Closed Loop medical devices such as Closed Loop Deep Brain Stimulation and Brain Computer Interface are some of the emerging neurotechnologies. New generations of implantable brain–computer interfaces have recently gained success in human clinical trials. These implants detect specific neuronal patterns and provide the subject with information to respond to these patterns. Further, Closed Loop brain devices give control to the subject so that he can respond and decide on a therapeutic goal. Although the implants have improved subjects’ quality of (...) life, their use has raised varied ethical concerns. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the ethical implications specific to the therapeutic goals of closed loop brain implants. The authors analyze the related work qualitatively and quantitatively so as to help readers in understanding the various ethical implications of closed loop brain implants. (shrink)

Insulin is stored within the pancreas in an inactive Zn2+‐bound hexameric form prior to release. Similarly, clinical insulins contain Zn2+ and form multimeric complexes. Upon release from the pancreas or upon injection, insulin only becomes active once Zn2+ disengages from the complex. In plasma and other extracellular fluids, the majority of Zn2+ is bound to human serum albumin (HSA), which plays a vital role in controlling insulin pharmacodynamics by enabling removal of Zn2+. The Zn2+‐binding properties of HSA are attenuated by (...) non‐esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) also transported by HSA. Elevated NEFA concentrations are associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. Here we present the hypothesis that higher NEFA levels in obese and/or diabetic individuals may contribute to insulin resistance and affect therapeutic insulin dose‐response profiles, through modulation of HSA/Zn2+ dynamics. We envisage this novel concept to have important implications for personalized treatments and management of diabetes‐related conditions in the future. (shrink)

Martin Buber was an eighteenth-century European thinker, philosopher and scholar. Buber’s thoughts are very relevant and contemporary, even in today’s advanced digital, informational and technological age. We live in a time of heightened tensions and conflict; the article discusses geopolitical realities and the importance of dialogue. It goes over Martin Burrell’s ideas on dialogue. Further, it discusses understanding geopolitics in the light of dialogue. This article concludes that advanced technology is affecting core issues of geopolitics. Only dialogue can provide answers (...) to humanity’s challenges in this changing era. In such a time, the core principles of Martin Buber’s dialogue are more relevant than ever for a way forward that the entire world is looking for in relation to present geopolitical realities. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to consider this practice of “communitarian” reading—reading aloud, reading together—as a defining aspect of the cultures of reading among Bengali women in the nineteenth century. I wish to contest the privileging of “silent” reading as a “modern” mode of reading and the subsequent celebration of the protean incorporeality of the “silent” reader, in the works of prominent scholars of readership, arguing that the privileging of “silent” reading as the predominant “modern” mode of reading does not (...) offer a sufficient framework for the study of reading practices of the “historical” “woman reader” in the age of colonial “modernity” in a terrain such as that of Bengal. The article thus engages with alternate frameworks of considering the practice of reading aloud, drawing upon diverse feminist scholarship on practices of reading to argue in favor of considering the practice of “communitarian” reading as a form of female sociality for Bengali women in the nineteenth century, at a time when public spaces remained largely inaccessible to women. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between metaphor and reasoning, by claiming that argumentation might act as a bridge between metaphor and reasoning. Firstly, the chapter introduces metaphor as a framing strategy through which some relevant properties of a source domain are selected to understand a target domain. The mapping of properties from the source to the target domain implicitly forces the interpreter to consider the target from a specific perspective. Secondly, the chapter presents metaphor as (...) an implicit argument where some inferences can be drawn from the comparison between the source and the target domain. In particular, this chapter aims to understand whether and to what extent such an argument might be linked to analogical reasoning. The chapter argues that, in case of faulty analogy, this kind of argument might have the form of a quaternio terminorum, where metaphor is the middle term. Finally, the chapter presents the results of an experimental study, aiming to test the effect of the linguistic nature of the middle term on the detection of such faulty analogy. The chapter concludes that a wider context is needed to make sense of an analogical argument with novel metaphors, whilst in a narrow context, a lexicalised metaphor might be extended and the overall argument might be interpreted as metaphoric. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of the study is to probe millennials on their perceptions towards consumer ethics and to generate new insights in the realm of consumer behaviour. Millennials constitute a big fraction of the total consumer base with immense buying power. Therefore, the exploration of the ethical perspective of millennials is of vital importance for organizations. Design/methodology/approach The study applies a grounded theory approach to explore the subjective experiences of consumers and draws insights from the data following an interpretivist epistemology. (...) Findings The findings revealed five prominent themes that throw light on the consumer’s ethical orientations. The findings extend Hunt Vettel’s theoretical framework and ethical relativism. Research limitations/implications This research is limited by the small sample of millennials studied. Practical implications The paper advances the Hunt Vittel theoretical framework of ethics and provides insights into the deontological and teleological evaluations of millennials while making ethical decisions. The study adds to the existing research on millennials materialism and ethical orientation. The organizations get an insight into the ethical perceptions of millennials. The findings reinforce the consumer’s perceived importance of adoption of green practices by the organizations. The organization’s investment in green practices precipitate a favourable image of the organization among the millennials. Originality/value Literature in ethics is replete with studies adopting positivist methodologies. This paper is unique as it shuns the methodological bias and adopts a grounded theory approach to study new age digitally savvy millennial consumers. (shrink)

