Academic literature on the topic 'Caste beliefs scale'

Democracy means the prearrangement of governance in which people can enjoy the greatest means of life. It depends on the larger participation of people regardless of caste, gender, creed, men, and women. So far, the constitution of India shaped a democratic state and ensured the right to liberty, equal rights, the notion of justice, and fraternity for all its citizens in society. The political enterprisers who uphold the various ethnoreligious characteristics, mainly the Hindu nationalist beliefs and opinions, have shaped a lot of confusion and bewilderment about the conceptual ideas of secularism. The Liberal democracy still continues as an arrangement of human governance and structure of values that keep on unwavering for millions of people. At the lower stages, the judicial organization took a large-scale initiative in some debatable and controversial occurrences.

Kavu" or the holy Sarpa Kavu (meaning Sacred Grove of the Serpent) is a typically small traditional grove of trees seen in the Kerala state of South India. These pristine groves usually have representations of several Naga Devatas (serpent gods), which were worshipped by the joint families or big houses (taravads). This was part of Nagaradhana (snake worship) which was prevalent among Keralites during past centuries. The kayos' represent the locally deep-rooted tradition of worshipping plants, animals and local deities. They are mostly concentrated in Kerala's entire region especially in the North Malabar region. The kavus; however, are facing threats byway of changes in values as well as socio-economic pressures, despite the weight of traditional beliefs and rituals associated with them. Large scale conversion of land, decline of traditional agrarian values, socio­economic factors, population pressure and shortage of land have already made a dent on the rich ecosystem of 'kavus'. A large number of 'sarpa kavus', that were protected and maintained by upper caste communities, disappeared, due to the disintegration of families that protected them. In some cases, this led to their renovation and conversion into temples. There are reports stating that the 'kavus' suffered large scale degradation in the state due to high percentage of settler migration. These rich ecological repositories that also function as traditional water-harvesting system are not being given due importance. Most of the 'kavus' are located near agricultural lands; this indicates their role in an agrarian society. Most of the 'kavus' have perennial water resources rich in organic matter that enhance fertility of agriculture lands. Community protection alone can save the ' kavus'. Only through solid initiatives, it's possible to create awareness about 'kavus' ecological value among the communities (stakeholders); traditionally protecting the 'kavus' and the public. Sanctity of the 'kavus' may have been sustained by beliefs. No less important is their protection by highlighting their ecological importance.

Background: A growing number of global health interventions involve community members in activism to prevent violence against women (VAW), but the psychological drivers of participation are presently ill-understood. We developed a new scale for measuring three proposed drivers of participation in collective action to address VAW in the context of urban informal settlements in Mumbai, India: perceived legitimacy, perceived efficacy, and collective action norms. Methods: We did a household survey of 1307 men, 1331 women, and 4 trans persons. We checked for 1) social desirability bias by comparing responses to self-administered and face-to-face interviews, 2) acquiescence bias by comparing responses to positive and negatively worded items on the same construct, 3) factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis, and 4) convergent validity by examining associations between construct scores and participation in groups to address VAW and intent to intervene in case of VAW. Results: Of the ten items, seven showed less than five percentage point difference in agreement rates between self-administered and face-to-face conditions. Correlations between opposite worded items on the same construct were negative (p<0.05), while correlations between similarly worded items were positive (p<0.001). A hierarchical factor structure showed adequate fit (Tucker-Lewis index, 0.919; root mean square error of approximation, 0.036; weighted root mean square residual, 1.949). Comparison of multi-group models across gender, education, caste, and marital status showed little evidence against measurement invariance. Perceived legitimacy, efficacy and collective action norms all predicted participation in groups to address VAW and intent to intervene in case of VAW, even after adjusting for social capital (p<0.05). Conclusion: This is the first study to operationalize a measure of the psychological drivers of participation in collective action to address VAW in a low- and middle-income context. Our novel scale may provide insight into modifiable beliefs and attitudes community mobilisation interventions can address to inspire activism in similar low-resource contexts.

Evidence shows that the seasonal migrants returned from India have been a source of COVID-19, which helped spread it across Nepal. This cross-sectional study, guided by the Health Belief Model (HBM) model, that people's underlying believes in this case around COVID-19, is determined by a large extend their subsequent behaviors. This study aimed to examine the association between personal characteristics and perceived threats regarding COVID-19 among 384 seasonal migrants who had returned from India and were staying in a quarantine center in Surkhet, Nepal. A questionnaire was used with the help of three health workers working in the Quarantine Center. A five-point sequential grade Likert scale was constructed based on two HBM constructs, like 'perceived susceptibility' and ‘severity.' A score ≥ of 50% was designated as high, and ≤ 50% as a perceived low level of threat. Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed to interpret the data using SPSS 20 version. Generally, participants regarded the threat of COVID-19 as low. The severity of COVID-19 was thought to be greater than the vulnerability of the subjects. Gender, age, caste, education, health status, and perceived susceptibility did not correlate with perceived susceptibility. However, the participants’ demographic characteristics were associated with their perceived level of severity. Therefore, this study calls for proper risk communication to people who returned from abroad, as this is essential in promoting protective behavior during a pandemic outbreak.

Context As a part of the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE) 2020 Standards for Accreditation of Professional Athletic Training Programs, all preceptors affiliated with accredited programs must identify an area of contemporary expertise in a routine area of athletic training practice. However, little is known regarding preceptors' perceptions of contemporary expertise. Objective To explore preceptors' perceptions of the characteristics of contemporary expertise. Design Cross-sectional. Setting Online survey with open-ended questions. Patients or Other Participants A total of 277 preceptors affiliated with 80 CAATE-accredited professional programs accessed the survey; 259 respondents completed at least 1 open-ended question, and 201 completed the survey in its entirety (77.6% completion rate). Main Outcome Measure(s) We used a 16-item survey including demographic (10 items), Likert-scale (1 item), and open-ended (5 items) questions. Descriptive statistics were conducted to characterize respondent demographics and familiarity with contemporary expertise. Guided by consensual qualitative research, a 3-person data analysis team coded responses from the open-ended questions following a structured, 4-phase progression. An external auditor confirmed accuracy and representation of the findings. Results Approximately 36% of preceptors reported they were not at all familiar with contemporary expertise. Preceptors identified several defining characteristics (eg, knowledge or skills possessed, clinical practice experience, intentional continuing education, evidence-based practice [EBP]) and parameters (eg, CAATE curricular content standards, Board of Certification domains of practice, areas of specific interest) of contemporary expertise. Additionally, 85% of preceptors discussed how identifying areas of contemporary expertise would improve their practice, while the remaining 15% discussed how it would not. Conclusions Preceptors affiliated with CAATE-accredited professional programs appear to be largely in favor of developing an area of contemporary expertise and believe it will improve their own clinical practice. More education is needed to acquaint preceptors who are not yet familiar with the notion of contemporary expertise.

The article is devoted to the problem of using the CASE STUDY approach in the course "Information Security in the Media: Linguistic Competence", which is offered to students of master's specialties "Media Linguistics". The authors substantiate its methodological expediency by adapting to integrated disciplines, where the objects of analysis are real-life facts and their representation in the media, and where there are several effective solutions to the problem.The course "Information Security in the Media: Linguistic Competence" is interdisciplinary, that is why it corresponds well with the analytical capabilities of the approach. The authors also represent the methodical complex, which was created on the basis of the course for teaching master students at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The choice of analytical material is motivated by the fact that modern wars are fought primarily in the information space, where safe and dangerous are deliberately fused in media flows, so there is an urgent need to learn to distinguish between them.The topics of the lectures correlate with the problems of information pathogenicity. In security contexts, it appears as a result of violation of the legal basis of information activities and communication norms, when there are various psychoecological deviations that destroy trust in official institutional information, destroy traditional value paradigms, beliefs, turn socialized reflection on information influences into panic, mass aggression or indifference, etc. Within the course, students study the evolutionary dynamics of the standards of secure information representation, in particular in terms of its modern standards in the media, security specifics of traditional and current fact-checking is studied, and different scales of strategically important information and types of verbal manipulation are analyzed. The course is aimed at improving the media culture of secure communication, involves the formation of skills to recognize strategic content implemented in modern government strategies of hard, soft and intelligent power, special attention is paid to the processes of information socialization with the help of communication technologies.The specificity of the course objectifies the need to update methodological approaches and analytical tools for the study of media texts. This problem is partially solved by involving the methodological resource CASE STUDY.

