Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita on the Gajasūtra. By S. L. P. Anjaneya Sarma and François Grimal with the collaboration of Luther Obrock. Regards sur l’Asie du Sud / South Asian Perspectives, vol. 1. Vyākhyānamālā, vol. 1. Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2013. Pp. iii + 136. Rs 450, €21.

The National Blood Policy in India relies heavily on voluntary blood donors, as they are usually assumed to be associated with low levels of transfusion-transmitted infections . In India, it is mandatory to test every unit of blood collected for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS, syphilis and malaria. Donors come to the blood bank with altruistic intentions. If donors test positive to any of the five infections, their blood is discarded. Although the blood policy advocates disclosure of TTI status, donors (...) are not, in practice, informed about their results. The onus is on the donor to contact the blood bank. Out of approximately 16 000 donations in the past 2 years, 438 tested positive for TTI, including 107 for HIV. Only 20% of the donors contacted the blood bank; none of them were HIV positive. Disclosure by blood banks of TTI status by telephone or mail has resulted in serious consequences for some donors. Health providers face an ethical dilemma, in the absence of proper mechanisms in place for disclosure of test results, regarding notification to donors who may test positive but remain ignorant of their TTI status. Given the high cost of neglecting to notify infected donors, the authors strongly recommend the use of rapid tests before collecting blood, instead of the current practice, which takes 3 h to obtain results, and disclosure of results directly to the donor by a counsellor, to avoid dropouts and to ensure confidentiality. (shrink)

The preparation of layers of amorphous Se by plasma-enhanced CVD using the hydride H2Se as precursor gas is described. Information concerning the structure of the films was obtained from Raman spectroscopy. The spectra of amorphous Se indicated that the dominant molecular structure is the eight-membered ring and/or a chain with Se8 molecular fragments. This material exhibited reversible photodarkening when illuminated at 77 K. In order to explain this phenomenon, we propose a mechanism which takes into account the role of the (...) lone-pair electron orbitals of Se in their contribution to structural ordering. Illumination can cause a distortion in the normal bonding direction between nearest-neighbour Se atoms and induce in this way intrinsic defect states located at the band edges. In the photo-darkened state, optical transition will occur between these defect states. (shrink)

In this work we study the relativistic mechanics of continuous media on a fundamental level using a manifestly covariant proper time procedure. We formulate equations of motion and continuity (and constitutive equations) that are the starting point for any calculations regarding continuous media. In the force free limit, the standard relativistic equations are regained, so that these equations can be regarded as a generalization of the standard procedure. In the case of an inviscid fluid we derive an analogue of the (...) Bernoulli equation. For irrotational flow we prove that the velocity field can be derived from a potential. If in addition, the fluid is incompressible, the potential must obey the d'Alembert equation, and thus the problem is reduced to solving the d'Alembert equation with specific boundary conditions (in both space and time). The solutions indicate the existence of light velocity sound waves in an incompressible fluid (a result known in previous literature (19) ). Relaxing the constraints and allowing the fluid to become linearly compressible one can derive a wave equation, from which the sound velocity can again be computed. For a stationary background flow, it has been demonstrated that the sound velocity attains its correct values for the incompressible and nonrelativistic limits. Finally viscosity is introduced, bulk and shear viscosity constants are defined, and we formulate equations for the motion of a viscous fluid. (shrink)

Avtor khudozhestvennyĭ kak teoreticheskai︠a︡ problema -- Avtor khudozhestvennyĭ kak istoriko-kulʹturologicheskai︠a︡ problema.

This book highlights some of the most pressing safety, ethical, legal and societal issues related to the diverse contexts in which robotic technologies apply. Focusing on the essential concept of well-being, it addresses topics that are fundamental not only for research, but also for industry and end-users, discussing the challenges in a wide variety of applications, including domestic robots, autonomous manufacturing, personal care robots and drones.

The level of medical care to patients and the success of the implementation of the national project "Health" depend on the health status and doctor's professionalism. Modern healthcare reform is being implemented by optimizing costs, merging medical organizations, closing ineffective hospitals, expanding the use of high-tech care and informatization of the doctor's activities. All this makes it necessary to assess the health of doctors. Scientists have studied the quality of life and identified the professional burnout of doctors in children's clinics (...) in different age groups. Primary care pediatricians have a higher quality of life score when compared to the standard [1]. However, all groups have a high level of professional burnout. The pre-retirement group of doctors has more unfavorable profile. They are highly professional specialists but may experience emotional discomfort because the pension system has been reformed. This situation requires the introduction of preventive work with doctors of this age as a group with great potential and capable of professional longevity. (shrink)

In his valuable contribution to the Fondation Hardt Entretiens of 1960 on Hesiod Professor La Penna dealt with the famous ‘theodicy of labour’ in Virgil, Georgics I. 118–59. He recalled that, whereas Hesiod made Prometheus' trickery the reason for Zeus' hiding fire and the other goods and so rendering labour necessary, Virgil omits mention of Prometheus or of any element of guilt.

