The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

This article aims to improve the understanding of corporate governance and environmental reporting literature by analyzing the impact of board gender diversity (BGD) on environmental performance, environmental disclosure, and greenwashing behavior. The panel regression estimation technique with fixed effects was applied to Chinese firm data. As a result, it was found that more women who served on corporate boards enhanced the company's environmental performance and disclosures while limiting greenwashing behavior. The result indicated that women in top management play a constructive (...) role in establishing firms' active environmental initiatives. Furthermore, this relationship was nonlinear and exponentially increased when women's representation reached the threshold of 33.5% representation on board or higher. Based on the findings, no internal bias was found even after other governance and firm-level control factors and probable endogenies were considered and variable biases were omitted. Notably, the results present important implications for regulators and policymakers by highlighting the influential role of BGD in promoting environmentally responsible practices and reducing greenwashing. (shrink)

The current study investigates whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officer to be socially responsible. Furthermore, it explores the role of sub-national institutional contingencies [i.e., state-owned enterprises vs. non-SOEs, foreign-owned entities vs. non-FOEs, cross-listed vs. non-cross-listed, developed region] in CEO tournament incentives and the corporate social responsibility performance relationship. Data were collected from all A-shared companies listed in the stock exchanges of China from 2014 to 2019. The study uses the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares and cluster OLS regression. (...) Moreover, firm-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares regression, and propensity score matching deal with the endogeneity problem and check the robustness of the results. The results provide reliable evidence that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. On the other hand, sub-national institutional contingencies positively affect the association between CEO tournament incentives and CSRP. The findings have important implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSP by providing incentives to top managers. (shrink)

The increasing global demand for energy necessitates devoted attention to the formulation and exploration of mechanisms of thermal heat exchangers to explore and save heat energy. Thus, innovative thermal transport fluids require to boost thermal conductivity and heat flow features to upsurge convection heat rate, and nanofluids have been effectively employed as standard heat transfer fluids. With such intention, herein, we formulated and developed the constitutive flow laws by utilizing the Rossland diffusion approximation and Stephen’s law along with the MHD (...) effect. The mathematical formulation is based on boundary layer theory pioneered by Prandtl. Governing nonlinear partial differential flow equations are changed to ODEs via the implementation of the similarity variables. A well-known computational algorithm BVPh2 has been utilized for the solution of the nonlinear system of ODEs. The consequence of innumerable physical parameters on flow field, thermal distribution, and solutal field, such as magnetic field, Lewis number, velocity parameter, Prandtl number, drag force, Nusselt number, and Sherwood number, is plotted via graphs. Finally, numerical consequences are compared with the homotopic solution as a limiting case, and an exceptional agreement is found. (shrink)

Professor D. Z. Phillips in ‘Bad Faith and Sartre's Waiter’ assigns to Sartre the view that ‘waiters are necessarily in bad faith’, i.e. the profession of waiting as such is in bad faith. What could this mean in the context of Sartre's philosophy? That waiters as a class seek to flee their freedom by adopting that vocation? It must mean something on those lines since, for Sartre, to engage in bad faith is to deny one's freedom. The question then arises: (...) could Sartre have heldsuch a view ? And, if he could not have, how does Phillips manage tothink he did ? (shrink)

Moral foundations theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universal and societal aspects of morality. The focus thus far has been on understanding the influence of group categories on moral foundations by controlling for relevant factors and then examining the unique contribution of a single factor. Although this type of analysis was critical to demonstrate the efficacy of the Moral Foundations Theory and Moral Foundations Questionnaire, the current study examines moral responses from the intersection of culture, ethnic identity and (...) gender group membership in the United States and India. Significant results suggest that moral foundations are better understood through a multiple group identity perspective and that the MFQ is equipped to capture differences in moral foundations within subgroups. (shrink)

Acute Myeloid Leukemia is a kind of fatal blood cancer with a high death rate caused by abnormal cells’ rapid growth in the human body. The usual method to detect AML is the manual microscopic examination of the blood sample, which is tedious and time-consuming and requires a skilled medical operator for accurate detection. In this work, we proposed an AlexNet-based classification model to detect Acute Myeloid Leukemia in microscopic blood images and compared its performance with LeNet-5-based model in Precision, (...) Recall, Accuracy, and Quadratic Loss. The experiments are conducted on a dataset of four thousand blood smear samples. The results show that AlexNet was able to identify 88.9% of images correctly with 87.4% precision and 98.58% accuracy, whereas LeNet-5 correctly identified 85.3% of images with 83.6% precision and 96.25% accuracy. (shrink)

