BackgroundResponsive neurostimulation has been utilized as a treatment for intractable epilepsy. The RNS System delivers stimulation in response to detected abnormal activity, via leads covering the seizure foci, in response to detections of predefined epileptiform activity with the goal of decreasing seizure frequency and severity. While thalamic leads are often implanted in combination with cortical strip leads, implantation and stimulation with bilateral thalamic leads alone is less common, and the ability to detect electrographic seizures using RNS System thalamic leads is (...) uncertain.ObjectiveThe present study retrospectively evaluated fourteen patients with RNS System depth leads implanted in the thalamus, with or without concomitant implantation of cortical strip leads, to determine the ability to detect electrographic seizures in the thalamus. Detailed patient presentations and lead trajectories were reviewed alongside electroencephalographic analyses.ResultsAnterior nucleus thalamic leads, whether bilateral or unilateral and combined with a cortical strip lead, successfully detected and terminated epileptiform activity, as demonstrated by Cases 2 and 3. Similarly, bilateral centromedian thalamic leads or a combination of one centromedian thalamic alongside a cortical strip lead also demonstrated the ability to detect electrographic seizures as seen in Cases 6 and 9. Bilateral pulvinar leads likewise produced reliable seizure detection in Patient 14. Detections of electrographic seizures in thalamic nuclei did not appear to be affected by whether the patient was pediatric or adult at the time of RNS System implantation. Sole thalamic leads paralleled the combination of thalamic and cortical strip leads in terms of preventing the propagation of electrographic seizures.ConclusionThalamic nuclei present a promising target for detection and stimulation via the RNS System for seizures with multifocal or generalized onsets. These areas provide a modifiable, reversible therapeutic option for patients who are not candidates for surgical resection or ablation. (shrink)

This paper aims to introduce a robust framework for forecasting demand, including data preprocessing, data transformation and standardization, feature selection, cross-validation, and regression ensemble framework. Bagging ), boosting and extreme gradient boosting regression ), and stacking are employed as ensemble models. Different machine learning approaches, including support vector regression, extreme learning machine, and multilayer perceptron neural network, are adopted as reference models. In order to maximize the determination coefficient value and reduce the root mean square error, hyperparameters are set using (...) the grid search method. Using a steel industry dataset, all tests are carried out under identical experimental conditions. In this context, STACK1 and STACK2 models provided better performance than other models. The highest accuracies of R2 of 0.97 and 0.97 are obtained using STACK1 and STACK2, respectively. Moreover, the rank according to performances is STACK1, STACK2, XGBR, GBR, RFR, MLP, ELM, and SVR. As it improves the performance of models and reduces the risk of decision-making, the ensemble method can be used to forecast the demand in a steel industry one month ahead. (shrink)

This first full-length study of the Arabic reception of Plato's Timaeus considers the role of Galen of Pergamum in shaping medieval perceptions of the text as transgressing disciplinary norms. It argues that Galen appealed to the entangled cosmological scheme of the dialogue, where different relations connect the body, soul, and cosmos, to expand the boundaries of medicine in his pursuit for epistemic authority – the right to define and explain natural reality. Aileen Das situates Galen's work on disciplinary boundaries in (...) the context of medicine's ancient rivalry with philosophy, whose professionals were long seen as superior knowers of the cosmos vis-à-vis doctors. Her case studies show how Galen and four of the most important Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers in the Arabic Middle Ages creatively interpreted key doctrines from the Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy as well as their own intellectual identities. (shrink)

Intersexuality, particularly in the global South, remains an under‐researched field of study. In my in‐progress doctoral research project, I explore the cultural, social, and medical discourses that influence how key stakeholders such as healthcare providers make decisions about the sex and gender assignment of the intersex child in India. In this paper I interrogate some of these ideas around gender assignment of intersex people in India, paying particular attention to the context of son preference. I am interested in exploring how (...) decisions of gender assignment by medical professionals are guided by ideas of son preference. Focusing on four qualitative, semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews across two cities with medical doctors from different specializations, this paper is a preliminary attempt to examine some of the factors that guide medical professionals in making decisions about gender assignment of intersex children and explore the dynamics of the decision‐making process. Specifically, I explore the factors that inform doctors’ decision‐making and locate these decision‐making processes within the broader socio‐cultural context of India. (shrink)

