Concurrent investigation of global motion and form processing in amblyopia: an equivalent noise approach

PURPOSE: Directly comparing the motion and form processing in neurologic disorders has remained difficult due to the limitations in the experimental stimulus. In the current study, motion and form processing in amblyopia was characterized using random dot stimuli in different noise levels to parse out the effect of local and global processing on motion and form perception. METHODS: A total of 17 amblyopes (8 anisometropic and 9 strabismic), and 12 visually normal subjects monocularly estimated the global direction of motion and global orientation in random dot kinematograms (RDK) and Glass patterns (Glass), whose directions/orientations were drawn from normal distributions with a range of means and variances that served as external noise. Direction/orientation discrimination thresholds were measured without noise first then variance threshold was measured at the multiples of the direction/orientation threshold. The direction/orientation and variance thresholds were modelled to estimate internal noise and sampling efficiency parameters. RESULTS: Overall, the thresholds for Glass were higher than RDK for all subjects. The thresholds for both Glass and RDK were higher in the strabismic eyes compared with the fellow and normal eyes. On the other hand, the thresholds for anisometropic amblyopic eyes were similar to the normal eyes. The worse performance of strabismic amblyopes was best explained by relatively low sampling efficiency compared with other groups (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: A deficit in global motion and form perception was only evident in strabismic amblyopia. Contrary to the dorsal stream deficiency hypothesis assumed in other developmental disorders, deficits were present in both motion (dorsal) and form (ventral) processing

Laparoscopic uterovaginal anastomosis for cervicovaginal agenesis

Cervico-vaginal agenesis is an extremely uncommon mullerian abnormality. Therefore, we describe a case of a female patient, age 21, known case of cervico-vaginal agenesis presented with cyclic abdominal pain and vomiting. She underwent three surgeries for vaginal correction to drain haemometra. She underwent Laparoscopic uterovaginal anastomosis. After surgery, the patient experienced regular menstrual cycles without dysmenorrhea. On follow-up, hysteroscopy showed a patent anastomosis, vagina was completely healed and she continued to have regular menstrual cycles

Contraceptive intentions among Christian women in India: a multi-stage Logit model analysis

Background: The main objective of this paper is to find how end level service providers of contraceptives can meet problems in identifying specific non-users at different stages of service delivery.  Methods: A multi-stage Logit model is developed from NFHS (2005-06) data for Christian women in India. The initial model is selected by Brown screening technique and for the final model, likelihood ratio statistic and Akaike information criterion is used. The study variables are age, number of living children, unmet need, infecundity, side effects of contraceptive use, education and place of residence, SLI and cash earning.Results: Though spatial factors affect both Christian and non-Christian women, SLI directly affect Christian womens’ intention while it operates through education for non-Christian women. The best model for future contraceptive intention among Christian women is affected by unmet need operating through standard of living.Conclusions: The study finds two different paths of causation affecting future contraceptive intentions of Christian and non-Christian women with separate policy concerns and suggests that paths to future contraceptive intentions of Christian women may act as a social learning through diffusion process for non-Christian women

Coincidence Points for Mappings under Generalized Contraction

In this paper we establish some results on the existence of coincidence and fixed points for multi-valued and single valued mappings extending the result of Feng and Liu [2] and Liu et.al [5]. It is also proved with counter example that our results generalize and extend some well known results. Key Words: common fixed point, Coincidence point, multi-valued mappings

Dynamics of contraceptive use among schedule caste women in Uttar Pradesh

Background: Scheduled caste is socially and economically disadvantaged population and contributes to one fifth of India’s population. Population policy (2002), government of India, has set the task of addressing unmet need for contraception in order to achieve the medium term objective of bringing the total fertility rate down to replacement level by the year 2010.  Methods: The data used for the paper has been taken from Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) Survey round-II (2001-02) phase-I of Uttar Pradesh. Information of only scheduled caste women has been used for analysis. Bi-variate and logistic regression analysis was carried out.Results: There is positive relationship between knowledge of traditional methods, level of education and standard of living; which is expected to have inverse relationship. Use of contraceptive methods among these groups of women is substantially low, but it follows an expected trend. Government health care institutions remain the main source of contraception for scheduled caste women in the study area.Conclusions: Results from the logistic analysis give a clear picture that women with the information/knowledge are more likely to use the method in the near future.

Corporate social disclosures in the knowledge-based sector in an emerging economy

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting by the BSE TECk Sector in the developing economy of India. Using content analysis, this study analyses the disclosures of corporate social responsibility elements by the BSE TECk Sector in the annual reports. CSR disclosures are analysed in context of sources, nature and the item of information.The findings of the study advice that all the companies in the BSE TECk index disclose social issues in their annual reports. Human resources related issues have found greater attention in annual report of the sample companies and less attention has been provided to ethical issues. The study highlights that it is important for the corporate sector to disclose CSR related matters as part of their overall corporate and business performance reporting model. The paper also provides some practical implications about reporting of socially responsible activities for knowledge based companies