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

Efficient representation of texture details in medical images by fusion of Ripplet and DDCT transformed images

Purpose: To evaluate and compare the performance of Ripplet Type-1 transform and directional discrete cosine transform (DDCT) and their combinations for improved representation of MRI images while preserving its fine features such as edges along the smooth curves and textures.Methods: In a novel image representation method based on fusion of Ripplet type-1 and conventional/directional DCT transforms, source images were enhanced in terms of visual quality using Ripplet and DDCT and their various combinations. The enhancement achieved was quantified on the basis of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), mean square error (MSE), structural content (SC), average difference (AD), maximum difference (MD), normalized cross correlation (NCC), and normalized absolute error (NAE). To determine the attributes of both transforms, these transforms were combined to represent the entire image as well. All the possible combinations were tested to present a complete study of combinations of the transforms and the contrasts were evaluated amongst all the combinations.Results: While using the direct combining method (DDCT) first and then the Ripplet method, a PSNR value of 32.3512 was obtained which is comparatively higher than the PSNR values of the other combinations. This novel designed technique gives PSNR value approximately equal to the PSNR’s of parent techniques. Along with this, it was able to preserve edge information, texture information and various other directional image features. The fusion of DDCT followed by the Ripplet reproduced the best images.Conclusion: The transformation of images using Ripplet followed by DDCT ensures a more efficient method for the representation of images with preservation of its fine details like edges and textures.Keywords: Ripplet, Directional discrete cosine transform (DDCT), Peak signal to noise ratio, MSE (mean square error), SC (structural content), MD (maximum difference), NCC (normalized cross correlatio

Translation Errors Significantly Impact Low-Resource Languages in Cross-Lingual Learning

Popular benchmarks (e.g., XNLI) used to evaluate cross-lingual language understanding consist of parallel versions of English evaluation sets in multiple target languages created with the help of professional translators. When creating such parallel data, it is critical to ensure high-quality translations for all target languages for an accurate characterization of cross-lingual transfer. In this work, we find that translation inconsistencies do exist and interestingly they disproportionally impact low-resource languages in XNLI. To identify such inconsistencies, we propose measuring the gap in performance between zero-shot evaluations on the human-translated and machine-translated target text across multiple target languages; relatively large gaps are indicative of translation errors. We also corroborate that translation errors exist for two target languages, namely Hindi and Urdu, by doing a manual reannotation of human-translated test instances in these two languages and finding poor agreement with the original English labels these instances were supposed to inherit.Comment: Accepted to main proceedings of "The 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Free-floating dual-arm robots for space assembly

Freely moving systems in space conserve linear and angular momentum. As moving systems collide, the velocities get altered due to transfer of momentum. The development of strategies for assembly in a free-floating work environment requires a good understanding of primitives such as self motion of the robot, propulsion of the robot due to onboard thrusters, docking of the robot, retrieval of an object from a collection of objects, and release of an object in an object pool. The analytics of such assemblies involve not only kinematics and rigid body dynamics but also collision and impact dynamics of multibody systems. In an effort to understand such assemblies in zero gravity space environment, we are currently developing at Ohio University a free-floating assembly facility with a dual-arm planar robot equipped with thrusters, a free-floating material table, and a free-floating assembly table. The objective is to pick up workpieces from the material table and combine them into prespecified assemblies. This paper presents analytical models of assembly primitives and strategies for overall assembly. A computer simulation of an assembly is developed using the analytical models. The experiment facility will be used to verify the theoretical predictions

Silver-Russell Syndrome: A Case Report

A 15-year-old male boy with hemihypertrophy (left side) of the body was admitted in the hospital with the history of repeated attacks of convulsion. The patient was diagnosed as Silver-Russell syndrome on clinical ground. Silver-Russell syndrome (SRS) is a very rare genetic disorder that appears no later than early childhood. This is usually characterized by asymmetry in the size of the two halves or other parts of the body. Silver-Russell Syndrome occurs mostly in isolated cases because of sporadic genetic changes (mutations) for no apparent reason. For lack of facilities we were not able to do genetic study

Impact of serum magnesium levels in critically ill elderly patients—A study in a rural teaching hospital

