This book offers the first comparative account of the changes and stabilities of public perceptions of science within the US, France, China, Japan, and across Europe over the past few decades. The contributors address the influence of cultural factors; the question of science and religion and its influence on particular developments (e.g. stem cell research); and the demarcation of science from non-science as well as issues including the âe~incommensurabilityâe(tm) versus âe~cognitive polyphasiaâe(tm) and the cognitive (in)tolerance of different systems of knowledge.

This essay cross-examines both the correlation and the disjunction between art philosophy and political reason in the thinking of the French Jewish art philosopher, Kant specialist and socialist politician Victor Basch. Two interwoven lines of questioning will be in play. One considers the extent to which Basch's theory of beauty, which was primarily grounded in a psychological theory of Einfühlung, was a corollary to his political ideas and practices. The other line of inquiry raises questions about how Basch's political position, (...) namely his anti-facist defending of republican values, became influenced by his work on aesthetics. By answering both questions, this article challenges the traditional historiography of interwar aesthetics. The esaay shows how conceptual debates of aesthetics were not just sterile theoretical products, but to a large extent offered an apparatus to diagnose and orientate a rapidly changing world. Therefore this essay develops a reflection about the gaze needed to take in the complex historical situations from which aesthetic reflections grew, and which in turn they addressed. (shrink)

This paper provides a new argument for the raising analysis of relative clauses. This argument is based on the observation that certain adjectival modifiers on the head of a relative clause can be interpreted in positions internal to the relative clause. It is shown that the raising analysis of relative clauses is able to generate the readings corresponding to the relative clause internal interpretation of adjectival modifiers and that two competing analyses of relative clauses, the matching analysis and the head (...) external analysis, are not able to do so. (shrink)

In this study, we develop a new theoretical framework of Coping Intelligence which examines relationships between coping strategies and organizational commitment among boundary spanning employees. We collected data from 452 boundary spanning salespeople using multiple sources. Results demonstrate that a formative model of Coping Intelligence is superior to a reflective model and that problem-focused coping contributes to CI which, in turn, is related to affective and normative commitment. Further, our more parsimonious formative model illustrates that positive problem-focused coping and negative (...) emotion-focused coping contribute to both affective and normative commitment. After controlling for gender and salespeople’s commission in separate analyses, results remain significant. We provide additional insights: Females are likely to use emotion-focused coping than males, but gender is not related to organizational commitment. Salespeople’s commission is positively related to both affective and normative commitment but unrelated to coping strategies. We shed new lights on boundary spanning employees’ Coping Intelligence and organizational commitment and offer theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to coping strategies and business ethics. (shrink)

Given the comprehensive influence of mindfulness on human thought and behavior, and the importance of moral reasoning in business decisions, we examine the role of mindfulness as an antecedent to moral reasoning through two studies. In Study 1, we propose and test a theoretically derived model that links mindfulness and moral reasoning, mediated by compassion and egocentric bias using a survey design. In Study 2, we examine whether mindfulness training enhances moral reasoning using an experimental design with graduate students of (...) business management. The findings of Study 1 substantiate the positive association of mindfulness with moral reasoning. We found that this relationship is fully mediated by compassion and egocentric bias. The results of Study 2 suggest that mindfulness meditation training has a positive impact on individuals' states of mindfulness, compassion, and moral reasoning, and decreases egocentric bias. We relate the findings of the study with contemporary neurological research and discuss the theoretical, pedagogical, and managerial implications. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm value and seeks to identify the source of that value, by disaggregating the effects on forecasted profitability, long-term growth and the cost of capital. The study explores the possible risk (reducing) effects of CSR and their implications for financial measures of performance. For individual dimensions of CSR, in general strengths are positively valued and concerns are negatively valued, although the effect is not universal across all dimensions of CSR. (...) We show that these valuation effects are principally driven by CSR performance associated with better long run growth prospects, with an additional minor contribution made by a lower cost of equity capital. (shrink)

The classical approach to build an automatic speech recognition system uses different feature extraction methods at the front end and various parameter classification techniques at the back end. The Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients and perceptual linear prediction techniques are the conventional approaches used for many years for feature extraction, and the hidden Markov model has been the most obvious selection for feature classification. However, the performance of MFCC-HMM and PLP-HMM-based ASR system degrades in real-time environments. The proposed work discusses the implementation (...) of discriminatively trained Hindi ASR system using noise robust integrated features and refined HMM model. It sequentially combines MFCC with PLP and MFCC with gammatone-frequency cepstral coefficient to obtain MF-PLP and MF-GFCC integrated feature vectors, respectively. The HMM parameters are refined using genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization. Discriminative training of acoustic model using maximum mutual information and minimum phone error is preformed to enhance the accuracy of the proposed system. The results show that discriminative training using MPE with MF-GFCC integrated feature vector and PSO-HMM parameter refinement gives significantly better results than the other implemented techniques. (shrink)

