Prior research suggests that the media plays an important information intermediary role in capital markets. We investigate the role of the media in influencing firms’ engagement in corporate social responsibility activities. Using a large sample of 4396 unique firms from 42 countries over the period 2003–2012, we find strong evidence that firms engage in more CSR activities if located in countries where the media has more freedom. This relation is robust to using various proxies for media freedom, an alternative source (...) of CSR data, and to applying the instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity. In additional analyses, we find that the positive relation between media freedom and CSR engagement is stronger for better governed firms and for larger firms. Since the media have the ability to impact reputational capital, we conclude that media freedom affects firms’ incentives to engage in costly CSR activities. (shrink)

This paper examines whether bank capital ratios and default risk are associated with the gender of the bank’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of the board. Given the documented gender-based differences in conservatism and risk tolerance, we postulate that female CEOs and board Chairs should assess risks more conservatively, and thereby hold higher levels of equity capital and reduce the likelihood of bank failure during periods of market stress. Using a large panel of U.S. commercial banks, we document that banks (...) with female CEOs hold more conservative levels of capital after controlling for the bank’s asset risk and other attributes. Furthermore, while neither CEO nor Chair gender is related to bank failure in general, we find strong evidence that smaller banks with female CEOs and board Chairs were less likely to fail during the financial crisis. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that gender-based behavioral differences may affect corporate decisions. (shrink)

This essay explores the notion of female embodiment and its relation to the phenomenon of religion. It explains religious beliefs, acts, and events in terms of the worship of the female body. By elucidating this standpoint, this essay hopes to reclaim the centrality of the female body and its importance in the study of philosophy of religion.

Infertility specialists may be confronted with the ethical dilemma of whether to disclose misattributed paternity (MP). Physicians should be prepared for instances when an assumed father’s evaluation reveals a condition known for lifelong infertility, for example, congenital bilateral absence of vas deferens (CBAVD). When there is doubt regarding a patient’s comprehension of his diagnosis, physicians must consider whether further disclosure is warranted. This article describes a case of MP with ethics analysis that concludes that limited nondisclosure is most consistent with (...) a physician’s principled duties to inform, to respect patients’ autonomy, and to employ nonmaleficence (including the avoidance of psychosocial harms). (shrink)

Libertarian paternalism is a concept derived from cognitive psychology and behavioural science. It is behind policies that frame information in such a way as to encourage individuals to make choices which are in their best interests, while maintaining their freedom of choice. Clinicians may view their clinical consultations as far removed from the realms of cognitive psychology but on closer examination there are a number of striking similarities.

Flavin‐containing monooxygenases (FMOs), traditionally known for detoxifying xenobiotics, are now recognized for their involvement in endogenous metabolism. We recently discovered that an isoform of FMO, fmo‐2 in Caenorhabditis elegans, alters endogenous metabolism to impact longevity and stress tolerance. Increased expression of fmo‐2 in C. elegans modifies the flux through the key pathway known as One Carbon Metabolism (OCM). This modified flux results in a decrease in the ratio of S‐adenosyl‐methionine (SAM) to S‐adenosyl‐homocysteine (SAH), consequently diminishing methylation capacity. Here we discuss (...) how FMO‐2‐mediated formate production during tryptophan metabolism may serve as a trigger for changing the flux in OCM. We suggest formate bridges tryptophan and OCM, altering metabolic flux away from methylation during fmo‐2 overexpression. Additionally, we highlight how these metabolic results intersect with the mTOR and AMPK pathways, in addition to mitochondrial metabolism. In conclusion, the goal of this essay is to bring attention to the central role of FMO enzymes but lack of understanding of their mechanisms. We justify a call for a deeper understanding of FMO enzyme's role in metabolic rewiring through tryptophan/formate or other yet unidentified substrates. Additionally, we emphasize the identification of novel drugs and microbes to induce FMO activity and extend lifespan. (shrink)

