Dia Foundation

Abstract This article studies Ṭūsī’s conception of the proper philosophical method according to his critique of Shahrastānī’s Kitāb al-Muṣāraʿa in the Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ . That conception provides a counterexample for three misconceptions of the entity called ‘Islamic philosophy’. The first, introductory section summarizes the three grand narratives about philosophy in the Islamicate world: the dismissive, the mystifying, and the dogmatic. Then the books of Shahrastānī and Ṭūsī are introduced. The main part of the article gives an account and analysis of the relevant passages in Ṭūsī’s work. Some elements of Ṭūsī’s philosophical method discussed include the role of observation, cognitive humility, reliance on logic and demonstrative reasoning, and distinguishing the philosophical discourse from religious speech, mystical and poetic discourse. In the conclusion, the evidence is summarized to show how the book is a counterexample for the three misconceptions.

An attempt has been made to document the plants having food and medicinal values used by the local communities of Loktak Lake, Manipur, India. A survey was made in 2021–2022, which enumerated 28 foods and 31 medicinal plants commonly consumed by the local communities. Further, they are classified as nutraceuticals and modes of use. The study not only highlights them but also draws attention to their value addition and conservation.

High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) Events are catastrophic events characterised by a lack of precedence and high levels of uncertainty due to their cascading and compounding dynamics. Over recent decades, these events have become more likely as the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems has grown, heightening the risk of cascading failures across sectors and amplifying the impacts of initial triggers. As traditional risk-based approaches often fail in analyzing complex risk interactions, a more holistic methodology is needed to identify cross-sectoral vulnerabilities, common failure points, and strategies to improve systemic resilience. The AGILE project aims to fill this gap by developing a methodology for understanding, assessing, managing, and communicating HILP events with a systemic, risk-agnostic and systemic resilience perspective. The proposed methodology is subdivided into 3 tiers with increasing levels of detail: the first tier is the scoping study, i.e. the mapping of the system critical functions and their relationships, and developing a guideline structure for table-top exercises; the second tier refers to the identification and parametrization of interdependences and feedback loops between critical functions to gauge single-points-of failure; finally the third tier aims to uses network analysis and technological innovations (e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning) to create an asset-level representation of systemic performance, evaluating flows of information, resources, and energy through the system in real time.This paper describes the methodological approach under development for the third tier and its preliminary application to the metropolitan city of Venice. The system is conceptualized as a network, with nodes representing key elements that drive the city's functionality, such as transportation infrastructure, communication systems, ecosystems, households, and economic activities, while links represent the dependencies between these components.   The quantification of the links poses significant challenges, requiring a combination of available data, expert input, and, where possible, machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. By drawing analogies between graph metrics and risk variables, this network analysis identifies key elements that could exacerbate system failure (for example, authority and closeness of a node can be associated with exposure and vulnerability of the corresponding critical function). Simulations are used to explore how risks might propagate through the network, offering valuable insights into potential consequences and strategies for resilience enhancement. Efforts are ongoing to define and refine Venice’s systemic network, with a focus on understanding and addressing vulnerabilities to enhance urban resilience in the face of future HILP events.

تعدّ مدينة الحلّة من أبرز المراكز العلميّة الشيعيّة في القرون الماضية، فقد أطلّ منها فقهاء عظام، ومع هذا فنحن لا نعرف عن مدارسها ومراكزها العلميّة إلَّا القليل. هذا البحث يدرس بعض المخطوطات المستنسخة بمدينة الحلّة وفي المدرسة الزينيّة، ويبحث أهميّتها نظرًا إلى تدريس مشاهير الفقهاء فيها كابن فهد وغيره، وتدلّ القرائن الموجودة في المخطوطات والنسخ المخطوطة في المدرسة على أَنَّ النشاط العلميّ كان موجودًا فيها منذ نهاية القرن الثامن حتّى منتصف القرن الثاني عشر.

