How CSR practices might differ in the same MNC between a developed vis-a-vis an emerging country context and its potential implication on their CSR practice?

The aim of this study is to investigate how CSR practices differ within the same company in a developed vis-a-vis an emerging country context. Three companies are used as case studies to determine the prevalent practices for formulation, implementation and evaluation of CSR across companies within UK and India. It looks at the motivations for these, studies the processes engaged in and the possible strategies employed by these companies to overcome contextual differences across national boundaries. The literature on CSR in an internationalized context is reviewed to understand the factors that are prevalent that could influence practices across countries. Key elements of National Business systems and new institutional theory are considered to explain differences in practice across national boundaries. Additionally, possible approaches to CSR practice among MNCs in an international environment are studied. The study observes that there exists a key distinction in the overall perception and definition of CSR between both the countries. There also exists a strategic correlation between the firm's international strategy in a country and its CSR practice. Additionally, the effectiveness of global implementation of its policies along with the National Business system of that country might influence more traditional systems shaping companies practices. Increasingly new institutionalism might go on to influence global CSR policy implementation through CSR communication within the company internationally. Institutionalized practice might also be reflected in specific local practices which might be followed in order to compete or 'fit in' with the local market

How CSR practices might differ in the same MNC between a developed vis-a-vis an emerging country context and its potential implication on their CSR practice?

The aim of this study is to investigate how CSR practices differ within the same company in a developed vis-a-vis an emerging country context. Three companies are used as case studies to determine the prevalent practices for formulation, implementation and evaluation of CSR across companies within UK and India. It looks at the motivations for these, studies the processes engaged in and the possible strategies employed by these companies to overcome contextual differences across national boundaries. The literature on CSR in an internationalized context is reviewed to understand the factors that are prevalent that could influence practices across countries. Key elements of National Business systems and new institutional theory are considered to explain differences in practice across national boundaries. Additionally, possible approaches to CSR practice among MNCs in an international environment are studied. The study observes that there exists a key distinction in the overall perception and definition of CSR between both the countries. There also exists a strategic correlation between the firm's international strategy in a country and its CSR practice. Additionally, the effectiveness of global implementation of its policies along with the National Business system of that country might influence more traditional systems shaping companies practices. Increasingly new institutionalism might go on to influence global CSR policy implementation through CSR communication within the company internationally. Institutionalized practice might also be reflected in specific local practices which might be followed in order to compete or 'fit in' with the local market

A study of prevalence of thyroid dysfunction in abnormal uterine bleeding

Background: Abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) is one of the most frequent presentation to gynecology OPD. AUB is a common but complicated clinical presentation and occurs in 15-20% of women between menarche to menopause and significantly affects the women’s health. Thyroid disorders are more common in women than in men and cause abnormal sexual development, menstrual irregularity, infertility and premature menopause. Objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of thyroid disorders in women in reproductive age group with AUB.Methods: A hospital based prospective cross sectional observational study was carried out in department of obstetrics and gynecology, Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer and Medical Center and Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital at Narayana Health City, Bangalore with abnormal uterine bleeding during the period of 2 years (December 2015 to November 2017), total 153 patients were included in the study. All women with AUB in reproductive age group were included. Diagnosed cases of ovarian cyst, uterine fibroid, polyp, adenomyosis, endometriosis and malignant (endometrial and cervical) tumors were excluded. Women who are on drugs or hormone therapy (for past 3 months. IUCD users/oral contraceptives pill user. Patients with known case of thyroid disorder, carcinoma thyroid patients with history of coagulation disorder, liver disorder, renal disorder, tuberculosis.Results: A total N=115 (75.2%) of patients who took part in this study had euthyroid status. The estimated prevalence of thyroid dysfunction was 24.9%. Out of which n=22 (14.4%) had subclinical hypothyroidism, n=14 (9.2%) had overt hypothyroidism, n=2 (1.3%) had hyperthyroidism. The most common thyroid dysfunction amongst the study group was noted to be subclinical hypothyroidism (14.4%).Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of thyroid disorders in cases which are clinically diagnosed as AUB. TSH is most sensitive test in detecting thyroid dysfunction. Subclinical cases need to be treated. Hence thyroid function evaluation should be made mandatory in cases of AUB to detect thyroid dysfunction

A rare case of extragonadal immature teratoma mimicking as subserosal pedunculated myoma

Immature teratomas are usually derived from a malignant transformation of mature teratoma. The pure immature teratoma accounts for less than 1% of all ovarian cancers. It is the second most common germ cell malignancy and accounts for 10-20% of all ovarian malignancies seen in women younger than 20 years of age. Extragonadal origin are extremely rare and the most common extragonadal site of these teratomas is the omentum. We hereby describe a case report of a 29-year-old lady who presented with abdominal pain and her imaging with an ultrasound revealed a mass with features suggestive of a subserosal fibroid. She underwent a laproscopic myomectomy. A histopathologic diagnosis of Immature teratoma was made following her primary surgery. She subsequently underwent a staging laparotomy which was followed by chemotherapy. Immature teratomas predominantly occur in young patients, and preservation of fertility is an important factor in its management. Treatment should be initiated as soon as possible after surgery, preferably within 7-10 days, in those patients who require chemotherapy