In the aftermath of shocking workplace scandals, people are often baffled when individuals within the organization were aware of clear-cut wrongdoing yet did not inform authorities. The current research suggests that moral concern for the suffering that a transgressor might face if a crime were reported is an under-recognized, powerful force that shapes whistleblowing in organizations, particularly when transgressors are fellow members of a highly entitative group. Two experiments show that group entitativity heightens concern about possible consequences that the transgressor (...) would face if a crime were to be reported, and that this concern reduces the likelihood of reporting wrongdoing in organizations to authorities. Further, the studies identify a mechanism through which concern about the transgressor is heightened in highly entitative groups: potential reporters perceive that the transgressor felt remorse for their crime. Thus, when fellow members of highly entitative organizations commit crimes, people are more likely to imagine that these transgressors felt anxiety or guilt about their actions, and this prompts greater concern for transgressors in ways that encourage people to let them “off the hook.” We discuss the implications of these findings for how reporting to authorities can be encouraged within highly entitative organizations. (shrink)

The theory of rough sets starts with the notion of an approximation space , which is a pair ( U , R ), U being the domain of discourse, and R an equivalence relation on U . R is taken to represent the knowledge base of an agent, and the induced partition reflects a granularity of U that is the result of a lack of complete information about the objects in U . The focus then is on approximations of concepts (...) on the domain, in the context of the granularity. The present article studies the theory in the situation where information is obtained from different sources. The notion of approximation space is extended to define a multiple-source approximation system with distributed knowledge base , which is a tuple , where N is a set of sources and P ranges over all finite subsets of N . Each R P is an equivalence relation on U satisfying some additional conditions, representing the knowledge base of the group P of sources. Thus each finite group of sources and hence individual source perceives the same domain differently (depending on what information the group/individual source has about the domain), and the same concept may then have approximations that differ with the groups. In order to express the notions and properties related with rough set theory in this multiple-source situation, a quantified modal logic LMSAS D is proposed. In LMSAS D , quantification ranges over modalities, making it different from modal predicate logic and modal logic with propositional quantifiers. Some fragments of LMSAS D are discussed and it is shown that the modal system KTB is embedded in LMSAS D . The epistemic logic is also embedded in LMSAS D , and cannot replace the latter to serve our purpose. The relationship of LMSAS D with first and second-order logics is presented. Issues of expressibility, axiomatization and decidability are addressed. (shrink)

This book presents the first comparative study of the works of Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion in relation to their vigorous struggles against Nazi aggression during World War II and the Holocaust. It illuminates ways in which their early lives conditioned both their political engagements during wartime and their extraordinary literary creations empowered by what Lara R. Curtis refers to as modes of ‘writing resistance.’ With skillful recourse to a remarkable variety of genres, they offer compelling (...) autobiographical reflections, vivid chronicles of wartime atrocities, eyewitness accounts of victims, and acute perspectives on the political implications of major events. Their sensitive reflections of gendered subjectivity authenticate the myriad voices and visions they capture. In sum, this book highlights the lives and works of three courageous women who were ceaselessly committed to a noble cause during the Holocaust and World War II. (shrink)

Ẓuhūr al-amān (The advent of security) is a book on civics published during the reign of Ammanullah Khan (1919-29) as amir of Afghanistan. The book's title pays homage to the name of Ammanullah Khan himself. In its treatment of the duties of the members of Afghan society to the ruler and to each other, Ẓuhūr al-amān appears to highlight the challenges faced by Ammanullah Khan in his efforts to modernize Afghanistan. The book is divided into more than (...) 30 short chapters describing the rights and responsibilities of the ruler, of persons living within a family unit, and of members of Afghan society as a whole. Some sections, such as one on the rights that are to be afforded to the king (ḥuquq-i lazima bar padishah), are further divided into subsections. The book begins with several chapters on religious matters, including those on tauhid (the unity of God), on ʻibada (worship), and on fahm-i sharīʻat-i rasūl ʻalayhi al-salām (the sharia). Ẓuhūr al-amān was published on October 11, 1923, by the then newly established Ministry of Education. The author of the work, a religious scholar by the name of ʻAbd al-Haqq, lists his father as ʻAbd al-ʻAziz from the village of Lower Arghanda in the township of Paghman, near Kabul. He highlights, as well, his tribal affiliation with the well-known Pushtun tribe of Suleimankhel. (shrink)

