The transgender population generally faces rights violations and discrimination in their day-to-day lives, which was exacerbated during the recent pandemic. This necessitates close scrutiny from an ethics perspective. Following directives from a 2014 Supreme Court judgement, Kerala became the first Indian state to implement a comprehensive policy to enforce the constitutional rights of transgender people. Despite such positive actions, a basic social tendency not to respect gender diversity has led to discrimination and marginalization. This was very evident during the pandemic. (...) In this empirical work, we have documented the lives of the transgender community during the pandemic wherein they share experiences related to livelihood, interaction with the healthcare system, and acceptance in society vis-à-vis the pandemic. Simply providing third-gender status will not help the gender-marginalized community to grow to their fullest potential and have a better lifestyle on par with others in mainstream society. (shrink)

Does humanity have a moral obligation toward the estimated millions of individuals who will be displaced from their homes over the course of this century primarily due to sea-level rise as the earth's climate warms? What form should these actions take?

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 791-796.

In recent decades, there have been major changes in the organisation of social reproduction. As middle-class women have entered the workforce in large numbers, and state provision of childcare and other welfare services has been scaled back under neo-liberalism, there has been an unprecedented outsourcing of household labour to the market. The resulting commodification of social reproduction has not liberated women from the demands of housework but has largely shifted this work away from women in the Global North towards migrant (...) women workers from poor and heavily indebted countries of the Global South. At the same time, there has also been a huge increase in internal migration within Global South countries, as newly wealthy middle classes in the cities are being serviced by poor rural women. Commodified domestic labour relies on the existence of gendered and racialised migrant workers. This article examines the domestic workers’ strike as an effective and urgent mode of political action given the massive and growing concentration of migrant women in domestic work. This requires a reassessment of earlier feminist strategies based on a nuclear family model and current advocacy strategies that, influenced by foundations, have rejected the strike tactic in favour of limited legal strategies. This article draws on my empirical research on domestic workers’ movements in the USA and India in order to highlight emerging strategies of labour movements. (shrink)

In this paper we undertake an examination of the presence of similar “women-protective” discourses in policy debates occurring over two bills on reproductive-related topics considered during the 2013 California legislature session. The first bill, now signed into law, allows nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician assistants to perform first-trimester aspiration abortions. The second bill, had it passed, would remove the prohibition on paying women for providing eggs to be used for research purposes. Using frame analysis we find evidence of (...) similar protective arguments by opponents of both bills, although these advocates do not share ideological positions on abortion rights or women's autonomy. In the case of AB154, anti-abortion advocates use language and frames that call for protecting the health of women against the imputed interests of the “abortion industry.” In the case of AB926, feminists and pro-choice advocates evoke similar frameworks for the protection of women against the interests of the “medical research industry.” Both sides argue for the “protection of women,” from opposing positions on the rights and autonomy of women in relationship to reproductive freedom. (shrink)

In cloud security, intrusion detection system (IDS) is one of the challenging research areas. In a cloud environment, security incidents such as denial of service, scanning, malware code injection, virus, worm, and password cracking are getting usual. These attacks surely affect the company and may develop a financial loss if not distinguished in time. Therefore, securing the cloud from these types of attack is very much needed. To discover the problem, this paper suggests a novel IDS established on a combination (...) of a leader-based k-means clustering (LKM), optimal fuzzy logic system. Here, at first, the input dataset is grouped into clusters with the use of LKM. Then, cluster data are afforded to the fuzzy logic system (FLS). Here, normal and abnormal data are inquired by the FLS, while FLS training is done by the grey wolf optimization algorithm through maximizing the rules. The clouds simulator and NSL-Knowledge Discovery and DataBase (KDD) Cup 99 dataset are applied to inquire about the suggested method. Precision, recall, and F-measure are conceived as evaluation criteria. The obtained results have denoted the superiority of the suggested method in comparison with other methods. (shrink)

