Study of four works of Sri Krishna Prem, 1898-1965, a Vaishnavite teacher; includes a bibliographical sketch.

In developed economies, powerful legislative and regulatory frameworks, for people with disability over the last five decades, have provided major motivation for business compliance with disability in the workplaces. However, developing economy like India is marked by emergent disability legislation, weak institutional enforcement and an evolving disability rights movement. In the absence of strong institutional expectations, the private sector’s role in mainstreaming the disability agenda has been largely an act of voluntary participation. Drawing upon an in-depth, multilevel, cross-functional qualitative study (...) of four Indian information technology sector companies, this paper explores why these companies engage in pro-social corporate behaviour in favour of disability. The study locates itself in the context of conceptualization of PWD as employee stakeholders and the literature on strategic CSR. The findings reveal that strategic factors promote voluntary business engagement with disability at workplaces and contribute to understanding of workplace integration of minority employees. (shrink)

The presence of vegetation on railway tracks threatens track safety and longevity. However, vegetation inspections in Sweden are currently being carried out manually. Manually inspecting vegetation is very slow and time consuming. Maintaining an even quality standard is also very difficult. A machine vision-based approach is therefore proposed to emulate the visual abilities of the human inspector. Work aimed at detecting vegetation on railway tracks has been split into two main phases. The first phase is aimed at detecting vegetation on (...) the tracks using appropriate image analysis techniques. The second phase is aimed at detecting the rails in the image to determine the cover of vegetation that is present between the rails as opposed to vegetation present outside the rails. Results achieved in the current work indicate that the machine vision approach has performed reasonably well in detecting the presence/absence of vegetation on railway tracks when compared with a human operator. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Colonial Figures and Postcolonial ReadingSuvir Kaul (bio)Jenny Sharpe. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.Sara Suleri. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Biologists tell us that racialism is a myth and there is no such thing as a master race. But we in India have known racialism in all its forms ever since the (...) commencement of British rule. The whole ideology of this rule was that of the herrenvolk and the master race, and the structure of government was based upon it; indeed the idea of a master race is inherent in imperialism. There was no subterfuge about it; it was proclaimed in unambiguous language by those in authority. More powerful than words was the practice that accompanied them....—Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (1946)Sara Suleri begins The Rhetoric of English India with a critique of “some of the governing assumptions” of the field of colonial cultural studies, which she sees as subject to a debilitating “concept-function”: “While the representation of otherness has long been acknowledged as one of the must [sic] culturally vexing idioms to read, contemporary interpretations of alterity are increasingly victims of their own apprehension of such vexation. Even as the other is privileged in all its pluralities, in all its alternative histories, its concept-function remains too embedded in a theoretical duality of margin to center ultimately to allow the cultural decentering that such critical attention surely desires” [1]. Suleri enumerates some of the problems attendant upon “alteritist” methods of reading: “While alteritism begins as a critical and theoretical revision of a Eurocentric or Orientalist study of the literatures of colonialism, its indiscriminate reliance on the centrality of otherness tends to replicate what in the context of imperialist discourse was the familiar category of the exotic.” In its single-minded devotion to the analysis of difference, alteritism runs the risk of “representing ‘difference’ with no attention to the cultural nuances that differentiation implies. Instead, alteritism reads to reify questions of cultural misapprehension until ‘otherness’ becomes a conceptual blockage that signifies a repetitive monumentalization of the academy’s continuing fear of its own cultural ignorance” [12].In her account of academic processes, Suleri is surely right in claiming that, “in contravention of the astounding specificity of each colonial encounter... contemporary critical theory names the other in order that it need not be further known” [13], thus providing theoretical models and vocabularies whose easy portability and schematic applicability become the reasons for their institutional success. Now that a loose affiliation of texts, revisionary reading practices, and literary histories are being institutionalized (particularly in departments of English) under the disciplinary rubric of colonial and postcolonial discourse studies, such a questioning of the protean versatility [End Page 74] and analytical usefulness of notions of “otherness” or alterity is timely. 1 In much academic writing, the critique of colonial discourses ends where perhaps it should begin, by positing the many forms of alterity that are invoked in the writing of the imperial, nationalist, or even subaltern subject. Particularly in the work of literary theorists, this dynamic of self and other proves entirely compelling when charted in and through textual representation, and the metropolitan archive, both literally and figuratively open in our moment of decolonization, provides ample opportunity to think about the reiterated motifs of “civilization” and “barbarism,” modernity and its antecedents, trade and empire, warfare and conquest.Yet what is to make such intellectual work “postcolonial” in any significant sense? Today, “postcolonial studies” in the Anglo-US academy often suggests simply the opening up of a new archive or a bringing together, in different ways, of various interpretative or reading techniques developed by poststructuralist theorists. There is little evidence that such intellectual work derives any of its critical functions and polemical urgencies from the present-day cultural and intellectual life of the “postcolonial” nation or nations whose historical legacy is under study. Metropolitan concerns and agendas dictate the nature and process of inquiry, rather than a more appropriate sense of the pressing issues that have priority in the national debates of once-colonized countries. What is required is a different... (shrink)

