The relationship between ethical ideology and job stress appears to be complex. This study is based on a model presented by Forsyth (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39:175, 1980), showing two dimensions (idealism and relativism) that play an important role in ethical evaluation and behavior. Based on a survey of 561 employees of hotel industry in India, ethical ideologies were found to be negatively associated with job stress. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and multiple regressions. The result (...) showed that relativism is negatively correlated with job stress. Further, it has been established that idealism and relativism interacted in such a way that there is a negative relationship between idealism and job stress when relativism is low and positive relationship when relativism is high. The findings imply that ethical ideology adversely influences the job stress in the organization. (shrink)

Dennett (_Synthese,_ _53_(2), 159–180, 1982, 1991, _Journal of Consciousness Studies,_ _10_(9–10), 19–30, 2003, _Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,_ _6_, 247–270, 2007 ) proposes and defends a method called _heterophenomenology_. Heterophenomenology is a method to study consciousness _from a third-person objective point of view_ as opposed to a first-person subjective point of view or (auto)-phenomenology. The method of heterophenomenology serves a necessary role in Dennett’s schema of bridging the gap between the manifest and the scientific image of the world. In this (...) paper, I attempt to present a limited critique of the method of heterophenomenology. The objection raised in this paper is limited to one of the steps involved in the method, i.e., the interpretation of the heterophenomenological text as analogous to novelist fiction. I attempt to show that the assumptions made by Dennett about the interpretation of fiction are contradictory in nature and therefore the same cannot be applied to the interpretation of a heterophenomenological text. The assumptions fail in justifying the interpretation of fiction itself and hence exporting them by analogy to interpret a heterophenomenological text is a mistake. (shrink)

Observational discrepancies in galactic rotation curves and cluster dispersion data have been interpreted to imply the existence of dark matter. Numerous efforts at its detection, however, have failed to turn up any positive result. As a dynamical theory is always operative on the assumed mass distribution to predict kinematic observations, some scientists see the discrepancy as telling against General Relativity. Among the many theories that seek to modify gravity, those that are built on Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), or yield MOND (...) behaviour at appropriate scales, achieve remarkable empirical success without assuming dark matter. The continued non-detection of dark matter and the empirical success of MOND supports the claim that the current evidential and theoretical context underdetermines General Relativity. In this article, I clarify the kind of underdetermination that can be said to threaten General Relativity. Specifically, I argue that the present evidential and theoretical context increase the possibility of an unconceived alternative to GR which would be just as well supported by the available evidence. (shrink)

The capacity to generate recursive sequences is a marker of rich, algorithmic cognition, and perhaps unique to humans. Yet, the precise processes driving recursive sequence generation remain mysterious. We investigated three potential cognitive mechanisms underlying recursive pattern processing: hierarchical reasoning, ordinal reasoning, and associative chaining. We developed a Bayesian mixture model to quantify the extent to which these three cognitive mechanisms contribute to adult humans’ performance in a sequence generation task. We further tested whether recursive rule discovery depends upon relational (...) information, either perceptual or semantic. We found that the presence of relational information facilitates hierarchical reasoning and drives the generation of recursive sequences across novel depths of center embedding. In the absence of relational information, the use of ordinal reasoning predominates. Our results suggest that hierarchical reasoning is an important cognitive mechanism underlying recursive pattern processing and can be deployed across embedding depths and relational domains. (shrink)

Recent advances in genomic and imaging techniques have revealed the complex manner of organizing billions of base pairs of DNA necessary for maintaining their functionality and ensuring the proper expression of genetic information. The SMC proteins and cohesin complex primarily contribute to forming higher‐order chromatin structures, such as chromosomal territories, compartments, topologically associating domains (TADs) and chromatin loops anchored by CCCTC‐binding factor (CTCF) protein or other genome organizers. Cohesin plays a fundamental role in chromatin organization, gene expression and regulation. This (...) review aims to describe the current understanding of the dynamic nature of the cohesin‐DNA complex and its dependence on cohesin for genome maintenance. We discuss the current 3C technique and numerous bioinformatics pipelines used to comprehend structural genomics and epigenetics focusing on the analysis of Cohesin‐centred interactions. We also incorporate our present comprehension of Loop Extrusion (LE) and insights from stochastic modelling. (shrink)