The “social licence to operate” has been invoked in science policy discussions including the 2007 Universal Ethical Code for scientists issued by the UK Government Office for Science. Drawing from sociological research on social licence and STS interventions in science policy, the authors explore the relevance of expectations of a social licence for scientific research and scientific contributions to public decision-making, and what might be involved in seeking to create one. The process of seeking a social licence is not the (...) same as trying to create public or community acceptance for a project whose boundaries and aims have already been fully defined prior to engagement. Such attempts to “capture” the public might be successful from time to time but their legitimacy is open to question especially where their engagement with alternative research futures is “thin”. Contrasting a national dialogue on stem cells with the early history of research into bioenergy, we argue that social licence activities need t.. (shrink)

This article critically engages with the influential theory of ‘‘molecularized biopower’’ and ‘‘politics of life’’ developed by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. Molecularization is assumed to signal the end of population-centred biopolitics and the disciplining of subjects as described by Foucault, and the rise of new forms of biosociality and biological citizenship. Drawing on empirical work in Science and Technology Studies, we argue that this account is limited by a focus on novelty and assumptions about the transformative power of the (...) genetic life sciences. We suggest that biopower consists of a more complex cluster of relationships between the molecular and the population. The biological existence of different human beings is politicized through different complementary and competing discourses around medical therapies, choices at the beginning and end of life, public health, environment, migration and border controls, implying a multiple rather than a singular politics of life. (shrink)

An economically viable and environmental friendly method of generating hydrogen for fuel cells is by the reaction of certain metals with steam, called metalsteam reforming (MSR). This technique does not generate any toxic by-products nor contributes to the undesirable greenhouse effect. From the standpoint of favorable thermodynamics, total environmental benignity, and attractive economics, iron appears to be the metal of choice for such a process. An inexpensive source of iron for the MSR is the steel industry's mill-scale waste via hydrogen (...) and carbothermic reduction, both of which are energy-intensive processes. These have been eliminated by a novel, solution-based room temperature technique producing nanoscale iron, thus obviating the sintering of iron or iron oxide and deactivation during the cyclic operation of MSR. Some preliminary results are presented of an investigation aimed at converting the mill-scale waste into nanoscale iron, which was subsequently used in generating hydrogen for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. (shrink)

This response argues that the delegitimization of scientific authority provides a much-needed opportunity to examine the ethics, pragmatics and metaphysics of science's relationship to other forms of knowledge. While sharing Nanda's concerns about an unreflexive valorizaion of indigenous knowledge particularly as it applies to Hindu-nationalist justifications of its own reactionary project, I suggest that the political implications of science critique can only be evaluated fairly through an understanding of what is at stake in specific contexts. Rather than rejecting STS approaches (...) and visions of 'alternative modernities' tout court, I argue that they can assist in furthering the Enlightenment project of critical reason. Using empirical examples form research on health and the environment, the paper suggests ways in which the blurring of nature, technology, society and the human could be politically productive. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 94-97.

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected ethnic minorities and migrants, not only through an increased risk of infection and death (Pan et al. 2020), but also through experiences of harassment, mar...

The phrase 'here be monsters' or 'here be dragons' is commonly believed to have been used on ancient maps to indicate unexplored territories which might hide unknown beasts. This book maps and explores places between science and politics that have been left unexplored, sometimes hiding in plain sight - in an era when increased emphasis was put on 'openness'. The book is rooted in a programme of research funded by the Leverhulme Trust entitled: 'Making Science Public: Challenges and opportunities, which (...) runs from 2014 to 2017. One focus of our research was to critically question the assumption that making science more open and public could solve various issues around scientific credibility, trust, and legitimacy. Chapters in this book explore the risks and benefits of this perspective with relation to transparency, responsibility, experts and faith. (shrink)

