For eradication of acute poverty, it is vital to factor in the human experience of it. Building social capital and networks that nurture, empower, and consistently reinforce a new shared economic identity can provide rich socioeconomic dividends. For states tackling extreme poverty at scale, building and strengthening social capital are essential public goods investments.

This study examines the impact of regulatory changes on seven distinct corporate governance determinants of asset quality in Indian banks. We focus on the Companies Act of 2013 and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of 2016, two key pieces of legislation that have significantly impacted the Indian banking industry. Using the General Method of Moments, a dynamic panel data method, we analyze data from 45 Indian public and private sector banks from 2010 to 2019. Our results suggest that board functioning (...) contributes more to the reduction of non-performing assets after the passage of the Companies Act. However, the impact of special committee activity, ownership concentration, and intensity of board activities has worsened. As far as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of 2016 is considered, it has reduced the negative impact of special committee activity and board functioning on asset quality. Our study addresses the endogeneity issue, frequently encountered in previous research on corporate governance determinants of asset quality. This study makes a valuable contribution to the literature by providing insights into the impact of regulatory changes on corporate governance determinants of asset quality in Indian banks. Our research also provides a benchmark for other emerging economies to define their legal frameworks. We suggest further study of the factors, particularly board independence and gender diversity in light of the Acts. (shrink)

In this work, we explore modeling of wormholes in framework of f(R, T) gravity with the functional form f(R,T)=R+αR2+λT\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f(R, T)= R+\alpha R^2 +\lambda T$$\end{document}, where R and T are the Ricci scalar and trace of energy-momentum tensor respectively, α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document} and λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda$$\end{document} are arbitrary constants. Using the equation of state (EoS) pr=ωρ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} (...) \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$p_r=\omega \rho$$\end{document} and shape function b(r)=r0arar0,(0shrink)

Comments on: JRE Focus on The 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, Journal of Religious Ethics 26.2 “Rethinking Human Rights: A Review Essay on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters” by David Little, Journal of Religious Ethics 27.1.

The Question Of The Relationship Between The Ultimate Reality Of The Universe, And Its Proximate Reality As Experienced By Us, Is Apt To Boggle The Mind. Nevertheless, The Hindu School Of Philosophy, Known As Advaita Vedanta, Tries To Render It Comprehensible At The Level Of The Individual Through Everyday Analogies Like Mistaking A Piece Of Seashell For A Piece Of Silver.

On the philosophical aspects and concept of God in Sikhism.

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)

Study in context of Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

Addressing religion and feminism on a global scale, this unprecedented book contains a nuanced and fine-tuned treatment of seven of the world's religions from a feminist perspective by leading women scholars. The fact that these authors share a dual but undivided commitment both to themselves as women and to their traditions as adherents imparts to their voices a prophetic quality, and if Mahatma Gandhi is to be believed, even scriptural value.

As a forum for philosophical discourse of religious studies as related to the world's women, the "Annual Review of Women in World Religions" fails. The first three issues display an unfortunately limited approach. Certain articles are promising, but editorial intellectual constraints appear to have circumscribed the philosophical latitude provided to contributors. In spite of the potential of the journal's topic area, it is doubtful it will soon succeed in emerging as a publication with adequate inclusionary liberality and ideal discursive freedom.

We studied the dynamics of large networks of spiking neurons with conductance-based (nonlinear) synapses and compared them to net- works with current-based (linear) synapses. For systems with sparse and inhibition-dominated recurrent connectivity, weak external inputs in- duced asynchronous irregular firing at low rates. Membrane potentials fluctuated a few millivolts below threshold, and membrane conductances were increased by a factor 2 to 5 with respect to the resting state. This combination of parameters characterizes the ongoing spiking activity typ- ically recorded in (...) the cortex in vivo. Many aspects of the asynchronous irregular state in conductance-based networks could be sufficiently well characterized with a simple numerical mean field approach. In particular, it correctly predicted an intriguing property of conductance-based net- works that does not appear to be shared by current-based models: they exhibit states of low-rate asynchronous irregular activity that persist for some period of time even in the absence of external inputs and with- out cortical pacemakers. Simulations of larger networks (up to 350,000 neurons) demonstrated that the survival time of self-sustained activity increases exponentially with network size. (shrink)