I provide a critical commentary regarding the attitude of the logician and the philosopher towards the physicist and physics. The commentary is intended to showcase how a general change in attitude towards making scientific inquiries can be beneficial for science as a whole. However, such a change can come at the cost of looking beyond the categories of the disciplines of logic, philosophy and physics. It is through self-inquiry that such a change is possible, along with the realization of the (...) essence of the middle that is otherwise excluded by choice. The logician, who generally holds a reverential attitude towards the physicist, can then actively contribute to the betterment of physics by improving the language through which the physicist expresses his experience. The philosopher, who otherwise chooses to follow the advancement of physics and gets stuck in the trap of sophistication of language, can then be of guidance to the physicist on intellectual grounds by having the physicist’s experience himself. In course of this commentary, I provide a glimpse of how a truthful conversion of verbal statements to physico-mathematical expressions unravels the hitherto unrealized connection between Heisenberg uncertainty relation and Cauchy’s definition of derivative that is used in physics. The commentary can be an essential reading if the reader is willing to look beyond the categories of logic, philosophy and physics by being ‘nobody’. (shrink)

Physical dimensions like “mass”, “length”, “charge”, represented by the symbols [M], [L], [Q], are not numbers, but used as numbers to perform dimensional analysis in particular, and to write the equations of physics in general, by the physicist. The law of excluded middle falls short of explaining the contradictory meanings of the same symbols. The statements like “m tends to 0”, “r tends to 0”, “q tends to 0”, used by the physicist, are inconsistent on dimensional grounds because “m”, “r”, (...) “q” represent quantities with physical dimensions of [M], [L], [Q] respectively and “0” represents just a number—devoid of physical dimension. Consequently, due to the involvement of the statement “q tends to 0'', where q is the test charge” in the definition of electric field leads to either circular reasoning or a contradiction regarding the experimental verification of the smallest charge in the Millikan–Fletcher oil drop experiment. Considering such issues as problematic, by choice, I make an inquiry regarding the basic language in terms of which physics is written, with an aim of exploring how truthfully the verbal statements can be converted to the corresponding physico-mathematical expressions, where “physico-mathematical” signifies the involvement of physical dimensions. Such investigation necessitates an explanation by demonstration of “self inquiry”, “middle way”, “dependent origination”, “emptiness/relational existence”, which are certain terms that signify the basic tenets of Buddhism. In light of such demonstration I explain my view of “definition”; the relations among quantity, physical dimension and number; meaninglessness of “zero quantity” and the associated logico-linguistic fallacy; difference between unit and unity. Considering the importance of the notion of electric field in physics, I present a critical analysis of the definitions of electric field due to Maxwell and Jackson, along with the physico-mathematical conversions of the verbal statements. The analysis of Jackson’s definition points towards an expression of the electric field as an infinite series due to the associated “limiting process” of the test charge. However, it brings out the necessity of a postulate regarding the existence of charges, which nevertheless follows from the definition of quantity. Consequently, I explain the notion of undecidable charges that act as the middle way to resolve the contradiction regarding the Millikan–Fletcher oil drop experiment. In passing, I provide a logico-linguistic analysis, in physico-mathematical terms, of two verbal statements of Maxwell in relation to his definition of electric field, which suggests Maxwell’s conception of dependent origination of distance and charge ) and that of emptiness in the context of relative vacuum. This work is an appeal for the dissociation of the categorical disciplines of logic and physics and on the large, a fruitful merger of Eastern philosophy and Western science. Nevertheless, it remains open to how the reader relates to this work, which is the essence of emptiness. (shrink)

