Social Trust-based Blockchain-enabled Social Media News Verification System

In the current digital era, information exchanges can be done easily through the Internet and social media. However, the actual truth of the news on social media platforms is hard to prove, and social media platforms are susceptible to the spreading of hoaxes. As a remedy, Blockchain technology can be used to ensure the reliability of shared information and can create a trusted communications environment. In this study, we propose a social media news spreading model by adapting an epidemic methodology and a scale-free network. A Blockchain-based news verification system is implemented to identify the credibility of the news and its sources. The effectiveness of the model is investigated by utilizing agent-based modelling using NetLogo software. In the simulations, fake news with a truth level of 20% are assigned a low News Credibility Indicator (NCI ± -0.637) value for all of the different network dimensions. Moreover, the Producer Reputation Credit is also decreased (PRC ± 0.213) so that the trust factor value is reduced. Our epidemic approach for news verification has also been implemented using Ethereum Smart Contract and several tools such as React with Solidity, IPFS, Web3.js, and Metamask. By showing the measurements of the credibility indicator and reputation credit to the user during the news dissemination process, this proposed smart contract can effectively limit user behaviour in spreading fake news and improve the content quality on social media.

Cultural Representation in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and The Jewel

This article attempts to pinpoint the interaction of Cultural Representation in Wole Soyinka’s play The Lion and the Jewel. Culture can be perceived as a bunch of regular convictions that hold individuals together, these normal convictions lead to social practices, and practices that are instilled with significance. Culture is to incorporate every one of the aspects of human experience that stretch out past our actual truth, culture alludes how we comprehend ourselves both as people and as member of the society incorporates stories, religion, media, ceremonies, and even language.The Europeans colonization in African made many changes in their culture, some people thought that they are reformed by the European, but some thought that their culture was changed by them. The play sets in the village named Ilujinle in West Africa, and it has the characteristics like comedy, love, myth, folklore, dance, music, and cultural conflict between old culture and new culture, because the old culture was followed by uneducated people, they were led by Baroka and the new culture was followed by Lakunle, who works as a teacher in that village. Wole Soyinka presents the custom and traditions of Yoruba in the play The Lion and the Jewel and he created significant characters, who defends the modernity because they are deeply rooted with old custom and tradition of their culture.

Implementation of the method of figurative transformations to minimizing symmetric Boolean functions

This paper reports a study that has established the possibility of improving the effectiveness of the method of figurative transformations in order to minimize symmetrical Boolean functions in the main and polynomial bases. Prospective reserves in the analytical method were identified, such as simplification of polynomial function conjuncterms using the created equivalent transformations based on the method of inserting the same conjuncterms followed by the operation of super-gluing the variables. The method of figurative transformations was extended to the process of minimizing the symmetrical Boolean functions with the help of algebra in terms of rules for simplifying the functions of the main and polynomial bases and developed equivalent transformations of conjuncterms. It was established that the simplification of symmetric Boolean functions by the method of figurative transformations is based on a flowchart with repetition, which is the actual truth table of the assigned function. This is a sufficient resource to minimize symmetrical Boolean functions that makes it possible to do without auxiliary objects, such as Karnaugh maps, cubes, etc. The perfect normal form of symmetrical functions can be represented by binary matrices that would represent the terms of symmetrical Boolean functions and the OR or XOR operation for them. The experimental study has confirmed that the method of figurative transformations that employs the 2-(n, b)-design, and 2-(n, x/b)-design combinatorial systems improves the efficiency of minimizing symmetrical Boolean functions. Compared to analogs, this makes it possible to enhance the productivity of minimizing symmetrical Boolean functions by 100‒200 %. There are grounds to assert the possibility of improving the effectiveness of minimizing symmetrical Boolean functions in the main and polynomial bases by the method of figurative transformations. This is ensured, in particular, by using the developed equivalent transformations of polynomial function conjuncterms based on the method of inserting similar conjuncterms followed by the operation of super-gluing the variables.

