Whistleblowing is the act of disclosing information from a public or private organization in order to reveal cases of corruption that are of immediate or potential danger to the public. Blowing the whistle involves personal risk, especially when legal protection is absent, and charges of betrayal, which often come in the form of legal prosecution under treason laws. In this article we argue that whistleblowing is justified when disclosures are made with the proper intent and fulfill specific communicative constraints in (...) addressing issues of public interest. Three communicative constraints of informativeness, truthfulness and evidence are discussed in this regard. We develop a ‘harm test’ to assess the intent for disclosures, concluding that it is not sufficient for justification. Along with the proper intent, a successful act of whistleblowing should provide information that serves the public interest. Taking cognizance of the varied conceptions of public interest, we present an account of public interest that fits the framework of whistleblowing disclosures. In particular, we argue that whistleblowing is justified inter alia when the information it conveys is of a presumptive interest for a public insofar as it reveals an instance of injustice or violation of a civil or political right done against and unbeknown to some members of a polity. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is the public disclosure of information with the purpose of revealing wrongdoings and abuses of power that harm the public interest. This book presents a comprehensive theory of whistleblowing: it defines the concept, reconstructs its origins, discusses it within the current ethical debate, and elaborates a justification of unauthorized disclosures. Its normative proposal is based on three criteria of permissibility: the communicative constraints, the intent, and the public interest conditions. The book distinguishes between two forms of whistleblowing, civic and (...) political, showing how they apply in the contexts of corruption and government secrecy. The book articulates a conception of public interest as a claim concerning the presumptive interest of the public. It argues that public interest is defined in opposition to corporate powers and its core content identified by the rights that are all-purposive for the distribution of social benefits. A crucial part of the proposal is dedicated to the impact of security policies and government secrecy on civil liberties. It argues that unrestrained secrecy limits the epistemic entitlement of citizens to know under which conditions their rights are limited by security policies and corporate interests. When citizens are denied the right to assess when these policies are prejudicial to their freedoms, whistleblowing represents a legitimate form of political agency that safeguards the fundamental rights of citizens against the threat of unrestrained secrecy by government power. Finally, the book contributes to shifting the attention of democratic theory from the procedures of consent formation to the mechanisms that guarantee the expression of dissent. It argues that whistleblowing is a distinctive form of civil dissent that contributes to the demands of institutional transparency in constitutional democracies and explores the idea that the way institutions are responsive to dissent determines the robustness of democracy, and ultimately, its legitimacy. What place dissenters have within a society, whether they enjoy personal safety, legal protection, and safe channels for their disclosure, are hallmarks of a good democracy, and of its sense of justice. (shrink)

This article examines how skilled middle-class Tamil women—an Indian regional group—negotiate with gender to strategize immigration to and settlement in the United States by drawing on life-history interviews with 33 first-generation professional women, most of whom entered the United States as family migrants. I find that the women negotiate with gender to configure Tamil Brahminical relations of subordination, thereby asserting their subjectivity through “strident embedded agency” in immigration. In this way, they realize gender non-normative desires for immigration, engage in gender (...) non-normative actions, and perform normative actions in reconstituted ways. Even as their strident embedded agency facilitates their embodiment of configured Tamil womanhood, it produces Tamil Brahmin relations of subordination. This article delineates the complexity of women’s subjectivities and agency and Tamil women’s agential strategizing of immigration as emergent from their gendered and caste/classed social locations. (shrink)

In evolutionary psychology predictions, women’s mate preferences shift between fertile and nonfertile times of the month to reflect ancestral fitness benefits. Our meta-analytic test involving 58 independent reports was largely nonsupportive. Specifically, fertile women did not especially desire sex in short-term relationships with men purported to be of high genetic quality. The few significant preference shifts appeared to be research artifacts. The effects declined over time in published work, were limited to studies that used broader, less precise definitions of the (...) fertile phase, and were found only in published research. (shrink)

The Papers In This Volume, Presented At A Seminar Organised By The Gurukula Kangri Viswavidyalaya, Offer A Kaleidoscopic View Of Myriad Aspects Of Himalayan Eco-System Like Causes Of Its Degradation, Impact Of Hydroelectric To Deforestation And Role Of Wild Life. The Deliberations Also Highlight The Relevance Of Vedic Philosophy In Conserving The Fragile Himalayan Eco-System.

