Non-geostationary satellite (NGSO) constellations—particularly LEO/MEO—are transforming mining by providing low-latency connectivity and taskable Earth observation to remote, infrastructure-poor sites. Objectives include mapping NGSO applications across exploration, planning, and operations; assessing AI's role in tasking, routing, and analytics; and examining governance and ESG implications, with a focus on Africa and East Africa. Methods involved a PRISMA-aligned systematic review (protocol registered) synthesising primary and secondary evidence on NGSO-enabled EO and communications in mining. A random-effects meta-analysis was planned if three or more comparable (...) studies reported the same outcome; otherwise, a structured narrative synthesis with predefined subgroups (LEO vs MEO, EO vs backhaul, open-pit vs underground, Africa vs elsewhere) was used. Results and discussion showed that across more than 30 use cases, NGSO backhaul and EO tasking consistently reduced time to insight for pit progression, tailings surveillance, and asset tracking; simulations indicated routing improvements of approximately 10% on tree topologies and 30% on mesh networks at N=500, demonstrating tangible latency and capacity benefits for safety-critical workflows. Continuity was enhanced through multi-sensor PNT (GNSS/inertial/vision plus radio localisation ) and hierarchical link adaptation that rapidly re- parameterises under noise, weather, or interference. AI added value by improving tasking and congestion control in edge and cloud inference, though it required cascaded models, compression, and uncertainty gating to meet compute and bandwidth constraints. Governance themes—such as data protection, transparency, and community benefit—were recurring enablers of adoption. Conclusion: When combined with resilient positioning, adaptive operations, and credible ESG safeguards, NGSO combined with AI can significantly enhance mining efficiency, safety, and sustainability; priorities include standardised KPIs, transparent cost models, and long-term pilot deployments. (shrink)

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and non- geostationary satellite (NGSO; LEO/MEO) services promise faster, safer, and “ greener ” mining, but also raise ethical and governance risks. This study interrogates the technofix narrative. Objectives were to map NGSO+AI applications across the mining value chain ; assess technical, operational, environmental, and economic performance; examine governance, data rights, and justice implications ; evaluate capacity and procurement models ( with an East African lens ); and distill actionable guidance. Following a (...) PRISMA-2020 protocol, a mixed-methods review ( database inception –12 Aug 2025) of peer- reviewed and grey literature was undertaken with duplicate screening and appraisal (JBI, RoB 2/ROBINS-I, AACODS; GRADE/ CERQual ). Over 80 empirical studies and initiatives were synthesized ; random-effects meta- analysis was used where outcomes were comparable, alongside realist narrative synthesis. NGSO connectivity reduced latency (LEO: tens of ms; MEO: ~100–200 ms) and high-revisit EO (SAR/ optical ) improved surface-change detection ; operational gains ( uptime, reporting ) were noted but with low – moderate certainty given short follow -up and sponsorship. Governance lagged capability : data ownership and portability were unclear, third-party audit access rare, and community participation uneven ; ethical risks included bias, privacy, and cultural impacts. East African pilots showed technical promise amid institutional gaps. NGSO+AI can advance SDG- aligned mining only when coupled to binding data rights, independent assurance, participatory pathways, open interfaces, and local capacity ; otherwise tools risk performative compliance rather than accountable, just outcomes. (shrink)

Apolitical, amoral, an aesthete whose writings point toward some form of liberation: this is the figure who emerges from most recent scholarship on Friedrich...

The “ideal-typical-historical” version of a concept, derived partly from the thinking of Max Weber, was described. This version of a concept was shown to be concerned with historical time, and the continuity and change between events. It was demonstrated how the ideal-typical-historical approach can make the unique features of historical events clearly explicit through a method of comparison; and how a combination of categories or concepts could be used in this approach to show the variety of tendencies in historical individuals. (...) In conclusion, this approach to concepts consciously attempts to harmonize the classificatory process inherent in a concept with the historians individualizing approach. (shrink)

We often lament our limited nature as human beings. Supernatural is certainly no stranger to this theme and often contrasts the many weaknesses of man to the awesome power of angels, demons, and otherworldly creatures. It should be enough to show that angels can reasonably be atheists by showing two things. First, the best arguments in favor of the existence of God are no better if Anna and Cas think about them, and second, that these angels are also in no (...) better position than we are to deny what is perhaps the strongest argument against the existence of God. The cosmological argument for the existence of God begins with a couple of observations about the universe. The first is pretty obvious‐“things exist.” The second is that everything that exists was caused to exist as it is. (shrink)

The community of faith finds blessing for itself when it gives due weight to the Old Testament insight that nearness to God is found by those who, like Job and Jacob, assertively engage the Covenant Partner.