The use of single-use items is now ubiquitous in medical practice. Because of the high costs of these items, the practice of reusing them after sterilisation is also widespread especially in resource-poor economies. However, the ethics of reusing disposable items remain unclear. There are several analogous conditions, which could shed light on the ethics of reuse of disposables. These include the use of restored kidney transplantation and the use of generic drugs etc. The ethical issues include the question of patient (...) safety and the possibility of infection. It is also important to understand the role of informed consent before reuse of disposables. The widespread practice of reuse may bring down high healthcare costs and also reduce the huge amount of hospital waste that is generated. The reuse of disposables can be justified on various grounds including the safety and the cost effectiveness of this practice. (shrink)

Goddess traditions have much to contribute to reflections on the feminine in Imago Dei. Christian theologians and scholars have found goddess traditions in Hinduism as a source of enrichment for Christian theology. Using the Yogini Tantra, a seventeenth-century Tāntric text from India, I argue that the role of Kālï in the Tāntric Trinity and the conceptualization of Kālï-ness as explicated in Hindu Tantra helps us reconsider the role of the feminine in the Christian conception of the trinitarian Godhead and Imago (...) Dei. Kālï-ness offers the feminist scholar of theology a way of doing “thealogy.” Reflecting on the pneumatological dimension of the Tāntric trinitarian godhead and the role of Kālï as pneuma manifesting within and outside of the Godhead helps us reflect on the theological understandings of the Christian trinitarian godhead. I explore the kind of possibilities that such a comparison opens us up to in interreligious learning. (shrink)

Paul of Aegina's (fl.c. 630)Pragmateiais the only extant Greek medical text from antiquity that discusses the extraction of arrows and small missiles. In his book on surgery, Paul details how to extract arrows according to their properties and the parts of the body which they have wounded (6.88). He prefaces his instructions by describing how arrows differ in their material, figure, size, number, mode, and power. Paul's account of arrow varieties appears to reflect the environment of his medical practice, seventh-century (...) Alexandria, for he refers to Egyptian arrow types when listing the material composition and sizes of different arrows. (shrink)

Extant scholarship on Hindu war ethics uses the term dharma yuddha as a synonym of the term, just war, as conceptualized within Christian theo-ethical frameworks developed primarily in the Western academy. Dharma in the term dharma yuddha is presented as equivalent to the term just in just war, and an antonym of adharma or kuta, i.e., unjust. I track the documentary origins of the term dharma yuddha by surveying the usage of this and similar terms in ancient Hindu sources, including (...) the Mahabharata, the Arthashastra, and selected Dharmasastras. I find that the usage of the term dharma yuddha in primary Hindu sources is markedly different from how it is used in contemporary scholarship: the texts mention a range of types of war that are closely related to, but not the same as, the concept of dharma yuddha; this taxonomical richness and complexity is not captured by a binary analytical framework of just versus unjust. In addition, the relationship between dharma and war remains under-explored and merits a more nuanced study than a one-to-one comparison with Christian just war ethics. I, hence, offer a taxonomical model for dharma yuddha, which places it as part of the yuddha family; the model presents attributes of dharma yuddha that are necessary and/or sufficient and which bear conceptual similarities with attributes of other members in the yuddha family. The model presents these attributes in a hierarchical fashion as is reflected in the texts surveyed. The paper makes two types of contributions: firstly, theoretically, it fills a lacuna in the scholarship on Hindu war ethics by presenting a taxonomical and constructive framework to study war that draws from a systematic survey of wars as presented in the Hindu canon; secondly, methodologically, it seeks to decolonize studies on Hindu ethics by studying the texts on their own terms, as opposed to seeing them through the eyes of Christian and, primarily, Western, analytical categories of war. (shrink)

