Bhangra: Mystics, music and migration

Bhangra: Mystics, Music and Migration explores the origins of this folk song and dance from the Panjab in South Asia and its development into part of modern British culture in the hybrid soundscape of British Bhangra and beyond. This book originated in academic research and the Heritage-lottery funded Bhangra Renaissance project. Through ethnographic research, oral history interviews, performances, photography, story-telling and community activity it celebrates the past contribution of all those involved in Bhangra. This ground-breaking work provides an in-depth history of the spiritualism of performance and song, and an overview of the artists involved in influencing its development, as well as contemporaries leading the way of Bhangra’s renaissance amongst the South Asian diaspora in the UK and around the world

DEPENDENCY BASED COORDINATION FOR CONSISTENT SOLUTIONS IN DISTRIBUTED WORK

Many organizational problems can be decomposed into nearly independent subproblems the solution of which is the responsibility of independent agents. In this kind of work, which we call distributed work, the problems are only nearly independent since dependencies exist between the commitments required from each agent. As a consequence of these dependencies, the coordination problem becomes one of maintaining a consistent global solution in the face of the possibly conflicting activities of each agent. We define a normative model for coordination protocols that indicates the formal requirements for maintaining a globally consistent solution. The model identifies several properties that the protocol must enforce, namely serializability, atomicity, completeness, and soundness. We show that these properties are desirable in coordination protocols for distributed work problems.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Ebola US Patient Zero: lessons on misdiagnosis and effective use of electronic health records.

On September 30th, 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first travel-associated case of US Ebola in Dallas, TX. This case exposed two of the greatest concerns in patient safety in the US outpatient health care system: misdiagnosis and ineffective use of electronic health records (EHRs). The case received widespread media attention highlighting failures in disaster management, infectious disease control, national security, and emergency department (ED) care. In addition, an error in making a correct and timely Ebola diagnosis on initial ED presentation brought diagnostic decision-making vulnerabilities in the EHR era into the public eye. In this paper, we use this defining teachable moment to highlight the public health challenge of diagnostic errors and discuss the effective use of EHRs in the diagnostic process. We analyze the case to discuss several missed opportunities and outline key challenges and opportunities facing diagnostic decision-making in EHR-enabled health care. It is important to recognize the reality that EHRs suffer from major usability and inter-operability issues, but also to acknowledge that they are only tools and not a replacement for basic history-taking, examination skills, and critical thinking. While physicians and health care organizations ultimately need to own the responsibility for addressing diagnostic errors, several national-level initiatives can help, including working with software developers to improve EHR usability. Multifaceted approaches that account for both technical and non-technical factors will be needed. Ebola US Patient Zero reminds us that in certain cases, a single misdiagnosis can have widespread and costly implications for public health

MULTIPLE AGENT FORMALISMS FOR COORDINATION IN ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS

Many organizational problems are ill-structured where the structure of a problem is not apparent at the outset of the problem solving process. Agents responsible for these problems often decompose them into subproblems the solution of which is the responsibility of other agents. These problems are only nearly independent in the sense that temporal and technical dependencies exist between the different subproblems. Since the problems are interdependent, coordinating the activities of the different agents is important for ensuring that the partial solutions discovered by these different agents are not conflicting in terms of global consistency. Usual mechanisms for coordination include communication and negotiation between agents of interrelated problems. In this paper we describe a formalism for coordination in multiple agent ill-structured problems based on four properties of tasks, atomicity, serializability, completeness and soundness. We examine how these properties are essential for handling conflict resolution. We also outline some requirements for control.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

AN EXTENDED ATMS FOR DECOMPOSABLE PROBLEMS

When dealing with nearly decomposable problems such as those described by Simon (1973), the problem components may be worked on by different problem solvers that are spatially and temporally separated, with each problem solver constrained by assumptions it makes about the activities and choices of other problem solvers, that is by partial knowledge of the global problem. There are advantages to maintaining multiple solutions locally for as long as possible, even though a single final solution is desired. When it becomes less desirable to retract certain assumptions, these become constraints for other problem solvers and can be communicated to them via a truth maintenance system. We describe an extended architecture for an ATMS for these kinds of decomposable problemsInformation Systems Working Papers Serie

Removal of Colour From Biomethanated Distillery Waste by Treatment with Activated Sawdust