Photo by Naveed Ahmed on Unsplash ABSTRACT India has had a solid standard for medical ethics since the birth of Ayurvedic holistic science over 5000 years ago. The country’s views on healthcare policy, counsel on how to deal with patients, and what constitutes good behavior within the profession stem from ancient outlines for medical practice. These “codes of conduct” were heavily influenced by religious and spiritual practices, emphasizing the sanctity of life and transcending the needs of the body. With time, however, medical care evolved through shifting priorities in education and governmental pressures. These once-cherished “codes of conduct” were referred to less often, while malpractice issues have steadily increased. There is a need for an open discussion of why this spike in medical malpractice is happening in a country that used to condemn it and how improving ethics, limiting the role of profits, and returning traditional philosophies to the medical ethics curricula could help. INTRODUCTION Currently, India has the largest number of bioethics units of any country, reflecting the importance of ethical behavior in Indian society. These centers do not affiliate with schools, yet they serve as spaces for bioethical discourse. The Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS) was the first to address escalating malpractice cases. Other major medical organizations (e.g., the Indian Medical Association and the Medical Council of India) followed, stressing the importance of standardized ethics. Some have formed symposiums and organized conferences to address these concerns.[1] There have been several calls to revisit the classic “codes of conduct” and their focus on the spiritual concept of life-death-rebirth. Toward this end, modern Indian doctors were reminded that physicians existed not for fortune or status but for the welfare of their patients. These altruistic teachings came from the seminal Ayurvedic texts, the cornerstone of India’s modern medicine. Happiness for the “healer” was to come out of showing compassion for all living beings and prolonging the precious gift of life.[2] In contrast, Indian novelist, Shashi Tharoor, speaking on the current state of medical practice, recently remarked: “India is not an underdeveloped country, but a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.”[3] Taking a closer look at what caused the core values of an ancient healthcare system to change so drastically involves evaluating how the Indian medical education system evolved. This paper examines the development of medical principles, their influence across the subcontinent, commercialization, and the government’s role in India’s healthcare instability. This paper then lists some of the measures taken by bioethical units to counteract some of the issues brought on by corruption. l. Western Influence Western influence on medical practices came when the French, Portuguese, and British arrived in India. They almost completely reinvented India’s healthcare system. Medical ethics based on the values of spirituality were almost completely stripped away and replaced by Western concepts.[4] Established traditional ethical standards were no longer taught, resulting in less deference to traditional moral beliefs. Coupled with an increase in medical misconduct, the general population lost trust in their healthcare leaders.[5] Before the influence of Western medicine, the Carakha Sumhita, a millennia-old Sanskrit text detailing Ayurveda, helped establish healthcare guidelines. A passage from the text sums up the ethics of that time: “He who practices medicine out of compassion for all creatures, rather than for gain or for gratification of the senses, surpasses all.”[6] The Carakha Sumhita’s focus on medical ethics was ahead of its time, centuries before bioethics became a subject in its own right. Healthcare was predicated on aphorisms that all medical students internalized rather than on business models, as in many developed nations. India’s caste system, established generations ago, permeated every aspect of South Asian society except for when it came to medicine. Healers tended to ignore the conventions of adhering to an individual’s caste. Instead, they treated patients as if they were family and incorporated elements of spirituality when dealing with patients, making ethical misconduct a rare phenomenon. This was the case for almost two centuries.[7] To become practicing physicians, doctors committed to a consecration ceremony to prove their good moral standing to the people they were to serve.[8] Their schooling prepared them for a profession designed to “give back,” not for monetary gain. The core values taught in medical school affect the mentality doctors carry with them. The lack of ethics training may have been at fault for the underlying corruption levels that now plague the healthcare space in India. There is a 110 percent increase in the rise of medical negligence cases in India every year.[9] To pinpoint why this occurred, we must look at current medical training practices and how they influence doctors of our time period. After colonization, many established core values were stripped from the medical curriculum.[10] In fact, by 1998, only one medical college in India, St. John’s in Bangalore, even addressed medical ethics in its curriculum.[11] Graduates across the country were left ill-equipped to deal with the ethical issues that cropped up once they made it into the field. As a result, they were not prepared to think through consequences pertaining to patients and their families. Some suggest that the curriculum changes were linked to rising malpractice cases. “When society at large is corrupt and unethical, how can you expect doctors to be honest?”[12] This topic arises regularly in bioethics discussions and the answer lies in education. Reverting to a system of medicine that encourages students to recognize ethical consequences can solve many of the ethical problems in contemporary society. ll. Privatization and Tuition Some argue that the global increase in capitalism caused the subcontinent’s ethical problems, that the Indian medical education system began its descent into corruption and nepotism, and its loss in prestige, with the privatization of their colleges.[13] In India, just over 50 percent of medical schools are public, and just under 50 percent are private.[14] Through changing policies, private medical schools became increasingly for-profit like other businesses.[15] Despite having more medical schools than any other country, India has a shortage of doctors, primarily due to low enrollment rates and high university fees. While there are 202 medical schools in India, its large population means there are 5 million people per medical school.[16] Christian Medical College, a top-ranked university in Vellore, once had an acceptance rate of 0.25 percent, with only 100 seats for medical students.[17] Now its acceptance rate hovers around 5 percent. There has been minimal progress in making it easier to get a medical school acceptance; there is still a long way to go in equalizing access to education. India’s system for training doctors is now rife with corruption, with bribes accepted under the guise of “donations” and new curricula completely devoid of traditional Indian training methods.[18] Nepotism in the industry has made qualifications even less significant. In 2010, 69 hospitals and medical colleges were reported for selling exam papers to students, and most employed staff lied about their clinical experience.[19] In a cheating scandal in 2013 involving several Indian universities, students purchased falsified entrance exam results. Not only are these students unqualified for the placements they secured, but legal action by the government did not materialize.[20] Dr. Anand Rai, a physician who had to go into protective hiding following death threats for being a whistleblower in the 2013 scandal subsequently remarked: “...the next generation of doctors is being taught to cheat and deceive before they even enter the classroom.”[21] The effects of this scandal can be felt far beyond its borders - India also happens to be the world’s largest exporter of doctors, with about 47,000 currently practicing in the United States.[22] lll. Hospital Privatization With the privatization of major hospitals and the shift to a “United States” business focus, another serious problem emerged. In the recent past, patients hailing from rural villages and often living in poverty could access quality health care from public hospitals. They had access to highly trained doctors, and all costs were usually fully subsidized.[23] This was in keeping with the old tradition that believed in aid no matter the circumstance. As the focus shifted towards maximizing profitability, these opportunities for poor patients vanished. Chains of private hospitals are rapidly replacing public ones. Their purchasing model is to consolidate through a centralized subsidiary.[24] This usually results in significant savings. Instead of passing on some savings to patients through reduced pricing, any savings are used to fulfill a key objective of privatized businesses: maximize profitability. The poor now contend with inflated prices and are being turned away from facilities that once treated them at no cost, all while levels of trust in the healthcare system have plummeted. This distrust can discourage people who cannot afford care from seeking medical aid when they need it. The healthcare system has devolved to the point whereby remaining public hospitals are overrun by huge numbers of patients unable to afford the hugely inflated prices at private institutions. This, coupled with healthcare workers that often have substandard training, has created deplorable public health conditions. lV. Corruption This deplorable public health condition reflects a failing healthcare system. To make matters worse, hospitals hire unqualified graduates untrained in medical ethics to meet India's urgent need for large numbers of qualified doctors. Many hospitals have even resorted to employing corrupt doctors to counteract the physician shortage. According to the Indian Medical Association (IMA), about 45 percent of those who practice medicine in India have no formal training.[25] IMA also reported that close to 700,000 doctors employed at some of the biggest hospitals, who are currently diagnosing, treating, and operating, have neither the training nor experience to do so. A large-scale forgery ring, broken up in 2011, revealed that buyers could pay as little as 100 US dollars for a medical degree from a non-existent college. This “cleared” them for practice.[26] It has been estimated that over 50,000 fraudulent medical degrees have been purchased in the past decade. Government level corruption is widespread, as one can gain placement into medical school, “graduate” with fake degrees, and sell fake practicing licenses. V. Solutions These topics, raised by bioethics centers, are now being taken more seriously by healthcare professionals taking steps to address medical misconduct. As many as five million people in India die each year due to medical negligence.[27] By requiring each physician to complete a new comprehensive Acute Critical Care Course (ACCC), specialists estimate that physicians can reduce the rate of malpractice deaths by as much as 50 percent in rural areas.[28] This intensive two-year course contains detailed training methods built off of current knowledge and walks healthcare professionals through crucial steps designed to reduce errors. Even small errors, such as a poorly inserted IV for fluid or a minor surgery mishap, can be life threatening. The course thoroughly covers these as mandated.[29] The ACCC is unfortunately not a widely spread concept in a lot of rural areas. For now, while many major hospitals continue to ignore the high rates of avoidable deaths, implementation of the ACCC program seems slow. The current Medical Council of India needs to be more effective at addressing malpractice cases, as there are so many of them.[30] One possible solution to the growth of unethical business practices in medicine is to offer physicians incentives to make ethically sound decisions. This can start by increasing the number of slots available for medical students at government-run medical schools. Less student debt would lead more doctors away from overbilling their patients. This is a strategy currently being employed in the state of Tamil Nadu, where a centrally sponsored scheme has approved the induction of an additional 3,496 MBBS seats in government colleges.[31] More students studying at subsidized costs with less competition lowers the inclination toward deceit and profiteering. Another incentive for ethical practice can come from accountability and transparency. The background of every doctor operating should be public information, including the rate of successful surgeries versus unsuccessful ones resulting from personal negligence. This would encourage doctors to keep a clean record and, in turn, encourage hospitals to hire and train those who will preserve or improve their reputation. This information is kept in a medical record monitored in most parts of India through a traditional paper method.[32] While eliminating paper in medical recording and reverting to digital use is the ultimate aim, it will take time to implement a system that takes into account e-signatures and verifiable witnesses. CONCLUSION India’s history of leadership in medical ethics has undergone some major changes. A relatively recent privatization of the education system has caused a shift in values and decimated the medical industry on many levels. The moral principles of doctors have come into question. While industry and government leaders are trying to solve the multi-faceted issues facing the medical industry, it is obvious that this is an undertaking requiring inventive solutions. Prioritizing ethics in medical education, de-privatizing medical schools and hospitals, offering affordable options, and limiting corruption would improve India’s ability to offer high-quality medical care. Adding traditional Indian medical ethics back into the curricula would foster a workforce dedicated to serving patients over profiteering. - [1] Deshpande, SmitaN. 2016. “The UNESCO Movement for Bioethics in Medical Education and the Indian Scenario.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry 58 (4): 359. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.196722. [2] Mukherjee, Ambarish, Mousumi Banerjee, Vivekananda Mandal, Amritesh C. Shukla, and Subhash C. Mandal. 2014. “Modernization of Ayurveda: A Brief Overview of Indian Initiatives.” Natural Product Communications 9 (2): 1934578X1400900. https://doi.org/10.1177/1934578x1400900239. [3] 2020. Eubios.info. 2020. https://www.eubios.info/EJ102/EJ102E.htm. [4] Arnold, David, ed. 2000. “Western Medicine in an Indian Environment.” Cambridge University Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/science-technology-and-medicine-in-colonial-india/western-medicine-in-an-indian-environment/28BAB761BE205B06D32BC3DC972E9384. [5] Kulkarni, Vani, Veena Kulkarni, and Raghav Gaiha. 2019. “Trust in Hospitals-Evidence from India.” https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=psc_publications. [6] Bhasin, Dr Sanjay K. 2005 “What Ails Medical Profession.” Www.academia.edu. Accessed September 17, 2022. https://www.academia.edu/7631547/What_Ails_Medical_Profession. [7] Shapiro, Natasha, and Urmila Patel. (2006) “Asian Indian Culture: Influences and Implications for Health Care.” https://www.molinahealthcare.com/~/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/providers/fl/medicaid/resource_fl_asianindianculture_influencesandimplicationsforhealthcare.pdf. [8] Swihart, Diana L, and Romaine L Martin. 2021. “Cultural Religious Competence in Clinical Practice.” Nih.gov. StatPearls Publishing. 2021. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493216/. [9] “India’s Mighty Medical Education Mess.” 2022. Education World. July 11, 2022. https://www.educationworld.in/indias-mighty-medical-education-mess/. [10] Pandya, Sunil. 2020. “Medical Education in India: Past, Present, and Future Perspectives. in Sun Kim, ed. Medical Schools Nova Science Publishers, Inc. (= [11] Ravindran, G. D., T. Kalam, S. Lewin, and P. Pais. 1997. “Teaching Medical Ethics in a Medical College in India.” The National Medical Journal of India 10 (6): 288–89. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9481103/. [12] “Chapter 9: Opinions on Professional Self-Regulation”(2016) https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/ama-assn.org/files/corp/media-browser/code-of-medical-ethics-chapter-9.pdf. [13]Sanjiv Das. 2020. “The Pill for India’s Ailing Medical Education System.” Express Healthcare. February 3, 2020. https://www.expresshealthcare.in/education/the-pill-for-indias-ailing-medical-education-system/416711/. [14] https://www.marketresearch.com/Netscribes-India-Pvt-Ltd-v3676/Private-Medical-Colleges-India-30399614/."There are ~50.89% government medical colleges and ~49.11% private medical colleges in the country.”; NPR.org. (2021) “When Students in India Can’t Earn College Admission on Merit, They Buy Their Way In.” Accessed September 19, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2019/08/04/745182272/when-students-in-india-cant-earn-college-admission-on-merit-they-buy-their-way-i. [15] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/how-medical-colleges-in-india-became-a-business-one-policy-change-at-a-time/articleshow/69707594.cms [16] Muula A. S. (2006). Every country or state needs two medical schools. Croatian medical journal, 47(4), 669–672. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2080437/ [17] Miglani, Andrew MacAskill, Steve Stecklow, Sanjeev. 2015. “Why India’s Medical Schools Are Plagued with Fraud.” Mint. June 17, 2015. https://www.livemint.com/Politics/BDGOx3SApU3QbsRMjZUK9M/Why-Indias-medical-schools-are-plagued-with-fraud.html. [18] Clark, J. 2015. “Indian Medical Education System Is Broken, Reuters Investigation Finds.” BMJ 350 (jun18 3): h3324–24. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h3324. [19] Reuters. 2015. “Special Report - Why India’s Medical Schools Are Plagued with Fraud,” June 16, 2015, sec. Special Reports. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-india-medicine-education-specialrepor/special-report-why-indias-medical-schools-are-plagued-with-fraud-idINKBN0OW1N520150616. [20] Andrew Emett. (2015) “Over Two Dozen Witnesses and Suspects Mysteriously Die in Indian Cheating Scandal | NationofChange.” Accessed September 19, 2022. https://www.nationofchange.org/2015/07/08/over-two-dozen-witnesses-and-suspects-mysteriously-die-in-indian-cheating-scandal/. [21] (Reuters 2015) [22] Clark, J. 2015. “Indian Medical Education System Is Broken, Reuters Investigation Finds.” BMJ 350 (jun18 3): h3324–24. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h3324. [23] Barik, Debasis, and Amit Thorat. 2015. “Issues of Unequal Access to Public Health in India.” Frontiers in Public Health 3 (October). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2015.00245. [24] “Investment Opportunities in India’s Healthcare Sector.” (2021) https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2021-03/InvestmentOpportunities_HealthcareSector_0.pdf. [25] Clark, J. 2015. “Indian Medical Education System Is Broken, Reuters Investigation Finds.” BMJ 350 (jun18 3): h3324–24. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h3324. [26] “Are We Importing Fake Doctors?” (2015) Www.workerscompensation.com. Accessed September 19, 2022. https://www.workerscompensation.com/news_read.php?id=21672&forgot=yes. [27] Boston, 677 Huntington Avenue, and Ma 02115 +1495‑1000. 2013. “Millions Harmed Each Year from Unsafe Medical Care.” News. September 19, 2013. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/millions-harmed-each-year-from-unsafe-medical-care/. [28] “Specialised Course for Doctors Can Help Cut the Deaths due to Medical Errors; Experts.” 2018. DailyRounds. October 29, 2018. https://www.dailyrounds.org/blog/specialised-course-for-doctors-can-help-cut-the-deaths-due-to-medical-errors-experts/. [29] Sokhal, Navdeep, Akshay Kumar, Richa Aggarwal, Keshav Goyal, Kapil Dev Soni, Rakesh Garg, Ashok Deorari, and Ajay Sharma. 2021. “Acute Critical Care Course for Interns to Develop Competence.” The National Medical Journal of India 34 (3): 167–70. https://doi.org/10.25259/NMJI_103_19. [30] Singhania, Meghna A. 2020. “How Much Punishment?- MCI Formulates Sentencing Guidelines for Cases of Medical Negligence.” Medicaldialogues.in. February 13, 2020. https://medicaldialogues.in/news/health/mci/how-much-punishment-mci-formulates-sentencing-guidelines-for-cases-of-medical-negligence-62645. [31] “Health Ministry Reports 30% Increase in Number of Functional Medical Colleges in Five Years.” (2022) Www.pharmabiz.com. Accessed September 19, 2022. http://www.pharmabiz.com/NewsDetails.aspx?aid=152299&sid=1. [32] Honavar, Santosh G. 2020. “Electronic Medical Records – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Indian Journal of Ophthalmology 68 (3): 417. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijo.ijo_278_20.

The twentieth was, from one perspective, the democratic century — a span of one hundred years which began with no fully functioning democracies in existence anywhere on the planet (if one defines democracy as a political system in which there is both universal suffrage and competitive elections), and ended with 120 countries out of 192 classified by the Freedom House think tank as ‘democratic’. There are of course still many societies where democracy is denied or effectively neutered — the remaining outposts of state socialism, such as China, Cuba, and North Korea; most if not all of the Islamic countries; exceptional states such as Singapore, unapologetically capitalist in its economic system but resolutely authoritarian in its political culture. Many self-proclaimed democracies, including those of the UK, Australia and the US, are procedurally or conceptually flawed. Countries emerging out of authoritarian systems and now in a state of democratic transition, such as Russia and the former Soviet republics, are immersed in constant, sometimes violent struggle between reformers and reactionaries. Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were accompanied by the intimidation of parties and politicians who opposed Vladimir Putin’s increasingly populist and authoritarian approach to leadership. The same Freedom House report which describes the rise of democracy in the twentieth century acknowledges that many self-styled democracies are, at best, only ‘partly free’ in their political cultures (for detailed figures on the rise of global democracy, see the Freedom House website Democracy’s Century). Let’s not for a moment downplay these important qualifications to what can nonetheless be fairly characterised as a century-long expansion and globalisation of democracy, and the acceptance of popular sovereignty, expressed through voting for the party or candidate of one’s choice, as a universally recognised human right. That such a process has occurred, and continues in these early years of the twenty-first century, is irrefutable. In the Gaza strip, Hamas appeals to the legitimacy of a democratic election victory in its campaign to be recognised as the voice of the Palestinian people. However one judges the messianic tendencies and Islamist ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it must be acknowledged that the Iranian people elected him, and that they have the power to throw him out of government next time they vote. That was never true of the Shah. The democratic resurgence in Latin America, taking in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia among others has been a much-noted feature of international politics in recent times (Alves), presenting a welcome contrast to the dictatorships and death squads of the 1980s, even as it creates some uncomfortable dilemmas for the Bush administration (which must champion democratic government at the same time as it resents some of the choices people may make when they have the opportunity to vote). Since 9/11 a kind of democracy has expanded even to Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit at the point of a gun, and with no guarantees of survival beyond the end of military occupation by the US and its coalition allies. As this essay was being written, Pakistan’s state of emergency was ending and democratic elections scheduled, albeit in the shadow cast by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Democracy, then — imperfect and limited as it can be; grudgingly delivered though it is by political elites in many countries, and subject to attack and roll back at any time — has become a global universal to which all claim allegiance, or at least pay lip service. The scale of this transformation, which has occurred in little more than one quarter of the time elapsed since the Putney debates of 1647 and the English revolution first established the principle of the sovereignty of parliament, is truly remarkable. (Tristram Hunt quotes lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian to the effect that the Putney debates, staged in St Mary’s church in south-west London towards the end of the English civil war, launched “the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth” – “A Jewel of Democracy”, Guardian, 26 Oct. 2007) Can it be true that less than one hundred years ago, in even the most advanced capitalist societies, 50 per cent of the people — women — did not have the right to vote? Or that black populations, indigenous or migrant, in countries such as the United States and Australia were deprived of basic citizenship rights until the 1960s and even later? Will future generations wonder how on earth it could have been that the vast majority of the people of South Africa were unable to vote until 1994, and that they were routinely imprisoned, tortured and killed when they demanded basic democratic rights? Or will they shrug and take it for granted, as so many of us who live in settled democracies already do? (In so far as ‘we’ includes the community of media and cultural studies scholars, I would argue that where there is reluctance to concede the scale and significance of democratic change, this arises out of continuing ambivalence about what ‘democracy’ means, a continuing suspicion of globalisation (in particular the globalisation of democratic political culture, still associated in some quarters with ‘the west’), and of the notion of ‘progress’ with which democracy is routinely associated. The intellectual roots of that ambivalence were various. Marxist-leninist inspired authoritarianism gripped much of the world until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Until that moment, it was still possible for many marxians in the scholarly community to view the idea of democracy with disdain — if not quite a dirty word, then a deeply flawed, highly loaded concept which masked and preserved underlying social inequalities more than it helped resolve them. Until 1989 or thereabouts, it was possible for ‘bourgeois democracy’ to be regarded as just one kind of democratic polity by the liberal and anti-capitalist left, which often regarded the ‘proletarian’ or ‘people’s’ democracy prevailing in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba or Vietnam as legitimate alternatives to the emerging capitalist norm of one person, one vote, for constituent assemblies which had real power and accountability. In terms not very different from those used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, belief in the value of democracy was conceived by this materialist school as a kind of false consciousness. It still is, by Noam Chomsky and others who continue to view democracy as a ‘necessary illusion’ (1989) without which capitalism could not be reproduced. From these perspectives voting gave, and gives us merely the illusion of agency and power in societies where capital rules as it always did. For democracy read ‘the manufacture of consent’; its expansion read not as progressive social evolution, but the universalisation of the myth of popular sovereignty, mobilised and utilised by the media-industrial-military complex to maintain its grip.) There are those who dispute this reading of events. In the 1960s, Habermas’s hugely influential Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere critiqued the manner in which democracy, and the public sphere underpinning it, had been degraded by public relations, advertising, and the power of private interests. In the period since, critical scholarly research and writing on political culture has been dominated by the Habermasian discourse of democratic decline, and the pervasive pessimism of those who see democracy, and the media culture which supports it, as fatally flawed, corrupted by commercialisation and under constant threat. Those, myself included, who challenged that view with a more positive reading of the trends (McNair, Journalism and Democracy; Cultural Chaos) have been denounced as naïve optimists, panglossian, utopian and even, in my own case, a ‘neo-liberal apologist’. (See an unpublished paper by David Miller, “System Failure: It’s Not Just the Media, It’s the Whole Bloody System”, delivered at Goldsmith’s College in 2003.) Engaging as they have been, I venture to suggest that these are the discourses and debates of an era now passing into history. Not only is it increasingly obvious that democracy is expanding globally into places where it never previously reached; it is also extending inwards, within nation states, driven by demands for greater local autonomy. In the United Kingdom, for example, the citizen is now able to vote not just in Westminster parliamentary elections (which determine the political direction of the UK government), but for European elections, local elections, and elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The people of London can vote for their mayor. There would by now have been devolved assemblies in the regions of England, too, had the people of the North East not voted against it in a November 2004 referendum. Notwithstanding that result, which surprised many in the New Labour government who held it as axiomatic that the more democracy there was, the better for all of us, the importance of enhancing and expanding democratic institutions, of allowing people to vote more often (and also in more efficient ways — many of these expansions of democracy have been tied to the introduction of systems of proportional representation) has become consensual, from the Mid West of America to the Middle East. The Democratic Paradox And yet, as the wave of democratic transformation has rolled on through the late twentieth and into the early twenty first century it is notable that, in many of the oldest liberal democracies at least, fewer people have been voting. In the UK, for example, in the period between 1945 and 2001, turnout at general elections never fell below 70 per cent. In 1992, the last general election won by the Conservatives before the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, turnout was 78 per cent, roughly where it had been in the 1950s. In 2001, however, as Blair’s government sought re-election, turnout fell to an historic low for the UK of 59.4 per cent, and rose only marginally to 61.4 per cent in the most recent general election of 2005. In the US presidential elections of 1996 and 2000 turnouts were at historic lows of 47.2 and 49.3 per cent respectively, rising just above 50 per cent again in 2004 (figures by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). At local level things are even worse. In only the second election for a devolved parliament in Scotland (2003) turnout was a mere 48.5 per cent, rising to 50.5 in 2007. These trends are not universal. In countries with compulsory voting, they mean very little — in Australia, where voting in parliamentary elections is compulsory, turnout averages in the 90s per cent. In France, while turnouts for parliamentary elections show a similar downward trend to the UK and the UK, presidential contests achieve turnouts of 80-plus per cent. In the UK and US, as noted, the most recent elections show modest growth in turnout from those historic lows of the late 1990s and early Noughties. There has grown, nonetheless, the perception, commonplace amongst academic commentators as well as journalists and politicians themselves, that we are living through a ‘crisis’ of democratic participation, a dangerous decline in the tendency to vote in elections which undermines the legitimacy of democracy itself. In communication scholarship a significant body of research and publication has developed around this theme, from Blumler and Gurevitch’s Crisis of Public Communication (1996), through Barnett and Gaber’s Westminster Tales (2000), to more recent studies such as Lewis et al.’s Citizens or Consumers (2005). All presume a problem of some kind with the practice of democracy and the “old fashioned ritual” of voting, as Lewis et al. describe it (2). Most link alleged inadequacies in the performance of the political media to what is interpreted as popular apathy (or antipathy) towards democracy. The media are blamed for the lack of public engagement with democratic politics which declining turnouts are argued to signal. Political journalists are said to be too aggressive and hyper-adversarial (Lloyd), behaving like the “feral beast” spoken of by Tony Blair in his 2007 farewell speech to the British people as prime minister. They are corrosively cynical and a “disaster for democracy”, as Steven Barnett and others argued in the first years of the twenty first century. They are not aggressive or adversarial enough, as the propaganda modellists allege, citing what they interpret as supine media coverage of Coalition policy in Iraq. The media put people off, rather than turn them on to democracy by being, variously, too nice or too nasty to politicians. What then, is the solution to the apparent paradox represented by the fact that there is more democracy, but less voting in elections than ever before; and that after centuries of popular struggle democratic assemblies proliferate, but in some countries barely half of the eligible voters can be bothered to participate? And what role have the media played in this unexpected phenomenon? If the scholarly community has been largely critical on this question, and pessimistic in its analyses of the role of the media, it has become increasingly clear that the one arena where people do vote more than ever before is that presented by the media, and entertainment media in particular. There has been, since the appearance of Big Brother and the subsequent explosion of competitive reality TV formats across the world, evidence of a huge popular appetite for voting on such matters as which amateur contestant on Pop Idol, or X Factor, or Fame Academy, or Operatunity goes on to have a chance of a professional career, a shot at the big time. Millions of viewers of the most popular reality TV strands queue up to register their votes on premium phone lines, the revenue from which makes up a substantial and growing proportion of the income of commercial TV companies. This explosion of voting behaviour has been made possible by the technology-driven emergence of new forms of participatory, interactive, digitised media channels which allow millions to believe that they can have an impact on the outcome of what are, at essence, game and talent shows. At the height of anxiety around the ‘crisis of democratic participation’ in the UK, observers noted that nearly 6.5 million people had voted in the Big Brother UK final in 2004. More than eight million voted during the 2004 run of the BBC’s Fame Academy series. While these numbers do not, contrary to popular belief, exceed the numbers of British citizens who vote in a general election (27.2 million in 2005), they do indicate an enthusiasm for voting which seems to contradict declining rates of democratic participation. People who will never get out and vote for their local councillor often appear more than willing to pick up the telephone or the laptop and cast a vote for their favoured reality TV contestant, even if it costs them money. It would be absurd to suggest that voting for a contestant on Big Brother is directly comparable to the act of choosing a government or a president. The latter is recognised as an expression of citizenship, with potentially significant consequences for the lives of individuals within their society. Voting on Big Brother, on the other hand, is unmistakeably entertainment, game-playing, a relatively risk-free exercise of choice — a bit of harmless fun, fuelled by office chat and relentless tabloid coverage of the contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. There is no evidence that readiness to participate in a telephone or online vote for entertainment TV translates into active citizenship, where ‘active’ means casting a vote in an election. The lesson delivered by the success of participatory media in recent years, however — first reality TV, and latterly a proliferation of online formats which encourage user participation and voting for one thing or another — is that people will vote, when they are able and motivated to do so. Voting is popular, in short, and never more so, irrespective of the level of popular participation recorded in recent elections. And if they will vote in their millions for a contestant on X Factor, or participate in competitions to determine the best movies or books on Facebook, they can presumably be persuaded to do so when an election for parliament comes around. This fact has been recognised by both media producers and politicians, and reflected in attempts to adapt the evermore sophisticated and efficient tools of participatory media to the democratic process, to engage media audiences as citizens by offering the kinds of voting opportunities in political debates, including election processes, which entertainment media have now made routinely available. ITV’s Vote for Me strand, broadcast in the run-up to the UK general election of 2005, used reality TV techniques to select a candidate who would actually take part in the forthcoming poll. The programme was broadcast in a late night, low audience slot, and failed to generate much interest, but it signalled a desire by media producers to harness the appeal of participatory media in a way which could directly impact on levels of democratic engagement. The honourable failure of Vote for Me (produced by the same team which made the much more successful live debate shows featuring prime minister Tony Blair — Ask Tony Blair, Ask the Prime Minister) might be viewed as evidence that readiness to vote in the context of a TV game show does not translate directly into voting for parties and politicians, and that the problem in this respect — the crisis of democratic participation, such that it exists — is located elsewhere. People can vote in democratic elections, but choose not to, perhaps because they feel that the act is meaningless (because parties are ideologically too similar), or ineffectual (because they see no impact of voting in their daily lives or in the state of the country), or irrelevant to their personal priorities and life styles. Voting rates have increased in the US and the UK since September 11 2001, suggesting perhaps that when the political stakes are raised, and the question of who is in government seems to matter more than it did, people act accordingly. Meantime, media producers continue to make money by developing formats and channels on the assumption that audiences wish to participate, to interact, and to vote. Whether this form of participatory media consumption for the purposes of play can be translated into enhanced levels of active citizenship, and whether the media can play a significant contributory role in that process, remains to be seen. References Alves, R.C. “From Lapdog to Watchdog: The Role of the Press in Latin America’s Democratisation.” In H. de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists. London: Routledge, 2005. 181-202. Anderson, P.J., and G. Ward (eds.). The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Barnett, S. “The Age of Contempt.” Guardian 28 October 2002. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/comment/0,12123,820577,00.html>. Barnett, S., and I. Gaber. Westminster Tales. London: Continuum, 2001. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch. The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lewis, J., S. Inthorn, and K. Wahl-Jorgensen. Citizens or Consumers? What the Media Tell Us about Political Participation. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005. Lloyd, John. What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics. London: Constable, 2004. McNair, B. Journalism and Democracy: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Cultural Chaos: News, Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style McNair, Brian. "Vote!." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/01-mcnair.php>. APA Style McNair, B. (Apr. 2008) "Vote!," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/01-mcnair.php>.

