The Great Art

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Negative Numbers ◽  
Square Roots ◽  
Quadratic Equations ◽  
Indian Mathematician ◽  
Northern India ◽  
First Millennium

This chapter discusses the origins of the art of algebra, beginning with the possibility that it may have come from the Greeks or from the Hindus. However, the Brahmins of northern India had some idea of algebra long before the Arabians learned it, contributed to it and brought that art to Spain in the late eleventh century. The Brahmasphutasiddhanta, written by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in 628, not only advanced the mathematical role of zero but also introduced rules for manipulating negative and positive numbers, methods for computing square roots, and systematic methods of solving linear and limited types of quadratic equations. The chapter also considers the contriburions of Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwārizmī and suggests that negative numbers originated in China, where they had been used since the beginning of the first millennium.

Buddhist philosophy, Indian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Northern India ◽  
The World ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
The Buddha

Buddhism was an important ingredient in the philosophical melange of the Indian subcontinent for over a millennium. From an inconspicuous beginning a few centuries before Christ, Buddhist scholasticism gained in strength until it reached a peak of influence and originality in the latter half of the first millennium. Beginning in the eleventh century, Buddhism gradually declined and eventually disappeared from northern India. Although different individual thinkers placed emphasis on different issues, the tendency was for most writers to offer an integrated philosophical system that incorporated ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. Most of the issues addressed by Buddhist philosophers in India stem directly from the teachings attributed to Siddhārtha Gautama, known better through his honorific title, the Buddha. The central concern of the Buddha was the elimination of unnecessary discontent. His principal insight into this problem was that all dissatisfaction arises because people (and other forms of life as well) foster desires and aversions, which are in turn the consequence of certain misunderstandings about their identity. Discontent can be understood as frustration, or a failure to achieve what one wishes; if one’s wishes are generally unrealistic and therefore unattainable, then one will naturally be generally dissatisfied. Since the Buddha saw human frustration as an effect of misunderstandings concerning human nature, it was natural for Buddhist philosophers to attend to questions concerning the true nature of a human being. Since the Buddha himself was held as the paradigm of moral excellence, it was also left to later philosophers to determine what kind of being the Buddha had been. A typical question was whether his example was one that ordinary people could hope to follow, or whether his role was in some way more than that of a teacher who showed other people how to improve themselves. The Buddha offered criticisms of many views on human nature and virtue and duty held by the teachers of his age. Several of the views that he opposed were based, at least indirectly, on notions incorporated in the Veda, a body of liturgical literature used by the Brahmans in the performance of rituals. Later generations of Buddhists spent much energy in criticizing Brahmanical claims of the supremacy of the Veda; at the same time, Buddhists tended to place their confidence in a combination of experience and reason. The interest in arriving at correct understanding through correct methods of reasoning led to a preoccupation with questions of logic and epistemology, which tended to overshadow all other philosophical concerns during the last five centuries during which Buddhism was an important factor in Indian philosophy. Since the Buddha saw human frustration as an effect that could be eliminated if its cause were eliminated, it was natural for Buddhist philosophers to focus their attention on a variety of questions concerning causality. How many kinds of cause are there? Can a multiplicity of effects have a single cause? Can a single thing have a multiplicity of causes? How is a potentiality triggered into an actuality? Questions concerning simplicity and complexity, or unity and plurality, figured prominently in Buddhist discussions of what kinds of things in the world are ultimately real. In a tradition that emphasized the principle that all unnecessary human pain and conflict can ultimately be traced to a failure to understand what things in the world are real, it was natural to seek criteria by which one discerns real things from fictions.

Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
First Millennium

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.

Role of Sildenafil in Management of Pediatric Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Janagill ◽  
Puneet Aulakh Pooni ◽  
Siddharth Bhargava ◽  
Shibba Takkar Chhabra
Keyword(s):  
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome ◽  
Respiratory Distress Syndrome ◽  
Respiratory Distress ◽  
Distress Syndrome ◽  
Pediatric Intensive Care ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Pulmonary Vasodilator ◽  
Pulmonary Arterial

AbstractAcute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has high mortality and multiple therapeutic strategies have been used to improve the outcome. Inhaled nitric oxide (INO), a pulmonary vasodilator, is used to improve oxygenation. This study was conducted to determine the role of sildenafil, an oral vasodilator, to improve oxygenation and mortality in pediatric ARDS (PARDS). The prevalence of pulmonary hypertension in PARDS was studied as well. Inclusion criteria included children (1–18 years) with ARDS requiring invasive ventilation admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in Northern India over a 1-year period of time. Thirty-five patients met the inclusion criteria. Cardiologist performed a detailed echocardiogram to determine pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP). Patients with persistent hypoxemia were started on oral sildenafil. The majority (77%) patients had a primary pulmonary etiology of PARDS. Elevated PAP (>25 mm Hg) was detected in 54.3% patients at admission. Sildenafil was given to 20 patients who had severe and persistent hypoxemia. Oxygenation improved in most patients after the first dose with statistically significant improvement in PaO2/FiO2 ratios at both 12 and 24 hours following initiation of therapeutic dosing of sildenafil. Improvement in oxygenation occurred irrespective of initial PAP. Outcomes included a total of 57.1% patients discharged, 28.6% discharged against medical advice (DAMA), and a 14.3% mortality rate. Mortality was related to the severity of PARDS and not the use of sildenafil. This is the first study to determine the effect of sildenafil in PARDS. Sildenafil led to improvement in oxygenation in nearly all the cases without affecting mortality. Due to unavailability of INO in most centers of developing countries, sildenafil may be considered as an inexpensive alternative in cases of persistent hypoxemia in PARDS. We recommend additional randomized controlled trials to confirm the effect of sildenafil in PARDS as determined in this study.

