The Expansionist View of Systematic Testimonial Injustice: South Asian Context

In this paper, I offer an expansionist view of the Frickerian central case of testimonial injustice, citing examples from the South Asian context. To defend this expansionist position, I provide an argument in three parts. First, I argue that credibility deficit and credibility excess are entangled with each other in such a way that often, one produces the other. Secondly, I contend that we should not say that systematic testimonial injustice is a consequence of credibility deficit only because of the entanglement between them. I also contend that for being the central case of testimonial injustice, identity prejudice should not be necessarily negative; it can be positive as well. Propounding a twofold condition of the status of a knower, the last part claims that testimonial injustice occurs when one of the two conditions remains unmet

The Motivation Problem, Future Generations, and the Idea of “Leaving the Earth No Worse”

The author examines the problem of motivation about future generations. He argues that though many philosophers think that direct motivations are problematic for future generations only, they are not unproblematic for the current generations too, and that the motivation problem can be solved if we consider the idea of “leaving the earth no worse.” He also shows why such an idea should be promoted and can motivate us to work in the best interests of current and future generations. The author also contends that prioritizing the idea of “leaving the earth no worse” is not exclusively anthropocentric

Micro-credit, Trust, and Social Solidarity in Bangladesh: A Socio-philosophical Analysis

Drèze and Sen are not entirely right in their apparent glorification of the roles of nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh in An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions because they leave out and/or de-emphasize some important issues, especially those that are related to the problematic trusting relationship between nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh and rural poor women. Nongovernmental organizations’ use of trust disturbs social solidarity in rural Bangladesh mainly because of their massive supervision mechanism that they undertake to sustain the so-called trusting relationship between them and their debtors. The massive supervision mechanism damages social solidarity also because it creates a tension between local norms and nongovernmental organizations’ neoliberalist values of “discipline, efficiency and competitiveness,” which nongovernmental organizations try to inject into villagers by their numerous social engineering programs, which are state’s responsibility. Nongovernmental organization monitoring has some psychological impacts on their clients that also contribute to shaking social solidarity. The absence of a proper trusting relationship between nongovernmental organizations and rural poor women reduces the capabilities of the latter as a result of which Drèze and Sen’s glorification of Bangladeshi nongovernmental organizations and Sen’s capabilities approach are in tension. However, there are strategies that Bangladeshi nongovernmental organizations should employ to address the issues raised due to their massive supervision mechanism

Progress in Polyhaploid Production Techniques of Hexaploid Wheat through Wide Crosses

(Triticum aestivum L.) through wide crosses were evaluated in terms of pollen sources, 2,4-D application, embryo rescue and chromosome retention. Pollen sources included Hordeum bulbosum L., Zea mays L., Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br., Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, and Tripsacum dactyloides (L.) L. Maize-mediated polyhaploid production was more stable than the other methods because of a lesser genotypic influence on embryo formation. Application of 2,4-D onto wheat after pollination was critical to promote seed setting and embryo formation in all cross combinations. Embryo rescue was necessary at an appropriate embryo developmental stage to obtain plant regeneration. Paternal chromosomes were eliminated by the stage of active growth of the polyhaploid seedlings. Polyhaploid production frequencies ranged between 10 and 20% of pollinated wheat florets, suggesting germ plasm genotypic effects

Kinetic Model of CCA Fixation on Wood. Part I. The Initial Reaction Zone

The fixation process for chromated copper arsenate (CCA-C) preservative treated wood has at least two distinctly different zones. One of these is a fast "Initial Reaction," characterized by a rapid increase in pH and a decrease in available hexavalent chromium (Crvi). In the present study we develop a mathematical model that describes the initial reaction kinetics for red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) treated with 1% CCA-C. The results show that the initial fixation reactions follow pseudo 10th order kinetics. The activation energy and pre-exponential factors were found to be 37.8 kj.mol-1 and 8.7 X 10-19 h-1 mol-9 I9, respectively. At all treatment temperatures tested, the initial reaction resulted in approximately 47% chromium reduction. At 4° the time required to complete the initial reaction is approximately 4.5 h; at room temperature the initial reaction is complete in about 1.7 h. At 50° the initial reaction is complete in about 25 min. The complete model incorporates the rate equation, Arrhenius temperature dependence, and the fixation definition into a single equation that expresses % chromium fixation as a function of initial chromium concentration in the treating solution and time and temperature history of the wood following treatment.This model can also be used as an integral part of an overall fixation model that can be used to predict the percent fixation at a given treatment condition based on knowledge of the temperature history of the wood during fixation