In today’s competitive world, the pressures of work have been escalating and there is a growing feeling among employees that the demands of work begin to dominate life and a sense of work life imbalance is felt. Thus, finding a balance between work and life in today’s swift world presents a major challenge to both the employer and employee. This article seeks to explore the variation among men and women academicians with regards to overall job satisfaction, job stressors and work (...) family conflict that influence overall balance among the academicians. Data were collected via questionnaire. T-test and Analysis of Variance were used to find out the important component to persist balance. The result indicates that women faculty members as compared to the male faculty members exhibit a high degree of dissatisfaction with regards to career, family responsibilities and work life integration issues while balancing the work life domain. (shrink)

Due to the increased interest in ecology, global warming and numerous environmental problems, ecological issues are becoming extremely important in education. Many researchers and thinkers believe that solutions to environmental problems are affected by the environmental ethics adopted. This article identifies which of the three branches of environmental ethics are present in formal environmental education in Poland. This has been achieved by analysing the content of textbooks used by science teachers in the fourth grade of elementary schools. The results show (...) that anthropocentric ethics is dominant in the content of formal environmental education, while biocentric ethics is less frequent and there is also some focus on holistic ethics and the declaration that man is part of nature. (shrink)

The present study examines the relationship between pictorial similes and hybrid pictorial metaphors. The results suggest that hybrid pictorial metaphors are perceived more strongly than pictorial similes when they are presented on their own and in corrective convention but not when they are verbalized. We argue that hybrid pictorial metaphors have transformational effects as the fusion of two concepts allow the reader to see one thing in terms of another. Juxtaposition in a pictorial simile merely suggests a search for similarity, (...) which is not explicit. Results also showed that verbalized metaphor (X is Y) or the simile (X is like Y) forms are often used to convey a similar meaning and strength for pictorial simile and pictorial metaphor. However, in corrective scenarios participants are forced to reassess visual features: in this situation, pictorial metaphors are considered more strongly than pictorial similes even when they are verbalized. (shrink)

On 24th March 2020, the first nationwide complete lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India for 21 days which was later extended to 31st May 2020. Consequently, thousands of migrant workers placed in big cities had no other option but to go back to their native villages. Their journeys back to villages- thousands of kilometres on bicycles or foot due to the non-availability of public transport amidst the travel ban- were driven by the compulsions of food and shelter. (...) In one of many heart-wrenching incidents, sixteen laborers were run over by a freight train while they were resting on the railway tracks. The images of the Roti on the railway track strewn across were beamed on the national news channels, as a telling commentary of the unimaginable hardships of these workers. Ironically, in the eyes of law, they were trespassers under the Indian Railways Act, 1989. The Indian Railway did not pay any compensation to the victims. Their act also violated the Indian Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Indian Penal Code, 1860- the law for the breach of lockdown guidelines and the law for disobedience of order by public servants respectively- for having decided to travel amidst a travel ban. The semiotics of law-making acts ‘criminal’ bereft of ‘moral culpability’ are seldom questioned on their supposed amoral foundations. Pandemic exhibited that social fissures not only condition the individual or community actions but also the actions of the State. Minorities especially Muslims were at the receiving end of State’s selective enforcement of lockdown laws in India. The various instances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic expose the hollow claims of equality before the law and the equal protection of laws as a constitutional promise to every citizen. This article aims to unravel the ostensible and the actual moral exhibition of such Indian laws through the lens of several incidents during the nationwide lockdown in India. This paper would argue that this constructed positivist amorality needs to be deconstructed to unearth the power imbalance that it seeks to hide. (shrink)

