The affinities of antibodies (Abs) for their target antigens (Ags) gradually increase in vivo following an infection or vaccination, but reach saturation at values well below those realisable in vitro. This ‘affinity ceiling’ could in many cases restrict our ability to fight infections and compromise vaccines. What determines the affinity ceiling has been an unresolved question for decades. Here, we argue that it arises from the strength of the chain of protein complexes that is pulled by B cells during the (...) process of Ag acquisition. The affinity ceiling is determined by the strength of the weakest link in the chain. We identify the weakest link and show that the resulting affinity ceiling can explain the Ab affinities realized in vivo, providing a conceptual understanding of Ab affinity maturation. We explore plausible evolutionary underpinnings of the affinity ceiling, examine supporting evidence and alternative hypotheses and discuss implications for vaccination strategies. (shrink)

Research Methodology for Social Sciences provides guidelines for designing and conducting evidence-based research in social sciences and interdisciplinary studies using both qualitative and quantitative data. Blending the particularity of different sub-disciplines and interdisciplinary nature of social sciences, this volume: Provides insights on epistemological issues and deliberates on debates over qualitative research methods; Covers different aspects of qualitative research techniques and evidence-based research techniques including survey design, choice of sample, construction of indices, statistical inferences, and data analysis; Discusses concepts, techniques, and (...) tools at different stages of research beginning with design of field surveys to collect raw data and then to analyze the data using statistical and econometric methods; With illustrations, examples and a reader friendly approach, this volume will serve as a key reference material for compulsory research methodology courses at Doctoral levels across different disciplines like Economics, Sociology, Women's Studies, Education, Anthropology, Political Science, International Relations, Philosophy, History, Business Management and the like. This volume will also be indispensable for post-graduate courses dealing with quantitative techniques and data analysis. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the ways through which companies gain legitimacy. However, CSR actions themselves are subject to public skepticism because of increased public awareness of greenwashing and scandalous corporate behavior. Legitimacy of CSR actions is indeed influenced by the actions of the company but also is rooted in the basic cultural values of a society and in the ideologies of evaluators. This study examines the legitimacy of CSR actions of publicly traded forest products companies as compared (...) to family-owned forest products companies. Results indicate a lower legitimacy for CSR actions of publicly traded companies than for family-owned companies. The study also examines the effect of social responsibility orientation (SRO) of evaluators on the legitimacy accorded to companies' CSR actions. We found that SRO was negatively associated with legitimacy, especially for women. Perceived profitability of companies was negatively associated with legitimacy of CSR actions for publicly traded but not for family-owned companies. (shrink)

Problems in peer review, the backbone of maintaining high standards in scientific publishing, have led to wide spread discontent within the scientific community. Training in the peer review process and a simpler format to assist in decision making are possible courses to improve and expedite the process of peer review and scientific publishing. The authors discuss problems in the peer review process focusing on challenges related to major revisions and reviewer's wish list of experiments; this leads to the loss of (...) time and money. Major revisions rarely lead to significant improvements, while simultaneously delay the dissemination of knowledge. The authors propose simple solutions including training peer reviewers to improve the peer review system. (shrink)

This article investigates the universal values scale, Schwartz Value Survey for its applicability to measure cultural context-specific values. The study establishes a need to construct a new scale by identifying and incorporating Indian culture-specific values in SVS. Deriving data using self-assessment questionnaires from 709 respondents in 2 studies and analysing them using principal component analysis and structural equation modelling, the article reconceptualizes Schwartz’s Portrait Values Questionnaire and the 10 motivational value factors and develops a new 76-item Holistic Values Scale to (...) measure Indian values using well-established scale development methods. The article further presents the research and policy implications and future research areas in this domain. (shrink)