Epistemologies and research methods are not free of metaphysics. This is to say that they are both, supported by (or presumed by), and support (or presume) fundamental ontologies. A discussion of the epistemological foundations of "multimethod" research in the social sciences—in as much as such research claims to unearth "causal" relations—therefore cannot avoid the ontological presuppositions or implications of such a discussion. But though there isn’t necessarily a perfect correspondence between ontology, epistemology, and methodology, they do constrain each other. As (...) such it is possible to make methodological choices that are at odds with one’s (implicit) ontology or argue from an ontology that is inconsistent one’s choice of methods.Yet lack of recognition of this fact has hampered methodological discussions in political science, especially with respect to the discussion on the merits of multimethod research. The ontology implicitly accepted in such discussions is "reductionist" and "regularist," that is, one that respectively defines causes in terms of noncausal relations and states of affair and affirms that such noncausal relations are regularities in nature. This article will argue that any attempt to fit "multimethod" research (where "multimethod" signifies some combination of inferential statistics and case studies) within this narrow ontology is destined to fail since such a metaphysics logically cannot accord case studies a necessary or sufficient role in the in the establishment of causal relations. However, there are metaphysical positions within the ambit of an empiricist philosophy of science that can accommodate multiple methods without contradiction. The article discusses two such ontologies and suggests ways in which they might allow the establishment of a coherent epistemological foundation for multimethod research, however, within a decidedly empiricist philosophy of science. (shrink)

Hierarchical cognitive mechanisms underlie sophisticated behaviors, including language, music, mathematics, tool-use, and theory of mind. The origins of hierarchical logical reasoning have long been, and continue to be, an important puzzle for cognitive science. Prior approaches to hierarchical logical reasoning have often failed to distinguish between observable hierarchical behavior and unobservable hierarchical cognitive mechanisms. Furthermore, past research has been largely methodologically restricted to passive recognition tasks as compared to active generation tasks that are stronger tests of hierarchical rules. We argue (...) that it is necessary to implement learning studies in humans, non-human species, and machines that are analyzed with formal models comparing the contribution of different cognitive mechanisms implicated in the generation of hierarchical behavior. These studies are critical to advance theories in the domains of recursion, rule-learning, symbolic reasoning, and the potentially uniquely human cognitive origins of hierarchical logical reasoning. (shrink)

Durán et al argue in ‘Who is afraid of black box algorithms? On the epistemological and ethical basis of trust in medical AI’1 that traditionally proposed solutions to make black box machine learning models in medicine less opaque and more transparent are, though necessary, ultimately not sufficient to establish their overall trustworthiness. This is because transparency procedures currently employed, such as the use of an interpretable predictor,2 cannot fully overcome the opacity of such models. Computational reliabilism, an alternate approach to (...) adjudicating trustworthiness that goes beyond transparency solutions, is argued to be a more promising approach. CR can bring the benefits of traditional process reliabilism in epistemology to bear on this problem of model trustworthiness. Durán et al ’s explicitly reliabilist epistemology to assess the trustworthiness of black box models is a timely addition to current transparency-focused approaches in the literature. Their delineation of the epistemic from the ethical also serves the debate by clarifying the nature of the different problems. However, their overall account underestimates the epistemic value of certain transparency-enabling approaches by conflating different types of opacity and also oversimplifies transparency-advocating arguments in the literature. First, it is unclear why Durán et al consider transparency approaches as insufficient to overcome epistemic opacity, if heiraccount of opacity is the traditional one from the machine learning literature: opacity stemming from the mismatch between mathematical optimisation in high dimensionality that is characteristic of machine learning and the demands of human-scale reasoning and styles of semantic interpretation.3 …. (shrink)

