Why is corruption—the misuse of public office for private gain— perceived to be more widespread in some countries than others? Different theories associate this with particular historical and cultural traditions, levels of economic development, political institutions, and government policies. This article analyzes several indexes of “perceived corruption” compiled from business risk surveys for...

Computing as a discipline is often characterized as a combination of three major traditions: theoretical, scientific, and engineering tradition. Although the three traditions are all considered equally necessary for modern computing, the engineering tradition is often considered to be useful but to lack intellectual depth. This article discusses the basic intellectual background of the engineer...

The phenomenon of contemporary composers reaching across cultures in search of inspiration, musical materials and forms, and new ideas is not a new one, but it is occurring now with greater frequency. Some seek to join inherited traditions from within their own ancestral cultures with new traditions from the West or with new technologies. Some are Westerners exploring traditional musical forms ...

Homeric Greek, Kalevala Finnish, Old Norse andMiddle Tamil are all languages in which weight is claimed to be exclusively binary in the poetic metrics. As I demonstrate through corpus studies of these traditions, the poets were sensitive to additional grades of weight, such that finely articulated continua of syllable weight can be inferred from distributional asymmetries in the metres. Across ...

The article by Oortwijn, Jansen, and Baltussen (OJB) is much more important than it appears because, in the absence of any good general theory of “evidence-informed deliberative processes” (EDP) and limited evidence of how they might be shaped and work in institutionalising health technology assessment (HTA), the best approach seems to be to accumulate the experience of...

the books written on the world strange items and categories ,may be called as a literary genre, too. they also originate from the people's beliefs, traditions, customs, and culture of a specific region. some of these strange items and categories have been turned into various tales of mysteries. the experts of other fields, such as geography, history, etc. have used them as well. azari toos...

The effigy mounds of the Upper Midwest and Ohio Valley long have been regarded as distinct independent cultural developments. A review mound iconography in both regions reveals similarities suggesting that they are elements a shared tradition. Comparisons with rock art imagery from Missouri, inferred centers this artistic ceremonial florescence, reveal co-occurrences specific motifs provide add...