The reproductive justice framework shifted understandings and analyses of reproductive oppression beyond individual ‘choice’ by incorporating analyses of structural injustice, racism, and social and economic concerns. In this article, we build on understandings of the reproductive justice framework by integrating a postcolonial lens and bring the powerful conceptual tools of postcolonial feminist theory to bear on issues of reproductive oppression in India. We articulate the elements of such a postcolonial lens—the transnational operation of race, Orientalism, the subjective experience of colonialism (...) as well as the role of the nation-state and nationalism in shaping reproductive lives—and demonstrate how these elements, along with religion, caste, and right-wing Hindu fundamentalism, structure reproductive oppression in India. Through our discussion of the issues of sterilization, sex-selective abortion, and commercial surrogacy in India we reveal how the underlying coloniality of Malthusian ideas of controlling population to reduce poverty, Orientalist and racist tropes of moral and intellectual inferiority and sexual licentiousness, and the Orientalist and colonial framing of the “East” as backward, uncivilized, and dependent clearly shape reproductive issues in India. Offering a nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of reproductive oppression within India, our discussion brings reproductive justice into conversation with a feminist postcolonial perspective to foreground the continued impact of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and settler colonialism on reproductive oppression. (shrink)

Can mandated adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) improve firm value? Most CSR adoption is purely voluntary. However, governments regularly encourage CSR adoption with soft regulations that vary from simply endorsing and symbolically supporting CSR to requiring the adoption of specific practices. Governments have resisted fully mandating CSR because there is some concern universally that mandated CSR may reduce firm value. There is, however, no empirical clarity as to whether mandated CSR impedes or improves firm value. We address this uncertainty (...) by analyzing the effects of the mandated adoption of CSR that the government of India legislated in 2014. Drawing on a sample of 1,526 publicly traded firms and deploying a combinative analytical framework comprising an event study, regression discontinuity design, and a difference-in-differences technique, we conclude that India’s CSR mandate did, in fact, increase value for all firms bound by the mandate. This value-enhancing effect was greater for foreign firms relative to domestic firms. Our results refute previous research showing that India’s CSR mandate diminished firm value. (shrink)

Implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chains is not a trivial task. In fact, many firms in recent years have publicly proclaimed that in order to keep their CSR commitments, they had to reduce reliance on external suppliers by vertically integrating their operations. Our aim in this article is to examine whether there is truly a relationship between a firm’s CSR performance and its level of vertical integration. Drawing on a multi-industry sample of 2,715 firm-year observations, and after addressing (...) endogeneity concerns, we demonstrate that firms with higher CSR performance tend to vertically integrate more (or, outsource less). We also demonstrate that this tendency is weaker for firms that have higher degrees of asset specificity or international diversification. Our core conclusion is that CSR performance and outsourcing are at odds, but firms can reconcile this tension by deepening their collaborations with suppliers. (shrink)

The business case for social responsibility is one of the most widely studied topics in the business and society literature that focuses on large firms. This attention is understandable because large firms have an obligation to shareholders who, as commonly assumed, seek to maximize returns on their investments, in turn, pressing corporate managers to show that firms’ expenditures in social engagement would pay off. Small firms, on the other hand, rarely face such pressures, yet the BCSR logic is increasingly applied (...) to small firms as well. Our primary objective in this paper is to examine whether and how much do small firm owners’ perceptions of BCSR affect the firm’s social engagement. In finding a fine-grained answer to those questions, we consider BCSR as a two-dimensional construct consisting of tangible and intangible benefits, and also integrate the BCSR perspective with the slack resource perspective to offer a motivation-capacity lens to examine firm’s social engagement. Drawing on a multi-industry sample of 478 small firms in the US, we find that while small firm owners’ perceptions about potential tangible benefits of social engagement are not related to the firm’s social engagement, perceptions about potential intangible are positively related. Firm's financial performance is also positively related to its social engagement, but there is no interaction between potential benefits and financial performance. This study contributes to an improved understanding about small firms’ social engagement, which still remains an understudied area. Our results are in line with studies which argue that firms’ social engagement is a response to institutional factors. (shrink)

