This essay revisits the scholarly consensus about the “earliest” song and early images of Mīrā—the sixteenth-century Rajput noblewoman who is a leading female voice in north Indian devotional (bhakti) movements. I show that what scholars have considered as Mīrā’s oldest extant poem—recorded in the Kartarpur manuscript of 1604, which culminated in the making of the Sikh Guru Granth Sāhib—has a different history of recension in the devotional sects of Rajasthan. In the early seventeenth-century manuscripts of the Dādūpanth, the same poem (...) is not attributed to Mīrā but to Sukhānand, one of the twelve disciples of Rāmānand— the first Guru of the major Rām devotional sect of north India. Various possible explanations for this double attribution will be explored, and the question asked: What do the varied attributions of Mīrā’s “earliest” song tell us about the growth of a Mīrā corpus and the multiple Mīrās as represented in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hagiographies that emerged from her own region? (shrink)

Cognitive enhancement (CE) covers a broad spectrum of methods, including behavioral techniques, nootropic drugs, and neuromodulation interventions. However, research on their use in children has almost exclusively been carried out in high-income countries with limited understanding of how experts working with children view their use in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). This study examines perceptions on cognitive enhancement, their techniques, neuroethical issues about their use from an LMICs perspective.Seven Indian experts were purposively sampled for their expertise in bioethics, child (...) development and child education. In-depth interviews were conducted using a semi-structured topic guide to examine (1) understanding of CE, (2) which approaches were viewed as cognitive enhancers, (3) attitudes toward different CE techniques and (4) neuroethical issues related to CE use within the Indian context. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed before thematic analysis.Findings indicate Indian experts view cognitive enhancement as a holistic positive impact on overall functioning and well-being, rather than improvement in specific cognitive abilities. Exogenous agents, and neuromodulation were viewed with skepticism, whereas behavioral approaches were viewed more favorably. Neuroethical concerns included equitable access to CE, limited scientific evidence and over-reliance on technology to address societal problems. This highlights the need for more contextually relevant neuroethics research in LMICs. (shrink)

Atomic-scale computer simulation has been used to study the thermally activated atomic transport of self-interstitial atoms in the form of planar clusters in pure Cu and f -Fe. There is strong evidence that such clusters are commonly formed in metals during irradiation with high-energy particles and play an important role in accumulation and spatial distribution of surviving defects. An extensive study of the mobility of SIA clusters containing two to 331 interstitials has been carried out using the molecular dynamics simulation (...) technique for the temperature range from 180 to 1200 K. The results obtained show that clusters larger than three to four SIAs are one-dimensionally mobile in both Cu and Fe. Large clusters of more than 100 SIAs in Cu and 300 SIAs in Fe have significantly reduced mobility. The problem of describing one-dimensional motion in three-dimensional space is discussed. An attempt is made to describe the mobility of SIA clusters within the approximation of 1D diffusion. For clusters in both metals the effective migration energy of 1D diffusion as estimated via the jump frequency of the cluster centre of mass is found to be independent of the number of SIAs in the clusters, although the cluster jump frequency decreases with increasing cluster size. Mechanisms of 1D mobility of interstitial clusters are discussed. (shrink)

Academic research studies examining the ethical attitudes and behaviors of salespeople have produced several frameworks that explore the ethical decision-making processes to which salespeople adhere when faced with ethical dilemmas. Past literature enriches our understanding; however, a critical review of the relevant literature suggests that an emotional route to salesperson ethical decision-making has yet to be explored. Given the fact that individuals’ emotional capacities play an important role in decision-making when faced with an ethical dilemma, there is a need for (...) empirical research in this area. We address this issue by outlining and testing an emotion-based model to study the ethical attitudes and behaviors of salespeople in a relational selling context. Building on the cognitive-affective model proposed by Gaudine and Thorne (J Bus Ethics 31:175–187, 2001 ), we outline a framework that incorporates higher order prosocial emotions: capacity for concern and capacity for guilt. We include salesperson’s role clarity within the organization as a moderator to examine person–situation interaction. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus disease is impactful on all aspects of individuals’ lives, particularly mental health due to the fear and spirituality associated with the pandemic. Thus, purpose of this study was to identify the relationship among fear, spirituality, and mental health on COVID-19 among adults in Malaysia. This study also examines spirituality as a mediator in relationship between fear and mental health. The study involved around 280 adults in Malaysia. This research is a quantitative study. Data analysis method has been (...) used for data analysis. Based on descriptive analysis, mental health questionnaire indicated that 60.0% of them are at a poor level of mental health whereas 57.5% of respondents showed a moderate level of COVID-19 fear, and 60.4% of respondents owned moderate level of spiritual well-being. The results also demonstrated that respondents that have a high level of fear would have a high level of mental health; interestingly, those with a high level of spirituality will have a lower level of mental health. Findings indicated that spirituality significantly mediated the relationship between fear and mental health. This research will help to demonstrate how important spirituality values to control mental health to be more positive among adults in Malaysia. The main contributions of this study are to help come out with new intervention method for those who are mentally ill and need help. (shrink)

