From Patanjali to the "gospel of sweat": yoga's remarkable transformation from a sacred movement into a thriving global market

Movements seeking to infuse markets with moral values often end up utilizing the market mechanism and support from mainstream actors to scale up, even if it comes at the cost of diluting their founding ethos. However, this process can be particularly challenging for movements that are explicitly opposed to using a market mechanism as a means of scaling up. Our analysis of yoga between 1975 and 2016 reveals how a counter-cultural movement fundamentally opposed to a capitalist market economy but seeking to grow can paradoxically become syncretic with markets. We show how, before such a movement can be commodified, it must be de-essentialized, a process that requires stripping away key aspects of its history, context, and religious commitments and transforming collective goals into individual ones. This process involves not only external entrepreneurs looking to mine the movement, but also movement leaders seeking wider enrollment of resource-rich actors to scale the movement up. We show how codes borrowed from parallel movements and templates borrowed from markets can be instrumental in driving such a movement’s transformation. Through this “extreme” case of the yoga movement, we advance understandings of how movements can become syncretic with values and practices they fundamentally oppose

A declarative model of clinical information systems integration in intensive care

The findings of this multi-site study emphasise the importance of Organisational Culture for integrating clinical information systems into intensive care units. A novel model, the Iterative Systems Integration Model, has two principle components, these being Organisational Culture and the Actual Usefulness of the clinical information system. The model is derived from empirical data collected in four intensive care sites in England and Denmark, with one site being used to validate the model. The model highlights clinical information systems as directly affecting the work processes of the sites investigated, which in turn affect the Organisational Culture and Actual Usefulness of the clinical information system used, and these features affect clinical information system integration. This forms an iterative process of change as clinical information systems are introduced and integrated. Intensive care units are complex organisations, with complex needs and work processes. The impact of clinical information systems on these work processes is investigated in this thesis using Role Activity Diagrams. These diagrams are analysed to show that although clinical work processes are consistent at each site, the information processes differ. Intensive care information processes are found to have the potential to be much simplified with the introduction of seamless clinical information systems. Qualitative data collectio n methods were deployed, i. e., observations, interviews, and shadowing of clinical staff, together with a questionnaire at each site for further validation. Data were analysed using grounded theory to extract salient variables, which informed the development of the model. These factors were indicative of the Organisational Culture of the sites investigated and the Actual Useftilness of the clinical information systems being used. It was posited that clinical information systems that reconcile expectations of both hospital management and clinical staff - and that have the potential to adapt to their organisational environment - have a greater chance of surviving in complex environments such as intensive care. Despite decades of Health Infon-flatics, no such systems exist in their entirety; this research shows that 'ancient problems' of clinical information systems integration are still prevalent, and presents the Iterative Systems Integration Model, the application of which may assist with the integration of clinical information systems in intensive care.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Energy harvesting towards self-powered iot devices

The internet of things (IoT) manages a large infrastructure of web-enabled smart devices, small devices that use embedded systems, such as processors, sensors, and communication hardware to collect, send, and elaborate on data acquired from their environment. Thus, from a practical point of view, such devices are composed of power-efficient storage, scalable, and lightweight nodes needing power and batteries to operate. From the above reason, it appears clear that energy harvesting plays an important role in increasing the efficiency and lifetime of IoT devices. Moreover, from acquiring energy by the surrounding operational environment, energy harvesting is important to make the IoT device network more sustainable from the environmental point of view. Different state-of-the-art energy harvesters based on mechanical, aeroelastic, wind, solar, radiofrequency, and pyroelectric mechanisms are discussed in this review article. To reduce the power consumption of the batteries, a vital role is played by power management integrated circuits (PMICs), which help to enhance the system's life span. Moreover, PMICs from different manufacturers that provide power management to IoT devices have been discussed in this paper. Furthermore, the energy harvesting networks can expose themselves to prominent security issues putting the secrecy of the system to risk. These possible attacks are also discussed in this review article

Effects of solution treatment and aging on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and corrosion resistance of a β type Ti-Ta-Hf-Zr alloy

