Buddhism provides various kinds of wisdom supporting human beings when they are faced with life and death. How should we confront our own death? How should we treat the mind, when our family member or loved one is faced with death? How... more
Buddhism provides various kinds of wisdom supporting human beings when they are faced with life and death. How should we confront our own death? How should we treat the mind, when our family member or loved one is faced with death? How should we comfort the grief, when we go through the death of the family member or the loved one? We want to show you such Buddhist wisdom concerning the problems of life and death.
We have taken part in a lot of academic conferences such as of Association of
Clinical Death Studies in Japan (Nihon no Shi Rinshō Kenkyūkai, 日本の死臨床研究会) out of interest in what is called humanity. I have seen many people confronting the death and those who care them and could learn a lot of things. I would like to show you my poor process as well.
Death is unreasonable for human beings. We are not able to explain rationally the death of a family member or loved one.
Why am I supposed to die? Why is the family member or loved one supposed to die? Why is he or she supposed to die at such a young age?, etc.
No matter how many times we ask ourselves “Why”, it is not possible to find the answer.
The death from long-term disease must not be acceptable, much less sudden death or the death due to any disaster or accident.
The Tōhoku earthquake which occurred on 11. March 2011 forced many people to confront the absurdity.
But come to think of it, what is unreasonable is not only death.
All the fact that we were born, that we live at this moment and that we are who we are absurd. Nobody cannot choose the parents, where and when he or she is born, etc. We cannot explain why we look like that, why we have such a color of the eyes and hairs.
This is because life is beyond the comprehention of human beings by nature.
Bricks are one of the most important items of construction activities. India is the second largest brick producer in the world. It is continuously expanding on account of a rapid increase in demand for bricks in infrastructure and housing... more
Bricks are one of the most important items of construction activities. India is the second largest brick producer in the world. It is continuously expanding on account of a rapid increase in demand for bricks in infrastructure and housing project. In order to meet this demand, over 150,000 brick units provide direct employment to more than 8 million workers. The annual turnover of the industry is Rs. 8000 crore (Approx). With the restriction in use of clay in manufacturing of bricks, fly ash brick is best substitute for it. Growing awareness among the prospective and potential building & consistent efforts by Govt. fly ash brick is incorporate in the schedule of various construction agencies. With the change of demand of the society, fly ash bricks are gradually increasing day by day not only in the metropolitan cities but also in urban & rural sector. All construction works are dependent on bricks. This research paper presents a comparison of fly ash bricks and clay bricks. Data is collected through questionnaires and personal interviews targeting Consultants, Engineers, and Traders. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is adopted to evaluate the responses collected from the respondent by Independent Samples T-test.
The aim of this study was to assess Australian girls' beliefs and feelings about menarche and menstruation using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Eighty-seven Grade 6 girls were interviewed and completed questionnaires,... more
The aim of this study was to assess Australian girls' beliefs and feelings about menarche and menstruation using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Eighty-seven Grade 6 girls were interviewed and completed questionnaires, including both self-report and projective measures, relating to pubertal status, attitudes to and knowledge about menstruation. Results showed knowledge to be limited, with evidence of incorrect and negative myths about menstruation. Attitudes to menstruation were characterized by embarrassment, discomfort, and ambivalence about growing up. Themes in story completion tasks further reflected these attitudes, along with shame and anxiety, linked periods with incapacity or illness, and expressed the norm of periods as events which require the use of deception and denial as coping strategies. Mature problem-solving approaches to the hypothetical situations in the stories were rare. Factor analysis of the attitudinal and knowledge data revealed four factors — Comfort through Knowledge; Negative Feelings: Discomfort through Knowledge; and Independence — which were discussed in terms of the ambivalent social construction placed on menstruation.
This study attempts to examine the perceptions of college students regarding online/hybrid education, the criteria used for decision making and the drawbacks that may keep students from enrolling in online education. Studies by Thomerson... more
This study attempts to examine the perceptions of college students regarding online/hybrid education, the criteria used for decision making and the drawbacks that may keep students from enrolling in online education. Studies by Thomerson and Smith [15], and by Leonard and Guha [7] demonstrate that there are various characteristics that affect students’ perceptions which were the basis for this study. The main factors collected from previous studies that were analyzed included effectiveness, convenience, and social interaction, and level of difficulty. Data were collected by distributing surveys through the internet. 146 usable questionnaires were returned. Factor analysis was performed based on the surveys returned and significant factors were found. These results lead to the proposal of a research model.