Kinetic Model of CCA Fixation in Wood. Part II. The Main Reaction Zone

Fixation of chromated copper arsenate type C (CCA-C) solution on wood, measured by hexavalent chromium reduction, follows different rates in different reaction zones. We identify two main zones: an initial reaction and a second main reaction. The main reaction zone in red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) starts once approximately 47% of the total CrvI in the impregnated CCA-C solution is fixed on wood matrix. The second main fixation reaction follows first-order reaction kinetics, and an Arrhenius type of correlation can be used in modeling the fixation kinetics. We obtained similar values of Arrhenius parameters for CCA-C concentrations of 1% and 3%. The activation energies for fixation reactions in the second zone were 87.6 and 88.1 kJ/mol for 1% and 3% CCA-C concentrations, respectively. The pre-exponential factors of the reaction rate constant were 2.7 X 1013 and 2.2 X 1013 h-1 for 1 and 3% solutions, respectively. By combining the reaction rate equations and the temperature-dependence (Arrhenius) relationship, a mathematical model for the main reaction of 1% CCA-C fixation in red pine was produced.This model estimates the percentage of CCA-C solution fixation on red pine for a given time (in hours)/temperature (K) history of the wood following treatment

The Effects of Supervisory Behavior on IT employees’ Job Satisfaction: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of the study is to influence positive motivational behaviors and expected satisfaction from the employees working at the organizations under close supervision. It has been monitored two supervisory behaviors on IT employees’ job satisfaction: authoritarian and positive achievement motivation behavior. Data were collected through pre-structured questionnaire from the employees working in the IT department of Real Estate and Hosing Development Industry in Bangladesh (N=80).   The data indicated that IT Supervisors were engaged in positive motivational behaviors and expected greater satisfaction from the employees under their supervision; IT employee’s job satisfactions were increased. Key words: Supervisory behavior, Job satisfaction, Organization Behavior

Seasonal variation of mixed layer depth in the north Arabian Sea

The Arabian Sea is unique due to the extremes in atmospheric forcing that lead to the semi-annual seasonal changes. The reversing winds of summer and winter monsoon induce the variation in the characteristics of mixed layer depth. The importance of mixed layer depth is recognized in studying the biological productivity in the ocean. In this paper variability of mixed layer depth in the north Arabian Sea have been discussed. The study is based on the data collected under North Arabian Sea Environment and Ecosystem Research (NASEER) program. The results of the study indicate that there is a significant variation in the mixed layer depth from summer to winter monsoon as well as coast to offshore

Root cause analysis (RCA) of fractured ASTM A53 carbon steel pipe at oil & gas company

Incident involving failures of ASTM A53 carbon steel (CS) pipe, connected to pressure safety valve (PSV) and carrying raw gas has caused serious supply disruption. This study was performed to identify the most probable cause of the pipe failure. It was conducted by reviewing the existing design, construction data and pipe material analysis using non-destructive techniques such as VT, PT, MT and UT along with metallographic, hardness and microscopic analysis. The investigation revealed that excessive material loss has occurred in both failure and its adjacent regions due to abrasive grinding, resulting in the formation of a through thickness flaw. These grindings were performed to accommodate the pre-installed piping spool to avoid alteration in the pipe position. RCA demonstrated that this rapid thinning of the steel pipe body later led to its failure. Metallurgical study using photomicrograph shows that the morphology of the steel material was consistent and did not show any evidence of internal corrosion or micro fractures. Further damage to the surface of already excessively reduced thickness occurred due to nominal pipe vibration and atmospheric effect during service. The research work described in the paper has a significant meaning to recognize the root cause of such failures in CS pipes and through given recommendations to eliminate future such happenings

Differentiable Graph Module (DGM) for Graph Convolutional Networks

Graph deep learning has recently emerged as a powerful ML concept allowing to generalize successful deep neural architectures to non-Euclidean structured data. One of the limitations of the majority of current graph neural network architectures is that they are often restricted to the transductive setting and rely on the assumption that the underlying graph is known and fixed. Often, this assumption is not true since the graph may be noisy, or partially and even completely unknown. In such cases, it would be helpful to infer the graph directly from the data, especially in inductive settings where some nodes were not present in the graph at training time. Furthermore, learning a graph may become an end in itself, as the inferred structure may provide complementary insights next to the downstream task. In this paper, we introduce Differentiable Graph Module (DGM), a learnable function that predicts edge probabilities in the graph which are optimal for the downstream task. DGM can be combined with convolutional graph neural network layers and trained in an end-to-end fashion. We provide an extensive evaluation on applications in healthcare, brain imaging, computer graphics, and computer vision showing a significant improvement over baselines both in transductive and inductive settings