SummaryExamining waiting time to birth among newlywed couples is likely to provide insights into the desire for spacing births among newlywed husbands and wives. Data from the Indian National Family Health Survey of 2005–06 are used to examine the desired waiting time to birth among newlywed couples. The dependent variable is spousal concordance on desired waiting times. Overall 65% of couples have concordant desired waiting times. Among discordant couples, wives were more likely to want to wait longer than their husbands. (...) Couples from richer wealth quintiles were more likely than couples from the poorest quintile to have concordant desired waiting times. Muslims were less likely than Hindus to have concordant desires. There is a need for spacing contraceptive methods among newlyweds in India. This may have implications for the Indian Family Planning Programme, which to date has largely focused on sterilization. Programmes need to include newlywed husbands to promote use of spacing methods. (shrink)

Einsteinian gravity, of which Newtonian gravity is a part, is fraught with the problem of singularity that has been established as a theorem by Hawking and Penrose. The _hypothesis_ that founds the basis of both Einsteinian and Newtonian theories of gravity is that bodies with unequal magnitudes of masses fall with the same acceleration under the gravity of a source object. Since, the Einstein’s equations is one of the assumptions that underlies the proof of the singularity theorem, therefore, the above (...) hypothesis is implicitly one of the founding pillars of the same. In this work, I demonstrate how one can possibly write a non-singular theory of gravity which manifests that the above mentioned hypothesis is only valid in an approximate sense in the “large distance” scenario. To mention a specific instance, under the gravity of the earth, a 5 kg and a 500 kg fall with accelerations which differ by approximately \(113.148\times 10^{-32}\) meter/sec \(^2\) and the more massive object falls with less acceleration. Further, I demonstrate why the concept of gravitational field is not definable in the “small distance” regime which automatically justifies why the Einstein’s and Newton’s theories fail to provide any “small distance” analysis. In course of writing down this theory, I demonstrate why the continuum hypothesis as spelled out by Goedel, is undecidable. The theory has several aspects which provide the following realizations: (i) Descartes’ self-skepticism concerning exact representation of numbers by drawing lines (ii) Born’s wish of taking into account “natural uncertainty in all observations” while describing “a physical situation” by means of “real numbers” (iii) Klein’s vision of having “a fusion of arithmetic and geometry” where “a point is replaced by a small spot” (iv) Goedel’s assertion about “non-standard analysis, in some version” being “the analysis of the future”. (shrink)

There has been in recent decades very substantial work done on the concept of a nation, nationality and nationalism. In spite of the world coming together on many fronts—particularly, economy and a multicultural habitat formations especially in Europe and North America—these ideas remain politically volatile. In modern times, the idea of a nation has become powerfully associated with the idea of the state and the two notions are frequently used almost interchangeably. If among the emotional ties that form the basis (...) of the idea of a nation, we add a strong sense of belonging to a specific culture with its own history, traditions and the sharing of ethical and aesthetic values—it may quite naturally lead to the idea of one-nation, one-state and one culture. Such indeed has been a trend in the European concept of the idea of a nation of the 18th, 19th and partly of the twentieth century. However, same cannot be said about Indian nation. If we closely look at the growth of Indian nationalism in the backdrop of anti-colonial movement and formation of Indian state after gaining independence, we find lack of unanimity among thinkers. This paper explores the growth of Indian Nationalism and formation of Indian Nation through the eyes of one of the most seminal contemporary Indian thinkers Sri Aurobindo. (shrink)

Many targets of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway are regulated by TCF transcription factors, which play important roles in animal development, stem cell biology, and oncogenesis. TCFs can regulate Wnt targets through a “transcriptional switch,” repressing gene expression in unstimulated cells and promoting transcription upon Wnt signaling. However, it is not clear whether this switch mechanism is a general feature of Wnt gene regulation or limited to a subset of Wnt targets. Co-repressors of the TLE family are known to contribute to (...) the repression of Wnt targets in the absence of signaling, but how they are inactivated or displaced by Wnt signaling is poorly understood. In this mini-review, we discuss several recent reports that address the prevalence and molecular mechanisms of the Wnt transcription switch, including the finding of Wnt-dependent ubiquitination/inactivation of TLEs. Together, these findings highlight the growing complexity of the regulation of gene expression by the Wnt pathway. Wnt targets are regulated by a “switch” where TLE co-repressors are displaced from TCFs by β-catenin, leading to activation of transcription. Recent reports challenge this view and suggest that additional processes, including exchange of specific TCF proteins and Wnt-dependent ubiquitination of TLEs, play important roles in the Wnt transcriptional switch. (shrink)