AbstractBackground/PurposeMagnesium deficiency has been a common, but easily ignored, electrolyte abnormality. Studies on magnesium deficiency are lacking in India, especially in a rural setting. Here, we have correlated serum magnesium levels with outcomes in elderly patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit with respect to the length of intensive care unit stay, need for mechanical ventilatory support and its duration, and outcome (discharge/death).MethodsA prospective, observational study was conducted in patients aged 60 years and older, who had been admitted to the intensive care unit of the medicine department for over a year. The chi-square test was applied to correlate hypomagnesemia with the outcome.ResultsIn our study, 59.30% of the elderly patients had hypomagnesemia. Compared with patients with a normal magnesium level, hypomagnesemic patients had no correlation with the duration of medical intensive care unit stay (5.57±6.10 days vs. 5.61±5.55 days), but the need for mechanical ventilation (57.84% vs. 45.71%), rate of discharge from the intensive care unit or cure (60.28% vs. 71.42% ), rate of death (39.21% vs. 28.57%), and mean duration of ventilation (3.07±5.05 days vs. 2.15±3.46 days) were higher. However, no significant statistical difference was found between these groups.ConclusionHypomagnesemia was associated with a slightly higher mortality rate. Requirement and duration of ventilatory support were also higher, although not statistically significant. Hypomagnesemia was not found to have any impact on the duration of medical intensive care unit stay. Monitoring of serum magnesium levels may have prognostic and perhaps therapeutic implications in the elderly

Validation of the use of POSSUM score in enteric perforation peritonitis - results of a prospective study

Introduction: The objective of the study was to present our last 5-years experience of peritonitis and validate POSSUM score in predicting mortality and morbidity in patients of enteric perforation (EP) peritonitis. Methods: Data was collected prospectively for all peritonitis cases admitted in single surgical unit from January 2005 to December 2009. Parameters for calculating POSSUM were also retrieved; in these patients, O:E (Observed vs. Expected) ratio of mortality and morbidity were estimated after calculating predicted mortality and morbidity by exponential regression equations. Results: 887 patients with peritonitis were admitted and treated in this unit during the 5 years of study period. Duodenal (n=431; 48%) followed by ileal (n=380; 42.8%) perforations were the commonest. Mean age of the patients was 34 years and 86% were males. Mean delay in presentation was 78.5 hrs. Mean duration of hospital and ICU stay was 13 and 7.2 days. Postoperative complications were seen in 481 (54%) patients, and 90 (10%) patients died. POSSUM scores and predicted mortality/morbidity were calculated in 380 patients of ileal perforation peritonitis; O:E ratio of mortality and morbidity were 0.47 and 0.85 in these patients. Conclusion: POSSUM and P-POSSUM are accurate tools for predicting morbidity and mortality respectively in EP patients. Though they may sometime over or under predict morbidity as well as mortality.Key words: Enteric perforation, Peritonitis, POSSUM , P-POSSU

Novel swing-assist un-motorized exoskeletons for gait training

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Robotics is emerging as a promising tool for functional training of human movement. Much of the research in this area over the last decade has focused on upper extremity orthotic devices. Some recent commercial designs proposed for the lower extremity are powered and expensive – hence, these could have limited affordability by most clinics. In this paper, we present a novel un-motorized bilateral exoskeleton that can be used to assist in treadmill training of motor-impaired patients, such as with motor-incomplete spinal cord injury. The exoskeleton is designed such that the human leg will have a desirable swing motion, once it is strapped to the exoskeleton. Since this exoskeleton is un-motorized, it can potentially be produced cheaply and could reduce the physical demand on therapists during treadmill training.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A swing-assist bilateral exoskeleton was designed and fabricated at the University of Delaware having the following salient features: (i) The design uses torsional springs at the hip and the knee joints to assist the swing motion. The springs get charged by the treadmill during stance phase of the leg and provide propulsion forces to the leg during swing. (ii) The design of the exoskeleton uses simple dynamic models of sagittal plane walking, which are used to optimize the parameters of the springs so that the foot can clear the ground and have a desirable forward motion during walking. The bilateral exoskeleton was tested on a healthy subject during treadmill walking for a range of walking speeds between 1.0 mph and 4.0 mph. Joint encoders and interface force-torque sensors mounted on the exoskeleton were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the exoskeleton in terms of the hip and knee joint torques applied by the human during treadmill walking.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We compared two different cases. In case 1, we estimated the torque applied by the human joints when walking with the device using the joint kinematic data and interface force-torque sensors. In case 2, we calculated the required torque to perform a similar gait only using the kinematic data collected from joint motion sensors. On analysis, we found that at 2.0 mph, the device was effective in reducing the maximum hip torque requirement and the knee joint torque during the beginning of the swing. These behaviors were retained as the treadmill speed was changed between 1–4 mph. These results were remarkable considering the simplicity of the dynamic model, model uncertainty, non-ideal spring behavior, and friction in the joints. We believe that the results can be further improved in the future. Nevertheless, this promises to provide a useful and effective methodolgy for design of un-motorized exoskeletons to assist and train swing of motor-impaired patients.</p