Electroencephalography provides a non-invasive means to advancing our understanding of the development and function of the brain. However, the majority of the world’s population residing in low and middle income countries has historically been limited from contributing to, and thereby benefiting from, such neurophysiological research, due to lack of scalable validated methods of EEG data collection. In this study, we establish a standard operating protocol to collect approximately 3 min each of eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG data using a low-cost (...) portable EEG device in rural households through formative work in the community. We then evaluate the acceptability of these EEG assessments to young children and feasibility of administering them through non-specialist workers. Finally, we describe properties of the EEG recordings obtained using this novel approach to EEG data collection. The formative phase was conducted with 9 families which informed protocols for consenting, child engagement strategies and data collection. The protocol was then implemented on 1265 families. 977 children and 1199 adults provided resting-state data for this study. 259 children refused to wear the EEG cap or removed it, and 58 children refused the eyes-closed recording session. Hardware or software issues were experienced during 30 and 25 recordings in eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions respectively. Disturbances during the recording sessions were rare and included participants moving their heads, touching the EEG headset with their hands, opening their eyes within the eyes-closed recording session, and presence of loud sounds in the testing environment. Similar to findings in laboratory-based studies from high-income settings, the percentage of recordings which showed an alpha peak was higher in eyes-closed than eyes-open condition, with the peak occurring most frequently in electrodes at O1 and O2 positions, and the mean frequency of the alpha peak was found to be lower in children as compared to adults. We observed a deterioration in the EEG signal with prolonged device usage. This study demonstrates the acceptability, feasibility and utility of conducting EEG research at scale in a rural low-resource community, while highlighting its potential limitations, and offers the impetus needed to further refine the methods and devices and validate such scalable methods to overcome existing research inequity. (shrink)

Social media companies commonly design their platforms in a way that renders them addictive. Some governments have declared internet addiction a major public health concern, and the World Health Organization has characterized excessive internet use as a growing problem. Our article shows why scholars, policy makers, and the managers of social media companies should treat social media addiction as a serious moral problem. While the benefits of social media are not negligible, we argue that social media addiction raises unique ethical (...) concerns not raised by other, more familiar addictive products, such as alcohol and cigarettes. In particular, we argue that addicting users to social media is impermissible because it unjustifiably harms users in a way that is both demeaning and objectionably exploitative. Importantly, the attention-economy business model of social media companies strongly incentivizes them to perpetrate this wrongdoing. (shrink)

Autistic children do not consistently show conventional signs of social engagement, which some have interpreted to mean that they are not interested in connecting with other people. If someone does not act like they are interested in connecting with you, it may make it difficult to feel connected to them. And yet, some parents report feeling strongly connected to their autistic children. We conducted phenomenological interviews with 13 mothers to understand how they experienced connection with their 5- to 14-year-old nonspeaking (...) autistic children. Mothers of nonspeaking autistic children represent a unique group in which to study connection because their children both may not seem interested in connecting with them and have limited ability to communicate effectively using speech, a common way people connect with each other. The mothers in this study interpreted a range of child behaviors—some unconventional, but many conventional—as signs that their children were interested in connecting with them, (re)framed child behaviors that could undermine connection as caused by factors unrelated to the relationship, and expressed several convictions that may help build and sustain connection in the face of uncertainty about the meaning of their children’s behavior. Even though their autistic children may not consistently act in conventional socially oriented ways, these mothers reported perceiving their children’s behavior as embedded within an emotionally reciprocal relationship. (shrink)

Progress in psychological science can be limited by a number of factors, not least of which are the starting assumptions of scientists themselves. We believe that some influential accounts of autism rest on a questionable assumption that many of its behavioral characteristics indicate a lack of social interest – an assumption that is flatly contradicted by the testimony of many autistic people themselves. In this article, we challenge this assumption by describing alternative explanations for four such behaviors: low levels of (...) eye contact, infrequent pointing, motor stereotypies, and echolalia. The assumption that autistic people's unusual behaviors indicate diminished social motivation has had profound and often negative effects on the ways they are studied and treated. We argue that understanding and supporting autistic individuals will require interrogating this assumption, taking autistic testimony seriously, considering alternative explanations for unusual behaviors, and investigating unconventional – even idiosyncratic – ways in which autistic individuals may express their social interest. These steps are crucial, we believe, for creating a more accurate, humane, and useful science of autism. (shrink)