This experiment investigated the effect of format (line vs. bar), viewers’ familiarity with variables, and viewers’ graphicacy (graphical literacy) skills on the comprehension of multivariate (three variable) data presented in graphs. Fifty-five undergraduates provided written descriptions of data for a set of 14 line or bar graphs, half of which depicted variables familiar to the population and half of which depicted variables unfamiliar to the population. Participants then took a test of graphicacy skills. As predicted, the format influenced viewers’ interpretations (...) of data. Specifically, viewers were more likely to describe x–y interactions when viewing line graphs than when viewing bar graphs, and they were more likely to describe main effects and “z–y” (the variable in the legend) interactions when viewing bar graphs than when viewing line graphs. Familiarity of data presented and individuals’ graphicacy skills interacted with the influence of graph format. Specifically, viewers were most likely to generate inferences only when they had high graphicacy skills, the data were familiar and thus the information inferred was expected, and the format supported those inferences. Implications for multivariate data display are discussed. (shrink)

Current formal dialectical models postulate normative rules that enable discussants to conduct dialogical interactions without committing fallacies. Though the rules for conducting a dialogue are supposed to apply to interactions between actual arguers, they are without exception theoretically motivated. This creates a gap between model and reality, because dialogue participants typically leave important content-related elements implicit. Therefore, analysts cannot readily relate normative rules to actual debates in ways that will be empirically confirmable. This paper details a new, data-driven method for (...) describing discussants’ actual reply structures, wherein corpus studies serve to acknowledge the complexity of natural argumentation. Rather than refer exclusively to propositional content as an indicator of arguing pro/contra a given claim, the proposed approach to dialogue structure tracks the sequence of dialogical moves itself. This arguably improves the applicability of theoretical dialectical models to empirical data, and thus advances the study of dialogue systems. (shrink)

The U.S. Federal regulations allow institutional review boards (IRBs) to approve non-beneficial pediatric research when the risks are a minor increase over minimal, provided that the research is likely to develop generalizable knowledge about the subjects' disorder or condition. This “subjects' condition” requirement is quite controversial; commentators have argued for a variety of interpretations. Despite this considerable disagreement in the literature, there have not been any attempts to apply principles of legal interpretation to determine how the subjects' condition requirement should (...) be understood. (shrink)

This paper proposes that issues evaluation can be conducted by a framework which integrates the concept of a legitimacy gap with expectational gaps (factual, conformance, and ideal gaps). Using this framework, this paper empirically demonstrates the existence of expectational gaps in the context of the forest products industry by means of a quantitative survey. Results indicate that significant expectational gaps exist. This framework may have relevance for both issues management and legitimacy scholars.

Corporate net-zero carbon emission pledges abound and so does skepticism about the results they could deliver. Three approaches proposed here can ensure these pledges alleviate, rather than aggravate, the climate crisis.

This important and comprehensive work of 18th-century Islamic religious thought written in Arabic by a pre-eminent South Asian scholar provides an extensive and detailed picture of Muslim theology and interpretive strategies on the eve of the modern period.

When considering external assistive systems for people with motor impairments, gaze has been shown to be a powerful tool as it is anticipatory to motor actions and is promising for understanding intentions of an individual even before the action. Up until now, the vast majority of studies investigating the coordinated eye and hand movement in a grasping task focused on single objects manipulation without placing them in a meaningful scene. Very little is known about the impact of the scene context (...) on how we manipulate objects in an interactive task. In the present study, it was investigated how the scene context affects human object manipulation in a pick-and-place task in a realistic scenario implemented in VR. During the experiment, participants were instructed to find the target object in a room, pick it up, and transport it to a predefined final location. Thereafter, the impact of the scene context on different stages of the task was examined using head and hand movement, as well as eye tracking. As the main result, the scene context had a significant effect on the search and transport phases, but not on the reach phase of the task. The present work provides insights into the development of potential supporting intention predicting systems, revealing the dynamics of the pick-and-place task behavior once it is realized in a realistic context-rich scenario. (shrink)

