Authoritative Texts Research Articles

Digital Battlefronts: Rethinking Legal Frontiers in Cyber warfare and AI Conflicts

Cyberspace and artificial intelligence (AI) have been increasingly used in international conflicts without sufficient regulations, raising concerns over their unchecked impact. Although authoritative texts like the Tallinn Manual provide guidance for governing cyberspace, the absence of explicit International Humanitarian Law (IHL) rules tailored to cyber operations remains a significant concern.The current legal frameworks are insufficient to effectively regulate armed conflicts in cyberspace.The article discusses how cyber-attacks are regulated by the existing body of laws such as the United Nations Charter, International humanitarian Law (IHL), international treaties. The UN General Assembly global Conference on Cyberspace was organised to address, Whether the human moderators and commanders can be held responsible for AI-driven violations under the current IHL framework?. This paper explores the cyber attacks that are global in nature using various cyber case studies that are state sponsored or not state sponsored. This paper concludes that there is a need for new international conventions or legislations to effectively deal with cyberwarfare in international space.

Идентичность молокан и кряшен в середине XIX — начале XX вв.: сходства и различия (по материалам мемуаров)

The article draws a comparison of social identities of the two religious groups, the Molokan and Kryashen, by using the sources from the mid-nineteenth — early twentieth century. The sources include memoirs by the Molokan Nil Petrovich Dimryukov and the Kryashen Vasilii Timofeevich Timofeev. The article is based upon three theoretical concepts — “identity” by E. Erikson, “group formation” by R. Jenkins and “textual communities” by B. Stock. The author concludes that the tendency to construct communal life around authoritative religious texts among Molokans and Kryashens of the said time period had specific features: the tradition of textuality among Molokans faced challenges both from outside and inside the community, but also had its supporters; while the tradition of textuality among Kryashens was only gaining its special form. The author also notes the prospects of comparing the identity of both groups in the past with their present-day forms basing on his field research in Moscow and Kazan.

Text analysis and optimization strategy of an app’s privacy policy from the perspective of dual perception: taking Chinese shopping apps as an example

Purpose This paper aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of the shortcomings of apps’ privacy policies and to propose improvement and optimization strategies, which are of great significance for establishing a transparent and responsible privacy protection framework that ensures compliant collection and use of users’ information and effective protection of their privacy. Design/methodology/approach This paper obtained privacy policy texts for 100 shopping apps through Web crawlers and manual downloads. Based on the perspective of perceived usefulness, thematic analysis is conducted through the latent Dirichlet allocation topic model and comparison with existing policies. Based on the perspective of perceived ease of use, readability analysis is conducted through content analysis and formula calculation. Findings The apps privacy policies can be divided into seven themes. The authors benchmark these seven topics with the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, the E-Commerce Law of the People’s Republic of China and the General Data Protection Regulation. It is found that there are omissions in the information collection and use and juvenile protection of the existing apps. Through the indicators’ readability analysis and calculation, it is found that the existing apps privacy policies have good performance in the readability indicators such as naming method, frame directory and so on. However, text personalization and text readability need to be improved and optimized. Originality/value At the theoretical level, this paper constructs a model from the dual perception perspectives of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use and analyses the apps’ privacy policy texts at a fine-grained level. At the practical level, based on large-scale apps’ privacy policy text data, this paper conducts multi-dimensional research from theme analysis, authoritative law benchmarking analysis, content analysis and text readability calculation and analysis. At the same time, this paper identifies the current problems of apps’ privacy policies and puts forward countermeasure suggestions for their content improvement and optimization.

Towards an Intellectual History of Cakravartin Kingship

Abstract Cakravartin kingship has long been treated as an ahistorical constant in histories of premodern Southern Asia. This paper argues for an intellectual history of cakravartinship, based not on its articulation in supposedly authoritative texts—particularly Buddhist suttas—but instead on what I call a “genealogy of practice,” traced primarily through the inscriptional record. Such a genealogy suggests that the mid-eleventh century served as a watershed moment for cakravartin claims: across the Indian Ocean, across “religious” boundaries, and across vernacular languages.

Forms of the Mother Right: Marxism's Matriarchal Origins from Friedrich Engels to Lu Märten

AbstractThe nineteenth‐century discovery of the matrilineal origins of society shattered assumptions about the necessity of the bourgeois family. For Marxists, ethnographic studies of the mother right provided an aesthetic form to reevaluate the “woman question” from a scientific perspective. Although Marx and Engels had long rejected the idea of the family in favor of “family forms,” Engels's adaptation of Morgan's Ancient Society (1877) in Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats (1884) was canonized as the authoritative Marxist text on the subject. While the ethnographic form enabled the denaturalization of the family, its racialized and gendered temporality undercut socialist critiques of social forms. This article introduces Lu Märten's queer utopian response to the mother right, Geschichte der Frau vom Mutterrecht bis zur Gegenwart (1947), which dispenses with the evolutionary structure of the ethnographic study to offer a vision of polyamorous and androgynous forms in a classless society.