When an employee’s off-duty conduct generates mass social media outrage, managers commonly respond by firing the employee. This, I argue, can be a mistake. The thesis I defend is the following: the fact that a firing would occur in a mass social media outrage context brought about by the employee’s off-duty conduct generates a strong ethical reason weighing against the act. In particular, it contributes to the firing constituting an inappropriate act of blame. Scholars who caution against firing an employee (...) for off-duty conduct have thus far focused primarily on due process related issues or legal concerns pertaining to free speech, lifestyle discrimination, and employment at-will. However, these concerns amount to only a partial, and contingent, diagnosis of what is at issue. I argue that even when due process considerations are met, firings in these contexts can be unjustified. Moreover, even if a business is not concerned with the unethical conduct per se, but is rather strictly concerned with PR, the argument I advance nevertheless provides one important ethical reason that counts against firings in mass social media outrage contexts. Given that managers are often under significant pressure to respond swiftly in cases where an employee is at the center of mass social media outrage, it is especially important that scholars begin to clarify the normative issues. This article builds on the burgeoning philosophical literature on the ethics of blame and provides a novel account of a distinctive ethical concern that arises with firings in mass social media outrage contexts. (shrink)

Employment-at-will (EAW) is the legal presumption that employers and employees may terminate an employment relationship for any or no reason. Defenders of EAW have argued that it promotes autonomy and efficiency. Critics have argued that it allows for the domination, subordination, and arbitrary treatment of employees. We intervene in this debate by arguing that the case for EAW is contextual in a way that existing business ethics scholarship has not considered. In particular, we argue that the justifiability of EAW for (...) a given jurisdiction depends on existing complementarities among the institutions that constitute the jurisdiction’s political economy. Notably, our view takes seriously the ethical concerns EAW critics have raised by showing how these concerns can be mitigated through public policy measures that do not require eliminating EAW. (shrink)

NEMO means Network Mobility which is the extension of Mipv6 and it is invented for accessing internet for the group of people when they are travelling in Vehicle as Network group. During handoff while exchanging Binding Updates between the Mobile Network Node, Correspondent Node and Home Agent, many security threats are present during those messages exchange. It may prone to several standard malicious attacks on the BU and Binding Acknowledgement. An efficient end-to-end security method is required to protect the BU (...) Exchange between MNN, HA and CN. In this paper, a secure architecture is proposed to provide authentication and confidentiality at each level of communication using a 3-Party Key Exchange called 3-PKE-NEMO with the help of Bilinear Pairing Theorem. Handoff delay is reduced without compromising security strength. The whole experimentation of this proposed work is carried out using NS2 simulation tool and authentication proof is given using BAN logic between all the nodes in NEMO. The proposed security architecture is compared with related existing solutions and found to be more secure. (shrink)

Why do organizations conduct job interviews? The traditional view of interviewing holds that interviews are conducted, despite their steep costs, to predict a candidate’s future performance and fit. This view faces a twofold threat: the behavioral and algorithmic threats. Specifically, an overwhelming body of behavioral research suggests that we are bad at predicting performance and fit; furthermore, algorithms are already better than us at making these predictions in various domains. If the traditional view captures the whole story, then interviews seem (...) to be a costly, archaic human resources procedure sustained by managerial overconfidence. However, building on T. M. Scanlon’s work, we offer the value of choice theory of interviewing and argue that interviews can be vindicated once we recognize that they generate commonly overlooked kinds of noninstrumental value. On our view, interviews should thus not be entirely replaced by algorithms, however sophisticated algorithms ultimately become at predicting performance and fit. (shrink)

