Electronic waste (E-waste) illustrates discarded appliances that utilize electricity for their functioning. It is one of the fastest growing waste streams across the globe. A study on the generation and management of E-waste was conducted in the city of Pune, India, involving four different stakeholders, namely, the information technology (IT) sector, banking sector, educational institutes, and households. All these stakeholders are listed by the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forest as major contributors to the problem of E-waste in the country. (...) Semistructured interviews were carried out at 4 IT companies, 10 banks, 16 educational institutes, and 50 households. Results show that the generation of E-waste with respect to computer waste is highest at the IT sector, followed by the banking sector. Apart from a few exceptions, rudimentary management practices were prevalent among the stakeholders. There is a lack of awareness on concerns related to E-waste. Establishing sustainable E-waste management practices, formulation and implementation of appropriate policy initiatives, transparency in the system, and educating people on their responsibility toward global E-waste problem are essential in order to address the emerging concern of E-waste in India. (shrink)

Maxim Storchevoy,A Scientific Approach to Ethics: Developing Greater Respect for Ethics in Business and Society, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 147 pages. ₹147. ISBN: 978-3-319-69112-1.

Most laboratory experiments studying Tullock contest games find that bids significantly exceed the risk-neutral equilibrium predictions. We test the generalisability of these results by comparing a typical experimental implementation of a contest against the familiar institution of a ticket-based raffle. We find that in the raffle initial bid levels are significantly lower and bids adjust more rapidly towards expected-earnings best responses. We demonstrate the robustness of our results by replicating them across two continents at two university labs with contrasting student (...) profiles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Datafication has allowed us to quantify every facet of the corona-virus pandemic. A significant quantity of data sets on infection and recovery rates, mortality, comorbidities, the intensity of symptoms, region-by-region statistics, vaccination, and virus variants, among other things, has been made publicly available. However, these data sets relentlessly reduce human beings to mere numbers and graph points. The present study employs a close reading of comic panels to demonstrate how graphic medicine uses data to critique, supplement, and expose its lacunae. (...) The article draws from graphic medical narratives and panels such as Andy Warner's "The Nib Bureau of Statistics" (2020), Sarah Firth's "State of Emergency" (2021), and Randall Munroe's "Statistics" (2020). Though data visualizations and comics are both graphical representations, their treatment of COVID-19-related issues is radically different. Graphic medicine "re-draws" data visualizations through imitation, subversion, and displacement to showcase multiple temporalities, marginal agencies, and the affective nature of human existence. Furthermore, the humanistic intervention of graphic medicine deftly reclaims individual lives and attendant stories in a world dominated by technologically mediated data. This essay does not dismiss the performative force of data; instead, it insists on humanizing and contextualizing a sensitive presentation of data to convey our entangled existence and collective states. (shrink)

Ever since the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, East Asians across the globe have been ostracized, othered, pathologized, and subjected to numerous anti-Asian hate crimes. Despite contemporary China’s rapid modernization, the country is still perceived as an Oriental and primitive site. Taking these cues, the current article aims to investigate the Sinophobic attitudes in the wake of COVID-19 through a detailed analysis of sequential comics and cartoons by artists of East Asian descent, such as Laura Gao and (...) Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. Drawing theoretical insights from Alexandre White’s “epidemic orientalism” and Priscilla Wald’s “medicalized nativism,” this essay investigates how these chosen comics function as counternarratives through first-person storytelling. In so doing, these comics, while reinstating the dignity of East Asians, also challenge and resist the naturalized methods of seeing that justify violence and dehumanization. The article further argues that Sinophobia and anti-Asian hate crimes are motivated as much by the origins of COVID-19 in China as by the political, economic, and technological variables that have shaped modern China. (shrink)