In today’s competitive environments, a growing number of firms are establishing their presence through the Web sites. Based on Steuer’s and Rheingold’s arguments on perceptual experience in the virtual space, this paper provides a theoretical framework that highlights the effects of interactivity, immersion, and association for customers. The paper argues that though interactivity, immersion, and association are critical for attracting customers on a Web site, these characteristics may also lead to social, ethical and privacy concerns among customers that many unscrupulous (...) firms tend to exploit for their advantages. Interactivity has been measured through speed, range, and significance of interactivity. Immersion has been measured through breadth and depth of immersion. Association has been categorized into one‐to‐one or many‐to‐many relationships. Four Web sites, amazon.com, eBay.com, schwab.com, and victoriasecret.com, are analyzed with respect to interactivity, immersion, and association. The implications of the use and abuse of interactivity, immersion, and association are discussed. (shrink)

Festschrift in honor of 60th birtha anniversary of Ganesh Umakant Thite, Sanskritist; comprises contributed articles on various aspects of Vedic literature, Hinduism and Indic philosophy.

This book presents the historical account of its teachers. To make the reading easy and intelligible its technical terms are explained. The book also explains how PRATYABHIJNA system was formulated and developed by the great teachers.

This paper uses autocatalytic networks to model discontinuous cultural transitions involving cross-domain transfer, using as an illustrative example, artworks inspired by the oldest-known uncontested example of figurative art: the carving of the Hohlenstein-Stadel Löwenmensch, or lion-human. Autocatalytic networks provide a general modeling setting in which nodes are not just passive transmitters of activation; they actively galvanize, or “catalyze” the synthesis of novel nodes from existing ones This makes them uniquely suited to model how new structure grows out of earlier structure, (...) i.e., cumulative, generative network growth. They have been used to model the origin and early evolution of biological life, and the emergence of cognitive structures capable of undergoing cultural evolution. We conducted a study in which six individual creators and one group generated music, prose, poetry, and visual art inspired by the Hohlenstein-Stadel Löwenmensch, and answered questions about the process. The data revealed four through-lines by which they expressed the Löwenmensch in an alternative art form: lion-human hybrid, subtracting from the whole to reveal the form within, deterioration, and waiting to be found with a story to tell. Autocatalytic networks were used to model how these four spontaneously derived through-lines form a cultural lineage from Löwenmensch to artist to audience. We used the resulting data from three creators to model the cross-domain transfer from inspirational source to creative product. These four spontaneously-generated threads of cultural continuity formed the backbone of this Löwenmensch-inspired cultural lineage, enabling culture to evolve even in the face of discontinuity at the level conventional categories or domains. We know of no other theory of cultural evolution that accommodates cross-domain transfer or other forms of discontinuity. The approach paves the way for a broad scientific framework for the origins of evolutionary processes. (shrink)

A generator program for a computable function (by definition) generates an infinite sequence of programs all but finitely many of which compute that function. Machine learning of generator programs for computable functions is studied. To motivate these studies partially, it is shown that, in some cases, interesting global properties for computable functions can be proved from suitable generator programs which cannot be proved from any ordinary programs for them. The power (for variants of various learning criteria from the literature) of (...) learning generator programs is compared with the power of learning ordinary programs. The learning power in these cases is also compared to that of learning limiting programs, i.e., programs allowed finitely many mind changes about their correct outputs. (shrink)

This paper deals with issues related to character building and human values, both in personal and work life. The focus of the author is value-centred management, which has been discussed along two aspects of the human self, that is, the micro self and macro self. Here, the author tries to highlight the importance of both 'selves' in the organizational context. In the concluding part of the paper the author presents the authenticity of Kautilya's views on the macro self in the (...) context of the present business scenario. The author attempts to portray the transition created by the market economy, which cannot provide an exclusively painless solution. Moreover, he advocates culturing of self-discipline in corporate life, which can bring about qualitative improvement, both in work and personal life. 'Work with integrity and serve with love' is the philosophy the author presents in this paper. (shrink)

Study of Vedāntasiddhāntamuktāvalī, treatise on Hindu Advaita (non-dualistic) Vedanta philosophy, by Prakāśānanda, 16th cent.

Business groups dominate the economic landscape in many economies around the world. While business groups overcome the institutional voids arising due to inefficiencies of external markets, they also possess market power, which could be economically and socially counterproductive, especially for unaffiliated firms. Drawing on the transaction cost and industrial organization economics, we examine whether the presence of business group affiliated firms in industries restricts the entry of unaffiliated firms or firms affiliated with small- and medium-size business groups. Findings based on (...) Indian firms suggest that investments by business group affiliated firms in an industry have an inverted U-shaped relationship with the investment by unaffiliated firms. However, investments by firms affiliated with large-sized business groups have a U-shaped relationship with the investment by affiliates of small and medium business groups. These findings suggest that the market power of business groups and entry barrier relationship is contingent on the size of the business groups. (shrink)

The motivation of someone who is locked-in, that is, paralyzed and mute, is to find relief for their loss of function. The data presented in this report is part of an attempt to restore one of those lost functions, namely, speech. An essential feature of the development of a speech prosthesis is optimal decoding of patterns of recorded neural signals during silent or covert speech, that is, speaking “inside the head” with output that is inaudible due to the paralysis of (...) the articulators. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the importance of both fast and slow single unit firings recorded from an individual with locked-in syndrome and from an intact participant speaking silently. Long duration electrodes were implanted in the motor speech cortex for up to 13 years in the locked-in participant. The data herein provide evidence that slow firing single units are essential for optimal decoding accuracy. Additional evidence indicates that slow firing single units can be conditioned in the locked-in participant 5 years after implantation, further supporting their role in decoding. (shrink)