We investigated how motor agency in the voluntary control of body movement influences body awareness. In the Rubber Hand Illusion , synchronous tactile stimulation of a rubber hand and the participant’s hand leads to a feeling of the rubber hand being incorporated in the participant’s own body. One quantifiable behavioural correlate of the illusion is an induced shift in the perceived location of the participant’s hand towards the rubber hand. Previous studies showed that the induced changes in body awareness are (...) local and fragmented: the proprioceptive drift is largely restricted to the stimulated finger. In the present study, we investigated whether active and passive movements, rather than tactile stimulation, would lead to similarly fragmented body awareness. Participants watched a projected image of their hand under three conditions: active finger movement, passive finger movement, and tactile stimulation. Visual feedback was either synchronous or asynchronous with respect to stimulation of the hand. A significant overall RHI, defined as greater drifts following synchronous than asynchronous stimulation, was found in all cases. However, the distribution of the RHI across stimulated and non-stimulated fingers depended on the kind of stimulation. Localised proprioceptive drifts, specific to the stimulated finger, were found for tactile and passive stimulation. Conversely, during active movement of a single digit, the proprioceptive drifts were not localised to that digit, but were spread across the whole hand. Whereas a purely proprioceptive sense of body-ownership is local and fragmented, the motor sense of agency integrates distinct body-parts into a coherent, unified awareness of the body. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that if a set of plausible conditions obtain, then driving a standard vehicle rather than riding in an autonomous vehicle (AV) will become analogous to driving drunk rather than driving sober, and therefore impermissible. In addition, we argue that a ban on the production, sale, and purchase of new standard vehicles would also become justified. We make this case in part by highlighting that the central reasons typically offered in support of state-mandated vaccination will also (...) support mandating AV use. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of our argument for the obligations of vehicle-producing firms. (shrink)

fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

The desirability of creating norms within the framework of law has been a challenging process in a free market economy. The principles of antitrust law enunciated by courts in abuse of dominant cases has led to ‘refusal to deal’ as a contested doctrine. When dominance is treated as legitimate aspiration and free market choices are the medium to achieve the aspirations of free market enterprises, any duty or obligation cast on the firm is considered antithetical to the spirit of free (...) market unless it eclipses the anticompetitive effect. Where an economic analysis of antitrust law has non-economic impacts with ethical and moral issues, it calls for an alternative economic thought which also considers plural values of society. This also reflects a conflict arising out of lack of norms and respect for property rights. This paper attempts to analyze the cases and framework which is currently employed by the courts and the challenges it puts forth in creating a norm that is universal. The author by drawing on the principles of Gandhian economic thought and its essential features of trusteeship, non-possession and non-violence creates space for resolution of conflicts promoting ethical and moral considerations. Resolution of conflict through ethical and moral norms also assimilates the varied goals of antitrust regulation, including non-economic goals when the goals of antitrust require a broader consideration that accommodates the wider spectrum of market participants. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Serageldin, Ismail and Martin‐Brown, Joan Ethics and Values: A Global Perspective.

In one of his earliest dialogues, the Soliloquia, Augustine identifies the liberal arts (disciplinae) with truth (veritas), and employs this somewhat puzzling identification as a premise in his infamous proof of the immortality of the soul (Sol. 2.24). In this paper, I examine Augustine’s argument for this peculiar identification. Augustine maintains both (1) that the constituent propositions of the liberal arts are true, and (2) that the liberal art of dialectic (disciplina disputandi) is the “truth through which all disciplines are (...) true” (Sol. 2.21). I argue that Augustine identifies the liberal arts with truth because (1) the constituent propositions of the liberal arts are learned, and (2) dialectic’s structure is essential to the liberal arts. I further suggest that the subject matter of each liberal art reflects a distinct segment of intelligible reality, that is, the realm of the intelligible Forms. (shrink)

We've outsourced too much of our thinking. How do we get it back? At the height of the 2014 Ebola epidemic, a man who had recently returned from West Africa with a fever and severe abdominal pain entered a hospital in Dallas--and was sent home. Even after healthcare workers learned their patient had come from Liberia, ground zero of the Ebola hot zone, not one of those treating him considered the deadly virus as a possible cause of his condition. Shortly (...) after the man died, one of the nurses who had treated him sought clearance from the Centers for Disease Control to board a commercial flight. She reported a fever of 99.5 degrees, but because the protocol restricted travel at 100.4 degrees or higher, she was cleared. She was later confirmed to be infected with Ebola. A public health disaster akin to the one depicted in the movie Contagion was averted, but only by sheer luck. How could this happen? As Harvard lecturer and global trend watcher Vikram Mansharamani shows in this eye-opening and perspective-shifting book, our complex, data-flooded world has made us ever more reliant on experts, protocols, and technology. We've stopped thinking for ourselves. (Have you ever followed your GPS device to a deserted parking lot?) With stark and compelling examples drawn from business, sports, and everyday life, the author illustrates how in a very real sense we have outsourced too much of our thinking, relinquishing our autonomy. Of course, experts, protocols, and computer-based systems are essential to helping us make informed decisions. What we need is a new approach for integrating these information sources more effectively, harnessing the value they provide without undermining our own autonomy. The author provides principles and techniques for doing just that, empowering readers with a more critical and nuanced approach to making decisions. Think for Yourself is an indispensable guide for those looking to restore self-reliant thinking in a data-driven and technology-dependent yet overwhelmingly uncertain world. (shrink)

