The last 20 years have seen a staggering growth in the practice of off-shoring clinical research to low-and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs), a growth that has been matched by the neoliberal policies adopted by host countries towards attracting trials to their shores. A recurring concern in this context is the charge of exploitation, linked to various aspects of off-shoring. In this paper, I examine Alan Wertheimer's approach and offer an alternative view of understanding exploitation in this context. I will (...) suggest that the justification for the enterprise of research is largely dependent on its integration within a health system from which participants regularly benefit and I argue that an attention to a principle of reciprocity will enable us to better recognize and address exploitation in international research. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 233-234, March 2022.

BackgroundDuring a commercial surrogacy arrangement, the event of embryo transfer can be seen as the formal starting point of the arrangement. However, it is common for surrogates to undergo a failed attempt at pregnancy conception or missed conception after an embryo transfer. This paper attempts to argue that such failed attempts can be understood as a loss. It aims to reconstruct the experiences of loss and grief of the surrogates and the intended parents as a consequence of their collective failure (...) to conceive a surrogate pregnancy.MethodsDrawing on a qualitative study conducted over a period of eight months between 2014 and 2015 at two fertility clinics in Delhi and two in Kolkata, India, this paper examines the experiences of the surrogates and the intended parents when faced with missed conceptions or failed conceptions during a surrogacy arrangement.ResultsWe argue that while the surrogate grieves the non-arrival of a ‘good news’ as an uncertain loss, the intended parents experience yet another, failure in addition to the losses they might have incurred during their previous fertility treatments. The body of the surrogate becomes a site of ‘a lost opportunity’. The surrogate embodies a loss in her quest to achieve social mobility and the intended parents experience a disembodied pregnancy loss. This very emotional experience stands in stark contrast to the conceptualisation of such failed attempts as non-events within the discourse of the surrogacy industry. The experience of loss of the intended parents is recognised but their grief is given no space. We argue that such ambiguity around the nature of losses resulting out of a missed or failed conception during surrogacy is an outcome of lack of interpersonal relationship between the surrogate and the intended parents.ConclusionsSince commercial surrogacy is a relational process, the only way in which the experiences of losses and failures of the actors at the preconception stage can be better addressed is through developing close sharing and understanding between each other through an ethics of care. Therefore, to nurture caring relationships, surrogacy needs to be understood as a moral commitment by –the surrogates and intended parents. To enable such a commitment, there is a need to reconsider the pre-defined and legally regulated professional duty of the doctors, agents and agencies. It cannot be a one-sided commitment, but has to have elements of mutuality. (shrink)

In this paper, we take up the call to further examine structural injustice in health, and racial inequalities in particular. We examine the many facets of racism: structural, interpersonal and institutional as they appeared in the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, and emphasize the relevance of their systemic character. We suggest that such inequalities were entirely foreseeable, for their causal mechanisms are deeply ingrained in our social structures. It is by recognizing the conventional, un-extraordinary nature of racism within social systems (...) that we can begin to address socially mediated health inequalities. (shrink)

Despite the growing importance of ‘social value’ as a central feature of research ethics, the term remains both conceptually vague and to a certain extent operationally rigid. And yet, perhaps because the rhetorical appeal of social value appears immediate and self-evident, the concept has not been put to rigorous investigation in terms of its definition, strength, function, and scope. In this article, we discuss how the anthropological concept of liminality can illuminate social value and differentiate and reconfigure its variegated approaches. (...) Employing liminality as a heuristic encourages a reassessment of how we understand the mobilization of ‘social value’ in bioethics. We argue that social value as seen through the lens of liminality can provide greater clarity of its function and scope for health research. Building on calls to understand social value as a dynamic, rather than a static, concept, we emphasize the need to appraise social value iteratively throughout the entire research as something that transforms over multiple times and across multiple spaces occupied by a range of actors. (shrink)

vol. 1. Vairāgya-prakaraṇa, Mumukṣu-prakaraṇa, Utpatti-prakaraṇa -- vol. 2. Sthiti-prakaraṇa, Upadeśa-prakaraṇa -- vol. 3. Nirvāṇa-prakaraṇa (pūrvārdha) -- vol. 4. Nirvāṇa prakaraṇa (utarārdha).

