The Effect of Service Quality on Satisfaction Apropos Service Recipients of Divisional Secretariats in Colombo District in Sri Lanka

AbstractA vast array of knowledge has been accumulated on the effect of service quality on customer satisfaction, particularly with a large number of studies over the past few years. However, the effect of service quality on satisfaction of service recipients in Divisional Secretariats in the Public Sector is relatively an unattended area by researchers. Hence, this study was carried out to evaluate the effect of service quality on satisfaction of service recipients of divisional secretariats. This particular organization was selected for the study as it is considered to be the most significant service provider in terms of statutory, social, economic and development in the country. As per the annual progress report of the Ministry of Home Affairs (2015), there are 332 Divisional Secretariats operating in the country at present. Out of 332 divisional secretariats, all the 13 secretariats were taken from the Colombo District for this study. The main aims of this study are as follows: (1) to evaluate the level of service quality of the Divisional Secretariats, (2) to evaluate the level of each dimension of service quality, (3) to examine the effect of service quality on service recipient’s satisfaction. A questionnaire survey and personal interviews were conducted to collect data by using the purposive sampling method. A modified questionnaire was prepared based on SERVQUAL instruments with two additional questions. A sample of 520 service recipients from 13 Divisional Secretariats in Colombo was drawn and it was represented by 40 from each division. Correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to examine the relative impact of the service quality on satisfaction of service recipients. The study revealed that all the service quality attributes positively related to satisfaction of the service recipients. The findings of the study show that satisfaction of service recipients in terms of service quality has not met the expected level, which a divisional secretariat is deemed to provide for.Keywords: Service Quality, Service Recipient, Divisional Secretariat, Satisfactio

Evaluation of Acoustic Parameters for Angulimala Sutta using Voiced to Unvoiced Ration and Vowel Distribution

Pirith is believed as a protective doctrine preached by the Load Buddha in Pali language. The aim of this study is to analyze acoustic properties of Pirith using computer-aided methods and identify special characteristics and patterns. In this study, two methods were used to identify special characteristics of Angulimala Sutta. First method calculates voiced to unvoiced ratio using zero crossing rate and energy content associated with the acoustic signal while second method recognizes vowel distribution using first and second formant frequencies. Results of the first method indicates approximately 96% of frames are voiced while the second method suggests approximately 72% of vowels concentrate in the square region of F1,0~1500 Hz and demonstrating when chanting the Angulimala sutta most of the time the tongue height is low positioned in back levels while lips shaped unrounded. KEYWORDS: Formant frequencies, Voiced to unvoiced ratio, Zero-Crossing rate, Vowel distributio

The Use of a Large, Extensive Green Roof for Multiple Research Objectives

The Green Roof on the Onondaga County Convention Center in Syracuse, NY is planted with several varieties of sedum over an area of 0.56 hectares. The roof was constructed in 2011, and has been instrumented with sensors to enable research and education over an extended period. The purpose of the current work on this roof is to quantify its performance with respect to water storage and energy transfer, and to identify chemical constituents in the runoff that might be contributed by the growth medium. The scope of the project also includes a number of measurements on traditional roofs in the vicinity of the Convention Center as controls. Experimental methods include measurements with temperature probes installed in different layers of the green roof, a meteorological station, soil moisture sensors positioned around the roof, and an electromagnetic flowmeter connected to the roof drains. Chemical analysis of incoming precipitation and stormwater runoff is conducted by ion chromatography. Besides the research underway, an educational website is under construction that shows realtime data from many of the instruments. The website includes explanations of the energy flow through the roof layers, water flow and water storage in the growth medium, and runoff through the roof drains. The website is designed for use by teachers of K-12 and undergraduate courses to enable students to learn about green roofs as a tool for managing urban stormwater. Results of the research show that heat flow through the roof is largely controlled by extruded polystyrene insulation below the growth medium, and that the growth medium is not a major barrier to heat flow. Substantial amounts of stormwater can be stored by the roof, as long as the growth medium is able to dry somewhat between storms. Precipitation events in close succession may cause the growth medium to stay saturated, preventing the roof from storing additional stormwater. The results of this work are important for assisting designers and engineers to improve the performance of green roofs

