In 2018, the Chinese scientist He Jiankui presented his research at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong. While it was intended that he facilitate a workshop, he was instead called on to present his research in heritable human genome editing, where he made the announcement that he had taken great strides in advancement of his research, to the extent that he had gene-edited human embryos and that this had resulted in the live births of two (...) children. While his research ethic and methodology was interrogated, he insisted that two children, twin girls, had been born healthy and that there was another pregnancy (at the time) where birth of a third gene edited child would be imminent. This announcement generated a ripple effect in the scientific community and exposed the gaps in regulation and absence of law relating to the technology. This resulted in a flurry of activity and conversation around regulation of the technology, which scientists stated was not ready for human trials. This article reviews the Third Summit which was held in London in March 2023 and comments on the latest developments in the regulation of heritable human genome editing. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 is a fast-developing viral pandemic spreading across the globe. Due to lack of availability of proven medicines against COVID-19, physicians have resorted to treatments through large trials of investigational drugs with poor evidence or those used for similar diseases. Large trials randomize 100–500+ patients at multiple hospitals in different countries to either receive these drugs or standard treatment. In order to expedite the process, some regulatory agencies had also given permission to use drugs approved for other diseases, (...) despite a lack of evidence of efficacy in COVID-19. In this review, we highlight the potential ethical issues that should be addressed during the use of investigational drugs with little prior evidence as a treatment options during a pandemic. We discuss the impact of design of randomized clinical trials using LOTUS trial as an example and that of off-label use of drugs like chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine on the safety of patients during COVID-19. We conclude that the adaptive randomized clinical trial designs offer a flexible and efficient approach, enabling patients to quickly switch to successful treatments, while minimizing the number of patients on standard of care. Randomized clinical trial design should consider blinding of investigators and only representative patients who can provide consent should be included. We also conclude the emergency approvals of drugs should be carefully issued and off-label use should be restricted in pandemics. Streamlined regulatory guidelines for emergency drug use in a pandemic can also help in providing benefit and minimizing harm to patients in the future. (shrink)

Collected articles on spiritual life based on the life of Bābu Rāṇapurā, mystic-saint poet from Gujarat; previously published in Kacchamitra, a Gujarati daily.

Collected articles on spiritual life based on Bābubhāī Raṇapurā, 1940, Hindu saint; previously published in Kacchamitra, a Gujarati daily.

Earlier evidence suggests that besides humans, some species of mammals and birds demonstrate visual self-recognition, assessed by the controversial “mark” test. Whereas, there are high levels of inter-individual differences amongst a single species, some species such as macaques and pigeons which do not spontaneously demonstrate mirror self-recognition can be trained to do so. We were surprised to discover that despite being widely used as a model system for avian research, the performance of zebra finches on the mark test had not (...) been studied earlier. Additionally, we studied the behavioral responses of another species of passerine songbirds to a mirror and the MSR mark test. Although a small number of adult male zebra finches appeared to display heightened responses toward the mark while observing their reflections, we could not rule out the possibility that these were a part of general grooming rather than specific to the mark. Furthermore, none of the house crows demonstrated mark-directed behavior or increased self-exploratory behaviors when facing mirrors. Our study suggests that self-directed behaviors need to be tested more rigorously in adult male zebra finches while facing their reflections and these findings need to be replicated in a larger population, given the high degree of variability in mirror-directed behaviors. (shrink)

Cloud computing paradigm is growing rapidly, and it allows users to get services via the Internet as pay-per-use and it is convenient for developing, deploying, and accessing mobile applications. Currently, security is a requisite concern owning to the open and distributed nature of the cloud. Copious amounts of data are responsible for alluring hackers. Thus, developing efficacious IDS is an imperative task. This article analyzed four intrusion detection systems for the detection of attacks. Two standard benchmark datasets, namely, NSL-KDD and (...) UNSW-NB15, were used for the simulations. Additionally, this study highlights the proliferating challenges for the security of sensitive user data and gives useful recommendations to address the identified issues. Finally, the projected results show that the hybridization method with support vector machine classifier outperforms the existing techniques in the case of the datasets investigated. (shrink)

The Sacred Garden Monasteries of Lumbini, with a guided tour of the Maya Devi Temple as another highlight.

