Mere Observation Research Articles

Imam Al-Ghazali on The Balance Observance of ‘Ibadah (Devotional Act): An Enduring Legacy to The Muslim World

This article analyses Imam al-Ghazali’s theory of the balance observance of ibadah (devotional acts or good deeds) among Muslims. Performing ‘ibadah, is part and parcel of the Muslims’ life. Nevertheless, the majority of Muslims—scholars and the public alike—place great emphasis only on the diligent outward performance of devotional acts, and on the observance of the outward requirements. However, Imam al-Ghazali goes beyond this normative practice, arguing that a mere outward observance of devotional acts is still insufficient, and indeed is still at risk. This article is theoretical in nature, and it involves bibliographic research, employing descriptive and analytic methods. The article founds that Imam al-Ghazali maintains devotional acts consist of outward and inward dimensions, and both need to be observed simultaneously and kept in balance. It is only through this balance observance that devotional acts will be transformed from mere physical motions of pure ritualistic observance to spiritually rich deeds, filled with real understanding, wisdom, and realisation.

The bitcoin: a sparkling bubble or price discovery?

The phenomenal rise in the price of bitcoin, prior to the trend reversal of early 2018, resembles a bubble as spectacular as any other bubble. A mere observation of the price rise and a comparison with the common characteristics of a bubble provide anecdotal evidence for the bitcoin bubble. Based on price and volume data up to the end of November 2017, formal empirical evidence is presented by using procedures that do not require the estimation of a fundamental value for bitcoin. The empirical evidence shows that (i) the volume of trading can be explained predominantly in terms of price dynamics; (ii) trading in bitcoin is based exclusively on technical considerations pertaining to past price movements, particularly positive price changes; and (iii) the price of bitcoin is an explosive process. These findings are interpreted to imply a price bubble.

Review, deliberate fault in the field of civil liability in iranian and french law

Iranian jurisprudence and law are based on the principle of the humiliation responsibility and the absolute responsibility is familiar so there is a need for clear legislation. Humiliate is the victim and wastage of human behavior in the external circumstances of the incident. Also, by accepting the idea of a kind of humiliation in Iranian and French people the lack of clear non-point like maniacs are also responsible under the circumstance. Humiliation is divided into a different variety, sometimes based on material element (action and omission), sometimes based on spiritual element (contempt intentional and unintentional) are divided. Due to its deliberate humiliation in the context of the basic conditions is important and the intention intentional infliction of humiliation decisions. Sometimes heavy fault committed and the circumstances of the loss are presumptively for the detection of deliberate humiliation. The tools created the loss; the responsibility is with the conventional and original tools with the community in creating losses, the dividing responsibility should be on the effect rate of the tools and the Article 526 F.M.I are mere observer that the affecting any of the tools are equal. Force majeure objective or absolute responsibility such as anger does not read in responsibility but assuming responsibility based on humiliation and contempt Read exempt returns claim of responsibility.

Comparative phylogenetics of some species of Ophioglossum L. (Ophioglossaceae: Pteridophyta) in India with comments on evolutionary significance of high palaeoploidy and rare morphological traits

The genomic constitution of the genus Ophioglossum is complicated because of its being geologically ancient and of long evolutionary history. A lot of plants of the same and different species resemble each other as well as show significant differences among morphological characters among themselves. Many of the new species described have exhibited several unknown features not observed in any species of the genus so far. In this paper, we wish to emphasize that mere observations on shape and size of trophophyll (leaf) and rhizome, should not be taken reliably in delimiting different species of the genus Ophioglossum because of several variations already reported for many species. Preference should be given to exine ornamentation of spores as emphasized by the present study. Detailed observations on exine ornamentation of spores under SEM have offered precious and distinctive features; semi-tuberculate, beaded strings, and stripped exines are a few forms of spore ornamentations offering clear distinction among species. Long chains of circulate-alete (round alete) spores, sometimes linear tetrads as described hereunder in Ophioglossum aletum are novel features exclusively confined to this species. Comparative chromosome profiles of many species described earlier do not offer any significant support to the identity except in O. eliminatum, which has the lowest chromosome count (n = 90). This appears that since almost all species possess intraspecific polyploidy, the intragenomic variability must be loaded with interspecific hybridization contents including chromosomal aberrations. Quite possibly, this may be one of the reasons that homologous chromosomes rarely form trivalents and multivalents during early meiotic stages, despite the fact that palaeoautoploidy must have resulted in copying homologous chromosomes. In recent years, repeated phylogenetic analysis of chloroplast rbcL have revealed that many species in India appear to be offshoots of a vulgatum clade which are likely to be the hybridization products involving O. costatum, O. vulgatum, O. reticulatum, and also including of other interspecific hybridizations. It is remarkable to mention that some of the new taxa published by us, viz. O. eliminatum, O. indicum, O. aletum and O. chalonerii (unpublished), explicitly show distinct phylogenetic relationship maintaining independent genomic identity. Furthermore, each new species shows some rare uniquely confined trait not possessed by any other species of the genus. These morphological traits also suggest that the plants may be expressing extremely rare genic-combinations which might have been brought forth due to autopolyploidy and/or allopolyploidy (hybridizations) during the past few decades. Obviously, we will need a multidisciplinary approach (morphological, anatomical, biochemical) in order to identify different species of Ophioglossum with new and unusual genomic identity and also to understand possible evolutionary mechanisms undergoing within the genome.

