116 research outputs found
An excerpt from Urmila Pawar\u27s Autobiography
Get PDFThe term "Dalit literature" is used to describe works written by authors from the Dalit ethnic minority. The hardships and triumphs of the Dalit people were mirrored in this body of writing. It also revealed their uphill battle in life to the outside world. They are victims of centuries of discrimination and oppression at the hands of those in power in their own nation. Social transformation in this society owes a great deal to the efforts of notable individuals like B.R. Ambedkar. Dalit writings have emphasized the rights and agency of the Dalit community. Many authors of Dalit descent have written on the difficulties inherent in their language and culture. They questioned the privilege of the higher caste and advocated for the adoption of vernacular speech. Several Dalit authors have achieved widespread acclaim for their works. There are several famous authors from India, like Bama (K.R. Meera), Om Prakash Valmiki, Chetan Divate, Urmila Pawar, and Daya Pawar. Urmila Pawar is a well-known Marathi author and activist. She has achieved widespread renown as a writer due to the autobiographical nature of her books. Her works are impacted by both her time as a student and her time as an educator.
 
The effect of mechanical strain on properties of lubricated tablets compacted at different pressures
No full textA full factorial design of experiments was used to study the effect of blend shear strain on the compaction process, relative density and strength of pharmaceutical tablets. The powder blends were subjected to different shear strain levels (integral of shear rate with respect to time) using an ad hoc Couette shear cell. Tablets were compressed at different compaction forces using an instrumented compactor simulator, and compaction curves showing the force-displacement profiles during compaction were obtained. Although the die-fill blend porosity (initial porosity) and the minimum in-die tablet porosity (at maximum compaction) decreased significantly with shear strain, the final tablet porosity was surprisingly independent of shear strain. The increase in the in-die maximum compaction with shear strain was, in fact, compensated during post-compaction relaxation of the tables, which also increased significantly with shear strain. Therefore, tablet porosity alone was not sufficient to predict tablet tensile strength. A decrease in the ‘work of compaction’ as a function of shear strain, and an increase in the recovered elastic work was observed, which suggested weaker particle-particle bonding as the shear strain in- creased. For each shear strain level, the Ryskewitch Duckworth equation was a good fit to the tensile strength as a function of tablet porosity, and the obtained asymptotic tensile strength at zero porosity exhibited a 60% reduction as a function of shear strain. This was consistent with a reduced bonding efficiency as the shear strain increased.Peer reviewed
A Model-Relative Normative Framework for Living Under Constraint
Get PDFThis paper articulates a model-relative normative framework for living that is consistent with a naturalistic, non-foundational philosophy distinguishing physical systems, abstract structures, and representational models. It rejects both metaphysical moral realism and normative subjectivism, arguing instead that normativity arises as a derived evaluative structure wherever agents represent the world under constraint and must distinguish success from failure. Within this framework, values and obligations are neither intrinsic features of reality nor arbitrary preferences, but commitments justified by coherence, empirical constraint, and consequence.
The framework treats comprehension as normatively central. Understanding is not valued as an intrinsic good, but as a practical necessity for reducing error, sustaining agency, and enabling responsible action. Meaning is understood as a normative evaluation of a finite life rather than as a semantic or metaphysical property; finitude intensifies rather than undermines evaluative significance. A meaningful life is characterized by coherence across comprehension, contribution to shared conditions of existence, and engaged experience.
Because human agents are embedded in shared social and ecological systems, individual normative commitments have conditional implications for education, dignity, sustainability, and institutional organization. These implications are derived rather than axiomatic and remain open to revision. The paper further examines the impact of artificial intelligence on human agency, arguing that AI-generated representations decouple creation from understanding and thereby make human comprehension more important, not less. AI is framed as a potential amplifier of epistemic capacity rather than a replacement for understanding.
