55 research outputs found

    Not All Politicians Are the Same: The Effect of Gender and Political Party on Candidate Evaluation

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    This study seeks to examine how gender stereotypes and political party stereotypes influence voters’ evaluation of candidates and vote choice through evaluating voters’ reactions to stereotypic expectancy violations by fictional candidates. Previous research has suggested that multiple factors contribute to vote choice, such as political party affiliation and subjective attitudes about gender roles and stereotypes. Participants (n = 200), recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, were asked to evaluate fictional Republican and Democratic male and female presidential candidates, and to fill out surveys defining their attitudes and beliefs on gender roles and stereotypes. No interactions were found between a candidate’s gender and political party and the participants’ political party affiliation. Attitudes about gender roles for men and women played a part in evaluating candidates’ competency and ability to govern. Future research should study the mechanisms behind traditional gender attitudes’ effect on vote choice and incorporate other demographic and social factors, such as biases regarding race and sexuality, into election data collection in order to examine their effect on vote choice

    Phase transitions and bubble nucleations for a phi^6 model in curved spacetime

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    Condsidering a massive self-interacting phi ^6 scalar field coupled arbitrarily to a (2+1) dimensional Bianchi type-I spacetime, we evaluate the one-loop effective potential. It is found that phi ^6 potential can be regularized in (2+1) dimensional curved spacetime. A finite expression for the energy-momentum tensor is obtained for this model. Evaluating the finite temperature effective potential, the temperature dependence of phase transitions is studied. The crucial dependence of the phase transitions on the spacetime curvature and on the coupling to gravity are also verified. We also discuss the nucleation of bubbles in a phi ^6 model. It is found that there exists an exact solution for the damped motion of the bubble in the thin wall regime.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

    Inflationary Hubble Parameter from the Gravitational Wave Spectrum in the General Slow-roll Approximation

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    Improved general slow-roll formulae giving the primordial gravitational wave spectrum are derived in the present work. Also the first and second order general slow-roll inverse formulae giving the Hubble parameter HH in terms of the gravitational wave spectrum are derived. Moreover, the general slow-roll consistency condition relating the scalar and tensor spectra is obtained

    BIOCONVERSION OF HEMICELLULOSE HYDROLYSATE OF SWEET SORGHUM BAGASSE TO ETHANOL BY USING PICHIA STIPITIS NCIM 3497 AND DEBARYOMYCES HANSENII SP.

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    Production of ethanol from concentrated D-xylose solutions and hemicellulose hydrolysate of sweet sorghum bagasse was achieved by using Pichia stipitis NCIM 3497 and an isolated yeast Debaryomyces hansenii sp. These yeasts were capable of producing ethanol from solutions containing 800 g/L D-xylose, and the optimum sugar concentration was found to be 150 g/L at pH 4, 30oC, with a production time of 72 hours. These yeasts were capable of utilizing multiple sugars. Hemicellulose hydrolysates of sweet sorghum bagasse were obtained by dilute acid hydrolysis and autohydrolysis including steam explosion treatment. The hydrolysate was treated by an over-liming process for detoxification and pH adjustment. Ethanol yield from hemicellulose hydrolysate was found to be higher than that of synthetic medium containing D-xylose. These yeasts can be used in production of ethanol from concentrated hemicellulose hydrolysates containing high pentose sugars obtained while treating lignocellulosic biomass at high substrate concentrations

    Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Medical Image Feature Extraction and Selection

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    AbstractFor a hybrid medical image retrieval system, a genetic algorithm (GA) approach is presented for the selection of dimensionality reduced set of features. This system was developed in three phases. In first phase, three distinct algorithm are used to extract the vital features from the images. The algorithm devised for the extraction of the features are Texton based contour gradient extraction algorithm, Intrinsic pattern extraction algorithm and modified shift invariant feature transformation algorithm. In the second phase to identify the potential feature vector GA based feature selection is done, using a hybrid approach of “Branch and Bound Algorithm” and “Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm” using the breast cancer, Brain tumour and thyroid images. The Chi Square distance measurement is used to assess the similarity between query images and database images. A fitness function with respect Minimum description length principle were used as initial requirement for genetic algorithm. In the third phase to improve the performance of the hybrid content based medical image retrieval system diverse density based relevance feedback method is used. The term hybrid is used as this system can be used to retrieve any kind of medical image such as breast cancer, brain tumour, lung cancer, thyroid cancer and so on. This machine learning based feature selection method is used to reduce the existing system dimensionality problem. The experimental result shows that the GA driven image retrieval system selects optimal subset of feature to identify the right set of images

    Influence of cataract and small incision cataract surgery on the macular thickness measurements: an optical coherence tomography-based study