Titanium and some of its alloys have become increasingly important for biomedical materials due to their high specific strength, good corrosion resistance, and excellent biocompatibility compared to the biomedical stainless steels and cobalt-chromium based alloys. In this study, a β type TTHZ alloy (Ti-40Ta-22Hf-11.7Zr) was prepared with the cold-crucible levitation technique. The corrosion behavior and the effects of solution treatment (ST) and aging on the microstructures and mechanical properties of the TTHZ alloy were investigated using electrochemical analysis, XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), OM (optical microscopy), XRD (X-ray diffractometry), TEM (transmission electron microscopy) and compressive testing. The results indicate that the as-cast alloy exhibited a β + ωath microstructure, which transformed into a single β phase after ST at 900 °C for 1 h. The β phase further transformed into β + α′′, β + α′′ + α, and β + α + ωiso after aging for 15 min, 1.5 h, 12 h and 24 h, respectively. The different phases of the TTHZ alloy showed significantly different mechanical properties and corrosion behavior. The solution-treated TTHZ alloy exhibited a compressive yield strength of approximately 1018 MPa and an excellent compressive strain as no fracturing was observed; and the compression tests were stopped at a compressive strain of ∼70%. The TTHZ alloy after solution treatment plus aging exhibited an increase in the compressive yield strength with a decreased compressive strain. The solution-treated TTHZ alloy exhibited a single β phase with the highest corrosion resistance, compared to the as-cast and solution-treated alloy, followed by aging samples. The open-circuit potential (OCP) analysis indicates that the corrosion resistance of the as-cast TTHZ alloy was superior to those of both CP-Ti and Ti6Al4V

Radiologic feeding gastrostomy placement: experience in 23 patients

Objective: To evaluate the safety, efficacy and complications of percutaneous gastrostomy catheter placementunder flouro guidance for long-term enteral feeding.MATERIALS AND Methods: Between April 1998 to May 2002, 23 patients who had percutaneous gastrostomy catheter placement were retrospectively reviewed. Clinical indications for catheter placement included patients with neurologic disease, head and neck malignancy, and pulmonary disease patients. Placement of 12 - 14 Fr gastrostomy catheter was then accomplished with the Seldinger technique. The technical success, procedural complications were recorded.Results: Twenty seven procedures, including revisions, were performed. The success rate for catheter placement was 100%. Revision was necessary in 7 (30%) instances in 7 patients. There was one (3.8%) major and 4 (14.8%) minor complications.CONCLUSION: Fluoroscopically directed percutaneous placement of gastrostomy catheters is a safe and effective procedure

Psychosocial work environment and leisure-time physical activity: the Stormont Study

Background: Research findings are equivocal on relations between the psychosocial work environment and leisure-time physical activity (LTPA). This might be partly due to studies having focused on a restricted set of psychosocial dimensions, thereby failing to capture all relevant domains. Aims: First, to examine cross-sectional associations between seven psychosocial work environment domains and LTPA in a large sample of UK civil servants. Second, to profile LTPA and consider this in relation to UK government recommendations on physical activity. Method: in 2012, Northern Ireland Civil Service employees completed a questionnaire including measures of psychosocial working conditions (Management Standards Indicator Tool) and LTPA. We applied bivariate correlations and linear regression analyses to examine relations between psychosocial working conditions and LTPA. Results: Of ~26,000 civil servants contacted, 5,235 (20%) completed the questionnaire. Twenty-four per cent of men and 17% of women reported having undertaken ≥30 minutes of physical activity on five or more days in the past week. Job control (-0.08) and peer support (-0.05) were weakly but significantly negatively correlated with LTPA in men. Job role (-0.05) was weakly but significantly negatively correlated with LTPA in women. These psychosocial work characteristics accounted for 1% or less of the variance in LTPA. Conclusions: Longitudinal research to examine cause-effect relations between psychosocial work characteristics and leisure-time physical activity might inform the potential for psychosocial job redesign to increase employees’ physical activity during leisure time

Controllable Fano-type optical response and four-wave mixing via magnetoelastic coupling in a opto-magnomechanical system

We analytically investigate the Fano-type optical response and four-wave mixing (FWM) process by exploiting the magnetoelasticity of a ferromagnetic material. The deformation of the ferromagnetic material plays the role of mechanical displacement, which is simultaneously coupled to both optical and magnon modes. We report that the magnetostrictively induced displacement demonstrates Fano profiles, in the output field, which is well-tuned by adjusting the system parameters, like effective magnomechanical coupling, magnon detuning, and cavity detuning. It is found that the magnetoelastic interaction also gives rise to the FWM phenomenon. The number of the FWM signals mainly depends upon the effective magnomechanical coupling and the magnon detuning. Moreover, the FWM spectrum exhibits suppressive behavior upon increasing (decreasing) the magnon (cavity) decay rate. The present scheme will open new perspectives in highly sensitive detection and quantum information processing.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure