Women\u27s Perception of Science: Theory and Practice

This presentation is part of the Science and Values: Global Perspectives track. Science is very much recognized as giving new life to mankind and this new life means advancement or progress. Science is utilitarian because its discoveries and inventions satisfy human needs. Feminists perceive these impacts of science and technology though there exists a negative side of science and technology about which feminists are critical. Sal Restivo blames science as responsible for generating new social problems, which Sandra Harding accounted positively. Harding evaluates science and technology as both progressive and regressive.1 I shall analyze Harding’s feminist views of science and then I shall explain the standpoint of women scientists of Bangladesh. I Is science value free? Can science ignore ethics? Sometimes it is said that science cannot be blamed from such standpoints. But feminists hold that science presents theories and develop technologies which are used to the domination of race, class and gender. Science is blamed for hiding this fact in various ways. The claim that science is value neutral is wrong. Scientists cannot overlook the consequences of the ideas, beliefs or conceptions which they uphold. Scientists are consciously and intentionally involved in their approach to new inventions and as such cannot be indifferent to the social consequences. Feminists reject the claim that science is value neutral; they say, “theoretical science is pure science but often misused and abused”. New reproductive technologies have been strongly opposed by the feminists as these technologies have immense adverse effects on women’s health. Feminists for long time are opposing new reproductive technologies on several grounds especially that these have detrimental effects on women bodies which eventually lower women’s positions in the misogynous cultures. Moreover, these reproductive technologies restrict women’s reproductive choices widely. Thus it is observed that scientific researches and related inventions have been largely biased by sexism and androcentrism. Renowned feminist, such as, Sandra Harding, Ruth Hubbard, Carol Gilligan and Anderson hold that sexist and androcentric views are responsible for harmful research in biology and in the social sciences. Carol Gilligan revealed certain facts regarding development of woman personality and morality as necessary for the conduct of social relations which were previously acknowledged as immature, deviant and chaotic. Biological and psychological interpretations emphasize the qualitative traits of male but degraded those of female. Feminists argue that this is because androcentric biases illusioned the research at every stage.2 II In Bangladesh women are more neglected than men in all the spheres of development. But it is true that women folk must be included in the mainstream development program. Different sociological, anthropological and philosophical studies have taken place in order to find out women problems. This in turn leads to the claim that discrimination level is to be minimized. Women rightists’ groups are very active in this respect. It has been seen that women are lagging behind men in education sector. Education is considered as the most important phenomenon in enhancing women’s position in the society. For women to play role in the development of the country and to fit themselves in decision-making stages they need education urgently. In Bangladesh the visibility of women in public sphere began during the twentieth century but it was a slow process. With the liberation of the country women began to appear in public sphere on socio-politico-economical grounds. But opportunities for women were not equal. But gradually more and more women appeared in public service, and the social atmosphere seemed to be liberal for women. But now-a-days there exists a mixed attitude regarding women’s outward workplace. Large number of people believe the traditional view that women’s primary workplace is the home – the family; but a liberal expectation is growing in the society that women will share the public workplace with men. The liberal ideology supports women’s higher education for women’s higher job opportunity. A large number of women are now seen in public and private offices, and also in banking services. In political areas also number of women appearances increased. Women came forward as business holders in the country. Nevertheless, the conservative ideology as against the liberal ideology is still very influential in the country. I shall also explain women scientists’ perceptions of science. In Bangladesh there are few women scientists (i.e., those who are university faculty members or are working in the areas of medicine and technology) because girls are not encouraged for science study. Moreover, women in scientific research and workplace are not much interested in feminist matters. Generally, women in science believe that science is objective, logical and a rational pursuit. As such we find that like the western scientists here also women scientists uphold the concept of value-free pure science and do not consider the misuse of technology. Women scientists, except a few, do not believe that there is any biasness between science and nature. They think that the questions of manipulating and degrading the nature are philosophical questions, that is to say value question, not scientific questions. Women scientists like to measure things from the social point of view, for example, the social problem they face is called the gendered family roles problem. No matter whether women are scientists they have to maintain their gender roles – this is the pressure they feel. Beyond this, they do not like to respond to the question whether science is ‘male’ oriented or the question that the manner their research is structured is a ‘male’ one. It appears that women scientists have less thought to feminist questions also. In Bangladesh women scientists are more involved in their struggle to place themselves in the line of male-stream scientists for which they avoid to participate actively in feminist movement. Once they take this stronghold position in their field, they will open the path for their next generation scientists to see clearly what the social scientists are seeing, i.e., to see philosophical questions. This will enable them to challenge the regressive part of sciences

Health care utilization during terminal child illness in squatter settlements of Karachi

Objective: Information on health seeking behavior and health care utilization has important policy implications in health systems development. The paper presents some of the issues related to health care utilization and health seeking behavior in case of terminal child illness in seven squatter settlements of Karachi.Methods: From seven squatter settlements of Karachi, with a population of 100,000 approximately, we collected information, using pretested structured questionnaire, from the mothers on health care utilization during the final illness of under five children dying during 1995-1996. These deaths were identified from an earlier baseline health and demographic survey in these areas.Results: Interviews were completed for 259 infant and child deaths of which 57% were boys. Of all deaths 72% were taken to a health care provider, of which 82% went as soon as the child got ill. Private sector is the most preferred first choice i.e., 83%. Of all those who had been to a health care provider, 65% were referred to some other place and 72% of them took more than 12 hours altogether to reach the referred facility. Children in older age categories (OR 4.4 95% CI 2.22-8.67 and OR 5.0, 95% CI 2.09-12.31), boys (OR 2.6, 95% CI 1.46-4.77) and those with appropriate or incomplete immunization (OR 4.1, 95% CI 2.13-7.94) were significantly associated with the health care utilization as compared to their counterparts.CONCLUSION: Living in urban areas does not ensure accessibility to effective health care. In poor urban communities, referral to other facility delay the initiation of effective treatment in case of child illness leading to death which could be prevented otherwise. Private sector constitutes an important segment of our health care system, which requires strengthening and back up support. Furthermore, the study finding is suggestive of gender discrimination in health seeking behavior

PROGESTERONE AND ESTRADIOL PROFILES DURING ESTROUS CYCLE AND GESTATION IN DWARF GOATS (CAPRA HIRCUS)

Serum progesterone and estradiol profiles during estrous cycle, gestation and parturition in four Dwarf goat females (Capra hircus) were monitored. Blood sampling was carried out daily during estrous cycle and on alternate days during gestation till parturition. Observations regarding length of estrous cycle, gestation length, litter size and birth weight of kids were recorded. With the initiation of cyclicity, estradiol attained higher levels (7.7 ± 1.7 pg/ml) at estrus phase and dropped down to the lower levels within 3 to 4 days post-estrus. Concomitantly, progesterone started to increase from the mean basal value of 0.1 ± 0.03 ng/ml on day-0 to 3.0 ± 0.9 ng/ml on day-6 of estrous cycle and reached the peak value of 7.7 ± 0.6 ng/ml on day-12. From day-15, a decline was observed in progesterone values till the end of the cycle. A second estradiol rise of 14.0 ± 1.2pg/ml was observed on day-18 of the cycle. The mean estrous cycle length was 18.2 ± 2.1 days. During gestation, higher progesterone levels were maintained in the range of 4.3–11.0 ng/ml. Estradiol remained at lower concentrations for 30-50 days of gestation, then gradually increased and reached 270 ± 13.0 pg/ml a few days before parturition. It dropped again to basal values within 1-2 days postpartum. The mean gestation length in Dwarf goats was 144.8 ± 3.9 days and the litter size was 1.8 ± 0.5. It was concluded that Dwarf goat is a prolific breed, having a short gestation length with multiple births being common

Impact analysis of crossovers in a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm

Multi-objective optimization has become mainstream because several real-world problems are naturally posed as a Multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs) in all fields of engineering and science. Usually MOPs consist of more than two conflicting objective functions and that demand trade-off solutions. Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are extremely useful and well-suited for solving MOPs due to population based nature. MOEAs evolve its population of solutions in a natural way and searched for compromise solutions in single simulation run unlike traditional methods. These algorithms make use of various intrinsic search operators in efficient manners. In this paper, we experimentally study the impact of different multiple crossovers in multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) framework and evaluate its performance over test instances of 2009 IEEE congress on evolutionary computation (CEC?09) developed for MOEAs competition. Based on our carried out experiment, we observe that used variation operators are considered to main source to improve the algorithmic performance of MOEA/D for dealing with CEC?09 complicated test problems

Nanopackaging of Silver using Spice Extract and their Characterization

The aim of the present study was to synthesize silver nanoparticles using spice extracts as reducing agents and further evaluate their anti-microbial activities. Silver has been shown to possess antimicrobial activity. The silver nanoparticles were prepared by solvent evaporation method. The silver nanoparticles were characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy. The functional groups present in the phyto-constituents on the plant extract were determined by FT-IR studies. The particle size of the silver nanoparticles was determined by Dynamic Light Scattering and was found to be 143, 50 and 56 nm for cloves, cinnamon and neem silver nanoparticles respectively. They exhibited antibacterial property against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella typhi strains, tested using Well Diffusion method. Plant extracts however reduce the antimicrobial activity of the nanoparticles. In conclusion, antimicrobial activities of silver nanoparticles were reduced by plant extracts certifies vital potential in biomedical application.Keywords: Silver nanoparticles Neem Cinnamon Clove

