Sinhala New Year: The Banku Rabana and its Relationship to Food Culture

The main livelihood of Sri Lankan village life is the agricultural industry centered on the rice plant. This culture has incorporated a sub-culture surrounding food sprouting from this as well. Throughout history, the harvest brought home has been consumed in a festive setting. This is most clearly seen in the month of April, with the dawn of the New Year. The banku rabana is a traditional percussion instrument that is 3-4 feet in diameter and is made to represent the sun. Played by four individuals sitting around the rabana this is a custom spread island wide with variations indigenous to regions. This is a qualitative study through which the following aims are discussed. First, a rough outline of the traditional New Year festival and the significance of the banku rabana. Then, the communication methods involving the banku rabana, the different playing styles and related vocal verses as well as their hidden meanings were investigated. Finally, the aspects of food culture brought out through the banku rabana are discussed. Discussions and field observations were carried out as primary sources. Furthermore, experience in the field of Ayurveda medicine and food culture was used as a primary source here. The secondary sources used were studying the relevant texts on the topics relevant to the research. This culture is an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Sri Lanka.

The robot take-over: Reflections on the meaning of automated education

With education technology pointing to an ever-increasing automation of educational activities, a few enthusiasts go so far as to predict the replacement of teachers by robots. The present paper intends to take such declarations as a provocation, encouraging us to question our understanding of educational practices. That this possibility is even considered says much about how we understand education and effectively educate, greatly instigating our inquiries about that which is ever the subject of education, i.e., the human being. To follow this line of questioning, the exposition will proceed thus: there will firstly be a rough outline of what is a “robot”, and what, if anything, distinguishes it from any other machine, beginning with the origin of the word, in fiction, and with considerations on machinery and automation relying on a few of Karl Marx’s insights. Following that, a few attempts to define real-life robots and robot-like machinery used in Information and Communication Technology will be seen, leading to a brief foray on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Finally, the last part will have recourse to Hannah Arendt’s theory of action in an effort to reflect on the meaning of the hopes for and attempts at an automated education.

POSZUKIWANIE TOŻSAMOŚCI. NA PRZYKŁADZIE WIERSZA INNY LISNIANSKIEJ „Развалилось то, что долго длилось…”

The article is an attempt of the semantic interpretation of the poem of Inna Lisnianska “Развалилось то, что долго длилось…”. It concerns the role of the Jewish Question in identity formation of the lyrical subject. I was preceded by a rough outline of the Jewish issue in Russian literature. The interpretation demonstrates that the drama of the tumble indicated in the title is opposed by the “elf” of the lyrical subject. That self was formed by the unity of blood, the unity of both cultures and both religions. It was formed by her cry — with all the blood (“всей своей кровью”), where Christian and Jewish elements merge.

Dynamic capabilities: a systematic literature review of theory and practice

Purpose. Although the dynamic capability concept has been one of the most researched topics in strategic management in recent years, it is not commonly defined in theory and hardly applied in practice. For this reason, the authors decided to re-evaluate dynamic capability literature. Design/Method/Approach. Systematic literature review. Findings. Various discrepancies concerning the very nature of dynamic capabilities and their impact on firm performance are identified that need to be resolved. Theoretical implications. For the purpose of enabling more precise prediction, it is recommended to contrast various dynamic capability concepts, reducing the number and increasing the predictability of the contingencies involved. It is advised to develop these scenarios based on the various seminal papers on dynamic capabilities, grounded in empirical research and supported by specific examples. Practical implication. It is concluded that there is a generalized version of the dynamic capability concept that allows one to understand the rough outline of dynamic capability theory. However, it is noted that this generalized, contingency-based version compromises the prediction of specific dynamic capability deployment outcomes, therefore hindering dynamic capabilities in gaining practical application. Originality/Value. Complementary and opposing views on the characteristics, causalities and contingencies of the dynamic capability construct are combined and contrasted respectively. Research limitations/Future research. The paper highlights avenues for further research by contrasting, rather than merging, different perspectives. Paper type – сonceptual.