“Seeing” the Weak Bonding

In physics, the observer effect suggests that mere observation of a phenomenon changes that phenomenon. Molecular imaging involves bombardment of electrons, frequently influencing the structure. In this issue, Cui et al. smartly change the energy conditions by lowering temperature.

Social learning of arbitrary food preferences in bonobos

A fruitful approach to investigate social learning in animals is based on paradigms involving the manipulation of artefacts. However, tool use and elaborate object manipulations are rare in natural conditions, suggesting that social learning evolved in other contexts where fitness consequences are higher, such as discriminating palatable from noxious foods, recognising predators or understanding social hierarchies. We focussed on one such context by investigating whether bonobos socially learned others’ arbitrary food preferences through mere observation. To this end, we trained two demonstrators to prefer or avoid distinctly coloured food items, treated with either a sweet or bitter agent. Demonstrators then displayed their newly acquired preferences in front of naïve subjects. In subsequent choice tests, subjects generally matched their choices to the demonstrators’ preferred food colours, despite having already tasted the equally palatable colour alternative. Both age and exposure to demonstrator preference had a significant positive effect on the proportion of matched choices. Moreover, in a context where errors can be costly, social learning was instant insofar as six of seven subjects used socially learned information to influence their very first food choice. We discuss these findings in light of the current debate on the evolution of social learning in animals.

Image processing in plant diseases detection

Agricultural productivity is something on which economy highly depends. It is important to monitor the plant during its growth period, as well as, at the time of harvest. In this paper, image processing is used as a tool to monitor the diseases on fruits during farming, right from plantation to harvesting. Agriculture is a most important and ancient occupation in India. As economy of India is based on agricultural production, utmost care of food production is necessary. Pests like virus, fungus and bacteria causes infection to plants with loss in quality and quantity production. There is large amount of loss of farmer in production. Hence proper care of plants is necessary for same. This paper presents an overview of using image processing methods to detect various plant diseases. Image processing provides more efficient ways to detect diseases caused by fungus, bacteria or virus on plants. Mere observations by eyes to detect diseases are not accurate. Overdose of pesticides causes harmful chronic diseases on human beings as not washed properly. Excess use also damages plants nutrient quality. It results in huge loss of production to farmer. Hence use of image processing techniques to detect and classify diseases in agricultural applications is helpful. Identification of the plant diseases is the key to preventing the losses in the yield and quantity of the agricultural product. The studies of the plant diseases mean the studies of visually observable patterns seen on the plant. Health monitoring and disease detection on plant is very critical for sustainable agriculture. It is very difficult to monitor the plant diseases manually. It requires tremendous amount of work, expertize in the plant diseases, and also require the excessive processing time. Hence, image processing is used for the detection of plant diseases. Disease detection involves the steps like image acquisition, image pre-processing, image segmentation, feature extraction and classification. This paper discussed the methods used for the detection of plant diseases using their leaves images. This paper also discussed.