The catch 22 situation in psychiatry is that for precise diagnostic categories/criteria, we need precise investigative tests, and for precise investigative tests, we need precise diagnostic criteria/categories; and precision in both diagnostics and investigative tests is nonexistent at present. The effort to establish clarity often results in a fresh maze of evidence. In finding the way forward, it is tempting to abandon the scientific method, but that is not possible, since we deal with real human psychopathology, not just concepts to (...) speculate over. Search for clear-cut definitions/diagnostic criteria in psychiatry must be relentless. There is a greater need to be ruthless and blunt in this, rather than being accommodative of diverse opinions. Investigative tests - psychological, serum, CSF, or neuroimaging - are only corroborative at present; they need to become definitive. Medicalisation appears most prominent in psychiatry; so, diagnostic proliferation and fuzziness appear inevitable. And yet, the established diagnostic entities need to forward greater and conclusive precision. Also, the need for clarity and precision must outweigh pandering to and mollifying diverse interests, moreso in the upcoming revision of diagnostic manuals. This is specially because the DSM-5, being an Association manual, may need to accommodate powerful member lobbies; and ICD-11 may similarly need to cater to diverse country lobbies. Finding precise biological correlates of psychiatric phenomena, whether through neuroimaging, molecular neurobiology and/or neurogenomics, is the right way forward. It is in the 1.5-kg structure in the cranium that all secrets of psychiatric conditions lie. Social forces, behavioural modification, psychosocial restructuring, study of intrapsychic processes, and philosophical insights are not to be discounted, but they are supplementary to the primary goal - studying and deciphering those brain processes that result in psychiatric malfunction. Experimental breakthroughs, both in psychiatric aetiology and therapeutics, will come mainly from biology and its adjunct, psychopharmacology; while supplementary and complementary breakthroughs will come from the psychosocial, cognitive and behavioural approaches; the support base will come from phenomenology, epidemiology, nosology and diagnostics; while insights and leads can hopefully come from many fields, especially the psychosocial, the behavioural, the cognitive and the philosophical. Major energies must now be marshalled towards finding biomarkers and deciphering the precise phenotype-genotype-endophenotype axis of psychiatric disorders. Energies also need to be focussed on unravelling those critical processes in the brain that tip the scale towards psychiatric disorders. At how those critical processes are set into motion by forces de novo, in utero, in the genes and their expression, by the environment's psychopathological social forces - stress, peer pressure, poverty, deprivation, alienation, malnutrition, discrimination of various types (caste, gender, race, etc.), mass conflicts (war, terror attacks, etc.), disasters (natural and man-made), religious/ideological fascism - or social institutions like marriage, family, work place, political governance, etc. Ultimately, we must decipher how the brain goes into malfunction when such varied forces impinge on it, which precise cortical areas and neuronal cellular and molecular processes are involved in such malfunction and its manifestation, as also which of these are involved when malfunction ceases and health is restored, and the psychosocial processes and institutions which aid such health restoration, as also those which promote well-being and help in primary prevention. Emphasis on the brain and its intimate neurological and molecular mechanisms will not impinge on, or nullify, importance of the 'mind,' wherein subtle and gross brain functions in the form of behaviour, thought and emotions in all their ramifications will continue to be the focus of psychological, cognitive, sociological, psychopharmacological, behavioural and philosophical research. Progress in brain research must move in tandem with progress in 'mind' research. (shrink)

In their rare comments on Existentialism, contemporary British philosophers, with a few notable exceptions, frequently ridicule the use of “nothing” by such writers as Sartre and Heidegger. And when it is discovered that these writers maintain that the contemplation of nothingness gives rise to anguish, this ridicule is expressed even more strongly. What may be taken as a typical example of this tendency are Professor Ayer's remarks in his Horizon articles on Sartre. A characteristic quotation runs as follows: “In particular, (...) Sartre's reasoning on the subject of le néant seems to me exactly on a par with that of the King in Alice through the Looking-Glass … The point is that words like ‘nothing” and ‘nobody” are not used as the names of something insubstantial and mysterious; they are not used to name anything at all”;. (shrink)

The food security of more than half of the world’s population depends on rice production which is one of the key objectives of precision agriculture. The traditional rice almanac used astronomical and climate factors to estimate yield response. However, this research integrated meteorological, agro-chemical, and soil physiographic factors for yield response prediction. Besides, the impact of those factors on the production of three major rice ecotypes has also been studied in this research. Moreover, this study found a different set of (...) those factors with respect to the yield response of different rice ecotypes. Machine learning algorithms named Extreme Gradient Boosting and Support Vector Regression have been used for predicting the yield response. The SVR shows better results than XGBoost for predicting the yield of the Aus rice ecotype, whereas XGBoost performs better for forecasting the yield of the Aman and Boro rice ecotypes. The result shows that the root mean squared error of three different ecotypes are in between 9.38% and 24.37% and that of R-squared values are between 89.74% and 99.13% on two different machine learning algorithms. Moreover, the explainability of the models is also shown in this study with the help of the explainable artificial intelligence model called Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations. (shrink)

