Existing research posits that decision makers use specific cognitive frames to manage tensions in sustainability. However, we know less about how the cognitive frames of individuals at different levels in organization interact and what these interactions imply for managing sustainability tensions, such as in Bottom of the Pyramid projects. To address this omission, we ask do organizational and project leaders differ in their understanding of tensions in a BOP project, and if so, how? We answer this question by drawing on (...) a 5-year study of a BOP project of a global pharmaceutical company in India. In line with the existing research, we found three kinds of frames—paradoxical, business case, and business—held differently across organizational levels and over time. We also found that the shift in frames of both project and organizational leaders was mediated by the decision-making horizon. The initial divergence across organizational levels, seen in paradoxical and business frames, was mediated by long-term decision-making horizon. However, there was an eventual convergence toward business frames associated with the shift from long- to shorter-term decision-making horizons and one that led to the project’s closure. We contribute by proposing a dynamic model of cognitive frames in sustainability, where the research has either alluded to top-down or bottom-up understanding. (shrink)

This paper encapsulates the debate as to whether or not tarka is an additional source of knowledge. In this regard, Jaina thinkers opine that they are, unlike Buddhists and Nyāya thinkers, an additional source of knowledge, for what we come to know through tarka is not known through any other means of knowledge. En route, Jaina’s understanding of tarka is put forth, thereafter their criticism of others’ understanding is supplied. Eventually, some recent discussions over this debate are intimated that seem (...) to go in support of Jaina understanding of tarka. These recent discussions hint at the direction in which Jaina thinkers need to advance their stand. (shrink)

गेटिअर के शोध-पत्र "Is Justified Treu Belief Knowledge" जो कि ANALYSIS में 1963 में प्रकाशित हुआ था उसका यह हिन्दी अनुवाद है। .

Veiling is one of the sources of seclusion of women from and within society. _Ghūnghat_ (_avagunṭhana, purdāh_) or veiling is primarily associated with covering one’s face which performs various functions. The rationale for veiling could be that it becomes a source of refuge to women from the gaze of others, sometimes providing them with a place of their own, without any interference from others, maintains their respectability and _mān_ or _izzat_ (honour), and becomes a sign of their modesty in society. (...) On the other hand, on analysis, it turns out to be a source of concealment of one’s identity, suppression of one’s sexuality, and a life without any agency. This paper, in the context of the dominant caste of the North Indian Hindu community, will bring out the cultural, social, and gendered aspects of the practice of veiling to show how the acceptance and deference to this practice is the byproduct of women’s conditioning in a patriarchal society. By bringing in the physical and symbolic aspects of veiling, this paper attempts to show how this discussion is significant for the attainment of a ‘good quality of life’ as mentioned by Martha Nussbaum and to come out of the state of an internalised sense of oppression. (shrink)

The increased scrutiny of investors regarding the non-financial aspects of corporate performance has placed portfolio managers in the position of having to weigh the benefits of ' holding the market' against the cost of having positions in companies that are subsequently found to have questionable business practices. The availability of stock indexes based on sustainability screening makes increasingly viable for institutional investors the transition to a portfolio based on a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) benchmark at relatively low cost. The increasing (...) share of socially responsible investments may play a role in providing incentives towards a continuous upgrading of sustainability standards to the extent that their performance is not systematically inferior to that of the other funds. This article examines whether these incentives have been so far detectable with particular reference to the Dow Jones Sustainability Stoxx Index (DJSSI) that focuses on the European corporations with the highest CSR scores among those included in the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index. The aim of the article is twofold. First, we analyse the performance of the DJSSI over the period 2001-2006 compared to that of the Surrogate Complementary Index (SCI), a new benchmark that includes only the components of the DJ Stoxx 600 that do not belong to the ethical index to evaluate more correctly the size of possible divergent performances. Second, we perform an event study on the same data set to analyse whether the stock market evaluation reacts to the inclusion (deletion) in the DJSSI. In both cases, the results suggest that the evaluation of the CSR performance of a firm is a significant criterion for asset allocation activities. (shrink)

A considerable section of the population in India accesses the services of individual private medical practitioners (PMPs) for primary level care. In rural areas, these providers include MBBS doctors, practitioners of alternative systems of medicine, herbalists, indigenous and folk practitioners, compounders and others. This paper describes the profile, knowledge and some practices of the rural doctor in India and then discusses the reasons for lack of equity in health care access in rural areas and possible solutions to the problem.

