203 research outputs found
How perception of status differences affects our decision making
No full textAs human beings, we aspire higher to achieve greater security in our lives. We assess our standing in society in relative terms. Past studies have shown that our subjective social status relative to society can determine health consequences (Operario et al, 2004). Yet, we have a limited understanding of how to measure our subjective status and how that affects our decision making and behavior. Understanding these may reveal important information about how perception of status differences affects behavior. Therefore, the primary goal of this dissertation is to closely examine perception of status in order to evaluate its subsequent effect on decision making. Four studies were conducted to examine the relationship between status perceptions and decision making. In the first study, we established a laboratory manipulation of status, designed and validated appropriate questionnaires, and probed its effects on decision making via an economic game called the Ultimatum Game. In study 2, we examined how perception of status affected choice of an experimental status symbol. Both of these studies showed a negative relationship with decision making. In study 1, the low status subjects, who felt inferior to their partner, shared more with their high status partners. And in study 2, we observed that in certain contexts, the low status subjects, who felt inferior to their partner, chose the experimental status symbol more. However, in study 3, when we made the experimental situation riskier, subjects who perceived themselves to be inferior to their partner chose the status symbol less than their high status counterparts. In addition, low status subjects showed more affinity for risk at specific levels. In study 4, we examined if these effects were due to self-esteem and found no effect of self-esteem. Together, these studies showed that laboratory manipulations of status can capture psychological aspects of the status experience and may induce a compensatory tendency. These compensatory tendencies may vary depending on both status of the subject and riskiness of the situation. Studying status in a laboratory setting allows researchers to understand these behaviors more closely and speculate on how to best address status concerns for the betterment of society.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Swati Bhattachary
Analyzing Advancement in Crowdfunding Research and Envisioning its Future: A Bibliometric Approach
No full textPublished online 24 July 2023. Published in print 1 August 2023.Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers.Crowdfunding represents an emerging alternative means of marshaling resources which may prove to be a game-changer in the entrepreneurial finance landscape. Although the rapid growth in this field has yielded a multidisciplinary body of work, the scaffolding of this vast body of work is still largely unknown in the scholarly domain. We conduct a bibliometric analysis of 534 crowdfunding articles to uncover the intellectual landscape of crowdfunding research. Our comprehensive co-citation analysis reveals two generations of crowdfunding research, identifies the most researched themes in area, and highlights its theoretical and disciplinary anchors. In addition, our bibliographic cartography traces the shifts in areas of interest of scholars within the heterogeneous field. Overall, our critical analysis of the most influential conversations in crowdfunding research helps reveals gaps in the extant literature which act as fertile directions for its future inquiry
Biological and bio-inspired morphometry as a route to tunable and enhanced materials design
No full textThesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 2016.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.Structural materials in nature integrate classical materials selection rules with morphometry (geometry or shape-based rules) to create high-performance, multi-functional structures that exhibit tunable properties through extraordinary complexity, hierarchy, and precise structural control. This thesis explores the use of morphometry as a materials design parameter through the development of bio-inspired, flexible composite armor based on the articulated exoskeleton of an armored fish, Polypterus senegalus, which achieves uniform coverage and protection from predatory threats without restricting flexibility. First, the functional implications of shape and shape variation are examined as materials design parameters within the biological exoskeleton using a new method that integrates continuum strain analysis with landmark-based geometric morphometric analysis in 2D and 3D. Bioinspired flexible composite prototypes are fabricated using multi-material 3D printing and tested under passive loading (self-weight) and active loading (bending) to examine how the shape of scales contributes to local, interscale mobility mechanisms that generate anisotropic, global mechanical behavior. With one prototype design scheme, a wide array of mechanical behavior is generated with stiffness ranging over several orders of magnitude, including 'mechanical invisibility' of the scales, showing how morphometry can tune flexibility without varying the constituent materials. Finally, finite element models simulating the bending experiments are created to establish a computational framework for analyzing the mechanical response of the prototypes. The finite element models are then extended to examine the effect of different loading conditions, scale morphometry, multi-material architecture, and constituent material properties. The results show how morphometric-enabled materials design, inspired by structural biological materials, can allow for tunable behavior in flexible composites made of segmented scale assemblies to achieve enhanced user mobility, custom fit, and flexibility around joints for a variety of protective applications.by Swati Varshney.Ph. D
A Tibetan window into the twentieth-century Himalayan world
No full textThis article examines interconnections between parts of the Indian Himalaya and Tibet in the period encompassing the escape of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama to India in 1959. While Buddhism served as connecting tissue binding together communities across recently drawn national borders, networks linking families in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet were also forged through monastic patronage, colonial education, intermarriage, seasonal migration and trade. Through a reading of colonial and postcolonial archives from Delhi, London and Gangtok, as well as the private papers of Indian political appointees in the Himalaya, the article shows how, far from blazing a trail, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans who followed him into exile were treading well-worn migration routes and leaning on relationships forged over centuries. Archival evidence from press and parliamentary proceedings in the 1950s and 1960s reveals a shared religious history and information that India claimed to be the cradle of the subcontinent’s Buddhist heritage, which helped garner greater support for the Dalai Lama and his countrymen