The elements which every schoolboy learns on beginning Latin Verse Composition include a number of rules which seem arbitrarily designed to make the game harder. In hexameters, he is told, he must have a masculine caesura either in the third foot or in the second and fourth, and end normally with a disyllabic or a trisyllable; in pentameters he must end with a disyllabic; and in neither line may a single monosyllable stand at the end. Rarely, in my experience, is (...) any reason given him by way of redress, and he will search for one in vain in most of the school text-books, in introductions like Postgate's to Tibullus and Propertius, and in histories of Latin literature like Wight Duff's and Mackail's. This reticence may be due to the dissensions of experts on this subject and on the subject of Latin accentuation in general, but the theory that predominates in England, among those who hold a theory at all, explains so many of the phenomena that it deserves to be more widely and precisely known. The most detailed exposition of it is by E. H. Sturtevant, who summed up his analyses in a pair of articles in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1923–4. While his careful work is invaluable as marshalling the statistics and evidence, it errs on the side of excessive minuteness, and leaves room not merely for some additions, but for a different kind of treatment concerned less with bare statistics and more with poetic principles and historical development. Since Latin Verse Composition plays such an important part in English higher classical education, it seems desirable that a less technical and more accessible account should be available for English readers. Such an account I attempt to give here, keeping separate as far as possible the exposition and the consideration of the criticisms and rival theories that have been advanced. (shrink)

As in literature poetry precedes prose, so in poetry a special and ‘heightened’ diction seems to precede everyday language. Mr.T.S.Eliot has put it thus: ‘Every revolution in poetry is apt to be, and sometimes to announce itself as, a return to common speech.’ How does this apply to Greek and Latin ? There are objections to considering words in isolation from this point of view, since neutral ones are apt to go now grey, now purple, according to their company; but (...) if we do not do so, we deny ourselves the only considerable method of investigation that is still open to us. Again, we must recognize that most poems are composed largely of ordinary words, though these are often used in a way that is not ordinary. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind pronounced the “official doctrine” regarding the nature of the mind and the body as “hailing chiefly from Descartes.” That doctrine, anathematized by Ryle as “the dogma of the ghost in the machine,” is said to hold that every human being is composed of a body and a mind, that the body is physical whereas the mind is not, and that the mind may continue to exist when the body is destroyed. Ryle’s famous attack (...) on the official doctrine has undoubtedly stimulated Cartesian studies, both in those who wish to understand Descartes better in order to make the defense of the doctrine more effective and in those who wish to attack it, sometimes even with arguments which Ryle himself would have rejected. Occasionally, one reads a reference to “Platonic dualism,” not so much as a clearly defined alternative to Cartesian dualism but rather as an inchoate or loose version of Descartes’ doctrine. A recent exception is Richard Rorty who in the first chapter of his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature has insisted on the difference between the Platonic and the Cartesian positions, although it should perhaps be added that his hostility to the former is if anything greater than his hostility to the latter. Without suggesting that there are not obvious similarities in the Platonic and Cartesian versions of dualism, it will perhaps be useful to try to penetrate beneath the slogans in order to get a clearer picture of the arguments which impelled Plato to hold a position the strangeness which was evident even to his contemporaries. (shrink)

Disclosure of financial interests in scientific research is the centerpiece of the new conflict of interest regulations issued by the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation that became effective October 1, 1995. Several scientific journals have also established financial disclosure requirements for contributors. This paper measures the frequency of selected financial interests held among authors of certain types of scientific publications and assesses disclosure practices of authors. We examined 1105 university authors (first and last cited) from Massachusetts (...) institutions whose 789 articles, published in 1992, appeared in 14 scientific and medical journals. (shrink)

Purpose: One of my goals in the paper is to investigate why realists reject radical constructivism (RC) as well as social constructivism (SC) out of hand. I shall do this by means of commenting on Peter Slezak’s critical paper, Radical Constructivism: Epistemology, Education and Dynamite. My other goal is to explore why realists condemn the use of RC and SC in science and mathematics education for no stated reason, again by means of commenting on Slezak’s paper. Method: I restrict my (...) comments to Slezak’s paper and leave it to the reader to judge which, if any, of the reasons that I advance for these two states of affairs are not specific to Slezak’s paper. Other readers might not agree with my interpretations of Slezak’s paper, including Slezak himself, but I offer them after having worked with von Glasersfeld in interdisciplinary research in mathematics education for over 25 years. Findings: My findings are that Slezak: (1) rejects RC and SC on the basis of unjustified criticisms, (2) does not explore basic tenets of RC nor of SC beyond the unjustified criticisms, (3) rejects how SC and RC have been used in science and mathematics education, based at least in part on the unjustified criticisms, (3) dislikes how SC has been used in science and mathematics education, a dislike that fuels his rejection of any constructivism, and (4) doesn’t explore how RC has been used in scientific investigations in mathematics education. On the basis of these findings, I conclude that how epistemological models of knowing might be used in science or mathematics education would be better left to the educators who use them in interdisciplinary work. (shrink)