The twentieth was, from one perspective, the democratic century — a span of one hundred years which began with no fully functioning democracies in existence anywhere on the planet (if one defines democracy as a political system in which there is both universal suffrage and competitive elections), and ended with 120 countries out of 192 classified by the Freedom House think tank as ‘democratic’. There are of course still many societies where democracy is denied or effectively neutered — the remaining outposts of state socialism, such as China, Cuba, and North Korea; most if not all of the Islamic countries; exceptional states such as Singapore, unapologetically capitalist in its economic system but resolutely authoritarian in its political culture. Many self-proclaimed democracies, including those of the UK, Australia and the US, are procedurally or conceptually flawed. Countries emerging out of authoritarian systems and now in a state of democratic transition, such as Russia and the former Soviet republics, are immersed in constant, sometimes violent struggle between reformers and reactionaries. Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were accompanied by the intimidation of parties and politicians who opposed Vladimir Putin’s increasingly populist and authoritarian approach to leadership. The same Freedom House report which describes the rise of democracy in the twentieth century acknowledges that many self-styled democracies are, at best, only ‘partly free’ in their political cultures (for detailed figures on the rise of global democracy, see the Freedom House website Democracy’s Century). Let’s not for a moment downplay these important qualifications to what can nonetheless be fairly characterised as a century-long expansion and globalisation of democracy, and the acceptance of popular sovereignty, expressed through voting for the party or candidate of one’s choice, as a universally recognised human right. That such a process has occurred, and continues in these early years of the twenty-first century, is irrefutable. In the Gaza strip, Hamas appeals to the legitimacy of a democratic election victory in its campaign to be recognised as the voice of the Palestinian people. However one judges the messianic tendencies and Islamist ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it must be acknowledged that the Iranian people elected him, and that they have the power to throw him out of government next time they vote. That was never true of the Shah. The democratic resurgence in Latin America, taking in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia among others has been a much-noted feature of international politics in recent times (Alves), presenting a welcome contrast to the dictatorships and death squads of the 1980s, even as it creates some uncomfortable dilemmas for the Bush administration (which must champion democratic government at the same time as it resents some of the choices people may make when they have the opportunity to vote). Since 9/11 a kind of democracy has expanded even to Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit at the point of a gun, and with no guarantees of survival beyond the end of military occupation by the US and its coalition allies. As this essay was being written, Pakistan’s state of emergency was ending and democratic elections scheduled, albeit in the shadow cast by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Democracy, then — imperfect and limited as it can be; grudgingly delivered though it is by political elites in many countries, and subject to attack and roll back at any time — has become a global universal to which all claim allegiance, or at least pay lip service. The scale of this transformation, which has occurred in little more than one quarter of the time elapsed since the Putney debates of 1647 and the English revolution first established the principle of the sovereignty of parliament, is truly remarkable. (Tristram Hunt quotes lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian to the effect that the Putney debates, staged in St Mary’s church in south-west London towards the end of the English civil war, launched “the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth” – “A Jewel of Democracy”, Guardian, 26 Oct. 2007) Can it be true that less than one hundred years ago, in even the most advanced capitalist societies, 50 per cent of the people — women — did not have the right to vote? Or that black populations, indigenous or migrant, in countries such as the United States and Australia were deprived of basic citizenship rights until the 1960s and even later? Will future generations wonder how on earth it could have been that the vast majority of the people of South Africa were unable to vote until 1994, and that they were routinely imprisoned, tortured and killed when they demanded basic democratic rights? Or will they shrug and take it for granted, as so many of us who live in settled democracies already do? (In so far as ‘we’ includes the community of media and cultural studies scholars, I would argue that where there is reluctance to concede the scale and significance of democratic change, this arises out of continuing ambivalence about what ‘democracy’ means, a continuing suspicion of globalisation (in particular the globalisation of democratic political culture, still associated in some quarters with ‘the west’), and of the notion of ‘progress’ with which democracy is routinely associated. The intellectual roots of that ambivalence were various. Marxist-leninist inspired authoritarianism gripped much of the world until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Until that moment, it was still possible for many marxians in the scholarly community to view the idea of democracy with disdain — if not quite a dirty word, then a deeply flawed, highly loaded concept which masked and preserved underlying social inequalities more than it helped resolve them. Until 1989 or thereabouts, it was possible for ‘bourgeois democracy’ to be regarded as just one kind of democratic polity by the liberal and anti-capitalist left, which often regarded the ‘proletarian’ or ‘people’s’ democracy prevailing in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba or Vietnam as legitimate alternatives to the emerging capitalist norm of one person, one vote, for constituent assemblies which had real power and accountability. In terms not very different from those used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, belief in the value of democracy was conceived by this materialist school as a kind of false consciousness. It still is, by Noam Chomsky and others who continue to view democracy as a ‘necessary illusion’ (1989) without which capitalism could not be reproduced. From these perspectives voting gave, and gives us merely the illusion of agency and power in societies where capital rules as it always did. For democracy read ‘the manufacture of consent’; its expansion read not as progressive social evolution, but the universalisation of the myth of popular sovereignty, mobilised and utilised by the media-industrial-military complex to maintain its grip.) There are those who dispute this reading of events. In the 1960s, Habermas’s hugely influential Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere critiqued the manner in which democracy, and the public sphere underpinning it, had been degraded by public relations, advertising, and the power of private interests. In the period since, critical scholarly research and writing on political culture has been dominated by the Habermasian discourse of democratic decline, and the pervasive pessimism of those who see democracy, and the media culture which supports it, as fatally flawed, corrupted by commercialisation and under constant threat. Those, myself included, who challenged that view with a more positive reading of the trends (McNair, Journalism and Democracy; Cultural Chaos) have been denounced as naïve optimists, panglossian, utopian and even, in my own case, a ‘neo-liberal apologist’. (See an unpublished paper by David Miller, “System Failure: It’s Not Just the Media, It’s the Whole Bloody System”, delivered at Goldsmith’s College in 2003.) Engaging as they have been, I venture to suggest that these are the discourses and debates of an era now passing into history. Not only is it increasingly obvious that democracy is expanding globally into places where it never previously reached; it is also extending inwards, within nation states, driven by demands for greater local autonomy. In the United Kingdom, for example, the citizen is now able to vote not just in Westminster parliamentary elections (which determine the political direction of the UK government), but for European elections, local elections, and elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The people of London can vote for their mayor. There would by now have been devolved assemblies in the regions of England, too, had the people of the North East not voted against it in a November 2004 referendum. Notwithstanding that result, which surprised many in the New Labour government who held it as axiomatic that the more democracy there was, the better for all of us, the importance of enhancing and expanding democratic institutions, of allowing people to vote more often (and also in more efficient ways — many of these expansions of democracy have been tied to the introduction of systems of proportional representation) has become consensual, from the Mid West of America to the Middle East. The Democratic Paradox And yet, as the wave of democratic transformation has rolled on through the late twentieth and into the early twenty first century it is notable that, in many of the oldest liberal democracies at least, fewer people have been voting. In the UK, for example, in the period between 1945 and 2001, turnout at general elections never fell below 70 per cent. In 1992, the last general election won by the Conservatives before the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, turnout was 78 per cent, roughly where it had been in the 1950s. In 2001, however, as Blair’s government sought re-election, turnout fell to an historic low for the UK of 59.4 per cent, and rose only marginally to 61.4 per cent in the most recent general election of 2005. In the US presidential elections of 1996 and 2000 turnouts were at historic lows of 47.2 and 49.3 per cent respectively, rising just above 50 per cent again in 2004 (figures by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). At local level things are even worse. In only the second election for a devolved parliament in Scotland (2003) turnout was a mere 48.5 per cent, rising to 50.5 in 2007. These trends are not universal. In countries with compulsory voting, they mean very little — in Australia, where voting in parliamentary elections is compulsory, turnout averages in the 90s per cent. In France, while turnouts for parliamentary elections show a similar downward trend to the UK and the UK, presidential contests achieve turnouts of 80-plus per cent. In the UK and US, as noted, the most recent elections show modest growth in turnout from those historic lows of the late 1990s and early Noughties. There has grown, nonetheless, the perception, commonplace amongst academic commentators as well as journalists and politicians themselves, that we are living through a ‘crisis’ of democratic participation, a dangerous decline in the tendency to vote in elections which undermines the legitimacy of democracy itself. In communication scholarship a significant body of research and publication has developed around this theme, from Blumler and Gurevitch’s Crisis of Public Communication (1996), through Barnett and Gaber’s Westminster Tales (2000), to more recent studies such as Lewis et al.’s Citizens or Consumers (2005). All presume a problem of some kind with the practice of democracy and the “old fashioned ritual” of voting, as Lewis et al. describe it (2). Most link alleged inadequacies in the performance of the political media to what is interpreted as popular apathy (or antipathy) towards democracy. The media are blamed for the lack of public engagement with democratic politics which declining turnouts are argued to signal. Political journalists are said to be too aggressive and hyper-adversarial (Lloyd), behaving like the “feral beast” spoken of by Tony Blair in his 2007 farewell speech to the British people as prime minister. They are corrosively cynical and a “disaster for democracy”, as Steven Barnett and others argued in the first years of the twenty first century. They are not aggressive or adversarial enough, as the propaganda modellists allege, citing what they interpret as supine media coverage of Coalition policy in Iraq. The media put people off, rather than turn them on to democracy by being, variously, too nice or too nasty to politicians. What then, is the solution to the apparent paradox represented by the fact that there is more democracy, but less voting in elections than ever before; and that after centuries of popular struggle democratic assemblies proliferate, but in some countries barely half of the eligible voters can be bothered to participate? And what role have the media played in this unexpected phenomenon? If the scholarly community has been largely critical on this question, and pessimistic in its analyses of the role of the media, it has become increasingly clear that the one arena where people do vote more than ever before is that presented by the media, and entertainment media in particular. There has been, since the appearance of Big Brother and the subsequent explosion of competitive reality TV formats across the world, evidence of a huge popular appetite for voting on such matters as which amateur contestant on Pop Idol, or X Factor, or Fame Academy, or Operatunity goes on to have a chance of a professional career, a shot at the big time. Millions of viewers of the most popular reality TV strands queue up to register their votes on premium phone lines, the revenue from which makes up a substantial and growing proportion of the income of commercial TV companies. This explosion of voting behaviour has been made possible by the technology-driven emergence of new forms of participatory, interactive, digitised media channels which allow millions to believe that they can have an impact on the outcome of what are, at essence, game and talent shows. At the height of anxiety around the ‘crisis of democratic participation’ in the UK, observers noted that nearly 6.5 million people had voted in the Big Brother UK final in 2004. More than eight million voted during the 2004 run of the BBC’s Fame Academy series. While these numbers do not, contrary to popular belief, exceed the numbers of British citizens who vote in a general election (27.2 million in 2005), they do indicate an enthusiasm for voting which seems to contradict declining rates of democratic participation. People who will never get out and vote for their local councillor often appear more than willing to pick up the telephone or the laptop and cast a vote for their favoured reality TV contestant, even if it costs them money. It would be absurd to suggest that voting for a contestant on Big Brother is directly comparable to the act of choosing a government or a president. The latter is recognised as an expression of citizenship, with potentially significant consequences for the lives of individuals within their society. Voting on Big Brother, on the other hand, is unmistakeably entertainment, game-playing, a relatively risk-free exercise of choice — a bit of harmless fun, fuelled by office chat and relentless tabloid coverage of the contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. There is no evidence that readiness to participate in a telephone or online vote for entertainment TV translates into active citizenship, where ‘active’ means casting a vote in an election. The lesson delivered by the success of participatory media in recent years, however — first reality TV, and latterly a proliferation of online formats which encourage user participation and voting for one thing or another — is that people will vote, when they are able and motivated to do so. Voting is popular, in short, and never more so, irrespective of the level of popular participation recorded in recent elections. And if they will vote in their millions for a contestant on X Factor, or participate in competitions to determine the best movies or books on Facebook, they can presumably be persuaded to do so when an election for parliament comes around. This fact has been recognised by both media producers and politicians, and reflected in attempts to adapt the evermore sophisticated and efficient tools of participatory media to the democratic process, to engage media audiences as citizens by offering the kinds of voting opportunities in political debates, including election processes, which entertainment media have now made routinely available. ITV’s Vote for Me strand, broadcast in the run-up to the UK general election of 2005, used reality TV techniques to select a candidate who would actually take part in the forthcoming poll. The programme was broadcast in a late night, low audience slot, and failed to generate much interest, but it signalled a desire by media producers to harness the appeal of participatory media in a way which could directly impact on levels of democratic engagement. The honourable failure of Vote for Me (produced by the same team which made the much more successful live debate shows featuring prime minister Tony Blair — Ask Tony Blair, Ask the Prime Minister) might be viewed as evidence that readiness to vote in the context of a TV game show does not translate directly into voting for parties and politicians, and that the problem in this respect — the crisis of democratic participation, such that it exists — is located elsewhere. People can vote in democratic elections, but choose not to, perhaps because they feel that the act is meaningless (because parties are ideologically too similar), or ineffectual (because they see no impact of voting in their daily lives or in the state of the country), or irrelevant to their personal priorities and life styles. Voting rates have increased in the US and the UK since September 11 2001, suggesting perhaps that when the political stakes are raised, and the question of who is in government seems to matter more than it did, people act accordingly. Meantime, media producers continue to make money by developing formats and channels on the assumption that audiences wish to participate, to interact, and to vote. Whether this form of participatory media consumption for the purposes of play can be translated into enhanced levels of active citizenship, and whether the media can play a significant contributory role in that process, remains to be seen. References Alves, R.C. “From Lapdog to Watchdog: The Role of the Press in Latin America’s Democratisation.” In H. de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists. London: Routledge, 2005. 181-202. Anderson, P.J., and G. Ward (eds.). The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Barnett, S. “The Age of Contempt.” Guardian 28 October 2002. < http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/comment/0,12123,820577,00.html >. Barnett, S., and I. Gaber. Westminster Tales. London: Continuum, 2001. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch. The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lewis, J., S. Inthorn, and K. Wahl-Jorgensen. Citizens or Consumers? What the Media Tell Us about Political Participation. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005. Lloyd, John. What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics. London: Constable, 2004. McNair, B. Journalism and Democracy: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Cultural Chaos: News, Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge, 2006.

