Contributed articles presented at the National Workshop on "Innovative Courses on Applied/Practical Philosophy" held on Dec. 10-12, 2001 organized by Indian Council of Philosophical Research.

Spatially and temporally restricted expression of Hox genes requires multiple mechanisms at both the transcriptional and the post-transcriptional levels. New insight into this precise expression mechanism comes from recent findings of a novel sense–antisense miRNA combination from the bithorax complex of Drosophila melanogaster.1-4 These two miRNAs encoded from the same locus target 3′ untranslated regions of anterior hox genes, Antp, Ubx and abd-A to establish the dominance of posterior hox gene Abd-B in its expression domain. Such double-edge tools, sense–antisense miRNA (...) combinations, also operate at multiple loci in the genome implicating their wider impact on the post-transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes. BioEssays 30:1058–1061, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this paper, I’ll discuss the philosophical debate that took place between Michel Foucault and his student Jacques Derrida on Rene Descartes’ doctrine of cogito. In my exposition, I shall discuss Descartes’ contributions to modern philosophy in twofold manner, namely the central and the marginal doctrines. At the centre of Cartesian modernity, there is cogito and the emergence of human subjectivity, reason and rationalism, truth in terms of clearness and distinctness and the existence of God. On the margins, we come (...) across madness, deception, demon and so forth. These are the issues, which are subjected to rigorous criticism and rejection by Foucault on the one hand, and Derrida on the other. The debate tries to reallocate the central and the marginal themes by overemphasizing the marginal issues and thereby moving one step forward. However, in the process of doing that they have under-emphasized the central doctrines and have gone two steps backward. The ambition lies in paving the way for an internal departure from Cartesian modernity to Foucauldian–Derridean postmodernity. Instead of going to a critical reading of Derrida’s interpretation of the Cartesian text step by step and his debate with Foucault, the present paper hopes to provide some of the basic issues involved in Descartes and Foucauldian–Derridean reaction to those issues. In my attempt to articulate the debate, I shall furnish some clarifications, annotations and summations that may be useful for the limited end of preliminary acquaintance with Descartes on the one hand, and Foucault and Derrida on the other. (shrink)

Proceeding of the 22nd International Congress of Vedanta, organized at the Special Center for Sanskrit Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi during December 27-30, 2015.

Pigment cells in zebrafish − melanophores, iridophores, and xanthophores − originate from neural crest‐derived stem cells associated with the dorsal root ganglia of the peripheral nervous system. Clonal analysis indicates that these progenitors remain multipotent and plastic beyond embryogenesis well into metamorphosis, when the adult color pattern develops. Pigment cells share a lineage with neuronal cells of the peripheral nervous system; progenitors propagate along the spinal nerves. The proliferation of pigment cells is regulated by competitive interactions among cells of the (...) same type. An even spacing involves collective migration and contact inhibition of locomotion of the three cell types distributed in superimposed monolayers in the skin. This mode of coloring the skin is probably common to fish, whereas different patterns emerge by species specific cell interactions among the different pigment cell types. These interactions are mediated by channels involved in direct cell contact between the pigment cells, as well as unknown cues provided by the tissue environment. (shrink)

Images are an important source of data and information in the agricultural sciences. The use of image-processing techniques has outstanding implications for the analysis of agricultural operations. Fruit and vegetable classification is one of the major applications that can be utilized in supermarkets to automatically detect the kinds of fruits or vegetables purchased by customers and to determine the appropriate price for the produce. Training on-site is the underlying prerequisite for this type of arrangement, which is generally caused by the (...) users having little or no expert knowledge. We explored various methods used in addressing fruit and vegetable classification and in recognizing fruit disease problems. We surveyed image-processing approaches used for fruit disease detection, segmentation and classification. We also compared the performance of state-of-the-art methods under two scenarios, i.e., fruit and vegetable classification and fruit disease classification. The methods surveyed in this paper are able to distinguish among different kinds of fruits and their diseases that are very alike in color and texture. (shrink)

We applaud Ram Frost for highlighting the need for multicultural perspectives while developing universal models of visual word recognition. We second Frost's proposal that factors like lexical morphology should be incorporated besides purely orthographic features in modeling word recognition. In support, we provide fresh evidence from Hindi, an example of hitherto under-represented alphasyllabic orthographies, in which flexible encoding of akṣara position is constrained by the morphological structure of words.