Is a Muslim still a Muslim when he crashes airplanes into the twin towers? Any serious theory of multiculturalism has to deny that Islam could ever come to justify suicide bombing and terrorism. My thesis is that none of the contemporary multicultural theories manages to do so, or at least not without collapsing into a Kantian conception of personal autonomy and, consequently, into some standard version of liberalism. Communitarianism, trying to demonstrate that fundamentalism has nothing to do with the true (...) and authentic Islam and that it does not take into account the pluralism prevailing in Islam, has to moralize Islam. A Humean position, which takes Islamic fundamentalism to be merely a pathology, the product of resentment and western neocolonialism, eventually could come to the conclusion that good and upright Muslims today cannot help but become suicide bombers. Liberal multiculturalism, considering identity to be a matter of choice, must suppose that an active agent with self-knowledge is by definition a responsible person with a moral identity. In conclusion, multiculturalism, in its effort to make the good identities prevail over the bad and the ugly identities, risks adopting some of the same righteous attitudes towards Islam as traditional liberalism. (shrink)

Today we can identify two challenges of pluralism: the ever-growing conflicts between religious, national and ethnic groups on the one hand and the oppression of dissenting individuals by their respective communities on the other hand. Both intercommunitarian and intracommunitarian conflicts find their origin in a communitarian conception of our political, cultural, or religious identities. After presenting some of the problems of the communitarian solution in particular with regard to the challenge of internal pluralism, I introduce alternative conceptions of multiculturalism that (...) consider our commitments to be part of our personal or individual identity. Distinguishing a conception of identity based upon self-knowledge from liberal, postmodern theories (Richard Rorty) and alternative non-cognitive theories (Bernard Williams) that consider identity to be individual in nature, I propose that the awareness of the individual nature of commitments makes it possible for us not to impose our values upon other individuals who do not share them while at the same time justifying the multicultural project. (shrink)

The article introduces to the issue of religion, rights and the public sphere. It analyzes 4 challenges that the conception of the public sphere currently faces: Does there exists a trade-off between the public sphere and a legal regime of civil rights? Does the public sphere really require us to keep the good and religious questions outside of it? To what extent is the public sphere neutral and not rather itself the outcome of a particular and contingent conception of the (...) good? Whatever might be our answers to the questions 1 to 3, does not Islam constitute a special challenge for any conception of the public sphere? The article draws following prudent conclusions: First, rights are somewhat fundamental for a democratic public sphere. Second, a democratic public sphere cannot exclude religion. Third, little indicates that the public sphere is only a western concept. On the contrary, the public sphere has a universal character. Fourth, Islam does not pose any specific challenge to the public sphere, at least no more than the other religions. (shrink)

The Book Studies The Different Aspects Of Tantrism, Its Vastness And Intricacies, Its Heterogeneous And Contradictory Elements And Gives A Historical Perspective To The Conglomeration Of Ideas And Practices Through Space And Time. It Also Incorporates A Review Of Tantric Art And A Glossary Of Technical Terms.