The political articulation of sexual violence, as legally understood today, took place in India from 1970s onward. In succeeding decades, its definition broadened, positioning it in contexts of caste-based violence, of violence against women at workplaces, and of custodial violence. The Delhi gang rape case, in 2012, introduced another set of political and legal articulations, simultaneously revealing the very politics around them. This paper begins by tracking these phases and definitions, to emphasize one area where such violence has been vocalized (...) the most in recent years, i.e. institutes of higher education in India. Legal codes in this context, carry grave contradictions. Beside, altogether different interpretation occurs when these are applied within institutes of higher education via bureaucratic channels. Recorded cases have shown presence since 2013, except in some regions which appear in negligible measure. Therefore, alongside tracing the historical journey of political articulations of sexual violence in institutes of higher education, this paper takes the case of Raipur city, in the state of Chhattisgarh located in the central-eastern part of India, which has negligible presence in sexual violence crime records in the context of higher educational institutes. Based on a close reading of legal texts, and field visits conducted across institutions in Raipur between 2020–2022, I argue that the limitation of law in combating gender violence, appears not when it is neglected, but often when it is consciously reinterpreted against minority communities, despite claiming to protect those very communities. I attempt to reassess the potential of ‘law’ as a tool to combat gender violence, around existing debates around society and law. (shrink)

Aren Z. Aizura's Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment is one of the best nonfiction books I have read recently. I was interested in Aizura's work because of the several ways in which this book's subjects resonated with my reflections on gender nonconforming subjects, gender reassignment, and the medical-industrial complex with a focus on interrogating the West/non-West binary. It focuses on trans and gender nonconforming people, issues of mobility, and access to various technologies for bodily modification. This book, divided (...) in two parts, will be of interest to a variety of readers, especially scholars doing feminist studies, queer theory, feminist science and technology... (shrink)

Violence, as a concept, has shaped most of human history and discourse. Over the centuries, the concept has gone through dynamic evolutions and should be understood in relation to diverse agents such as nation, nostalgia, and culture. Modern society’s tendency to impede and constrain overt forms of violence has paved the way for covert forms to exist in socio-cultural spheres. Cultural violence is one such realization where aggression gets exercised covertly through heterogenous mediums such as language, regulations, mass media, and (...) most importantly cultural practices. Its topological structures can be traced in national imagination and a sense of cultural nostalgia originating out of it, that ultimately formulates cultural “otherness.” In Gandhian philosophy, the absence of physical aggression is insignificant, if not complemented with the eradication of violence from the cultural and intellectual strata. Gandhi’s critique of exclusive nationalism and narrowness is reflective of a distinct kind of cultural topology that generates structural violence and with the due course of history it gets legitimacy to exert power over the cultural binary it constructed. The fundamental questions of the paper are associated with assessing the role of national imagination and cultural imperatives in germinating the structures of violence in culture, exclusive nationalism, and Gandhian reconsideration of peace in the context of covert violence in the material and intellectual realms. (shrink)

RésuméLe « Synopsis du Timée de Platon » de Galien, ouvrage clé pour l’étude du platonisme prémoderne, survit uniquement dans une édition dite « imparfaite » de 1951 qui présente pour la première fois le texte arabe survivant accompagné de sa traduction en latin. Les rédacteurs de la série « Plato Arabus » du Corpus Platonicum, à laquelle l’édition appartient, ont attribué les défauts de cette édition à la mort inopportune de Paul Kraus, qui l'a préparée, aidé par un autre (...) réfugié juif, Richard Walzer, pendant la période de la seconde guerre mondiale. Notre analyse de sources tirées d'archives démontrera que le travail sur ce volume était majoritairement celui de Kraus. Qui plus est, nous démontrons que Walzer et le rédacteur du Corpus Platonicum Raymond Klibansky ont marginalisé le travail de Kraus sur le projet dans l'optique d'avancer leurs propres carrières universitaires en tant que Juifs réfugiés en Grande-Bretagne. Nous allons également examiner la manière dont Walzer et Klibansky ont remanié le projet initial de Kraus – celui d'un corpus sémitique du platonisme – en un « Plato Arabus » plus étroit qui s'alignerait sur une étude du platonisme latin, projet qu'ils présumaient plus susceptible d'intéresser leurs mécènes britanniques. (shrink)