The purpose of the study was to explore and describe leadership at Matlala District Hospital in Limpopo, a province of South Africa. The study was critical for a better understanding of leadership styles adopted in different situations (hospital, district or province) at Matlala District Hospital in the Sekhukhune district. The main objectives of the study were described in chapter 1 on leadership styles (transformational and transactional), to determine how best to investigate leadership styles at Matlala District Hospital, to determine what the current leadership style at Matlala District Hospital is and to propose the most appropriate leadership style for Matlala District Hospital. A mixed-methods approach was used with an exploratory and descriptive design. In terms of the qualitative methodology, purposive sampling was used as the managers were selected on their knowledge of the issues under investigation. Firstly, an interview schedule was developed and used to collect data at Matlala District Hospital. The sample size was 82. Interviews were conducted with 12 members of the executive committee who were regarded as senior managers of the hospital. Secondly, the researcher distributed the questionnaires to participants of the hospital that met the inclusion criteria. Seventy participants completed questionnaires, which were collected upon completion. A 100% response rate was reached. Thematic analysis was used to assess the qualitative data. With regard to quantitative data analysis, descriptive, frequency tables and charts and inferential statistics were used. According to the results, those managers who felt that resources had be provided felt strongly that leadership at the hospital should be improved. Accordingly, guidelines for improving leadership at Matlala District Hospital have to be developed to ensure that mitigating factors are in place for the improvement of the situation at the hospital.
Public Administration and Management
M. P. A. (Public Administration)