Islam gives legal precedence to purity of lineage and known parenthood of all children. In Islam treatment to infertility using IVF is permitted within validity of marriage contract with no genes mixing. The paper shows that the Qur’ān, the word of Allah, and science, the deeds of Allah are not in major conflicts in defining the start of human life. The Holy Qur’ān provides an elegant description of origin, developmental stages of intra-uterine life. The Hadith explains two positions one that (...) believes human embryo get ensouled at conception and the other after 40 days of conception. The paper aims to find that Islam confers moral respect to human embryo, but it also clarifies the absence of full human rights to a developing foetus. In Islam, human embryonic use is probably permissible for therapeutic and reproductive purpose keeping intact the principles of Shari’ah. (shrink)

The use of modern medical technologies and interventions involves ethical and legal dilemmas which are yet to be solved. For the religious Jews the answer lies in Halakhah. The objective of this paper is to unscramble the difficult conundrum possessed by the halakhalic standing concerning the use of human embryonic cell for research. It also aims to take contemporary ethical issues arising from the use of technologies and medical advances made in human reproduction and study them from an abstract philosophical (...) perspective. Instead of providing any Jewish practical ruling the paper have tried to incite, stimulate and encourage philosophical thoughts about the issue through the intensive understanding of traditional Jewish thoughts. In this paper, an objective as well as a deep-rooted study has been adopted about the use of human embryos for research and the Jewish adoption of assisted reproductive technologies through the prism of the knowledge of Halakhah, Torah and Talmud. The paper finds that the embryo research sits at the crossroads of many halakhalic issues. Judaism adopts the belief that God has created man in his own image. The Jews not being dogmatic decipher “the image” of the creator as the ability to discern and reason. It follows that Judaism does not subscribe to the notion that tampering with nature is prohibited. To the Jews the mitzvah for procreation is so great that they are open to reason and adopt newer medical advancement in procreation. The Jewish laws are not only for engagement in intellectual exercise or academic pursuit but subscribe to a higher order of moral conduct. The Jewish approach is not situational but also casuistic in resolving conflicting medical issues. (shrink)

Acupuncture, like many alternative health care modalities, allows for and encourages a bodily experience of transformation. Clients (as well as practitioners) often experience a new body in the making. Within the context of ethnographic work focusing on the emergent bodies of acupuncturists and their clients, this paper focuses on the third, and perpetually more hidden, member of this ethnographic triad: the anthropologist. How do anthropologists position themselves in relation to alternative health care? Where is the anthropologists' body in relation to (...) an alternative health modality like acupuncture? Certainly fieldwork is never solely a discursive venture. Where are our bodies when we are doing fieldwork? (shrink)