The origins of U.S. corporate taxation are often associated with the 1909 corporate excise tax. Scholars who have investigated the beginnings of this levy have mainly focused on the legislative history of the 1909 corporate tax to argue that it was either an expression of the Progressive Era impulse to regulate large-scale corporations or an attempt to use corporations as remittance devices to collect taxes aimed at wealthy shareholders. This Article broadens the conventional historical accounts of the emergence of American (...) corporate taxation by revisiting the 1909 U.S. corporate tax from a comparative perspective. The aim is to look both below and beyond the American nation-state to determine how and why U.S. state governments and other Western industrialized nations tried to tax corporations at the turn of the twentieth century. This Article investigates a small slice of subnational and transnational comparative examples: corporate tax laws and policies in a few representative nineteenth-century industrializing American states, and in turn-of-the-century England and Germany. Building on the well-known insights of comparative business history, this Article contends that historically-determined political interests, social ideas, and cultural beliefs help explain the American obsession with disciplining large-scale business corporations through the use of nominally punitive tax laws and policies. Comparative-historical analysis shows how differences in the organizational structures of big businesses across place and time have led to variations in political economy that were ultimately expressed in the legal ideas and cultural attitudes toward corporate capitalism. These variations, in turn, shaped the transnational distinctions in corporate tax law and policies. Greater attention to the comparative-historical development of law and political economy may help us understand the stubborn persistence of American corporate taxation, particularly in the face of recent global changes and the relentless economic critiques of the double taxation of corporate income. (shrink)

The natural replacement of damaged cells by stem cells occurs actively and often in adult tissues, especially rapidly dividing cells such as blood cells. An exciting case in Boston, however, posits a kind of natural stem cell therapy provided to a mother by her fetus—long after the fetus is born. Because there is a profound lack of medical intervention, this therapy seems natural enough and is unlikely to be morally suspect. Nevertheless, we feel morally uncertain when we consider giving this (...) type of therapy to patients who would not naturally receive it. Much has been written about the ethics of stem cell research and therapy; this paper will focus on how recent advances in biotechnology and biological understandings of development narrow the debate. Here, the author briefly reviews current stem cell research practices, revisits the natural stem cell therapy case for moral evaluation, and ultimately demonstrates the importance of permissible stem cell research and therapy, even absent an agreement about the definition of when embryonic life begins.Although one promising technology, blighted ovum utilisation, uses fertilised but developmentally bankrupt eggs, it is argued that utilisation of unfertilised eggs to derive totipotent stem cells obviates the moral debate over when life begins. There are two existing technologies that fulfil this criterion: somatic cell nuclear transfer and parthenogenic stem cell derivation. Although these technologies are far from therapeutic, concerns over the morality of embryonic stem cell derivation should not hinder their advancement. (shrink)

Although today Appayya Dīkṣīta enjoys a reputation as the preeminent Śaiva polemicist of the sixteenth century, it must be remembered that he also wrote works from a distinctively Vaiṣṇava perspective, in which Viṣṇu is extolled as the paramount god rather than Śiva. This paper examines one of those works, the Varadarājastava and its autocommentary. It places special emphasis on how the poem is patterned on the Varadarājapañcāśat of the fourteenth-century Śrīvaiṣṇava poet and philosopher, Vedānta Deśika, with close attention to the (...) Varadarājastava’s use of the Vaiṣṇava imagery of the dahara-vidyā or meditation on brahman as the small space within the lotus-shaped heart. While this meditation was the central devotional practice for Appayya Dīkṣita and for his Śaiva predecessor Śrīkaṇṭha, in the Varadarājastava, Appayya is able to develop a more overtly Advaita dahara-vidyā, unfettered by hermeneutic fidelity to Śrīkaṇṭha’s Śaiva approach. The paper also considers the anomaly of Appayya writing as a Vaiṣṇava in the context of the institutional conflicts that took place between Śaivas and Vaiṣṇavas at sites close to where Appayya received patronage. (shrink)

Teachers are burned out and leaving the profession at an alarming rate. We see this problem connected with the ethical orientation of care ethics that teachers are encouraged to adopt while preparing to enter the profession. When they enter the profession, educators often find themselves confronting a neoliberal hegemony that is at odds with care ethics in both theory and practice. This neoliberalized context is incompatible with the relational conceptual foundations of care ethics, forcing a compromised enactment of care that (...) works against sustainability, equity, and educational transformation. In this article, we elaborate the ontological, epistemological, and axiological tensions that threaten educators’ care-ethics-in-practice within neoliberal hegemony. The ersatz care ethics-in-practice is at best able to deliver only a superficial form of caring to the students while possibly causing moral injury to the educators. Ultimately, we see this issue as illustrative of the co-option of progressive discourses by neoliberalism that leads to the hegemony of progressive neoliberalism in educational contexts. Shunning the incremental/structural changes binary, we suggest radical incremental enactments of a politics of collective care might be the way to bring about a future where authentic caring is found woven into the systemic fabric of schooling. (shrink)

