WHO IS THE IDENTIFIABLE VICTIM?--CASTE INTERACTS WITH SYMPATHY IN INDIA

Earlier studies have documented an “identifiable victim effect”-- people donate more to help individual people than to groups. Evidence suggests that this is in part due to an emotional reaction to the identified recipients, who generate more sympathy. However, stereotype research has shown that low-ranking groups are often not seen sympathetically; indeed stigmatized groups can be targets of “dehumanized” perception, perceived with disgust. We conducted an internet survey experiment among Indian participants, crossing the identification treatment with the group membership of the recipient. We indicate group membership of identified recipients subtly, with names that connote a social rank. We found an identifiable recipient effect for generically Indian, high caste, and Muslim recipients, but the effect was reversed for low caste recipients. Participants were as willing to donate to statistical low caste recipients as to statistical high caste recipients, but were less willing to donate to identified low caste recipients.However, an identifiable victim effect was seen for all recipient groups among participants open to a love marriage, a coarse indicator of rejecting caste hierarchy in favor of shared humanity. To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating that the identifiable victim effect interacts with the identity of the victim.identifiable victim effect; stereotypes; out-groups; caste; Dalit; pro-social behavior; India

“Even when class conditions are equalised, caste seems to have an independent effect on future life outcomes” – Ashwini Deshpande

In November Professor Ashwini Deshpande presented a new paper on caste, class and social mobility to an audience of academics and researchers at the South Asia Centre. After the seminar she spoke to Sonali Campion about the survey design for the paper, its initial findings and the challenge of measuring social mobility among women

DOES AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AFFECT PRODUCTIVITY IN THE INDIAN RAILWAYS?

Our objective in this paper is to shed some empirical light on a claim often made by critics of affirmative action policies: that increasing the representation of members of marginalized communities in jobs – and especially in relatively skilled positions – comes at a cost of reduced efficiency. We undertake a systematic empirical analysis of productivity in the Indian Railways in order to determine whether increasing proportions of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in railway employment – largely a consequence of India's affirmative action policies – have actually reduced productive efficiency in the railway system. We find no evidence that higher percentages of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the railway labour force have reduced productivity. Indeed, some of our results suggest that the opposite is true, providing tentative support for the claim that greater labour force diversity boosts productivity.affirmative action; labour force; productivity; Indian railways

A Case Study on Effective Use of Active Learning Strategies to Increase Learner Engagement in Digital Marketing Course

The usage of active learning approaches for the delivery of courses can enhance the learning ability of students. This case study establishes the effectiveness of active learning strategies and benefits in grasping the curriculum which is a central concept of student-centered learning, derived from the productive approach. This study focuses on the Course in Digital Marketing where there is a scope to enhance and encourage active participation of students to explore and configure recent tools such as Blogger, Google Ads, Facebook Ads manager, small SEO tools to name a few. The students can analyze and review the performance of advertising campaigns with the Analytics tool and suggest improvement plans based on performance metrics. The active learning approach enhances their interpersonal, and communication skills and a chance for employability in the field of marketing or have their own business ventures

THE EMERGENCE OF TIME PROGRAMMED DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM: CHRONOTHERAPY OF CARDIO VASCULAR DISEASES

Time programmed drug delivery system is a system that promises to deliver a drug at a point of time when it is most required, as it is programmed beforehand. Though the delivery system is a boon to the pharmaceutical research due to its desired release profile feature and application to numerous disease areas like hypercholesterolemia, asthma, cardiovascular disease, peptic and duodenal ulcers and cancers of various categories, its special significance is due to its potential applications in chronotherapeutic drug delivery, where the pinnacle aim of devising this drug delivery system is to obtain a programmed release at desired time points, with a lag time where no drug is released. Lot of work is being carried out lately, to understand the relationship between the rhythmicity in disease symptoms and the biological clock, but a special mention is required in case of diseases associated with cardiovascular functions. Cardiovascular system works on a frequency cycle and it resonates hour to hour with the biological clock except in cases of disturbances from any external stimuli, which leads to CVSdisorders. Correcting the rhythmicity of the frequency cycles of heart, which are apparently in sync with the master clock, can be done or achieved by delivering the drug exactly at the point of time when it is needed the most. This will minimize the side effects and maximize the benefits of the administered dose. This review focuses on the importance of circadian rhythm and chronotherapy in the management of CVSand overall physiology, scientific evidences of their relationship, role and importance of PDDS in formulation management and finally the work done in this direction and the marketed chronotheraptics delivery systems available for CVS disorders

