Vaishnava Cyber-Puja: Problems of Purity and Novel Ritual Solutions

In this article, I examine Vaishnava Hindu views on cyber-pūjā to Vishnu (the ritual worship of Vishnu online). Based on ethnographic interviews with Vaishnava devotees in the New Jersey tri-state area, I argue that although these devotees have nothing against the online worship of Vishnu in theory (they believe that Vishnu is ontologically present in cyberspace and available there for worship), they nonetheless have reservations about performing such worship in practice. These reservations, I argue, stem from concerns about violations of two types of purity: spatial purity (the purity of the sacred cyber-altar space in which Vishnu resides) and mental purity (the purity of the mental state of the devotee who is performing the cyber-pūjā). However, although devotees have concerns over the violations of purity that stem from cyber-pūjā, many have come up with novel, medium specific, ritual practices that can help overcome or at least mitigate these purity violations. I discuss these ritual practices—which include actions such as lighting incense in front of the computer, clearing one's private data (browsing history, etc.,) and moving the computer to a separate part of the desk—and the ways that they enhance both the computer as a space for worshipping Vishnu and devotees' mental purity while doing so. Finally, I conclude the article with a discussion of the importance that Vaishnavas place on purity of intention, and show that for many devotees, pure devotional intention is all one needs in order to overcome any seemingly problematic aspect of cyber-pūjā

The R Package markets: Estimation Methods for Markets in Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

Market models constitute a significant cornerstone of empirical applications in business, industrial organization, and policymaking macroeconomics. The econometric literature proposes various estimation methods for markets in equilibrium, which entail a market-clearing structural condition, and disequilibrium, which are described based on a structural short-side rule. Nonetheless, maximum likelihood estimations of such models are computationally demanding, and software providing simple, out-of-the-box methods for estimating them is scarce. Therefore, applications rely on project-specific implementations for estimating these models, which hinders research reproducibility and result comparability. This article presents the R package markets, which provides a common interface with generic functionality simplifying the estimation of models for markets in equilibrium and disequilibrium. The package specializes in estimating demanded, supplied, and aggregated market quantities and absolute, normalized, and relative market shortages. Its functionality is exemplified via an empirical application using a classic dataset of United States credit for housing starts. Moreover, the article details the scope and design of the implementation and provides statistical measurements of the computational performance of its estimation functionality gathered via large-scale benchmarking simulations. The markets package is free software distributed under the Expat license as part of the R software ecosystem. It comprises a set of estimation and analysis tools that are not directly available from either alternative R packages or other statistical software projects

Facile Method to Prepare Superhydrophobic and Water Repellent Cellulosic Paper

Silica nanoparticles (7 nm) were dispersed in solutions of a silane/siloxane mixture. The dispersions were applied, by brush, on four types of paper: (i) modern, unprinted (blank) paper, (ii) modern paper where a text was printed using a common laser jet printer, (iii) a handmade paper sheet detached from an old book, and (iv) Japanese tissue paper. It is shown that superhydrophobicity and water repellency were achieved on the surface of the deposited films, when high particle concentrations were used (≥1% w/v), corresponding to high static (θS ≈ 162°) and low tilt (θt < 3°) contact angles. To interpret these results, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was employed to observe the surface morphologies of the siloxane-nanoparticle films. Static contact angles, measured on surfaces that were prepared from dilute dispersions (particle concentration <1% w/v), increased with particle concentration and attained a maximum value (162°) which corresponds to superhydrophobicity. Increasing further the particle concentration did not have any effect on θS. Colourimetric measurements showed that the superhydrophobic films had negligible effects on the aesthetic appearance of the treated papers. Furthermore, it is shown that the superhydrophobic character of the siloxane-nanoparticle films was stable over a wide range of pH

Greek-American Couples Examining Acculturation, Egalitarianism and Intimacy

This research study investigated several questions about Greek-American couples:1) Is there a relationship between an individual's profile of acculturation and perceivedintimacy and egalitarianism in hisker marital relationship? 2) Are there differences inperceived levels of intimacy and egalitarianism between members of mono- and interethniccouples? 3) Do gender and generation affect a partner's profile of acculturation? 4)Do gender and generation affect a partner's perception of intimacy and egalitarianism inhislher marital relationship?Ph.D., Couple and Family Therapy -- Drexel University, 200

Tailored Bayes: a risk modeling framework under unequal misclassification costs.

Risk prediction models are a crucial tool in healthcare. Risk prediction models with a binary outcome (i.e., binary classification models) are often constructed using methodology which assumes the costs of different classification errors are equal. In many healthcare applications, this assumption is not valid, and the differences between misclassification costs can be quite large. For instance, in a diagnostic setting, the cost of misdiagnosing a person with a life-threatening disease as healthy may be larger than the cost of misdiagnosing a healthy person as a patient. In this article, we present Tailored Bayes (TB), a novel Bayesian inference framework which "tailors" model fitting to optimize predictive performance with respect to unbalanced misclassification costs. We use simulation studies to showcase when TB is expected to outperform standard Bayesian methods in the context of logistic regression. We then apply TB to three real-world applications, a cardiac surgery, a breast cancer prognostication task, and a breast cancer tumor classification task and demonstrate the improvement in predictive performance over standard methods

Digital divine : technology use by Indian spiritual sects

Spirituality-based organizations in India, centered around a set of beliefs and practices, with a charismatic guru figure at their head, have embraced the information age enthusiastically, and have come to the fore as key players in the national narrative around social welfare and development in recent years. We conducted a qualitative study of four Hinduism-oriented Spirituality-based Organizations (SBOs) in India using interviews, on-site observations, and in-depth examination of their online outreach material to understand the ways in which technology impacts and advances their core functions. We examine five core ways which technology plays a critical role in these SBO - community-building, dissemination of core practices, self-fashioning, philanthropic outreach, and organizational growth – all of which inform these organizations’ influence in society beyond the confines of their adherents. We find that all these functions are enabled in different ways by digital technologies, which have organizational value in and of themselves, but also play an equally important role in helping extend these organizations’ public image as modern, innovative organizations aligned with broader aspirations of national development and social welfare