Farmers in developed countries have established various tillage practices for crop production. These include plowing, disking, subsoiling, harrowing, field cultivating, rotary hoeing, and row-crop cultivating. But these conventional tillage practices necessitate the use of heavy equipment that often causes soil compaction, impairs soil physical conditions, and creates conditions leading to soil erosion. Many Western countries, studying their conventional tillage systems through the new perspective of sustainable approaches to agriculture, are developing new tillage practices, called conservation tillage, which limit tillage to (...) essential operations and prevent damage to soil. The majority of the small-scale farmers in developing countries use indigenous tillage systems. These are low-cost, locally adapted technologies that reflect considerable knowledge of sustainable agriculture. Ironically, the new conservation tillage systems currently being developed in the West have many characteristics of indigenous tillage systems. This paper compares conventional, conservation, and indigenous tillage practices, using examples from the United States and India, and concludes that, for sustainable food production, indigenous tillage practices in developing countries should continue to be used. (shrink)

The Indian philosophical schools divide the types of cognitions mainly as recollection and non-recollection. The set of non-recollections is termed as experiential cognitions ( anubhava ). Two issues about recollection and experience are discussed in this paper. One is defining recollection and distinguishing a recollection from similar types of cognitions. The second one is the validity of recollection. With regard to the validity of recollection, views of three philosophers namely Prabhākara, Gaṅgeśa and Udayana, are discussed and compared. All the three (...) consider recollection as not valid although the reasons put forth by them for such a consideration differs. While briefly analyzing these views, the paper shows that somehow the concept of validity is relevant only in case of experiential cognitions. In this process, the paper puts an effort to pin down a particular feature present in all the experiential cognitions that can account for the distinction of the experience from a recollection and can justify the invalidity of recollection. (shrink)

Maswood and Rajaram examine the transmission of false memories across small and larger networks. While the spread of false memories is not inherently beneficial, Maswood & Rajaram argued that a better understanding of the formation and propagation of false memories has practical and societal implications. For example, by better understanding how false memories transmit across groups, we might be better equipped to prevent detrimental behaviors that arise as a result of “fake news.”.

It is hypothesised that threatening stimuli are detected better due to their salience or physical properties. However, these stimuli are typically embedded in a rich context, motivating the question whether threat detection is facilitated via learning of contexts in which threat stimuli appear. To address this question, we presented threatening face targets in new or old spatial configurations consisting of schematic faces and found that detection of threatening targets was faster in old configurations. This indicates that individuals are able to (...) learn regularities within visual contexts and use this contextual information to guide detection of threatening targets. Next, we presented threatening and non-threatening face targets embedded in new or old spatial configurations. Detection of threatening targets was facilitated in old configurations, and this effect was reversed for non-threatening targets. Present findings show that detection of threatening targets is driven not only by stimulus properties as theorised traditionally but also by learning of contexts in which threatening stimuli appear. Further, results show that context learning for threatening targets obstructs context learning for non-threatening targets. Overall, in addition to typically emphasised bottom-up factors, our findings highlight the importance of top-down factors such as context and learning in detection of salient, threatening stimuli. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn earlier work we showed that individuals learn the spatial regularities within contexts and use this knowledge to guide detection of threatening targets embedded in these contexts. While it is highly adaptive for humans to use contextual learning to detect threats, it is equally adaptive for individuals to flexibly readjust behaviour when contexts once associated with threatening stimuli begin to be associated with benign stimuli, and vice versa. Here, we presented face targets varying in salience in new or old spatial (...) configurations and changed the target salience halfway through the experiment to examine if contextual learning changes with the change in target salience. Detection of threatening targets was faster in old than new configurations and this learning persisted even after the target changed to non-threatening. However, the same pattern was not seen when the targets changed from non-threatening... (shrink)

Say to the Sun, “Don’t Rise,” and to the Moon, “Don’t Set”: Two Oral Narratives from the Country- side of Maharashtra. Edited and translated by Anne Feldhaus, with Ramdas Atkar and Rajaram Zagade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 632, 3 illus. $99.

André Couture ,Claudia Nadeau-Morissette.

We often remember in the company of others. In particular, we routinely collaborate with friends, family, or colleagues to remember shared experiences. But surprisingly, in the experimental collaborative recall paradigm, collaborative groups remember less than their potential, an effect termed collaborative inhibition. Rajaram and Pereira-Pasarin (2010) argued that the effects of collaboration on recall are determined by “pre-collaborative” factors. We studied the role of 2 pre-collaborative factors—shared encoding and group relationship—in determining the costs and benefits of collaborative recall. In (...) Experiment 1, we compared groups of strangers who encoded alone versus together, before collaborating to recall. In Experiment 2, we compared groups of friends who encoded alone versus together, before collaborating to recall. We found that shared encoding abolished collaborative inhibition in both Experiments 1 and 2. But prior relationship did not influence collaborative inhibition over and above the effects of shared encoding. Regardless of encoding condition, collaborative group recall contained fewer intrusions than nominal group recall, and these benefits continued in subsequent individual recall. Our findings demonstrate that pre-collaborative factors—specifically shared encoding—have flow-on benefits for group and individual recall amount, but not recall accuracy. We discuss these findings in terms of self- and cross-cuing in collaborative recall. (shrink)