Pro-active Meeting Assistants : Attention Please!

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all

Pro-active Meeting Assistants: Attention Please!

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all. This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all

Nabakalebara of Lord Jagannath in the Temple at Puri in Odisha India : The Re-Embodiment of the Divine

Lord Jagannath is an ancient deity of the Hindu religion in the Indian sub-continent He symbolizes the Lord Krishna and Lord Vishnu This article illustrates about the Nabakalebara Ceremony of Lord Jagannath in the grand temple of Jagannath at Puri in Odisha This is a very grand and unique ritual which is not found in any other Hindu shrine and temple in India and elsewhere in the world This is a non-recurring ritual which takes place once in every 8th or 19th year when intercalary Odia month of Asadha falls As per the tradition of the Jagannath Temple in Puri during this period it is convenient to perform the Nabakalebara Ceremony of the Chaturdha Murty i e Lord Jagannath Lord Balabhadra Devi Subhadra and Sri Sudarshan which are worshiped as the main deities of the temple The deities are made up of Neem wood which necessitate renewal of the deities within a definite time span through performing the Nabakalebara Ceremony This write up broadly narrates about how a series of rituals are observed during the Vanayaga Journey which continues for nearly three to four months in searching and identifying four sacred Neem trees from which the four idols of Lord Jagannath Balabhadra Subhadra and Sudarshan are constructed Thereafter the core ritual of Ghata Paribartan i e transforming of Brahma Padartha or the soul substance takes place secretly inside the main temple in the midnight in closed door by the intimate servitors of Lord Jagannath such as Pati Mahapatra and Daita Servitor

Medicinal properties of fractionated acetone/water neem (Azadirachta indica) leaf extract from Nigeria: a review

The global scenario is now supporting the development of modern drugs from less toxic plant products with proven medicinal properties. Each part of neem plant (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) reportedly has various medicinal properties and has been in use in many continents for centuries. Recently, a fractionated neem-leaf extract known as IRAB with reported activities against Malaria, HIV/AIDS and cancer has been developed into a drug and currently marketed in Nigeria as IRACAP®. This paper reviews the medicinal properties, clinical studies and safety concerns of this fractionated acetone-water neem leaves extract as a footstep to further studies both on the extract and/or its chemical constituents.Key words: IRAB, dogonyaro, Malaria, Nigeri

Lives of Barter

The ancient Hindu text, Rig Veda states that there is only one truth. It’s not merely secular universalism that Hinduism alludes to here, it’s also the thought that universalism extends to all life forms—the integral unity of them—the belief that life and death (even that of the universe) is cyclical, that everything dies and takes birth several times over in different forms. This belief and several other myths emerging from this belief system are an integral part of the world in which the characters of this thesis reside. This thesis explores how stories can change lives and that the myths and tales of a community have deep connections to their history and even though they are told only as stories, they communicate some deep truths about the people that tell them

Psychologization or the discontents of psychoanalysis

This article explores the possibility of a debate between psychoanalysis and the human sciences and, in particular, between psychoanalysis and psychology. Psychoanalysis's particular view on subjectivity values fiction (truth having the structure of fiction) as a constitutive dimension of personal and social reality. In contrast, the mainstream psy-sciences threaten to remain caught in the attempt to unmask things as they really are (eg, hard neurobiological reality), thus risking losing the subjective dimension as such. Drawing on examples of phenomena of psychologization (in Reality TV and in contemporary discourses of parent and child education), the author spells out the different, but eventually and necessarily intertwined, responses of psychoanalysis and psychology to modernity and modern subjectivity

AZIDIRACHTA INDICA AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR THE PRESERVATION OF BAMBUSA VULGARIS IN GHANA

Bamboo is a renewable natural resource which is woody, precious, physically powerful and exceptionally fast-growing grass which plays important role in the world’s economy; however in Ghana, most bamboo industries use chemical preservatives which are expensive and poisonous product for the preservation of bamboo which also have rippling effects on the users of bamboo products and the environment as whole. The study used the descriptive and experimental research methodologies with interview and observations as data collection instruments to gather data from respondents. Stratified Random sampling technique was employed to sub-divide the population into smaller homogeneous group so as to get more exact representation. The study discovered azadirachtin in the neem is the plants main agent for battling insects. It appears to cause about 90% effectiveness in dealing with most pests. The azidarachtin does not kill insect but it repels and disrupts their growth and reproduction. Moreover, it was found that neem leave extracts, as a preservative, is more suitable for the preservation of domestic products such as chopsticks, ladles, chopping boards and fruit trays. It is recommended that, a more environmentally friendly chemicals such as the azadirachtin must be used in the preservation of bamboo.  Article visualizations

Taking Historical Fundamentalism Seriously

In her recent book The Whites of Their Eyes Jill Lepore argues that today’s conservatives’ embrace of the founding is not just another example of citizens using the Revolution for political purposes—which generations of Americans have done—but instead an attack on the very idea of history. Tea Partiers, she concludes, practice a form of “antihistory.” “In antihistory,” Lepore writes, “time is an illusion. Either we’re there, two hundred years ago, or they’re here, among us.” To Tea Partiers, there is no distance between the past and present; the past is not a foreign country. To believe that the founders can speak to us directly, not mediated by the mists of time, “is to subscribe to a set of assumptions about the relationship between the past and the present stricter, even, than the strictest form of constitutional originalism.” It is to be, Lepore argues, a historical “fundamentalist.

Multi-party Interaction in a Virtual Meeting Room

This paper presents an overview of the work carried out at the HMI group of the University of Twente in the domain of multi-party interaction. The process from automatic observations of behavioral aspects through interpretations resulting in recognized behavior is discussed for various modalities and levels. We show how a virtual meeting room can be used for visualization and evaluation of behavioral models as well as a research tool for studying the effect of modified stimuli on the perception of behavior