Positive Polarity indefinites, such as some in English, are licensed in simplex negative sentences as long as they take wide scope over negation. When it surfaces under a clausemate negation, some can in principle take wide scope either by movement or by some semantic mechanism; e.g., it can take pseudoscope if it is interpreted as a choice function variable. Therefore, there is some uncertainty regarding the way in which PPI indefinites get licensed: can pseudoscope suffice? In this article we show, (...) using novel data from Hindi-Urdu and English, that pseudoscope is not sufficient, and that it is the syntactic position of PPI indefinites at LF, rather than their actual scope, which is relevant for licensing. These facts support a unified view of PPI indefinites as generalized quantifiers, and disfavor analyses where they are, or can be, interpreted as choice function variables. (shrink)

The relationship between ethical ideology and job stress appears to be complex. This study is based on a model presented by Forsyth, showing two dimensions that play an important role in ethical evaluation and behavior. Based on a survey of 561 employees of hotel industry in India, ethical ideologies were found to be negatively associated with job stress. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and multiple regressions. The result showed that relativism is negatively correlated with job stress. Further, it (...) has been established that idealism and relativism interacted in such a way that there is a negative relationship between idealism and job stress when relativism is low and positive relationship when relativism is high. The findings imply that ethical ideology adversely influences the job stress in the organization. (shrink)

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements can (...) be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

Deep neural networks have been playing a significant role in acoustic modeling. Convolutional neural networks are the advanced version of DNNs that achieve 4–12% relative gain in the word error rate over DNNs. Existence of spectral variations and local correlations in speech signal makes CNNs more capable of speech recognition. Recently, it has been demonstrated that bidirectional long short-term memory produces higher recognition rate in acoustic modeling because they are adequate to reinforce higher-level representations of acoustic data. Spatial and temporal (...) properties of the speech signal are essential for high recognition rate, so the concept of combining two different networks came into mind. In this paper, a hybrid architecture of CNN-BLSTM is proposed to appropriately use these properties and to improve the continuous speech recognition task. Further, we explore different methods like weight sharing, the appropriate number of hidden units, and ideal pooling strategy for CNN to achieve a high recognition rate. Specifically, the focus is also on how many BLSTM layers are effective. This paper also attempts to overcome another shortcoming of CNN, i.e. speaker-adapted features, which are not possible to be directly modeled in CNN. Next, various non-linearities with or without dropout are analyzed for speech tasks. Experiments indicate that proposed hybrid architecture with speaker-adapted features and maxout non-linearity with dropout idea shows 5.8% and 10% relative decrease in WER over the CNN and DNN systems, respectively. (shrink)

This Presidential Address of the Bombay Psychiatry Society covers the state of psychiatry in India in 1997. It posits that with the advent of newer brain imaging technologies in India such as computerised tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, single photon emission computerised tomography and brain electrical activity mapping, an era of evidence-based psychiatry in India has arrived. The Address cautions against the dehumanising potential of excessive reliance on technology. The need for a greater emphasis on psychiatry during undergraduate medical education is (...) discussed along with the need to destigmatise psychiatric disorders. Finally, the need to encourage quality research in psychiatric disorders is stressed. (shrink)

This paper explores the changes in cognitive function which occur as someone "loses consciousness" under anesthesia. Seven volunteers attempted a categorization task and a within-list recognition test while inhaling air, 0.2% isoflurane, and 0.4% isoflurane. In general, performance on these tests declined as the dose of anesthetic was increased and returned to baseline after 10 min of breathing air. A measure of auditory evoked responding termed "coherent frequency" showed parallel changes. At 0.2% isoflurane, subjects could still identify and respond to (...) category exemplars but showed impaired short-term memory function. Electrical stimulation at 0.4% isoflurane, intended to mimic the arousing effects of surgery, had a small, beneficial effect on performance. A mean of 63% of category exemplars was identified at this stage, but recognition memory for those exemplars was at chance on recovery. There was no evidence for learning of words presented at 0.8% isoflurane. (shrink)