The Lord of the Fourteen worlds is manifest here. Questioner: For whom is the title 'Dada Bhagwan' used? Dadashri: For 'Dada Bhagwan.' Not for me. I am a 'Gnani Purush A. M. Patel.' 'Dada Bhagwan' is the Lord of the fourteen worlds. He dwells within you also, but He has not awakened yet, he remains unmanifested. Here within me, He is fully awakened and manifest. He is capable of awakening the Lord within you.

Contributed seminar papers presented at Akhilabhāratīyavaidikasaṅgoṣṭhī Vaidikavāṅmayasya Vividhāyāmaḥ (All India Vedic Seminar on Various Branches of Vedic studies) held and organized by Department of Sanskrit, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, Purulia, West Bengal and sponsored by Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Ved Vidya Pratishthan on 26th and 27th October 2017.

Our current Anthropocene epoch is marked by a rampant proliferation of challenging environmental issues. Over the years, researchers have come to recognize these issues as quintessential wicked pro...

Abstract This essay discusses the paradox of the N?g?rjunian negation as presented in his Vigrahavy?vartani. In Part One it is argued that as the Naiy?yika remarks, N?g?rjuna's speech act ?No proposition has its own intrinsic thesis? seemingly contradicts his famous claim that he has no negation whatsoever. In Parts Two and Three I consider the traditional as well as modem responses to this paradox and offer my own. I argue that N?g?rjuna's speech act does not generate a paradox for two (...) reasons: (a) the equivalence thesis of the kind??P = ?P is obviously false; and (b) since N?g?rjuna's speech act is situated in the dialogical/conversational universe of discourse as opposed to the argumentative/systematic universe of discourse, the teaching of the non?intrinsic thesis of all statements that it purports, holds for all statements in its class, including itself. Lastly, it is argued that even though the N?g?rjunian speech act is not a negation situated in the argumentative universe of discourse, it serves both philosophical and soteriological purposes. (shrink)

Polemical writings against the socioeconomic theories of Karl Marx, 1818-1883.

This paper examines the role of mutual funds in corporate social responsibility. Using a fund-level, holdings-based CSR score, we find that CSR-friendly mutual funds improve firms’ CSR standings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher mutual fund ownership and stronger corporate governance. We further show that while CSR-friendly mutual funds have influence on almost all CSR categories, they focus on increasing CSR strengths rather than reducing CSR concerns. We also discover that CSR-friendly funds are more likely to vote (...) in favor of CSR proposals, and that firms owned by CSR-friendly funds are more likely to link their CEO compensation to CSR outcomes. These results suggest that actively managed mutual funds, which were previously thought to be indifferent to social and ethical issues, play a significant role in corporate social outcomes of the firms they invest in. (shrink)

It is intriguing to think about the range of kind of things one could say with the help of words, but out of these myriad tasks philosophically the most fascinating one is to convince the other about the inefficacy of the words or language in certain domains of experiences in our lives. It is fascinating and intriguing for onesimple reason namely that in such cases language is put to a task of undoing itself and more importantly by itself with the (...) help of nothing apart from itself. (shrink)