This paper explores the link between student achievement and student learning styles in a college microeconomics course, based on the Dunn and Dunn model of learning styles. The Productivity Environmental Survey (PEPS) is utilized to... more
This paper explores the link between student achievement and student learning styles in a college microeconomics course, based on the Dunn and Dunn model of learning styles. The Productivity Environmental Survey (PEPS) is utilized to measure learning style preferences for twenty elements. Factor analysis is applied to reduce the multidimensional preferences to a smaller set of common factors that identify analytic, global or indifferent learning styles. The common factors are used as explanatory variables to measure the correlation between student achievement and their learning styles. The empirical methodology developed in this study also provides a test of the internal validity of the Dunn and Dunn model, the construct validity of the PEPS instrument and the predictive validity of the model. The authors explain how the results of the current research could be utilized to more generally enhance student achievement in the instruction of introductory economics and potentially other s...
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the structural validity and reliability of a student’s behaviors’ self-evaluation scale (SBSS) in the physical education class. The SBSS was created in order to evaluate the effect of a... more
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the structural validity and reliability of a student’s behaviors’ self-evaluation scale (SBSS) in the physical education class. The SBSS was created in order to evaluate the effect of a physical education program in the context of the multicultural composition of the student population in the Greek elementary schools. First, the face validity of items was evaluated, second, the pool of the items selected was factor analyzed. Two hundred and thirty six (N = 236) students, aged 10 to 12 years old (M = 11, SD = 1.38) participated in this study. The participation consisted of 110 (46.6%) boys and 126 (53.4%) girls who attended the 5 th and 6 th grade of primary school. From the participants, 133 (56.4%) were Greeks and 103 (43.6%) were foreigners. Exploratory factor analysis yielded five factors (goals ‐ acquaintances ‐ reward ‐ help ‐ irresponsibility) accounting for 65.2% of the variance. The internal reliability index of the questi...
This study used a community sample of 954 participants (475 girls and 479 boys; aged between 10.9 and 17.3 years and from the city of Barcelona) and a risk group of 78 participants (35 men and 43 women; derived from the community sample)... more
This study used a community sample of 954 participants (475 girls and 479 boys; aged between 10.9 and 17.3 years and from the city of Barcelona) and a risk group of 78 participants (35 men and 43 women; derived from the community sample) that have exceeded ≥95 percentile ...
There currently exists a dearth of research on the transmission and assimilation of myths. To overcome this limitation, we developed a novel scale that measures belief in science-related myths. A total of 363 participants completed this... more
There currently exists a dearth of research on the transmission and assimilation of myths. To overcome this limitation, we developed a novel scale that measures belief in science-related myths. A total of 363 participants completed this new scale along with measures of personality (the Big Five factors), anti-scientific attitudes, and New Age orientation. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the items of the belief in myths scale could be reduced to two factors concerning human-related and non-human-related myths. Both factors were internally reliable, were moderately inter-correlated, and were not rated significantly differently by women and men (although human-related myths were rated as significantly more believable than non-human-related myths). Further analysis showed that only human myths were significantly predicted by anti-scientific attitudes and the Big Five factor of Extraversion. These results are discussed in relation to the promotion of scientific literacy.
Certain symptoms of grief have been shown (a) to be distinct from bereavement-related depression and anxiety, and (b) to predict long-term functional impairments. We termed these symptoms of "complicated grief" and developed the... more
Certain symptoms of grief have been shown (a) to be distinct from bereavement-related depression and anxiety, and (b) to predict long-term functional impairments. We termed these symptoms of "complicated grief" and developed the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG) to assess them. Data were derived from 97 conjugally bereaved elders who completed the ICG, along with other self-report scales measuring grief, depression, and background characteristics. Exploratory factor analyses indicated that the ICG measured a single underlying construct of complicated grief. High internal consistency and test-retest reliabilities were evidence of the ICG's reliability. The ICG total score's association with severity of depressive symptoms and a general measure of grief suggested a valid, yet distinct, assessment of emotional distress. Respondents with ICG scores > 25 were significantly more impaired in social, general, mental, and physical health functioning and in bodily pain...