Understanding the notion of human being in Taylor’s theory of modern society includes the understanding of external components that define it – a moral framework and a social community – and the understanding of internal components – the capacities, mainly the component of the strong evaluation, that enable it to be oriented towards the highest values. A human being understood as a self, a person, a subject, an identity, overshadows, however, their multidimensionality through the exclusivity of the dimension of moral (...) good as the main reference to their self-evaluation. The paper elaborates Taylor’s moral ontology, the relationship between the self and the good, and the foundation for the creation a modern identity as the synonym for a modern human being in their positioning related to the highest moral values. (shrink)

The current study has mapped the impact of changes in different climatic parameters on the productivity of major crops cultivated in India like cereal, pulses, and oilseed crops. The vulnerability of crops to different climatic conditions like exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive indicators along with its different components and agribusiness has been studied. The study uses data collected over the past six decades from 1960 to 2020. Analytical tools such as the Tobit regression model and Principal Component Analysis were used for (...) the investigation which has shown that among climatic parameters, an increase in temperature along with huge variations in rainfall and consistent increase in CO2 emissions have had a negative impact by reducing crop productivity, particularly cereals and oilseed. Among various factors, adaptive factors such as cropping intensity, agricultural machinery, and livestock density in combination with sensitivity factors such as average operational land holding size and productivity of cereals, and exposure indicators like Kharif temperature, heavy rainfall, and rate of change in maximum and minimum Rabi temperature have contributed significantly in increasing crop vulnerability. The agribusiness model needs to be more inclusive. It should pay attention to small and remote farmers, and provide them with inclusive finance that can facilitate the adoption of climate-smart financial innovations, serve the underserved segments, and help them reach the target of a sustainable and inclusive agribusiness model. Though the social, technological, and economic initiatives can enhance the adaptive capacity of farmers, political measures still have a major role to play in providing a healthy climate for agriculture in India through tailored adaptive approaches like the adoption of craft climate adaptation program, dilating the irrigation coverage and location-centric management options. Hence, multidisciplinary and holistic approaches are worth emphasizing for evaluating the future impacts of change in climate on Indian agriculture. (shrink)

Musical Work Analysis is a holistic approach to the cognitive theory of the musical work. The book develops some of Roman Ingarden's concepts on the epistemology of an actually existing work of music. The author outlines an epistemological theory of the musical work by discussing the role of musical analysis in modern musicology, defining sources and objects of epistemological activity, formulating a systematization of analytical terms, issues and methods, both normative and descriptive, and addressing the relation between analysis and interpretation (...) of a musical work. The book was published in Polish language in edition of the Foundation for Polish Science (Wrocław University Press, Wrocław 2003) and awarded by the Polish Ministry of National Education (2004). (shrink)

Purpose Along with their immense benefit, online channels of communication and information-sharing also present a myriad set of challenges. The unauthorized downloading and sharing of copyrighted content such as music and movies is one such issue. This study aims to examine the factors related to the unauthorized downloading of content amongst young internet users in an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach An online structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 219 internet users between 17 and 24 years of age. The (...) partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the primary data. Findings The study findings report that monetary savings and social influence are the main drivers underlying the propensity to engage in unauthorized downloading amongst young adults. Perceptions of harm caused to artists and producers appear to be a deterrent. Though the respondents perceive the quality of content downloaded from unauthorized sites to be less than desirable, and there is also a higher perceived threat from viruses, this does not appear to deter unauthorized downloading behaviour amongst this segment of consumers. Research limitations/implications Combating unauthorized downloading and other forms of questionable online behaviours is a challenge for multiple stakeholders. Consumption of unauthorized digital content is examined in the context of online consumers whose demographic profile is often associated with this category of questionable behaviour. The study adds to the extant understanding of the aetiology of what are often considered online unethical and illegal behaviours and makes both practical and theoretical contributions to the subject field. Originality/value The study examines an important aspect of rapidly evolving internet technologies. The internet provides a veil to individuals engaging in unethical online activities. Despite the existence of laws declaring these activities to be illegal, instances of copyright violations of music and movies abound. The insights regarding the drivers and deterrents of a form of online unauthorized activity are used to present a set of strategies aimed at addressing such behaviours. (shrink)

