The 'Parekh Report' - national identities with nations and nationalism

‘Multiculturalists’ often advocate national identities. Yet few study the ways in which ‘multiculturalists’ do so and in this article I will help to fill this gap. I will show that the Commission for Multi-Ethnic Britain’s report reflects a previously unnoticed way of thinking about the nature and worth of national identities that the Commission’s chair, and prominent political theorist, Bhikhu Parekh, had been developing since the 1970s. This way of thinking will be shown to avoid the questionable ways in which conservative and liberal nationalists discuss the nature and worth of national identities while offering an alternative way to do so. I will thus show that a report that was once criticised for the way it discussed national identities reflects how ‘multiculturalists’ think about national identities in a distinct and valuable way that has gone unrecognised

Adam Smith and Colonialism

In the context of debates about liberalism and colonialism, the arguments of Adam Smith have been taken as illustrative of an important line of anti-colonial liberal thought. The reading of Smith presented here challenges this interpretation. It argues that Smith’s opposition to colonial rule derived largely from its impact on the metropole, rather than on its impact on the conquered and colonised; that Smith recognised colonialism had brought ‘improvement’ in conquered territories and that Smith struggled to balance recognition of moral diversity with a universal moral framework and a commitment to a particular interpretation of progress through history. These arguments have a wider significance as they point towards some of the issues at stake in liberal anti-colonial arguments more generally

Topics concerning state variable feedback in automatic control systems. Part 1 - Specification. Part 2 - Sensitivity. Part 3 - Intentional nonlinearities. Part 4 - Unavailable states

Specifications, sensitivity, intentional nonlinearities, and unavailable states concerned with state variable feedback in automatic control system

National identity - A multiculturalist's approach

‘Multiculturalists’ in Britain have advocated the importance of national identity since the 1970s. Yet many claim that multiculturalists do not do this and few study how they do it. We thus do not know why and how multiculturalists in Britain advocate the importance of national identity. In this article I will examine how one of Britain’s most prominent multiculturalists, Bhikhu Parekh, has done so since the 1970s. I will show that Parekh’s way of thinking about national identity is distinct from the ways in which other prominent thinkers discuss such an identity, and valuable, as Parekh has insights into what such an identity is and why we should value it. This article will identify a previously unnoticed, distinct and valuable way of thinking about national identity, which comes from a multiculturalist in Britain

POC-scale testing of an advanced fine coal dewatering equipment/technique: Quarterly technical progress report No. 9, October 1996--December 1996

The advanced fine-coal cleaning techniques such as column flotation, recovers a low-ash ultra-fine size clean-coal product. However, economical dewatering of the clean coal product to less than 20 percent moisture using conventional technology is difficult. This research program objective is to evaluate a novel coal surface modification technique developed at the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research in conjunction with conventional and advanced dewatering technique at a pilot scale at the Powell Mountain Coal Company`s Mayflower preparation plant located in St. Charles, VA. During this quarter in the laboratory dewatering studies were conducted using copper and aluminum ions showed that for the low sulfur clean coal slurry addition of 0.1 Kg/t of copper ions was effective in lowering the filter cake moisture from 29 percent to 26.3 percent. Addition of 0.3 Kg/t of aluminum ions provided filter cake with 28 percent moisture. For the high sulfur clean coal slurry 0.5 Kg/t of copper and 0.1 Kg/t of aluminum ions reduced cake moisture from 30.5 percent to 28 percent respectively. Combined addition of anionic (10 g/t) and cationic (10 g/t) flocculants was effective in providing a filter cake with 29.8 percent moisture. Addition of flocculants was not effective in centrifuge dewatering. In pilot scale screen bowl centrifuge dewatering studies it was found that the clean coal slurry feed rate of 30 gpm was optimum to the centrifuge, which provided 65 percent solids capture. Addition of anionic or cationic flocculants was not effective in lowering of filter cake moisture, which remained close to 30 percent for both clean coal slurries