A lot of Indian research is replicative in nature. This is because originality is at a premium here and mediocrity is in great demand. But replication has its merit as well because it helps in corroboration. And that is the bedrock on which many a fancied scientific hypothesis or theory stands, or falls. However, to go from replicative to original research will involve a massive effort to restructure the Indian psyche and an all round effort from numerous quarters. The second (...) part of this paper deals with the essence of scientific temper, which need not have any basic friendship, or animosity, with religion, faith, superstition and other such entities. A true scientist follows two cardinal rules. He is never unwilling to accept the worth of evidence, howsoever damning to the most favourite of his theories. Second, and perhaps more important, for want of evidence, he withholds comment. He says neither yes nor no. Where will Science ultimately lead Man is the third part of this essay. One argument is that the conflict between Man and Science will continue till either of them is exhausted or wiped out. The other believes that it is Science which has to be harnessed for Man and not Man used for Science. And with the numerous checks and balances in place, Science will remain an effective tool for man's progress. The essential value-neutrality of Science will have to be supplemented by the values that man has upheld for centuries as fundamental, and which religious thought and moral philosophy have continuously professed. (shrink)

Modern medicine has done much in the fields of infectious diseases and emergencies to aid cure. In most other fields, it is mostly control that it aims for, which is another name for palliation. Pharmacology, psychopharmacology included, is mostly directed towards such control and palliation too. The thrust, both of clinicians and research, must now turn decisively towards prevention and cure. Also, longevity with well-being is modern medicine's other big challenge. Advances in vaccines for hypertension, diabetes, cancers etc, deserve attention; (...) as also, the role of meditation, yoga, spirituality etc in preventing disease at various levels. Studies on longevity, life style changes and healthy centenarians deserve special scrutiny to find what aids longevity with wellbeing. A close look at complementary and alternative medicine is needed to find any suitable models they may have, cutting aside their big talk and/or hostility towards mainstream medical care. Medicine is a manifestation of the human eros, and should not become a means of its thanatos. It must realise its true potential, so that eros prevails, and thanatos prevails only ultimately, not prematurely. (shrink)

Along with political, economic, ethical, rehabilitative and military dimensions, psychopathological sequelae of war and terrorism also deserve our attention. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre ( W.T.C.) in 2001 and the Gulf War of 1990-91 gave rise to a number of psychiatric disturbances in the population, both adult and children, mainly in the form of Post-traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD). Nearly 75,000 people suffered psychological problems in South Manhattan alone due to that one terrorist attack on the WTC in (...) New York and the Pentagon in Washington. In Gulf War I, more that 1,00,000 US veterans reported a number of health problems on returning from war, whose claims the concerned government has denied in more than 90% cases. Extensive and comprehensive neurological damage to the brain of Gulf War I veterans has been reported by one study, as has damage to the basal ganglia in another, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in a third, possibly due to genetic mutations induced by exposure to biological and chemical agents, fumes from burning oil wells, landfills, mustard or other nerve gases. The recent Gulf War will no doubt give rise its own crop of PTSD and related disorders. In a cost-benefit analysis of the post Gulf War II scenario, the psychopathological effects of war and terrorism should become part of the social audit any civilized society engages in. Enlightened public opinion must become aware of the wider ramifications of war and terrorism so that appropriate action plans can be worked out. (shrink)

Most clinicians and researchers are concerned with recent advances in psychiatry. This involves the danger whether something time-tested may get sidelined for extra-scientific reasons. That the pharmaceutical industry and super-specialist researcher may keep churning out new findings to impress audiences is only a partial truth. Research progresses by refutation and self-correction. Acceptance in science is always provisional; changing paradigms, frameworks of enquiry and raising new questions is integral to break through in scientific knowledge. Hence, there is in science a constant (...) concern with the new. Moreover, the number of treatment non- responders to the time-tested swells with time, and researchers feel challenged to find ways and means of resolving their difficulties. Newer challenges need newer strategies. Obsession with the most recent can lead us astray, but a healthy evidence-based acceptance of the new is essential for advancement in psychiatric research. As indeed of research in all fields of medicine. And of science in general. The role of lithium and newer mood stabilizers in bipolar disorders are taken as examples to highlight this point. (shrink)