Invisible women in reproductive technologies: Critical reflections

The recent spectacular progress in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has resulted in new ethical dilemmas. Though women occupy a central role in the reproductive process, within the ART paradigm, the importance accorded to the embryo commonly surpasses that given to the mother. This commentary questions the increasing tendency to position the embryonic subject in an antagonistic relation with the mother. I examine how the mother’s reproductive autonomy is compromised in relation to that of her embryo and argue in favour of doing away with the subject-object dyad between them, particularly in the contexts of surrogacy and abortion. I also engage with the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. A critical discussion of the privacy judgment passed by the Supreme Court of India helps examine how personal autonomy of the body and mind extends to include the reproductive autonomy of women as well

Assisted conception and Embryo Research with reference to the tenets of Catholic Christianity

Religion has a considerable influence over the public’s attitudes towards science and technologies. The objective of the paper is to understand the ethical and religious problems concerning the use of embryo for research in assisting conception for infertile couples from the perspective of Catholic Christians. This paper seeks to explain our preliminary reflections on how religious communities particularly the Catholic Christian communities respond to and assess the ethics of reproductive technologies and embryo research. Christianity as a whole lacks a unified and definitive statement on when an embryo becomes a person, although fundamentalist Christians tend to be opposed to embryo experimentation. Roman Catholics tend to believe that the embryo should be treated as human life from the moment of conception or fertilisation. As opposed to this preconception I have tried to point out that a foetus is a clump of cells and lacks individuality as a conscientious human being and thus can be used for research for therapeutic reason. The paper concluded that the Church accepts techniques on embryo that respect their life. So they would allow procedures that are akin with healing and improvement of life without involving undue risks. The Church feels children should arise out of act of love between man and his wife in co-operation with God. In this regard, it may be pointed out though the creation of a child through a conjugal act in a wed lock is the preferred method since it is the most natural, least expensive one. But that does not mean, it should be the only acceptable means to conception. To state a child born using ARTs would be less perfect compared to a child born through conjugal act of husband and wife is absurd one to be mentioned

Philosophical Ruminations about Embryo Experimentation with Reference to Reproductive Technologies in Jewish “Halakhah”

The use of modern medical technologies and interventions involves ethical and legal dilemmas which are yet to be solved. For the religious Jews the answer lies in Halakhah. The objective of this paper is to unscramble the difficult conundrum possessed by the halakhalic standing concerning the use of human embryonic cell for research. It also aims to take contemporary ethical issues arising from the use of technologies and medical advances made in human reproduction and study them from an abstract philosophical perspective. Instead of providing any Jewish practical ruling the paper have tried to incite, stimulate and encourage philosophical thoughts about the issue through the intensive understanding of traditional Jewish thoughts. In this paper, an objective as well as a deep-rooted study has been adopted about the use of human embryos for research and the Jewish adoption of assisted reproductive technologies through the prism of the knowledge of Halakhah, Torah and Talmud. The paper finds that the embryo research sits at the crossroads of many halakhalic issues. Judaism adopts the belief that God has created man in his own image. The Jews not being dogmatic decipher “the image” of the creator as the ability to discern and reason. It follows that Judaism does not subscribe to the notion that tampering with nature is prohibited. To the Jews the mitzvah for procreation is so great that they are open to reason and adopt newer medical advancement in procreation. The Jewish laws are not only for engagement in intellectual exercise or academic pursuit but subscribe to a higher order of moral conduct. The Jewish approach is not situational but also casuistic in resolving conflicting medical issues

Search of wormholes in different dimensional non-commutative inspired space-time with lorentzian distribution

In this paper we are searching whether the wormhole solutions exists in different dimensional non- commutative inspired spacetimes. It is well known that the noncommutativity of the space is an outcome of string theory and it replaced the usual point like object by a smeared object. Here we have chosen Lorentzian distribution as the density function in the noncommutative inspired space- time. We have observed that the wormhole solutions exist only in four and five dimension, however, higher than fine dimension no wormhole exists. For five dimensional spacetime, we get a wormhole for a restricted region. In usual four dimensional spacetime, we get a stable wormhole which is asymptotically flat.Comment: 13 pages,23 figures, Accepted in European Physical Journal

The Dark Energy Star and Stability analysis

We have proposed a new model of dark energy star consisting of five zones namely, solid core of constant energy density, the thin shell between core and interior, an inhomogeneous interior region with anisotropic pressures, thin shell and the exterior vacuum region. We have discussed various physical properties. The model satisfies all the physical requirements. The stability condition under small linear perturbation has also been discussed.Comment: 11 pages,16 figures, Accepted in European Physical Journal

Production and decay rates of excited leptons in a left-right symmetric scenario

We merge two leading Beyond Standard Model scenarios, namely compositeness and left-right symmetry, and probe the resulting collider signatures in the leptonic case. The constraints on composite models for fermions leave open the possibility of vector like excitations of Standard Model (SM) fermions. Here we consider the possibility of low scale left-right gauge symmetry $SU(2)_{R} \times SU(2)_{L} \times U(1)_ {B-L}$, with the simplifying assumption that the right like excited sector of fermions is significantly heavier than the excitations of the left chiral fermions. It is found that the right handed currents still contribute to observable processes, and alter the existing bounds on the scale of compositeness. The cross section times branching ratio of the photon decay channel is strongly depressed, bringing down the exclusion limit of the mass of excited electrons from about 2 TeV to below 1 TeV. On the other hand, cross section times branching ratio of the Z decay channel is significantly enhanced and remains greater than that of the photon channel. We thus propose analyzing the Z decay channel in existing collider data in order to search for signature of left-right symmetry as well as excited leptons with masses above 1 TeV.Comment: 10 figures updated. Incorporated constraints from muon anomalous magnetic moment, and lepton flavour violation processes. Table I adde

Modeling Repeatedly Flaring δ\delta Sunspots

Active regions (AR) appearing on the surface of the Sun are classified into $\alpha$, $\beta$, $\gamma$, and $\delta$ by the rules of the Mount Wilson Observatory, California on the basis of their topological complexity. Amongst these, the $\delta$-sunspots are known to be super-active and produce the most X-ray flares. Here, we present results from a simulation of the Sun by mimicking the upper layers and the corona, but starting at a more primitive stage than any earlier treatment. We find that this initial state consisting of only a thin sub-photospheric magnetic sheet breaks into multiple flux-tubes which evolve into a colliding-merging system of spots of opposite polarity upon surface emergence, similar to those often seen on the Sun. The simulation goes on to produce many exotic $\delta$-sunspot associated phenomena: repeated flaring in the range of typical solar flare energy release and ejective helical flux ropes with embedded cool-dense plasma filaments resembling solar coronal mass ejections.Comment: Minor changes consistent with Phys Rev Lett versio