Patience and Forgiveness: The Meaning of Kṣānti (Pali: Khanti) in the Mahābhārata and the Pali Canon

This dissertation explores the meaning of the Sanskrit term kṣānti in the Mahābhārata and the Pali term khanti in the Pali Canon. There is considerable debate and confusion within the scholarly community as to what these terms mean, and scholars have chosen to translate the verbal root from which they derive using a wide range of terms: “ be patient,” “forgive,” “tolerate,” “endure,” “suffer,” “pardon,” “forbear,” “wait,” “allow,” “indulge,” and so on. Through a thorough and close examination of the Mahābhārata and the Pali Canon, this dissertation unveils the precise meanings of these terms in these texts. This dissertation will demonstrate that kṣānti had two distinct meanings in the Mahābhārata which were differentiated based on several factors - varṇa or caste, duration of practice, relationship with anger, classification as virtuous or dharma, and perception as a strength or weakness. On the other hand, khanti in the Pali canon, referred to a specific two-step psychological process – the negation of anger, followed by the cultivation of a positive feeling towards others, mettā. The dissertation then engages in a comparative analysis of the differing treatments of kṣānti and khanti in the Mahābhārata and Pali Canon, respectively, noting major differences, elements of intertextuality and hypothesizing their process of development. Through these findings, the dissertation will provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the ideas of patience and forgiveness in these early Indian narrative texts

Self-Microemulsifying System

Oral route is preferred for drug administration; however according to the recent scenario 40% of new drug candidates have poor water solubility and low bioavailability. One of the biggest challenges in drug delivery science is to improve low oral bioavailability problem which is associated with the hydrophobic drugs due to their unprecedented potential as a drug deliver with the broad range of application. Self-emulsifying systems have been proved as highly useful technological innovations to vanquish such bioavailability problem by virtue of their diminutive globule size, higher solubilization tendency for hydrophobic drugs, robust formulation advantages, and easy to scale up. Self-microemulsifying systems are isotropic mixers of oil, surfactant, drug and co-emulsifier or solubilizer, which spontaneously form transparent micro-emulsions with oil droplets ranging between 100 and 250 nm. Micro emulsified drug can be easily absorbed through the lymphatic pathway and it bypasses the hepatic first-pass effect. Self-microemulsifying system is a thermodynamically stable system and overcomes the drawback of layering of emulsions after sitting for a long period of time. The present literature gives exhaustive information on the formulation design and characterization of self-microemulsifying systems

The Role of Information and Financial Reporting in Corporate Governance and Debt Contracting

We review recent literature on the role of financial reporting transparency in reducing governance-related agency conflicts among managers, directors, and shareholders, as well as in reducing agency conflicts between shareholders and creditors, and offer researchers some suggested avenues for future research. Key themes include the endogenous nature of debt contracts and governance mechanisms with respect to information asymmetry between contracting parties, the heterogeneous nature of the informational demands of contracting parties, and the heterogeneous nature of the resulting governance and debt contracts. We also emphasize the role of a commitment to financial reporting transparency in facilitating informal multiperiod contracts among managers, directors, shareholders, and creditors

May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

A comprehensive overview of radioguided surgery using gamma detection probe technology

The concept of radioguided surgery, which was first developed some 60 years ago, involves the use of a radiation detection probe system for the intraoperative detection of radionuclides. The use of gamma detection probe technology in radioguided surgery has tremendously expanded and has evolved into what is now considered an established discipline within the practice of surgery, revolutionizing the surgical management of many malignancies, including breast cancer, melanoma, and colorectal cancer, as well as the surgical management of parathyroid disease. The impact of radioguided surgery on the surgical management of cancer patients includes providing vital and real-time information to the surgeon regarding the location and extent of disease, as well as regarding the assessment of surgical resection margins. Additionally, it has allowed the surgeon to minimize the surgical invasiveness of many diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, while still maintaining maximum benefit to the cancer patient. In the current review, we have attempted to comprehensively evaluate the history, technical aspects, and clinical applications of radioguided surgery using gamma detection probe technology

A Refined Technique for Management of Nasal Flaring: The Quest for the Holy Grail of Alar Base Modification

“A smile is happiness you'll find right under your nose”– Tom Wilson. This quote holds true just for patients, not for surgeons. The correction of the nose always poses a challenge to the cosmetic surgeon. Deformities of the external and internal nose may be congenital or acquired and may be secondary to soft tissue and/or osseo-cartilaginous abnormalities, leading to aesthetic and/or functional consequences. Alar flare poses a common problem, sometimes alone and sometimes in conjunction with other external deformities. Alar base reduction is generally considered when the interalar distance exceeds the intercanthal distance. It has been well documented that this simple additional procedure brings about a substantial enhancement in the nose. Various techniques have been described and used in the past, each having their benefits and drawbacks, with the modified Weir wedge excision, Aufricht nasal sill excision, and Bernstein V-Y advancement being the common ones. We hereby describe a technique that is simple yet effective in achieving the desired results and at the same time aims at preventing relapse to obtain satisfactory long term results

EPJ Data Science / Collective aspects of privacy in the Twitter social network

Preserving individual control over private information is one of the rising concerns in our digital society. Online social networks exist in application ecosystems that allow them to access data from other services, for example gathering contact lists through mobile phone applications. Such data access might allow social networking sites to create shadow profiles with information about non-users that has been inferred from information shared by the users of the social network. This possibility motivates the shadow profile hypothesis: the data shared by the users of an online service predicts personal information of non-users of the service. We test this hypothesis for the first time on Twitter, constructing a dataset of users that includes profile biographical text, location information, and bidirectional friendship links. We evaluate the predictability of the location of a user by using only information given by friends of the user that joined Twitter before the user did. This way, we audit the historical prediction power of Twitter data for users that had not joined Twitter yet. Our results indicate that information shared by users in Twitter can be predictive of the location of individuals outside Twitter. Furthermore, we observe that the quality of this prediction increases with the tendency of Twitter users to share their mobile phone contacts and is more accurate for individuals with more contacts inside Twitter. We further explore the predictability of biographical information of non-users, finding evidence in line with our results for locations. These findings illustrate that individuals are not in full control of their online privacy and that sharing personal data with a social networking site is a decision that is collectively mediated by the decisions of others.(VLID)477385