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Is humanity heading to immortal living? If so, what areas of society are playing an active role in achieving this? In order to understand this, the study explores the relationship between immortality and the wellness and medical tourism industry to seek potential relationships between them and ultimately, asks difficult questions about the growth of these tourism sectors and the potential need for greater regulation of them.

Taking a pragmatic philosophical approach and through the examination of refined information from secondary sources and published material and reports, the study presents original theoretical knowledge and a model exploring tourism and human immortality.

This paper argues that continued growth in the wellness and medical markets today could lead to a world where transhumanists and cyborgs are present in our world, even taking over from Homo sapiens. The study presents a model highlighting the potential role of wellness and medical tourism markets, illustrating the potential for future consumer services that could further fuel the search for immortality. Thus, how such markets and consumer desires are (in)directly supporting humanities desire for (non-human) immortal existence.

Today, individuals are driven by wellness practices and medical and cosmetic desires and are willing to travel the globe in search of companies who are either capable of carrying out the desired procedures or seeking prices more affordable to them. This research offers novel insights into these complex relationships and maps the affiliation between wellness and medical practices and the concept of immortality.

This paper aims to explain the nature of the economic agent in Islamic economics. He is commonly referred to as Homo Islamicus.

This is done by deriving the concept from the Qurʾān as the primary epistemological source in Islamic economics. The paper, thus, attempts to explore the message of the Qurʾān and internalize its concepts and values in their totality into the conception of the economic agent from an Islamic perspective.

The paper brings an insight regarding the nature of the economic agent in Islamic perspective. The concept of the economic agent that is developed from the Qurʾānic teachings will be useful in developing assumptions and theories in Islamic economics.

This paper explores the normative behavioral framework of man from the Qurʾānic perspective (i.e. what is expected of man) in order to serve as the basis on which assumptions, concepts and theories could be produced and applied in real life. Further studies could extend the discussion by examining the application of the concepts in practice.

This paper promotes a normative behavioral framework that could be the basis in developing the body of knowledge of Islamic economics.

This paper promotes a concept of the economic agent in Islamic perspective, termed as Homo Islamicus, who is going to portray Islamic ethical teachings in economic actions. The paper brought insights from the Qurʾānic teachings and principles in developing the concept of Homo Islamicus who will be the representative agent in theorizing Islamic economics.

This paper is determined to examine the role of body image and materialism in predicting the identity exploration of university students when conspicuous consumption is a mediator variable.

The study used a quantitative method. Data were collected from students of three federal universities in Nigeria. The sample size was 331. A self-report questionnaire was used to collect data and analysis was performed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Findings reveal that materialism has a negative association in predicting the identity exploration of students. At the same time, there was a significant full and partial mediating effect of conspicuous consumption on the relationship between body image and materialism on identity exploration, respectively.

The study provides valuable information for parents in understanding how conspicuous consumption may influence their children’s identity formation. The findings can also be helpful for educators in the design of discussions and interventions for students on the social-psychological antecedents of conspicuous consumption and identity exploration. Government and regulatory agencies can use the study’s findings to shape student financial literacy and consumer protection policies.

This study makes both theoretical and methodological contributions to the existing literature. It provided concrete empirical evidence establishing a subtle connection between the symbolic self-completion theory and the identity status paradigm. It is also amongst the first single research conducted within the scope of these two theories in the Nigerian higher education context.

This paper considers the role of nonhuman animals in the thought of Donna Haraway, going from her critique of the animal as model/mirror for the evolution of the human body politic to her proposal for a “compost” society. It demonstrates her changing positions in relation to the social role of animals and the deepening of her critique of intersectional relations that subordinate nonhuman animals and animalized people.

The paper intertwines a loosely historical approach and a thematic one, focusing on key issues of sociological theory, such as work, agency and kinship, and the way these relate to the animal question in Haraway's writings. Her texts are discussed both broadly and in-depth, and her positionality in terms of both feminism and antispeciesism is foregrounded.

The paper shows how the progressive abandonment of a posthuman approach in favor of a compostist one brings Haraway nearer to intersectional ecofeminism and to a fuller consideration of nonhuman agency at a material level, as well as to a deeper critique of instrumental relations of domination and issue that had been problematic in critiques of her earlier work.

The paper highlights the role of nonhumans in the evolution and constitution of societies and advocates a response-able multispecies politics.

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the social role of animals in Haraway's thought and the deepening antispeciesism of her feminist approach that sheds a different light on her positionality in relation to ecofeminism.

Drawing on Bourdieu's conceptualisation of physical capital, this article explores the experiences of male and female employees in non-traditional occupations where body work is an integral part of the role. Specifically, the authors examine how being an underrepresented gender in this context impacts the experience of work, including challenges faced and perceptions for future opportunities in the role.

The research is based on two in-depth case studies undertaken in the social care and security/door work sector. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with male social care workers and female security workers in the night-time hospitality sector. Management representatives were also interviewed in each case. The interviews examined how the nature of the work in these roles impacted on the underrepresented gender's perceptions of various aspects of their working lives.