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Monk who stood against Vietnam war, also led me home
No full textThe Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, who preached “engaged Buddhism”, passed away on 22 January at the age of 95. He lived out most of his life in homelessness, necessitated both by his monastic vows and political exile. Martin Luther King, Jr, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967
Book review | Mystics and sceptics
No full textAreview of three recent books on the Himalaya earlier this month opened with the provocation: ‘Whose Himalaya is it?’ Surveying writing on the Himalaya from the earliest colonial encounters to the present day, Amish Raj Mulmi (Himal Southasian, March 1, 2023) found that “indigenous modes of seeing are rarely found in contemporary Western popular writing about the Himalaya”. The massif and its inhabitants have been variously exoticised, marginalised, and vilified
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Genome Sequence and the Identification of Mosquitocidal Toxin Operons in Clostridium bifermentans subsp. malaysia
No full textGenome Sequence and the Identification of Mosquitocidal Toxin operons in Clostridium bifermentans subsp. malaysiabySwati ChawlaDoctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Environmental ToxicologyUniversity of California, Riverside, March 2015Dr. Sarjeet S. Gill, Chairperson The management and control of mosquito vectors of human disease currently rely primarily on chemical insecticides. However, larvicidal treatments can be effective, and if based on biological insecticides, they can also ameliorate the risk posed to human health by chemical insecticides. The aerobic bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis and Lysinibacillus sphaericus have been used for vector control for a number of decades. But development of mosquito resistance to individual toxins has been seen in laboratory and in field. More recently, the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium bifermentans subsp. malaysia (Cbm) has been reported to have high mosquitocidal activity, and a number of proteins were identified as potentially mosquitocidal. However, the cloned proteins showed no mosquitocidal activity. I determined genome sequence of the only known anaerobic mosquitocidal bacterium, Cbm by the next generation sequencing approach. I showed that the genome consists of a 3.7-Mb chromosome, seven small plasmids and a 109-kb megaplasmid that contains the two toxin operons responsible for mosquitocidal activity. Also, additional virulence-related factors could be identified for further work. I co-authored and published that four toxins encoded by the Cry operon, Cry16A, Cry17A, Cbm17.1, and Cbm17.2, are all required for toxicity, and these toxins collectively show remarkable selectivity for Aedes rather than Anopheles mosquitoes, even though Cbm is more toxic to Anopheles. I also tried to improve the mosquitocidal activity of Cbm Cry operon by protein engineering of surface loop residues in domain II of Cry17Aa and wanted to test on 4 different species of important human disease vectors, Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae, Anopheles stephensi and Culex quinquefasciatus. I also identified the toxins that could target Anopheles are different from those expressed by the Cry operon and investigated the possibility that the genes encoded in second operon on pClosMP, the Clostridial Mosquitocidal Protein (Cmp) operon, could be toxic to Anopheles. The Cmp operon encodes seven genes, including a 150-kDa mosquitocidal toxin (CMP1) and HA gene. I show the three genes, CMP1, CNTNH, and CHA that play an important role in botulinum neurotoxicity are not active individually against mosquitoes. We need to express the native full length 16kb Cmp operon and CMP1-CNTNH-HA constructs to answer this question. In summary, based on data in the literature and my work, I demonstrate that Cbm harbors its mosquitocidal activity on a large 109kb plasmid that encodes for two toxin operons. The Cry operon toxins work as a complex and are active against Aedes larvae. The Cmp operon toxins activity against Aedes and Anopheles larvae remains a vast field of study to be further explored
Fashioning a ‘Buddhist’ Himalayan cartography: Sikkim darbar and the cabinet mission plan
No full textIn the months leading up to the transfer of power in India, the eastern Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim made several representations to the Cabinet Mission and other constitutional bodies that were giving shape to the successor Indian government. The Sikkim Darbar was worried that its ambiguous position under colonial treaties might lead India to treat it as one of the five-hundred odd princely states that were slowly merging with the union. In letters, memoranda, legal briefs, and personal meetings, the Darbar argued that it was racially, religiously, socially, and culturally distinct from India, and that its allegiance lied to its north with Tibet. This article traces the vocabulary for the Sikkim Darbar’s assertion of difference from India back to the racialised imperial writing and realpolitik that had informed colonial policy towards the Himalayan states since the nineteenth century, most notably Olaf Caroe’s 1940 thesis on the ‘Mongolian Fringe’. This archival evidence emphasises Sikkimese agency and helps excavate an imagination of the Himalaya from within the region. The article also nuances the history of the forging of Indian republic by foregrounding the processes of negotiation and compromise that continued to shape the territorial contours of the Indian nation long after the moment of decolonisation.
How Not To Read The Dalai Lama’s Statement On His Reincarnation
No full textIn the week that he turned 90, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama made the much-anticipated announcement on his succession along anticipated lines. At the start of the Fifteenth Tibetan Religious Conference in Dharamsala on July 2, he said that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue after him, and that the responsibility for finding his successor will rest with the Gaden Phodrang Trust, based in his private office in Dharamsala
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