Dancing in the Dark: The Case for Chaos in an Age of AI Generated Answers

ABSTRACTOne of the key aims of information search tools is to organise information and make it accessible and useful, reducing the chaos of an information deluge to ten blue links, perhaps with some context about the utility of the information they represent. Generative AI answer engines, such as ChatGPT, have gone one step further, reducing the ten blue links to a single passage of text: highly digestible, easily accessible, possibly false and ultimately bland. All chaos, including disagreement between sources, possible false information, and the influence of societal biases, and the opportunity to access more information is hidden under a rug of simple, authoritative sounding text. Friction, disagreement, reflections and odd informational juxtapositions have long been known to underpin serendipity, inspiration and creativity, yet these answer engines reduce all of these opportunities, particularly in the context of complex information needs. Using ‘bounded chaos’ as a framework, we critique the trade‐offs made by answer engines, demonstrating that, even as they are non‐deterministic, they hide the wrong parts of the chaos for those who seek learning or inspiration. We make the case against bland, and defend information seekers need for perceptible heterogeneity, friction, and even a little chaos.

The Controversy of Child Marriage Culture in The Perspective of Maqāṣid al-Usrah: A Case Study of The Authority of Lebe' in Brebes

This research is backdroped by the role of Kiais (religious figures) whose opinions regarding the permissibility of child marriage are widely followed by their local community. It aims to investigate the relevance of child marriage law in the Regency of Brebes from the perspective of maqāṣid al-usrah. This research was conducted in Banjarharjo, Pararaja, Banjaran, and Brebes districts of the Regency of Brebes by employing legal anthropology and Ushul al-Fiqh approaches. The theories used in this research are internalization theory and maqāṣid al-usrah. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and document analysis. The practice of child marriage in Brebes society is, in principle, irrelevant to the concept of maqāṣid al-usrah, which was theoretically explained by Jamal al-Din 'Aṭiyyah. This research found that religious understanding that is internalized in the community traditions resulted in a fiqh product entitled Kitāb al-Nikah authored by an Indonesian ulama and the authority of Lebe' which has had a significant influence on the practice of child marriage in Brebes Regency. The practice of child marriage should not only be based on authoritative texts but also requires consideration of 'āqil bāligh as well as consideration of suitability, namely rushd (capability) as well as considering maqāṣid al-usrah, regulating the relationship between men and women (tanẓīm al-'alaqah bayn al-jinsayn), realization of peace, love, and compassion (taḥqīq al-sakn wa al-mawaddah wa al-raḥmah), maintaining religion in the family (hifz al-tadayyun fi al-usrah), regulating the essential aspects of the family (tanẓīm al-jānib al-mu'assasī li al-usrah), and Family Financial Regulation (tanẓīm al-jānib al-māl li al-usrah).

Urban equilibrium: legal imperatives for sustainable development and habitat preservation in Shenzhen, China

Shenzhen, a bustling metropolis in China, is currently grappling with the delicate balance between urban expansion and environmental preservation. This study finds that the disintegration of habitats due to urban development in Shenzhen city significantly impacts the ecosystem of animals and plants, detrimentally altering their living conditions. The study results reveal that the expansion of construction land in China has surged by an impressive 84.39% between 2000 and 2020, which has come at the cost of diminishing wetlands, farmland, and woodlands by 57.24%, 16.58%, and 1.86%, respectively. Between 1980–2020, the urban expanse of Shenzhen expanded dramatically, growing from 16.0 square kilometres to 850.2 square kilometres. This transformation was primarily driven by the rapid conversion of forested areas, which saw a staggering decrease of approximately 300% to 780 km2 by 2020. Additionally, half of Shenzhen’s expansion can be attributed to the transformation of agricultural land, with an additional 40% stemming from the clearing of forests and approximately 9% resulting from the decrease in water resources. Furthermore, non-urban green spaces, particularly built-up areas, have significantly expanded, now encompassing approximately 60% of the city in 2018. Therefore, based on the existing literature and authoritative legal texts, this study aims to examine the legal frameworks of the Shenzhen government and, along with China’s national legislation, to make room for wildlife and biodiversity conservation in a metropolis like Shenzhen.