Description: Jain Philosophy : Historical Outline interprets the fundamentals of Jain philosophy from the viewpoint of their historical genesis and development and shows that the incipient stage of the Jain thought-complex agreed totally with the pythagorean approach to philosophy which was based on observed realities and was quite in harmony with the existing socio-political conditions of the time of Lord Mahavira while the sophisticated stage marked by the a priori doctrines and dogmas it had generated in course of its development (...) and by the traditionally floating ideas in regard to the belief in a eternal moral order in the universe, the law of karma, ignorance as the cause of bondage and knowledge as that of liberation, the efficacy of meditation, and so forth, was a persistent juxtaposition in the evolutionary stages of the former. Since no system of Indian philosophy allows a purely isolated treatment, a comparative study of all the philosophical systems has been made here to determine the real nature of the Jain standpoint with more emphasis on the original dynamism of Jainism which had contributed to the growth of various natural sciences, including those of biology and astronomy, on the total rejection of the concept of a supernatural agent in the form of God, on the theories of valid knowledge and on the unique logical system based on the principles of relativity. Contents Preface of the Second Edition Preface of the First Edition Chap. I : INTRODUCTION : 1. The Jains as they are 2. Researches on Jainism 3. Literary Sources 4. Archaeological Sources : Architecture and Sculpture 5. Archaeological Sources : The Epigraphs 6. Parsva and Mahavira 7. Ecclesiastical History Chap. II : THE INCIPIENT STAGE : 1. The Prehistory of Jainism 2. The Historical Background 3. Material Basis of the Great Intellectual Movement 4. The Conflicts in the History of Indian thought 5. Contemporary Philosophical Schools 6. Purana Kassapa 7. Pakudha Kaccayana 8. Makkhali Gosala 9. Sanjaya Belatthiputta 10. Ajita Kesakambalin 11. Social Experiences of Mahavira 12. The Social Basis of Jain Ethics Chap. III : THE SOPHISTICATED STAGE : 1. Jainism and Indian Philosophical Tradition 2. Jain Atheism 3. Jain Logic 4. Scientific Enquiries : Cosmology 5. Scientific Enquiries : Classification of Jiva 6. Scientific Enquiries : Biology, Physiology, Etc 7. Scientific Enquiries : Diseases and Medicines 8. Scientific Enquiries : Astronomy 9. Scientific Enquiries : Atomism 10. Jain Cosmography 11. The Unfounded Speculations and their Ethical Considerations 12. The Nine Fundamentals and the Doctrine of Karma 13. Classification of Karma and the Gunasthanas 14. A Review of the Jain Metaphysics 15. Theory of Knowledge 16. Psychological Ingredients 17. The Non-Absolutist Standpoint Chap. IV : A COMPARATIVE STUDY : 1. Jainism and Vedic Tradition 2. Jainism and Buddhism 3. Jainism and Ajivikism 4. Jainism and Materialism 5. Jainism and Samkhya 6. Jainism and Yoga 7. Jainism and Mimamsa 8. Jainism and Nyaya-Vaisesika 9. Jainism and Vedanta 10. A Subjectwise Comparative Study of the Systems. (shrink)

Today we can identify two challenges of pluralism: the ever-growing conflicts between religious, national and ethnic groups on the one hand and the oppression of dissenting individuals by their respective communities on the other hand. Both intercommunitarian and intracommunitarian conflicts find their origin in a communitarian conception of our political, cultural, or religious identities. After presenting some of the problems of the communitarian solution in particular with regard to the challenge of internal pluralism, I introduce alternative conceptions of multiculturalism that (...) consider our commitments to be part of our personal or individual identity. Distinguishing a conception of identity based upon self-knowledge from liberal, postmodern theories (Richard Rorty) and alternative non-cognitive theories (Bernard Williams) that consider identity to be individual in nature, I propose that the awareness of the individual nature of commitments makes it possible for us not to impose our values upon other individuals who do not share them while at the same time justifying the multicultural project. (shrink)

Spatially and temporally restricted expression of Hox genes requires multiple mechanisms at both the transcriptional and the post-transcriptional levels. New insight into this precise expression mechanism comes from recent findings of a novel sense–antisense miRNA combination from the bithorax complex of Drosophila melanogaster.1-4 These two miRNAs encoded from the same locus target 3′ untranslated regions of anterior hox genes, Antp, Ubx and abd-A to establish the dominance of posterior hox gene Abd-B in its expression domain. Such double-edge tools, sense–antisense miRNA (...) combinations, also operate at multiple loci in the genome implicating their wider impact on the post-transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes. BioEssays 30:1058–1061, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political (...) complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law. (shrink)