Social Impairments in Mental Disorders: Recent Developments in Studying the Mechanisms of Interactive Behavior

Most mental disorders are associated with impairments in social functioning. Paradigms developed to study social functioning in laboratory settings mostly put participants in a detached observer point of view. However, some phenomena are inherently interactive and studying full-blown reciprocal interactions may be indispensable to understand social deficits in psychopathology. We conducted a narrative review on recent developments in the field of experimental clinical psychology and clinical social neuroscience that employs a second-person approach to studying social impairments in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), and Schizophrenia. Recent developments in methodological, analytical, and technical approaches, such as dual eye-tracking, mobile eye-tracking, live video-feed, hyperscanning, or motion capture allow for a more ecologically valid assessment of social functioning. In individuals with ASD, these methods revealed reduced sensitivity to the presence of a real interaction partner as well as diminished behavioral and neural synchronicity with interaction partners. Initial evidence suggests that interactive paradigms might be a powerful tool to reveal reduced interpersonal sensitivity in Personality Disorders and increased interpersonal sensitivity in individuals with SAD. A shift towards adapting a second-person account has clearly benefitted research on social interaction in psychopathology. Several studies showed profound differences in behavioral and neural measures during actual social interactions, as compared to engaging participants as mere observers. While research using truly interactive paradigms is still in its infancy, it holds great potential for clinical research on social interaction. We review studies adopting a second-person account of social interaction in clinical psychology. Studies show profound differences between actual social interactions and mere observations. The full extent of impairments in social functioning unfolds only in complex social interactions. New methodological developments hold great potential for research on social interaction deficits. We review studies adopting a second-person account of social interaction in clinical psychology. Studies show profound differences between actual social interactions and mere observations. The full extent of impairments in social functioning unfolds only in complex social interactions. New methodological developments hold great potential for research on social interaction deficits.

Diversity matters! How cross-border journalism calls out media bias

This article argues that the dominant tradition of journalism that places the reporter as a mere observer to events, power relations and global hierarchies is unfit as a working model for cross-border collaboration teams. By reversing the perspective of research, it investigates how the ‘neutral‘ position of journalism itself has been shaped by historical context, story-telling traditions, iconic imageries and naturalized assumptions that have influenced its view of the world. With the goal of initiating a knowledge transfer, this article explores key concepts from Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Theory to apply them to contemporary journalism practices.

Audience and Other-Regarding Effects in an Experimental Auction With Bribery

We report results from an experimental set up in which two firms compete in an auction to win the license for a public project, submitting sealed offers regarding the project’s quality and a bribe to the public official deciding. We study the role of an agent (citizen) who is either a mere observer or is passively affected by the quality of the winning project. Experimental data reveal that the existence of a citizen affected by the winning project significantly reduces bribes, while a citizen who only observes the auction results in higher pro-social behaviour from public officials.

Mere Observations, Fair Comment and Actual Facts: The Voice of Rehman Rashid

In the twilight of British Malaya, Rehman Rashid was born. He grew up in independent Malaysia, as his nation approached the turn of the millennium. As a young journalist in 1981, he had believed it simple to see what was special about Malaysia; it was a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-lingual country, what could be clearer than that? Rehman wrote passionately about Malaysia, this country that he loved dearly. Dissected to its constituent parts, Malaysia to him was a hopeless mess of conflicting priorities, mutually unintelligible languages, contradictory cultures and blinkered religions. Politics were divisive, its economy exploitive, its pillars of authority buttressed by an impenetrable scaffolding of draconian laws upheld by a parliament in which dominance seemed to matter far more than debate. He also believed that there was no reason for Malaysia to survive this far but it had. This is what he wrote about in his columns called ‘On Friday’ and his different take on things didn’t quite sit well with his peers or his superiors. He chooses above all else to see it as a testament to resilience and durability, and perhaps a certain steely apathy; to the presence of sufficient numbers of citizens prepared not to die for their country. This is where this paper situates this research, within the journalistic construction of this journalist’s writings. Keywords: Columnist, On Friday, journalistic construction, joint authorship, praxis of agency.

Pilgrim Readers: Introducing Undergraduates to Dante’s Divine Comedy

In the context of undergraduate education, “Teaching Dante” often means reading selected cantos from the Divine Comedy, most, if not all of them, taken from the Inferno. I suggest, however, that Dante’s aims in the Divine Comedy, as well as the particular experiences related in the Inferno itself, cannot be understood from any perspective offered by the Inferno alone. In spelling out my reasons for saying this I offer an approach to the text that includes readings from each of its three cantiche within the sometimes severe time-limitations of an undergraduate course. Central to this approach is the notion that student-readers of the Divine Comedy are called upon by the poem to be not mere observers of the experiences of the poet-pilgrim but to become themselves “pilgrim-readers.” In this presentation, this “call” is itself explored through the treatment of “divine justice” within the poem.