Bacteriological analysis of bile in cholecystectomy patients

Background: Cholecystectomy is currently a frequently performed operation. The presence of gallstones within either the gallbladder or biliary tree is associated with the bacterial colonization of the bile. Acute cholangitis spans a continuous clinical spectrum and can progress from a local biliary infection to advanced disease with sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. Therefore, it is important to know the microbiological flora of the gallbladder before prophylactic antibiotics are given. Aims & objectives: To evaluate the microbiological profile of bile from gall bladder in patients undergoing cholecystectomy. To determine the appropriate antibiotic for preoperative prophylaxis in cholecystectomy patients based on the microbiological profile of bile.Methods: The study was a prospective study carried out in SSG Hospital. A total of 78 patients undergone cholecystectomy who met the inclusion criteria were included in the study. 3cc bile was aspirated from all patients, this collected bile from gallbladder before cholecystectomy was transported to the laboratory in sterile test-tube. The specimen was evaluated to find out whether it is sterile or has any bacteria present. The types of bacteria are determined and whether the amount of isolate is significant or not. And sensitivity to antibacterial agents against antibiotics was determined.Results: 19 patients showed positive bile culture in which Escherichia coli was the most common isolated bacteria (63.16% among positive bile culture and 15.38% among all patients) and bile was sterile in 59 patients (75.64%). Other organisms isolated were Pseudomonas (3.85%), Klebsiella (2.56%), coagulase negative Staphylococcus and Staphylococcus viridans (1.28%). Positive bile culture was a more common finding (50% of patients were bile culture positive) in patients with acute cholecystitis in this study. Post-operative wound infection is more common (15.79%) in group of patients with isolated organism from bile. There is a strong correlation between bile culture and wound culture (75%).  Conclusions: It was found that sensitivity to third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins was higher as compared to aminoglycoside in acute as well as chronic cholecystitis. In this study levofloxacin also shows good sensitivity against isolated organism from bile. Piperacilin and tazobactum also shows good sensitivity against isolated organism from bile and they are more effective against pseudomonas. The resistance to second-generation cephalosporins and aminoglycoside has increased. For preoperative prophylaxis third and fourth-generation cephalosporins and levofloxacin show better promise and may be used as the first line of preoperative prophylaxis in operations for acute and chronic cholecystitis undergoing cholecystectomy.

Should the appendix always be removed during surgery for mucinous ovarian tumors?

Background: Appendectomy is performed in all mucinous ovarian tumors (MOT) identified intraoperatively to ensure microscopic metastases from appendix are not missed. Several recent studies suggested that appendectomy should only be performed in cases with a grossly abnormal appendix or with evidence of pseudomyxoma peritonei. Our study aimed to determine the frequency of malignancy in a grossly normal appendix in women undergoing surgery for borderline or malignant MOT.Methods: In a single institution retrospective study, women undergoing surgery for MOT from January 1, 2008 to June 30, 2016 were included. Women with benign MOT, those with a history of either prior appendicectomy or prior gastrointestinal (GI) malignancy were excluded.Results: Of 266 women identified with MOT, 153 with borderline and malignant MOT were included in the study after application of inclusion criteria. The study population comprised of 29 (18.95%) borderline and 124 (81.05%) malignant MOT. Among the borderline MOT, 13/29 had undergone appendectomy. Five (38.46%) had grossly abnormal appendices of whom 1 had mucinous cystadenoma, 3 had borderline mucinous tumor and 1 had mucinous cystadenocarcinoma of the appendix. Histology was normal in all 8 (61.54%) grossly normal appendices. Among the malignant MOT, 80/124 (64.52%) underwent appendicectomy. Nineteen (23.46%) had grossly abnormal appendices and histology was suggestive of adenocarcinoma of appendix. Histology was normal in all 62 (76.54%) macroscopically normal appendices.Conclusions: Present results suggest that appendectomy be performed only for those appendices that are grossly abnormal or associated with pseudomyxoma peritonei at surgery for MO

A quasi-diagonal approach to the estimation of Lyapunov spectra for spatio-temporal systems from multivariate time series

We describe methods of estimating the entire Lyapunov spectrum of a spatially extended system from multivariate time-series observations. Provided that the coupling in the system is short range, the Jacobian has a banded structure and can be estimated using spatially localised reconstructions in low embedding dimensions. This circumvents the ``curse of dimensionality'' that prevents the accurate reconstruction of high-dimensional dynamics from observed time series. The technique is illustrated using coupled map lattices as prototype models for spatio-temporal chaos and is found to work even when the coupling is not strictly local but only exponentially decaying.Comment: 13 pages, LaTeX (RevTeX), 13 Postscript figs, to be submitted to Phys.Rev.