Challenges of teaching clinically applied anthropology and cultural psychiatry in India: an evolving partnership between a UK university and an Indian NGO

The current emphasis on Global Mental Health risks losing the focus on the local and the particular and rendering anthropological insight pertinent. A more critical examination of pedagogical methods and curricula, and of the challenges of establishing collaborative, balanced partnerships is required. Since 2006, a group of clinical anthropologists1 based at UCL and members of The Banyan2, have been working together on an innovative series of short, annual courses on social science theory and methods applied to mental health in South Asia. A UCL/BALM3 research unit was also established in 2008 employing local researchers to conduct joint studies into mental health and its related stigma in the Indian context. Following a brief history and outline of the collaboration, this paper discusses specific challenges: institutional issues and local economics; history and power dynamics; teaching versus training; working within mixed disciplinary and “cultural” domains both in the UK and India; and the spatial and temporal challenges of supervising research across continents. The paper concludes by reflecting on the contribution this collaboration has made to knowledge flow, examining localised and culturally specific understandings of pedagogy. These insights offer potential for similar international organisations seeking to establish inclusive and effective partnerships between frequently disparate contexts

Islamophobia in the National Health Service: an ethnography of institutional racism in PREVENT's counter‐radicalisation policy

In 2015, the UK government made its counter‐radicalisation policy a statutory duty for all National Health Service (NHS) staff. Staff are now tasked to identify and report individuals they suspect may be vulnerable to radicalisation. Prevent training employs a combination of psychological and ideological frames to convey the meaning of radicalisation to healthcare staff, but studies have shown that the threat of terrorism is racialised as well. The guiding question of our ethnography is: how is counter‐radicalisation training understood and practiced by healthcare professionals? A frame analysis draws upon 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork, which includes participant observation in Prevent training and NHS staff interviews. This article demonstrates how Prevent engages in performative colour‐blindness – the active recognition and dismissal of the race frame which associates racialised Muslims with the threat of terrorism. It concludes with a discussion of institutional racism in the NHS – how racialised policies like Prevent impact the minutia of clinical interactions; how the pretence of a ‘post‐racial’ society obscures institutional racism; how psychologisation is integral to the performance of colour‐blindness; and why it is difficult to address the racism associated with colourblind policies which purport to address the threat of the Far‐Right

Keeping our mouths shut: the fear and racialized self-censorship of British healthcare professionals in PREVENT training

The PREVENT policy introduced a duty for British health professionals to identify and report patients they suspect may be vulnerable towards radicalisa- tion. Research on PREVENT’s impact in healthcare is scant, especially on the lived experiences of staff. This study examined individual interviews with 16 critical National Health Service (NHS) professionals who participated in mandatory PRE- VENT counter-radicalisation training, half of whom are Muslims. Results reveal two themes underlying the self-censorship healthcare staff. The first theme is fear, which critical NHS staff experienced as a result of the political and moral subscript underlying PREVENT training: the ‘good’ position is to accept the PREVENT duty, and the ‘bad’ position is to reject it. This fear is experienced more acutely by British Muslim healthcare staff. The second theme relates to the structures which extend beyond PREVENT but nonetheless contribute to self-censorship: distrustful settings in which the gaze of unknown colleagues stifles personal expression; reluctant trainers who admit PREVENT may be unethical but nonetheless relinquish responsibility from the act of training; and socio-political conditions affecting the NHS which overwhelm staff with other concerns. This paper argues that counter- terrorism within healthcare settings may reveal racist structures which dispropor- tionality impact British Muslims, and raises questions regarding freedom of conscience

Developing an anthropological psychiatry strategy for culturally framed social defeat affecting Dalits in higher education in India

Psychiatry and clinically applied anthropology have a vital role in helping Dalit students and faculty in India’s  higher education who experience social defeat and psychological distress associated with caste‐ism. A brief pilot eclectic intervention deployed active listening (‘witnessing’), reframing narratives of life‐experience, critically examining interpretive metaphors, and unpacking cultural dynamics of everyday oppression

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF RP-HPLC METHOD FOR ESTIMATION OF DARUNAVIR ETHANOLATE IN BULK AND TABLETS

Objective: A new precise, accurate, sensitive and robust RP-HPLC method was developed for estimation of darunavir ethanolate in bulk and tablets.Methods: The chromatographic separation was achieved on Enable C18 column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) at an ambient temperature. The mobile phase consists of acetonitrile and 0.01M potassium acetate buffer, pH 5.1 (75:25 v/v) was at the flow rate 1 ml/min and UV detection was done at 268 nm.Results: The method was linear over the concentration range of 40-90 µg/ml (r2= 0.998) of the drug. The percentage content was found in darunavir ethanolate 99.19±0.58 in tablets. The low value of the drug %RSD (0.11) indicates that reproducibility of this method. Low value of LOD and LOQ suggests the sensitivity of the method.Conclusion: It can be concluded from the results that the proposed RP-HPLC method was found to be rapid, simple, accurate, robust and precise for the analysis of darunavir ethanolate in bulk and tablet dosage form. The developed method can be applied in routine analysis of this drug in the pharmaceutical industry.Â

Role of Higher Education Institutions in Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development: A case study of Shivaji University, Maharashtra, India.