A collection of dramatic accounts about doctors who have faced the moral dilemma of choosing between obeying rules and doing what is best for a patient offers insight into the essential principles of medical ethics and their impact on...

Wallace-Hadrill's reading of spatial hierarchy does not address the representation of gender in mythological paintings. However, a rough survey indicates that the majority are erotic and/or violent. Erotic depictions common on household items suggest that the Romans were sensitive to this content; the likely use of pattern books in selecting programs for domestic decoration suggests a synoptic awareness of it. This points to the applicability of contemporary theories of representation and power, and Mulvey's model of visual pleasure in narrative film (...) is adapted for this paper. According to Mulvey, film offers two pleasures: scopophilia, which presents the woman as aesthetic-erotic fragments, suggesting but concealing her difference ; sadistic voyeurism, which assumes difference and then investigates, punishes, or forgives it. Both are illustrated in paintings of Ariadne abandoned and rediscovered, and in other paintings which portray either the gaze or erotic violence . While these paintings seem to confirm in relation to gender what the rest of the house says about class and status, some paintings confuse the issue. The male body is often fetishized , and attacked ; gender and role are sometimes deliberately ambiguous . Such transgressions of the boundaries of the male body are not a part of Mulvey's theory, and they suggest the use of gender to complicate as well as confirm the class/status message of the house; two different negotiations of this use are found in the House of the Vettii and the House of the Ara Maxima. One can compare reversals and reassertions of gender, class and status in other evidence, in literature, pantomime and the games. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private LifeDavid FredrickKristina Milnor. Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life. Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xii + 360 pp. Cloth, $99.It is the often-difficult task of social history to explain how a given institution (e.g., marriage, education, the army) changed across different types of cultural expression (e.g., legal (...) and moral prescriptions, representation in visual art and literature) and in lived experience. In this fruitful and sometimes brilliant study, Kristina Milnor explores the repositioning of women during the Augustan period with respect to the distinction between public and private life. Over the course of an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue, she develops the argument that the Augustan period "invented" private life or, more precisely, new strategies for representing private life, in order to make the imperial system look like a return to traditional Roman family values. In making this argument, Milnor looks back to the Republic and forward to Nero; she assembles a wide range of literary and material evidence and makes judicious use of theory. Milnor is primarily concerned with textual representation; as she puts it at one point, the volume is "a study of representation rather than reality" (40–41). However, she does include substantial sections on architecture and space, and in the end it is not clear whether Milnor sees architecture in the Augustan period as a mode of representation or as something that by reshaping behavior necessarily transformed private life in lived experience.The introduction uses Vergil's simile of the housewife spinning in Aeneid 8 to set up the much-debated distinction between "public" and "private" in Roman culture. Milnor notes that the original meaning of privatus during the republic is narrowly oppositional, "a man without a political or military position," but broadened during the empire to mean more generally, "anyone... who did not hold the ultimate 'public' role of emperor" (20). Hence privatus and "domestic" do not mean the same thing: "privatus is necessarily a political word," while "the domestic... functions as a kind of moralized privacy, a concept whose strength lies in its allegiance to supposedly transcendent and apolitical ethical truths" (27). Women emerge during the Augustan period as the preferred symbols of this "moralized privacy," and while the physical and social circumstances of Roman women were highly disparate, the representation of female virtues remains consistent: "the domestic ideal was a construct which did not 'truthfully' represent any woman's life, even at the same time as it purported to represent them all" (38).In the first chapter ("Reading and Writing Gender on the Augustan Palatine"), Milnor argues that Augustus' Palatine complex is "engendered" by the prominence of Niobe, Cleopatra, and the Danaids in its decorative program, pointing to the problematic display of female virtue in the princeps' house. Because of Augustus' unprecedented political position, the "private" behavior of the women in his house became a kind of public performance, a tension that persists in Augustus' larger treatment of the city. In Tristia 2, Ovid addresses Augustus as a fellow author whose "text" is the city of Rome, and just as women [End Page 605] have misread Ovid's poetry licentiously, they frequently appropriate Rome's temples and porticoes for sexual liaisons. Milnor observes that this disingenuous argument at least recognizes women as active and resisting readers of texts, noting further that imperial women (Octavia and Livia) are paradoxically empowered as "authors" of significant public spaces precisely because they were seen to be expressing politically disinterested virtues. The chapter concludes with a look back at Cicero's de Domo Sua, which casts Clodius as a feminized abuser of public space in his appropriation of the Portico of Catulus for his shrine of Libertas; the restoration of Cicero's house, meanwhile, represents the restoration of the Roman state. Milnor argues that this anticipates Augustus' use of his own house as a symbol for Rome, and thus as the site for a paradoxically public performance of the traditions of Roman domesticity.The second chapter, "Domesticity and Display in Vitruvius' de Architectura," begins with two significant questions. Why, if... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to outline an ethics development activity that uses scenarios in university classes to further the knowledge, engagement, and enhancement of the ethical actions of the students. By starting with a brief review of the objective and use of scenarios in ethics research, the paper progresses to explain the activity, debrief the activity, and finally to provide an analysis of the activity with examples. Included in this activity are ways to incorporate a discussion of Kant’s (...) Categorical Imperative Theories, NCA Credo of Ethical Communication, and the use of videos for Milgram’s Blind Obedience and Stanford’s Prison studies—thus making this activity useful across all disciplines. (shrink)