According to the Supreme Court of Canada, Aboriginal title is a property right, albeit of a distinctive kind. Most significantly, the right is subject to an inherent limit: title lands cannot be used in a way that deprives present and future generations of the right to use the land. Aboriginal title is also encumbered by a restraint on alienation, and has its source in Aboriginal legal systems that predate and survive the assertion of Crown sovereignty. In this paper, we argue (...) that these features of Aboriginal title are not burdensome judicial innovations on a property right, but are instead the essential contours of a sovereign right. That is, the Court’s own description of Aboriginal title does not comport with sound theoretical understandings of a property right. Aboriginal title is much more akin to a right of sovereignty—the right to make laws about the use of a territory. Aboriginal title is the right of law-making jurisdiction over the title lands. The existing literature, while edging towards the view that Aboriginal title is a sovereign right, has lacked the unifying theoretical basis needed to decisively dispatch the Court’s property paradigm. In particular, all extant accounts find the inherent limit inexplicable. The account in this article theorizes and explains the inherent limit, as well as all of the sui generis elements of Aboriginal title, and shows their interconnectedness. Our view additionally answers a number of questions that the Court’s property paradigm does not, including: (1) what laws primarily govern title lands; (2) who has standing to question whether any particular use of title land violates the inherent limit; (3) what is the status of private land interests that overlap with Aboriginal title lands; and (4) how should the doctrine of Aboriginal title be updated in light of jurisprudential developments emphasizing that Indigenous peoples never ceded their sovereignty? (shrink)

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that one's money ethic, religiosity and attitude toward business play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity - intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness - were studied. A global scale of money ethic was examined, as was a global measure of attitude toward business. Results indicate that both types of religiosity as well as one's money ethic and attitude toward business were significant (...) determinants of at least some types of consumer ethical beliefs. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 2, Page 93-113, April 2022. Twitter is an increasingly common source of rich, personalized qualitative data, as millions of people daily share their thoughts on myriad topics. However, questions remain unclear concerning if and how to quote publicly available social media data ethically. In this study, focusing on 136 education manuscripts quoting 2667 Tweets, we look to investigate the ways in which Tweets are quoted, the ethical discussions forwarded and actions taken, and the extent to (...) which quoted Tweets are “discoverable.” A concerning result is that in almost all manuscripts, and for around half of all quoted Tweets, the original author could be identified. Drawing on our findings we share some ethical dilemmas, including those that arise from an apparent lack of understanding of the technical aspects of the platform, and offer suggestions for promoting ethically-informed practice. (shrink)

From a theoretical perspective, most discussions of statistical learning have focused on the possible “statistical” properties that are the object of learning. Much less attention has been given to defining what “learning” is in the context of “statistical learning.” One major difficulty is that SL research has been monitoring participants’ performance in laboratory settings with a strikingly narrow set of tasks, where learning is typically assessed offline, through a set of two-alternative-forced-choice questions, which follow a brief visual or auditory familiarization (...) stream. Is that all there is to characterizing SL abilities? Here we adopt a novel perspective for investigating the processing of regularities in the visual modality. By tracking online performance in a self-paced SL paradigm, we focus on the trajectory of learning. In a set of three experiments we show that this paradigm provides a reliable and valid signature of SL performance, and it offers important insights for understanding how statistical regularities are perceived and assimilated in the visual modality. This demonstrates the promise of integrating different operational measures to our theory of SL. (shrink)

Within the limited, but growing, literature on small business ethics almost no attention has been paid to the issue of social responsibility within ethnic minority businesses. Using a social capital perspective, this paper reports on an exploratory and qualitative investigation into the attitudinal and behavioural manifestations of CSR within small and medium-sized Asian owned or managed firms in the U.K., with particular reference to the distinctive factors motivating organisational responses. It offers alternative explanations of entrepreneurial behaviour and suggests areas for (...) further research. (shrink)

What drives organisations to engage in socially responsible purchasing initiatives? To investigate this important question, this article uses a case-study approach to examine the context within which supplier diversity programmes have emerged in both the U.S. and U.K. The analysis identifies legislative and policy developments, economic imperatives, stakeholder pressures and ethical influences as forces shaping organisational responses. It reveals important contextual differences between U.K. and U.S. experience and offers an empirical and theoretical explanation of corporate behaviour.

BackgroundIn this study, medical errors are defined as unintentional patient harm caused by a doctor’s mistake. This topic, due to limited research, is poorly understood in Malaysia. The objective of this study was to determine the proportion of doctors intending to disclose medical errors, and their attitudes/perception pertaining to medical errors.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary public hospital from July- December 2015 among 276 randomly selected doctors. Data was collected using a standardized and validated self-administered questionnaire intending to (...) measure disclosure and attitudes/perceptions. The scale had four vignettes in total two medical and two surgical. Each vignette consisted of five questions and each question measured the disclosure. Disclosure was categorised as “No Disclosure”, “Partial Disclosure” or “Full Disclosure”. Data was keyed in and analysed using STATA v 13.0.ResultsOnly 10.1% intended to disclose medical errors. Most respondents felt that they possessed an attitude/perception of adequately disclosing errors to patients. There was a statistically significant difference when comparing the intention of disclosure with perceived disclosures. Most respondents were in common agreement that disclosing an error would make them less likely to get sued, that minor errors should be reported and that they experienced relief from disclosing errors.ConclusionMost doctors in this study would not disclose medical errors although they perceived that the errors were serious and felt responsible for it. Poor disclosure could be due the fear of litigations and improper mechanisms/procedures available for disclosure. (shrink)

With special reference to Punjab, India; a study.

