There is little doubt that the concept of social capital represents a useful tool for many social sciences. Nevertheless, its use in broad domains and in different disciplines could lead in weak and, sometimes, inaccurate theoretical propositions. We suggest here to pose two basic distinctions up to better focalize the analysis and its effects on the behavior both of actors (micro level) and of...

Even though most of the aspects of medicine are thoroughly described in Ayurveda, proper division of the branches is needed as in the other systems of medicine. This paper gives the significance of the individual study of aspects on social medicine in this system and attempts to distinguish some of the contexts from the classics meant for this study.

Concepts refer to properties or characteristics of objects, e.g., weigh, height, attitude, intelligence, and leadership. Concepts are abstract or general ideas, which are important to how we think about particular subjects or issues (Blaxter et al. 2002: 205). They are constructs, i.e., they represent inference deduced from observable events. They symbolize inference at a higher level of abstra...

the concept of entrepreneurship has derived much attention to itself from scientific boards and public and private organizations in the recent decades. a brief review on the literature of entrepreneurship reveals that due to the economic approaches taken, entrepreneurship is setting forth to find out new ways to maximize the benefit and income. at the other hand, social organizations, too, must...

In this paper we model the concept of ”coarseness”, typically used in texture image descriptions, by means of fuzzy sets. Specifically, we relate representative measures of this kind of texture with its presence degree. To obtain these ”presence degrees”, we collect assessments from polls filled by human subjects, performing an aggregation of these assessments by means of OWA operators. Using t...

Conformity is an often criticized feature of human belief formation. Although generally regarded as a negative influence on reliability, it has not been widely studied. This paper attempts to determine the epistemic effects of conformity by analyzing a mathematical model of this behavior. In addition to investigating the effect of conformity on the reliability of individuals and groups, this pa...