Brands are widely regarded as a constellation of shared associations surrounding a company and its offerings. On the traditional view of brands, these associations are regarded as perceptions and attitudes in consumers’ minds in relation to a company. We argue that this traditional framing of brands faces an explanatory problem: the inability to satisfactorily explain why certain branding activism initiatives elicit the moralized reactive attitudes that are paradigmatic responses to wrongdoing. In this paper, we argue for a reframing of brands (...) that calls for viewing brands as a series of normatively binding expectations that are ethically akin to promises. Our promissory framing of brands avoids the explanatory problem, illuminates a number of ethical requirements on branding, and reconceptualizes the role of brand managers. (shrink)

In response to the 32 commentaries, we clarify and extend two of the central arguments in our target article: Social motivation is a dynamic, emergent process, not a static characteristic of individuals, and autistic perspectives are essential to the study of autistic social motivation. We elaborate on how taking these two arguments seriously can contribute to a more accurate, humane, and useful science of autism.

Cornell realism (CR), a prominent meta-ethical position that has emerged since the last decades of the twentieth century, proposes a non-reductionist naturalistic account of moral properties and facts. This paper argues that the best version of CR’s chosen methodology for arriving at justified moral beliefs must be seen as a variant of reflective equilibrium. In comparison to the traditional versions, our proposal offers a ‘social’ reinterpretation of reflective equilibrium in delineating CR’s epistemology. We argue that it satisfactorily accounts for objectivity (...) and calls for the inclusion of the social nature of both moral and scientific inquiries. Emphasising the social dimension of their epistemological account also nudges debates in metaethics into incorporating the much-needed social dimension while dealing with questions of moral beliefs and facts that have been of CR’s concern. (shrink)

Computer ethics, or more broadly, Information Technology (IT) ethics, is often concerned with issues about privacy, accuracy, property and accessibility and framing of policies and rules on the features. While ethical issues on these topics are important, issues about IT ethics apply more broadly. The purpose of ethics is not just to draft new policies or legal codes. Ethics also aims to probe and bring into limelight for ethical deliberations those issues, which have escaped policy formulations or human introspection. This (...) paper tries to address one such ethical issue. This paper concerns with email ethics and with one of the features of emailing - ‘forwarding’. As an applied ethics domain, I have tried to use some samples of forwarded mails. Through the analysis of the given sample mails, I claim that (1) this issue of ‘forwarding’ falls well outside the domain of framing ethical policies and (2) it is a matter of ethical concern. I have addressed this ethical concern by drawing a criterion to judge if one’s act of ‘forwarding’ a mail is ethical act or not. (shrink)

Peter Singer in his Practical Ethics and in other works as well gives importance to reason in making an ethical decision. Thinkers question Singer’s consistency and employment of reason in his ethical decisions. Jacqueline A Laing talks about Singer’s inconsistency in her article 'Inconsistency and Consequentialism'. With reference to animal rights and abortion, she claims that Singer uses different yardstick, thus Singer is inconsistent. She remarks that Singer uses the notion of ‘sentientism’ for the defense of animal rights, whereas he (...) comes up with ‘personism’ for human centered ethics. She claims that if Singer is consistent why can’t he use the same notion of ‘sentientism’ for animal rights as well as issues on humans like disabled human beings? According to her, this suggests there is an inconsistency in Singer’s work on ethical issues concerning animals and ethical issues concerning humans. As a corollary conclusion, she claims that Singer is biased towards animals. In this paper, the authors try to show that there is no such inconsistency. Contrary to her claims, the authors like to show that Singer uses personism in the discussions related to animals and similarly he uses sentientism in his discussion related to abortion and other human centered ethical issues. Therefore, Laing’s claims about Singer’s inconsistency and her following claim that Singer is biased towards animals need to be reconsidered. (shrink)

