Exploration of Ethical Debates through Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss,Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Smith’s On Beauty

This essay examines debates over alternative ethical formulations that break from the Kantian model through contemporary fiction—Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005). The essay returns to the theory, the ethics of care, put forward by Carol Gilligan in In a Different Voice (1982), which has regained significance in the context of questions surrounding care in contemporary ethical thinking. While the three novels are concerned with ideas of care, beauty, justice and the tyranny of the mainstream, this essay examines particular themes in particular texts which suggest that ideas with otherwise subversive potential—like care or beauty or justice—lose their radicalism when they are incorporated within the impersonal, masculinist mainstream. Carol Gilligan’s feminine ethics of care, with its respect for the particular, is not only still important as the stimulus to thinking about alternatives to overarching ethical discourses, but it could also re-confer these concepts of care, beauty and justice their revolutionary potential.     

The influence of interfaces on the formation of bubbles in He-ion-irradiated Cu/Mo nanolayers

The role of immiscible Cu/Mo interfaces on the formation of helium (He) bubbles in ion-irradiated Cu/Mo 5?nm multilayers is examined. Interfaces significantly enhance the critical He concentration above which bubbles, approximately 1?nm in diameter, are detected via through-focus imaging in a transmission electron microscope. He-to-vacancy ratio affects the formation and distribution of He bubbles. The diameter of He bubbles in Cu appears to be slightly larger than that in Mo.     

Language selection in bilingual speech: evidence for inhibitory processes

Although bilinguals rarely make random errors of language when they speak, research on spoken production provides compelling evidence to suggest that both languages are active when only one language is spoken (e.g., [Poulisse, N. (1999). Slips of the tongue: Speech errors in first and second language production. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins]). Moreover, the parallel activation of the two languages appears to characterize the planning of speech for highly proficient bilinguals as well as second language learners. In this paper, we first review the evidence for cross-language activity during single word production and then consider the two major alternative models of how the intended language is eventually selected. According to language-specific selection models, both languages may be active but bilinguals develop the ability to selectively attend to candidates in the intended language. The alternative model, that candidates from both languages compete for selection, requires that cross-language activity be modulated to allow selection to occur. On the latter view, the selection mechanism may require that candidates in the nontarget language be inhibited. We consider the evidence for such an inhibitory mechanism in a series of recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies.     

Narasiṃha,the Supreme Deity of Andhra Pradesh: Tradition and Innovation in Hinduism—An Examination of the Temple Myths,Folk Stories,and Popular Culture

Narasi?ha is the most popular Vai??ava deity of Andhra Pradesh, with numerous temples found across Andhra Pradesh. Narasi?ha is the only theriomorphic deity to achieve this status, most commonly ascribed to anthropomorphic deities, such as Krishna (Gujarat), Rāma (North India), Murugan (Tamilnadu), and Kāli (Bengal). In order to understand the overall image of Narasi?ha and his rise to supreme status in Andhra Pradesh, I will examine the sthalapurā?as and folk traditions of Narasi?ha and include a demonstration of how the local traditions inform and interact in the religious experience and practice of society. The article is divided into two sections. The first section examines the sthalapurā?as (local temple myths) and ritual practices of selected Narasi?ha temples. The discrepancies are highlighted between the classical purā?a representation of Narasi?ha and the actual cultic praxis in contemporary Andhra Pradesh. The second section analyzes the folk mythology of Narasi?ha to understand the features which establish him as the most popular Vai??ava deity/avatāra of choice in Andhra Pradesh. Considered also are themes of Narasi?ha from popular culture. Apart from shedding light on the Vai??avism and Narasi?ha, this study contributes to the understanding of popular Hinduism in India.     

Mixed-sided individuals with neuroticism sustain more unintentional injuries in India

Previous research has shown a positive association between unintentional injury liability and non‐right‐handedness (especially mixed‐handedness). Research has also shown neuroticism to be one of the main predictors of unintentional injuries. In the present study we investigated the relationship of the three variables—frequency of unintentional injuries, side bias, and neuroticism. Further, the study aimed at extending the findings of previous studies establishing a relationship between non‐right‐handedness and unintentional injuries to a similar pattern in other domains of side bias—footedness, eyedness, and earedness. Data were collected from a large sample (N = 3474) using the side bias questionnaire, the shorter version of Maudsley's Personality Inventory, and an unintentional injury checklist. Results revealed positive correlations between the frequency of unintentional injuries and mixed‐sidedness, followed by left‐sidedness and right‐sidedness in each of the four domains of side bias. Furthermore, an increase in the frequency of unintentional injuries was observed for mixed‐sided and left‐sided individuals with higher levels of neuroticism.     

Dynamics of attention in depth: evidence from multi-element tracking

We examined the allocation of attention in depth using a multi-element tracking paradigm. Observers were required to track a predefined subset of from two to eight elements in displays containing up to sixteen identical moving elements. We first show that depth cues, such as binocular disparity and occlusion through T-junctions, improve performance in a multi-element tracking task in the case where element boundaries are allowed to intersect in the depiction of motion in a single frontoparallel plane. We also show that the allocation of attention across two perceptually distinguishable planar surfaces, either frontoparallel or receding at a slanting angle and defined by coplanar elements, is easier than allocation of attention within a single surface. The same result was not found when attention was required to be deployed across items of two-color populations rather than across items of a single color. Our results suggest that, when surface information does not suffice to distinguish between targets and distractors that are embedded in these surfaces, division of attention across two surfaces aids in tracking moving targets. A final experiment with populations of elements moving within distinct volumes produced similar results, suggesting that spatial separation in three dimensions, rather than confinement to surfaces as such, may explain the improved performance for the two-surface case.     

Speed of processing of the visual-orthographic and auditory-phonological systems in adult dyslexics: the contribution of "asynchrony" to word recognition deficits

This study investigated whether "asynchrony" in speed of processing (SOP) between the visual-orthographic and auditory-phonological modalities contributes to word recognition deficits among adult dyslexics. Male university students with a history of diagnosed dyslexia were compared to age-matched normal readers on a variety of experimental measures while event-related potentials and reaction time data were collected. Measures were designed to evaluate auditory and visual processing for non-linguistic (tones and shapes) and linguistic (phonemes and graphemes) low-level stimuli as well as higher-level orthographic and phonological processing (in a lexical decision task). Data indicated that adult dyslexic readers had significantly slower reaction times and longer P300 latencies than control readers in most of the experimental tasks and delayed P200 latencies for the lexical decision task. Moreover, adult dyslexics revealed a systematic SOP gap in P300 latency between the auditory/phonological and visual/orthographic processing measures. Our data support and extend previous work that found SOP asynchrony to be an underlying factor of childhood dyslexia. The present data suggests, however, that among adult dyslexics the between modalities asynchrony occurs at later processing stages than in children.