One popular argument for global redistribution focuses on the history of colonialism, which is rife with injustices perpetrated by the former governments of Western nations. Current citizens of these societies can be taxed to pay reparations to people their former colonies. The chapter inspects two different arguments for this view: one focusing on unjustly gotten gains for rich Western citizens, the other focusing on unjust harms befalling citizens of developing nations. The former argument fails because it misdecribes the fact; contrary to popular belief, most Western citizens were actually harmed by colonialism. The latter argument is better, and actually supports a case for reparations. However, contrary to its proponents’ beliefs, such reparations ought not take the form of large-scale redistribution, but the form of removing the unjust barriers people face that continue the harms they now experience. The duty to repair past injustice mostly strengthens the conclusions of this book.

This chapter highlights conflicts created by fishing at levels generally thought to be sustainable. Sustainable seafood has been defined as providing food today without affecting the ability of future generations to obtain food. But this straightforward definition belies the complexity of sustainability. Models suggest that even under low levels of fishing there can be large impacts on ecosystem attributes, and thus the small reductions from sustainable harvest levels that have been advocated as a win-win solution do not necessarily lead to ecosystem benefits. Second, a case study of herring fisheries and harvest by indigenous peoples in Haida Gwaii reveals that what is regarded to be a sustainable commercial herring harvest can degrade human wellbeing. A potential solution may be spatial management that creates trade-offs on finer spatial scales, and satisfies more ecological and cultural needs.

This book examines the discursive connections between global flows of ideologies about leadership and good governance, how these ideologies are localized in Indonesia, and how all of this relates to changing political, bureaucratic, and market regimes between 1998 and 2004. It starts with a speech given by the head of the International Monetary Fund about the importance of good governance. It then traces the uptake of shibboleths of this speech within Indonesian government policy documents, within the Indonesian mass media, and in the everyday talk that occurred in a government office in Indonesia during the author’s five months of fieldwork in that office between August 2003 and January 2004. The book makes the case that in order to formulate nuanced interpretations of connection and processes of localization, researchers need to engage in a type of reflexivity that involves a constant movement between data from different time-spaces. Such a practice, it is argued, adds to our understanding of how and why both researchers and those researched come to believe and present themselves in specific ways. In doing so, the book extends contemporary conceptual work in the broad areas of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology as it relates to notions of scale, connection, chronotope, leadership talk, and personhood, while sketching how this conceptual work can be operationalized methodologically.

Spoken dialog systems present a classic example of planning under uncertainty. Speech recognition errors are ubiquitous and impossible to detect reliably, so the state of the conversation can never be known with certainty. Despite this, the system must choose actions to make progress to a long term goal. As such, decision theory, and in particular partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), present an attractive approach to building spoken dialog systems. Initial work on “toy” dialog systems validated the benefits of the POMDP approach; however, it also found that straightforward application of POMDPs could not scale to real-world problems. Subsequent work by a number of research teams has scaled up planning and belief monitoring, incorporated high-fidelity user simulations, and married commercial development practices with automatic optimization. Today, statistical dialog systems are being fielded by research labs for public use. This chapter traces the history of POMDP-based spoken dialog systems, and sketches avenues for future work.

I have generally found that lawyers and judges are more easily per¬suaded by evidence than argument. For every argument, no matter how sophisticated, the competent lawyer can launch a credible counter-argument. Stronger evidence is harder to reject. Leaving the theory behind, then, what evidence is there to suggest that on¬line courts are a social innovation that is worth pursuing? As I write in early 2019, it is early days for online courts. We are at the foothills, with mountain ranges yet to climb. Extended courts are quite common but online judging (at scale) remains unusual. Nonetheless, the examples we do have are inspiring, compelling, and give a strong sense, I believe, of developments that are likely to unfold globally in the coming decade.

Systematic surveys in the Tula region in southern Hidalgo has revealed a long and diverse history of settlement that included at least three different episodes of migration. Each was quite different in terms of scale and mode of execution, including what appears to have been 1) well-orchestrated mass migrations or colonization of the region by Teotihuacan, 2) small scale migrations involving the appearance of a foreign enclave of possibly mixed Teotihuacan/Zapotec whose members comprised an entire settlement, and 3) uncoordinated multiple migrations of Coyotlatelco traditional peoples, each probably involving small groups from varying areas of origin within a larger region of the same general destination. All three appear to have involved relatively short-distance migration, which we believe was a common practice in Mesoamerica, where knowledge of the destination was a likely "pull" factor that facilitated both multiple and return migration events.

This chapter charts the contributions of anthropology to public mental health. It examines three main traditions in anthropological practice: (i) individual-level approaches, investigating mental health beliefs, behaviours, and illness narratives; (ii) meso-level approaches, assessing the provision, nature, and practice of mental health care systems; and (iii) macro-level approaches, examining the mental health impact of societal structures, including political and economic structures. It emphasizes the importance of moving among different levels of analysis. The chapter also provides case study material on suicide in the Arctic. The chapter concludes by discussing climate change and other emerging public mental health challenges, suggesting a multi-scale, interdisciplinary ecological approach.

William Bowie settled on a theoretical position that accounted for isostasy and the jigsaw-puzzle fit of the continents but ignored the facts of historical geology. And yet, as we have seen, he interacted and corresponded with historical geologists, particularly with Charles Schuchert (1858–1942). Of all the American geologists who ultimately rejected the theory of drift, Schuchert was perhaps the one who engaged the problem the most seriously. As America’s foremost historical geologist, Schuchert was well placed to argue the case for or against drift, and he grappled with the question of continental connections for at least fifteen years. In the end, however, Schuchert, like Bowie, rejected continental drift. Just as Bowie argued against drift because of beliefs grounded in the exigencies of geodetic practice, Schuchert ultimately argued against drift because of beliefs grounded in the exigencies of geological practice. For Bowie, the practice was Pratt isostasy, for Schuchert, it was Uniformitarianism. Charles Schuchert rejected continental drift because he interpreted it to be incompatible with Uniformitarianism. However, he did not reject it because he could not see drift taking place, as might be supposed. Uniformitarianism has meant many things to many people, and to Charles Schuchert in the late 1920s, it meant—rightly or wrongly—an essentially steady-state earth, whose details were forever changing but whose large-scale patterns and relationships remained the same. And this seemed to him to deny the possibility of major changes in the configuration of the continents. Moreover—and perhaps more importantly—for Schuchert, as for most historical geologists, Uniformitarianism was a form of scientific practice, a means of doing historical geology. It was, in fact, the primary means of doing historical geology. For Schuchert, abandoning Uniformitarianism was nearly tantamount to abandoning historical geology altogether. Not surprisingly, he declined to do this. Like William Bowie, Charles Schuchert settled on a theoretical position that preserved his scientific practice. But whereas Bowie’s theoretical ideas had little staying power, the alternative that Schuchert embraced influenced a generation of geologists to believe that drift was not so much impossible as unnecessary.

