Minors can be left without legal custody due to many different reasons. When a minor is in distress he/she is at the mercy of the decision of the competent entity for the granting of his/her guardian. However, based on the affective relationships established by the different family members, determining parental responsibility constitutes a highly important decision. This research proposes a solution to the problem described by means of a recommendation system to assign parental responsibility and its incidence in the best interests of minors. The proposed method bases its operation on the use of Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps (NCM) to model the uncertainty in causal relationships. A case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposal.

The main objective of this special issue is to divulge the applicability of the Neutrosophic Theory and to explore the possibilities and advantages of neutrosophic tools, through both the presentation of thorough research and case studies in solving social problems in Latin America. The best presentations discussed at the III International Congress of Educational Research and University Innovation, turned into papers, show us the capacity for socialization of neutrosophic knowledge and its link with this science of validation and consolidation of scientific knowledge. This publication with authors from 11 countries that we place in the hands of the international scientific community, constitutes an example of how in Latin America the Neutrosophy is contributing to complex solutions based on the results of scientific research carried out by teachers and students committed to the social responsibility of continuing to progress for the benefit of humanity.

Fuzzy sets have experienced multiple expansions since their conception to enhance their capacity to convey complex information. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets, image fuzzy sets, q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets, and neutrosophic sets are a few of these extensions. Researchers and academics have acquired a lot of information about their theories and methods for making decisions. However, only a small number of research findings discuss how neutrosophic sets theory and their extensions (NSTEs) are used in education. The Handbook of Research on the Applications of Neutrosophic Sets Theory and Their Extensions in Education implements fresh scientific approaches to enhance the quality of decisions under neutrosophic environments, particularly within education. Covering key topics such as data modeling, educational technologies, decision making, and learning management systems, this major reference work is ideal for instructional designers, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This special issue reflects the impact of neutrosophic theory in Latin America, especially after creating the Latin American Association of Neutrosophic Sciences. Among the areas of publication most addressed in the region are found in the interrelation of social sciences and neutrosophy, presenting outstanding results in these research areas. The main objective of this special issue is to divulge the impact publication related to the Neutrosophic theory and explore new areas of research and application in the region. The SI reflects the influence of the neutrosophic publications in Latin America by opening new research areas mainly related to Neutrosophic Statistics, Plithogeny, and NeutroAlgebra. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning the incorporation of authors from new countries in the region, such as Paraguay, Uruguay, and Panama, to have authors in total from 15 countries, 12 of them from the Latin American region.

“Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” has been created for publications on advanced studies in neutrosophy, neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics that started in 1995 and their applications in any field, such as the neutrosophic structures developed in algebra, geometry, topology, etc.

The Latin American Neutrosophic Science Association was created in 2018 as a result of the initiative of a group of university professors from Mexico and Ecuador. The Association has developed an intense work in the investigative context, expression of the capacity that neutrosophy has as a tool for understanding and transformation of reality in social benefit. Neutrosophic sets as a generalization fuzzy set (especially intuitionistic fuzzy sets), allows handling a greater number of situations that occur in reality and becomes a facilitator of the approach to the studied object without undermining its complex and multivariate essence. In this special edition, researchers from six Ecuadorian universities show the results of research projects addressing a wide range of topics related to the social environment of these Higher Education Institutions. The contents include law, criminology, public and administrative management, evaluation of pedagogical scenarios, prospective analysis, artificial intelligence, among other topics. They are many different texts with a common denominator, the social sciences, and their relationship with neutrosophy. The progress of these investigations originates a significant change in the ways of validating and reasoning the proposals, the appreciation of neutrality increases the interpretability and the inferential efficacy from the analysis of the results, which enunciates a methodological, perceptive and objective enrichment in the humanistic sciences in Latin American geographical region.

In a world of chaotic alignments, traditional logic with its strict boundaries of truth and falsity has not imbued itself with the capability of reflecting the reality. Despite various attempts to reorient logic, there has remained an essential need for an alternative system that could infuse into itself a representation of the real world. Out of this need arose the system of Neutrosophy (the philosophy of neutralities, introduced by FLORENTIN SMARANDACHE), and its connected logic Neutrosophic Logic, which is a further generalization of the theory of Fuzzy Logic. In this book we study the concepts of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) and their Neutrosophic analogue, the Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps (NCMs). Fuzzy Cognitive Maps are fuzzy structures that strongly resemble neural networks, and they have powerful and far-reaching consequences as a mathematical tool for modeling complex systems. Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps are generalizations of FCMs, and their unique feature is the ability to handle indeterminacy in relations between two concepts thereby bringing greater sensitivity into the results. Some of the varied applications of FCMs and NCMs which has been explained by us, in this book, include: modeling of supervisory systems; design of hybrid models for complex systems; mobile robots and in intimate technology such as office plants; analysis of business performance assessment; formalism debate and legal rules; creating metabolic and regulatory network models; traffic and transportation problems; medical diagnostics; simulation of strategic planning process in intelligent systems; specific language impairment; web-mining inference application; child labor problem; industrial relations: between employer and employee, maximizing production and profit; decision support in intelligent intrusion detection system; hyper-knowledge representation in strategy formation; female infanticide; depression in terminally ill patients and finally, in the theory of community mobilization and women empowerment relative to the AIDS epidemic.

For the first time, the social problem of untouchability, which is peculiar to India, is being studied mathematically.We have used Fuzzy Cognitive Maps and Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps to analyze the views of the revolutionary Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (17.09.1879 24.12.1973) who relentlessly worked for more than five decades to secure the rights of the oppressed people who were considered untouchables. This thought-provoking book will be of great interest to human rights activists, socio-scientists, historians, and above all, mathematicians.From UNESCO citation: Periyar, The Prophet of the New Age, The Socrates of South East Asia, Father of the Social reform Movement and Arch Enemy of Ignorance, Superstition, Meaningless Customs and Baseless Manners.

This book is an excellent starting point for any curriculum in fuzzy systems fields such as computer science, mathematics, business/economics and engineering. It covers the basics leading to: fuzzy clustering, fuzzy pattern recognition, fuzzy database, fuzzy image processing, soft computing, fuzzy applications in operations research, fuzzy decision making, fuzzy rule based systems, fuzzy systems modeling, fuzzy mathematics. It is not a book designed for researchers - it is where you really learn the "basics" needed for any of the above-mentioned applications. It includes many figures and problem sets at the end of sections.