There has recently been a growth in research that examines how corporations respond to allegations of unethical actions. Although scholars have gained much insight about the range of responses available to and used by organizations, there has been almost no study of why firms choose one response over another. In this article, the authors present a framework of likely organizational response choices to allegations of wrongdoing; we propose that response choices are based on the degree of reputational risk from stakeholder (...) withdrawal of support and on perceived threats to the firm’s primary or secondary identity. (shrink)

Proyectada en 1908 y colocada en 1914, la vidriera de Nuestra Señora del Pilar fue una de las primeras vidrieras artísticas fabricadas por La Veneciana. Pese a ocupar el mayor ventanal de la catedral-basílica de Zaragoza permanece ignorada por las guías turísticas e Internet. Este trabajo arroja luz sobre dicho vitral, su diseñador y el arte sobre cristal. Analizamos su composición pilarista en el contexto de la historia civil, religiosa y legendaria de Zaragoza. Concluiremos con el profundo significado simbólico de (...) esta vidriera que consagra a la Virgen del Pilar como el honor del pueblo zaragozano, aragonés y español así como un elemento del espíritu de la reconciliación hispano-francesa de 1908. Palabras clave: vidriera artística, El Pilar, Zaragoza, La Veneciana, Guyonnet, relaciones hispano-francesas.Projected in 1908 and placed in 1914, the stained-glass window of Nuestra Señora del Pilar was one of the first artistic stained-glass windows manufactured by La Veneciana. Despite occupying the largest window of the cathedral-basilica of Zaragoza remains ignored by tourist guides and the Internet. This work sheds light on this stained-glass window, your designer and art on glass. Next, we will analyze its ‘pilarista’ composition, a synthesis of the civil, religious and legendary history of Zaragoza. We will conclude with the deep symbolic meaning of this stained-glass window, which consecrates the Virgen del Pilar as the honor of the people of Zaragoza, Aragon and Spain. Eventually, this article constitutes an invitation to consider this work as an element of the spirit of Spanish-French reconciliation of 1908. Key words: stained-glass, El Pilar, Zaragoza, La Veneciana, Guyonnet, Spanish-French relations. (shrink)

Although representations of female scientists in the media have increased over time, stereotypical portrayals of science persist. In-depth, contemporary profiles of scientists’ roles have an opportunity to reflect or to challenge stereotypes of science and of gender. We employed content and linguistic analyses to examine whether publicly available profiles of scientists from New York Times and The Scientist Magazine support or challenge pervasive beliefs about science. Consistent with broader stereotypes of STEM fields, these portrayals focused more on agency than communality. (...) However, profiles also challenged stereotypes through integrating communality, purpose, and growth. This analysis also found similar presence of communal and agentic constructs for both female and male scientists. The current findings highlight the importance of considering counterstereotypic representations of science in the media: Communicating messages to the public that challenge existing beliefs about the culture of science may be one path toward disrupting stereotypes that dissuade talented individuals from choosing science pathways. (shrink)

According to the World Health Organisation, three to five million individuals are infected by influenza, and around 250,000 to 500,000 people die of this infectious disease worldwide. Influenza epidemics pose a serious public health threat. Moreover, graver dangers are encountered with influenza subtypes against which there is little or no preexisting human immunity. Such subtypes of influenza have the potential to cause devastating epidemics. Thus, enhancing surveillance systems for the purpose of detecting influenza epidemics in an early stage can quicken (...) response times and save millions of lives. This paper presents three adapting intelligence models: support vector machine regression, artificial neural network using particle swarm optimisation, and our intelligent time series to predict influenza epidemics. The novelty of the current study is that it proposes a new intelligent model to predict influenza outbreaks. The INTS model combines clustering with a time series model to enhance the prediction of influenza outbreaks. The innovation of our proposed model integrates the results obtained from the existing weighted exponential smoothing model with centroids obtained from clustering. We developed a surveillance system for influenza epidemics using Google search queries. The current research is based on a weighted version of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention influenza-like illness activity level obtained from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention data, as well as query data obtained from the Goggle search engine in the USA. The influenza-like illness data was collected from January 4, 2009, to December 27, 2015, stretching across a total time span of 312 weeks. Google Correlate was used to select search queries related to influenza epidemics. In total, 100 search queries were obtained from Google Correlate, 10 of which were better and more relevant search queries selected in this study. The model was evaluated using online Google search queries collected from Google Correlate. Standard measure performance MSE, RMSE, and MAE were employed to estimate the results of the proposed model. The empirical results of the INTS model showed MSE = 0.003, RMSE = 0.036, and MAE = 0.0185, indicating that the errors of the proposed model are very limited. A comparative model of predicting results between the INTS model, alternative Google Flu Trend, and autoregression with Google search data is also presented. The proposed model outperformed the existing models. (shrink)