The Narrowing of the Gender Wealth Gap across the Nineteenth-Century United States

Shammas (1994) documented the expansion of women's wealth holding across the nineteenth-century United States, explaining it as the result of the married women's property acts (MWPAs) passed in most of states starting circa 1840. We look at the timing of the expansion of women's wealth holding, drawing on archival and published evidence from probate records. Starting with Richmond, Virginia, and its agricultural hinterland, we consider a variety of places, urban and rural, in the South and North, to suggest a general view of the eastern United States. In rough outline, while colonial women were at most one-tenth of probated wealth holders, antebellum women were at least one-fifth. Levels of women's wealth holding increased even more. The substantial narrowing of the gender wealth gap cannot be attributed to the MWPAs that followed. Perhaps those acts will explain the further narrowing of the gender wealth gap in the later nineteenth century, but that narrowing might better be understood as a continuation of previous trends. Our results remind that some legal reforms can better be understood as reflections than causes of social change.

Morphological characteristics of Echinococcus granulosus derived from buffalo in Iran

SUMMARYCystic echinococcosis is a significant parasitic disease in Iran, where a variety of animals act as intermediate hosts. In this study, 25 isolates of Echinococcus granulosus obtained from water buffalo from various parts of Iran were characterized on the basis of the morphology of the metacestode and the adult worm. The characteristics of protoscoleces from the different studied areas were nearly similar. They showed 2 rows of alternating large and small hooks and their shapes were smooth in outline. In contrast to the protoscoleces, the adult rostellar hooks showed a rough outline. The results showed that the total length, the blade lengths of the large and small hooks and the number of hooks are almost similar to those isolated from sheep but significantly different from those isolated from camels. The growth rates of adult E. granulosus (total worm length, segmentation and maturation) of buffalo origin, at 35 and 41 days post-infection of dogs, were nearly comparable to the common sheep strain. The form of the strobila and the morphology of the reproductive system were also similar to those of sheep origin. This suggests that the common sheep strain (G1) of E. granulosus may also use buffaloes as its intermediate host.

New conceptualisations of mood and anxiety disorders

SummaryThis paper argues for a simpler and more realistic classification for mental disorders that occur in general medical settings. Our complex classifications are little used by internists or general practitioners, and both the DSM and the ICD classifications are aware that many cases of “co-morbidity” could be avoided, and cases of diagnoses “not otherwise specified” could be reduced. This would necessitate a re-arrangement of the chapters in both major classifications, and the design of a drastically simpler system for describing common mental disorders. The rough outline of such a system is described, but to do so we have to create an important disorder which simply does not exist at present, called “anxious depression” - but this can only be created if mood disorders and anxiety disorders are included in the same chapter of the parent classification. The advantages and problems of these changes are briefly described.

The Functionality of Christian Life: Problems of The Early Hegel's Epistemology of Religion

In this paper I want to explore a central line of reasoning in Hegel's early philosophy of religion, which he expounded in fragments he wrote while he was in Bern and Frankfurt in the 1790's. These fragments are known under the titles, Fragmente über Volksreligion und Christentum (dated around 1793–94), Die Positivität der christlichen Religion (1795–96), Entwürfe über Religion und Liebe, and a later essay entitled Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksat, they were written sometime between 1798 and 1800, a few years before Hegel published his seminal Jena texts, but they remained unpublished in his lifetime. These texts have, since Nohl's edition of 1907, come to be known collectively as Hegel's ‘theologische Jugendschriften’. I believe that they contain the inchoate system of Hegel's thought in general and his mature philosophy of religion in particular. My main claim here is that Hegel believes that there is an intimate relation between reason and religion, so much so in fact that one can argue that there is reason in religion.In the first section of my paper, I elaborate on some general problems concerning the relation between faith and reason, in particular, concerning the criterion of truth and viewpoint-neutrality. In the second section, I introduce Hegel's well-known problematic of the sublation of conceptual oppositions, which in the context of an account of the positivity of religion he already articulates, in some form, in these early documents and which may provide a solution for the problems that, in the first section, I argue arise around the relation between faith and reason. This will be merely a rough outline. I subsequently discuss, very briefly, some central aspects of Kant's philosophy of religion, to which to an important extent Hegel's is indebted. In the fourth section, I go on to indicate, also very broadly, the sense in which Hegel attempts to improve upon Kant and thus apparently proves to be more consistent than him. I then raise an issue concerning Hegel's particularist position in his epistemology of religion, which does not sit well with the notion of rationality as viewpoint-neutral. To illustrate this, I look at Hegel's reading of the Eucharist. This is all very sketchy and is meant mainly to elucidate the sense in which, according to Hegel, there is reason in religion.