Bacteria use trans‐translation to rescue stalled ribosomes and target incomplete proteins for proteolysis. Despite similarities between tRNAs and transfer‐messenger RNA (tmRNA), the key molecule for trans‐translation, new structural and biochemical data show important differences between translation and trans‐translation at most steps of the pathways. tmRNA and its binding partner, SmpB, bind in the A site of the ribosome but do not trigger the same movements of nucleotides in the rRNA that are required for codon recognition by tRNA. tmRNA‐SmpB moves from (...) the A site to the P site of the ribosome without subunit rotation to generate hybrid states, and moves from the P site to a site outside the ribosome instead of to the E site. During catalysis, transpeptidation to tmRNA appears to require the ribosomal protein bL27, which is dispensable for translation, suggesting that this protein may be conserved in bacteria due to trans‐translation. These differences provide insights into the fundamental nature of trans‐translation, and provide targets for new antibiotics that may have decrease cross‐reactivity with eukaryotic ribosomes. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAdults use a variety of strategies to reason about fraction magnitudes, and this variability is adaptive. In two studies, we examined the relationships between mathematics anxiety, working memory, strategy variability and performance on two fraction tasks: fraction magnitude comparison and estimation. Adults with higher mathematics anxiety had lower accuracy on the comparison task and greater percentage absolute error on the estimation task. Unexpectedly, mathematics anxiety was not related to variable strategy use. However, variable strategy use was linked to more accurate (...) magnitude comparisons, especially among adults with lower working memory performance or those who use mathematics less frequently, as well as lower PAE on the estimation task. These findings shed light on the role of strategy variability in fraction problem solving and demonstrate a link between mathematics anxiety and fraction magnitude reasoning, a key predictor of general mathematics achievement. (shrink)

. Epochs present in the voiced speech are defined as time instants of significant excitation of the vocal tract system during the production of speech. Nonstationary nature of excitation source and vocal tract system makes accurate identification of epochs a difficult task. Most of the existing methods for epoch detection require prior knowledge of voiced regions and a rough estimation of pitch frequency. In this paper, we propose a novel method that relies on time-order representation based on short-time Fourier–Bessel series (...) expansion which can be employed on entire speech signal to detect epochs without any prior information. The proposed method automatically detects voiced regions in the speech signal by computing the marginal energy density with respect to time in the low frequency range from the energy distribution in the time-frequency plane. An estimate of pitch frequency for each detected voiced region is then obtained by computing the marginal energy density with respect to frequency in the LFR from the energy distribution in the time-frequency plane. Epochs are located for each detected voiced region as peaks in the derivative of the low pass filtered signal corresponding to falling edges of peak negative cycles in the LPF signal synthesized from TOR coefficients corresponding to LFR. Experimental results obtained by the proposed method on speech signals taken from the CMU-Arctic database are found to be promising. The proposed method detects epochs with high accuracy and reliability. (shrink)

Ancient Indian philosophies consider self-realization as a fundamental concept and aim of human life, which appears theoretically similar to the self-actualization concept of the West. This article compares and contrasts the self-actualization concept with the views of ancient Indian wisdom to create a model. Both ideas strive for a more elevated Self, unleashing our potential or the realization/actualization of the true Self. From the Indian Vedanta philosophy emerged the Panchakosha theory of personality, which provides a structural framework for human states (...) of consciousness leading to higher development and transcendental identity. According to the scriptures, any form of stress is due to an underdeveloped state of consciousness at these levels or due to disconnection from the true Self; once an individual comes in contact with the ‘true Self’, the problems of life are eliminated. Yoga is a systematic process and way of human development, and applying the principles of Yoga philosophy in life will help in transcending one from the lower Self to the higher Self, awakening human potential, and becoming self-actualized. Yogis, who practice Yoga, could be responsible for a positive shift towards sustainable communities or transformative environments through enhanced mindfulness, self-actualization, and social capital demonstrated by enhanced moral values, trust, engagement, and acceptance. This theoretical model from classical Indian thought has the potential to provide the needed guidelines to create more self-actualized people. The dimension of well-being and prescriptions on how to reach this state of highest well-being is the essence of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