Investigation of Optimum pH and Temperature for In-Vitro Crystallization of Urinary Cystine

Cystinuria contributes in formation of urinary stones. But, it has been reported that cystinuria is diagnosed when someone experiences with cystine stones. Therefore, early diagnosis of this condition is important. Thus, the objective of the study was to determine the optimum pH and temperature for crystallization of urine cystine in-vitro. Cystinuria solutions were prepared with the concentrations of 40, 60, 70, 75, 80, 90, 100 and 120 mg/dL. The pH of each solution was changed with the addition of acetic acid. Then solutions were exposed to temperature +4°C and 37°C, for 15, 30 and 45min. The sediments were observed microscopically for cystine crystals formation. Then acetone was added to cystinuria with the ratio of cystinuria:acetone, 8:1, 4:1, 2:1 and 1.1 and pH was altered with acetic acid and were subjected to +4 °C and 37 °C, for 15, 30 and 45 minutes and sediment was observed for cystine crystals under the microscope. Cystine crystallization had been occurred in the cystinuria of ≥100 mg/dL at pH 5 at 37 ° C and +4 °C, 30min after the addition of acetic acid whereas with the addition of acetone at cystinuria of ≥75mg/dL at pH 5 in both 37°C and at +4°C, 30min after the addition of acetic acid. The number of cystine crystals per High Power Field (HPF) was highest where cystinuria:acetone was 8:1.  The optimum conditions for cystine crystallization is at pH 5, 37 °C and +4 °C, 30min after acidifying with acetic acid at the minimum concentration of 100 mg/dL  of cystinuria. With the addition of acetone, at the ratio of cystinuria:acetone 8:1 with minimum concentration of cystinuria of 75 mg/dL.   KEYWORDS: Cystine, Crystallization, Acetic acid, Acetone, Temperature, p

Occurrence of Urinary Crystals among Urinary Tract Infections Suspected Paediatric Patients, Sri Lanka

Crystalluria has become one of the most vital biomarkers in urinalysis in detecting several disease conditions. It has been reported that urinary tract infections (UTI) may be the presenting sign of Urolithiasis in children. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify and estimate the different types of crystals in the urine samples collected from UTI suspected children who admitted to the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for children, Sri Lanka. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using 400 children belong to age<12 years suspected with UTI. The participants included 242 males and 158 females. The urine samples were collected prior to start antibiotics. Each sample was examined macroscopically and centrifuged at 2000 rpm for 5 minutes. The urine sediment was examined under the light microscope and different crystal types were identified and counted at x40 magnification. Out of 400 samples 82 samples (82/400) were positive for crystalluria. The crystal types present were uric acid, calcium oxalate, triple phosphate, ammonium biuate and ammonium urate. None of the samples showed abnormal crystal types. The distribution of each crystal type was as follow; uric acid 25/82, calcium oxalate 34/82, triple phosphate 12/82, ammonium biuate 7/82 and ammonium urate 4/82. The quantity of crystals per mL of urine was ranged as follow; uric acid 850-130,000, calcium oxalate 350- >250,000, triple phosphate 650-6,000, ammonium biurate and ammonium urate were presented in clumps. KEYWORDS: Crystalluria, Uric Acid, Calcium Oxalate, Triple Phosphate, Ammonium Biurate, Ammonium Urate, Urolithiasis, Urinary Tract Infections

Biphasic activation of complement and fibrinolysis during the human nasal allergic response

Complement, coagulation and fibrinolysis contribute to the pathology of many respiratory diseases. Here we detail the biphasic activation of these pathways following nasal allergen challenge. Understanding these mechanisms may lead to therapeutic insight in common respiratory diseases

Tissue-specific endothelial cell heterogeneity contributes to unequal inflammatory responses