Over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of partnerships between business and government, multilateral bodies, and/or social actors such as NGOs and local community organizations engaged in promoting development. While proponents hail these partnerships as an important new approach to engaging business, critics argue that they are not only generally ineffective but also serve to legitimate a neo-liberal, global economic order which inhibits development. In order to understand and evaluate the role of such partnerships, it is necessary (...) to appreciate their diversity with respect to not only the activities that they engage in, but also the degree to which they are subject to social control. This paper distinguishes four different types of business partnerships, based upon differing degrees of social control: conventional business; corporate social responsibility; corporate accountability; and social economy. Each type of partnership is described, their basic forms are noted, and the conditions and prospects for them contributing to development are examined. By way of conclusion, an analysis is offered of how the different types of business partnerships relate to different conceptions of development and function as policy paradigms to promote different globalization agendas. (shrink)

Advances in AI research have brought increasingly sophisticated capabilities to AI systems and heightened the societal consequences of their use. Researchers and industry professionals have responded by contemplating responsible principles and practices for AI system design. At the same time, defense institutions are contemplating ethical guidelines and requirements for the development and use of AI for warfare. However, varying ethical and procedural approaches to technological development, research emphasis on offensive uses of AI, and lack of appropriate venues for multistakeholder dialogue (...) have led to differing operationalization of responsible AI principles and practices among civilian and defense entities. We argue that the disconnect between civilian and defense responsible development and use practices leads to underutilization of responsible AI research and hinders the implementation of responsible AI principles in both communities. We propose a research roadmap and recommendations for dialogue to increase exchange of responsible AI development and use practices for AI systems between civilian and defense communities. We argue that generating more opportunities for exchange will stimulate global progress in the implementation of responsible AI principles. (shrink)

In recent years India has been moving further in the direction of adopting an Anglo-American model of corporate governance. This decision, the result more of international economic and political pressures than public debate, in effect represents a new development strategy for the world's most populous democracy. In light of this situation, it is important to ask two basic questions: 1) why has the Anglo-American model of corporate governance been adopted? and; 2) can it be justified? This paper addresses the first (...) of these questions by distinguish and examining three historical models of governance in India: 1) the managing agency model in the colonial period; 2) the business house model that emerged after independence, and; 3) the Anglo-American model which has recently been adopted (and is still emerging). The second question is approached through an examination of the "development impact" of the new model, as indicated by such measures as growth, employment and respect for shareholder rights. (shrink)

In response to Morningstar’s release of carbon risk (CR) scores in May 2018, (environmentally) sustainable mutual funds in the U.S. showed a greater reduction in their portfolio CR relative to conventional funds. The observed causal impact of this third-party disclosure is consistent with the funds’ primary investment objectives. Differences in fund names, potentially driven by marketing considerations, appear irrelevant to the behavior of sustainable funds. Conventional funds that are signatories to the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) or those with (...) secondary sustainability mandates behave more like other conventional funds rather than sustainable funds. These funds appear relatively insensitive to disclosures as their sustainability considerations are superseded by other primary investment criteria. Fiduciary and legal bonding influences fund managers’ response to sustainability disclosures. Sustainable funds lower their CR score by reducing exposure to fossil fuels, not by increasing exposure to renewables. (shrink)