Agency, authority and universality in the promotion of global ELT textbook series

ABSTRACT There is at present much focus in ELT on describing and promoting teacher and learner agency. However, ELT as a professional field is concurrently characterised by an increasing orientation toward authoritative texts, particularly those imbued with authority at the transnational level. Global textbooks are a notable example, since they, along with global language testing and language policy, play an increasingly important role in determining teaching and learning practices across a range of different settings. Our focus in this paper is on how the authoritativeness of global textbooks is upheld in online promotional materials. Examining websites of three contemporary ELT textbook series, we analyse discourse strategies employed to legitimise the authoritative position of the textbooks and their publishers. We find that publishers legitimised their authority through strategic links to external forces (policy, testing), in this way foregrounding the universality of the textbooks. In contrast, the websites represented the agencies of teachers and learners only minimally, primarily as subordinate to the agency attributed to textbooks themselves. We conclude with a reflection on the need for applied critical scholarship in ELT that can offer practical alternatives and thus disrupt dominant notions of universality and the hierarchization of knowledge these are based on.

The Safed Genizah: Buried Manuscripts and Kabbalistic Philology in Seventeenth-Century Palestine

Abstract Many Jewish communities around the world have maintained a special site, known as a genizah, for discarding written materials. This article focuses on the genizah of the town of Safed in the Galilee. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Safed Genizah preserved Hebrew manuscripts written by Ḥayyim Vital (d. 1620), foremost student of the influential kabbalist Yitsḥaḳ Luria (d. 1572). These manuscripts were excavated and edited in the mid-seventeenth century and became authoritative texts in the history of Jewish esotericism. My study describes Vital’s burial of his manuscripts and the editorial efforts of the Jewish scholars who followed him, particularly Avraham Azulai (d. 1643) in Hebron and Ya‘akov Tsemaḥ (d. 1666) and his fellowship in Jerusalem. Through analysis of their rhetoric and scribal practices, I explore the ethical, philological, and material aspects of this chapter in the pre-history of Genizah research.

“Dantes Dicit.” Notes on Dante as Auctoritas in the Medieval Academic Community

Dante’s articulate and sometimes critical attitude towards the academic community is evident in several of his works, specifically in Paradiso. To understand the actual extent of this ‘anti-academic’ attitude, this study considers the magistri of the higher schools and the holders of university chairs to observe their position regarding the Commedia. The study aims to ascertain whether the poem was regarded as a teaching text in the 14th and 15th centuries, and particularly whether it was referred to in the textual hermeneutics practiced in lectio. The analysis examined the utilization of the Commedia within schools and universities as an authoritative text in the commentary on the canon of the auctores maiores. The inclusion of Dante’s glosses in various manuscripts recalled to provide erudite data, lexical interpretations, exempla, and sententiae, reflects the progressive integration of the poem within the academic community. This integration signifies its acknowledgment among the auctores employed in exegetical practices, a phenomenon observed across various geographical regions as evidenced by the analyzed manuscripts.

Chatbots, search engines, and the sealing of knowledges

AbstractIn 2023, online search engine provider Microsoft integrated a language model that provides direct answers to search queries into its search engine Bing. Shortly afterwards, Google also introduced a similar feature to its search engine with the launch of Google Gemini. This introduction of direct answers to search queries signals an important and significant change in online search. This article explores the implications of this new search paradigm. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s theory of Situated Knowledges and Rainer Mühlhoff’s concept of Sealed Surfaces, I introduce the term Sealed Knowledges to draw attention to the increasingly difficult access to the plurality of potential answers to search queries through the output of a singular, authoritative, and plausible text paragraph. I argue that the integration of language models for the provision of direct answers into search engines is based on a de-situated and disembodied understanding of knowledge and affects the subjectivities of its users. At the same time, the sealing of knowledges can lead to an increasing spread of misinformation and may make marginalized knowledge increasingly difficult to find. The paper concludes with an outlook on how to resist the increasing sealing of knowledges in online search.