The book called "Philosophy of the Gita," by Prof. Ramesh N. Patel, is a striking philosophical study of the celebrated Sanskrit text called the Bhagavad-gita which is known simply as the Gita. Patel's book proposes and develops a new hermeneutic called archaic coherentism and applies it to the Gita to distill and decode a comprehensive metaphysic and philosophy of action embedded in the text. A new conceptual translation of the Sanskrit text brings out this philosophy in clear detail. (...) Philosophical essays preceding the translation include analysis of the often-neglected background of war and morality, discussion of action, freedom and self-identity, delineation of a new synoptic philosophy of Hinduism, and unearthing of a strikingly original and innovative metaphysics of existence, energy and triple individuation. The translation of the Gita is followed by two critical essays called "Emerging Philosophy" and "Coherence and Exegesis." Patel's translation focuses on the conceptual rendering of every term, with no Sanskrit word left untranslated, even including the tough ones like guna and Brahman. The essay called "Emerging Philosophy" does away with all Sanskrit terms, to facilitate the understanding of the newly decoded Gita's philosophy as a whole. The essay called "Coherence and Exegesis" critically examines several scholarly standpoints on the Gita with Patel's sound philosophical reasoning. The innovative philosophy of the Gita that emerges through the book's analysis includes an original theory of individuation revealing a Platonic-type Form of individuation evolving at three levels: essential, actional and physical. The book is written for professional philosophers and Sanskritist Indologists. It generally assumes familiarity with logical problems of philosophy and with Sanskrit terms in Indian philosophy. The author has a rare dual training in Sanskrit and philosophy. He skillfully exploits both in this book to achieve an unusual outcome that should be of great interest and challenge to both professional philosophers as well as scholars of Indology. (shrink)

Narrative analysis, creative writing, and interactive reflective writing have been identified as valuable for professional identity formation and resilience among medical and premedical students alike. This study proposes that medical student blogs are novel pedagogical tools for fostering peer-to-peer learning in academic medicine and are currently underutilized as a near-peer resource for premedical students to learn about the medical profession. To evaluate the pedagogical utility of medical student blogs for introducing core themes in the medical humanities, the authors conducted qualitative (...) analysis of one hundred seventy-six reflective essays by baccalaureate premedical students written in response to medical student-authored narrative blog posts. Using an iterative thematic approach, the authors identified common patterns in the reflective essays, distilled major themes, coded the essays, and conducted narrative analysis through close reading. Qualitative analysis identified three core themes and one overarching theme. The premedical students’ essays demonstrated significant self-reflection in response to near-peer works, discussed their perceptions of medical professionalism, and expressed concerns about their future progress through the medical education system. The essays consistently attributed the impact of the medical student narratives to the authors’ status as near-peers. The authors conclude that reading and engaging in reflective writing about near-peer blog posts encourages premedical students to develop an understanding of core concepts in the medical humanities and promotes their reflection on the profession of medicine. Thus, incorporating online blogs written by medical trainees as narrative works in medical humanities classrooms is a novel pedagogical method for fostering peer-to-peer learning in academic medicine. (shrink)

The last decades have seen major advances in the study of gestures both in humans and non-human primates. In this paper, we seriously examine the idea that there may be gestural form types that are shared across great ape species, including humans, which may underlie gestural universals, both in form and meaning. We focus on one case study, the hand fling gesture common to chimpanzees and humans, and provide a semantic analysis of this gesture.

This manuscript describes the institutional and clinical considerations that apply to the question of whether to mandate opioid dose reduction in patients who have received opioids long-term. It describes how a calamitous rise in addiction and overdose involving opioids has both led to a clinical recalibration by healthcare providers, and to strong incentives favoring forcible opioid reduction by policy making agencies. Neither the 2016 Guideline issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor clinical evidence can justify or promote (...) such policies as safe or effective. (shrink)

As a neo-liberal economy, India has become one of the new health tourism destinations, with commercial gestational surrogacy as an expanding market. Yet the Indian Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill has been pending for five years, and the guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research are somewhat vague and contradictory, resulting in self-regulated practices of fertility clinics. This paper broadly looks at clinical ethics in reproduction in the practice of surrogacy and decision-making in various procedures. Through empirical research in (...) New Delhi, the capital of India, from December 2011 to November 2012, issues of decision-making on embryo transfer, fetal reduction, and mode of delivery were identified. Interviews were carried out with doctors in eighteen ART clinics, agents from four agencies, and fourteen surrogates. In aiming to fulfil the commissioning parents’ demands, doctors were willing to go to the greatest extent possible in their medical practice. Autonomy and decision-making regarding choice of the number of embryos to transfer and the mode of delivery lay neither with commissioning parents nor surrogate mothers but mostly with doctors. In order to ensure higher success rates, surrogates faced the risk of multiple pregnancy and fetal reduction with little information regarding the risks involved. In the globalized market of commercial surrogacy in India, and with clinics compromising on ethics, there is an urgent need for formulation of regulative law for the clinical practice and maintenance of principles of reproductive ethics in order to ensure that the interests of surrogate mothers are safeguarded. (shrink)