This essay begins by focusing on four cultural characters that signify different but associated aspects of the changing destiny of the human figure at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. These characters embody the human figure, in the double sense of form and metaphor, at work, at leisure and at war, and as gendered cultural and philosophical ideal. It is our suggestion that they provide excellent images of a general economy of the future present. Their significance as indices (...) of the destiny of the human resides in the way that they disclose the effects of a restricted economy that overflows its boundaries to incorporate, utilise and restrict every element of its generalised expenditure, to use the categories of Georges Bataille: its sumptuary excess, its sacred forms, its abjected waste, its modes of eroticism, its violence. The essay continues by discussing the implications of, and consequences for, human life in the face of the corporate or techno‐bureaucratic drive to incorporate the ‘impossible‐real’. For Paul Virilio, the technological desire to overwrite the temporal and spatial dimensions of ‘the actual’ discloses something of the ‘divine’ in this new technology. In conclusion, then, the essay questions what resistance there might be to the law of the machine‐God who lies, impossibly, as the immanent being of machinic efficiency, operativity and becoming excellence. (shrink)

تشخيص فكري ومعرفي لمفهوم الأسرة ومكانتها في الفكر الإسلامي، وتفحّصٌ علمي ومنهجي لأسس البناء الأسري ومقاصده، وكشفٌ عن تأثير التحوّلات الاجتماعية في الأسرة والتحديات التي تواجهها، وتتبعٌ لانعكاسات الفكر الغربي في المنظومة القيمية للأسرة، وتبيّنٌ لبعض التجارب والخبرات في مجال المحافظة على دور الأسرة، لا سيما بعد هيمنة النموذج المعرفي الغربي، ومحاولة طمسه للخصوصيات الثقافية والمجتمعية. حاولت بحوث هذا الكتاب أن تجيب عن تساؤلات معرفية ومجتمعية مهمة مثل: ما أهم التحديات التي تواجه الأسرة المسلمة في الراهن المعاصر وكيفية مواجهتها، وما (...) التغيرات التي طرأت على الأسرة المسلمة في ظل التطورات والتسارعات المجتمعية والاقتصادية والتقنية إلخ، وما التصوّر الإسلامي لدور الأسرة في بناء المجتمع، وما دور مؤسسات المجتمع المدني في الحد من تأثير الاستلاب الثقافي، وما الإسهام الذي قدمته حركات الإصلاح الإسلامية في مجال المحافظة على الدور المحوري للأسرة في تشكيل الشخصية الإسلامية القادرة على تفعيل النهوض الحضاري؟ وقد أسهم المشاركون في هذا العمل الجماعي، الذين بلغ عددهم واحداً وعشرين باحثاً، في محاورة هذه الأسئلة المعرفية، وفي التأسيس لمنظومة معرفية مجتمعية قادرة على الإسهام في البناء الحضاري، وفي توجيه دفة الأسرة بما ينسجم مع التوجيهات الربانية والفطرة الإنسانية. (shrink)

This paper proposes two formal models for understanding real-life dialogues, aimed at capturing argumentative structures performatively enacted during conversations. In the course of the investigation, two types of discourse with a high degree of well-structured argumentation were chosen: moral debate and financial communication. The research project found itself confronted by a need to analyse, structure and formally describe large volumes of textual data, where this called for the application of computational tools. It is expected that the results of the proposed (...) research will make a contribution to formal systems modelling and the evaluation of communication from the point of view of argument soundness. (shrink)

Research teams have made considerable progress in treating absolute uterine factor infertility through uterus transplantation, though studies have differed on the choice of either deceased or living donors. While researchers continue to analyze the medical feasibility of both approaches, little attention has been paid to the ethics of using deceased versus living donors as well as the protections that must be in place for each. Both types of uterus donation also pose unique regulatory challenges, including how to allocate donated organs; (...) whether the donor / donor's family has any rights to the uterus and resulting child; how to manage contact between the donor / donor's family, recipient, and resulting child; and how to track outcomes moving forward. (shrink)