The ever increasing population and changing lifestyles are making the environmental problems more critical. Higher educational institutions can be the best solution to solve this situation. Higher education can play a crucial role in sustainable development of any nation. As environmental sustainability is becoming an increasingly important issue for the world, the role of higher educational institutions in relation to environmental sustainability is more prevalent. Universities are the apex bodies in higher education system and can provide environmental education through its curricular design, research and collaborative efforts with NGO’s working in those areas. They can provide trained manpower and knowledgeable expertise to solve critical environmental problems. They can also act as a good networking system and data collector. Shivaji University is one of the significant higher education institution located in heart of Western Ghats working with the same goal of environmental sustainability through various activities. The paper examines the efforts taken by higher education in environmental development in the areas of creating healthy environment and conservation of resources. Key words: Role of Higher education, Environmental protection, Universities, sustainable developmen

Field Investigation of Wave and Surge Attenuation in Salt Marsh Vegetation and Wave Climate in a Shallow Estuary

This research investigates and quantifies the effectiveness of salt marsh vegetation in reducing storm-induced waves and surge, and the potential for wetland erosion due to wave action, using field measurements on the Louisiana coast. To quantify wave attenuation and wave energy dissipation by vegetation (Spartina alterniflora), wave data were measured along a transect using pressure transducers during two tropical storms. Measurements showed that incident waves attenuated exponentially over the vegetation. The linear spatial wave height reduction rate increased from 1.5% to 4% /m as incident wave height decreased. The bulk drag coefficient estimated from the field measurements decreased with increasing Reynolds (Re) and Keulegan-Carpenter (KC) numbers. The vegetation-induced wave energy dissipation did not linearly follow incident energy, and the degree of non-linearity varied with the dominant wave frequency. The estimated drag coefficient is shown to be frequency-dependent and is parameterized by a frequency-dependent velocity attenuation parameter inside the canopy. The spectral drag coefficient predicts the frequency-dependent energy dissipation with better accuracy than the integral coefficient. The probability distribution of zero-crossing wave heights attenuated by vegetation was observed to deviate from the Rayleigh distribution and follow the theoretically derived one-parameter Weibull distribution which depends on local wave conditions only. Empirical relationships are developed to estimate the shape parameter from the local wave parameters. Field data collected during Tropical storm Ida (2009) and Lee (2011) showed that the surge attenuated at different rates in two estuaries of different topography. Surge reduction by vegetation was more effective on a large marsh. To quantify the potential for wave action to cause erosion of coastal wetlands, directional wave measurements were collected over a seven-month period. Marsh retreat rates estimated in the study area, using the wave power calculated from the field measurements are on the same order of magnitude of the recent marsh loss monitoring data. The empirical relationships of vegetation drag coefficient and wave height probability distribution function can be used to improve coastal modeling and to estimate characteristic wave heights for the design of coastal defense structures fronted by large swaths of salt marsh vegetation

Applying the Customer Based Brand Equity Model in examining Brand Loyalty of Consumers towards Johnson and Johnson Baby Care Products: A PLS-SEM Approach

This research primarily discusses the effects of various dimensions of CBBE Model that leads to brand loyalty in baby care products segment of Johnson and Johnson. While the CBBE Model is a well-established model to measure the brand equity the paper focuses on validating the model through empirical research and understanding the mediating effects of the same. Data for the study was collected through structured questionnaire using 5 point Likert scale where the responses varied between strongly agree to strongly disagree. Sample size consisted of 300 respondents all of which were female and had been using the said brand. Data was analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS) Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and the findings of this research show that perceived quality and perceived trust leads to increased brand value which in turn leads to brand loyalty. The study offers strategic implications for the industry thereby helping the companies to focus their efforts on building trust and developing quality product

Classification of Musical Instruments sounds by Using MFCC and Timbral Audio Descriptors

Identification of the musical instrument from a music piece is becoming area of interest for researchers in recent years. The system for identification of musical instrument from monophonic audio recording is basically performs three tasks: i) Pre-processing of inputted music signal; ii) Feature extraction from the music signal; iii) Classification. There are many methods to extract the audio features from an audio recording like Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Linear Predictive Codes (LPC), Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficients (LPCC), Perceptual Linear Predictive Coefficients (PLP), etc. The paper presents an idea to identify musical instruments from monophonic audio recordings by extracting MFCC features and timbre related audio descriptors. Further, three classifiers K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Binary Tree Classifier (BT) are used to identify the musical instrument name by using feature vector generated in feature extraction process. The analysis is made by studying results obtained by all possible combinations of feature extraction methods and classifiers. Percentage accuracies for each combination are calculated to find out which combinations can give better musical instrument identification results. The system gives higher percentage accuracies of 90.00%, 77.00% and 75.33% for five, ten and fifteen musical instruments respectively if MFCC is used with K-NN classifier and for Timbral ADs higher percentage accuracies of 88.00%, 84.00% and 73.33% are obtained for five, ten and fifteen musical instruments respectively if BT classifier is used. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150713

University College London: Cultural Consultation Service

The University College London Cultural Consultation Service offers advice and support for staff or students who are experiencing challenges that may have a cultural dimension. Dr Caroline Selai and Dr Sushrut Jadhav, co-directors of the service, give a personal insight into why the service was established and its impact. The service off ers confi dential consultations on individual issues, and also assists those who wish to enhance their existing cultural skills in teaching, learning and in the provision of healthcare. Help can range from basic consultation to facilitating more complex interventions