Gendered Violence and the Ethics of Social Science Research

The issue of ethical conduct in research settings is important and complex. As tenure-track researchers who study gendered violence, we found Clark and Walker’s discussion provocative, thoughtful, and interesting. They urge researchers to attend both to the structural dynamics of research carried out under the pressures of tenure and promotion while advocating an ethical frame that draws attention to the limited definition of risk or harm that animates typical human subjects research. Victims of violence, they argue, should not be subjected to a standardized understanding of risk. A broader framework is needed, one that brings into conversation virtue ethics with consequentialist and ontological frameworks. Given the impossible task of responding to the many points discussed by Clark and Walker, we chose to focus on four areas. In all likelihood, these areas of discussion reflect our own interests rather than Clark and Walker’s, but challenged to think seriously about research ethics in victimization studies, we attend to the following points. First, we seek to put virtue ethics in conversation with care ethics, in part because care ethics formed an important component of feminist discourse during the historical period in which institutional review boards came into being. Although virtue ethics may have lost its masculinist inflection after shedding its etymological roots,1 care ethics was explicitly seen as suited for the feminist subject. Following our discussion of care ethics, we address the question of setting victims of violence apart as a special class of vulnerable human research subjects. We argue that such a designation may yield more problems than it does solutions. Next, we turn to the violence of epistemology as a concern in research ethics. How do we come to an ethical definition of the research object, and to whom are we accountable? Finally, we turn to the relation of care when carrying out ethically and methodologically sound research

Targeting Agricultural Drainage to Reduce Nitrogen Losses in a Minnesota Watershed

Agricultural nitrogen losses are the major contributor to nitrogen loads in the Mississippi River, and consequently, to the existence of a hypoxic, or dead, zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Focusing on two small agricultural watersheds in southeast Minnesota, simulation results from the Agricultural Drainage And Pesticide Management (ADAPT) model were combined with a linear-optimization model to evaluate the environmental and economic impact of alternative land-use policies for reducing nitrogen losses. Of particular importance was the studys explicit focus on agricultural subsurface (tile) drainage, which has been identified as the major pathway for agricultural nitrogen losses in the upper Midwest, and the use of drainage-focused abatement policies. Results indicate that tile-drained land plays a key role in nitrogen abatement, and that a combined policy of nutrient management on tile-drained land and retirement of non-drained land is a cost-effective means of achieving a 20- or 30-percent nitrogen-abatement goal. Results also indicate that although it is cost-effective to abate on tile-drained land, it is not cost-effective to undertake policies that plug or remove tile drains from the landscape, regardless of whether the land would be retired or kept in production. Therefore, results imply that although tile-drained land is a major source of nitrogen lost to waterways, it is not cost-effective to remove the land from production or to remove the drainage from the land. Because of its value to agricultural production, it is better to keep tile-drained land in production under nutrient management and focus retirement policies on relatively less-productive, non-drained acres.Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Powering the Hydrogen Economy from Waste Heat: A Review of Heat‐to‐Hydrogen Concepts

Ever‐increasing energy demands and environmental concerns require new and clean energy supplies, many of which are intermittent and do not correlate with demand. To balance supply with demand, a universal energy vector should be employed such that intermittent renewable energy can be stored and transported and then used when needed. Hydrogen is the perfect universal energy vector and a possible solution that ensures environmental cleanliness, maximum utilization of renewable energy sources, and high efficiency, whereby the combustion of the fuel yields only water. One abundant and freely available energy source—both anthropogenic and natural—is heat. Heat can be obtained from industrial processes and is indeed often viewed as a waste product with a premium to remove but is notoriously difficult to capture, store, and transport. Capturing and storing low‐grade heat therefore provides a significant opportunity and can be achieved by coupling thermoelectric generators and water electrolyzers. A thermoelectric generator is placed within a thermal energy gradient and produces a flow of current that is fed to the electrolysis unit with which it produces hydrogen and oxygen as the final products. The hydrogen can be stored for long periods and transported for “on‐demand” use in fuel cells for electricity from hydrogen burners for a return to thermal energy. This Review summarizes the current state‐of‐the‐art research into implementing thermoelectric generators and utilizing heat as a primary energy source to produce hydrogen, which could replace the need for extra electric power to run hydrogen production units. Furthermore, suitable requirements, modifications, and other related aspects associated with such a new and novel method of hydrogen generation are discussed. Hydrogen produced from otherwise‐wasted energy sources can be considered to be green