A brief review of the literature on structural analysis of interpersonal be-havior is followed by a proposal which draws heavily from prior models, especially those of Schaefer and of Leary. The proposed model goes be-yond previous ones... more
A brief review of the literature on structural analysis of interpersonal be-havior is followed by a proposal which draws heavily from prior models, especially those of Schaefer and of Leary. The proposed model goes be-yond previous ones in that it has a highly explicit ...
In this paper, a combined use of dimensional analysis (DA) and modern statistical design of experiment (DOE) methodologies is proposed for a hydrodynamics experiment where there are a large number of variables. While DA is well-known, DOE... more
In this paper, a combined use of dimensional analysis (DA) and modern statistical design of experiment (DOE) methodologies is proposed for a hydrodynamics experiment where there are a large number of variables. While DA is well-known, DOE is still unfamiliar to most ocean engineers although it has been shown to be useful in many engineering and non-engineering applications. To introduce
In response to the need for ecological transition, a multitude of eco-city and eco-neighborhood initiatives have been instigated around the world. A major challenge has been the charge, captured by terms such as ‘eco enclaves’ and... more
In response to the need for ecological transition, a multitude of eco-city and eco-neighborhood initiatives have been instigated around the world. A major challenge has been the charge, captured by terms such as ‘eco enclaves’ and ‘environmental gentrification’, that these initiatives poorly attend to questions of social diversity and spatial equity. In France, too, where since 2008 a major national ÉcoQuartier initiative has been underway with close to 500 projects launched, some have warned against creating ‘écoquartiers bobo’ – urban development catering for a mainly ‘bourgeois-bohemian’ clientele. Consequently, this article investigates whether there may be selectivity at work in the placement of ÉcoQuartiers that favors advantageous locations. To this end, a detailed socio-spatial analysis was carried out with a sample of 214 implemented ÉcoQuartiers. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), eight factors were extracted from a comprehensive set of 53 socio-economic and geospatial variables. These were used to compare the sampled ÉcoQuartiers with the overall territory (mainland France and Corsica) as well as with a parallel national urban policy initiative, the ‘Quartiers Prioritaires de la Ville’ (‘urban priority neighborhoods’) which expressly focuses on areas of social disadvantage. As a result, this study reveals several dimensions of locational selectivity, which are discussed in terms of their policy and practice implications as well as their significance for conceptualizing eco-neighborhoods as socio-spatially inclusive places.
Industry clusters in a region represent a material basis for an innovation-based economy. The paper aims to explore the Turkish industry clusters by examining the inter-industry selling and purchasing relationships. The 1990 Turkish... more
Industry clusters in a region represent a material basis for an innovation-based economy. The paper aims to explore the Turkish industry clusters by examining the inter-industry selling and purchasing relationships. The 1990 Turkish input-output table is used to identify the similarities between selling and purchasing patterns of 60 manufacturing industries and derive a matrix that describes the relative linkage between them. Principle component factor analysis reveals the presence of 12 distinct industry clusters. The largest cluster is the petroleum cluster, followed by vehicle and food and agricultural clusters. The firms within the identified clusters provide a potential to share technical information and knowledge transfer through formal or informal interactions.
Measuring urban sprawl is a controversial topic among scholars who investigate the urban landscape. This study attempts to measure sprawl from a landscape perspective. The measures and indices used derive from various research... more
Measuring urban sprawl is a controversial topic among scholars who investigate the urban landscape. This study attempts to measure sprawl from a landscape perspective. The measures and indices used derive from various research disciplines, such as urban research, ecological research, and fractal geometry. The examination was based on an urban land-use survey performed in 78 urban settlements in Israel over the course of 15 years. Measures of sprawl were calculated at each settlement and then weighted into one integrated sprawl index through factor analysis, thus enabling a description of sprawl rates and their dynamics during a time period of two decades. The results reveal that urban sprawl is a multidimensional phenomenon that is better quantified by various measures.