose story remains outside the limits of representation. Finally, the article argues that this textual recuperation of the female suffering body is achieved through the employment of a mother— daughter plot which continues to represent the sick mother as socially and emotionally absent but which nevertheless renders her a central figure in the daughter’s narrative. (shrink)

This essay explores the material, phenomenological and political meaning of the Syrian corpse and the question of its dignity as represented in a series of media and visual outputs from 2011 to the present. The essay begins by arguing that the violence in Syria now targets the dead as much as the living. As such, the essay highlights the forms of ‘necroviolence’ that the Syrian corpse has been subjected to: mistreatment, erasure of markers of identity, denial of burial, mutilation and (...) ultimately an attempt to erase it from memory. The essay concludes by arguing that the Syrian corpse is not merely the passive subject or victim of ‘necroviolence’ but can also become the paradoxical agent of what we might call ‘postmortem resistance’. (shrink)

(1997). Information processing as an intrinsic property of biological systems: Origin and dynamics of information. World Futures: Vol. 50, No. 1-4, pp. 571-581.

This book discusses the basic foundations of theoretical biology. Contrary to the objects of theoretical physics, the biological object contains a kind of ontological duality and refers to a fundamental wholeness of a living system. The rational interpretation of wholeness is considered by the author as a true basis for fundamental principles of development of theoretical biology and for understanding its link to physics, to psychology, and to semiotics. The rational holistic approach in application to theoretical biology can be substantiated (...) through the clarification of internal logic of organization and description of biological systems. This logic will provide an understanding of the place of life in the Universe. The main goal of this book is to introduce the view that in the potentially infinite system of human knowledge, a proper clarification of the place of Man in the Universe is possible only via understanding of the phenomenon of life. (Imprint: Nova Biomedical). (shrink)

In order to modelize the reasoning of an intelligent agent represented by a poset T, H. Rasiowa introduced logic systems called “Approximation Logics”. In these systems a set of constants constitutes a fundamental tool. In this papers, we consider logic systems called L′T without this kind of constants but limited to the case where T is a finite poset. We prove a weak deduction theorem. We introduce also an algebraic semantics using Hey ting algebra with operators. To prove the completeness (...) theorem of the L′T system with respect to the algebraic semantics, we use the method of H. Rasiowa and R. Sikorski for first order logic. In the propositional case, a corollary allows us to assert that it is decidable to know “if a propositional formula is valid”. We study also certain relations between the L′T logic and the intuitionistic and classical logics. (shrink)

Any living system possesses internal embedded description and exists as a superposition of different potential realisations, which are reduced in interaction with the environment. This reduction cannot be recursively deduced from the state in time present, it includes unpredictable choice and needs to be modelled also from the state in time future. Such non-recursive establishment of emerging configuration, after its memorisation via formation of reflective loop (sign-creating activity), becomes the inherited recursive action. It leads to increase of complexity of the (...) embedded description, which constitutes the rules of generative grammar defining possible directions of open evolutionary process. The states in time future can be estimated from the point of their perfection, which represents the final cause in the Aristotelian sense and may possess a selective advantage. The limits of unfolding of the reflective process, such as the golden ratio and the golden wurf are considered as the canons of perfection established in the evolutionary process. (shrink)

(1992). A historical ethnography of a scientific anniversary in molecular biology: The first protein X‐ray photograph (1984, 1934) Social Epistemology: Vol. 6, The Historical Ethnography of Scientific Rituals, pp. 323-354.

Here, we analyze how the set of nucleotides in the cell is equilibrated and how this generates simple rules that help the cell to organize itself via maintenance of a stable non‐equilibrium state. A major mechanism operating to achieve this state is thermodynamic buffering via high activities of equilibrating enzymes such as adenylate kinase. Under stable non‐equilibrium, the ratios of free and Mg‐bound adenylates, Mg2+ and membrane potentials are interdependent and can be computed. The adenylate status is balanced with the (...) levels of reduced and oxidized pyridine nucleotides through regulated uncoupling of the pyridine nucleotide pool from ATP production in mitochondria, and through oxidation of substrates non‐coupled to NAD+ reduction in peroxisomes. The set of adenylates and pyridine nucleotides constitutes a generalized cell energy status and determines rates of major metabolic fluxes. As the result, fluxes of energy and information become organized spatially and temporally, providing conditions for self‐maintenance of metabolism. (shrink)