Gandhi’s writings on the issue of Caturvarṇa, despite their apparent lacunas, dogmatic tones and seeming inconsistencies, are available to a convincing reconstruction. With this purpose in view, the first section of this paper will attempt to give an anti-foundational reading of Caturvarṇa—where varṇa is seen to be based neither on the different proportions of the three guṇas (sattva, rajas and tamas), nor on a system of hereditary professions, but as abstract dimensions that are not mutually exclusive—and at best serves to (...) give an orientation to our cognition and actions. This reading, while borrowing heavily from Shri Aurobindo’s reading of Caturvarṇa, will seek to give it a more neutral and expansive direction, shorn of all associated suggestions of intransigence and empirical contingencies, in order to effect the best possible synthesis with Gandhi. The second section of this paper will concentrate on appropriate portions of Gandhi’s commentary on Gῑtā, trying to track down Gandhi’s reservations against any psychological determinism with respect to varṇa. His direct but scattered observations on varṇa and caste will be addressed in the last section—to see how far our neutral reading of Caturvarṇa can be responsibly reconciled with his distinction between varṇa and caste—indicating a way to dissolve the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate on varṇabheda and jātibheda. Overall, this paper attempts a paradigmatic reconstruction of Gandhian Caturvarṇa in the light of his approach to the notion of niṣkāma karma. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Religion has a considerable influence over the public’s attitudes towards science and technologies. The objective of the paper is to understand the ethical and religious problems concerning the use of embryo for research in assisting conception for infertile couples from the perspective of Catholic Christians. This paper seeks to explain our preliminary reflections on how religious communities particularly the Catholic Christian communities respond to and assess the ethics of reproductive technologies and embryo research. Christianity as a whole lacks a unified (...) and definitive statement on when an embryo becomes a person, although fundamentalist Christians tend to be opposed to embryo experimentation. Roman Catholics tend to believe that the embryo should be treated as human life from the moment of conception or fertilisation. As opposed to this preconception I have tried to point out that a foetus is a clump of cells and lacks individuality as a conscientious human being and thus can be used for research for therapeutic reason. The paper concluded that the Church accepts techniques on embryo that respect their life. So they would allow procedures that are akin with healing and improvement of life without involving undue risks. The Church feels children should arise out of act of love between man and his wife in co-operation with God. In this regard, it may be pointed out though the creation of a child through a conjugal act in a wed lock is the preferred method since it is the most natural, least expensive one. But that does not mean, it should be the only acceptable means to conception. To state a child born using ARTs would be less perfect compared to a child born through conjugal act of husband and wife is absurd one to be mentioned. (shrink)

The body in-pain has regularly been relegated to "the dark side"of Western biomedicine, academic research, and even everyday life. Following Starhawk's aptly titled resuscitation of "the dark"as a fertile source of spiritual transformation (Dreaming the Dark, 1982), this essay examines the ways in which intractable pain can open up the body to "a new body in the making" —one that engages with pain kinesthetically as well as discursively. This essay explores three ethnographic cases emerging from three different American fieldvvork sites. (...) An Internet mailing list called WITSENDO constitutes the first case; through often daily participation in this electronic mailing list, women suffering from endometriosis co-create a virtual community that strikingly mitigates their experiences of chronicand intense pain. The shift in how long-term clients of acupuncture care regard needling is the locus of the second case. Acupuncture treatments in American clinical settings often negotiate an American cultural assumption that needles are painful; this second case documents what happens to patients' "fear" of needles and experiences of pain after regular acupuncture treatments. The third case focuses on adepth interview with an American doula who provides labor support for women primarily in hospital settings, this interview explores the conditions under which American women in labor experience pain and how alternative birth professionals define and conceive of pain during childbirth.These three ethnographic cases highlight the cultural construction of pain by delving into the ways that pain sufferers and health care practitioners engage with the body-in-pain. Such engagements occur in the realm of language - both discursive and kinesthetic language. (shrink)

What is freedom? The contemporary history of humanity is a quest for enduring human freedom over oppression, subjugation and tyranny of many forms. In that pursuit, many wars have been fought, and millions of lives have perished, and many ideologies were born. In simple terms, freedom to the ability to act or change without being constrained. Freedom manifests when obstacles to initiate change or to express free will are removed. From a needs perspective, freedom is when an individual can pursue (...) his or her needs, wants and aspirations freely. However, freedom may not be absolute; some constraints or caveats can manifest from personal ethics and morality, family, cultural, faith systems and governance structures. It may also differ from one society to another. From a religious or philosophical perspective, freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy, and only exist in a human realm. This type of freedom is also known as political freedom expressed in the forms of human rights and civil liberties, which are often legislated and protected by laws. Nonetheless, the limits and depths of political freedoms such as freedom of choice, assembly, association, and freedom of expression are often debated and sometimes challenged through modern history. (shrink)

We, human strive and act in pursuance of happiness. The pursuit of happiness has been one of the most prominent goals of humanity since time immemorial. However, understanding and experiencing happiness varies across cultures. This chapter attempts to present the concept of happiness from the ancient Hindu culture as well from the Chinese tradition. The chapter would try to take up the position that the conception of happiness is a critical aspect of subjective well-being.