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to review the digital piracy literature and present the positive impacts of digital piracy and its benefit to businesses. A great deal of the literature discusses the consequences of digital piracy, but, in most cases, the focus is on the negative consequences.Design/methodology/approach– The authors draw on both the theoretical and empirical academic literature on digital piracy so as to analyze the ways in which digital piracy positively contributes to digital businesses.Findings– The paper provides (...) information on the positive consequences of digital piracy and demonstrates that the benefits include product diffusion, network externality, innovation, cost reduction, an effective promotional and publicity vehicle, and technology standardization.Originality/value– This paper investigates potential benefits of digital piracy and provides insights which may offer a fuller picture of the consequences of digital piracy. (shrink)

This article investigates the effect of perceived uncertainty on two types of screening strategies – exclusion and inclusion. Results from five studies showed that perceived uncertainty inc...

This book introduces readers to Indian philosophy by presenting the first integral English translation of Vaiśeṣikasūtra with the earliest extant commentary of Candrānanda on the old aphorisms of Vaiśeṣika school of Indian philosophy. The book offers a comprehensive description of the fundamental categories of ontology and metaphysics, among which the category of 'particularity' plays a major role in the 'problem of individuation' of 'substance' and 'nature' in both Indian and Western metaphysics. The book should be read primarily in relation to (...) Aristotle's Categories and is structured in three parts. Part 1 contains a general introduction to Indian philosophy and the Vaiśeṣika system. Part 2 is a textual-philological discussion on the commentary itself, since its first publication in 1961 by Muni Jambūvijayaji up until the present day. Part 3 is a philosophical translation that reads Vaiśeṣika in the global context of Comparative Philosophy and makes the text accessible to all philosophy readers interested in ontology and metaphysics. A new reference work and a fundamental introduction to anyone interested in Indian and Comparative Philosophy, this book will be of interest to academics and students in the field of Classical Studies, Modern Philosophy and Asian Religions and Philosophies. (shrink)

L’œuvre du Péruvien José Carlos Mariátegui place au cœur de ses analyses les catégories de praxis et de lutte des classes. Pour ce faire, il intègre de manière originale un marxisme de tradition historiciste. Cet article revient dans un premier temps sur les questions qui traversent ce courant, pour ensuite opérer une revue de la réception du terme historicisme dans les textes de Mariátegui. Dans un troisième temps, il propose de relire sa proposition stratégique révolutionnaire à l’aune d’une mobilisation des (...) catégories de tradition, de mythe et d’histoire. (shrink)

BackgroundA different ethos with respect to the perception of medical ethics prevails in societies in transition such as those in the Arabian Peninsula, which makes it difficult to apply international principles of bioethics in medical practice. This study aimed to develop and psychometrically test an instrument that measures physicians’ awareness of bioethics and medical law and their attitudes towards the practice of medical ethics. Additionally, it examined physician correlates influencing the awareness of bioethics.MethodsFollowing a rigorous review of relevant literature by (...) a panel of experts, a 13-item instrument, the Omani physicians’ bioethics and medical law awareness (OBMLA) questionnaire was developed with the aim of assessing physicians’ awareness of bioethics and medical law. The study tool’s construct validity and internal consistency reliability were examined by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Cronbach’s alpha. In a cross-sectional study, the questionnaire was distributed among a random sample of 200 physicians at a tertiary hospital in Muscat, Oman. Participant characteristics that may influence awareness of bioethics and medical law were explored.ResultsThe EFA of the OBMLA questionnaire resulted in three well-loading factors: (1) Physicians’ bioethics practice subscale (2) incentive related bioethics subscale and (3) medical law awareness subscale. Internal consistency reliability ranged between Cronbach’s α: 0.73–0.8. Of the total 200 participants, 52% reported that teaching medical ethics during medical school was inadequate. The overall mean (standard deviation, SD) of the bioethics awareness score and Omani medical law awareness were 27.6 (3.5) and 10.1 (2.1) respectively. The majority of physicians (73%) reported that they frequently encountered ethical dilemmas in their practice and 24.5% endorsed the view that unethical decisions tended to occur in their practice.ConclusionThe study provides an insight into the practice of bioethics, and the awareness of bioethics and medical law among physicians in a teaching hospital in Oman. The OBMLA questionnaire appears to be a valid and reliable tool to assess a physician’s awareness of bioethics and medical law. In this preliminary study, it appears that participants have suboptimal scores on the indices which measure practice and awareness of bioethics and medical law. (shrink)

The problem of finite-time stability of switched genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays via Wirtinger’s integral inequality is addressed in this study. A novel Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional is proposed to capture the dynamical characteristic of GRNs. Using Wirtinger’s integral inequality, reciprocally convex combination technique and the average dwell time method conditions in the form of linear matrix inequalities are established for finite-time stability of switched GRNs. The applicability of the developed finite-time stability conditions is validated by numerical results.

Enabling constraints are bottom up causes which create the possibility of the existence of a system. Disabling constraints reduce the degrees of freedom and narrow the choices of the system which are structural, functional, meaningful relations that assign executive roles to the component parts. In this paper, we discuss causality as enabling and disabling constraints in order to critique the absurdity of transitivity in causal relations. If downward causation is viewed as causation by constraints, we argue that it will not (...) face the absurdity of self-causation which is incurred because of the transitivity principle. In the process of self-organization, organizationally new structures are created from the lower level subcomponents of the system. Such self-organizing systems can be broadly considered as sui-generis and transcend the transitivity principle by causally influencing its subcomponents. These higher level systemic constraints that causally influence the components in a self-organizing system without violating any physical laws via causal constraints are termed as Downward Causation. (shrink)