The Politics behind the Veil

Using a natural experiment, we find that in provinces where Turkey’s Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) just won the election in 2004, women, including those who are weakly religious or non-religious, now veil far more than in provinces in which AKP just lost, the more so the poorer they are. This effect, as we predict, does not occur for praying regularly which is more costly and harder to observe practice. We argue that veiling is higher in AKP provinces not only because of a generic aim to conform to the stricter mores fostered by the victorious party. We find that those who veil, particularly those in AKP provinces who are not pious, are more politically active than those who do not veil. This may be an indication that veiling could partly be a strategic response to policies, which favour those who are or appear pious. Our study suggests that observable religious practices may have their independent dynamics driven by the pursuit of instrumental goals. Our results also suggest that parties with a religious ideology have an advantage over their secular counterparts in solving the clientelistic information problem, for they can rely on religious symbols for screening and signalling

Force spectroscopy using bimodal frequency modulation atomic force microscopy

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We propose a force-spectroscopy technique where a higher order mode of a cantilever is excited simultaneously with the first. Resonance tracking of both vibration modes through a frequency modulation scheme provides a way to extract topographical information and the gradient of the tip-sample interaction within a single surface scan. We provide an analytic treatment of the scheme, derive expressions relating frequency shifts of the higher mode and the tip-sample forces, and offer two methods of improving the accuracy of reconstruction of the force gradient. Finally, we confirm our predictions by numerical simulations. © 2011 American Physical Society

Performance measures for object detection evaluation

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We propose a new procedure for quantitative evaluation of object detection algorithms. The procedure consists of a matching stage for finding correspondences between reference and output objects, an accuracy score that is sensitive to object shapes as well as boundary and fragmentation errors, and a ranking step for final ordering of the algorithms using multiple performance indicators. The procedure is illustrated on a building detection task where the resulting rankings are consistent with the visual inspection of the detection maps. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Improved costs and outcomes with conscious sedation vs general anesthesia in TAVR patients: Time to wake up?

BackgroundTranscatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has become a commonplace procedure for the treatment of aortic stenosis in higher risk surgical patients. With the high cost and steadily increasing number of patients receiving TAVR, emphasis has been placed on optimizing outcomes as well as resource utilization. Recently, studies have demonstrated the feasibility of conscious sedation in lieu of general anesthesia for TAVR. This study aimed to investigate the clinical as well as cost outcomes associated with conscious sedation in comparison to general anesthesia in TAVR.MethodsRecords for all adult patients undergoing TAVR at our institution between August 2012 and June 2016 were included using our institutional Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and American College of Cardiology (ACC) registries. Cost data was gathered using the BIOME database. Patients were stratified into two groups according to whether they received general anesthesia (GA) or conscious sedation (CS) during the procedure. No-replacement propensity score matching was done using the validated STS predicted risk of mortality (PROM) as a propensity score. Primary outcome measure with survival to discharge and several secondary outcome measures were also included in analysis. According to our institution's data reporting guidelines, all cost data is presented as a percentage of the general anesthesia control group cost.ResultsOf the 231 patients initially identified, 225 (157 GA, 68 CS) were included for analysis. After no-replacement propensity score matching, 196 patients (147 GA, 49 CS) remained. Overall mortality was 1.5% in the matched population with a trend towards lower mortality in the CS group. Conscious sedation was associated with significantly fewer ICU hours (30 vs 96 hours, p = <0.001) and total hospital days (4.9 vs 10.4, p<0.001). Additionally, there was a 28% decrease in direct cost (p<0.001) as well as significant decreases in all individual all cost categories associated with the use of conscious sedation. There was no difference in composite major adverse events between groups. These trends remained on all subsequent subgroup analyses.ConclusionConscious sedation is emerging as a safe and viable option for anesthesia in patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement. The use of conscious sedation was not only associated with similar rates of adverse events, but also shortened ICU and overall hospital stays. Finally, there were significant decreases in all cost categories when compared to a propensity matched cohort receiving general anesthesia

Heating of magnetic fluid systems driven by circularly polarized magnetic field

Cataloged from PDF version of article.A theory is presented to calculate the heat dissipation of a magnetic suspension, a ferrofluid, driven by7 circularly polarized magnetic field. Theory is tested by in vitro experiments and it is shown that, regardless of the character of the relaxation process, linearly and circularly polarized magnetic field excitations, having the same root-mean-square magnitude, are equivalent in terms of heating efficiency. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Size-Aware Hypergraph Motifs

Complex systems frequently exhibit multi-way, rather than pairwise, interactions. These group interactions cannot be faithfully modeled as collections of pairwise interactions using graphs, and instead require hypergraphs. However, methods that analyze hypergraphs directly, rather than via lossy graph reductions, remain limited. Hypergraph motif mining holds promise in this regard, as motif patterns serve as building blocks for larger group interactions which are inexpressible by graphs. Recent work has focused on categorizing and counting hypergraph motifs based on the existence of nodes in hyperedge intersection regions. Here, we argue that the relative sizes of hyperedge intersections within motifs contain varied and valuable information. We propose a suite of efficient algorithms for finding triplets of hyperedges based on optimizing the sizes of these intersection patterns. This formulation uncovers interesting local patterns of interaction, finding hyperedge triplets that either (1) are the least correlated with each other, (2) have the highest pairwise but not groupwise correlation, or (3) are the most correlated with each other. We formalize this as a combinatorial optimization problem and design efficient algorithms based on filtering hyperedges. Our experimental evaluation shows that the resulting hyperedge triplets yield insightful information on real-world hypergraphs. Our approach is also orders of magnitude faster than a naive baseline implementation

Behind the Veil: The Strategic Use of Religious Garb

There is anecdotal evidence that since the late 20th century young, educated, and urban Muslim women veil more frequently and strictly. Does this imply that the classical sociological theories of religion, which predict that modernization should cause a decrease in religious behaviours, do not apply to Islam? We investigate this question using structural equation modelling to analyse three datasets, one from Turkey, one covering 25 Muslim countries, and one from Belgium where Muslims are a minority. We find that averagely religious women conform to the classical theories’ predictions. But among highly religious women the modernizing forces—education, occupation and higher income, urban living, and contacts with non-Muslims—increase veiling. We conjecture that for highly religious women modernizing factors raise the risk and temptation in women's environments that imperil their reputation for modesty: veiling would then be a strategic response, a form either of commitment to prevent the breach of religious norms or of signalling women’s piety to their communities. Our findings have implications for cultural policy and Muslim integration in Europe