Meno’s paradox raises serious challenges against most fundamental epistemological quest regarding the possibility of inquiry and discovery. In his response, Socrates proposes the theory of anamnesis and his ingenious distinction between doxa and episteme. But, he fails in his attempt to solve the paradox and some recent responses have also not succeeded in settling it, satisfactorily. We shall argue that epistemological issues approached in a Darwinian spirit offer a therapeutic resolution without rejecting the basic tenets of Plato’s epistemology. Drawing from (...) Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge, Darwinism is regarded as a metaphysical research program, rather than using it to collapse Plato’s metaphysics into biology. (shrink)

Underdetermination of theory choice claims that empirical evidence fails to provide sufficient grounds for choosing a theory over its rivals. We explore the epistemological and methodological significance of this thesis by utilising a classificatory scheme to situate three arguments that purport to establish its plausibility. Proponents of these three arguments, W.V.O Quine, John Earman, and Kyle Stanford, use different premises to arrive at the conclusion that theory choice is empirically underdetermined and their classification along the proposed schema brings out the (...) variety in underdetermination arguments and the historical trajectory of the thesis. Although the epistemological significance of underdetermination—it is seen as undermining the doctrine of scientific realism—is widely discussed in the literature, Quine understood the acceptance of the thesis as interrogating the attitude one is justified in adopting towards rival theories. We argue that sticking with one’s own theory in the face of underdetermination leads to a distinct type of disagreement, which we present as the methodological significance of underdetermination. The examination of the methodological significance of underdetermination allows us to propose weak underdetermination as a philosophically interesting variant of underdetermination. (shrink)

Em questões ambientais, a relação dos seres humanos com a natureza é vista como um problema ético importante. Isso gerou várias posições éticas como antropocentrismo, biocentrismo, ecocentrismo e similares. Sobre a relação do homem com o animal, B. G. Nortor menciona que animais em “contexto” devem ter prioridade em relação a animais em “conteúdo”. Norton nomeia animais domesticados e animais selvagens mantidos em cativeiros como animais em “contexto”. Ele sustenta que devemos cuidar dos animais domesticados na medida em que temos (...) um contrato hipotético com eles (Norton, 2003). Ao mesmo tempo em que concordamos com a posição de Norton de cuidar dos animais domesticados, defendemos que sua compreensão do contrato e sua subsequente compreensão de “cuidado” como derivando de um valor instrumental dos animais reflete sua posição de um antropocentrismo fraco. Neste artigo, defendemos que uma ética do “cuidado” é mais significativa quando emerge de uma perspectiva não-antropocêntrica que trate o outro como valioso intrinsecamente.: In environment related issues, the relationship of human beings to nature is seen as an important ethical issue. This issue has resulted in various ethical positions like anthropocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism and like. On man’s relationship with animal beings, Bryan G. Norton mentions that animals in ‘context’ should be given priority over animals in ‘content’. Norton brings the domesticated animals and captive bred wild animals under the ‘context’ animals. Norton maintains that we should take care of the domesticated animals as we have a hypothetical contract with them. (Norton, Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology, 2003) While we agree to Norton’s position of taking care of the domesticated animals, we maintain that his understanding of contract and his subsequent understanding of ‘care’ as stemming from an instrumental value of animals reflects his position of weak-anthropocentrism. In this paper, we claim that a ‘care’ based ethics is more meaningful when it emerges from a non-anthropocentric perspective that treat the other as intrinsically valued. Keywords : Content, Context, Intrinsic Value, Instrumental value, Pragmatism, Animal Care. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE In _The Reveries of a Solitary Walker_, Rousseau keeps a record of the thoughts, ideas, and reveries that freely run through his mind during his solitary walks. He finds that it is only when he is alone and not being disturbed that he is able to exist just for himself, and can “truly claim to be what nature willed”. Rousseau goes on these solitary walks in the countryside on the outskirts of Paris. (...) But if solitude is what he requires, why travel all the way to the countryside, which he says is very far from his residence in the middle of Paris? Put another way, why does he feel the need to be amidst nature in order to engage in these reveries? What do his reveries tell us about the role that nature has played in his life? This article will examine the role of nature in Rousseau’s solitary walks, as well as its presence in his life as revealed through his reveries. In particular, we will see that nature has played a central role in shaping Rousseau’s soul both during his adolescence and his adulthood. It is an essential ingredient to helping Rousseau realize his project of examining and ordering his soul, and in his attempt to understand what kind of man he is, given his deracination from mainstream society. Throughout his life nature has served as his mirror for self-examination; it acts as a trigger for various memories, it provides a harmonious setting for delving into the more painful of these memories, and allows him to extract insights that enable him to face his mortality. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Serageldin, Ismail and Martin‐Brown, Joan (eds) Ethics and Values: A Global Perspective.