Images of the Arab–Islamic world in the media: a quantitative and qualitative study of the western press, 1978–1993

The thesis examines the historical emergence of modes of perception, interpretation and evaluation within Western European nations of what has been termed Arab Islamic culture. It is argued that the West perceives Arab Islamic East as "Other" or "Them", but that the content of this "Otherness" shifts over time according to a range of historical, political, cultural and economic factors. The two central themes that emerge within these modes of interpretation are termed "Romanticism" and "Negativity/Hostility". The manifestation of these two themes is traced from antiquity to the modern age. The thesis demonstrates the continuities, shifts and transformations of these two themes throughout the history of European engagements with the Arab Islamic East. In addition to a comprehensive survey of Western literary and cultural interpretations of the Arab Islamic East, the study provides a content analysis of the presentation of Arab Islamic acts and events on the world stage in six modern Western newspapers. The content analysis and its evaluation are both quantitative and qualitative. The findings of the content analysis confirm much of the theoretical work of the earlier chapters. The central finding of this thesis is the gradual erosion of an earlier "Romanticist" interpretation and its increasing replacement by forms of interpretations summarised by the term "Negativity/Hostility". This process is not considered to be irreversible and the thesis hopes to contribute to more adequate, comprehensive and empathetic evaluations and relations between East and West

A Scientometric studies on Library and Information Science in India as Reflected in Digital Databases: A Review Using R

The scientometric research productivity and scholarly communication on library and information science papers indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus database from 2002 to 2021 are explored in this article.The main focus of scientometric research in the field of library science was on the range of research production over time.This paper presents a scientometric analysis to know the academic overview of LIS in India in terms of annual growth of publications, most prominent authors, most preferred journals, country and Institute collaboration etc

E-Resources and Services in Engineering College Libraries – A Case Study

Introduction Libraries have witnessed a great metamorphosis in recent years both in their collection development and in their service structure. Over the last several years, a significant transformation has been noticed in collection development policies and practices. Print medium is increasingly giving way to the electronic form of materials. This study examines libraries by region within the State of Karnataka, India. It examines the level of effort taken by the engineering college libraries in Karnataka to build electronic resources

E-Resources and Services in Engineering College Libraries – A Case Study

Introduction Libraries have witnessed a great metamorphosis in recent years both in their collection development and in their service structure. Over the last several years, a significant transformation has been noticed in collection development policies and practices. Print medium is increasingly giving way to the electronic form of materials. This study examines libraries by region within the State of Karnataka, India. It examines the level of effort taken by the engineering college libraries in Karnataka to build electronic resources

IMPACT OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICES ON THE PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPECIALLY-ABLED STUDENTS IN KARNATAKA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Students with Special Needs are a specific group of students who need additional assistance due to physical, intellectual or mental disabilities and limited physical development. The study examines a comparative study of the impact of library and information services on the personality development of specially-abled students in Karnataka. For this study, data were collected using quantitative and qualitative methods of in-depth interviews, survey methods, and focus group discussions on collecting data from a sample of 36 specially-abled school librarians/in charge in Karnataka. This study is confined to visually impaired schools and hearing impaired schools only. The study findings showed that there was a positive impact of library services on both categories of respondents. However, their challenges rely on their personality development process because they lack modern facilities, hearing loss, and blindness due to less supportive school infrastructures. The study highlights the impact of library and information services on the personality development of specially-abled students. It suggests better library and information services in the contemporary digital and electronic environment. The school libraries under the study should switch over from the traditional environment to the modern ICT environment to cope up with the ever-changing world

CONTENT BASED RETRIEVAL OF LECTURE VIDEO REPOSITORY: LITERATURE REVIEW

Multimedia has a significant role in communicating the information and a large amount of multimedia repositories make the browsing, retrieval and delivery of video contents. For higher education, using video as a tool for learning and teaching through multimedia application is a considerable promise. Many universities adopt educational systems where the teacher lecture is video recorded and the video lecture is made available to students with minimum post-processing effort. Since each video may cover many subjects, it is critical for an e-Learning environment to have content-based video searching capabilities to meet diverse individual learning needs. The present paper reviewed 120+ core research article on the content based retrieval of the lecture video repositories hosted on cloud by government academic and research organization of India