An Anthology of Faith-Based Collections’ Writings: Tracking the Genealogy of Scholarship on This Genre of Archives

Faith-based collections, also known as religious archives, church archives or archives of faith traditions, have paradoxically not received attention in mainstream archives. However, they permeate every facet of human endeavour. This could be attributed to this genre of archives as they are relatively unknown; there is a lack of general interest, maybe because of the small volume of archives generated from their parent churches or ministries, which renders them insignificant. Consequently, a definitive and authoritative text on faith-based collections has remained a pipe dream in the records and archives discipline, a global challenge. This paper explores the breadth of the writings to inform the global archival community so that scholars and archivists can contribute in this regard, thereby bridging this literary gap in our archival historiography. Faith-based collections, as they relate primarily to manuscripts of evangelists, are an under-researched area in Archival Science. Using secondary sources like books and reports and empirical works in journals, dissertations, theses, conference proceedings and so on, this paper provides a historical insight and timeline that highlights the trajectory of the scholarship on faith-based collections. While this article highlighted the scholarship on faith-based archives, it also contributed to managing manuscripts by evangelists/pastors in African Independent Churches (AICS) and mainstream churches. It offered insight into the emerging literature on faith-based collections and how this is scattered over various sources.

Compilation, Translation and Vernacular Composition after Arundel: John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady

Abstract John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady (1416–1421), a digressive devotional poem centred on a biography of Mary and a liturgical cycle from Christmas to Candlemas, challenges recent critical opinions on the limited direct impact of Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409. The poem both shapes and is shaped by the spirit of the age; it was likely intended for Henry V himself, survives in 50 manuscripts and was printed by William Caxton. In Life of Our Lady, Lydgate neither breaks the rules of Arundel’s Constitutions nor seeks reform. He experiences the rules as stimulation, not censorship. He will not straightforwardly apply Latinate authority to the vernacular. He draws attention to his authority as a writer, rather than to the language he uses, in order to create official ways to write an original, authoritative text for private use without Church intervention. He shows that neither compilation—as passive assembly of texts—nor translation—as a means of doing this in the vernacular—properly addressed the problems that Arundel had identified. Life of Our Lady purports to be an exercise in ‘dullness’ in the fifteenth century—self-effacement as the compiler and translator of authoritative sources—precisely because Lydgate uses the strictures of compilation and translation so cleverly to create his own vernacular authority. He uses this vernacular authority for original composition and to help readers in their private devotion.

What motivates South Korean Official Development Assistance?

AbstractOfficial Development Assistance (ODA) is defined by a motive: the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries. This review article considers the motives of one donor, South Korea, with a close reading and comparison of three authoritative texts. It argues that Korean ODA is primarily motivated by increasing status and influence, and supporting the overseas expansion of Korean companies. There is also a contribution from secondary motivations more clearly related to the definition of ODA: humanitarianism and being a good global citizen.

A STUDY OF MICROBIAL CONTAMINATION IN PUNARNAVA MANDURA

Introduction: Herbal medicines are being used extensively in many countries to treat many diseases, as seen in the COVID-19 pandemic, so the global market for herbal medicines has grown suddenly. In India, under the Ayurveda system of medicine, apart from plants, animal and mineral products have also been used as medicine since long ago. Both herbal and animal products contain primarily organic components; therefore, like food in-gredients (biological ingredients), herbal medicine and animal products are at risk of microbial growth and con-tamination. Punarnava Mandura is a popular Ayurvedic medicine described in various classical and authoritative texts of Ayurveda. It is a perfect example of a medicine made from substances derived from plants, minerals, and animals. It contains Mandura Bhasma as a mineral component apart from other herbal ingredients, while cow urine (Gomutra) is of animal origin. It is widely used in infectious and non-infectious fever, cold, indigestion, and other diseases of the Gastrointestinal tract. Microbial contamination of medicines is defined as the unintend-ed habitation of pathogenic microbes that cause their degradation. In pharmaceutics, various factors may be a source of microbes, including the ingredients of drugs, manpower, machines, and the environment of the phar-macy. Microbial contamination is a pertinent issue and essential in quality control steps in pharmaceutical man-ufacturing and food processing. Microbial contamination of medicines and food products may also affect human health. Objective: The primary aim and purpose of the present study was to determine the microbial contamina-tion of an Ayurvedic Herbo-mineral drug sample of Punarnava Mandura. Material and methods: The drug sam-ple (Self-made) was made in the institute pharmacy. Another drug sample (market sample) of Punarnava Man-dura of a pharmacy was also kept as a control to compare the results. Quantitative and qualitative assessment of microbial loads in Punarnava Mandura was assessed. The following strains of microbes: E. Coli, Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Fungus, and Total viable aerobic bacterial count were evaluated. Results: Both the samples of Punarnava Mandura have shown an insignificant load of selected microbes.