Finally, the paper introduces a dialectical method for making implicit beliefs explicit, enabling coherence testing and responsible revision without claiming finality or authority. The framework is offered as a disciplined, revisable stance toward living under constraint in a finite, interconnected, and technologically mediated world
A Foundational Framework for Understanding the Universe and the Self
Get PDFThis paper develops a structured philosophical framework for understanding reality, knowledge, and the self by explicitly distinguishing physical systems, abstract structures, and models. Motivated by scientific practice particularly in physics the framework aims to clarify how modeling, representation, and explanation operate without appealing to metaphysical inflation or reductionist collapse. Physical reality is treated as mind-independent and causally structured, while abstract structures, such as mathematical and logical relations, are treated as objectively existing but non-causal. Models are understood as constraint-sensitive representations that mediate between abstract structures and physical systems. Within this framework, the self is analyzed through a distinction between the empirical self, understood as a physically existing system, and the axiomatic self, understood as a model-level representation. Knowledge is treated as abstractly existing, while epistemic (representational) capacity is introduced to explain how systems can access, approximate, or misrepresent knowledge without reducing it to mental or physical states. Higher-level concepts such as agency, free will, consciousness, and ethics are developed as derived or model-relative notions, preserving their explanatory and practical significance without introducing new ontological commitments. The framework does not propose a new scientific theory or a comprehensive metaphysical system. Instead, it offers a coherent conceptual structure that clarifies the relationships between reality, abstraction, modeling, and normativity, while explicitly marking its scope and limits. By making its assumptions and distinctions explicit, the paper aims to support further philosophical analysis, comparison with existing frameworks, and continued refinement
A Framework-Guided Conceptual Analysis of Foundational Philosophical Questions
Get PDFThis paper applies a previously developed conceptual framework to a set of foundational philosophical questions concerning reality and existence, knowledge, truth, mind, self, consciousness, freedom, and normativity. The framework itself, introduced in an earlier work, is explicitly methodological rather than metaphysical. It does not aim to provide a comprehensive ontology or a final theory of reality, but to clarify how different philosophical concepts function across explanatory levels without category mistakes. The central motivation of the paper is the observation that many persistent philosophical problems arise not from a lack of empirical information or theoretical sophistication, but from systematic conceptual misplacement specifically, from treating explanatory concepts as metaphysical primitives, conflating internal logical relations with representational relations to reality, or collapsing distinct modes of existence into a single ontological category. The framework employed here addresses these issues by enforcing a disciplined separation between physical systems, abstract structures, and models, and by organizing concepts according to their explanatory roles. Rather than re-deriving or defending the framework, the paper demonstrates how philosophical answers take shape once its distinctions are consistently applied. Each foundational domain is analyzed in turn, showing how classical tensions such as those between objectivity and representation, causation and freedom, physical explanation and consciousness, or realism and fallibility can be reformulated and rendered intelligible within a coherent conceptual structure. The resulting accounts preserve realism about physical systems and abstract structures while avoiding metaphysical inflation and eliminativism. The paper does not claim to offer definitive or framework-independent solutions to foundational philosophical problems. Its contribution is methodological and clarificatory: it shows how a framework-guided approach can bring conceptual clarity to long-standing debates and make explicit the assumptions that often remain implicit in philosophical and scientific reasoning. As such, the work is intended for readers interested in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the conceptual foundations of scientific practice
A Foundational Framework for Understanding the Universe and the Self
No full textThis paper develops a structured philosophical framework for understanding reality, knowledge, and the self by explicitly distinguishing physical systems, abstract structures, and models. Motivated by scientific practice particularly in physics the framework aims to clarify how modeling, representation, and explanation operate without appealing to metaphysical inflation or reductionist collapse. Physical reality is treated as mind-independent and causally structured, while abstract structures, such as mathematical and logical relations, are treated as objectively existing but non-causal. Models are understood as constraint-sensitive representations that mediate between abstract structures and physical systems. Within this framework, the self is analyzed through a distinction between the empirical self, understood as a physically existing system, and the axiomatic self, understood as a model-level representation. Knowledge is treated as abstractly existing, while epistemic (representational) capacity is introduced to explain how systems can access, approximate, or misrepresent knowledge without reducing it to mental or physical states. Higher-level concepts such as agency, free will, consciousness, and ethics are developed as derived or model-relative notions, preserving their explanatory and practical significance without introducing new ontological commitments. The framework does not propose a new scientific theory or a comprehensive metaphysical system. Instead, it offers a coherent conceptual structure that clarifies the relationships between reality, abstraction, modeling, and normativity, while explicitly marking its scope and limits. By making its assumptions and distinctions explicit, the paper aims to support further philosophical analysis, comparison with existing frameworks, and continued refinement
Light as a Case Study within an Empirical-Axiomatic Framework
No full textScientific understanding proceeds through experiments that reveal how systems behave and through abstract models constructed to account for those behaviours. Persistent conceptual and philosophical confusions arise, however, when the distinction between empirical reality and its abstract representations is left implicit. This issue is particularly evident in the study of light, where multiple, mutually non-equivalent models coexist, each successful within specific limits, yet none capable of exhausting all observed phenomena.
