Women empowerment in a traditional masculine industry: Tourism in context

Tourism is considered as an essential source of generating employment, reducing poverty, and empowering women. Most of the tourism initiatives targeting poverty reduction primarily focus on providing income opportunities for women that only enhance their economic empowerment. Nevertheless, this does not usually lead to make overall development. This is attributed to the normative gender roles, cultural complexities, and power inequities that exist in societies. Additionally, most of the earlier research studies on tourism, poverty reduction, and women empowerment are also based on economic factors. Contrarily, limited studies are focused on non-economic factors. These non-economic factors are social, political, and psychological components that are essentially important for women's overall empowerment. Thus, these factors need to be studied comprehensively as they may hinder women’s participation in tourism activities. Having taken this background as the underlying problem of study, this paper is an attempt to highlight the social and political barriers impeding women empowerment and investigate about tourism development in the socio-political contexts affecting women, especially in rural areas, using case studies pertaining to different tourism destinations

Wednesday Convocation

Program listing performers and works performe

T-Cell Immunity to Influenza in Older Adults: A Pathophysiological Framework for Development of More Effective Vaccines

One of the most profound public health consequences of immune senescence is reflected in an increased susceptibility to influenza and other acute respiratory illnesses, as well as a loss of influenza vaccine effectiveness in older people. Common medical conditions and mental and psychosocial health issues as well as degree of frailty and functional dependence accelerate changes associated with immune senescence. All contribute to the increased risk for complications of influenza infection, including pneumonias, heart diseases, and strokes that lead to hospitalization, disability, and death in the over 65 population. Changes in mucosal barrier mechanisms and both innate and adaptive immune functions converge in the reduced response to influenza infection, and lead to a loss of antibody-mediated protection against influenza with age. The interactions of immune senescence and reduced adaptive immune responses, persistent cytomegalovirus infection, inflammaging (chronic elevation of inflammatory cytokines), and dysregulated cytokine production, pose major challenges to the development of vaccines designed to improve T-cell-mediated immunity. In older adults, the goal of vaccination is more realistically targeted to providing clinical protection against disease rather than to inducing sterilizing immunity to infection. Standard assays of antibody titers correlate with protection against influenza illness but do not detect important changes in cellular immune mechanisms that correlate with vaccine-mediated protection against influenza in older people. This article will discuss: (i) the burden of influenza in older adults and how this relates to changes in T-cell function, (ii) age-related changes in different T-cell subsets and immunologic targets for improved influenza vaccine efficacy in older, and (iii) the development of correlates of clinical protection against influenza disease to expedite the process of new vaccine development for the 65 and older population. Ultimately, these efforts will address the public health need for improved protection against influenza in older adults and vaccine preventable disability

Swain Committee Report

Letter addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Josephus H. Daniels, from the Committee appointed by the President of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, to visit the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. The purpose was to evaluate the work of the Post Graduate School. The committee recommended enlarging the enrollment of the Post Graduate School and providing for appropriate funding for buildings, equipment and curricula

HRD practices in the classified hotels in Orissa: a study of employee perceptions

In the present paper, an attempt has been made to measure the employees’ perception of some of the human resource development (HRD) practices prevailing in the classified hotels in Orissa. Orissa is a state in the eastern India which has been heavily concentrating its developmental efforts at the tourism industry in general and the hotel sector in particular since the early 80’s. However, the results do not substantiate the quantum of efforts for which many reasons have been proposed. A key contention made by critics is that these efforts were lopsided in that they gave undue importance to the marketing function and totally neglected complementary aspects like HRDEn el presente documento se ha tratado de medir la percepción de los empleados sobre las prácticas que revalecen en algunos desarrollos de recursos humanos (HRD) en hoteles clasificados de Orissa. Orissa es un estado del este de India que, desde principios de los años 80, ha concentrado sus esfuerzos de desarrollo en la industria turística en general y en el sector hotelero en particular. No obstante, los resultados no se substancian en la cantidad de esfuerzo por muchas razones. La principal crítica realizada se centra en que no se dió la suficiente importancia a la comercialización y descuidaron totalmente aspectos complementarios como el HRD