This note establishes a new identification result for additive random utility discrete choice models. A decision-maker associates a random utility Uj+mj\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$U_{j}+m_{j}$$\end{document} to each alternative in a finite set j∈1,…,J\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$j\in \left\{ 1,\ldots,J\right\} $$\end{document}, where U=U1,…,UJ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {U}=\left\{ U_{1},\ldots,U_{J}\right\} $$\end{document} is unobserved by the researcher and random with an unknown joint distribution, while the perturbation m=m1,…,mJ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} (...) \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {m}=\left $$\end{document} is observed. The decision-maker chooses the alternative that yields the maximum random utility, which leads to a choice probability system m→Pr1|m,…,PrJ|m\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf { m\rightarrow }\left,\ldots,\Pr \left \right) $$\end{document}. Previous research has shown that the choice probability system is identified from the observation of the relationship m→Pr1|m\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \mathbf {m}\rightarrow \Pr \left $$\end{document}. We show that the complete choice probability system is identified from observation of a relationship m→∑j=1sPrj|m\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {m}\rightarrow \sum _{j=1}^{s}\Pr \left $$\end{document}, for any sshrink)

Vijay is a forty-eight-year-old man with profound mental retardation and cerebral palsy. He uses a wheelchair, cannot speak or eat by mouth, and requires constant care. He lived in a group home for twenty-eight years. During the last year, Vijay has required two visits to the emergency room on average per month and has been hospitalized for two hundred days in total. These hospitalizations are the result of a number of painful and dangerous complications related to the gastrostomy tube that (...) provides his nutrition. The last time he was in the hospital, doctors had to give him a peripherally inserted central catheter, or PICC line, to provide nutrition because the gastrostomy tube was no longer effective .. (shrink)

Honor killings are graceless and ferocious murders by chauvinists with an antediluvian mind. These are categorized separately because these killings are committed for the prime reason of satisfying the ego of the people whom the victim trusts and always looks up to for support and protection. It is for this sole reason that honor killings demand strict and stern punishment, not only for the person who committed the murder but also for any person who contributed or was party to the (...) act. A positive change can occur with stricter legislation and changes in the ethos of the society we live in today. (shrink)

Minichromosome maintenance (Mcm) proteins are well‐known for their functions in DNA replication. However, their roles in chromosome segregation are yet to be reviewed in detail. Following the discovery in 1984, a group of Mcm proteins, known as the ARS‐nonspecific group consisting of Mcm13, Mcm16‐19, and Mcm21‐22, were characterized as bonafide kinetochore proteins and were shown to play significant roles in the kinetochore assembly and high‐fidelity chromosome segregation. This review focuses on the structure, function, and evolution of this group of Mcm (...) proteins. Our in silico analysis of the physical interactors of these proteins reveals that they share non‐overlapping functions despite being copurified in biochemically stable complexes. We have discussed the contrasting results reported in the literature and experimental strategies to address them. Taken together, this review focuses on the structure‐function of the ARS‐nonspecific Mcm proteins and their evolutionary flexibility to maintain genome stability in various organisms. (shrink)

In this technology-driven Digital Age, Management Education is primarily engaged in development of skills and techno-economic competence of students with dominant thrust on sharpening their rational faculties and quantitative ability. Deeper questions and nobler qualittative issues like Spirituality, Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics are naturally assigned low priority in the rush for money, career, fame, power and position both at the individual and organizational levels. The present paper engages in a Qualitative Research by conducting Focus group Interviews among Participants at (...) the Undergraduate level who had taken up Management Education. After content analysis of the responses the authors highlight their observations on the existing gaps in prevailing management education leading to failure of the present system in charging the students with a deeper Meaning of Work and a higher Purpose of Life. The paper then delves into exploration in pertinent tenets of Classical Indian Wisdom to enrich the spectrum of Management education with insights on Humanistic Philosophy, Holistic Learning, Enlightened CSR and Ethics, and Inspirational Leadership towards creating a better and more humane future for modern organizations. (shrink)