The first time Umāsvāti uses the word manas in his Tattvārtha-sūtra, the standard work for matters concerning Jaina philosophy, is when he lists the means of knowledge: mati, śruta, avadhi, manaḥ-paryāya and kevala. These are the pramāṇas. In TAS 1, 14 mati or sense perception is said to be caused by indriya and aninindriya; Pūjyapāda’s commentary says that anindriya, antaḥ-karaṇa and manas are synonyms. This obviously raises questions about the specific role and function of the manas/anindriya in mati, manaḥ-paryāya and (...) śruta, and how these retain their exclusivity without reducing the function of any of them to another means of cognition. In the Sāṅkhya system manas is seen as both an organ of cognition and an organ of action. It is interesting for a better understanding of the role of manas in Jaina thought to compare some aspects of it with the Sāṅkhya system. (shrink)

We applaud Ram Frost for highlighting the need for multicultural perspectives while developing universal models of visual word recognition. We second Frost's proposal that factors like lexical morphology should be incorporated besides purely orthographic features in modeling word recognition. In support, we provide fresh evidence from Hindi, an example of hitherto under-represented alphasyllabic orthographies, in which flexible encoding of akṣara position is constrained by the morphological structure of words.

It is shown that Jaina epistemology has its own history, with differences in certain respects depending on the thinker, and it is demonstrated that the Jainas did not lag behind the mainstream concerns in Indian philosophy. After dealing with the beginnings of epistemology in India, the basic Jaina epistemology is outlined based on selected aspects of the problem in the original words of selected early thinkers such as Kundakunda, Umāsvāti, and Māṇikyanandin.

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection causes death of 270,000 people die from every year. Sexually transmitted HPV was found one of the major causes of cervical cancer. World Health Organization (WHO). Cervical cancer (CC) is one of the top five cancers that affect women around the world. In June 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new vaccine for women, Gardasil, produced by the pharmaceutical company Merck that protects against infection by certain strains of HPV, including the two (...) strains that cause most cases of cervical cancer. Vaccinations are counted as one of public health’s important development but there is an ethical dilemma between balancing personal autonomy and protection of the entire at risk population. The vaccine caused very few side effects like local reactions whereas signs or symptoms of greater importance were very. Moreover it was considered that the vaccine is has an efficacy of practically 100% in prevention of precancerous lesion caused by the viral genotypes included in the vaccine. Bioethicists were not convinced about compulsory vaccination laws as the values of patient autonomy and informed consent to be preeminent to them. Not surprisingly, some have expressed wariness about or opposition to mandating HPV vaccination. A critical question is whether achieving a higher level of coverage justifies the infringement on parental autonomy that compulsory vaccination inevitably entails. Recommendation of the universal vaccination of girls and young women may evolve ethical challenges which might make it difficult for smooth implementation of the vaccination campaigns. Review of the ethical issues in HPV vaccination will constitute the main part of our paper. (shrink)

CHAPTER Introduction Some basic questions in philosophical anthropology The question whether there is indeed a concern in Indian thought of what comes under ...

Kundakunda’s handling of several basic ideas cannot be omitted when one deals with the following concepts in Jaina philosophy: 1. Sy_āt/siya, syādvāda_ or _saptabhaṅgī_. 2. _Nayas_, _vyavahāra_ and _niścaya nayas_ and _naya_vāda. 3. _Sapta_ and _Nava tattvas/padārtha_ and 4. _Anekāntavāda_. No doubt his dates are a major conundrum; recent research regards him to have lived around the fourth or fifth centuries (Brill’s Encyclopedia of Jainism, BEJ: Brill’s Encyclopedia of Jainism (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 2 South Asia), edited by Knut (...) Jacobsen, John A. Cort, Paul Dundas and Kristi L. Wiley. Leiden | Boston: Brill, 2020., p. 853). Moreover, it has been said that Kundakunda “_thread a somewhat new path on which he virtually remained a lone traveller_”, evident by the fact that hardly, if any, Digambara or even Śvetāmbara scholar elaborates on his ideas, let alone crediting him for significant basic insights into Jaina philosophy. Moreover, it seems to be evident, as will be attempted to show, that some ideas appear to be taken over from Kundakunda. Together with Kundakunda’s ‘legacy’, this article will highlight several conundrums regarding the philosophical impact of several concepts in his works that fortunately have not been relegated to oblivion. (shrink)