Cornell realism (CR), a prominent meta-ethical position that has emerged since the last decades of the twentieth century, proposes a non-reductionist naturalistic account of moral properties and facts. This paper argues that the best version of CR’s chosen methodology for arriving at justified moral beliefs must be seen as a variant of reflective equilibrium. In comparison to the traditional versions, our proposal offers a ‘social’ reinterpretation of reflective equilibrium in delineating CR’s epistemology. We argue that it satisfactorily accounts for objectivity (...) and calls for the inclusion of the social nature of both moral and scientific inquiries. Emphasising the social dimension of their epistemological account also nudges debates in metaethics into incorporating the much-needed social dimension while dealing with questions of moral beliefs and facts that have been of CR’s concern. (shrink)

Africa has a colonial past that renders it a linguistic melting pot, where language is not only important for communication but is inextricably related to cultural identity. In Africa, there are over 2000 languages that are still being used and spoken. Language diversity coupled with cultural diversity may affect the process of obtaining informed consent in data-intensive research. We explore some of the challenges and opportunities of multilingualism in handling informed consent in the context of data-intensive research. In multilingual contexts, (...) as in most African countries, language is exceptionally central, and translation has potential cultural, social, historical, functional and scientific importance. However, it is recognised that terminological and translation activities may not always be cost-effective or feasible. We consider alternative mechanisms of harmonisation of data-related terminology and concepts in multilingual contexts, such as iconography, graphic elicitation and other multimedia formats of information sharing. The inclusion of visual or multimedia explanations in informed consent forms can improve comprehension, enhance information transfer and learning, reduce potential vulnerabilities associated with low literacy levels or the inability to interpret technical language associated with data-intensive research, build trust with participants and their communities, and promote autonomy of potential participants. We recognise that the inclusion of visual or multimedia content to facilitate information transfer is only one component of the informed consent process for data-intensive research. Research ethics committees (RECs) should be mindful of other key considerations and challenges of informed consent for data-intensive research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and to explore whether these alternative forms of consent are ethical and effective in multilingual contexts. (shrink)

Childhood adversity is associated with altered or dysregulated stress reactivity; these altered patterns of physiological functioning persist into adulthood. Evidence from both preclinical animal models and human neuroimaging studies indicates that early life experience differentially influences stressor-evoked activity within central visceral neural circuits proximally involved in the control of stress responses, including the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and amygdala. However, the relationship between childhood adversity and the (...) resting-state connectivity of this central visceral network remains unclear. To this end, we examined relationships between childhood threat and childhood socioeconomic deprivation, the resting-state connectivity between our regions of interest (ROIs), and affective symptom severity and diagnoses. We recruited a transdiagnostic sample of young adult males and females (n= 100; mean age = 27.28,SD= 3.99; 59 females) with a full distribution of maltreatment history and symptom severity across multiple affective disorders. Resting-state data were acquired using a 7.2-min functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sequence; noted ROIs were applied as masks to determine ROI-to-ROI connectivity. Threat was determined by measures of childhood traumatic events and abuse. Socioeconomic deprivation (SED) was determined by a measure of childhood socioeconomic status (parental education level). Covarying for age, race and sex, greater childhood threat was significantly associated with lower BNST-PVN, amygdala-sgACC and PVN-sgACC connectivity. No significant relationships were found between SED and resting-state connectivity. BNST-PVN connectivity was associated with the number of lifetime affective diagnoses. Exposure to threat during early development may entrain altered patterns of resting-state connectivity between these stress-related ROIs in ways that contribute to dysregulated neural and physiological responses to stress and subsequent affective psychopathology. (shrink)