The aim of this work is to see the role of activated carbon (wood sawdust) and A. Niger in the removal of colour from the anaerobically digested molasses spent wash. Various operation parameters like pH, contact time, adsorbent dosage, concentration of phosphate and carbon source, were considered and their effect on decolourization of anaerobically digested MSW by activated carbon and A. Niger in batch mode was investigated

Effects of Epigallocatechin-3-gallate Treatment on Cognitive Deficits in a Down Syndrome Mouse Model

poster abstractDown syndrome (DS) is caused by three copies of human chromosome 21 (Hsa21) and results in a constellation of phenotypes that include intellectual disability (ID) and skeletal abnormalities. Ts65Dn mice, the most extensively studied model of DS, have three copies of approximately half the genes on Hsa21 and display many DS related phenotypes including skeletal and ID deficits. DYRK1A is found in three copies both in humans with DS and in Ts65Dn mice; DYRK1A has increased expression in humans with DS and is involved in a number of critical pathways including CNS development and osteoclastogenesis. Epigallcatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), the main polyphenolic compound found in green tea, inhibits Dyrk1a activity, and we have shown previously that a three-week treatment with EGCG during adolescence normalizes some skeletal abnormalities in Ts65Dn mice. The current study tested the hypothesis that a similar 3-week treatment with EGCG will also rescue cognitive deficits observed in Ts65Dn mice. Trisomic mice and euploid littermates were given EGCG or water (control) for three weeks during adolescence. Following termination of the treatment, the mice were tested sequentially (over 5 weeks) on locomotor activity (two daily 30-min sessions in an activity chamber), novel object recognition (NOR) memory, acquisition of delayed non-matching to place (DNMP) spatial working memory in a tmaze, or spatial learning and memory in the Morris water maze (MWM). Results to date indicate that Ts65Dn mice exhibit deficits in the learning and memory tasks compared to controls, but the 3-week EGCG treatment did not significantly improve their performance.We hypothesize that for EGCG to be effective for improving cognitive deficits of the Ts65Dn mice, it needs to be present in the brain during the behavioral testing period; our ongoing studies are testing this with continuous EGCG treatment throughout the behavioral testing process

Low field magnetic sensing with anisotropic magnetoresistive sensors

Operation of Honeywell's AMR sensors HMC1001 and HMC1002 has been investigated at low temperature. It has been shown that the magnetoresistive sensor can be used to monitor low magnetic environment in cryogenics. Изучена работа магниторезистивных датчиков HMC1001 и HMC1002 производства фирмы Honeywell при низких температурах. Показано, что датчики могут быть успешно использованы для измерения слабых магнитных полей в криогенной аппаратуре

Interaction effect of nitrogen and vermicompost in the presence of herbicide (Clodinafop propargyl) on nitrogen transformation in a sandy soil

A laboratory experiment with three levels of nitrogen (0, 100 and 200 mg kg-1), two levels of vermicompost (0 and 1 % on dry wt. basis) and two levels of herbicide (0 and 60 g a.i. ha-1) was conducted with sandy soil of Hisar to study the interaction of nitrogen and vermicompost in the presence of herbicide (clodinafop propargyl) on nitrogen transformation during 2014. NH4+-N contents increased upto the 14th day in soil and then declined up to 56th day under control. NO3--N content in soil increased significantly throughout the incubation study under control. With con-junctive use of nitrogen along with vermicompost, NH4+-N contents increased significantly in the soil upto 14th day of incubation with an increase from 44.49 to 73.22 mg kg-1 and 64.00 to 102.87 mg kg-1, whereas NO3--N content in soil significantly increased throughout the incubation study over control and the increase was from 13.68 to 101.36 mg kg-1 and 23.19 to 115.48 mg kg-1. However, NH4+-N and NO3--N decreased significantly at all incubation periods with the application of herbicide alone and in presence of nitrogen as well as vermicompost. The study revealed that judi-cious use of N, leads to more availability of N to crop and prevents the environmental pollution. Higher levels of N application may increase the risk of ground water pollution due to more availability of NO3- ion which can be sub-jected to leaching losses. Vermicompost proved to be the important source of nutrients as it has narrow C:N ratio and decompose more quickly than other organic manures such as FYM etc. Among commonly used herbicides, clodinafop propargyl is most commonly used herbicide and may have negative impact on the microbial population and thus may hinder the transformation processes particularly in sandy soils which have low organic matter content and thereby affecting the availability of nutrients to crop and play decisive role in crop yields