The findings illustrate how many of the challenges associated with non-traditional occupations are experienced differently in body work roles, either being amplified or instead presenting opportunities for the role holder with implications for the day-to-day and longer-term experience of work. The findings illustrate how the actions and behaviour of management and colleagues can exacerbate the extent to which underrepresented gender feel accepted within their role and organisation.

Organisational decision makers need to be aware of the importance of reviewing practices regarding hiring, promotion and the allocation of tasks and duties for non-traditional role holders engaged in body work.

The article contributes to understandings of “body work” and physical capital in non-traditional occupations, illustrating how gender-based assumptions can restrict individuals in these roles to a greater extent than in other forms of work where the body is salient to the performance of the role.

The purpose of this paper investigates dynamic ease distributions of clothes at bust and waist lines with different body surface angle by using a Qualisys three-dimensional motion capture system (3DMCS).

The current method first obtain the specific markers of participants and their clothes along the bust and waist lines through 3DMCS, then using the least square method and four piecewise polynomial fitting participants and their clothes' bust and waist curves. The coordinates of the markers were tracked by the 3DMCS, while the participants under different body surface angle walked on a treadmill calculated the distances of markers coordinates to the participants' bust and waist curves. Finally, the data of samples were analyzed. It was found that the dynamic ease distributions showed different patterns at different body surface angle.

The results revealed the bust convex angle is 26.53 degrees (Specification:X3) and back slope angle is 13.96 degrees (Specification: Y1), the fluctuation of participant ease distributions on bust section was most obvious, and the maximum fluctuation value was ±20 mm and ±25 mm. The ease distributions of participant waist section fluctuated most obviously when the bust convex angle is 28.10 degrees (Specification: X5) and the back slope angle is 13.96 degrees (Specification: Y1), and the maximum fluctuation was ±30 mm and ±20 mm. The bust convex angle has the greatest influence on 1# garment, and the back slope angle has the greatest influence on 2# garment.

Currently, there is little information in the literature about dynamic ease distributions of garment on a different body types. This paper takes different body surface angles as the research objects to analyze the ease distributions of different clothes, the conclusion can provide reference data for 3D garment modeling and improve the authenticity of virtual garment fitting.

The article contributes to affective ethnography focussing on the fluidity of organizational spacing. Through the concept of affective space, it highlights those elements that are ephemeral and elusive – like affect, aesthetics, atmosphere, intensity, moods – and proposes to explore affect as spatialized and space as affective.

Fluidity is proposed as a conceptual lens that sits at the conjunction of space and affect, highlighting both the movement in time and space, and the mutable relationships that the capacity of affecting and being affected weaves. It experiments with “writing differently” in affective ethnography, thus performing the space of representation of affective space.

The article enriches the alternative to a conceptualization of organizations as stable entities, considering organizing in its spatial fluidity and in being a fragmented, affective and dispersed phenomenon.

The article's writing is an example of intertextuality constructed through five praxiographic stories that illustrate the multiple fluidity of affective spacing in terms of temporal fluidity, fluidity of boundaries, of participation, of the object of practice, and atmospheric fluidity.

The purpose of this paper is to propose new directions for human resource management (HRM) research by drawing attention to online data as a complementary data source to traditional quantitative and qualitative data, and introducing network text analysis as a method for large quantities of textual material.

The paper first presents the added value and potential challenges of utilising online data in HRM research, and then proposes a four-step process for analysing online data with network text analysis.

Online data represent a naturally occuring source of real-time behavioural data that do not suffer from researcher intervention or hindsight bias. The authors argue that as such, this type of data provides a promising yet currently largely untapped empirical context for HRM research that is particularly suited for examining discourses and behavioural and social patterns over time.

While online data hold promise for many novel research questions, it is less appropriate for research questions that seek to establish causality between variables. When using online data, particular attention must be paid to ethical considerations, as well as the validity and representativeness of the sample.

The authors introduce online data and network text analysis as a new avenue for HRM research, with potential to address novel research questions at micro-, meso- and macro-levels of analysis.

The rostrum of a paddlefish provides hydrodynamic stability during feeding process in addition to detect the food using receptors that are randomly distributed in the rostrum. The exterior tissue of the rostrum covers the cartilage that surrounds the bones forming interlocking star shaped bones.

The aim of this work is to assess the mechanical behavior of four finite element models varying the type of formulation as follows: linear-reduced integration, linear-full integration, quadratic-reduced integration and quadratic-full integration. The paper also presents the load transfer mechanisms of the bone structure of the rostrum. The base material used in the study was steel with elastic–plastic behavior as a homogeneous material before applying materials properties that represents the behavior of bones, cartilages and tissues.

Conclusions are based on comparison among the four models. There is no significant difference between integration orders for similar type of elements. Quadratic-reduced integration formulation resulted in lower structural stiffness compared with linear formulation as seen by higher displacements and stresses than using linearly formulated elements. It is concluded that second-order elements with reduced integration are the alternative to analyze biological structures as they can better adapt to the complex natural contours and can model accurately stress concentrations and distributions without over stiffening their general response.

The use of advanced computational mechanics techniques to analyze the complex geometry and components of the paddlefish rostrum provides a viable avenue to gain fundamental understanding of the proper finite element formulation needed to successfully obtain the system behavior and hot spot locations.