In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Jesus trades in the language of hyperbole: The Pharisee and the tax collector are both caricatures of a particular way of responding to God. In itself each of these ways is not without its legitimacy. Nevertheless, the reason the Pharisee incurs God's disapproval in Jesus9 parable has to do with his misuse of religious tradition: Keeping the tradition becomes the means by which he exalts himself over others. Still, the tax (...) collector, too, can stand as a warning: Lamenting one's sins, if it does not lead to commensurate action, merely becomes an exercise in cheap grace. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 533-553.

This case study is designed to help students evaluate ethical boundaries in employment contracts and workplace responsibilities. A job description typically outlines an employee’s primary responsibilities, but it cannot account for every possible task. To address this, the “other duties as assigned” clause in employment contracts allows employers to add responsibilities beyond the listed core duties. This clause ensures flexibility in handling unforeseen or necessary tasks that support the organization’s goals even if not explicitly mentioned in the job description. When (...) such tasks arise, employees are expected to perform these “other duties” as part of their role. However, ethical and legal issues may arise when tasks assigned under the “other duties as assigned” clause are excessively burdensome, unrelated to an employee’s primary responsibilities, or inconsistent with the intent—or a violation of the spirit—of the employment contract. These “other duties” may be perceived as exploitative or abusive, potentially resulting in disputes between employers and employees. The case study under discussion explores an instance in which an employer exceeds these boundaries by regularly assigning tasks that deviate significantly from the intended scope of the employees’ roles. This analysis will highlight the potential for misuse of the “other duties as assigned” clause and its broader implications for both parties. (shrink)

First drafted in 2006 and currently in version 2.1, the London Charter calls for the adoption of international standards for intellectual integrity, transparency, sustainability, and access in 3D modeling for cultural heritage. While the London Charter has been in the process of revision and distribution to the heritage community, game engines have become less expensive and more approachable. Several engines offer the ability to publish easily across operating systems, mobile devices, and the web, causing a rapid expansion in their use (...) for archeological visualization. However, the very power of game engines to create and publish immersive content poses fundamental challenges to the emphasis on data-driven visualization and transparency expressed in the London Charter. These challenges should not be suppressed, since they can prove heuristically fruitful if they are explicitly recognized and explored. This potential is illustrated by a descriptive analysis of the recreation of the House of the Prince of Naples in Pompeii by an undergraduate humanities class, which concludes that the immersive effects of engine-based visualizations are as much to be found in their creation as in their “playing.” This suggests the value of democratizing the creation of game engine content for heritage visualization beyond research visualization laboratories, as a part of undergraduate curricula in the humanities. (shrink)

The university environment in the Nigerian context has a lot of stressors and such have the potential of impeding the work effectiveness of university staff. In the ideal situation, lecturers’ target is to discharge their duties diligently, devoid of any limiting factor. However, when the environment is not conducive to achieving such a target, the expected result will be hampered. Studies on the management of stressful conditions abound, but none has targeted the Science and Agricultural education lecturers. This situation makes (...) the researchers wonder how Science and Agricultural education lecturers manage their work stress. Thus, this research explored the effect of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) on stress management among Science and Agricultural lecturers using a randomised controlled trial group experimental design. A sample of 186 participants randomly sampled from federal universities in Southeast Nigeria was involved in this research. An adopted perceived stress scale (α =.87) was used to get the necessary data for the study. The randomised evaluation lasted for 12 weeks, while data collected were analysed using Quade’s analysis of covariance test. It was found that Science and Agricultural education lecturers who were exposed to 12-week REBT intervention had significantly lesser stress score than their counterparts who served as the waitlisted control group. In other words, it was concluded that Science and Agricultural education lecturers can effectively manage their stress through REBT intervention. Interestingly, the finding showed that the REBT group participants were able to retain their decreased job stress after a 3-month follow-up measure. Thus, one of the work ethics implications of these findings is that REBT's ability to reduce job stress can lead to improved work outputs. Hence, it is recommended that appropriate arrangements should be made by the university administration in southeast Nigeria to ensure that REBT intervention is implemented for the teaching staff of the university. (shrink)