Of myths and metallurgy: Archaeological and ethnological approaches to upland iron production in 9th century CE northwest Laos

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-140
Author(s):  
Olivier Évrard ◽  
Thomas O. Pryce ◽  
Guido Sprenger ◽  
Chanthaphilith Chiemsisouraj
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Iron Production ◽  
Ancient Population ◽  
Iron Smelting ◽  
Immigration And Emigration ◽  
First Millennium

Our recent discovery and excavation of a series of iron smelting furnaces, dated to the eighth and ninth century CE, near upland Rmet villages in northwest Laos, potentially sheds new light on the role of regional upland groups during the immediate pre-Tai period. The oral tradition associated with these furnaces emphasises the role of an ancient population of metallurgists who left the area under pressure from the Rmet. These stories could refer to the actual arrival and departure (immigration and emigration) of a population of metallurgists in that area sometime during the second half of the first millennium CE or they can support the scenario of a dissimilation process. The latter would explain the existence of a Rmet subculture that the locals regard as ‘Chueang Lavae’ villages, a differentiation that Karl G. Izikowitz had labelled ‘Upper Lamet’ in the 1930s. Our finds show that archaeology and ethnology can both contribute to a much-needed reformulation of upland Lao history.

Role of Survivin Gene Promoter Polymorphism (−31G>C) in Susceptibility and Survival of Esophageal Cancer in Northern India

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 880-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohit Upadhyay ◽  
Rohini Khurana ◽  
Shaleen Kumar ◽  
Uday Chand Ghoshal ◽  
Balraj Mittal
Keyword(s):  
Esophageal Cancer ◽  
Gene Promoter ◽  
Promoter Polymorphism ◽  
Survivin Gene ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Gene Promoter Polymorphism

An epidemiological study of hysteria

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-405
Author(s):  
K. C. Dube ◽  
Narender Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Incidence Rate ◽  
Epidemiological Study ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Educational Level ◽  
Prevalence Rate ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Study Population

SummaryIn a comprehensive epidemiological study conducted by a census survey in a population of 29,468 individuals in the Agra region of Uttar Pradesh, northern India, 261 cases of conversion symptoms in the form of hysterical fits were detected constituting a prevalence rate of 8.9 per thousand (Dube, 1970). The study population consisted of residents in urban, semi-rural and rural areas. The prevalence rate was significantly higher in urban than in rural areas. Females constituted 96.1% of all cases of hysteria. The highest incidence rate was in the age group 15–24 years. The role of caste, marital status and educational level, found to be associated with the occurrence of symptoms, has been discussed.

POVERTY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND ESPECIALLY CHILD BENEFIT

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (01n02) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER TOWNSEND
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Present Form ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Investment Fund ◽  
Development Goal ◽  
World Poverty ◽  
First Millennium

Poverty has been reduced by too little, or not at all, in recent years. A fifth, perhaps a quarter, of the world's population are living in extreme poverty. The measurement of the phenomenon, and especially of annual trends in the rates and severity of poverty, is not acceptably precise, consistent, and generally agreed. Nor is policy being analyzed and justified in precise correlation with such trend reports as have been published. The first Millennium Development Goal — to halve world poverty by 2015 — has become an unlikely prospect. The reasons lie in the present form of the globalization of the market, together with continuing preference shown to neo-liberal economic and social policies. If poverty is to be systematically reduced, the orthodoxies of definition, measurement, explanation and resolution, which as key elements of the problem necessarily reinforce each other, have to be re-examined and re-formulated quickly. In re-examining approaches to measurement and policy the new human rights instruments, endorsed by a majority and in some cases by an overwhelming majority of governments, must play a vital role. Their potentialities are considerable for the measurement of poverty, deprivation, exclusion and development. But, crucially, they can help to engineer an international, as well as scientific, consensus in the war on poverty. One priority illustration would be a UN Child Investment Fund to finance the universal right of children to social security.

Occasionalism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Rudolph
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
The Third ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The World

This chapter charts the development of the theory of occasionalism within the Islamic tradition until the fifth/eleventh century. Occasionalism emphasizes God’s absolute power by negating natural causality and attributing every causal effect in the world immediately to Him. It is often assumed to be a distinctive, if not exclusive, feature of Sunnīkalāmas opposed to Muʿtazilism, Shīʿism, and Islamic philosophy. The chapter begins with the question of how the foundations of the occasionalist theory were prepared in the evolving Muʿtazilī discussions of the third/ninth and early fourth/tenth century. It then considers the role of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in the completion and final formulation of the theory before turning to later developments originating with some Ashʿarī theologians of the late fourth/tenth and the fifth/eleventh century. It also looks at the seventeenth chapter ofTahāfut al-falāsifa, in which Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) discusses occasionalism and the problematic of causality.

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