The term sustainability has become one of the most significant in the current era. It seems to be ubiquitous amongst academics, politicians, business leaders, media personnel and even the general public. It is no exaggeration to state that it is considered all over the world to be the most pressing issue to be addressed for the long-term future of the planet and its inhabitants. The topic is of course complex, and the issue of sustainability is under much debate as to (...) what it actually is and how it can be achieved, but it is completely certain that the resources of the planet are fixed in quantity and, once used, cannot be reused except through being reused in one form or another. At present, much of the discourse of sustainability has focused upon the environment and in particular upon climate change and the effects that this is having. Thus, the discourse has tended to be about mitigation. Sustainability of course requires all three pillars of the triple bottom line—economic, environmental and social—to be addressed. Indeed, it might be considered that the effects upon the social, and how we choose to live our lives, might well be the most profound effect of achieving sustainability. This book therefore focuses upon some of the many aspects of the social and how we can adapt our lives to accommodate the requirements of sustainability. it therefore takes a very different approach to addressing the issues of sustainability, while of course not ignoring the other pillars. This book therefore sets out to examine various aspects of the changes to personal, corporate and institutional behaviour which may have to come about in our search for sustainability. It is tended to address some of the issues and how they are being dealt with in various parts of the world. As always, our concept is to share best practice and thereby enrich both the discourse and our progress towards sustainability. Thus, we focus upon the current situation while also considering the extent to which the focus is changing so much that we need to think about new approaches to our understanding of behaviour and differing effects in practice. The international origins of the contributors to this book make this an original contribution taking some of the best ideas from around the world. This book therefore addresses these issues from a perspective not generally addressed by researchers, or even by politicians and the press. It therefore provides fresh perspectives upon the important issue of our common future. As always, this approach is based on the tradition of the Social Responsibility Research Network srrnet.org (a worldwide body of scholars with membership of several thousand), which in its 20-year history has sought to broaden the discourse and to treat all research as inter-related and relevant to business. This tradition has always been to explore the subject widely and to seek relevant solutions, while also sharing best practice. This book is based primarily upon some of the contributions from the network at our recent conference and shows both commonality and diversity in approaches and effects. (shrink)

A critical issue in executive control is how the nervous system exerts flexibility to inhibit a prepotent response and adapt to sudden changes in the environment. In this study, force measurement was used to capture “partial” unsuccessful trials that are highly relevant in extending the current understanding of motor inhibition processing. Moreover, a modified version of the stop-signal task was used to control and eliminate potential attentional capture effects from the motor inhibition index. The results illustrate that the non-canceled force (...) and force rate increased as a function of stop-signal delay, offering new objective indices for gauging the dynamic inhibitory process. Motor response was a function of delay in the presentation of novel/infrequent stimuli. A larger lateralized readiness potential amplitude in go and novel stimuli indicated an influence of the novel stimuli on central motor processing. Moreover, an early N1 component reflects an index of motor inhibition in addition to the N2 component reported in previous studies. Source analysis revealed that the activation of N2 originated from inhibitory control associated areas: the right inferior frontal gyrus, pre-motor cortex, and primary motor cortex. Regarding partial responses, LRP and error-related negativity were associated with error correction processes, whereas the N2 component may indicate the functional overlap between inhibition and error correction. In sum, the present study has developed reliable and objective indices of motor inhibition by introducing force, force-rate and electrophysiological measures, further elucidating our understandings of dynamic motor inhibition and error correction. (shrink)