Necessary, Transcendental, and Universal Truth

A simple puzzle leads Fine to conclude that we should distinguish between worldly sentences like “Socrates exists,” whose truth values depend on circumstances and unworldly ones like “Socrates is human,” which are true or false independently of circumstances. The former, if true in every circumstance, express necessary propositions. The latter, if true, express transcendental propositions, which, for theoretical convenience, we regard as necessary in an extended sense. Here it is argued that this understanding is backwards. Transcendental truths and sentences true in every circumstance (here labeled universal truths) are both species of necessary truth. The revised understanding is clarified by a simple formal system with distinct operators for necessary, transcendental, and universal truth. The system is axiomatized. Its universal-truth fragment coincides with something that Arthur Prior once proposed as System A. The ideas of necessary, transcendental truth are further clarified by considering their interaction with actual truth. Adding an operator for actually true to the formal system produces a system closely related to one of Crossley and Humberstone.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

This chapter presents a Radical Fictionalist analysis of talk about fiction, as in my utterances of ‘Fahrquhar was a well to do planter’ or of ‘according to Bierce’s Occurrence, Fahrquhar was a well to do planter’. According to this chapter’s favourite approach, namely the Way of Retelling, the former sentence does not encode a proposition, and the latter does not involve a sentential operator. The central sections of this chapter justify the sense in which these sentences are not in the business of truth, and are rather to be assessed according to the normative dimension of faithfulness. The final sections of this chapter present an alternative to the Way of Retelling, namely the Way of Truth. This hypothesis remains consistent with the premises of Radical Fictionalism, but it satisfies those who insist that fiction talk is to be analysed as elliptical talk concerned with actual truth.

Curiosity, responsibility, hospitality: Scenes of interreligious friendship

Three themes in interreligious friendship are illustrated through stories from the author’s childhood and adulthood. Curiosity takes different forms across the life span but can continue to lead to relationships both personal and professional. Responsibility asks that one represent one’s own tradition accurately, including in recognizing that no single person can speak for a religion. Hospitality is understood both as interpersonal welcome and, drawing from Catherine Cornille, as recognizing and welcoming “actual truth” in other religions. Hospitality offers and sustains friendship despite societal obstacles and individual failures. Throughout the life cycle, the experience of envying others’ religiosity can both inspire friendship and refine how one understands and practices one’s own religious commitments.

STRONGLY MILLIAN SECOND-ORDER MODAL LOGICS

The most common first- and second-order modal logics either have as theorems every instance of the Barcan and Converse Barcan formulae and of their second-order analogues, or else fail to capture the actual truth of every theorem of classical first- and second-order logic. In this paper we characterise and motivate sound and complete first- and second-order modal logics that successfully capture the actual truth of every theorem of classical first- and second-order logic and yet do not possess controversial instances of the Barcan and Converse Barcan formulae as theorems, nor of their second-order analogues. What makes possible these results is an understanding of the individual constants and predicates of the target languages as strongly Millian expressions, where a strongly Millian expression is one that has an actually existing entity as its semantic value. For this reason these logics are called ‘strongly Millian’. It is shown that the strength of the strongly Millian second-order modal logics here characterised afford the means to resist an argument by Timothy Williamson for the truth of the claim that necessarily, every property necessarily exists.

You have to be joking: Are communities loosing respect for health and safety policy, programs and systems?

OHS management systems and professionals have done much to ensure the health and safety of workers and societies in general. However, where these systems have become complex, overbearing and authoritarian, they have stifled workers and the community’s ability to respond to unique or unanticipated occurrences of occupational and general risk. This predicament is exacerbated when the general public lose faith in an OHS culture that has “gone mad”, or become “out of control”, and where “open season” has been declared by the media on safety regulators, their systems and regulations. This may be a perceived rather than actual truth, however, perceptions drive personal attitudes and responses, and the reputation and effectiveness of OHS is at stake. Driving some contemporary attitudes towards OHS is a barrage of lampoon, satire and angry comment pervade by mischief-makers, the press and the electronic media. The profession has also looked into the mirror and revealed areas of self-doubt. This paper looks at an unfolding and worrying scenario for occupational health.