The Effect of Visual Capture Towards Subjective Embodiment Within the Full Body Illusion

Typically, multisensory illusion paradigms emphasise the importance of synchronous visuotactile integration to induce subjective embodiment towards another body. However, the extent to which embodiment is due to the ‘visual capture’ of congruent visuoproprioceptive information alone remains unclear. Thus, across two experiments (total N = 80), we investigated how mere visual observation of a mannequin body, viewed from a first-person perspective, influenced subjective embodiment independently from concomitant visuotactile integration. Moreover, we investigated whether slow, affective touch on participants’ own, unseen body (without concomitant touch on the seen mannequin) disrupted visual capture effects to a greater degree than fast, non-affective touch. In total, 40% of participants experienced subjective embodiment towards the mannequin body following mere visual observation, and this effect was significantly higher than conditions which included touch to participants own, unseen body. The velocity of the touch that participants received (affective/non-affective) did not differ in modulating visual capture effects. Furthermore, the effects of visual capture and perceived pleasantness of touch was not modulated by subthreshold eating disorder psychopathology. Overall, this study suggests that congruent visuoproprioceptive cues can be sufficient to induce subjective embodiment of a whole body, in the absence of visuotactile integration and beyond mere confabulatory responses.

Linear-in- T resistivity in dilute metals: A Fermi liquid perspective

We consider a short-range deformation potential scattering model of electron-acoustic phonon interaction to calculate the resistivity of an ideal metal as a function of temperature (T) and electron density (n). We consider both 3D metals and 2D metals, and focus on the dilute limit, i.e., low effective metallic carrier density of the system. The main findings are: (1) a phonon scattering induced linear-in-T resistivity could persist to arbitrarily low T in the dilute limit independent of the Debye temperature ($T_D$) although eventually the low-T resistivity turns over to the expected Bloch-Gruneisen (BG) behavior with $T^5$ ($T^4$) dependence, in 3D (2D) respectively; (2) because of low values of n, the phonon-induced resistivity could be very high in the system; (3) the resistivity shows an intrinsic saturation effect at very high temperatures (for $T>T_D$), and in fact, decreases with increasing T above a high crossover temperature with this crossover being dependent on both $T_D$ and n in a non-universal manner. We also provide high-T linear-in-T resistivity results for 2D and 3D Dirac materials. Our work brings out the universal features of phonon-induced transport in dilute metals, and we comment on possible implications of our results for strange metals, emphasizing that the mere observation of a linear-in-T metallic resistivity at low temperatures or a very high metallic resistivity at high temperatures is not necessarily a reason to invoke an underlying quantum critical strange metal behavior. We discuss the temperature variation of the effective transport scattering rate showing that the scattering rate could be below or above $k_BT$, and in particular, purely coincidentally, the calculated scattering rate happens to be $k_BT$ in normal metals with no implications for the so-called Planckian behavior.

Expressive Currencies: Artistic Transactions and Transformations of Warrior-Inspired Masquerades in Calabar

Expressive Currencies: Artistic Transactions and Transformations of Warrior-Inspired Masquerades in Calabar

Fractional Josephson effect with and without Majorana zero modes

It is known that the low-energy physics of the Josephson effect in the presence of Majorana zero modes exhibits a $4\pi$ periodicity as the Aharonov-Bohm flux varies in contrast to the $2\pi$ Josephson periodicity in usual superconducting junctions. We study this fractional Josephson effect in 1D topological superconductors in Majorana nanowire systems by focusing on the features of the phase-energy relations in a superconducting semiconductor nanowire with spin-orbital coupling by including different factors operational in experimental systems, such as short wire length, suppression of superconducting gap, and the presence of an Andreev bound state. We show that even in the absence of Majorana zero modes, some non-topological physical effects can manifest a $4\pi$ periodicity of the phase-energy relation in the Josephson junction, thus providing a false positive signal for fractional Josephson effect with no underlying Majorana zero modes. Furthermore, we consider several scenarios of inhomogeneous chemical potential distributions in the superconducting nanowire leading to four Majorana bound states and construct the effective four Majorana model to correctly describe the low-energy theory of the Josephson effect. In this setup, multiple Majorana zero modes can also have the $4\pi$ fractional Josephson effect, although the underlying physics arises from Andreev bound states since two close by Majorana bound states effectively form Andreev bound states. Our work demonstrates that the mere observation of a fractional Josephson effect simulating $4\pi$ periodicity cannot, by itself, be taken as the definitive evidence for topological superconductivity. This finding has important implications for the ongoing search for non-Abelian Majorana zero modes and efforts for developing topological qubits.