Cognitive control is easy to identify in its effects, but difficult to grasp conceptually. This creates somewhat of a puzzle: Is cognitive control a bona fide process or an epiphenomenon that merely exists in the mind of the observer? The topiCS special edition on cognitive control presents a broad set of perspectives on this issue and helps to clarify central conceptual and empirical challenges confronting the field. Our commentary provides a summary of and critical response to each of the papers.

Illness narratives invite practitioners to understand how biomedical and traditional health information is incorporated, integrated, or otherwise internalized into a patient’s own sense of self and social identity. Such narratives also reveal cultural values, underlying patterns in society, and the overall life context of the narrator. Most illness narratives have been examined from the perspective of European-derived genres and literary theory, even though theorists from other parts of the globe have developed locally relevant literary theories. Further, illness narratives typically examine (...) only the experience of illness through acute or chronic suffering (and potential recovery). The advent of biomedical disease prevention methods like post- and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PEP and PrEP) for HIV, which require daily pill consumption or regular injections, complicates the notion of an illness narrative by including illness prevention in narrative accounts. This paper has two aims. First, we aim to rectify the Eurocentrism of existing illness narrative theory by incorporating insights from African literary theorists; second, we complicate the category by examining prevention narratives as a subset of illness narratives. We do this by investigating several narratives of HIV prevention from informants enrolled in an HIV prevention trial in Kenya and Uganda in 2022. (shrink)

Treatment informed consent aims to preserve the autonomy of patients in the clinician – patient relationship so as to ensure valid consent. An acceptable method of evaluating understanding of consent information is by assessing the extent of recall by patients of the pieces information believed to have been passed across. When concerns are not satisfactorily addressed from the patients’ perspective, recall of consent information may be low. This study is a questionnaire – based cross – sectional interview of consecutive adult (...) surgical patients who could give their respective medical histories and who were booked for elective major surgical procedures over a period of 7 months in a tertiary health institution in southeastern Nigeria. Four to five days after a formal consent session, during ward admission, extent of recall of information on the nature of the disease condition or diagnosis, the nature of the planned procedure and the risks involved in the planned procedure were assessed and analyzed on the background of how satisfying the consent sessions were from individual patient’s perspective. Generally, the recall of nature of disease condition and nature of planned procedure is better than recall of risks involved in the planned procedure. More specifically however, recall in these 3 domains is significantly better among the patients that affirmed that their concerns were satisfactorily addressed. The findings from this study support that no effort should be spared in ensuring that the consent information are satisfying to the patients from the patients’ viewpoint. (shrink)

In this essay, the author describes how he faced institutionalized homophobia during his psychiatric training, and how he later wrote a play inspired by the life of a gay psychiatrist. Despite Freud’s supportive stance, homosexuality aroused the antipathy of American organized psychiatry and psychoanalysis and came to be listed as an illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Dr. John E. Fryer outed himself as “Dr. H Anonymous” at a 1972 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, and the next year (...) homosexuality was removed from the DSM. The 2014 play Doctor Anonymous offers a fictionalized account of this watershed moment in the history of the gay rights movement. The author discusses his own psychotherapeutic work with gay male patients, including those who had previously been treated with conversion therapy, and explores how the play mirrors his own life experience and the experience of his patients. (shrink)