This study uses a specific method to analyze the contents of the codes of ethics of the largest corporations in Australia, Canada and Sweden and compares the findings of similar content analyses in 2002 and 2006. It tracks changes in code contents across the three nations over the 2002–2006 period. There were statistically significant changes in the codes of the three countries from 2002 to 2006: the Australian and Canadian codes becoming more prescriptive, intensifying the differences between these and the (...) Swedish codes. The contents of these codes and the nature of the changes they have undergone over time are culturally driven: Australia's and Canada's reflecting their similar cultural profiles and Sweden's reflecting its differences from these countries on organizationally relevant cultural dimensions. The study reveals that corporate codes of ethics are living documents as reflected by the significant longitudinal changes in the frequencies of mention of several of the 60 items underpinning the content analysis of the codes of ethics. Consequently, and in light of their growing prevalence and importance as instruments of corporate governance, they should not be treated as static but as dynamic documents that are subject to various environmental factors. The clear implication of the findings of this study is that for corporate codes of ethics ‘one size does not fit all’ and that these instruments must be carefully monitored and revised to reflect changing conditions. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 1053-1101, October 2022.

Positive psychology has paved the way for newer and more informed ideas of living a meaningful, integrated and well-rounded quality of living. The current era of the pandemic has also moulded the ways in which individuals perceive their quality of life and how they want to integrate a holistic approach towards their well-being. The workplace settings have seen tremendous changes in terms of how employers, employees and the organisations at large function and operate. The pre-pandemic concept of success has shifted (...) its focus from hard work to developing grit among employees to increase the overall efficiency of the organisations. Grit has revolutionised the conventional standards of success, meaning in life and has impacted personal as well as occupational welfare. This integration of positive psychology and transpersonal psychology has catalysed the purpose for the current study. To help organisations and individuals thrive in their professional endeavours at the workplace and to provide them with relevant psychological tools to enhance their occupational growth, the present study has been conducted empirically to investigate the antecedents and consequences of grit among 209 working professionals in India. The results of this study indicate that the transpersonal capital of metacognition, flow, optimism and empathy have a significant role to play in developing grit among the participants. The findings have implications for enhancing job satisfaction and job performance of participants. The current research also provides a framework to organisations towards designing interventions for improving efficiency at the workplace. (shrink)

Intentions are an important concept in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. We present a formal theory of intentions and beliefs based on Discourse Representation Theory that captures many of their important logical properties. Unlike possible worlds approaches, this theory does not assume that agents are perfect reasoners, and gives a realistic view of their internal architecture; unlike most representational approaches, it has an objective semantics, and does not rely on an ad hoc labeling of the internal states of agents. We (...) describe a minimal logic for intentions and beliefs that is sound and complete relative to our semantics. We discuss several additional axioms, and the constraints on the models that validate them. (shrink)

Remnants of ancient retroviral infections during evolution litter all mammalian genomes. In modern humans, such endogenous retroviral (ERV) sequences comprise at least 8% of the genome. While ERVs and other types of transposable elements undoubtedly contribute to the genomic “junk yard”, functions for some ERV sequences have been demonstrated, with growing evidence that ERVs can be important players in gene regulatory processes. Here we focus on one particular large family of human ERVs, termed HERVH, which several recent studies suggest has (...) a key regulatory role in human pluripotent stem cells. Remarkably, this is not the first instance of an ERV controlling pluripotency. We speculate as to why this convergent evolution might have come about, suggesting that it may reflect selection on the virus to extend the time available for transposition. Alternatively it may reflect serendipity alone. (shrink)

In Canada, laws and policies consistently reject the commodification of human organs and tissues, and Canadian practice is consistent with international standards in this regard. Until the Assisted Human Reproduction Act of 2004, gamete donation in Canada was an exception: Canadians could pay and be paid open market rates for gametes for use in in vitro fertilization. As sections of the AHR Act forbidding payment for gametes and permitting only reimbursement of receipted expenses gradually came into effect in 2005, Canada (...) did away with this anomaly. Medical practice and legal prohibitions in assisted human reproduction are now consistent with other areas of medicine where tissues and organs are taken from one person to benefit others: Altruistic donation, rather than selling and buying, will be the norm. (shrink)