Two stages of the creative writing process were characterized through mobile scalp electroencephalography in a 16-week creative writing workshop. Portable dry EEG systems with synchronized head acceleration, video recordings, and journal entries, recorded mobile brain-body activity of Spanish heritage students. Each student's brain-body activity was recorded as they experienced spaces in Houston, Texas, and while they worked on their creative texts. We used Generalized Partial Directed Coherence to compare the functional connectivity among both stages. There was a trend of higher (...) gPDC in the Preparation stage from right temporo-parietal to left anterior-frontal brain scalp areas within 1–50 Hz, not reaching statistical significance. The opposite directionality was found for the Generation stage, with statistical significant differences restricted to the delta band. There was statistically higher gPDC observed for the inter-hemispheric connections AF07–AF08 in the delta and theta bands, and AF08 to TP09 in the alpha and beta bands. The left anterior-frontal recordings showed higher power localized to the gamma band for the Generation stage. An ancillary analysis of Sample Entropy did not show significant difference. The information transfer from anterior-frontal to temporal-parietal areas of the scalp may reflect multisensory interpretation during the Preparation stage, while brain signals originating at temporal-parietal toward frontal locations during the Generation stage may reflect the final decision making process to translate the multisensory experience into a creative text. (shrink)

Day-to-day lives are affected globally by the epidemic coronavirus 2019. With an increasing number of positive cases, India has now become a highly affected country. Chronic diseases affect individuals with no time identification and impose a huge disease burden on society. In this article, an Efficient Recurrent Neural Network with Ensemble Classifier is built using VGG-16 and Alexnet with weighted model to predict disease and its level. The dataset is partitioned randomly into small subsets by utilizing mean-based splitting method. Various (...) models of classifier create a homogeneous ensemble by utilizing an accuracy-based weighted aging classifier ensemble, which is a weighted model’s modification. Two state of art methods such as Graph Sequence Recurrent Neural Network and Hybrid Rough-Block-Based Neural Network are used for comparison with respect to some parameters such as accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and relative absolute error. As a result, it is found that the proposed ERNN-EC method accomplishes accuracy of 95.2%, precision of 91%, recall of 85%, F1-score of 83.4%, and RAE of 41.6%. (shrink)

BackgroundCognitive deficits are one of the core features of major depressive disorder that play crucial role in functional recovery. Studies have explored cognitive deficits in MDD, however, given inconsistent results, especially in mild-moderate MDD. Recently, studies have explored music as cognitive ability in various clinical conditions. In MDD, large focus has been on evaluating emotion deficits and just a handful on music cognition. With growing evidence on use of music based intervention to target cognitive deficits, it is imperative to explore (...) nature of music cognitive ability in MDD.AimTo examine musical and neuro-cognitive deficits in patients with mild-moderate MDD.MethodsPatients diagnosed with mild or moderate MDD and matched healthy controls were evaluated on selected tests from NIMHANS Neuropsychological test battery and Montreal battery for evaluation of amusia.ResultsMDD group performed significantly lower than HC on working memory, verbal learning and retention. Three indices were computed for a comprehensive evaluation. Groups did not differ significantly in any of the indices- focused attention, executive function, learning and memory as well as on music cognition. Focused attention and memory index predicted music cognition in HC and the combined group. Attention alone contributed to 62.1% of variance in music cognition. Similarly, music cognition significantly predicted focused attention.ConclusionIndividuals with mild-moderate MDD show significant deficits in working memory, verbal learning and memory, however, not in music cognition. There exists a significant relationship between music cognition and attention, which could be implicated in use of music interventions to ameliorate cognitive deficits. Limitations of study include small sample size and heterogeneity. Future studies on larger cohort examining musical emotion perception and neurocognition is imperative to have deeper understanding of this debilitating condition. (shrink)

The ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez has reignited debate in Latin America and internationally on the questions of socialism and revolution. This forum brings together six leading intellectuals from different revolutionary traditions and introduces their reflections on class-struggle, the state, imperialism, counter-power, revolutionary parties, community and communes, workplaces, economy, politics, society, culture, race, gender, and the hopes, contradictions, and prospects of ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ in contemporary Venezuela.

We construct an existentially undecidable complete discretely valued field of mixed characteristic with existentially decidable residue field and decidable algebraic part, answering a question by Anscombe–Fehm in a strong way. Along the way, we construct an existentially decidable field of positive characteristic with an existentially undecidable finite extension, modifying a construction due to Kesavan Thanagopal.