This book addresses a perennial challenge for product planners and designers alike: how to objectively specify and quantify the aesthetics of products. It provides automotive product planners with a framework for the grammar of aesthetics and a tool for quantifying the aesthetics of an intended product. Further, it equips styling designers with a tool for connecting engineering and aesthetics. Given the author’s extensive experience in motorcycle design, the motorcycle has been chosen as the frame of reference for automobiles. Specifically in (...) the field of automobile design, where engineering and aesthetics go hand in hand, it also becomes important to clearly and objectively define the relationship between engineering design and aesthetics. Accordingly, this book clearly establishes the objective parameters of aesthetics, puts forward a method for quantifying aesthetics, identifies the engineering design parameters affecting aesthetics, and determines the relationship between parameters of aesthetics and engineering design. As such, it offers a useful guide not only for design professionals, but also for students and researchers of design. (shrink)

The unborn healthy foetus is looked upon as a blessing by one and all. A plethora of thoughts arise in the brains of expectant parents. But what goes on in the brain of the yet unborn still remains a mystery. 'Foetal mind' is a reflection of functions of its organs of sense, an instrument of knowledge that may even be reduced to machine to demonstrate the effect of sense organs and brain contact. Testimony to this fact are the various waveform (...) patterns obtained non-invasively from the foetal Middle Cerebral Artery (MCA) by using Colour Doppler Ultrasound. Our study, conducted for evaluating the foetal MCA in a rural obstetric population in Maharashtra, India, explains how the MCA - a major artery supplying foetal brain, can give abundant information about foetal heart and foetal stress. When only the foetal heart is stressed by the presence of arrhythmias or ectopic beats, these changes are manifest in the foetal MCA velocity waveform pattern as seen on Colour Doppler study. When the entire foetus is under stress, as in cases of intra uterine growth retardation (IUGR), changes again manifest in the foetal MCA velocity waveform pattern and are designated as the foetal Brain Sparing Effect. Thus scientific evaluation of foetal MCA waveform can objectively demonstrate that the overtly non-communicating foetal brain indeed remains an internal organ of sense and a vital instrument of knowledge to clarify the various effects of sense organs and brain contact. Although the brain parenchyma or cerebral metabolism has not been studied here, cerebral vessels serve as a window to cerebral metabolism, as auto regulatory function of brain leads to changes in haemodynamics of cerebral vessels. Also, like other vessels, MCA mirrors foetal distress and IUGR; but unlike other vessels, e.g. the umbilical or uterine artery, which show these changes in the form of reduction or even reversal of diastolic flow, MCA shows an increase in diastolic component due to brain sparing effect. The unique connection between physical changes in the foetal heart, brain and mental operations are thus critically clarified to some extent, and this helps untangle and comprehend the lattice of mental operations. Although this preliminary study has its limitations, it still carries forward the present corpus of knowledge on the strength of its evidential and critical enquiry and helps unravel the concept of foetal consciousness. (shrink)

The Ten Chapters Of The Book Deals With Indian Tradition And Customs, Including Those Which Find Up A Place In Jain And Buddhist Literature, Vedanta, Brahmanical And Kshtriya Traditions.

This article explores the extent to which income inequality and income mobility—both considered indicators of economic inequality and conditions of formal regulatory institutions —facilitate or constrain the emergence of social entrepreneurship. Using 77,983 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey of 26 countries, and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, our results from multilevel analyses demonstrate that country-level income inequality increases the likelihood of individual-level engagement in social entrepreneurship, while (...) income mobility decreases this likelihood. Further, income mobility negatively moderates the influence of income inequality on social entrepreneurship, such that the condition of low income mobility and high income inequality is a stronger predictor of social entrepreneurship. We discuss implications and limitations of our study, and we suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

The folklore studies scholar, such as Dorson, was emphatic about the distinction between folklore and ‘fake lore’, one being authentic and the other as invented by the popular industry; however, he paradoxically maintained interest in the contemporariness of folklore. This was a paradox since the contemporariness of folklore is largely, and usually, due to intersections of folk with popular and political. Nevertheless, the emphasis on contemporariness was a harbinger of discussion on the potential dynamics of folklore, and everything buried therein, (...) including value orientation. This essay is guided by the observations emerging from folklore studies, socio-cultural anthropology and performance studies in order to get into a specific case of Bihu, a folk performance inclusive of songs, dance, attires and instruments inter alia in Assam, in the northeast of India. The curious case of Bihu in flux divulges dynamics of value orientation and intersections of identity politics, in the wake of the contemporariness of folklore. (shrink)