We give Scott sentences for certain computable groups, and we use index set calculations as a way of checking that our Scott sentences are as simple as possible. We consider finitely generated groups and torsion-free abelian groups of finite rank. For both kinds of groups, the computable ones all have computable \ Scott sentences. Sometimes we can do better. In fact, the computable finitely generated groups that we have studied all have Scott sentences that are “computable d-\” sentence and a (...) computable \ sentence). In [9], this was shown for the finitely generated free groups. Here we show it for all finitely generated abelian groups, and for the infinite dihedral group. Among the computable torsion-free abelian groups of finite rank, we focus on those of rank 1. These are exactly the additive subgroups of \. We show that for some of these groups, the computable \ Scott sentence is best possible, while for others, there is a computable d-\ Scott sentence. (shrink)

Being Two Addresses Delivered In The University Of Toronto At The Philosophical Conference, 1922.

"De la dmocratie en Amrique" (published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840) is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville on the ...

Indian ethics is one of the great traditions of moral thought in world philosophy whose insights have influenced thinkers in early Greece, Europe, Asia, and the New World. This is the first systematic study of the spectrum of moral reflections from India.

We test the hypothesis that US corporations headquartered in states with greater public corruption are also prone to more unethical behavior when operating abroad. We exploit passage of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that curtailed bribery of foreign officials and find firms in corrupt states, especially those exporting to more corrupt countries, suffer greater performance decline following FCPA, suggesting larger loss from anticipated bribery restrictions. Controlling for industry, firms in corrupt states are more likely to be targets of FCPA enforcement actions. (...) They are also more likely to have paid foreign bribes, as disclosed during pre-FCPA investigations. (shrink)

A large section of the population (70%) of Uttarakhand largely depends upon agricultural based activities for their livelihood. Rural community of the mountains has developed several indigenous and traditional methods of farming to conserve the crop diversity and rejoice agrodiversity with religious and cultural vehemence. Traditional food items are prepared during occasion, festivals, weddings, and other religious rituals from diversified agrodiversity are a mean to maintain agrodiversity in the agriculture system. Agrodiversity is an insurance against disease and extreme climatic fluctuations, (...) as a coping mechanism in times of scarcity, as a means to enhance overall productivity of farms, as a source of critical nutrition and medicine in the Himalayan region. The different traditional system of agriculture and indigenous method of maintaining soil fertility, socio-cultural and religious rituals has saved many crops that are under threatened category. But all these system and practices are ignored nauseatingly in hill agriculture policy, where more emphasis was given for plain areas. Less emphasis is being put on local systems that rely on existing natural, human, and social assets such as biodiversity, traditional knowledge, and social capital underpinning collective action to ensure food security. Of late, development planners have realized the importance of appropriate technologies and therefore have stressed the need for on-site training, and capacity building of user groups in rural areas of the region. Rural technology demonstration and training center have been supposed as a means disseminating technologies enabling improvement in the yield potential of farms, income generation from off-farm activities, and conservation and efficient use of natural resources. There is a strong need to bring desirable changes in the agricultural policy, research, and development in reference to mountainous regions. The present paper describe present scenario of agriculture, traditional, and socio-cultural practices of retaining soil fertility and agrodiversity, policy dimensions, and strategies for management of the Himalayan agroecosystems. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)