Sikkim is known as a natural and ideal destination for the tourists looking for exotic and varied experiences. The study explores the adequacy of the policy in the context of eco-tourism principles espoused by eco-tourism society (TES) which are - minimize physical, social and psychological impact, Build environmental and cultural awareness, Provide positive experiences for both visitors and hosts, Produce direct financial benefits for conservation, and Recognize the rights and spiritual beliefs of the Indigenous People. Methodology used is case study for based on a structured questionnaire with 55 statements (on Likert scale) responded by the civil officers of the state government involved with eco-tourism policy and its implementation. To make it more meaningful one sample t-test has been conducted to test hypotheses. It concludes that the policy document has areas with distinct adequacies and inadequacies. The purpose of the study is to identify inadequacies that need to be addressed to make the policy document holistic and help in facilitating its proper implementation.

This chapter argues that people reason about legal evidence using small-scale qualitative networks. These cognitive networks are typically qualitative and incomplete, and based on people's causal beliefs about the specifics of the case as well as the workings of the physical and social world in general. A key feature of these networks is their ability to represent qualitative relations between hypotheses and evidence, allowing reasoners to capture the concepts of dependency and relevance critical in legal contexts. In support of this claim, the chapter introduces some novel empirical and formal work on alibi evidence, showing that people's reasoning conforms to the dictates of a qualitative Bayesian model. However, people's inferences do not always conform to Bayesian prescripts. Empirical studies are also discussed in which people over-extend the discredit of one item of evidence to other unrelated items. This bias is explained in terms of the propensity to group positive and negative evidence separately and the use of coherence-based inference mechanisms. It is argued that these cognitive processes are a natural response to deal with the complexity of legal evidence.

It is the firm belief of the authors that Blockchain and other frontier technologies will be an important tool for social impact globally. It is now possible, with technology, to envision a world where everyone has an identity, where everyone can be connected to the economic system, where farmers get fair deals for their crops, and land registration is incorruptible. Advances in solar, battery, and digital commerce make it possible to imagine even the smallest village in Africa being able to produce and trade small amounts of energy. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were a visionary leap to a future state where the world can be a better place for humankind. However, they will not be achieved without harnessing the potential of technology. Nor will they be reached alone. In this chapter, the authors profile innovative case studies in Blockchain, which, if brought to scale, may realise the technology's potential. It is through this learning and experimentation that we will learn how to deploy this technology globally for social impact.

It is the firm belief of the authors that Blockchain and other frontier technologies will be an important tool for social impact globally. It is now possible, with technology, to envision a world where everyone has an identity, where everyone can be connected to the economic system, where farmers get fair deals for their crops, and land registration is incorruptible. Advances in solar, battery, and digital commerce make it possible to imagine even the smallest village in Africa being able to produce and trade small amounts of energy. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were a visionary leap to a future state where the world can be a better place for humankind. However, they will not be achieved without harnessing the potential of technology. Nor will they be reached alone. In this chapter, the authors profile innovative case studies in Blockchain, which, if brought to scale, may realise the technology's potential. It is through this learning and experimentation that we will learn how to deploy this technology globally for social impact.

This chapter begins by outlining various theoretical approaches to determining the legality of the unilateral refusal to deal doctrine and the essential facilities doctrine. It investigates the case law in the US and the EU on unilateral refusal to license and discusses the doctrinal issues raised by these cases. The chapter then proposes a framework for analyzing unilateral refusal to license for developing countries that takes into account their existing technological capacity and the need to preserve incentives for technology transfer. The global mainstream approach to competition law is largely informed by the experiences of industrialized economies of continental scale such as the US and the EU. What has worked for them need not work for developing countries. In fact, in light of the disparate technological capacity of developing countries and the varying enforcement capacity of their competition authorities, there are good reasons to believe that developing countries need to develop an approach to the patent-competition interface that is sensitive to their domestic circumstances.

There is growing interest in using cannabis or specific cannabinoids (e.g., THC, CBD) as therapeutic agents for various stress-related psychiatric disorders (e.g., PTSD, anxiety). While beliefs about a drug, such as expecting to feel a certain way, have strong influences over the actual effects experienced by individuals, they are rarely evaluated in clinical research. In the present exploratory report, we sought to (1) evaluate the extent to which individuals believe that cannabis relieves stress, and (2) examine whether individual characteristics (i.e., age, sex, psychiatric illness, cannabis use frequency) are related to these beliefs. A sample of 234 adults (54.7% female; Mean age=31.37, SD=11.03, 19-69 years old) from the Halifax Regional Municipality community took part in a brief telephone screening interview to assess their eligibility for a larger study (in progress). Information was gathered about the frequency of current (i.e., past month) cannabis use (days per week), the presence of current psychiatric disorder(s) ("yes"/"no"), and the extent to which they believed that cannabis was an effective stress reliever (rating scale from 1 (“not at all”) to 10 (“extremely”)). Subjects reported a mean belief rating of 6.39 (SD=2.26). A multiple regression analysis was run to evaluate whether the belief that cannabis relieves stress was related to age, sex, psychiatric illness, and frequency of current cannabis use. Overall, the model significantly predicted cannabis belief ratings (p<.001, adjusted R2=.17). Among all variables, only frequency of cannabis use contributed significantly to this prediction (B=.544, 95% CI: [.387, .701], p<.001). In general, the present sample of community-recruited adults believed that cannabis was somewhat effective at relieving stress. Additionally, cannabis use frequency was the only variable that predicted the strength of this belief, such that more frequent use was associated with higher belief ratings. This is consistent with prior research indicating that heavier cannabis use is linked to positive cannabis expectancies. Given that stimulus expectancies influence substance-related responses, such findings would further the case for evaluating and controlling for these expectancies in clinical work with cannabis for stress-related conditions. Indeed, clinical cannabis research evaluating samples of heavy or frequent cannabis users may be subject to bias due to higher positive expectancies.

The mosque is a sacred important religious symbol for bringing Muslims together as demonstrated during the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). This paper investigates the potential of Masjid Ar-Rahman of Pulau Gajah, Kelantan as a spot for mosque tourism. Although this mosque was constructed in 2016, it has demonstrated a simplicity in its scale and traditional image. It has value as a hybrid assimilation of HinduBuddhist syncretism and tolerance, and has coined the term Nusantara to denote its hybridised Malay and Javanese architectural styles. The typology of this humble Malay Mosque architecture is of medium-scale and reflects the Sufistic contextual value beliefs of encouraging religious and architectural tourism alike. The conceptual framework capitalises on the research gap found in mosque cultural, architectural and Sufistic beliefs. Research by further delving into constructing the “Sense of Place” in relation to the “Sacred Places”. This research employs qualitative methods of interviewing visitors, applying phenomenological and case study approaches supported by architectural documentation in emphasising the symbolic and semiotic aesthetics aspects in constructing the “Sense of Place” bonded by Sufistic symbolic aesthetics. The theory is constructed in the deeply rooted Islamic Mosque architecture via Sufistic beliefs that provides a platform for mosque tourism activities.

Agent-Based Modeling has been recently recognized as a method for in-silico multi-scale modeling of biological cell systems. Agent-Based Models (ABMs) allow results from experimental studies of individual cell behaviors to be scaled into the macro-behavior of interacting cells in complex cell systems or tissues. Current generation ABM simulation toolkits are designed to work on serial von-Neumann architectures, which have poor scalability. The best systems can barely handle tens of thousands of agents in real-time. Considering that there are models for which mega-scale populations have significantly different emergent behaviors than smaller population sizes, it is important to have the ability to model such large scale models in real-time. In this paper we present a new framework for simulating ABMs on programmable graphics processing units (GPUs). Novel algorithms and data-structures have been developed for agent-state representation, agent motion, and replication. As a test case, we have implemented an abstracted version of the Systematic Inflammatory Response System (SIRS) ABM. Compared to the original implementation on the NetLogo system, our implementation can handle an agent population that is over three orders of magnitude larger with close to 40 updates/sec. We believe that our system is the only one of its kind that is capable of efficiently handling realistic problem sizes in biological simulations.

Abstract Precipitation strengthening of alloys by the formation of secondary particles (precipitates) in the matrix is one of the techniques used for increasing the mechanical strength of metals. Understanding the precipitation kinetics such as nucleation, growth, and coarsening of these precipitates is critical for evaluating their hardening effects and improving the yield strength of the alloy during heat treatment. To optimize the heat treatment strategy and accelerate alloy design, predicting precipitate hardening effects via numerical methods is a promising complement to trial-and-error-based experiments and the physics-based phase-field method stands out with the significant potential to accurately predict the precipitate morphology and kinetics. In this study, we present a phase-field model that captures the nucleation, growth, and coarsening kinetics of precipitates during isothermal heat treatment conditions. Thermodynamic data, diffusion coefficients, and misfit strain data from experimental or lower length-scale calculations are used as input parameters for the phase-field model. Classical nucleation theory is implemented to capture the nucleation kinetics. As a case study, we apply the model to investigate γ″ precipitation kinetics in Inconel 625. The simulated mean particle length, aspect ratio, and volume fraction evolution are in agreement with experimental data for simulations at 600 °C and 650 °C during isothermal heat treatment. Utilizing the meso-scale results from the phase-field simulations as input parameters to a macro-scale coherency strengthening model, the evolution of the yield strength during heat treatment was predicted. In a broader context, we believe the current study can provide practical guidance for applying the phase-field approach as a link in the multiscale modeling of material properties.

Abstract Most lab-scale acidizing experiments are performed in core samples with 100% water saturation conditions and at pore pressures around 1100 psi. However, this is seldom the case on the field, where different saturation conditions exist with high temperature and pressure conditions. Carbon-di-Oxide (CO2), a by-product evolved during the acidizing process, is long thought to behave inertly during the acidizing process. Recent investigations reveal that the presence of CO2 dynamically changes the behavior of wormhole patterns and acid efficiency. A compositional simulation technique was adopted to understand the process thoroughly. A validated compositional numerical model capable of replicating acidizing experiments at the core-scale level, in fully aqueous environments described in published literature was utilized in this study. The numerical model was extended to a three-phase environment and applied at the field scale level to monitor and evaluate the impacts of evolved CO2 during the carbonate acidizing processes. Lessons learned from the lab-scale were tested at the field-scale scenario via a numerical model with radial coordinates. Contrary to popular belief, high pore pressures of 1,000 psi and above are not sufficient to keep all the evolved CO2 in solution. The presence of CO2 as a separate phase hinders acid efficiency. The reach or extent of the evolved CO2 is shown to exist only near the damage zone and seldom penetrates the reservoir matrix. Based on the field scale model's predictions, this study warrants conducting acidizing experiments at the laboratory level, at precisely similar pressure, temperature, and salinity conditions faced in the near-wellbore region, and urges the application of compositional modeling techniques to account for CO2 evolution, while studying and predicting matrix acidizing jobs.

