9,015 research outputs found
Urban heritage conservation and rapid urbanization : insights from Surat, India
Currently, heritage is challenged in the Indian city of Surat due to diverse pressures, including rapid urbanization, increasing housing demand, and socio‐cultural and climate changes. Where rapid demographic growth of urban areas is happening, heritage is disappearing at an alarming rate. Despite some efforts from the local government, urban cultural heritage is being neglected and historic buildings keep being replaced by ordinary concrete buildings at a worryingly rapid pace. Discussions of challenges and issues of Surat’s urban area is supported by a qualitative dataset, including in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with local policy makers, planners, and heritage experts, triangulated by observation and a photo‐survey of two historic areas. Findings from this study reveal a myriad of challenges such as: inadequacy of urban conservation management policies and processes focused on heritage, absence of skills, training, and resources amongst decision makers and persistent conflict and competition between heritage conservation needs and developers’ interests. Furthermore, the values and significance of Surat’s tangible and intangible heritage is not fully recognized by its citizens and heritage stakeholders. A crucial opportunity exists for Surat to maximize the potential of heritage and reinforce urban identity for its present and future generations. Surat’s context is representative of general trends and conservation challenges and therefore recommendations developed in this study hold the potential to offer interesting insights to the wider planners and conservationists’ international community. This paper recommends thoughtful integration of sustainable heritage urban conservation into local urban development frameworks and the establishment of approaches that recognize the plurality of heritage values
Reversed Procrastination by Focal Disruption of Medial Frontal Cortex.
An enduring puzzle in the neuroscience of voluntary action is the origin of the remarkably wide dispersion of the reaction time distribution, an interval far greater than is explained by synaptic or signal transductive noise [1, 2]. That we are able to change our planned actions-a key criterion of volition [3]-so close to the time of their onset implies decision-making must reach deep into the execution of action itself [4-6]. It has been influentially suggested the reaction time distribution therefore reflects deliberate neural procrastination [7], giving alternative response tendencies sufficient time for fair competition in pursuing a decision threshold that determines which one is behaviorally manifest: a race model, where action selection and execution are closely interrelated [8-11]. Although the medial frontal cortex exhibits a sensitivity to reaction time on functional imaging that is consistent with such a mechanism [12-14], direct evidence from disruptive studies has hitherto been lacking. If movement-generating and movement-delaying neural substrates are closely co-localized here, a large-scale lesion will inevitably mask any acceleration, for the movement itself could be disrupted. Circumventing this problem, here we observed focal intracranial electrical disruption of the medial frontal wall in the context of the pre-surgical evaluation of two patients with epilepsy temporarily reversing such hypothesized procrastination. Effector-specific behavioral acceleration, time-locked to the period of electrical disruption, occurred exclusively at a specific locus at the ventral border of the pre-supplementary motor area. A cardinal prediction of race models of voluntary action is thereby substantiated in the human brain
Reversed Procrastination by Focal Disruption of Medial Frontal Cortex.
An enduring puzzle in the neuroscience of voluntary action is the origin of the remarkably wide dispersion of the reaction time distribution, an interval far greater than is explained by synaptic or signal transductive noise [1, 2]. That we are able to change our planned actions-a key criterion of volition [3]-so close to the time of their onset implies decision-making must reach deep into the execution of action itself [4-6]. It has been influentially suggested the reaction time distribution therefore reflects deliberate neural procrastination [7], giving alternative response tendencies sufficient time for fair competition in pursuing a decision threshold that determines which one is behaviorally manifest: a race model, where action selection and execution are closely interrelated [8-11]. Although the medial frontal cortex exhibits a sensitivity to reaction time on functional imaging that is consistent with such a mechanism [12-14], direct evidence from disruptive studies has hitherto been lacking. If movement-generating and movement-delaying neural substrates are closely co-localized here, a large-scale lesion will inevitably mask any acceleration, for the movement itself could be disrupted. Circumventing this problem, here we observed focal intracranial electrical disruption of the medial frontal wall in the context of the pre-surgical evaluation of two patients with epilepsy temporarily reversing such hypothesized procrastination. Effector-specific behavioral acceleration, time-locked to the period of electrical disruption, occurred exclusively at a specific locus at the ventral border of the pre-supplementary motor area. A cardinal prediction of race models of voluntary action is thereby substantiated in the human brain
Drug utilization pattern of antimicrobial agents in an outpatient department of otorhinolaryngology in a tertiary care hospital: a prospective, cross-sectional study
Background: Study based on antimicrobial drug utilization pattern and focus on factors related to prescribing, administering and its associated events. The aim of this study is to assess the prescribing patterns of antimicrobials, to assess the appropriateness of prescribed antimicrobials in an ear, nose and throat (ENT) infections.Methods: A prospective observational drug utilization study was carried out in otorhinolaryngology department for a period of 4 months. Patients who attended the ENT outpatient department (OPD) with ENT infections were included in the study and patients who were not willing to participate in the study were excluded and the data were analyzed.Results: Out of 155 patients, the average number of drugs per patient was 1.2. The percentage of drugs prescribed with the generic name was 26.32%. During this study, it was found that the most commonly prescribed groups of antimicrobials were penicillins (34.87%) followed by fluroqinolones (26.32%) and nitroimidazole (25%). During the study, it was observed that 46.71% patients visited for treating ear infections, 12.5% for nasal infections and 40.79% for throat infections. The routes of administration were oral (74.23%) and topical (20.10%).Conclusions: Our study shows some rational prescription patterns like less utilization of antimicrobials in ENT infections and were according to standard treatment guideline. The results of this study will be useful in future for making standard treatment guidelines. It also promotes the rational prescription and rational use of drugs
Evolution of dopant-induced helium nanoplasmas
Two-component nanoplasmas generated by strong-field ionization of doped
helium nanodroplets are studied in a pump-probe experiment using few-cycle
laser pulses in combination with molecular dynamics simulations. High yields of
helium ions and a pronounced, droplet size-dependent resonance structure in the
pump-probe transients reveal the evolution of the dopant-induced helium
nanoplasma. The pump-probe dynamics is interpreted in terms of strong inner
ionization by the pump pulse and resonant heating by the probe pulse which
controls the final charge states detected via the frustration of electron-ion
recombination
Role of Keystone Species in Aquatic Ecosystem
A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its environment relative to its abundance. Such species play a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organism s in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species
in the community
Controlling laser spectra in a phaseonium photonic crystal using maser
We study the control of quantum resonances in photonic crystals with
electromagnetically induced transparency driven by microwave field. In addition
to the control laser, the intensity and phase of the maser can alter the
transmission and reflection spectra in interesting ways, producing hyperfine
resonances through the combined effects of multiple scattering in the
superstructure.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Chemistry of enediynyl azides: activation through a novel pathway
The spontaneous activation of a nonaromatic enediynyl azide under ambient conditions has been demonstrated. The aromatic enediyne followed the expected cycloaddition with the alkene in the neighbouring arm to form a stable bridged bicyclic enediyne
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