Department of History

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

Department of Environmental Studies

Yale Agrarian Studies Series

Genetically Modified Democracy: Transgenic Crops in Contemporary India

World University root node

Department of Biology

Fulltext

Global Health Science and Practice

COVID-19 pandemic in India: Through the lens of modeling

Data transfer across DRAM channels accounts for nearly a quarter of the total energy consumption of DDR4 DRAMs. Modern applications with high bandwidth requirements further increase channel energy consumption. However, channel energy consumption is dependent on data being transferred. Pseudo Open Drain (POD) asymmetric termination, used in current DDR4 systems, consumes energy only when 1's are being transmitted over the channels. Many modern applications, including AI/ML ones are resilient to errors in data, and can work well with approximate data. This resilience can vary widely across and within applications, which provides a number of ways for exploiting these characteristics to save data transfer energy across the DRAM channel. However, all DRAM data encoding schemes have been targeted towards applications that require exact data and are not approximation resilient. In this paper, we propose Zero Aware Configurable Data Encoding by Skipping Transfer (ZAC-DEST), a data encoding scheme to reduce the energy consumption of DRAM channels, specifically targeted towards approximate computing and error resilient applications. ZAC-DEST exploits the similarity between recent data transfers across channels and information about error resilience behaviour of applications to reduce on-die termination and switching energy by reducing the number of 1's transmitted over the channels. ZAC-DEST also provides a number of knobs for trading off application's accuracy for energy savings, and vice versa, and can be applied to both training and inference. We apply ZAC-DEST to five machine learning applications. On average, across all applications and configurations, we observed a reduction of 40% in termination energy and 37% in switching energy as compared to the state of the art data encoding technique BD-Coder with an average output quality loss of 10%. We show that if both training and testing are done assuming the presence of ZAC-DEST, the output quality of the applications can be improved upto 9× as compared to when ZAC-DEST is only applied during testing leading to energy savings during training and inference with increased output quality.

Department of Computer Science

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers

Zero Aware Configurable Data Encoding by Skipping Transfer for Error Resilient Applications

The motion of glaciers over their bedrock or drops of fluid along a solid surface can vary dramatically when these substrates are lubricated. We investigate the coupled flow of a gravity current (GC) of a strain-rate softening fluid that is lubricated by a denser, lower-viscosity Newtonian fluid. We present a set of experiments in which such GCs are discharged axisymmetrically and at constant flux over a flat surface. Using imaging techniques, we follow the evolution of the front and thickness field of each fluid. We find that, unlike purely Newtonian lubricated GCs, the fronts of the non-Newtonian and lubricating Newtonian fluids have a power-law time evolution with different exponents. Each of these exponents is similar to that of a non-lubricated GC of the same fluid. Nevertheless, the fronts of our lubricated GCs evolve faster than those of the corresponding non-lubricated GCs owing to larger intercepts. In addition, in contrast with the monotonically declining thickness of non-lubricated GCs, the thickness of the lubricated, non-Newtonian fluid is nearly uniform, and that of the lubricating fluid is non-monotonic with localised spikes. Despite these complex thickness patterns, lubricated GCs remain axisymmetric as long as the flux of the lubricating fluid is sufficiently smaller than that of the non-Newtonian fluid.

Department of Physics

Journal of Fluid Mechanics

Lubricated gravity currents of power-law fluids

The invention of paratheatre, as a concept applicable to modern performance, stems from the work of Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999), Polish avant-garde theatre director, best known for pioneering the ‘Poor Theatre’. In the 1970s, Grotowski pursued a series of investigations into paratheatre, attempting to change the relationship between spectator and spectacle. This paratheatrical research, iterations of which Grotowski called ‘Special Projects’, took place primarily in the Polish countryside, but also in other locations, including Pennsylvania.1 Participants applied, and were chosen for a certain openness to the experience, which involved living in nature, doing various exercises, some of them ritualistic, and not performing for an audience. A core aim was to free actors from artificiality, including the built environment of the theatre, roles separate from the self, and narrative and plot.2 Speaking of Grotowski and the Laboratory Theatre members, Kumiega writes, ‘The activity that encapsulated their search (from 1970– 1978) became known in time as paratheatre: formally, this related to an activity that had its roots in drama, but specifically did not result in a theatrical presentation before an audience. The terms “spectator” and “actor” lost their divisive significance, and both the action and the creation became the collective responsibility’. 3 Grotowski presented the results, which he called ‘University of Research’, in Wrocław in July of 1975, at the Theatre of Nations Festival. This paratheatrical research continued for a few years after that, and the Laboratory Theatre finally disbanded in 1984.

