“I am the Mahar of your Mahars:” Cokhāmelā, the Modern Dalit Movement, and the Dalit Christian Theology

Over the last century, Cokhāmelā’s place and prominence in the Modern Dalit Movement and Dalit Christian theology have waned significantly. As the liberating potential of his work failed to be actualized, and more recent Dalit figures like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and movements like Dalit Sahitya began to examine his work and life more critically, Cokhāmelā and his abhangas were found inadequate. Cokhāmelā became identified as one whose conscientisation remained incomplete, primarily because he failed to convert from Hinduism and saw his caste through the lens of karma. This essay re-examines Cokhāmelā’s life, death, and legacy so as to reassess his potential contribution to revitalising Dalit movements, at a moment when the present generation of leaders acknowledge a stagnation. Because Cokhāmelā occupies a liminal space that maintains a tension between the Savarna and the Dalits, he is able to create a dissonance that disrupts any attempts to ignore the discontinuity between the spiritual and material, potential and actual dealings of caste. This article tries to find out if his liberating social vision be realised

Holistic engineering design : a combined synchronous and asynchronous approach

To aid the creation and through-life support of large, complex engineering products, organizations are placing a greater emphasis on constructing complete and accurate records of design activities. Current documentary approaches are not sufficient to capture activities and decisions in their entirety and can lead to organizations revisiting and in some cases reworking design decisions in order to understand previous design episodes. Design activities are undertaken in a variety of modes; many of which are dichotomous, and thus each require separate documentary mechanisms to capture information in an efficient manner. It is possible to identify the modes of learning and transaction to describe whether an activity is aimed at increasing a level of understanding or whether it involves manipulating information to achieve a tangible task. The dichotomy of interest in this paper is that of synchronous and asynchronous working, where engineers may work alternately as part of a group or as individuals and where different forms of record are necessary to adequately capture the processes and rationale employed in each mode. This paper introduces complimentary approaches to achieving richer representations of design activities performed synchronously and asynchronously, and through the undertaking of a design based case study, highlights the benefit of each approach. The resulting records serve to provide a more complete depiction of activities undertaken, and provide positive direction for future co-development of the approaches

Shared experiences of resilience amongst couples where one partner is living with dementia - a grounded theory study

Resilience is a concept which may help explain how older people are able to live well with dementia. Existing resilience research in dementia focuses on the caregiver and relatively little is known about how dyads (person with dementia and care partner) experience resilience. Using constructivist grounded theory, this qualitative study aimed to develop a theory of shared resilience amongst couples where one partner is living with dementia. Interviews were conducted with 12 dyads (n = 24) to explore their shared understanding of resilience, what helps to develop and maintain their resilience and how resilience shapes their relationship and mutual well-being. Findings indicate that resilience was experienced as continuing with a “normal” life as a couple notwithstanding the impact of dementia. This is in contrast to models of resilience which emphasize bouncing back or flourishing in the face of adversity. Instead, couples described a shared resilience that enabled them to maintain their couplehood, a sense of togetherness and reciprocity in their relationship, which in turn provided a further source of resilience. Findings emphasize the importance of dyadic research in developing a clearer understanding of the experience of living well with dementia. Interventions aimed at building resilience should engage dyads to consider how the couple’s shared resilience can be maintained and enhanced

Rules of formation of H–C–N–O compounds at high pressure and the fates of planetary ices

The solar system’s outer planets, and many of their moons, are dominated by matter from the H–C–N–O chemical space, based on solar system abundances of hydrogen and the planetary ices [Formula: see text] O, [Formula: see text] , and [Formula: see text]. In the planetary interiors, these ices will experience extreme pressure conditions, around 5 Mbar at the Neptune mantle–core boundary, and it is expected that they undergo phase transitions, decompose, and form entirely new compounds. While temperature will dictate the formation of compounds, ground-state density functional theory allows us to probe the chemical effects resulting from pressure alone. These structural developments in turn determine the planets’ interior structures, thermal evolution, and magnetic field generation, among others. Despite its importance, the H–C–N–O system has not been surveyed systematically to explore which compounds emerge at high-pressure conditions, and what governs their stability. Here, we report on and analyze an unbiased crystal structure search among H–C–N–O compounds between 1 and 5 Mbar. We demonstrate that simple chemical rules drive stability in this composition space, which explains why the simplest possible quaternary mixture HCNO—isoelectronic to diamond—emerges as a stable compound and discuss dominant decomposition products of planetary ice mixtures

Mueller Matrix Parameters for Radio Telescopes and their Observational Determination

Modern digital crosscorrelators permit the simultaneous measurement of all four Stokes parameters. However, the results must be calibrated to correct for the polarization transfer function of the receiving system. The transfer function for any device can be expressed by its Mueller matrix. We express the matrix elements in terms of fundamental system parameters that describe the voltage transfer functions (known as the Jones matrix) of the various system devices in physical terms and thus provide a means for comparing with engineering calculations and investigating the effects of design changes. We describe how to determine these parameters with astronomical observations. We illustrate the method by applying it to some of the receivers at the Arecibo Observatory.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figures; accepted for PAS

What Do We Know About Clodronate Now? A Medical and Veterinary Perspective.

There has recently been some controversy over the use of bisphosphonates in horses and some confusion regarding the different classes of bisphosphonates and the differences between the mechanism of actions and effects of each class. This review article explores the different bisphosphonate classes and their different effects and mechanisms of action based on research from both the human and equine veterinary fields. This collaborative review between veterinary surgeons and medical doctors describes the latest use of bisphosphonates in humans and horses, including safety aspects, and allows comparisons to be drawn between the two fields. Potential future uses of bisphosphonates are also discussed

Microscopic theory of colour in lutetium hydride

Nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride has recently been proposed as a near-ambient-conditions superconductor. Interestingly, the sample transforms from blue to pink to red as a function of pressure, but only the pink phase is claimed to be superconducting. Subsequent experimental studies have failed to reproduce the superconductivity, but have observed pressure-driven colour changes including blue, pink, red, violet, and orange. However, discrepancies exist among these experiments regarding the sequence and pressure at which these colour changes occur. Given the claimed relationship between colour and superconductivity, understanding colour changes in nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride may hold the key to clarifying the possible superconductivity in this compound. Here, we present a full microscopic theory of colour in lutetium hydride, revealing that hydrogen-deficient LuH$_2$ is the only phase which exhibits colour changes under pressure consistent with experimental reports, with a sequence blue-violet-pink-red-orange. The concentration of hydrogen vacancies controls the precise sequence and pressure of colour changes, rationalising seemingly contradictory experiments. Nitrogen doping also modifies the colour of LuH$_2$ but it plays a secondary role compared to hydrogen vacancies. Therefore, we propose hydrogen-deficient LuH$_2$ as the key phase for exploring the superconductivity claim in the lutetium-hydrogen system. Finally, we find no phonon-mediated superconductivity near room temperature in the pink phase.Comment: 3 figures + Supplementary Information, published versio