Jīvanmukti or ‘living liberation’ has been identified as a distinguishing feature of Indian thought; or, upon drawing a narrower circle, of Hindu thought; and upon drawing an even narrower cocentric circle of Vedānta—of Advaita Vedānta. In some recent studies the cogency of its formulation within Advaita Vedānta has been questioned—but without reference to the testimony of its major modern exemplar, Rama a Mahar i. This paper examines the significance of the life and statements of Rama a Mahar i for the (...) current debate in the context of neo-Hinduism. (shrink)

Presenting biographies of such influential thinkers as Dayanand, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Keshub Chandra Sen and Gandhi, this work includes enthralling extracts from key writings of modern Hindu thinking. It will be of special interest to students and scholars of religion, classical philosophy, and Indian literature, as well as to anyone interested in Hinduism.

The doctrines of Kanna and rebirth dovetail so neatly that they are often treated as a single philosophical package. This paper demonstrates that when they are each treated separately in their own right and their possible relationships are re‐examined, it leads to a much more nuanced understanding of not only these concepts but also the issues they were developed to address.

Ramana Maharsi is one of the lesser lights of modern Indian thought but a major figure in the context of modern Advaitic thought in Hinduism. Modern Indian thought in general is distinguished by a robust confidence in the efficacy of effort as an expression of free will, a confidence it shares with the temper of the West in general and which it may have imbibed by coming in contact with it. Modern Advaitic thought, as represented by its popular modern exponents (...) such as S. Radhakrishnan and T. M. P. Mahadevan, shares this confidence. Ramana Maharsi, however, strikes, at least at first glance, a somewhat discordant note. The purpose of this paper is to present his view on the time–honoured debate between predeterminism and free will and to analyze its philosophical implications. (shrink)

Isolated feedforward networks (FFNs) of spiking neurons have been studied extensively for their ability to propagate transient synchrony and asynchronous firing rates, in the presence of activity independent synaptic background noise (Diesmann et al., 1999; van Rossum et al., 2002). In a biologically realistic scenario, however, the FFN should be embedded in a recurrent network, such that the activity in the FFN and the network activity may dynamically interact. Previously, transient synchrony propagating in an FFN was found to destabilize the (...) dynamics of the embedding network (Mehring et al., 2003). Here, we show that by modeling synapses as conductance transients, rather than current sources, it is possible to embed and propagate transient synchrony in the FFN, without destabilizing the background network dynamics. However, the network activity has a strong impact on the type of activity that can be propagated in the embedded FFN. Global synchrony and high firing rates in the embedding network prohibit the propagation of both, synchronous and asynchronous spiking activity. In contrast, asynchronous low-rate network states support the propagation of both, synchronous spiking and asynchro- nous, but only low firing rates. In either case, spiking activity tends to synchronize as it propagates, challenging the feasibility to transmit information in asynchronous firing rates. Finally, asynchronous network activity allows to embed more than one FFN, with the amount of cross talk depending on the degree of overlap in the FFNs. This opens the possibility of computational mechanisms using transient synchrony among the activities in multiple FFNs. (shrink)

Festschrift in honor of Pushpendra Kumar, b. 1936, Sanskritist; comprises research papers on Vedic literature and philosophy and language.

The study is an attempt to understand the prevailing discourse in India on education as a right by closely reading the parliamentary debates on The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Educatio...

This paper presents a method for the study of the influence of stability of a power transformer on the power system based on the vibration principle. Traditionally, the EMD and EEMD algorithms are employed to test the box vibration signal data of the power transformer under three working conditions. The proposed method utilizes a partial EMD screening along with MPEEMD method for the online monitoring of power transformer. A complete online monitoring system is designed by using the STM32 processor and (...) LabVIEW system. The proposed system is compared with EMD and EEMD algorithms in terms of the number of IMFs obtained by decomposition, maximum correlation coefficient, and mean square error. The inherent mode correlation, when compared with the mean square error of the reconstructed signal, shows that the reconstruction error of MPEEMD algorithm is 4.762×10−15 which is better than the traditional EMD algorithm. It is observed from the results that the proposed method outperforms both EMD and EEMD algorithms. (shrink)