Whether due to simplicity or hypocrisy, the question of access to patient data for biomedical research is widely seen in the public discourse only from the angle of patient privacy. At the same time, the desire to live and to live without disability is of much higher value to the patients. This goal can only be achieved by extracting research insight from patient data in addition to working on model organisms, something that is well understood by many patients. Yet, most (...) biomedical researchers working outside of clinics and hospitals are denied access to patient records when, at the same time, clinicians who guard the patient data are not optimally prepared for the data’s analysis. Medical data collection is a time- and cost-intensive process that is most of all tedious, with few elements of intellectual and emotional satisfaction on its own. In this process, clinicians and bioinformaticians, each group with their own interests, have to join forces with the goal to generate medical data sets both from clinical trials and from routinely collected electronic health records that are, as much as possible, free from errors and obvious inconsistencies. The data cleansing effort as we have learned during curation of Singaporean clinical trial data is not a trivial task. The introduction of omics and sophisticated imaging modalities into clinical practice that are only partially interpreted in terms of diagnosis and therapy with today’s level of knowledge warrant the creation of clinical databases with full patient history. This opens up opportunities for re-analyses and cross-trial studies at future time points with more sophisticated analyses of the same data, the collection of which is very expensive. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objeto fazer uma discussão sobre a música e a resistência anticolonial em Angola a partir da história de Liceu Vieira Dias e do grupo musical N’gola Ritmos. Para tanto acompanharemos a trajetória de Liceu e do N’gola, de que forma eles usaram a música como resistência, além disso a atuação política de seus membros em organizações clandestinas de contestação do poder metropolitano antes de 1961. Palavras-Chave: Angola, Música, Resistências.

Hindu cosmology according to ancient Vedic literature; includes Sanskrit text.

Picturing Technology in China from Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century. By Peter J. Golas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Pp. xxix + 205, plus 16 plates. $56; HK$430.

In the French presidential election, both candidates tried to keep their domestic life separate from their campaign. Ségolène Royal is not married to François Hollande, the father of her four children. When asked whether they were a couple, Royal replied, “Our lives belong to us.†Similarly, in response to rumors that President-elect Nicholas Sarkozy’s wife had left him, a spokesman for Sarkozy said, “That’s a private matter.â€.

Les livres deutérocanoniques constituent un «intertestament» entre les écrits de la Bible rabbinique et ceux du Nouveau Testament chrétien. Ils sont sur une frontière, un fossé ou un pont entre le christianisme naissant et le judaïsme renaissant après 135. Ils font aussi le lien entre la Gola araméenne et la Diaspora hellénistique. Les écrits intertestamentaires – et spécifiquement les deutérocanoniques qui sont comme un «intertestament» canonique – sont vraiment nécessaires à la compréhension de la Bible.

Rad se bavi konstituisanjem tzv. postideoloske politike u novijoj evropskoj istoriji kao specificne politicke linije koja se suprostavlja svim ideologizacijama politike koje stupaju na snagu posle Francuske revolucije. Termin 'postideoloska politika' se objasnjava i prakticno se potkrepljuje analizom lika i dela trojice znacajnih evropskih drzavnika - Bizmarka Cercila i De Gola koji su prepoznati kao najsnaznije ispoljavanje onoga sto smo nazvali postideoloskom politikom, a koju pre svega karakterise kreativnost, fleksibilnost i izbegavanje svih rigidnih politickih formula. Koncept tzv. postideoloske politike (...) pociva na definiciji politike kao 'umetnosti moguceg' sto je zasticuje od bilo kakvog preteranog ideologizovanja. (shrink)

Rad se bavi konstituisanjem tzv. postideoloske politike u novijoj evropskoj istoriji kao specificne politicke linije koja se suprostavlja svim ideologizacijama politike koje stupaju na snagu posle Francuske revolucije. Termin 'postideoloska politika' se objasnjava i prakticno se potkrepljuje analizom lika i dela trojice znacajnih evropskih drzavnika - Bizmarka Cercila i De Gola koji su prepoznati kao najsnaznije ispoljavanje onoga sto smo nazvali postideoloskom politikom, a koju pre svega karakterise kreativnost, fleksibilnost i izbegavanje svih rigidnih politickih formula. Koncept tzv. postideoloske politike (...) pociva na definiciji politike kao 'umetnosti moguceg' sto je zasticuje od bilo kakvog preteranog ideologizovanja. (shrink)