Business legitimacy is important for any business, especially in times of economic downturn and increased media attention on corporate scandals. However,legitimacy is a quality that comes from society itself, sometimes influenced by the actions or image of the firm, but also rooted in the basic cultural values of the population. This study takes “legitimacy gap” as its dependent variable, defining it as the difference between expected and observed levels of social and environmental performance for both publicly-traded and family-owned business. The (...) study was conducted with a random sample using mailed surveys, and was oriented towards the forest products sector. Results indicate that family-owned businesses have lower legitimacy gaps (therefore, higher legitimacy) than publicly-traded companies, especially when the latter are considered very profitable. These findings were especially strong for women and for respondentswith a high social responsibility (SRO) orientation. (shrink)

Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics. Muzzafar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 516. $89.50, £62 ; $29.50, £20.50.

Thus far, the academic focus has been limited to understand how hybrid organizations balance goal plurality. However, the question how hybrids engage (or fail to engage) local communities in this process and the potential challenges involved has remained unaddressed. Relying on an inductive multiple case study of six Canadian community forest enterprises (CFEs), we describe dilemmas that arise between community engagement and CFEs’ other goals that form their social mission, as well as a distinct set of compromise tactics to address (...) them. We further identify a tension that arises from two distinct dimensions inherent to community engagement that are inherently interwoven yet contradicting. We add to research on paradox by showing that tensions not merely arise between outcome-focused goals that stem from organizational hybridity, but demonstrate that individual goal prescriptions in itself entail elements that cause tension, and warrant paradoxical management to ensure hybrids’ success in fulfilling their overall mission. (shrink)

Visual masking of primes lowers prime visibility but spares processing of primes as reflected in prime–target congruence and prime–response compatibility effects. However, the question is how to appropriately measure prime visibility. Here, we tested the influence of three procedural variables on prime visibility measures: prime–target similarity, prime–response similarity, and the variability of prime–response mappings. Our results show that a low prime–target similarity is a favorable condition for a prime visibility measure because it increases the sensitivity of this measure in comparison (...) to a high prime–target similarity. (shrink)

Believing that p, assuming that p, and imagining that p involve regarding p as true—or, as we shall call it, accepting p. What distinguishes belief from the other modes of acceptance? We claim that conceiving of an attitude as a belief, rather than an assumption or an instance of imagining, entails conceiving of it as an acceptance that is regulated for truth, while also applying to it the standard of being correct if and only if it is true. We argue (...) that the second half of this claim, according to which the concept of belief includes a standard of correctness, is required to explain the fact that the deliberative question whether to believe that p is transparent to the question whether p. This argument raises various questions. Is there such a thing as deliberating whether to believe? Is the transparency of the deliberative question whether to believe that p the same as the transparency of the factual question whether I do believe that p? We will begin by answering these questions and then turn to a series of possible objections to our argument. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare providers who are accountable for patient care safety and quality but who are not empowered to actualize them experience moral distress. Interventions to mitigate moral distress in the healthcare organization are needed. Objective: To evaluate the effect on moral distress and clinician empowerment of an established, health-system-wide intervention, Moral Distress Consultation. Methods: A quasi-experimental, mixed methods study using pre/post surveys, structured interviews, and evaluation of consult themes was used. Consults were requested by staff when moral distress was present. (...) The purpose of consultation is to identify the causes of moral distress, barriers to action, and strategies to improve the situation. Intervention participants were those who attended a moral distress consult. Control participants were staff surveyed prior to the consult. Interviews were conducted after the consult with willing participants and unit managers. Moral distress was measured using the Moral Distress Thermometer. Empowerment was measured using the Global Empowerment Scale. Results: Twenty-one consults were conducted. Analysis included 116 intervention and 30 control surveys, and 11 interviews. A small but significant decrease was found among intervention participants, especially intensive care staff. Empowerment was unchanged. Interview themes support the consult service as an effective mode for open discussion of difficult circumstances and an important aspect of a healthy work environment. Conclusions: Moral distress consultation is an organization-wide mechanism for addressing moral distress. Consultation does not resolve moral distress but helps staff identify strategies to improve the situation. Further studies including follow up may elucidate consultation effectiveness. (shrink)