Embryos and microscopes share a long, remarkable history and biologists have always been intrigued to watch how embryos develop under the microscope. Here we discuss the advances in microscopy which have greatly influenced our current understanding of embryogenesis. We highlight the evolution of microscopes and the optical technologies that have been instrumental in studying various developmental processes. These imaging modalities provide mechanistic insights into the dynamic cellular and molecular events which drive lineage commitment and morphogenetic changes in the developing embryo. (...) We begin the journey with a brief history of microscopy to study embryos. First, we review the principles and optics of light, fluorescence, confocal, and electron microscopy which have been key techniques for imaging cellular and molecular events during embryonic development. Next, we discuss recent key imaging modalities such as light‐sheet microscopy, which are suitable for whole embryo imaging. Further, we highlight imaging techniques like multiphoton and super resolution microscopy for beyond light diffraction limit, high resolution imaging. Lastly, we review some of the scattering‐based imaging methods and techniques used for imaging human embryos. (shrink)

Restorative practices are gaining traction as alternative approaches to student conflict and harm in schools, potentially surpassing disciplinary methods in effectiveness. In the current article, we contribute to the evolving understanding of restorative practices in schools by examining qualitative responses from educators regarding restorative interventions for online-mediated conflict and harm, including cyberbullying and sexting. Participants include pre-service educators, as well as junior and senior teachers with varying levels of familiarity with restorative practices. Our findings highlight how educators who have implemented (...) these practices largely hold positive perspectives of their effectiveness for resolving cyber conflicts and restoring a positive classroom environment. Educators emphasize the value of meaningful changes in student behaviour and acknowledge the potential of face-to-face mediation in mitigating online harm and promoting digital citizenship, though some educators raise questions about the appropriateness of restorative responses to serious incidents of online-mediated harm. This research offers fresh insights into the challenges and potential of restorative practices in schools, particularly in addressing cyber-based conflicts. We emphasize implementation challenges related to the distinct contexts in which schools operate and the influence of broader societal and systemic factors on the success of restorative practice initiatives. (shrink)

The process of obtaining informed consent to participate in a clinical study presents many challenges for research conducted in a population of patients with schizophrenia. Morally valid, informed consent must include information sharing, decisional capacity, and capacity for voluntarism. This paper examines the unique features of schizophrenia that may threaten each of these elements of informed consent, and it proposes additional safeguards in the process of gaining informed consent from individuals with schizophrenia in order to maximise the decision-making potential of (...) this patient population. (shrink)

This paper proposes relative and absolute measures of deprivation using social satisfaction functions. The relative measure gives us the amount by which social satisfaction can be increased in proportional terms by redistributing incomes equally. We also demonstrate the existence of a relationship between summary indices of deprivation and social satisfaction.

The majority of research on human rights focuses on the consequences of regime-type for human rights violations, and overwhelming evidence suggests that democracies are less likely to violate human rights of their citizens as compared to non-democracies. However, a regime-type perspective is unable to account for disparities in human rights violations within democratic and non-democratic regimes. This paper disaggregates regime-type and analyzes the relationship between citizens’ participation and human rights violations. I argue that a participative citizenry, as captured by high (...) voter turnout, is indicative of an active and vigilant populace who are more likely to hold governments accountable and ensure better human rights protections. The paper tests the relationship between human rights and voter turnout among 89 democratic countries from 1976 to 2008. The findings demonstrate that a participative citizenry enhances governmental respect for human rights. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 37-48, May–June 2022.

This study provides a bibliometric analysis of the DESIDOC journal of library and information technology during 2012–2022. Research data for this study has been exported from the SCOPUS database. A total of 638 articles published during the study period were analyzed to determine the most cited articles, most prolific author, growth of publication, occurrence of keywords, citation pattern, and authorship pattern. To visualize the occurrence of keywords and the co-citation of the author network, Vosviewer software was used. This study also (...) reveals that bibliometric, scientometrics, e-resource, and citation analysis are the most prolific research areas. (shrink)

This volume constitutes a lucid introduction to methodology in social research. It will enable social science researchers trained in a particular field to look beyond and relate to other methodological domains.