We have long known that tangential contact forces and the friction coefficient at a sliding contact arises not due to some “law” but as a result of contact geometric and material properties in combination with physical processes that are not always accessible to direct experimental verification. While tribologists have occasionally sought alternatives to the coefficient of friction as the primary means to quantify tangential forces at sliding contacts, its convenience, simplicity, long history and lack of viable alternatives assure that it will be remain in use for some time to come. Sometimes the coefficient can remain constant with normal load over orders or magnitude. One can be led to believe that the coefficient is a property of the interface or there is a “law” at work. At other times, the coefficient, usually measured, is said to vary with time, sliding distance or some other variable with no explanation as to why the variation occurs. In the present paper we discuss aspects of friction behavior and modeling, focusing on mechanics and the nature of the friction coefficient. The point of departure is a case where the adhesion theory of friction can be used to understand the mechanics of friction. One can then consider a number of situations and concepts that arise as variations of this case including average versus instantaneous friction; cases when Amontons-Coulomb relations do or don’t apply; static versus dynamic friction; scale effects at rough surfaces; limits of applicability of the friction coefficient; friction measurements, thermal and velocity effects; and local versus global friction and constitutive relations.

The Purdue Polytechnic Institute in Columbus utilizes metrology tools with specially designed 3-D printed and machined measurement artifacts to facilitate learning and provide opportunities to demonstrate competency in basic measurement tools. Analog and digital calipers, analog and digital micrometers, Pi tapes, bore micrometers, and dial indicators are all employed during special training sessions designed to educate about various measurement tools, allowing trainees to develop knowledge on how to choose a proper measurement tool. Trainees and students use different tools to measure identical features on a part, highlighting the different scales, resolutions, potential errors and uncertainties, as well as the obvious ease or challenge to utilize each tool. There is an obvious advantage of digital dimensional measurement tools due to the ease of reading the value, but they may not always represent the best tool for the specific task. Little prior experience in measurement may lead to the belief that the value displayed on the tool is correct without considering appropriate procedures, units, and mechanics of actually using the tool – pressure applied to the measurement surface, proper zero-setting of the tool etc. In the case of measuring diameters, is there consideration and evaluation of using a two-point instrument versus a three-point instrument? These issues are highlighted only if different tools are used to measure the same feature. Another issue addressed is using a dial indicator for several geometric dimensioning and tolerancing measurements, such as flatness, parallelism, and perpendicularity. These procedures are demonstrated and participants will perform several of these measurements, discussing afterwards the value and utility of coordinate measuring machines.

This is a study on how to retain distribution functions at the port in the large-scale industrial disaster prevention scheme at the time of great earthquakes. Urgent need for such efforts has been mounting in recent years. Industrial disaster prevention scheme is, in other words, Business Continuity Management (BCM), which enables continuity of important businesses while trying to make an early recovery of overall business activities at the time of great earthquakes. When an earthquake occurs, it is important to quickly resume businesses after an initial period of confusion. For this purpose, it is necessary to make a large-scale restoration plan, including the restoration of social infrastructure. In the Chubu Metropolitan Area in Japan where the city of Nagoya is the center, the global division of labor has been rapidly in progress. The businesses are developing more and more within the framework of closely and finely-knit global supply-chains between domestic and overseas enterprises. It is one of the areas where Business Continuity Management is in urgent need. The subject of the case study in this paper is all international distribution activities at the Port of Nagoya in the Chubu Metropolitan area where Tokai, Tou-Nankai or Nankai Earthquakes is anticipated in the near future. The concept of the Business Continuity Management shall be developed through research on the current measures taken by the enterprises and organizations who are the port-users. Then the goals and problems regarding the recovery of port functions will be identified. Furthermore, we will attempt to propose technological means to solve the problems and achieve the goals. This paper starts with the analysis of the questionnaires to about 30 member companies and organizations of Industry Disaster Management Panel. The next section consists of two parts; the first half is devoted to the function recovery planning on the shore, and the second half discusses the function restoration of the section on the sea within the port. We believe this study will provide valuable guidelines for the port function recovery in the Chubu area at the time of earthquakes. It will also serve as effective guiding philosophy for many ports in Japan and around the world which face similar problems.

As urbanization progresses in China's rural areas, so do the severity of social issues, including the decline of social assets, the recession of agricultural industries, the lack of community cohesion, and a weak sense of belonging. A decline in cultural awareness is the reason behind such phenomena, which stems from changes to residents' lifestyles and a lack of cultural beliefs. This issue also results in insufficient cultural awareness, weak cultural inheritance, and neglect of cultural values among community residents. To this end, this paper aims to examine an educational model to enhance the cultural awareness of local community residents.At present, there are two types of education methods to enhance cultural awareness: passive types and active types. For example, passive education refers to the enhancement of participants’ cultural qualities through the problem-solving style lesson and ‘implicit’ curriculum, while an active education might use reflective writing or PD to promote cultural awareness. Of the two, active education, represented by PD, is more conducive to participants' acceptance of cultural knowledge. PD is also an effective method for developing humanitarianism in developing countries. It can be applied to the special scenario of rural communities in China as a new solution for raising the cultural awareness of residents. This paper shares a specific case study of enhancing residents' cultural awareness in community collective memory using participatory game design.A total of eight subjects were selected in this study. Since children are the future of the community's cultural development, the subjects included 6 children and 2 adults. Unlike traditional PD, this study focused on attracting the interests of subjects and enhancing their abilities to inherit traditional culture through participatory game design. The study consisted of three workshops: the cultural exploration workshop, the game design workshop, and the game testing workshop. Activity theory was used as a basis to guide the choice of time, location, and power dynamics, from which a framework of participatory activities covering the four approaches of "probing", "telling", "acting", and "making" was developed for the workshops. To further enhance collaboration, participants were also provided with a complete set of toolkits during the three workshops, including role-playing tools, game idea cards, house of cards, scaffolding, etc. At the end of each workshop, the Cultural Awareness Scale, which contains the three elements of cultural cognition, cultural heritage, and cultural values, was administered to measure the change in cultural awareness of the subjects. A mixed methods approach was used in analysis to uncover underlying cultural associations. The study qualitatively analyzed the transcribed spoken words and behaviors of the subjects using multimodal analysis, and quantitatively analyzed the variations in the word count of the text and the level of detail in the elaboration. In summary, this case study is important for examining cultural education models and improving the cultural awareness of the population. It also provides a framework of activities for participatory design workshops, which can serve as a reference for further research.

After parliament failed to approve his revised version of the ‘Withdrawal Agreement’, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called a snap general election in October 2019 to capitalise on his growing support to ‘Get Brexit Done’. Johnson’s belief was that he had enough support countrywide to gain a majority to push his Brexit mandate through parliament based on a parliamentary seat majority strategy. The increased availability of large-scale Twitter data provides rich information for the study of constituency dynamics. In Twitter, the location of tweets can be identified by the GPS and the location field. This provides a mechanism for location-based sentiment analysis which is the use of natural language processing or machine learning algorithms to extract, identify, or distinguish the sentiment content of a tweet (in our case), according to the location of origin of said tweet. This paper examines location-based Twitter sentiment for UK constituencies per country and aims to understand if location-based Twitter sentiment majorities per UK constituencies could determine the outcome of the UK Brexit election. Tweets are gathered from the whisperings of the UK Brexit election on September 4th 2019 until polling day, 12th December 2019. A Naive Bayes classification algorithm is applied to assess political public Twitter sentiment. We identify the sentiment of Twitter users per constituency per country towards the political parties’ mandate on Brexit and plot our findings for visualisation. We compare the grouping of location-based sentiment per constituency for each of the four UK countries to the final Brexit election first party results per constituency to determine the accuracy of location-based sentiment in determining the Brexit election result. Our results indicate that location-based sentiment had the single biggest effect on constituency result predictions in Northern Ireland and Scotland and a marginal effect on Wales base constituencies whilst there was no significant prediction accuracy to England’s constituencies. Decision tree, neural network, and Naïve Bayes machine learning algorithms are then created to forecast the election results per constituency using location-based sentiment and constituency-based data from the UK electorate at national level. The predictive accuracy of the machine learning models was compared comprehensively to a computed-baseline model. The comparison results show that the machine learning models outperformed the baseline model predicting Brexit Election constituency results at national level showing an accuracy rate of 97.87%, 95.74 and 93.62% respectively. The results indicate that location-based sentiment is a useful variable in predicting elections.

Are international human rights treaties associated with better rights performance? The appetite for a conclusive answer has driven a number of large scale quantitative studies that have broadly shown little or no effect, and sometimes even a backsliding. However, the headline conclusions belie much more complicated findings, and the research methods used are controversial. These issues undermine confidence in the findings. Comparative and individual case studies allow for more detailed information about how domestic human rights activists use international human rights laws in practice. They tend to be more positive about the effect of treaties, but they are not as systematic as the quantitative work. Some indirect measures of treaty effect show that the norms contained within them filter down into domestic constitutions, and that the process of human rights reporting at the UN may be useful if dialogue can be considered an a priori good. It is likely that states are driven to comply with human rights obligations through a combination of dynamic influences. Drivers of compliance with international law is a major, unresolved question in the research that is heavily influenced by the worldview of researchers. The two strongest findings are: Domestic context drives compliance. In particular: (1) The strength of domestic non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and links with international NGOs (INGOs), and (2) in partial and transitioning democracies where locals have a reason to use the treaties as tools to press their claims. External enforcement may help drive compliance when: (1) other states link human rights obligations in the treaties to preferential trade agreements, and (2) INGOs ‘name and shame’ human rights violations, possibly reducing inward investment flows from companies worried about their reputation. Scholars also identify intermediate effects of continued dialogue and norm socialisation from the UN’s human rights reporting processes. Interviews with diplomats involved in UN reporting say that the process is more effective when NGOs and individual governments are involved.