The goal of this study is to reconsider Nietzsche's early metaphysics. Nietzsche has been understood both as the last metaphysician and as the first western thinker to overcome metaphysics. Most of Nietzsche's readers who have been concerned with this issue, however, have concentrated entirely on his conception of the will-to-power which appears in his later work and have completely ignored his early artists-metaphysics which is only to be found in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. If the metaphysical foundations (...) of this work are mentioned at all, readers assume that, because of the prominence awarded to the Apollinian and the Dionysian, the two art-drives are the first principles of the Artisten-Metaphysik. Based on this assumption, these same readers conclude that Nietzsche left his early metaphysics behind as he developed his conception of the will-to-power; the Artisten-Metaphysik has no relation to the will-to-power. ;In contrast to this treatment of the Artisten-Metaphysik, I argue that the first principle of Nietzsche's early metaphysics is the primordial-one , the world artist. On the basis of this hypothesis, I demonstrate that if the Ur-Eine is indeed the first principle of the Artisten-Metaphysik, the two art-drives are derivative of this principle. The Apollinian and the Dionysian burst forth from nature without the intervention of the human artist; each of the two art-drives represents a different creative tendency of the primordial artist. ;The significance of my re-evaluation of the Artisten-Metaphysik is far-reaching. Although previous interpretations of The Birth of Tragedy have prevented readers from seeing any connection between the early metaphysics and the will-to-power, my reconstruction of the Artisten-Metaphysik invites the reader to compare Nietzsche's early metaphysics with his later philosophical thought. And while I do not deny the differences between the Artisten-Metaphysik and the will-to-power, my interpretation enables the reader to appreciate the similarities between Nietzsche's early and his later philosophical work. Nietzsche is no longer understood as either the last metaphysician or the first western thinker to overcome metaphysics; rather, I emphasize the importance of Nietzsche's role as a transitional thinker in the western philosophical tradition. Indeed, Nietzsche emerges as one who adopts the will-to-power in an attempt to overcome metaphysics. And while he thinks of himself as an "untimely one" and one of the first thinkers to have overcome metaphysics, from the vantage point of this investigation elements of metaphysical thought may be identified in his philosophy. (shrink)

The rise of the sitar from a limited accompaniment instrument used in the regional courts of Northern India to an internationally recognized cultural icon underscores its importance both as an instrument and a cultural symbol—the sitar mirrors India’s social complexity. This story encapsulates the social, political and economic trauma resulting from the dismantling of Mughal empire to the partition of Pakistan, reflecting contesting social narratives and Hindu/Muslim cultural heritages through the distinctive musical styles modern India. A musical instrument and material (...) object of contested origins, the sitar extends from wood, gourd, wire, and ivory into complex social and cultural networks. I argue that the sitar, as object, cannot be reduced to either an empirical or phenomenological entity; it is a space of potentiality, the actualization of a virtual object. I examine the sitar as both byproduct and narrative, demonstrating how it defies attempts to limit its constantly rupturing borders with imposed cognitive frames, and how materiality and philosophical systems can inform ethnographic practice. (shrink)

Appropriate language use is essential to ensure inclusion of diverse populations in research. We aimed to identify possible language-related barriers regarding the informed consent process and propose interventions to improve clarity and understanding of pregnant and breastfeeding women participating in research. A cross-sectional qualitative study employing focus group discussions (FGD) was conducted in Uganda from August 2023 to September 2023, involving a diverse group of stakeholders from the community, including community members, research participants, and Community Advisory Board members. 19 FGD (...) comprised adult participants representing at least six different mother tongues (Luganda, Acholi, Runyankole, Runyoro, Lugbara and English). An inductive thematic approach was utilized for data analysis using NVivo version 12 software to identify language factors that influence informed consent. A series of community validation workshops ensured concurrence. At the individual level, language barriers, and low levels of literacy contributed to poor comprehension, thus hindering ability to achieve genuine informed consent. At the health facility level, participants reported that there was use of inappropriate, unclear language including inaccurate translations, with poor and complicated grammar in some consent forms. Participants reported that complex medical terminologies are difficult to translate to local languages. Community members highlighted that social/cultural norms in language use affected cultural perceptions of informed consent. To enhance understanding for individuals without education in science, participants suggested simplification of terminologies and avoidance of complex medical jargon. Researchers should identify participants’ preferred languages and communicate in those languages whenever possible. If researchers are not fluent, trained interpreters should be identified. Informed consent documents must be translated into local languages to ensure participants comprehend the study’s purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits. Involving community members during development and translation of these documents can provide valuable insights into local dialects and culturally specific concepts, ensuring that study tools like surveys and consent forms are accurate and respectful. Language barriers influence the informed consent process within communities in Uganda. These can potentially be resolved at individual, health system and community levels. Consideration of locally understandable terms in community-facing study documentation is likely to enhance understanding and could improve research participation, although further studies are needed to assess these. The use of appropriate language ensures that informed consent is genuine in keeping with principles of Good Clinical Practice, and developing a research communication strategy should be part of inclusive research design. (shrink)