This book is the first to bring together an interdisciplinary collection of essays on surrogacy and egg donation from three socially, legally and culturally distinct countries - India, Israel and Germany. It presents contributions from experts in the field of social and cultural sciences, bioethics, law as well as psychology and provides critical-reflective comparative analysis of the socio-ethical factors shaping surrogacy and egg donation practices across these three countries. This book highlights the importance of a comparative perspective to ‘make sense’ (...) of controversies and transitions in this highly contested area of artificial reproductive technologies. It demonstrates how local developments cannot be isolated from global events and vice versa. Therefore, this volume can be used as a standard reference for anyone seeking to understand surrogacy and egg donation from a macro-perspective in the next decade. (shrink)

The recent spectacular progress in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has resulted in new ethical dilemmas. Though women occupy a central role in the reproductive process, within the ART paradigm, the importance accorded to the embryo commonly surpasses that given to the mother. This commentary questions the increasing tendency to position the embryonic subject in an antagonistic relation with the mother. I examine how the mother’s reproductive autonomy is compromised in relation to that of her embryo and argue in favour of (...) doing away with the subject-object dyad between them, particularly in the contexts of surrogacy and abortion. I also engage with the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. A critical discussion of the privacy judgment passed by the Supreme Court of India helps examine how personal autonomy of the body and mind extends to include the reproductive autonomy of women as well. (shrink)

Metaphorically and metaphysically, the Hindu ancient mythologies refer to water as the container of life, strength, and eternity. The cult of water is described in the Vedic literature and followed on vividly in the Puranic literature. Water is one of the five elements of nature. The “wash away sins” quality of water is associated with the power of sanctity and cosmological connotation so much so that the rivers are revered as remover of pollution. Rivers in India are personified as female (...) and are perceived to be nurturing and quenching and when angered cause flooding. As people face the challenge of sustaining the world’s water today and for the future, this chapter focuses on how culture and religion would endeavor to play an increasingly recognized ethical and practical role. (shrink)

Community forms a crux of human living. In the wake of pandemic like Covid-19 to avoid community transmission what is most required of a responsible community member is to follow physical distancing to curb the spread of the infectious disease and this may lead to a feeling of isolation and loneliness. But this essay speaks of isolation with a positive connotation. It talks of isolation as solitude as the Indian philosophy also speaks extensively about this sense of self-contemplation and reflection (...) to understand others as we need to know our own selves. The say speaks of isolation as understood in Sāṃkhya philosophy. This essay talks of isolated consciousness and the three gunas particularly of the sattvic predicaments that enables positive mental development in human beings which is much needed in these tested times as the present pandemic. (shrink)

Epidemiological crisis during recrudescence of pandemic like COVID-19 may stir fear and anxiety leading to prejudices against people and communities, social isolation and stigma. Such behavioral change may wind up into increased hostility, chaos and unnecessary social disruptions. A qualitative exploratory approach was utilized to conduct an extensive review of secondary literature. The case-studies were gathered from academic literature like articles, opinions and perspective pieces published in journals and in grey literature like publications in humanitarian agencies and media reports. Grey (...) literature was included in the scope as the COVID-19 situation is still evolving. I discuss some of the mechanisms of stigmatization and how social connectedness and empathetic understandings can be a way out of negative stereotyping and discrimination met out to the sufferer of the communicable diseases as COVID-19. Empathetic understanding paves a way to approach a problem from the perspective of ‘we’ not limiting one only to ‘I’. The moment when we make an approach from ‘I’ to ‘We’ actually then we embark on a journey of illness to wellness. Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, stigma, discrimination, mental health, empathy, India, Face-to-face communication, social distancing, suicide. (shrink)

In her paper titled “The End of Personhood,” Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) takes a swipe at the functionalist account of personhood. The problem with the functionalist view of personhood is that...