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    Background: Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive imaging technique for analysing retinal architecture. It is a common investigation for various optic disc and macular diseases like glaucoma and diabetic macular oedema nowadays. OCT image quality is affected by many factors especially media opacity due to cataract. This study was done to compare macular thickness measurements by OCT in the presence of cataract and after removal of the cataract by Small Incision Cataract Surgery (SICS).Methods: A prospective observational study was designed which included 99 eyes of 99 patients with no optic disc and retinal pathology who underwent uncomplicated small incision cataract surgery. Routine ophthalmological evaluation including scans using macular analysis protocols of Cirrus HD OCT were done on the first visit to outpatient department and repeated on the day of surgery, one week and three weeks after surgery. The difference between the visits were analysed by Student’s t-test for paired samples.Results: The best corrected visual acuity and signal strength of OCT scans improved significantly after surgery. Among the macular parameters the temporal inner, nasal inner and nasal outer area thicknesses showed significant improvement from preoperative to postoperative values. The foveal thickness, nasal inner and nasal outer thicknesses changed significantly between two postoperative visits.Conclusions: The presence of cataract and small incision cataract surgery affects the macular measurements performed with Cirrus HD OCT. This should be taken into consideration while managing macular diseases like diabetic macular oedema

    Controlled manipulation of oxygen vacancies using nanoscale flexoelectricity

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    Oxygen vacancies, especially their distribution, are directly coupled to the electromagnetic properties of oxides and related emergent functionalities that have implication in device applications. Here using a homoepitaxial strontium titanate thin film, we demonstrate a controlled manipulation of the oxygen vacancy distribution using the mechanical force from a scanning probe microscope tip. By combining Kelvin probe force microscopy imaging and phase-field simulations, we show that oxygen vacancies can move under a stress-gradient-induced depolarisation field. When tailored, this nanoscale flexoelectric effect enables a controlled spatial modulation. In motion, the scanning probe tip thereby deterministically reconfigures the spatial distribution of vacancies. The ability to locally manipulate oxygen vacancies on-demand provides a tool for the exploration of mesoscale quantum phenomena, and engineering multifunctional oxide devices.Comment: 35 pages, Main text and the supplementary information combine

    Course Manual Winter School on Structure and Functions of Marine Ecosystem: Fisheries

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    Marine ecosystems comprises of diverse organisms and their ambient abiotic components in varied relationships leading to an ecosystem functioning. These relationships provides the services that are essential for marine organisms to sustain in the nature. The studies examining the structure and functioning of these relationships remains unclear and hence understanding and modelling of the ecological functioning is imperative in the context of the threats different ecosystem components are facing. The relationship between marine population and their environment is complex and is subjected to fluctuations which affects the bottom level of an ecosystem pyramid to higher trophic levels. Understanding the energy flow within the marine ecosystems with the help of primary to secondary producers and secondary consumers are potentially important when assessing such states and changes in these environments. Many of the physiological changes are known to affect the key functional group, ie. the species or group of organisms, which play an important role in the health of the ecosystem. In marine environment, phytoplankton are the main functional forms which serves as the base of marine food web. Any change in the phytoplankton community structure may lead to alteration in the composition, size and structure of the entire ecosystem. Hence, it is critical to understand how these effects may scale up to population, communities, and entire marine ecosystem. Such changes are difficult to predict, particularly when more than one trophic level is affected. The identification and quantification of indicators of changes in ecosystem functioning and the knowledge base generated will provide a suitable way of bridging issues related to a specific ecosystem. New and meaningful indicators, derived from our current understanding of marine ecosystem functioning, can be used for assessing the impact of these changes and can be used as an aid in promoting responsible fisheries in marine ecosystems. Phytoplantkon is an indicator determining the colour of open Ocean. In recent years, new technologies have emerged which involves multidisciplinary activities including biogeochemistry and its dynamics affecting higher trophic levels including fishery. The winter school proposed will provide the insights into background required for such an approach involving teaching the theory, practical, analysis and interpretation techniques in understanding the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems from ground truth measurements as well as from satellite remote sensing data. This is organized with the full funding support from Indian council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) New Delhi and the 25 participants who are attending this programme has been selected after scrutiny of their applications based on their bio-data. The participants are from different States across Indian subcontinent covering north, east, west and south. They are serving as academicians such as Professors/ scientists and in similar posts. The training will be a feather in their career and will enable them to do their academic programmes in a better manner. Selected participants will be scrutinized initially to understand their knowledge level and classes will be oriented based on this. In addition, all of them will be provided with an e-manual based on the classes. All selected participants are provided with their travel and accommodation grants. The faculty include the scientists who developed this technology, those who are practicing it and few user groups who do their research in related areas. The programme is coordinated by the Fishery Resources Assessment Division of CMFRI. This programme will generate a team of elite academicians who can contribute to sustainable management of marine ecosystem and they will further contribute to capacity building in the sector by training many more interested researchers in the years to come

    From the Spectrum to Inflation: A Second Order Inverse Formula for the General Slow-Roll Spectrum

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    We invert the second order, single field, general slow-roll formula for the power spectrum, to obtain a second order formula for inflationary parameters in terms of the primordial power spectrum
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