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

Bio-ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analyzing the rapidly growing pool of plant genomic and phenomic data. Ontologies provide structured vocabularies to support consistent aggregation of data and a semantic framework for automated analyses and reasoning. They are a key component of the Semantic Web. This paper provides background on what bio-ontologies are, why they are relevant to botany, and the principles of ontology development. It includes an overview of ontologies and related resources that are relevant to plant science, (...) with a detailed description of the Plant Ontology (PO). We discuss the challenges of building an ontology that covers all green plants (Viridiplantae). Key results: Ontologies can advance plant science in four keys areas: 1. comparative genetics, genomics, phenomics, and development, 2. taxonomy and systematics, 3. semantic applications and 4. education. Conclusions: Bio-ontologies offer a flexible framework for comparative plant biology, based on common botanical understanding. As genomic and phenomic data become available for more species, we anticipate that the annotation of data with ontology terms will become less centralized, while at the same time, the need for cross-species queries will become more common, causing more researchers in plant science to turn to ontologies. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) is a community resource consisting of standardized terms, definitions, and logical relations describing plant structures and development stages, augmented by a large database of annotations from genomic and phenomic studies. This paper describes the structure of the ontology and the design principles we used in constructing PO terms for plant development stages. It also provides details of the methodology and rationale behind our revision and expansion of the PO to cover development stages for all plants, particularly (...) the land plants (bryophytes through angiosperms). As a case study to illustrate the general approach, we examine variation in gene expression across embryo development stages in Arabidopsis and maize, demonstrating how the PO can be used to compare patterns of expression across stages and in developmentally different species. Although many genes appear to be active throughout embryo development, we identified a small set of uniquely expressed genes for each stage of embryo development and also between the two species. Evaluating the different sets of genes expressed during embryo development in Arabidopsis or maize may inform future studies of the divergent developmental pathways observed in monocotyledonous versus dicotyledonous species. The PO and its annotation databasemake plant data for any species more discoverable and accessible through common formats, thus providing support for applications in plant pathology, image analysis, and comparative development and evolution. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) (http://www.plantontology.org) (Jaiswal et al., 2005; Avraham et al., 2008) was designed to facilitate cross-database querying and to foster consistent use of plant-specific terminology in annotation. As new data are generated from the ever-expanding list of plant genome projects, the need for a consistent, cross-taxon vocabulary has grown. To meet this need, the PO is being expanded to represent all plants. This is the first ontology designed to encompass anatomical structures as well as growth and developmental (...) stages across such a broad taxonomic range. While other ontologies such as the Gene Ontology (GO) (The Gene Ontology Consortium, 2010) or Cell Type Ontology (CL) (Bard et al., 2005) cover all living organisms, they are confined to structures at the cellular level and below. The diversity of growth forms and life histories within plants presents a challenge, but also provides unique opportunities to study developmental and evolutionary homology across organisms. (shrink)

Plants from a handful of species provide the primary source of food for all people, yet this source is vulnerable to multiple stressors, such as disease, drought, and nutrient deficiency. With rapid population growth and climate uncertainty, the need to produce crops that can tolerate or resist plant stressors is more crucial than ever. Traditional plant breeding methods may not be sufficient to overcome this challenge, and methods such as highOthroughput sequencing and automated scoring of phenotypes can provide significant new (...) insights. Ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analysing the large quantities of data that come with these newer methods. As part of a larger project to develop ontologies that describe plant phenotypes and stresses, we are developing a plant disease extension of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDOPlant). The IDOPlant is envisioned as a reference ontology designed to cover any plant infectious disease. In addition to novel terms for infectious diseases, IDOPlant includes terms imported from other ontologies that describe plants, pathogens, and vectors, the geographic location and ecology of diseases and hosts, and molecular functions and interactions of hosts and pathogens. To encompass this range of data, we are suggesting inOhouse ontology development complemented with reuse of terms from orthogonal ontologies developed as part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. The study of plant diseases provides an example of how an ontological framework can be used to model complex biological phenomena such as plant disease, and how plant infectious diseases differ from, and are similar to, infectious diseases in other organism. (shrink)