Judicial Reasoning of Religious Court Judges in Compulsory Bequests to Non-Muslim Heirs

BackgroundHousing adaptations are aimed at minimizing the mismatch between older adults’ functional limitations and their building environments. We examined the association of housing adaptations with the prevention of care needs level deterioration among older adults with frailty in Japan.MethodsThe subjects comprised individuals who were first certified as having care support levels (defined as frail, the lowest two of seven care needs levels) under the public long-term care insurance systems between April 2015 and September 2016 from a municipality close to Tokyo. The implementation of housing adaptations was evaluated in the first six months of care support certification. Survival analysis with Cox proportional hazards model was performed to examine the association between housing adaptations and at least one care needs level deterioration, adjusting for age, sex, household income level, certified care support levels, cognitive function, instrumental activities of daily living, and the utilization of preventive care services (designed not to progress disabilities). We further examined the differences in the association of the housing adaptation amount by categorizing the subjects into the maximum cost group (USD 1,345–1,513) or not the maximum cost group (< USD 1,345). All the subjects were followed until the earliest of deterioration in care needs level, deaths, moving out of the municipality, or March 2018.ResultsAmong 796 older adults, 283 (35.6%) implemented housing adaptations. The incidence of care needs level deterioration was 19.3/1000 person-month of older adults who implemented housing adaptations, whereas 31.9/1000 person-month of those who did not. The adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) of care needs level deterioration was 0.69 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.51–0.93). The aHRs were 0.51 (95% CI: 0.31–0.82) and 0.78 (95% CI: 0.57–1.07) in the maximum and not maximum cost groups, respectively.ConclusionsHousing adaptations may prevent care needs level deterioration of older adults with frailty. Policymakers and health professionals should deliver housing adaptations for older adults at risk of increasing care needs.

Social media especially the Twitter platform has become a good data-source in Japan for tracking various social issues including depression and other mental health problems. It can overcome the under-representation and sampling bias of the survey data. In this study, we develop a machine learning approach to predict depression of Japanese people and compare their depression levels between pre-pandemic (2018) and pandemic (2020) times. We use three datasets in this study in which the first dataset is used for model development and its validation, while the rest two are used as test datasets for depression prediction. These two datasets represent timeseries tweets for the years 2018 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (pandemic), respectively. After preprocessing the tweets, the Bag-of-words (BOW) feature is computed for each test dataset, which is later fed to the trained Logistic Regression (LOGR) model to classify tweets into "Depressive" and "Non-Depressive" categories. An analysis on the classified tweets shows a significant increase of depressive tweets in 2020, when compared with those in 2018. The covid related depressive tweets was found 50.37% of the total covid-related tweets and 8.6% of the total depressive tweets in the 2020 dataset, which indicates an increased impact of depression on the Japanese people due to COVID-19. Also, the peak depression occurs in June and August 2020 just after the first peak of the death progression timeseries in Japan, which indicates the consequences or shocks of exponential death-turmoil along with the increasing economic uncertainty and mobility restrictions. The timely application of our method to suitable textual datasets can minimize the calamity of future disasters like COVID-19 as well as it can help making suitable policy decisions for sustainable solutions against depression.

This study aimed to clarify the current status of motor function, activities of daily living (ADL), and instrumental ADL (IADL) in hemophilia patients with HIV infection due to treatment with non-heat-treated blood products as they now enter middle and old age. Participants were 70 such patients (mean age, 52.1 years), and their range of motion (ROM), muscle strength, extremity circumference, walking speed, ADL, and IADL were evaluated at checkups of motor function, ADL, and IADL that were held during patients' association meetings. Results showed that ROM was limited in all joints. Ankle dorsiflexion, hip abduction, and shoulder abduction were particularly restricted. Decreased muscle strength was most frequent in ankle plantarflexion, followed by hip extension. The proportion of patients with walking speed and grip strength below reference values increased with age. Walking speed was 73.9-110.9% of reference values. Factors affecting walking speed were knee flexion, ankle dorsiflexion, and hip extension muscle strength. Grip strength was 58.0-83.5% of reference values. Thigh girth most greatly differed between the patients and healthy individuals. Among the ADL items, "standing up from the floor" was reported as "difficult"/"cannot do" by 45.7% of the patients. The most common IADL problem was "putting away futons", which 17.2% responded was "difficult"/"cannot do". Parents were the most common helpers with household tasks (12.9%). "Decreased muscle strength/limited ROM" was the most frequently reported troublesome problem (35.7%). These results reveal the current status of motor function, ADL, and IADL limitations in hemophilia patients with HIV.