The Mists of Ramanna

Scholars have long accepted the belief that a Theravada Buddhist Mon kingdom, Ramannadesa, flourished in coastal Lower Burma until it was conquered in 1057 by King Aniruddha of Pagan—which then became, in essence, the new custodian and repository of Mon culture in the Upper Burmese interior. This scenario, which Aung-Thwin calls the ""Mon Paradigm,"" has circumscribed much of the scholarship on early Burma and significantly shaped the history of Southeast Asia for more than a century. Now, in a masterful reassessment of Burmese history, Michael Aung-Thwin reexamines the original contemporary accounts and sources without finding any evidence of an early Theravada Mon polity or a conquest by Aniruddha. The paradigm, he finds, cannot be sustained. Aung-Thwin meticulously traces the paradigm's creation to the merging of two temporally, causally, and contextually unrelated Mon and Burmese narratives

Augmented Reality Based Reaching Exercise for shoulder Rehabilitation

Stroke or cerebrovascular accident (CVA) causes disability and affected the personâs quality of life. The rehabilitation therapies are normally conducted for post stroke patients to promote their quality of life and daily living standard. Among rehabilitation exercises, shoulder range of motion (ROM) exercise and muscle strengthening exercise are the most important rehabilitation therapies for post stroke patients as this can improve their activities of daily life. Among the shoulder ROM exercises, the reaching exercise is normally conducted with checkerboard in rehabilitation centre as a traditional therapy which becomes boring after trained for few times. To overcome this problem, same exercise with augmented reality (AR) based game like style incorporate with motivated visual and audio feedbacks has developed and details of the system is presented in this paper. The AR based reaching exercise has developed within the normal average range of motion. The system includes personal computer or laptop, webcam, marker and BioGraph Infiniti system. Thus, it can be used at home without modifying anything and patient can use easily by himself without extra help. The developed system has integrated with biofeedback system to become more effective in rehabilitation. The integrated system has already tested with healthy subject and worked perfectly with positive feedbacks

Development of augmented reality rehabilitation games integrated with biofeedback for upper limb

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability in all over the world. This disability greatly impacts the stroke patients' daily life activities. Thus, rehabilitation exercises are essential for post stroke patients to restore their lost functions gradually for daily life activities. Traditional rehabilitation exercises do not motivate the post stroke patients as they are normally humdrum and required expensive equipments. Therefore, this paper presents the development of low -cost motivating webcam colour based visual tracking augmented reality (AR) system with biofeedback for upper-limb post stroke rehabilitation therapy. Augmented Reality is a novel form of human-computer interface which overlay the computer-generated information on the real world environment rather than replaces it. In the developed AR system, two games; Ping Pong Rehab (PPR) and Balloon Collection Rehab (BCR) are created based on game design principle. PPR game trains shoulder and arm muscles during rehabilitation therapy whilst BCR game trains shoulder, arm and forearm muscles. Both games have been built and integrated with Biograph Infiniti software to monitor the muscles' performance. The integrated system will obtain the biofeedback EMG signals from patients that will be utilised for future developments. It allows the patients to monitor their arms and muscles movements in real time on the display screen via low-cost webcam. The system aims for home based rehabilitation system and friendly used by patients themselves. The developed integrated system has tested with able subject and it worked perfectly during the test

Real time biosignal-Driven illusion system for upper limb rehabilitation

This paper presents design and development of real time biosignal-driven illusion system: Augmented Reality based Illusion System (ARIS) for upper limb motor rehabilitation. ARIS is a hospital / home based self-motivated whole arm rehabilitation system that aims to improve and restore the lost upper limb functions due to Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA) or stroke. Taking the advantage of human brain plasticity nature, the system incorporates with number of technologies to provide fast recovery by re-establishing the neural pathways and synapses that able to control the mobility. These technologies include Augmented Reality (AR) where illusion environment is developed, computer vision technology to track multiple colors in real time, EMG acquisition system to detect the user intention in real time and 3D modelling library to develop Virtual Arm (VA) model where human biomechanics are applied to mimic the movement of real arm. The system operates according to the user intention via surface electromyography (sEMG) threshold level. In the case of real arm cannot reach to the desired position, VA will take over the job of real arm to complete the exercise. The effectiveness of the developed ARIS has evaluated via questionnaire, graphical and analytical measurements which provided with positive results