Implementation of Customized UTP Algorithm for Attack Detection in Multitier Web Applications

Internet services and application have gained lots of importance in our daily life such as banking, travel and social networking. Personal information from any of the remote location can be communicated and managed with the help of Internet. Due to their omnipresent use for daily task, web applications have been target for attack. To deal with increasing demand and data complexity web services and applications have moved to a multitiered design. The idea is to detect attacks in multitier architecture to model the network behavior of user sessions across both the front-end web server and the back-end database. The attacks like SQL injection, cross site scripting attack, privilege escalation attack and direct DB attack can be monitored with both the web and subsequent database requestusing customized UTP algorithm, which an independent system cannot do

Factors influencing addiction in female population of an urban slum area

Background: The use of certain licit substances like alcohol, tobacco and illicit substances like cocaine, amphetamine, cannabis, etc is termed as substance abuse. Globally, the most prevalent form of tobacco use in women is cigarette smoking. But, in low- and middle-income countries use of smokeless forms is quite common. Aim of the study was to study the factors influencing drug and tobacco addiction in the female population of an urban slum area.Methods: Community-based cross-sectional study conducted on 577 female participants in urban slums of a metropolitan city. A pre-validated semi-structured questionnaire was used. Data analysis was done in SPSS version 22.0 (IBM). Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests for associations were used.Results: The mean age of participants was 44.84±14.99 years and the mean age of onset of addiction was 21.51±6.47 years. Around 70.7% of women were tobacco chewers, 9.4% were smoking bidis and 15.8%were addicted to alcohol. Addiction is the subject of conflict in families of 70(12.1%) women. A most common source of information about the harmful effects of addiction was television and tobacco packets. Almost all women i.e. 555(96.2%) knew that oral cancer was a harmful effect of addiction. Willingness to quit an addiction was seen in 45.8%of women.Conclusions: Addiction in females is a major public health problem which is compounded by their lack of knowledge

Edge analysis of seasonal variability in chlorophyll maps of the Black Sea

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-94).The use of remotely sensed oceanographic data would be greatly benefited by being able to detect circulation features automatically through edge detection. In the Black Sea, the use of edge detection to identify fronts can be used to study the effects of river input on circulation patterns and biological and physical interactions. The use of edge detection on remotely sensed chlorophyll data is limited by noisy data, inaccurate measurements, temporal and spatial gaps in data, and limitations on computational power. The algorithm described in this thesis utilizes image processing techniques to create an edge detection process that shows the effects of the Danube river input on Black Sea circulation patterns with little computational complexity.by Ashwini G. Deshpande.S.M

The impact of a computer based adult literacy program on literacy and numeracy : evidence from India

With over 700 million illiterate adults in the world, many governments have implemented adult literacy programs across the world, although typically with low rates of success partly because the quality of teaching is low. One solution may lie in the standardization of teaching provided by computer-aided instruction. We present the first rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of a computer-based adult literacy program. A randomized control trial study of TARA Akshar Plus, an Indian adult literacy program, was implemented in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. We find large, significant impacts of this computer-aided program on literacy and numeracy outcomes. We compare the improvement in learning to that of other traditional adult literacy programs and conclude that TARA Akshar Plus is effective in increasing literacy and numeracy for illiterate adult women