Lipid droplets (LDs) are ubiquitous, neutral lipid storage organelles that act as hubs of metabolic processes. LDs are structurally unique with a hydrophobic core that mainly consists of neutral lipids, sterol esters, and triglycerides, enclosed within a phospholipid monolayer. Nascent LD formation begins with the accumulation of neutral lipids in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) bilayer. The ER membrane proteins such as seipin, LDAF1, FIT, and MCTPs are reported to play an important role in the formation of nascent LDs. As the (...) LDs grow, they unmix from the highly charged ER membrane to form mature LDs. LD biogenesis is an exciting, emerging research area, and herein, we discuss the recent progress in our understanding of the formation of eukaryotic nascent LDs. We focus on the role of ER membrane shaping proteins such as reticulons and reticulon‐like proteins, membrane lipids, and cytoskeleton proteins such as septin in the formation of nascent LDs. (shrink)

We present some striking global consequences of a model quaternionic quantum field theory which is locally complex. We show how making the quaternionic structure a dynamical quantity naturally leads to the prediction of cosmic strings and nonbaryonic hot dark matter candidates.

Prior research has shown the importance of institutional pressures in investigating corporate environmental behaviour. To date, the literature has been lacking in survey-based reflective measures of institutional pressures. This paper focuses on the development of reflective measures of coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism.

Inventory prediction and management is a key issue in a retail store. There are a number of inventory prediction techniques. However, it is difficult to identify a time series prediction model for inventory forecasting that provides uniformly good results for all the products in a store. This paper uses data from a small retail store to demonstrate the variability of results for different modeling techniques and different products. We demonstrate inadequacy of a generic inventory model. Stability and seasonality analysis of (...) the time series is used to identify groups of products exhibiting similar sales patterns. Different clustering techniques are applied to determine reasonable local groups. With the help of Mean absolute percentage error, the effectiveness of dataset partitioning for better inventory management is demonstrated. Appropriate inventory management strategies are proposed based on the stability and seasonality analysis. (shrink)

Smell perception plays an important role in eating behavior and might be involved in body weight gain. Since a body of literature implies that olfactory perception and function is hampered in obesity, we here investigate neuroanatomical correlates of this phenomenon. We assessed olfactory bulb volume with magnetic resonance imaging in 67 healthy participants with a body mass index from 18.9 to 45.4 kg/m2. Moreover, we obtained psychophysiological data on olfactory ability and self-report measurements on eating behavior. Additionally, we collected parameters (...) associated with metabolic health in obesity to investigate recently proposed mechanistic explanatory models of why olfaction may be altered in obesity. We showed that OB volume was significantly lower in participants with obesity when compared to those of normal weight. Moreover, we found weak to moderate negative correlations between OB volume and BMI and related measures of metabolic health, especially leptin, body fat percentage, waist-height ratio and insulin resistance. However, neither OB volume nor BMI were related to olfactory function in our young and healthy sample. Nevertheless, our results provide first indications that obesity is associated with brain anatomical changes in the OBs. (shrink)

Papers presented at the Seminar on Indian Philosophical Thought on Pramāṇa and Dharmakīrti organized by Tibet House, New Delhi from 10-13 Nov. 2003.

Innovation has been widely regarded as a powerful tool for stimulating economic growth and changing the quality of human life since the beginning of time. Innovation will continue to remain a key driving force for sustainability and growth in the current economic global slowdown. At present there are hardly any studies that show why innovation is successful at some organizations, and yet fails to achieve the desired results at others. The authors investigate the role of “core values and beliefs” of (...) leading innovative companies in India and abroad on how they go about building a unique innovation culture which ensures their continuous growth even in troubled times. (shrink)

In their analysis Childress et al. (2023) suggest that withdrawal of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) over a patient’s dissent is not justified by existing ethical arguments. The alternat...

The American political landscape exhibits significant polarization. People’s political beliefs cluster around two main camps. However, many of the issues with respect to which these two camps disagree seem to be rationally orthogonal. This feature raises an epistemic challenge for the political partisan. If she is justified in consistently adopting the party line, it must be true that her side is reliable on the issues that are the subject of disagreements. It would then follow that the other side is anti-reliable (...) with respect to a host of orthogonal political issues. Yet, it is difficult to find a psychologically plausible explanation for why one side would get things reliably wrong with respect to a wide range of orthogonal issues. While this project’s empirical discussion focuses on the US context, the argument generalizes to any situation where political polarization exists on a sufficiently large number of orthogonal claims. (shrink)

Gujarat has been identified as an enterpreneurial hub of India, primarily due to the innovative behaviour of Gujarati entrepreneurs. This has led Gujarat to become known as a model of enterpreneurial innovations. This model of enterpreneurial innovations has been developed from a study of entrepreneurs in a variety of industries from the region and several industrial clusters of enterprises in Gujarat. The study points to the transformation of many communities, particularly the Patel community, which was traditionally an agricultural community, into (...) a manufacturing class and a new emergent in Gujarat’s industrial scenario. (shrink)