Optimized conditions for high-level solubilization and purification of recombinant camel growth hormone in Escherichia coli

In this report, we describe the cloning, over-expression, efficient solubilization, purification and evaluation of bioactivity of camel growth hormone (cGH). The total cellular RNA was extracted from pituitary glands of freshly slaughtered animals and cDNA of cGH was synthesized by a pair of sequence specific primers with a product of 576 base pairs (bps). Amplicons was cloned into T/A cloning vector and positive clones were subjected to sequencing. After sequencing, cDNA was cloned in the prokaryotic expression vector system pET23b+. Conditions for cGH expression were optimized by varying the concentration of isopropyl-L-thio-β D-galactopyronoside (IPTG) and induction time. It was observed that 100 μM concentration of IPTG and 3 h post-induction produced the highest amount of cGH. Expressed GH was sequestered as inclusion bodies (IBs), and was therefore, solubilized using denaturant (urea) and detergents (SDS, CTAB, Tritin X-100, Tween-20). The best solubilization was obtained with 8.5 mM SDS in 100 mM Tris buffer at pH 8.5. The solubilized cGH was purified by gel filtration chromatography using Sephadex G-50 column. The purified protein was refolded by dialysis, analyzed on 12% sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and confirmed by Western blot. Further biological activity of purified product was confirmed by efficient growth of rat Nb2 lymphoma cells. This study provided the method for the efficient solubilization of cGH (r-cGH) with comparable bioactivity with commercially available bovine growth hormone (bGH) and could be further used for solubilization of other proteins expressed in prokaryotic system.Key words: Recombinant growth hormone, somatotropin, cloning, expression, inclusion bodies, solubilization, purification, bioactivity

Efficacy of 5-(2-aroyl)aryloxy methyl-2-phenyl-1,3,4-oxadiazoles as antibacterial and antifungal agents

Research and development of potent and effective antimicrobial agents represent one of the most important advances in therapeutics; the main aim of these efforts is not only control the serious infections, but also prevention and treatment of some infectious complications of other therapeutic modalities. A series of 5-(2-aroyl)aryloxy methyl-2-phenyl-1,3,4-oxadiazoles were screened for their antibacterial and antifungal activities. Anti-bacterial activity against B. cereus, S. aureus, B. subtilis, S. aureus (MRSA), E. aerogenes, M. luteus, K. pneumonia, P. aeruginosa, S. typhimurium, E. coli, paratyphi-B, P. vulgaris bacterial strains and anti-fungal activity against C. albicans, A.niger, F.solani, A.flavus, B.cinerea, C.krusei, M. pachydermatis, C.parapsilosis, F.moniliforme, C.gloeosporioides fungal strains were carried out. The bioassays indicated that most of the synthesized compounds showed potential antibacterial and anti-fungal activity

CHARACTERIZATION OF ENDOCRINE EVENTS AT OESTRUS IN DWARF GOAT (CAPRA HIRCUS)

This study was conducted to characterize the profiles of LH, estradiol and progesterone hormones during oestrus in Dwarf goats. Five does were synchronized into oestrus with 2 intramuscular injections of PGF2 at an interval of 10 days. Blood samples were drawn at 8 h intervals from 0 to 77 h after second injection and hormones were estimated by radioimmunoassay (RIA). One of the does did not show oestrus. In two goats, LH rises were observed from hours 25-45 and attained peak levels at h-70 after second PGF2 injection. In two other does the rise in LH was significantly earlier and reached peak levels at 24-30 h. The concentration of LH ranged between 7.5 and 30 ng/ml (mean 19 ng/ml). The estradiol peaks in does were noticed at the same time as that of the LH. Estradiol concentrations varied between 9 and 16 pg/ml (mean 12 pg/ml). The progesterone remained at basal levels (0.1-0.2 ng/ml) throughout the oestrus in all animals. These results indicate that the estradiol and LH rises have temporal relationship with each other, rising almost at the same time and LH fall was earlier than estradiol

Anisotropic Dark Energy and the Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics

We consider a Bianchi type $I$ model in which anisotropic dark energy is interacting with dark matter and anisotropic radiation. With this scenario, we investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics. It is concluded that the validity of this law depends on different parameters like shear, skewness and equation of state.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Scr. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1008.0692 and arXiv:1106.241