As his writings tend to prioritize the incorporeal over the corporeal, Plato seems an unlikely authority on medicine. He does not appear to have engaged in any systematic investigation of the body through direct examination of animal anatomy, like his pupil Aristotle. Notwithstanding Plato's apparent lack of interest in anatomical research, modern scholars view his dialogues as valuable witnesses for earlier and contemporary theories about the body. Famously, thePhaedrus(270c–e) mentions Hippocrates’ holistic approach to studying the body. Out of all his (...) dialogues, theTimaeusoffers the most extensive comments about the nature of the body and its functions. Many of its physiological ideas, however, seem to derive from earlier medical and philosophical authorities such as Alcmaeon of Croton (fifth century), Empedocles (fifth century) and Philistion of Locri (fourth century) rather than from Plato himself. (shrink)

We are told that some of the most important points discussed at the recent conference of East-West philosophers were the following.

This article offers the first edition and translation of two heretofore unpublished pharmacological treatises by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, namely Fī ittikhādh māʾ al-jubn and Fī manāfiʿ māʾ al-jubn, which seem to have formed part of a lost volume on dairy products. As it demonstrates, al-Rāzī’s examination of whey is connected to his philosophical interest in the complex nature of simple substances such as milk. The article also highlights how these two treatises built on the Greek pharmacological tradition by incorporating ingredients (...) from Persia and India. (shrink)

Reproductive technologies are increasingly used not just to detect the presence of fetal “abnormalities” but also to “correct” or eliminate them before birth. This is done with the aim to enable the birth of “healthy” and “normal” children who can contribute better to the nation’s productivity. Although these processes are common to most women, the situation is further aggravated for surrogates within developing country contexts, who already work in precarious conditions and occupy the lower end of the hierarchy within the (...) surrogacy arrangement. Highlighting the Indian surrogacy context, I discuss and analyze some of these biopolitical challenges and complexities. (shrink)

In this work, we have investigated the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics in logamediate and intermediate scenarios of the universe bounded by the Hubble, apparent, particle and event horizons using and without using first law of thermodynamics. We have observed that the GSL is valid for Hubble, apparent, particle and event horizons of the universe in the logamediate scenario of the universe using first law and without using first law. Similarly the GSL is valid for all horizons (...) in the intermediate scenario of the universe using first law. Also in the intermediate scenario of the universe, the GSL is valid for Hubble, apparent and particle horizons but it breaks down whenever we consider the universe enveloped by the event horizon. (shrink)

Corporate governance involves balancing the interests of the many stakeholders in a corporation—from shareholders and management to customers and the larger society. Corporate governance also offers the framework for attaining a company’s vision and mission, providing guidance and oversight on a broad spectrum—action plans and internal controls to performance measurement and corporate disclosure. Companies’ Act 2013 has been introduced in India with the primary objective of improving corporate governance practices in Indian corporations. In this paper, we investigate the moderating role (...) of corporate governance practices in large Indian corporations on firm performance, post introduction of Companies’ Act 2013. Specifically, we study the influence of board’s involvement in company’s affairs, board’s diversity, CEO duality, board compensation, and promoters’ involvement in the board. We find sufficient evidence that board involvement and board diversity positively influence firm performance, while CEO duality, board compensation, and promoters’ presence do not have an influence on firm performance. (shrink)

Hate speech has spread more rapidly through the daily use of technology and, most notably, by sharing your opinions or feelings on social media in a negative aspect. Although numerous works have been carried out in detecting hate speeches in English, German, and other languages, very few works have been carried out in the context of the Bengali language. In contrast, millions of people communicate on social media in Bengali. The few existing works that have been carried out need improvements (...) in both accuracy and interpretability. This article proposed encoder–decoder-based machine learning model, a popular tool in NLP, to classify user’s Bengali comments from Facebook pages. A dataset of 7,425 Bengali comments, consisting of seven distinct categories of hate speeches, was used to train and evaluate our model. For extracting and encoding local features from the comments, 1D convolutional layers were used. Finally, the attention mechanism, LSTM, and GRU-based decoders have been used for predicting hate speech categories. Among the three encoder–decoder algorithms, attention-based decoder obtained the best accuracy (77%). (shrink)