India In 1983 - New Challenges, Lost Opportunities

Hardgrave, Robert L. >India in 1983: New challenges, lost opportunities.> Asian Survey, Vol. 24, No. 2, (Feb., 1984), pp. 209-218Asian Studie

The Northeast, The Punjab, And The Regionalization Of Indian Politics

Asian Studie

Marxist Dilemma In Kerala - Administration And-Or Struggle

Asian Studie

Congress In India - Crisis And Split

Asian Studie

If You Work for the Government, Then Shut Your Mouth: Garcetti v. Ceballos and the Future of Public Employee Speech

This article dismantles the majority\u27s reasoning in Garcetti v. Ceballos. A theory is proposed to why the Court broke with prior precedence and the sweeping effect of the ambigous holding is examined

Adopting Object-Oriented Development: One Company\u27s Experience

In 1997, AA Company, made their initial move to OO development. Hoping to achieve success in a client-server environment, AAC initiated a phased pilot project using Java as the language. To date, these projects could be considered failures. What happened? This paper chronicles the events of OO adoption by AAC and discusses some things, in retrospect, that should have been done differently

The Effects of cellular theta breathing meditation on cell mediated immune response: A controlled, randomized investigation of altered consciousness and health

Medical anthropology is well positioned to make contributions to consciousness research based on biocultural approaches that integrate methodologies from the biological, behavioral and social sciences to explore aspects of human health. The ubiquity and perseverance of health related activities involving altered states of consciousness (ASC) across cultures past and present suggest that these potentials are deeply rooted in human sociocultural evolution. Analyzing the relationship between immune function and meditative ASC represents an effort to empirically investigate the adaptive value of these human potentials. A controlled, randomized investigation of two meditation practices was conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to determine how ASC-meditation might influence immune function. In the 3 week study of 13 subjects, a gentle breathing meditation technique called Cellular Theta Breathing (CTB), was compared against a mindfulness guided meditation (GM) technique and a reading control activity with respect to quantitative and qualitative outcome measures. Biomarkers including antibodies against the Epstein-Bar Virus (EBV) and salivary cortisol were measured in addition to qualitative assessments of consciousness states, reported levels of anxiety, and perceived personal meaning associated with each activity. CTB meditation activity was found to generate statistically significant reductions in measured anxiety. CTB also produced statistically significant increased frequencies of ASC when compared to GM and the control activity. CTB and GM resulted in statistically significant occurrences of 5 ASC characteristics (sound, temperature, physical sensations, emotion and time distortion) compared to the control activity. CTB generated a statistically significant frequency of 2 ASC characteristics (sound and physical sensation) compared with GM. Results suggest that increased episodes of altered consciousness characterized by changes in physical sensation, sound, temperature, emotion and time distortion during CTB and GM are linked with lowered anxiety and subsequently have an indirect influence in immune competence. No significance for salivary cortisol was indicated in either meditation technique or the control. CTB was found to have a measurable impact on EBV (p=0.06) antibody titer levels. However this finding should be tempered by the presence of outlier and disproportionate leverage values. EBV antibody reduction was statistically significant for all subjects during the first week of the study and 62% of subjects ended the study with reduced EBV antibodies compared to beginning baseline levels, suggesting that participation in the study improved immune system functioning for study participants. Results also show that when ASC characteristics, lowered anxiety and ascribed meaning were simultaneously present, EBV antibodies were reduced twice as much as during CTB compared to GM, and 4 times as much compared to the control. Findings suggest the combination of ASC, ascribed meaning, and lowered anxiety impact EBV antibodies. The presence of ascribed meaning and perceived anxiety reduction implicate socio-cultural factors in cell-mediated immune function and provides supportive evidence for the biological efficacy of culturally mediated healing-orientated practices involving ASC so common in the ethnographic record

Determinants of Systems Development Methodology Use

Systems development methodologies are not widely used (less than 50% actually use a methodology to guide systems development). With the importance placed on information systems and the current problems in developing systems, why are methodologies not used? The objective of the study proposed herein is to develop a model to assist organizations in assessing the determinants of actual use of systems development methodologies. The authors are currently in the midst of a multi-phase research project designed to build and test the model

Understanding the Effects of a Paradigm Shift: The Case of Object-Oriented Technology

Object-oriented technology has been around for over thirty years and offers some significant improvements over structured techniques and procedural languages. It has seen very slow growth in business applications, but is expected to grow at such a rate as to nearly replace those systems now being used at some point in the near future. It represents a paradigm shift that is difficult to master for both novice and experienced IS personnel. Radical changes, such as OO, force changes in the thought and work processes of workers and generally wreaks havoc in the workplace. Using the organizational psychology theory of Person-Environment fit, this study proposes a model to explain the behavioral performance and the amount of stress felt by a person in their workplace when undergoing a paradigm shift. The shift to OO is used as the test case for the model