We are people and so are they: Shared intimacies and the ethics of digital ethnography in autism communities

This paper reflects on the three main ethical challenges we faced when conducting digital ethnography in three autism Brazilian communities on Facebook: how to position oneself as a researcher, how to deal with the identity of participants, and how to manage data when anonymity is not enforced. After careful consideration of these issues and taking into consideration questions of authorship and vulnerability, we concluded that, firstly, as researchers, we wanted to be more than mere observers of our participants so we aimed for a mutual sharing and involvement between participants and researchers. Secondly, we believe that voice and authorship matter, so we gave our interviewees the choice of being anonymised or not. Finally, we had in mind that our participants may not be fully aware of the consequences of academic publishing, therefore sensitive topics as well as data gathered in the communities were always anonymised.

Etnografí­a y empirismo

La siguiente investigación solo tiene pretensiones exploratorias frente a problemas iniciales, pero no poco importantes, que deben sobrellevar antropólogos, etnólogos, etnógrafos o meros observadores que van en búsqueda de la alteridad. Durante el devenir histórico de la etnografí­a, entendiendo esta última como una disciplina que se ha configurado desde el siglo XVIII hasta nuestros dí­as, la intención de conocer a "los otros" mediante nuestra propia experiencia presenta dificultades epistemológicas y ontológicas que intentaremos reconocer de forma exploratoria, utilizando como hilo conductor los conceptos operatorios de la fenomenologí­a de Edmundo Husserl, siguiendo una revisión histórica del origen del concepto de etnografí­a y examinando algunas definiciones actuales de la disciplina etnográfica.

Impact of Higher Institutes of Sport and Physical Education in Tunisia Students’ Pre-University Cheating Behavior on Their Asocial Conduct during University Examinations

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first thesis dealing with cheating in university exams at the higher institutes of sport and physical education in Tunisia. This research is aimed to 1) evaluate the importance of the phenomenon; 2) define the profile of cheating students; and 3) contain the role of the society in the emergence and spread of this phenomenon. 799 students from the four Tunisian higher institutes of sports and physical education volunteered to respond to a quantitative questionnaire-based survey. The data collected were statistically analyzed using the SPSS-version 20 software. A univariate statistical study was followed by a bivariate or multivariate study. 86.1% of respondents admitted that they had cheated during their university education. Univariate and multivariate studies pointed to cheating antecedent as the common denominator amongst cheating students, since 99.98% of them had already cheated at school. Results analysis was performed from two standpoints: the individual and the social context, in which the student was brought up, based on well-established known theories. This twofold approach made it possible to highlight the interaction between the different actors. Student misbehavior is the inevitable result of the shift in social representations of academic norms that have led to the trivialization of cheating, converting student status from mere observer into a follower. The genesis of this culture, where cheating has become part of the norm, is marked by the collusion plays between the actors involved in the training and evaluation processes i.e. students, professors and the institutions.

Efficacy of 308-nm monochromatic excimer light in the management of halo nevi: An open label, pilot study

Introduction:Halo nevus (HN) affects approximately 1% of the population. Presence of hypo- or depigmented lesion carries tremendous psychosocial disturbance in the mind-set of population in the Indian subcontinent. Hence, HN requires intervention by any modalities. Here authors attempted to evaluate the efficacy of monochromatic excimer light (MEL) in treating HN.Materials and Methods:A total of 29 patients with HN were included in the study. A xenon chloride lamp emitting noncoherent, monochromatic 308-nm light that represents the natural evolution of the excimer laser was used. The initial dose was 100 mJ/cm2, which was increased by 100 mJ/cm2 per session. All the patients were followed up for 6 months.Results:A total of 29 patients with 10 males and 19 females (male to female ratio of 1:1.9) completed the study. The age of onset of HN ranged from 5 to 47 years and the mean age of the patients was 23 years. HN was seen on the face, back, neck, chest, trunk, and extremities in 5 (17.2%), 6 (20.7%), 4 (13.7%), and 6 (20.7%) patients, respectively. Outstanding response was noticed in 14 patients (48.2%), whereas 6 (20.6%) patients showed excellent improvement. Only 2 (6.8%) patients showed no response after 10 consecutive sessions.Conclusion:HN causes apprehension in the Indian population because of the social stigma associated with depigmented patches on the body. Mere observation and only counseling in the treatment protocol are not sufficient. MEL is a noninvasive procedure, which results in excellent repigmentation of HN without scarring.