The horror of 7/7 and the radicalization of young British Muslims have prompted a flurry of obituaries gleefully chronicling the demise of multiculturalism. This article turns the clock back to revisit Bhikhu Parekh's Rethinking Multiculturalism, the scholarly cousin of the report by the Runnymede Commission on The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain, both published in 2000. It argues that multiculturalism has never been as universally acceptable as recent critiques would lead us to believe, but also that philosophical multiculturalism is the unfortunate (...) victim of a lazy conflation with political multiculturalism. While Parekh's multiculturalism is worryingly sympathetic to the prevailing management of cultural diversity, it also illuminates the orthodox Left's elective disengagement with questions of culture, ethnicity and religion. Recent events have brought home the message that neglecting the complexity of belonging only strengthens the impulse for sectarian collectivism. They awaken us to the fact that Britain's emerging political actors will be multiculturalism's children: citizens who refract their interests through the lens of their inherited cultures. The question is whether we constitute the fact of cultural diversity as a full stop, as Parekh does, or whether we creatively seize it to enable `multicultures' of social justice, as this article advocates. (shrink)

What is remarkably unique of the popular cinema in the region of South Asia? How does it lead beyond the vexed notions of the contemporary milieu, namely, hybrid local? How does it transcend the idea of nationally restricted local too? Looking through eclectic motley of popular cinema in the region, this article seeks to unravel such questions with reflexive propositions. It paves the way to comprehend cinematic identity of the region with the adjective of ‘melodrama’, as perceived through the local (...) sociocultural component. It is with the sweep of melodrama, arguably, that cinema of South Asia transcends the notions attached with the category of ‘local’. In this backdrop, this article moots a probing question: What is local in the regional cinemas? Does local mean merely a vexed category in contemporary context of transnational flow? Or there is more to the category of local, beyond the existing formulations? With these questions, this article seeks to participate in the available discourse showing the regional cinema underpinned by the essentially dynamic nature and scope of the local. (shrink)

Compendium of the Advaita philosophy with Candrakānta vivaraṇa Gujarati commentary and translation.

On Indic philosophy with Telugu commentary.

On philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya; portion of work on Indic philosophy.

On Advaita philosophy; commentary on Taittīriyopaniṣad.

Epitome of twelve principal Upanishads, Hindu Advaita classics.

Compendium on the fundamentals of Advaita philosophy; Sanskrit text with Hindi translation.

The essays centered on Gandhian philosophy collected in this book reflect on contemporary global issues and explore peaceful ways to address them. It is based on the premise that the Gandhian method of nonviolence can be an effective tool for conflict resolution and global peace.

We draw upon the attention-based view of the firm to identify the conditions under which community influentials (CIs) on a board impact a firm’s corporate social performance (CSP). We test our hypotheses with a panel data set of Fortune 500 firms from 2004 to 2008, including 3,955 unique firm–director combinations (aggregated to the board level). Although CIs are often considered less powerful directors, we identify that when the firm is experiencing poor CSP, CIs have a positive effect on CSP. The (...) ability of CIs to influence CSP is also conditional on the access of CIs and other board members to socially oriented board ties. Our article points out that power and influence is contingent on the decision context and the relative knowledge of organizational players, and that players with relatively lower power may improve their status and command attention when they can offer exclusive insight into important issues. (shrink)

Verse treatise, with Prakasika commentary, on fundamentals of the Mīmāṃsā school in Hindu philosophy.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has motivated medical ethicists and several task forces to revisit or issue new guidelines on allocating scarce medical resources. Such guidelines are relevant for the allocation of scarce therapeutics and vaccines and for allocation of ICU beds, ventilators, and other life-sustaining treatments or potentially scarce interventions. Principles underlying these guidelines, like saving the most lives, mitigating disparities, reciprocity to those who assume additional risk (eg, essential workers and clinical trial participants), and equal access may (...) compete with one another. We propose the use of a “categorized priority system” (also known as a “reserve system”) as an improvement over existing allocation methods, particularly because it may be able to achieve disparity mitigation better than other methods. (shrink)