The stability of the power grid is concernment due to the high demand and supply to smart cities, homes, factories, and so on. Different machine learning and deep learning models can be used to tackle the problem of stability prediction for the energy grid. This study elaborates on the necessity of IoT technology to make energy grid networks smart. Different prediction models, namely, logistic regression, naïve Bayes, decision tree, support vector machine, random forest, XGBoost, k-nearest neighbor, and optimized artificial neural (...) network, have been applied on openly available smart energy grid datasets to predict their stability. The present article uses metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and ROC curve to compare different predictive models. Data augmentation and feature scaling have been applied to the dataset to get better results. The augmented dataset provides better results as compared with the normal dataset. This study concludes that the deep learning predictive model ANN optimized with Adam optimizer provides better results than other predictive models. The ANN model provides 97.27% accuracy, 96.79% precision, 95.67% recall, and 96.22% F1 score. (shrink)

The Indian mediascape has dramatically changed in the past 15 years. Gradual privatization and deregulation have resulted in increased entertainment-driven rather than public-service oriented news. This article explores the ethical issues Indian journalists face in such a globalized media environment. Our research was based on interactive workshops we conducted in various Indian cities. Findings from these workshops reveal that although journalists encounter serious ethical issues, media ethics is not a topic being widely discussed in Indian newsrooms and TV stations. Marketing (...) pressures, the tabloidization of news, and management and economic pressures are affecting journalism ethics and issues such as accountability, independence, and conflict of interests. A lack of professional training, especially ethics training, is affecting journalists' understanding of concepts such as privacy and accuracy. (shrink)

Heritable traits are predominantly encoded within genomic DNA, but it is now appreciated that epigenetic information is also inherited through DNA methylation, histone modifications, and small RNAs. Several examples of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of traits have been documented in plants and animals. These include even the inheritance of traits acquired through the soma during the life of an organism, implicating the transfer of epigenetic information via the germline to the next generation. Small RNAs appear to play a significant role in (...) carrying epigenetic information across generations. This review focuses on how epigenetic information in the form of small RNAs is transmitted from the germline to the embryos through the gametes. We also consider how inherited epigenetic information is maintained across generations in a small RNA‐dependent and independent manner. Finally, we discuss how epigenetic traits acquired from the soma can be inherited through small RNAs. (shrink)

This study sought to explore the level of personal wellbeing and identified the determinants of happiness among Indian adolescents and youth. Data were collected from a sample of 495 participants residing in the National Capital Region of Delhi, using the bilingual version of the Personal Wellbeing Index. Their PWI score was 80.06, indicating high happiness levels in the nonwestern normative PWI range. Domains of personal relationships, community connectedness, and safety represented high overall wellbeing with the highest mean scores. Multivariate analysis (...) showed that the least happy group on life as a whole domain was students aged 19–23 years as compared with the 11–14 and 15–18 years age group. Furthermore, men had higher happiness levels on personal safety, while women had higher scores on life achievement. The qualitative analysis illustrated the socio-cultural basis of these wellbeing determinants as rooted in the hierarchical social structures and collectivistic cultural orientation. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship of leadership effectiveness and psychological well-being with the work outcomes of intention to quit, job involvement and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), and whether workplace spirituality plays a role in mediating the associations of leadership effectiveness and psychological well-being with work outcomes. The study is cross-sectional and non-experimental. Data were obtained from 630 information technology (IT) employees from South India, adopting ‘power calculations’. The analysis was performed using SPSS version 20 for Windows (...) and LISREL version 8.72. Results reveal that leadership effectiveness and psychological well-being have a significant positive association with workplace spirituality, and this, in turn, has an impact on the work outcomes of intention to quit, job involvement and OBSE. Workplace spirituality can limit any negative associations of leadership effectiveness and psychological well-being with work outcomes. This research adds to the existing body of knowledge in the spirituality literature by drawing attention to the positive aspects of the interplay between spirituality, leadership transformation and well-being at work. The article concludes that building core values anchoring spirituality would lead to greater connectedness and healthier employee outcomes. (shrink)

Film production is the process of creating a film, involving stages such as progress, pre-production, invention, post-production, and sharing. It encompasses planning, scripting, shooting, editing, and finalizing the film for public viewing. The process of imagination drives innovation in scripting, directing, and cinematography, resulting in unique, engaging experiences that captivate audiences with their emotive stories. The principle of this investigation is to assess how psychological factors add to enhancing imagination in film production, focusing on their impact on creative processes and (...) outcomes. A study surveyed 680 students from college film program students to analyze their creative personality and imaginative capabilities using structured questionnaires. Key psychological constructs included Creative Self-Efficacy, Emotional Resilience, Cognitive Flexibility, and Intrinsic Motivation. The study investigated the impact of psychological factors on college cinema students' creative imagination in filmmaking, demonstrating high validity and reliability with Factor Loadings exceeding 0.76, Composite Reliability higher than 0.88, and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) range as of 0.59 to 0.67. Discriminant validity was confirmed as every construct AVE was better than its square correlations by other constructs. Psychological factors significantly influence film production imagination, fostering creative thinking and emotional depth. Understanding and harnessing these factors enhances storytelling, character development, and audience engagement, ultimately enriching the cinematic experience. (shrink)