Endothelial cells (EC) coordinate vascular homeostasis and inflammation. In organ transplantation, EC are a direct alloimmune target. We posited that tissue specific heterogeneity of vascular EC may partly underlie the disparate organ-specific alloimmune risk. We examined the vascular endothelial response to inflammation across six primary endothelial beds from four major transplanted organs: the heart, lung, kidney and liver. First, we reanalyzed a public dataset of cardiac allograft rejection and found that endothelial inflammatory response genes were elevated in human cardiac allograft biopsies undergoing rejection compared with stable grafts. Next, the inducible inflammatory phenotypes of EC from heart, lung, kidney, and liver were characterized in vitro, focused on expression of adhesion molecules and chemokines, and recruitment of allogeneic peripheral blood mononuclear immune cells. Large vessel cardiac EC most highly upregulated VCAM-1, particularly compared with hepatic EC, supported greater leukocyte adhesion and had distinct chemokine profiles after stimulation with cytokines and complement. Differentially expressed gene candidates that are known regulators of cytokine signaling and inflammatory programming were verified in publicly available datasets of organ-specific endothelial transcriptomes. In summary, differential baseline expression of immune regulating genes may contribute to differential vascular inflammatory responses depending on organ.Transplantation and autoimmunit

Resolving the confused identity of Frankliniella panamensis (Thysanoptera: Thripidae)

La figure de Jules César dans les Essais Dans les débats idéologiques en Italie, la figure de Jules César se situe au cœur de la grande polémique entamée par les humanistes florentins contre leurs homologues milanais et contre les visées expansionnistes de la tyrannie incarnée par les Visconti, et César est un des personnages les plus cités chez Machiavel. Même fascination en France : Marot se réfère à Jules César pour célébrer le vainqueur de Cérisoles, dans le Liber de militia, Pierre Ramus..

Representation of Time-Varying Stimuli by a Network Exhibiting Oscillations on a Faster Time Scale

Sensory processing is associated with gamma frequency oscillations (30–80 Hz) in sensory cortices. This raises the question whether gamma oscillations can be directly involved in the representation of time-varying stimuli, including stimuli whose time scale is longer than a gamma cycle. We are interested in the ability of the system to reliably distinguish different stimuli while being robust to stimulus variations such as uniform time-warp. We address this issue with a dynamical model of spiking neurons and study the response to an asymmetric sawtooth input current over a range of shape parameters. These parameters describe how fast the input current rises and falls in time. Our network consists of inhibitory and excitatory populations that are sufficient for generating oscillations in the gamma range. The oscillations period is about one-third of the stimulus duration. Embedded in this network is a subpopulation of excitatory cells that respond to the sawtooth stimulus and a subpopulation of cells that respond to an onset cue. The intrinsic gamma oscillations generate a temporally sparse code for the external stimuli. In this code, an excitatory cell may fire a single spike during a gamma cycle, depending on its tuning properties and on the temporal structure of the specific input; the identity of the stimulus is coded by the list of excitatory cells that fire during each cycle. We quantify the properties of this representation in a series of simulations and show that the sparseness of the code makes it robust to uniform warping of the time scale. We find that resetting of the oscillation phase at stimulus onset is important for a reliable representation of the stimulus and that there is a tradeoff between the resolution of the neural representation of the stimulus and robustness to time-warp. Author Summary Sensory processing of time-varying stimuli, such as speech, is associated with high-frequency oscillatory cortical activity, the functional significance of which is still unknown. One possibility is that the oscillations are part of a stimulus-encoding mechanism. Here, we investigate a computational model of such a mechanism, a spiking neuronal network whose intrinsic oscillations interact with external input (waveforms simulating short speech segments in a single acoustic frequency band) to encode stimuli that extend over a time interval longer than the oscillation's period. The network implements a temporally sparse encoding, whose robustness to time warping and neuronal noise we quantify. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate that a biophysically plausible model of oscillations occurring in the processing of auditory input may generate a representation of signals that span multiple oscillation cycles.National Science Foundation (DMS-0211505); Burroughs Wellcome Fund; U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Researc