Many recent studies of technological change have focussed on the implementation of computer-based high technology systems. The research described here deals with the introduction of a new but ‘low’ technology into an ancient craft tradition in India. The paper describes a project to capture and archive aspects of the tacit knowledge content of the traditional cire perdue brass foundry (Dhokra) craft of Bikna village, near Bankura, West Bengal. The research involved collaboration between the Indian National Institute for Science, Technology and (...) Development Studies (NISTADS) and School of Art, Media and Design, University of Wales, Newport, UK in the context of the EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network Project. NISTADS were proposing to introduce a new fuel-efficient furnace technology in place of the traditional form used in Bikna. It was expected that the introduction of the new furnace would catalyse major changes in the entire dhokra craft at Bikna. What was not anticipated, however, was the speed and extent of this change, to the extent that the old traditional way of doing things was changed within the space of a few months. A Multimedia record of the craft and the process was developed. These technologies make it possible to develop adequate representations of skilled performance mediated by the craftsman him- or herself. Particularly valuable in this respect is the capacity of multimedia systems to use a full range of modalities of description, including video, sound, still image, conventional text and technical diagrams. This enables the presentation of very complex information in a variety of formats and contexts. The context and process of developing this knowledge archive are described. (shrink)

Rajesh Sampath ABSTRACT: This paper will attempt a Hegelian reading of Derrida’s Beast and the Sovereign Vol 1 lectures to unpack certain apories and paradoxes in Ambedkar’s brief 1932 statement on modern India’s founding figure, Gandhi. In that small text Ambedkar is critical of Gandhi’s seemingly saintly attempt at fasting himself to death. Ambedkar diagnoses...

Rajesh Sampath ABSTRACT: This paper begins with several opening passages from the most esoteric writings in Hinduism’s vast, ancient religious-philosophical heritage, namely the Upanishads. The aim is to reveal certain essential connections between the primordial relation between self and sacrifice while exploring uncanny paradoxes of eternity and time, immortals and mortals and their secret linkages. ….

Rajesh Sampath ABSTRACT: This paper will articulate the conditions of thinking about the transition of Division II in Heidegger’s Being and Time in order to imagine the architecture of the missing Division III, which never appeared in the published Part I of Being and Time. The paper explores questions of temporality, historical temporality, and...

Rajesh Sampath ABSTRACT: This paper examines Ambedkar’s critical view of certain distortions, contradictions, and instabilities in democratic norms, constitutional validity, and citizens’ rights in India’s secular, constitutional, legal, pluralistic democracy. Through a strident deconstruction utilizing Hegelian resources, the paper exposes the contortions and contradictions underpinning Hindu metaphysics in some of its most abstract texts, namely...

Rajesh Sampath ABSTRACT: This paper excavates certain impulses that are buried in Pierre Klossowski’s 1968 edition of his original 1947 work, Sade My Neighbor. We argue that the self-suffocating nature of our historical present reveals the problem of an epochal threshold: in which twenty-first century democracy itself is threatened with death and violence in delusional ….

We examine the distribution of differentials in nominal comparatives in a range of languages and find a surprising diversity of patterns. While English allows for both numerals and numerically quantified noun phrases as differentials, many languages cannot use numerals as differentials. We show that the classical semantics of comparatives extends naturally to the nominal comparatives with numeral differentials but not to the case where the differential is a numerically quantified noun phrase. We extend the semantics to handle these cases. We (...) further show that this extension is not sufficient to handle differentials in nominal comparatives in French where a more radical extension is motivated. This close examination of differentials teaches us that the class of measure phrases is much larger than traditionally conceived, potentially coextensive with the class of count nouns. (shrink)

Considerations of justice and concern for well-being support conducting mental health research and addressing ethical concerns specific to mental health research are critical. We discuss these concerns, provide recommendations to enable the ethical conduct of mental health research, and argue that participants’ interests should be given primary weight in resolving apparent dilemmas. We also comment on provisions of two legislative actions in India relevant to mental health research: Rights of Persons with Disability Act 2016 and the Mental Health Care Act (...) 2017. Both conform to the 2006 United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities of which India is a signatory. Both provide protections and enumerate rights relevant to people with mental health conditions but with differing focus. The commonalities and differences between the three are discussed in the background of international literature on research in mental health conditions. Studies involving deception and future directions for ethical requirements regarding genetic research are discussed. (shrink)