Human embryonic moral status in the embryo debate in the Indian religious school of thoughts is a challenging issue. The paper tries to figure out whether ontological status implies moral status of embryo. Consciousness is an important determinant of animation of human embryo. In this paper an attempt had been made to understand the concept of man and soul in the Hindu philosophical thought. In the process we would also make a critical review of embryology in the Hindu philosophical thought. (...) The study would adopt a conceptual elucidation of morality. The paper made an elaborative study of Puruṣa as found in the Saṃkhya Philosophy and the study of consciousness and animation would try to resolve the related question, when does life begin to have that value? Embryo-protectionist regards embryos as a potential person. The Gita says the human person is individual self-called āttmā, whose nature is of pure consciousness, Brahman/Puruṣa. Consciousness constitutes the essentiality of individual Self. Human embryo developments are elaborately studied in the Yajñavalkya Smṛti, Garbha Upaniṣad, and Suśruta Saṃhitā. The self that remain latent in the embryo gets impetus with the association of consciousness until then it cannot be a human personality. In Hinduism sanctity of life gets combined with autonomy and self-determination. The sanctity of life applies both to the fetus as well as to the overall welfare of the society. The embryo being in an interim stage and the soul not being destroyed upon body annihilation, it may be claimed that since destruction or annihilation of the physical form does not destroy the soul, beneficial embryo research should thus not be abhorrent. The Hindu ethics as examined here precludes the consideration of the situation at hand, and causing the least harm and work according to one’s dharma. (shrink)

As the world has been left reeling by the large and continuous loss of human lives due to the current pandemic, Pope Francis offered "Urbi et Orbi" (To the City and the World) in his blessings. He led a recitation of the Lord's Prayer on the feast of the Annunciation which was live streamed around the world, renewing his invitation to pray incessantly for the cure of the sick as well for the medical caregivers. As places of worship across the (...) world are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people of faith need to either offer prayers within the restricted walls of their homes or make use of the virtual platforms available. One way to sustain communal worship is to rely on technology and that is how some of the temples and Gurudwaras in India are engaging with their communities. They have resorted to audio kirtan (call and response chanting) and songs through which they are delivering sermons and messages to their devotees. Whilst many temples have remained closed, some temples and Gurudwaras are still not ready to follow the restrictions implemented against gatherings. Flouting lockdown, several devotees have assembled outside the local temples of West Bengal and Patna on the occasion of Ram Navami and to offer Pujas (prayer rituals) seeking relief from COVID19. However, the annual festivals to honour Lord Ram at Ayodhya – where thousands gather – have been called off. (shrink)

Este artículo busca proporcionar una comprensión más profunda de la contribución de Swami Vivekananda en el área de la educación superior. Swami Vivekananda, que fue un filósofo indio, propagó el concepto de “creación del hombre” inculcando los ideales del “espiritualismo” y el “aprendizaje natural”. Tales ideales se han convertido gradualmente en uno de los prerrequisitos esenciales que el sistema educativo debería inculcar. Precisó la importancia de un agente de apoyo en forma de guía. Este último debería dirigir y también facilitar (...) un espacio que permita el crecimiento natural del niño. Estos dos aspectos esenciales contribuirían al desarrollo del niño. Sin embargo, resulta necesario mantener un equilibrio entre ambos para que el proceso de aprendizaje sea exitoso. Asimismo, este trabajo busca abordar cómo los ideales de Vivekananda contribuirían significativamente a solucionar algunos de los problemas que afectan a las pedagogías contemporáneas. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether the individual attributes of locus of control, gender, major in college and years of job experience affect the acceptability of certain workplace behaviors. A total of 198 college students of a mid-sized southeastern university formed the sample for this study. Locus of control, gender and years of job experience were found to have some affect on whether an individual considered a certain behavior acceptable or unacceptable.