The majority of antimicrobials that are produced are administered to animals, particularly food animals. While the overall impact of antimicrobial use in animals on antimicrobial resistance in humans and the environment is unclear, it undeniably has a role. Yet, some degree of antimicrobial use in animals is necessary for animal health and welfare purposes. Balancing the benefits and risks of antimicrobial use in animals is challenging because of the complexity of the problem and limitations in available data. However, a range (...) of measures can be implemented to reduce, refine and optimize antimicrobial use in animals, with a goal of minimizing the impact on human and environmental health while maintaining necessary therapeutic use in animals. A pandemic instrument can provide the necessary foundation for the whole-of-society and whole-of government One Health approach that is required to strengthen surveillance, communication, collaboration, and action. (shrink)

Networked service organisations are increasingly adopting a ‘smarter networking’ philosophy in their design of more agile and customer-focused supply models. Changing consumer behaviours and the emergence of transformative technologies—industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the Internet of Things—are driving a series of innovations, in terms of ‘products’ and business models, with major implications for the industrial enterprise, in their design of more ‘digitalised’ supply chains. For B2B systems, emerging ‘product-service’ offerings are requiring greater visibility, alignment and integration across an (...) increasingly complex network of multiple partners and collaborators, in order to deliver a better service and customer ‘experience’. To support the design and operation of these multi-organisational service networks, we outline a concept of operations architecture here, underpinned by the literature and network theory, and demonstrate application using a series of exemplar case studies. Focusing on relational elements and the processes key to network integration within service supply networks, the cases inform a set of operating principles and protocols—applicable to all stakeholders ‘cooperating’, within a ‘shared’ environment. Equally critical is to understand how digital technologies may influence future operating philosophies. This article extends our theoretical understanding of network organisations, from a traditional ‘product’ perspective to that of ‘services’, and presents the case for developing a common, unified approach to designing diverse forms of multi-partner service networks. (shrink)

Having a systematicseize of cultural diversity is necessary for health professionals to present culturally competent treatment, enhance patient satisfaction and recover healthcare outcomes. To better recognize how cultural identity (CI) affects the attitudes, communication preferences and decision-making processes of health professionals, this research looks at how cultural competency is integrated into healthcare education and strategy.This study examines the influence of CI on the perspectives and practices of health professionals and its impact on patient care. People's behaviors and self-perceptions are greatly (...) influenced by their concept of culture, which is defined by shared norms, language, and ethical principles. This research includes 281 health professionals from diverse contexts utilizing the Cultural Competence Assessment Questionnaire (CCAQ). Interpersonal relationships, professional development, communication skills, cultural sensitivity, competence and patient-centered care are all significantly correlated, according to the data. This finding suggests that for improved patient relationship and liberty of health, there should be specialized cultural competency training. Implications for practice: promote continued professional development about cultural sensitivity in health events, and conferences. This article also puts forward the use of CI as one method to guide and support the approach of health professionals and capture the attention of communications and cultural competencies to help develop patient results. (shrink)

In business ethics, there is a large body of literature focusing on the conditions, factors, and influences in the ethical decision-making processes. This work builds upon the past critical reviews by updating and extending the literature review found in Craft’s :221–259, 2013) study, extending her literature review to include a total of 141 articles. Since past reviews have focused on categorizing results based upon various independent variables, we instead synthesize and look at the trends of these based upon the four (...) ethical decision making categories: Awareness, Behavior, Judgment, and Intention. We focus on the moderation and mediation effects found within these studies and provide an in-depth analysis of future trends. Furthermore, we also highlight key statistical and methodological concerns, outline overarching trends, and directions of future research in empirical ethical decision making. (shrink)

Julietta Singh challenges the drive toward the mastery over self and others by showing how the forms of self-mastery advocated by anticolonial thinkers like Fanon and Gandhi unintentionally reproduced colonial logic, thereby leading her to argue for a more productive human subjectivity that is not centered on concepts of mastery.