In this work, light is analysed as a case study using the empirical–axiomatic self-framework. Light is treated first as an empirical self: a system that exists and behaves in reality and constrains observation through experimental interaction. Experimental outcomes are taken as empirical facts, understood not as explanations but as constraints imposed by reality on representation. From these constraints, multiple axiomatic selves ray, wave, classical electromagnetic, particle, quantum, and quantum field models are constructed as abstract, internally coherent structures, each defined by assumptions and restricted domains of validity.
The analysis shows that domains of validity are determined directly by experimental results and indirectly by comparison with more general axiomatic selves, though experimental constraint remains the ultimate authority. More general models clarify, but do not replace, earlier ones, explaining their success within restricted regimes. No axiomatic self, regardless of generality, is identified with the empirical self itself.
By maintaining a strict distinction between empirical reality and abstract representation, the framework dissolves several long-standing philosophical confusions, including realism versus instrumentalism, wave–particle duality, theory replacement, determinism versus probability, and the measurement problem. These issues are shown to arise from category mistakes rather than from deep features of nature.
Although light serves as the central example, the principles extracted are not specific to optical phenomena. The empirical–axiomatic distinction applies broadly across physical systems and extends naturally to complex systems. The work thus offers a clarified account of scientific understanding: to understand a system is to know the empirical constraints it imposes, the axiomatic structures used to represent it, the domains in which those structures apply, and the limits beyond which they fail
Our Story Collages
No full textOur Story digital collages of the Underwater Realm presented in Giannoulatou, I. D., Januchowski-Hartley, S. R., Sahni, A., Pawar, S. K., White, J. C., Lockheart, J., Baranduin, N., Herbst, D., Whittaker, B., Thackeray, S. J., Shooter, R., Darley, J. and Thomas, M. (in review). Collaging to find new connections and meaning about underwater places. cultural geographies. *Corresponding author: [email protected] </p
Our Story Audio-Visual Media
No full textOur Story audio-visual media presented in Giannoulatou, I. D., Januchowski-Hartley, S. R., Sahni, A., Pawar, S. K., White, J. C., Lockheart, J., Baranduin, N., Herbst, D., Whittaker, B., Thackeray, S. J., Shooter, R., Darley, J. and Thomas, M. (in review). Collaging to find river connections and stimulate new meanings. cultural geographies.
The original video file was changed with an updated version on 21 September 2022 to include subtitles (English).
*Corresponding author: [email protected] </p
An Immunocompetent Adult Male Presented with a Liver Abscess Caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis: A Case Report from India
No full textA liver abscess is a collection of purulent fluid in the liver parenchyma caused by a variety of etiological organisms such as bacteria, protozoa, and in rare occasions fungi. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is a frequent and widespread infection in underdeveloped nations such as India, which can manifest in many ways. Tuberculosis mostly affects the lungs, although it can also affect any organ in the body. We are reporting a case of liver abscess caused by MTB infection in order to raise general awareness among physicians about the importance of suspecting and ruling out tuberculosis as a cause of liver abscess. To the best of our knowledge, there have been very few such cases reported from India/the rest of the world
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