This chapter gives a brief overview of the composition of the volume and explains why it is important to undertake a detailed scholarly analysis and comparison of the following ethico-legal regimes of surrogacy and egg donation: the permissive-unregulated but transitory regime of India; the permissive regime of Israel, although highly regulated by professional, medical and religious norms, and the extremely restrictive regime of Germany, being legally permeable for particular forms of cross-border reproductive practice despite the non-permissive national law. It uses (...) an interdisciplinary lens to examine how the ethical, social, legal and cultural issues are interwoven in each regime. Moreover, we highlight the importance of a comparative analysis to understand how local developments cannot be isolated from each other, but deeply influence each other through transnational markets, modern media and the transfer of knowledge, people and body parts. (shrink)

The best evidence in favour of a claim to knowledge warranties not the possibility of our not being wrong, so says the sceptic. Whatever grounds a putative knower has for some claim, always there exists a gap between the grounds and the claim. Anti-sceptical stands take the form of attempts either to bridge or close the gap. The Cartesian approach for bridging up the gap consists in specifying a guarantee for the subjective ground of beliefs that would secure them from (...) sceptical attacks and elevate them to the status of knowledge. The guarantee is to be sought in the goodness of a deity, which by virtue of its sheer goodness will ensure our not being led into deception in matters of evidences for knowledge-claims, provided our epistemic endowments are used responsibly. Some not satisfied with the Cartesian tradition sought the guarantee elsewhere—in some basic self-justifying and self-evident beliefs providing foundation to our system of beliefs, which conjoined with the evidences for our claims to knowledge make such claims immune to sceptical attacks. (shrink)

As synthetic biology develops into a promising science and engineering field, we need to have clear ideas and priorities regarding its safety, security, ethical and public dialogue implications. Based on an extensive literature search, interviews with scientists, social scientists, a 4 week long public e-forum, and consultation with several stakeholders from science, industry and civil society organisations, we compiled a list of priority topics regarding societal issues of synthetic biology for the years ahead. The points presented here are intended to (...) encourage all stakeholders to engage in the prioritisation of these issues and to participate in a continuous dialogue, with the ultimate goal of providing a basis for a multi-stakeholder governance in synthetic biology. Here we show possible ways to solve the challenges to synthetic biology in the field of safety, security, ethics and the science-public interface. (shrink)

Bioethics has changed considerably over the last few years. Increased global interaction, through the off-shoring of clinical trials, cross-border surrogacy, organ trafficking, and medical tourism, among others practices, has brought additional considerations to a discipline that has been, until recently, relatively contained within national borders. We aim to contribute to the discourse on exploitation and vulnerability in a way that reflects such global changes. We will explore the link between vulnerability and exploitation, and argue that exploitation can be understood as (...) taking advantage of vulnerabilities, provided we recognize that vulnerabilities are often embedded within existing structural injustices. (shrink)

Pleiotropically acting eukaryotic corepressors such as retinoblastoma and SIN3 have been found to physically interact with many widely expressed “housekeeping” genes. Evidence suggests that their roles at these loci are not to provide binary on/off switches, as is observed at many highly cell‐type specific genes, but rather to serve as governors, directly modulating expression within certain bounds, while not shutting down gene expression. This sort of regulation is challenging to study, as the differential expression levels can be small. We hypothesize (...) that depending on context, corepressors mediate “soft repression,” attenuating expression in a less dramatic but physiologically appropriate manner. Emerging data indicate that such regulation is a pervasive characteristic of most eukaryotic systems, and may reflect the mechanistic differences between repressor action at promoter and enhancer locations. Soft repression may represent an essential component of the cybernetic systems underlying metabolic adaptations, enabling modest but critical adjustments on a continual basis. (shrink)