Department of English

Theatre and Metatheatre

Defining Paratheatre, From Grotowski to Antiquity’

How do countries with differing political institutions respond to national crises? We examine policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic in a sample of 125 countries, using high frequency data on two measures: (i) containment policies, i.e., closure of public spaces and restrictions on movement of people, and (ii) health policies, i.e., public information campaigns, testing, and contact tracing. We have four main findings. First, non-democracies impose more stringent policies prior to their first Covid-19 case, but democracies close the gap in containment policies and surpass non-democracies in health policies within a week of registering their first case. Second, while policy responses do not differ by governance systems (presidential or parliamentary), elected leaders who performed better in the last election, or face an election farther in the future, impose more aggressive policies. Third, democracies with greater media freedom respond more slowly in containment policies, but more aggressively in health policies. Lastly, more conducive norms (such as trust in the elected government) systematically predict a more aggressive policy response. Our results remain robust to allowing countries with different economic, social, and medical characteristics to have different evolution of policy responses. Our analysis therefore suggests that political institutions and the incentives of the political leaders embedded therein significantly shape the policy response of governments to a national crisis.

Department of Economics

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Political institutions and policy responses during a crisis

Current History

How India’s caste inequality has persisted—and deepened in the pandemic

The strategies of subordinate states in hegemonic or asymmetrical relations have been widely studied by international relations scholars. Such works generally focus on how a subordinate state can influence the hegemon's behavior so as to address and further the interests of the subordinate state. The relation between subordinate-state agency and the hegemonic system, the makeup of the hegemonic order, itself receives less attention. Through analysis of two cases of US hegemony in Latin America, this article examines how subordinate-state agency may strengthen or weaken the hegemonic system and, as such, makes a case for subordinate-state agency as an underpinning element of hegemony. It explores Colombian agency in the design phase of Plan Colombia as contributing to US hegemony, while Bolivian agency under the presidency of Evo Morales is examined as a challenge. In both instances, it was the United States, rather than the Latin American states, that took on a passive role, leaving the initiative with Colombia and Bolivia. Therefore, instead of reaffirmations of active one-way US hegemony versus passive subordinate states, the paper proposes to understand both cases as demonstrating the importance of subordinate-state agency in the configuration of the hegemonic system.

Department of International Relations

International Studies Review

Subordinate-State Agency and US Hegemony: Colombian Consent versus Bolivian Dissent

The two-dimensional directed spanning forest (DSF) introduced by Baccelli and Bordenave is a planar directed forest whose vertex set is given by a homogeneous Poisson point process N<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi class="MJX-tex-caligraphic" mathvariant="script">N</mi></mrow></math>&nbsp;on R2<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msup><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi mathvariant="double-struck">R</mi></mrow></mrow><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mn>2</mn></mrow></msup></math>. If the DSF has direction −ey<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mo>−</mo><msub><mi>e</mi><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi>y</mi></mrow></msub></math>, the ancestor h(u)<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>h</mi><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi mathvariant="bold">u</mi></mrow></mrow><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math>&nbsp;of a vertex u∈N<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi mathvariant="bold">u</mi></mrow></mrow><mo>∈</mo><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi class="MJX-tex-caligraphic" mathvariant="script">N</mi></mrow></mrow></math>&nbsp;is the nearest Poisson point (in the L2<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msub><mi>L</mi><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mn>2</mn></mrow></msub></math>&nbsp;distance) having strictly larger y<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>y</mi></math>-coordinate. This construction induces complex geometrical dependencies. In this paper, we show that the collection of DSF paths, properly scaled, converges in distribution to the Brownian web (BW). This verifies a conjecture made by Baccelli and Bordenave in 2007 (Ann. Appl. Probab. 17 (2007) 305–359).The two-dimensional directed spanning forest (DSF) introduced by Baccelli and Bordenave is a planar directed forest whose vertex set is given by a homogeneous Poisson point process N<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi class="MJX-tex-caligraphic" mathvariant="script">N</mi></mrow></math>&nbsp;on R2<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msup><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi mathvariant="double-struck">R</mi></mrow></mrow><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mn>2</mn></mrow></msup></math>. If the DSF has direction −ey<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mo>−</mo><msub><mi>e</mi><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi>y</mi></mrow></msub></math>, the ancestor h(u)<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>h</mi><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi mathvariant="bold">u</mi></mrow></mrow><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math>&nbsp;of a vertex u∈N<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi mathvariant="bold">u</mi></mrow></mrow><mo>∈</mo><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mi class="MJX-tex-caligraphic" mathvariant="script">N</mi></mrow></mrow></math>&nbsp;is the nearest Poisson point (in the L2<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msub><mi>L</mi><mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mn>2</mn></mrow></msub></math>&nbsp;distance) having strictly larger y<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>y</mi></math>-coordinate. This construction induces complex geometrical dependencies. In this paper, we show that the collection of DSF paths, properly scaled, converges in distribution to the Brownian web (BW). This verifies a conjecture made by Baccelli and Bordenave in 2007 (Ann. Appl. Probab. 17 (2007) 305–359).

Department of Mathematics

Annals of Probability

The 2d-directed spanning forest converges to the Brownian web

It is currently fashionable to take Putnamian model-theoretic worries seriously for mathematics, but not for discussions of ordinary physical objects and the sciences. However, I will argue that (under certain mild assumptions) merely securing determinate reference to physical possibility suffices to rule out the kind of nonstandard interpretations of our number talk Putnam invokes. So, anyone who accepts determinate reference to physical possibility should not reject determinate reference to the natural numbers on Putnamian model-theoretic grounds. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Department of Philosophy

Philosophia Mathematica

Physical Possibility and Determinate Number Theory