The contributors to this focus issue participated in a unique gathering of over sixty scholars in Lukenya, Kenya in January 2009, organized by Globethics.net. The three contributions here by Sumner B. Twiss, Shanta Premawardhana, and Ariane Hentsch Cisneros are not the outcome of the deliberations and discussions there; however, they led to the idea of this focus issue. Each essay incorporates major aspects of the general themes discussed in different groups at the Lukenya meeting: (1) defining global ethics; (2) ensuring (...) a successful interreligious dialogue on ethics; (3) integrating means and methods of sharing values in a human to human approach; (4) balancing power relations, inducing a real transformation; and (5) sharing values in the Kenyan and East-African contexts. (shrink)

Written by theologians, literary scholars, political theorists, classicists, and philosophers, the essays in Judgment and Action address the growing sense that certain key concepts in humanistic scholarship have become suspect, if not downright unintelligible, amid the current plethora of critical methods. These essays aim to reassert the normative force of judgment and action, two concepts at the very core of literary analysis, systematic theology, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and other disciplines. Interpretation is essential to every humanistic discipline, and every interpretation is (...) an act of judgment. Yet the work of interpretation and judgment has been called into question by contemporary methods in the humanities, which incline either toward contextual determination of meaning or toward the suspension of judgment altogether. Action is closely related to judgment and interpretation and like them, it has been rendered questionable. An action is not simply the performance of a deed but requires the deed’s intelligibility, which can be secured only through interpretation and judgment. Organized into four broad themes—interiority/contemplation, ethics, politics/community, and aesthetics/image—the aim of this broad-ranging and insightful collection is to illuminate the histories of judgment and action, identify critical sites from which rethinking them may begin, clarify how they came to be challenged, and relocate them within a broader intellectual-historical trajectory that renders them intelligible. (shrink)

Solon's cryptic injunction : "Call no man happy until dead" -- A mourning happiness : the Athenian funeral oration -- Difficult happiness : the case of tragedy -- Aristotle's hermeneutic of happiness : the first forgetting -- The trial narrative in Richardson's Pamela : suspending the hermeneutic of happiness -- Effects of the trial narrative on the concept of happiness -- Marriage plot -- The tragedies of sentimentalism -- Kantian ethics and the discourses of modernity -- Happiness in revolution : (...) erasing the political concept of happiness. (shrink)

This chapter tries to show that there is indubitable evidence for the claim that the Yoga philosophy of Patañjali can be said to be a philosophy as therapeia. For this reference will be made particularly to the Sāṅkhya school, whose ontology and metaphysics are presupposed by Yoga philosophy. The Sāṅkhya school begins with the question about overcoming three kinds of ‘suffering’ that torment human beings, and Patañjali himself says that the implementation of yoga, is, among other things, for the sake (...) of minimising the afflictions. The second part of the chapter will be concerned with the philosophical activity referred to in Yoga itself, namely the active yoga, or yoga in the form of action, in order to show how this can be seen as advancing the case for Yoga as therapeia. (shrink)

Two of the terms in the title are from Vidyānandin’s Tattvārtha-śloka-vārttika, which is his commentary on Umāsvāti’s Tattvārtha-sūtra. Sūtra 6 of the TAS states the following: pramāṇa-nayair adhigamaḥ, ‘knowledge—of the seven categories—is obtained through the pramāṇas and the nayas’). Vidyānandin’s commentary on this sūtra 6 entails a total of 56 ślokas, with his own prose vārttika on each of them in varying lengths. TAŚV 1, 6, 1–8 deal with particulars and universals, for which he uses the synonymous pairs aṃśa/aṃśin and (...) avayava/avayavin. That he is attacking the Buddhist position regarding this age old theme in Indian philosophy, is evident also in that he quotes Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇa-vārttika. By the time he comes to his TAŚV 1, 6, 6, he establishes that an object as a whole is open to perception and that the Buddhist also accepts perception as a valid means of knowledge, but does not accept the perception of an object as a whole. From TAŚV 1, 6, 11 onwards Vidyānandin continues with the same theme, elaborating his attack of the Buddhist view even further, doing so in terms of svasaṃvedana, pratyakṣa and pramāṇa. The presentation will attempt to deal with these concepts in order to see how Vidyānandin vindicates the Jaina position vis-à-vis the Buddhist one. This presentation will continue from my previous study of Vidyānandin’s TAŚV 1, 6, 1–10. (shrink)