Cost of high-level flooding as a consequence of climate change driver?: A case study of China’s flood-prone regions

The extent of flooding in China is more significant than in any other country. Our research reveals that approximately 66 % of China’s landmass is submerged by flooding, affecting about 50 % of the population. Furthermore, the financial toll of flooding now accounts for approximately 1.42 % of the annual gross domestic product (GDP), which is almost 40 times higher than the corresponding figure for the United States. We have observed that Zhengzhou city in Henan province, which faced a devastating flood in 2021, received a significant amount of rainfall, specifically a total of 552.5 mm within a 24-hour period. The floods in Henan province in 2021 caused considerable damage, including impacting nearly 15 million people, resulting in almost 400 deaths, damaging over 10,000 square kilometers of agricultural land, causing almost $19 billion in economic losses, and leading to the collapse of over 35,000 households and damage to various properties. In a similar manner, the significant flooding that occurred in southern China in 2020 impacted approximately 7.1 million individuals across eight provinces and resulted in 54 fatalities, the collapse of 6,700 houses, and incurred a direct economic loss of US$3.33 billion. We found that rainstorms have significantly increased to 10 % in the last 60 years in China. In this paper, we delved into exploring the existing published articles, reports, and government and authoritative legal texts to analyze the causes and impacts of flooding in China’s flood-prone regions and potential mitigation strategies to reduce the repercussions of distressing flood events. We believe this study will help policymakers by providing new insights while formulating policy to reduce the loss caused by high-level flooding.

Making Commotion: Riot and Protest in the Texts of 2 Henry VI

Abstract: This essay argues that the textual differences between the quarto and folio versions of William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI evince the three-way ideological contestation between the aristocracy, the middling sort, and the lower classes in early modern England. Perhaps the most famous scenes from the play, those depicting Jack Cade’s rebellion, exist in both versions, but the portrayal of the uprising is very different between the two texts. The 1594 quarto gives us a vicious Cade intent on destroying businesses, raping women, and spurning well-meaning nobles; the 1623 folio version, by contrast, gives us an eloquent if imperfect Cade whose grievances are justified, reasoned, and well articulated. Political and economic power was steadily shifting during this period from the aristocracy to the middling sort, and, although the differences in Cade’s rebellion from the quarto to the folio might seem to indicate a revision in favor of the rebels, what the changes represent is the beginning of the transfer of ideological power from the aristocracy to upper-class commoners. To the nobility, the rebels are rioters, intent on causing chaos. For the middling sort, it was more advantageous to label them justified protesters, as the rebellion might remove the middling sort’s direct competition—the aristocracy. Thus, the two authoritative texts of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI can help us understand changing perceptions of popular riot and protest in the period and their connection to dominant and emerging class ideologies.

Telehomecare: A Comprehensive Analysis of Its Relevance and Impact

The domestic conveyance of healthcare administrations to patients utilizing broadcast communications innovations that capture quiet clinical status estimations to empower and encourage timely instruction, data spread, social, emotional, and self-care support, as well as care administration by a healthcare professional at an outside location or unscheduled domestic visits based on require. This paper reviews the Telehomecare concepts, challenges, and constraints that need to be addressed for the successful implementation of the Telehomecare system. The narrative overview of the literature synthesizes the findings retrieved from searches of computerized databases, hand searches, and authoritative texts. The results have been summarized and categorized according to the parameters of the Telehomecare impact framework. This comprehensive analysis examines the relevance and impact of Telehomecare, highlighting its benefits, challenges, and future prospects. By understanding the implications of Telehomecare, healthcare systems can make informed decisions regarding its adoption and integration into existing care models.

Molecular mechanisms of circular RNA in breast cancer: a narrative review.

Breast cancer is presently the most prevalent cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide. Circular RNA (circRNA) is a class of closed circRNAs lacking a 5'-end cap structure and a 3'-end polyA tail, which is highly stable and widely involved in a variety of pathophysiological processes such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. In recent years, accumulating studies have shown that circRNAs play an important role in the development and prognosis of breast cancer, but there are fewer literature reviews on their intrinsic molecular mechanisms which is the aim of this study. This review synthesizes the findings of literature retrieved from searches of PubMed and Google Scholar databases, hand searches, and authoritative texts. Citations mainly originate from the past 3 years. The articles need to describe the role of circRNA in breast cancer; no language restrictions were imposed. This review summarizes the latest relevant literature and systematically reviews the four main mechanisms of circRNA in breast cancer from the perspective of circRNA function. At the same time, we describe the formation mechanism, characterization, and biological functions of circRNAs. We reviewed the status of actual knowledge about circRNA biogenesis and functions and summarized novel findings regarding the molecular mechanism of circRNA in breast cancer. Meanwhile, this review explores the possibility of circRNAs for becoming new biodiagnostic indicators and therapeutic targets in breast cancer.