Visualization of back pain data--a 3-D solution.

Traditional approaches to gathering and visualizing pain data rely on two-dimensional (2-D) human body models, where different types of sensation are recorded with various monochrome symbols. We propose an alternative that uses a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the human body, which can be marked in color to visualize and record pain data.     

Improving neural machine translation for low-resource Indian languages using rule-based feature extraction

Neural Computing and Applications - Languages help to unite the world socially, culturally and technologically. Different natives communicate in different languages; there is a tremendous...     

Cognitive and emotional antecedents of religious conversion.

Evaluated the contribution of several cognitive factors (tolerance of ambiguity, impermeability of present belief system, and cognitive quest) and emotional factors (perception of childhood relationship with parents, and childhood and adolescence stress and trauma) in precipitating religious conversion. Ss were 40 religious converts (aged 20–40 yrs) from 4 religious groups (Jewish, Catholic, Bahai, and Hare Krishna) and 30 age-matched religiously affiliated nonconverts (Jewish and Catholic). Converts' present belief systems were judged as more impermeable; but contrary to the cognitive hypotheses, the groups did not differ on several measures of tolerance of ambiguity and in degree of cognitive quest during adolescence. Emotional factors were more closely associated with religious conversion. Converts' perceptions of their parents were markedly more negative, and incidence of father absence was higher in the convert sample. Converts reported more traumatic events during childhood and described their childhood and adolescence as unhappy. In the interview with converts, personal stress was also reported more often than cognitive quest as characterizing the 2-yr period preceding conversion and as involved in the immediate consequences of conversion. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

QoS based resource provisioning and scheduling in grids

As Grid computing has emerged as a technology for providing the computational resources to industries and scientific projects, new requirements arise. Nowadays, resource management has become an important research area in the Grid computing environment. To provision the appropriate resource to a corresponding application is a tedious task. So, it is important to check and verify the provisioning of the resource before the application’s execution. In this paper, a resource provisioning framework has been presented that offers a resource provisioning policy, which caters to provisioned resource allocation and resource scheduling. The framework has been formally specified and verified. Formal specification and verification of the framework helps in predicting possible errors before the scheduling process itself, and thus results in efficient resource provisioning and scheduling of Grid resources.     

"The Discriminative Stimulus Effects of Cocaine in a Pavlovian Sexual Approach Paradigm in Male Japanese Quail": Correction to Troisi and Akins (2004).

Reports an error in the original article by J. R. Troisi, II and Chana Akins (Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 2004, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 237-242). The first sentence of the abstract, "Two groups of male Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) to discriminate cocaine from saline in a conditioned approach procedure maintained by sexual reinforcement," was incomplete. The correct wording is "Two groups of male Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) were trained to discriminate cocaine from saline in a conditioned approach procedure maintained by sexual reinforcement." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 2004-20800-003.) Two groups of male Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) to discriminate cocaine from saline in a conditioned approach procedure maintained by sexual reinforcement. For 1 group, cocaine (10 mg/kg ip) was administered prior to a conditioned stimulus (CS) that predicted copulation; saline followed by a CS predicted no copulation. A second group underwent the opposite training regimen. Results revealed apparent between-group differences in the rates of acquisition of the discrimination; however, during extinction trials, both groups responded more under the drug condition that predicted the female than to the condition that predicted no female. The results suggested that a drug discrimination may be maintained by sexual reinforcement. The findings are discussed with regard to interactions of cocaine and sexual reward, as well as to Pavlovian conditional stimulus control (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effect of Polymer Coating Systems on the Preparation, Tableting, and Dissolution Properties of Sustained-Release Drug Pellets

The preparation of sustained-release (SR) drug pellets and their tablets was evaluated. Pellets containing indomethacin, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride (P-HCl), or pseudoephedrine (P) base were prepared by spraying a mixture of drug, Eudragit S-100 resins, dibutyl sebacate, and alcohol onto nonpareil seeds via the Wurster-column process. The oven-dried drug/Eudragit S-100 (DS) pellets were coated with different levels of Eudragit RS and Eudragit S-100 acrylic resins. Tablets containing P-HCl or P-base SR pellets, microcrystalline cellulose, and Methocel K4M were compressed. The solubility of the drug entity in the polymer solution was found to be the most critical factor affecting the yield and the physical properties of the resultant DS pellets. Dissolution studies of Eudragit RS coated drug pellets demonstrated that the release profiles depended not only on the physicochemical properties of the drug, particularly aqueous solubility, but also on the coating levels. The release rate profiles of the matrix tablets can be modified by varying the types of P-HCl or P-base SR pellets in the formulation. The release of drug from the matrix tablets is primarily matrix controlled.     

Design and performance of a moderate temperature difference Stirling engine

The present work developed a prototype Stirling engine working at the moderate temperature range. This study attempts to demonstrate the potential of the moderate temperature Stirling engine as an option for the prime movers for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology. The heat source temperature is set to 350–500 °C to resemble the temperature available from the parabolic trough solar collector. This moderate temperature difference allows the use of low cost materials and simplified mechanical designs. With the consideration of local technological know how and manufacturing infrastructure, this development works with a low charged pressure of 7 bar and uses air as a working fluid. The Beta-type Stirling engine is designed and manufactured for the swept volume of 165 cc and the power output of 100 W. The performance of engine is evaluated at different values of charge pressures and wall temperatures at the heater section. At 500 °C and 7 bar, the engine produces the maximum power of 95.4 W at 360 rpm. The thermal efficiency is 9.35% at this maximum power condition. Results show that the moderate temperature operation offers a clear advantage in terms of the specific power over the low temperature operation. In terms of the West number, the present work demonstrated that the moderate temperature difference operations could offer the performance on par with the high temperature operations with more simple and less costly development.