A very common but untested assumption is that potential children would consent to be exposed to the harms of existence in order to experience its benefits. And so, would-be parents might appeal to the following view: Procreation is all-things-considered permissible, as it is morally acceptable for one to knowingly harm an unconsenting patient if one has good reasons for assuming her hypothetical consent—and procreators can indeed reasonably rely on some notion of hypothetical consent. I argue that this view is in (...) error. My argument appeals to a consent-based version of anti-natalism advanced by Seana Valentine Shiffrin. Anti-natalism is the view that it is always wrong to bring people into existence. While, like Shiffrin, I stop short of advocating a thoroughgoing anti-natalism, I nevertheless argue that procreators cannot appeal to hypothetical consent to justify exposing children to the harms of existence. I end by suggesting a more promising route by which this justification might be achieved. (shrink)

The uniqueness of Psychiatry as a medical speciality lies in the fact that aside from tackling what it considers as illnesses, it has perchance to comment on and tackle many issues of social relevance as well. Whether this is advisable or not is another matter; but such a process is inevitable due to the inherent nature of the branch and the problems it deals with. Moreover this is at the root of the polarization of psychiatry into opposing psychosocial and biological (...) schools. This gets reflected in their visualization of scope, in definitions and in methodology as well. Whilst healthy criticism of one against the other school is necessary, there should be caution against hasty application of one's frame of reference to an approach that does not intend to follow, or conform to, one's methodology. This should be done within the referential framework of the school critically evaluated, with due consideration for its methods and concepts. Similarly, as at present, there is no evidence to prove one or the other of these approaches as better, aside from personal choice. We can say so even if there is a strong paradigm shift towards the biological at present. A renaissance of scientific psychoanalysis coupled with a perceptive neurobiology which can translate those insights into testable hypotheses holds the greatest promise for psychiatry in the future. This suggests the need for unification of diverse appearing approaches to get a more comprehensive and enlightened worldview. It requires a highly integrative capacity. Just as a physicist thinks simultaneously in terms of particles and waves, a psychiatrist must think of motives, emotions and desires in the same breath as neurobiology, genetics and psychopharmacology. However, the integration must be attempted without destroying the internal cohesiveness of the individual schools. This will give a fair chance for polarization in which a single proper approach in psychiatry could emerge, which may be a conglomerate of diverse appearing approaches of today, or one which supersedes the rest. A synthesis of cognitive psychology and neuroscience offers the greatest promise at present. (shrink)

This article argues that early modern European assessments of Chinese astronomy and, accordingly, antiquity were largely shaped by local concerns about conflicting schemes of political order. Exploring a little-studied controversy between the Anglican vicar and orientalist George Costard and the French Jesuit in Beijing Antoine Gaubil, the article examines the political stakes involved in promoting or rejecting Chinese astronomical chronology in Georgian Britain and Qing China, respectively. For Whig Anglicans, accepting Chinese astronomical chronology risked legitimizing the “despotic” political system that (...) produced it. Conversely, for Jesuits in China, overtly rejecting Chinese astronomy and antiquity imperiled missionaries’ lives and the very survival of the mission. Eighteenth-century European political discourses thus both shaped and were subtly shaped by debates about Chinese astronomical practices and their relationship to antiquity. (shrink)

This article examines the turn to the aesthetic dimension in early 20th century critical theory, particularly in the work of Lukács, Benjamin and Adorno. It focuses on the concept of play ( Spiel), which garnered particular attention as a possible form of aesthetic resistance to the reification of reason in modern society. The article traces the concept of play from the work of Lukács, who engaged with Schiller’s notion of the play-drive but ultimately viewed it to be an inadequate form (...) of aesthetic resistance, to the work of Benjamin, who optimistically embraced the revolutionary possibility of play. In contrast, the article argues that Adorno’s work tacitly advances a critical concept of dark play that offers a third perspective between Lukács’s pessimism and Benjamin’s optimism, thus avoiding both the retreat into an apolitical aesthetic dimension and the uncritical embrace of play’s revolutionary potential. (shrink)

Our concern in this paper lies with a common argument from racial discrimination to realism about races: some people are discriminated against for being members of a particular race (i.e., racial discrimination exists), so some people must be members of that race (i.e., races exist). Error theorists have long responded that we can explain racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, so we need not explain it in terms of race itself. But to date there has been little detailed (...) discussion of whether it is better to explain racial discrimination in terms of race or in terms of racial attitudes alone. Our goal is to offer a novel and detailed argument in defense of explaining racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, by attending to the neglected phenomenon of misperception discrimination, which involves differential treatment due to misperceived race. We argue that the discriminatory action in misperception cases must be explained in the same way as cases where (according to the realist) the victim’s race is accurately perceived. Thus, the victim’s actual race cannot provide the best explanation. The main upshot of our argument is that explanatory arguments from racial discrimination to realism about race fail. (shrink)