Resumen El presente estudio, de carácter interpretativo-descriptivo, se ocupa de la relación existente entre el lenguaje verbal, la descortesía y las emociones en contextos de cultura hispanohablante. Se investiga dicha relación para algunos tipos de actos descorteses, correspondientes a tipos de una escala de intensificación de la fuerza de descortesía, Cortesía y conversación: de lo escrito a lo oral. Tercer Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE, Vol. 3. Valencia/estocolmo: Universidad de Valencia- Programa EDICE, Kaul de Marlangeon y Alba-Juez. 2012, A (...) typology of verbal impoliteness behaviour for the English and Spanish Cultures. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 25, pp. 69–92), y la consiguiente construcción discursiva de las emociones presentes en ellos. A tal fin, se adopta el punto de vista sociocultural de la pragmática, necesario tanto para el análisis del discurso de cortesía como para el de las emociones intervinientes en los distintos tipos de actos de descortesía, éstos y aquéllas asociados a sus respectivos contextos socioculturales y situacionales. De igual forma, se acoge el punto de vista de la psicología social, especialmente aquél que pone el énfasis en la dependencia contextual de las emociones y las considera como una construcción social. El pertinente corpus de ejemplos ha sido recogido en diferentes contextos de cultura hispanohablante que validan una interpretación ingtercultural. Los resultados de la descripción émica muestran que en cada tipo de descortesía considerado concurren complejas experiencias emocionales, sobre todo negativas, activadoras de conductas agresivas y de su grado de intensidad o de intencionalidad. (shrink)

Why are human rights considered inviolable norms of justice although more than hundred countries around the globe violate them? This paradox seems reducible to the discrepancy between idealism and reality in humanitarian affairs, but Imagining Human Rights complicates this picture by offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the imaginary status of human rights on their power and limitation alike.".

Phosphatidylinositol 4,5‐bisphosphate (PI4,5P2) is a key lipid signaling molecule that regulates a vast array of biological activities. PI4,5P2 can act directly as a messenger or can be utilized as a precursor to generate other messengers: inositol trisphosphate, diacylglycerol, or phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5‐trisphosphate. PI4,5P2 interacts with hundreds of different effector proteins. The enormous diversity of PI4,5P2 effector proteins and the spatio‐temporal control of PI4,5P2 generation allow PI4,5P2 signaling to control a broad spectrum of cellular functions. PI4,5P2 is synthesized by phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinases (...) (PIPKs). The array of PIPKs in cells enables their targeting to specific subcellular compartments through interactions with targeting factors that are often PI4,5P2 effectors. These interactions are a mechanism to define spatial and temporal PI4,5P2 synthesis and the specificity of PI4,5P2 signaling. In turn, the regulation of PI4,5P2 effectors at specific cellular compartments has implications for understanding how PI4,5P2 controls cellular processes and its role in diseases. (shrink)

This introduction discusses articles on the theory and politics of republicanism that were presented at the Istanbul Seminars 2015. It asks the following questions: Could it be that republicanism is at least in part the cause of the current cultural clashes and religious violence in both the Arab world and Europe?. Is it just an accident that republics in many parts of the post-colonial world turned authoritarian? Or does republicanism as such risk resulting in illiberal outcomes? In this regard, it (...) analyses, first, if there is a tension or inherent contradiction between republicanism and Islam. Second, this article examines if the political models in Turkey and France are misconceptions of republicanism and the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination. Last but not least, it raises the question if deliberative democracy is the best possible interpretation of republicanism, able to accommodate both freedom as non-domination and pluralism. (shrink)

Sanskrit text with verse translation in English and Hindi.

Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) is a powerful technique that can be used for global analysis of gene expression. Its chief advantage over other methods is that it does not require prior knowledge of the genes of interest and provides qualitative and quantitative data of potentially every transcribed sequence in a particular cell or tissue type. This is a technique of expression profiling, which permits simultaneous, comparative and quantitative analysis of gene‐specific, 9‐ to 13‐basepair sequences. These short sequences, called (...) SAGE tags, are linked together for efficient sequencing. The sequencing data are then analyzed to identify each gene expressed in the cell and the levels at which each gene is expressed. The main benefit of SAGE includes the digital output and the identification of novel genes. In this review, we present an outline of the method, various bioinformatics methods for data analysis and general applications of this important technology. BioEssays 26:916–922, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In the celebrated tantric manual, the Tantrāloka, Abhinavagupta and his commentator Jayaratha establish a non-dual Śaiva theory of reflection using the key metaphors of light and reflective awareness. This paper attempts to explain the philosophical problem of reflection from the standpoint of these non-dual Śaivas. It also evaluates the problem in its hermeneutical context, analysing multiple layers of meaning and interpretation. Is the metaphor of reflection only a way of explaining the particular currents of the Śaiva phenomenology represented by the (...) concepts of prakāśa and vimarśa? What philosophical problem does Abhinavagupta seek to solve by complicating the category of reflection and giving it a quasi-paradoxical status? Why does he use the model of the subtle elements to explain the theory of reflection? What does the ‘untaintedness of the mirror of consciousness’ mean for his system? These questions form the focus of this paper. (shrink)

Resumen La reseña, situada en la sección final de revistas especializadas, es un género textual típico del discurso científico, que ofrece información crítica acerca del contenido de una publicación reciente. El propósito del presente trabajo es enfocar el aspecto evaluativo del género reseña, ámbito propicio para la ocurrencia de diversas actividades de imagen de rol, de autocortesía, de cortesía y de descortesía. Este trabajo adopta el punto de vista discursivo-sociocultural para abordar los fenómenos de cortesía: Bravo y Kaul de (...) Marlangeon. Asimismo emplea la perspectiva de la teoría de la evaluación en el discurso, principalmente: Martin y Martin y White. El corpus ha sido extraído de reseñas de obras de autores hispanohablantes publicadas durante la última década en una selección de revistas internacionales de lingüística escritas en español: RILI, Signos, Discurso & Sociedad y Linred, donde se constata tanto el uso de los recursos evaluativos interconectados en el texto, como las diferentes actividades de imagen que desarrolla el reseñador. (shrink)

In the celebrated tantric manual, the Tantrāloka, Abhinavagupta and his commentator Jayaratha establish a non-dual Śaiva theory of reflection using the key metaphors of light and reflective awareness. This paper attempts to explain the philosophical problem of reflection from the standpoint of these non-dual Śaivas. It also evaluates the problem in its hermeneutical context, analysing multiple layers of meaning and interpretation. Is the metaphor of reflection only a way of explaining the particular currents of the Śaiva phenomenology represented by the (...) concepts of prakāśa and vimarśa? What philosophical problem does Abhinavagupta seek to solve by complicating the category of reflection and giving it a quasi-paradoxical status? Why does he use the model of the subtle elements to explain the theory of reflection? What does the ‘untaintedness of the mirror of consciousness’ mean for his system? These questions form the focus of this paper. (shrink)

It is possible to be ‘irrational’ without being ‘uneconomic’? What is the link between ‘Value’ and ‘values’? What do economists do when they ‘explain’? We live in times when the economic logic has become unquestionable and all-powerful so that our quotidian economic experiences are defined by their scientific construal. This book is the result of a multifaceted investigation into the nature of knowledge produced by economics, and the construction of the category that is termed ‘economic’ with its implied exclusions. It (...) is an attempt to think economics Otherwise, that is, a questioning of economics as if difference mattered. Nitasha Kaul re-examines certain understood ways of thinking about economics as a discipline, especially in elation to questions of identity and difference. This book explores the notion that economics is not a timeless, universal, objective science but a changing response to the problems of knowledge and administration. The epistemological inheritance of economics is ‘rooted’ in the enlightenment, and it also inherits the liberal paradoxes of that age. Kaul argues that the juxtaposition of identity with economic is essential, and can only be achieved by critiquing establishment economists’ discourse on identity, and taking feminist poststructural and postcolonial work seriously. The author challenges the assumption that there is a simple linkage between the category economic, the entity economy and the study of economics. She envisions an economics in the plural: contextual, social, political—econo-mixes. The book brings together some of the most urgent topics of the day—the power of economics as a discipline, the questions of difference and the politics of identity, and feminist perspectives on this. It will be particularly relevant to heterodox economists, feminist theorists, postcolonial studies scholars, social and cultural theorists, philosophers and history of ideas or intellectual history of thought scholars. (shrink)