In order to modelize the reasoning of intelligent agents represented by a poset T, H. Rasiowa introduced logic systems called “Approximation Logics”. In these systems a set of constants constitutes a fundamental tool. In this paper, we consider logic systems called L'T without this kind of constants but limited to the case where T is a finite poset. We study the tableau method for this system and we prove its completeness for a class of formulas with respect to an algebraic (...) semantics. (shrink)

This volume breaks new ground in the study of how national culture, disciplinary tradition, epistemological choice, and political expediency affect the construction of collective memory and, then, how historians work with—and sometimes against—those constructions. Essays focus on a variety of commemorative rites, ranging from the quincentennial of Copernicus to the centennials of Pasteur, Darwin, and Planck; from the tercentenary of Harvard to the half centennial of Los Alamos; from the centennial of evolutionary theory to anniversaries of research schools in molecular (...) biology. Contributors include Clark A. Elliott, Owen Gingerich, Dieter Hoffmann, Dominque Pestre, Robert W. Seidel, and V. Betty Smocovitis. (shrink)

In order to modelize the reasoning of intelligent agents represented by a poset T, H. Rasiowa introduced logic systems called “Approximation Logics”. In these systems the use of a set of constants constitutes a fundamental tool. We have introduced in [8] a logic system called equation image without this kind of constants but limited to the case that T is a finite poset. We have proved a completeness result for this system w.r.t. an algebraic semantics. We introduce in this paper (...) a Kripke-style semantics for a subsystem equation image of equation image for which there existes a deduction theorem. The set of “possible worldsr is enriched by a family of functions indexed by the elements of T and satisfying some conditions. We prove a completeness result for system equation image with respect to this Kripke semantics and define a finite Kripke structure that characterizes the propositional fragment of logic equation image. We introduce a reational semantics which has the advantage to allow an interpretation of the propositionnal logic equation image using only binary relations. We treat also the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem of the propositional fragment of logic equation image. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a propositional logic (called mixed logic) containing disjoint copies of minimal, intuitionistic and classical logics. We prove a completeness theorem for this logic with respect to a Kripke semantics. We establish some relations between mixed logic and minimal, intuitionistic and classical logics. We present at the end a sequent calculus version for this logic.

Using U.S. Department of Justice data on state-level political corruption, we find that, consistent with the Harmful Corruption Environment Hypothesis (HCEH), firms situated in states with higher levels of corruption incur higher costs of equity (CoEs). These results are robust for additional controls, propensity score matching, use of instrumental variables, exogenous shocks, and alternate measures for main dependent and primary independent research variables. Our study extends the stream of literature that investigates the influence of local ethical or trust factors on (...) CoE and complements works by El Ghoul and colleagues and Gupta and colleagues. (shrink)

Perceptual conscious experiences result from non-conscious processes that precede them. We document a new characteristic of the cognitive system: the speed with which visual meaningful stimuli are prioritized to consciousness over competing noise in visual masking paradigms. In ten experiments (N = 399) we find that an individual's non-conscious visual prioritization speed (NVPS) is ubiquitous across a wide variety of stimuli, and generalizes across visual masks, suppression tasks, and time. We also find that variation in NVPS is unique, in that (...) it cannot be explained by variation in general speed, perceptual decision thresholds, short-term visual memory, or three networks of attention (alerting, orienting and executive). Finally, we find that NVPS is correlated with subjective measures of sensitivity, as they are measured by the Highly Sensitive Person scale. We conclude by discussing the implications of variance in NVPS for understanding individual variance in behavior and the neural substrates of consciousness. (shrink)