This paper argues for the existence of a certain type of defeater for one’s belief that P—the presence of social incentives not to share evidence against P. Such pressure makes it relatively likely that there is unpossessed evidence that would provide defeaters for P because it makes it likely that the evidence we have is a lopsided subset. This offers, I suggest, a rational reconstruction of a core strand of argument in Mill’s On Liberty. A consequence of the argument is (...) that on morally and politically laden issues in particular, a high degree of doxastic openness might be appropriate. (shrink)

Political protests, debates on college campuses, and social media tirades make it seem like everyone is speaking their minds today. Surveys, however, reveal that many people increasingly feel like they're walking on eggshells when communicating in public. Speaking your mind can risk relationships and professional opportunities. It can alienate friends and anger colleagues. Isn't it smarter to just put your head down and keep quiet about controversial topics? In this book, Hrishikesh Joshi offers a novel defense of speaking your (...) mind. He explains that because we are social creatures, we never truly think alone. What we know depends on what our community knows. And by bringing our unique perspectives to bear upon public discourse, we enhance our collective ability to reach the truth on a variety of important matters. Speaking your mind is also important for your own sake. It is essential for developing your own thinking. And it's a core aspect of being intellectually courageous and independent. Joshi argues that such independence is a crucial part of a well-lived life. The book draws from Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and a range of contemporary thinkers to argue that it's OK to speak your mind. Key Features Shows that we have not just a right but a moral duty to publicly share what we know. Argues that discussing your unique ideas with others is essential for developing as a critical thinker. Explores the value of intellectual honesty and independence in the writings of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche and connects their thinking to contemporary problems. Argues that avoiding cultural blind spots today is important for the fate of future generations. (shrink)

We introduce LTAG-spinal, a novel variant of traditional Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG) with desirable linguistic, computational and statistical properties. Unlike in traditional LTAG, subcategorization frames and the argument-adjunct distinction are left underspecified in LTAG-spinal. LTAG-spinal with adjunction constraints is weakly equivalent to LTAG. The LTAG-spinal formalism is used to extract an LTAG-spinal Treebank from the Penn Treebank with Propbank annotation. Based on Propbank annotation, predicate coordination and LTAG adjunction structures are successfully extracted. The LTAG-spinal Treebank makes explicit semantic relations (...) that are implicit or absent from the original PTB. LTAG-spinal provides a very desirable resource for statistical LTAG parsing, incremental parsing, dependency parsing, and semantic parsing. This treebank has been successfully used to train an incremental LTAG-spinal parser and a bidirectional LTAG dependency parser. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, the world should embrace open borders – that is, let people move around the globe and settle as they wish, with exceptions made only in very specific cases such as fugitives or terrorists. Defenders of open borders have adopted two major argumentative strategies. The first is to claim that immigration restrictions involve coercion, and then show that such coercion cannot be morally justified. The second is to argue that adopting worldwide open borders policies would make the (...) world a much better place, particularly by improving average well-being. This essay contends that both of these argumentative strategies fail. Some immigration restrictions are not only morally justified, but morally required. (shrink)

Introduction: Electroconvulsive therapy is a commonly used brain stimulation treatment for treatment-resistant or severe depression. This study was planned to find the effects of ECT on brain connectivity by conducting a systematic review and coordinate-based meta-analysis of the studies performing resting state fMRI in patients with depression receiving ECT.Methods: We systematically searched the databases published up to July 31, 2020, for studies in patients having depression that compared resting-state functional connectivity before and after a course of pulse wave ECT. Meta-analysis (...) was performed using the activation likelihood estimation method after extracting details about coordinates, voxel size, and method for correction of multiple comparisons corresponding to the significant clusters and the respective rsFC analysis measure with its method of extraction.Results: Among 41 articles selected for full-text review, 31 articles were included in the systematic review. Among them, 13 articles were included in the meta-analysis, and a total of 73 foci of 21 experiments were examined using activation likelihood estimation in 10 sets. Using the cluster-level interference method, one voxel-wise analysis with the measure of amplitude of low frequency fluctuations and one seed-voxel analysis with the right hippocampus showed a significant reduction in the left cingulate gyrus and a significant increase in the right hippocampus with the right parahippocampal gyrus, respectively. Another analysis with the studies implementing network-wise resting state functional connectivity showed a significant increase in bilateral posterior cingulate cortex. There was considerable variability as well as a few key deficits in the preprocessing and analysis of the neuroimages and the reporting of results in the included studies. Due to lesser studies, we could not do further analysis to address the neuroimaging variability and subject-related differences.Conclusion: The brain regions noted in this meta-analysis are reasonably specific and distinguished, and they had significant changes in resting state functional connectivity after a course of ECT for depression. More studies with better neuroimaging standards should be conducted in the future to confirm these results in different subgroups of depression and with varied aspects of ECT. (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)