GroupMixNorm Layer for Learning Fair Models

Recent research has identified discriminatory behavior of automated prediction algorithms towards groups identified on specific protected attributes (e.g., gender, ethnicity, age group, etc.). When deployed in real-world scenarios, such techniques may demonstrate biased predictions resulting in unfair outcomes. Recent literature has witnessed algorithms for mitigating such biased behavior mostly by adding convex surrogates of fairness metrics such as demographic parity or equalized odds in the loss function, which are often not easy to estimate. This research proposes a novel in-processing based GroupMixNorm layer for mitigating bias from deep learning models. The GroupMixNorm layer probabilistically mixes group-level feature statistics of samples across different groups based on the protected attribute. The proposed method improves upon several fairness metrics with minimal impact on overall accuracy. Analysis on benchmark tabular and image datasets demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed method in achieving state-of-the-art performance. Further, the experimental analysis also suggests the robustness of the GroupMixNorm layer against new protected attributes during inference and its utility in eliminating bias from a pre-trained network.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 202

Production of genuine multimode entanglement in circular waveguides with long-range interactions

Starting with a product initial state, squeezed (coherent squeezed) state in one of the modes, and vacuum in the rest, we report that a circular waveguide comprising modes coupled with varying interaction strength is capable of producing genuine multimode entanglement (GME), quantified via the generalized geometric measure (GGM). We demonstrate that for a fixed interaction and squeezing strength, the GME content of the resulting state increases as the range of interactions between the waveguides increases, although the GGM collapses and revives with the variation of interaction strength and time. To illustrate the advantage of long-range interactions, we propose a quantity, called accumulated GGM, measuring the area under the GGM curve, which clearly illustrates the growing trends with the increasing range of interactions. We analytically determine the exact expression of GGM for systems involving an arbitrary number of modes, when all the modes interact with each other equally. The entire analysis is performed in phase-space formalism. We manifest the constructive effect of disorder in the coupling parameter, which promises a steady production of GME, independent of the interaction strength.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

ReRide:A Platform to Explore Interaction with Personal Data Before, During, and After Motorcycle Commuting

Part 7: DemonstrationsInternational audienceThe motorcycle could soon be the new frontier for the exploration of human interaction with advanced digital technology. In this paper we present a demo of a system designed and implemented to explore the design of personal informatics tools for motorbike commuting and help us conduct in-situ evaluation of such tools. We present the system architecture and demonstrate the capabilities of the system by presenting a case instantiation in the form of an interactive soft-and-hardware prototype that collects rider’s posture data, visualizes the data on the motorbike dashboard in real-time, and pushes the data to the cloud server for later retrieval

When Silent Actors Talk: Bodies as Learning Infrastructure in the Post-Pandemic World

This paper is based on a qualitative research study that explored the lived experiences of 25 high school students when they first transitioned to online learning during the Covid-19 lockdown. The objectives of the study were to describe the lived experiences of high school students who transitioned to online learning during the lockdown in terms of their learning, and their mental and physical wellbeing; and to map the resources and strategies deployed by the students to navigate difficult circumstances of studying during a global public health crisis. The study employs actor network theory in education, a sociomaterial approach, in identifying the silent taken-for-granted human and non-human actors that constitute learning infrastructures whose presence and effects become visible only during infrastructural breakdowns such as the pandemic. The findings are organized into four themes each of which identify different aspects of the resources, that is, learning infrastructures needed for high school students to learn well. The first theme describes how learners are affected by the shift in the responsibility of providing learning infrastructure from private schools to private homes. While the second theme focuses on how historically developed classroom surveillance mechanisms play out when the body is no longer visible, the third theme explores how bodies can be envisioned as technologies of engagement. The last theme explores how students as integral beings respond physically and emotionally to the learning process. The findings of the study have implications for policymakers, school leadership, and educators to expand their understandings of learning infrastructures needed for learning in post-pandemic online and offline contexts

Comprehensive analysis of temporal alterations in cellular proteome of bacillus subtilis under curcumin treatment

Curcumin is a natural dietary compound with antimicrobial activity against various gram positive and negative bacteria. This study aims to investigate the proteome level alterations in Bacillus subtilis due to curcumin treatment and identification of its molecular/cellular targets to understand the mechanism of action. We have performed a comprehensive proteomic analysis of B. subtilis AH75 strain at different time intervals of curcumin treatment (20, 60 and 120 min after the drug exposure, three replicates) to compare the protein expression profiles using two complementary quantitative proteomic techniques, 2D-DIGE and iTRAQ. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive longitudinal investigation describing the effect of curcumin treatment on B. subtilis proteome. The proteomics analysis revealed several interesting targets such UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 1-carboxyvinyltransferase 1, putative septation protein SpoVG and ATP-dependent Clp protease proteolytic subunit. Further, in silico pathway analysis using DAVID and KOBAS has revealed modulation of pathways related to the fatty acid metabolism and cell wall synthesis, which are crucial for cell viability. Our findings revealed that curcumin treatment lead to inhibition of the cell wall and fatty acid synthesis in addition to differential expression of many crucial proteins involved in modulation of bacterial metabolism. Findings obtained from proteomics analysis were further validated using 5-cyano-2,3-ditolyl tetrazolium chloride (CTC) assay for respiratory activity, resazurin assay for metabolic activity and membrane integrity assay by potassium and inorganic phosphate leakage measurement. The gene expression analysis of selected cell wall biosynthesis enzymes has strengthened the proteomics findings and indicated the major effect of curcumin on cell division

Training nurses to triage: A scoping review

Triage accuracy is important to ensure effective treatment and management of patients in the emergency department, however this requires nurses to receive high-quality triage training. This article reports the results of a scoping review that aimed to establish what research on triage training exists and what research is required to improve such training. Sixty-eight studies which used a range of training interventions and outcome measurements were reviewed. The authors conclude that the heterogeneity of these studies makes comparison challenging and that this, combined with low methodological quality, requires caution when applying the results in practice. The authors recommend establishing a gold standard for measuring triage training outcomes