The welfare state, once seen as the best institutional response to people in need, has steadily come under pressure, as much from shrinking state capacities as from neo-liberal advocates of individual responsibility. Still, despite decline of the post-war consensus on the efficacy of the welfare state, social ‘vulnerability’ still remains the key focus of public policy. However, though much in use in contemporary political discourse, the logical and practical implications of social vulnerability remain unclear. Its essential subjectivity – it is (...) the ‘feeling of vulnerability’ which makes one vulnerable – turns the concept into a catch-all variable, impeding rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis. I respond to this problem with a ‘vulnerability-responsibility’, model. Its parameters include a ‘responsive’ state, an active civil society and a participatory political environment, bolstered by the assertion of agency of the vulnerable. With India as an empirical exemplar, the essay shows how ‘nested’ vulnerability – a community of pro-active citizens in need of urgent and vital assistance - in the backdrop of a responsive state and competitive, robust and resilient political participation, can generate a sustainable, context-relevant process to cope with the problem of social vulnerability. The model, currently aimed at vulnerable citizens in a democratic state, has the potential of being extended to non-democracies as well as vulnerable non-citizens into its domain. (shrink)

India is a rising power in the multipolar world. This book showcases India's endogenous political ideas and strategic thinking, both of which are the key resources that underpin and drive this rise. Kautilya's Arthashastra is a major source of these ideas. It is a premodern treatise on statecraft and a foundational text of political science. So far, political science and international relations theory have largely ignored Kautilya, or, at best, labelled him merely as the 'Indian Machiavelli'. Such a characterisation vastly (...) undervalues the riches and depth of the contributions of Kautilya - a contemporary of Aristotle - whose contributions can be compared more appropriately to those of Artistotle's politics. Kautilya's contributions are recognised by such masters of western political theory as Max Weber and Hans J. Morgenthau. But in South Asia, Kautilya has remained adrift of the academic mainstream and has been given little prominence in public life, both intellectually and politically. Despite such scholarly negligence, everyday life in India - in terms of the institutions and process that constitute it - has remained deeply grounded in the political heritage of pre-modern India, succinctly codified in Kautilya's Arthashastra. These themes are explored in this book through such bridge concepts as the 'modernity of tradition' and the 're-use of the past' in tackling contemporary political problems. These concepts are the key factors that explain the resilience and stability of India's hybrid political institutions and democratic system. 'Kautilya's Arthashastra: an Intellectual portrait - Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India' is an indispensable key to understanding contemporary India and a major contribution to South Asian area studies, comparative politics and global political theory. (shrink)

. Fuzzy systems and artificial neural networks, as important components of soft-computation, can be applied together to model uncertainty. A composite block of the fuzzy system and the ANN shares a mutually beneficial association resulting in enhanced performance with smaller networks. It makes them suitable for application with time-varying multi-input multi-output channel modeling enabling such a system to track minute variations in propagation conditions. Here we propose a fuzzy neural system using a fuzzy time delay fully recurrent neural network that (...) has the capability to tackle time-varying inputs in fuzzified form and is used to model MIMO channels. The inference engine is constituted by novel FTDFRNN blocks which determine the decision boundaries and tracks in-phase and quadrature components of input signals encompassing stochastic behavior of the MIMO channel. The system shows significant improvement in performance compared to statistical and ANN approaches in terms of faster processing time, lower bit error rate margins and better precision while carrying out symbol recovery of transmitted data through severely faded MIMO channels. (shrink)

In this editorial we introduce the special Public Health Ethics symposium on social justice in public health. We present here a select set of papers arising from an international workshop, organized on 4–5 June 2012 by the Institute of Biomedical Ethics, in collaboration with the University Research Priority Program for Ethics at the University of Zurich. Meeting the Author is a series of international workshops organized by the Ethics Center of the University of Zurich. In this workshop format, a selected (...) group of junior and senior researchers discusses a seminal work in ethics together with the authors. (shrink)