Recent studies highlight the need for ethical and equitable digital health research that protects the rights and interests of racialized communities. We argue for practices in digital health that promote data self-determination for these communities, especially in data collection and management. We suggest that researchers partner with racialized communities to curate data that reflects their wellness understandings and health priorities, and respects their consent over data use for policy and other outcomes. These data governance approach honors and builds on Indigenous (...) Data Sovereignty (IDS) decolonial scholarship by Indigenous and non-indigenous researchers and its adaptations to health research involving racialized communities from former European colonies in the global South. We discuss strategies to practice equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility and decolonization (EDIAD) principles in digital health. We draw upon and adapt the concept of Precision Health Equity (PHE) to emphasize models of data sharing that are co-defined by racialized communities and researchers, and stress their shared governance and stewardship of data that is generated from digital health research. This paper contributes to an emerging research on equity issues in digital health and reducing health, institutional, and technological disparities. It also promotes the self-determination of racialized peoples through ethical data management. (shrink)

Cilia are slender, micrometer‐long organelles present on the surface of eukaryotic cells. They function in signaling and locomotion and are constructed by intraflagellar transport (IFT). The assembly of IFT complexes into so‐called IFT trains to initiate ciliary entry at the base of the cilium remains a matter of debate. Here, we use structural modeling to provide an architectural framework for how RabL2 is anchored at the ciliary base via CEP19 before being handed over to IFT trains for ciliary entry. Our (...) models suggest that the N‐terminal domain of CEP43 forms a homo‐dimer to anchor at the subdistal appendages of cilia through a direct interaction with CEP350. A long linker region separates the N‐terminal domain of CEP43 from the C‐terminal domain, which captures CEP19 above the subdistal appendages and close to the distal appendages. Furthermore, we present a structural model for how RabL2‐CEP19 associates with the IFT‐B complex, providing insight into how RabL2 is handed over from CEP19 to the IFT complex. Interestingly, RabL2 association with the IFT‐B complex appears to induce a significant conformational change in the IFT complex via a kink in the coiled‐coils of the IFT81/74 proteins, which may prime the IFT machinery for entry into cilia. (shrink)

Context. The identification of the sources that reionized the Universe and their specific contribution to this process are key missing pieces of our knowledge of the early Universe. Faint star-forming galaxies may be the main contributors to the ionizing photon budget during the epoch of reionization, but their escaping photons cannot be detected directly due to inter-galactic medium opacity. Hence, it is essential to characterize the properties of faint galaxies with significant Lyman continuum photon leakage up to z 4 to (...) define indirect indicators allowing analogues to be found at the highest redshift. Aims. Long gamma-ray bursts explode typically in star-forming regions of faint, star-forming galaxies. Through LGRB afterglow spectroscopy it is possible to detect directly LyC photons. Our aim is to use LGRBs as tools to study LyC leakage from faint, star-forming galaxies at high redshift. Methods. Here we present the observations of LyC emission in the afterglow spectra of GRB 191004B at z = 3:5055, together with those of the other two previously known LyC-emitting LGRB, to determine their LyC escape fraction and compare their properties. Results. From the afterglow spectrum of GRB 191004B we determine a neutral hydrogen column density at the LGRB redshift of og =17:2 0:15, and negligible extinction. The only metal absorption lines detected are C iv and Si iv. In contrast to GRB 050908 and GRB 060607A, the host galaxy of GRB 191004B displays significant Ly emission. From its Ly emission and the non-detection of Balmer emission lines we constrain its star-formation rate to 1 SFR 4:7 M yr. 1. We fit the Ly emission with a shell model and find parameters values consistent with the observed ones. The absolute LyC escape fractions we find for GRB 191004B, GRB 050908 and GRB 060607A are of 0:35+0:10.0:11, 0:08+0:05.0:04 and :20+0:05.0:05, respectively. We compare the LyC escape fraction of LGRBs to the values of other LyC emitters found from the literature, showing that LGRB afterglows can be powerful tools to study LyC escape for faint high-redshift star-forming galaxies. Indeed we could push LyC leakage studies to much higher absolute magnitudes. The host galaxies of the three LGRB presented here have all M1600 >.19:5 mag, with the GRB 060607A host at M1600 >.16 mag. LGRB hosts may therefore be particularly suitable for exploring the ionizing escape fraction in galaxies that are too faint or distant for conventional techniques. Furthermore the time investment is very small compared to galaxy studies. (shrink)