Augmented Reality based Illusion System with biofeedback

This paper presents the Augmented Reality based Illusion System (ARIS) with biofeedback for upper limb rehabilitation. It aims for fast recovery of motor deficit with motivational approach over traditional upper limb rehabilitation methods. The system incorporates with Augmented Reality (AR) technology to develop upper limb rehabilitation exercise and computer vision with color recognition technique to create 'Fool-the-Brain' concept for fast recovery of neural impairment due to various motor injuries. The rehabilitation exercise in ARIS is aiming to increase the shoulder joint range of motions by performing reaching movements and to strengthen the associated muscles. 'Fool-the-Brain' concept is introduced during performing rehabilitation exercise to perceive artificial visual feedback where user's real impaired arm is covered by Virtual Arm (VA). When the real arm cannot perform the required task, VA will take over the job of real one and will make the user perceives the sense that is still be able to accomplish the task with own effort. Evaluation has performed and results indicate that ARIS with biofeedback is a potential upper limb rehabilitation system for people with upper limb motor deficit. © 2014 IEEE

Scaled conjugate gradient based decision support system for automated diagnosis of skin cancer

Melanoma is the most deathful form of skin cancer but early diagnosis can ensure a high rate of survival. Early diagnosis is one of the greatest challenges due to lack of experience of general practitioners (GPs). This paper presents a clinical decision support system designed for the use of general practitioners, aiming to save time and resources in the diagnostic process. Segmentation, pattern recognition, and lesion detection are the important steps in the proposed decision support system. The system analyses the images to extract the affected area using a novel proposed segmentation method. It determinates the underlying features which indicate the difference between melanoma and benign images and makes a decision. Considering the efficiency of neural networks in classification of complex data, scaled conjugate gradient based neural network is used for classification. The presented work also considers analyzed performance of other efficient neural network training algorithms on the specific skin lesion diagnostic problem and discussed the corresponding findings. The best diagnostic rates obtainedthrough the proposed decision support system are around 92%

Efektifitas Media Charta Hasil Inovasi Berbasis Lampu Digital pada Pelajaran Biologi Materi Sistim Organ Manusia

Media carta berbasis lampu digital telah diteliti penerapannya pada sekolah MTs Negeri Mariai, SMP Negeri 11 Aimas dan MTs Al-Ma\u27arif 01 Aimas tanggal 8 bulan 4 tahun 2013 untuk mengetahui efektifitas dari media pelajaran pada mata pelajaran biologi pokok pembahasan sistem organ pada manusia. Metode penelitian ini adalah kuantitatif yang sistematik. Sampel dibedakan menjadi satu kelas kontrol dan satu kelas eksperimen tiap-tiap sekolah. Instrumen yang digunakan adalah tes tertulis, angket siswa, observasi teman sejawat dan dokumentasi. Uji analisis diberlakukan untuk menghitung validilitas, normalitas dan reabilitas. Uji hipotesis dilakukan dengan uji t. Hasil penelitian diperoleh nilai validitas yakni instrumen tes tertulis secara umum dapat dinyatakan valid. Uji reabilitas diperoleh 0,713 yang menandakan bahwa reabil, sedangkan uji normalitas diperoleh 0,079 sampai 0,777 yang menandakan data hasil tes normal. Hasil analisis uji t diperoleh untuk sekolah MTs Negeri Mariai t hitung yakni 5,74992 dan t tabel  yakni 2,01365 maka dinyatakan efektif. Hasil di sekolah SMP Negeri 11 Aimas diperoleh t hitung yakni  6.67707, t tabel yakni 2,0042 maka dinyatakan efektif , sedang di sekolah MTs Al-Ma\u27arif 01diperoleh t hitung  yakni 0.07084 t tabel  yakni  2,0313 maka dapat dinyatakan tidak efektif.&nbsp

Editorial

Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Myanma Pyay (Burma): An Introductio

A pilot study of temsirolimus and body composition.

PurposeBody weight and composition play a role in cancer etiology, prognosis, and treatment response. Therefore, we analyzed the weight, body composition changes, and outcome in patients treated with temsirolimus, an mTor inhibitor that has weight loss as one of its side effects.Patients and methodsSixteen patients with advanced solid tumors treated with temsirolimus were studied; body composition was evaluated utilizing computerized tomography images. Sarcopenia was defined as skeletal muscle index lower than 38.5 cm(2)/m(2) for women and 52.4 cm(2)/m(2) for men.ResultsFive of 16 patients (31 %) were men; median age, 60 years. Forty-four percent (7/16) of patients were sarcopenic. Fatigue, anemia, hyperglycemia, and hyperlipidemia were common. Baseline sarcopenia and body composition did not correlate with worse toxicity or treatment outcome. However, there was a trend for greater loss of adipose area (p = 0.07), fat mass (p = 0.09), and adipose index (p = 0.07) for patients with grade 3 or 4 toxicities versus those with grade 1 and 2 side effects.ConclusionPatients with higher grade toxicities tended to lose more body fat, suggesting a possible end-organ metabolic effect of temsirolimus. These observations merit exploration in a larger cohort of patients