La Comida y las Memorias: Food, Positionality, and the Problematics of Making One\u27s Home

This work explores how people talk about food. My original problem was to find how the idea of a cultural group one may see as comprised of Mexican Americans may or may not be complicated by a regional comparison (of rural Hispanos in Colorado and New Mexico and urban Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Philadelphia). The main question I asked myself in this exploration (as well as asked field consultants) was: How does food play a role in the enactment of self-definition? Out of a comparison of over 30 rural and urban food narratives gathered during fieldwork in both regions emerged the interesting link between food, place, and culture. These food narratives demonstrated a sense of place, a topophilia enacted through talking about food in one\u27s life. The men and women interviewed for this thesis use location and space to define and characterize (as well as to perform) the role of food in their lives, an action I call performative mapping. My conclusion was that the notion of home and of cultural borders expressed in narrative contrasts of us versus them, antes versus ahora, and here versus there are used by interviewees to perform authenticity as well as cultural boundary maintenance

Evaluation of Effectiveness of Concentrated Growth Factor with Bovine Porous Bone Mineral as Compared to Bovine Porous Bone Mineral Alone in the Treatment of Intra Bony Defects: A Split Mouth Study

BACKGROUND: Modern day periodontics aims at maintaining the health of teeth and their supporting structures with the main goal of controlling the infection and regenerating the lost supporting structures. Bovine porous bone mineral is a Xenograft and they induce bone formation through osteoinductive property. One of the recent approaches is to enhance the bone graft healing by growth factors. Concentrated growth factor (CGF), an advanced second generation platelet concentrate is a rich autologous source of various growth factors and leukocytes and has a strong potential to influence the cellular mechanisms responsible for periodontal regeneration. AIM OF THE STUDY: Aim of the present study is to evaluate, the effectiveness of Concentrated growth factor in combination with Bovine porous bone mineral as compared to Bovine porous bone mineral alone in the treatment of periodontal intrabony defects. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total number of 20 intrabony defects in 10 systemically healthy patients were selected randomly for the purpose of the study. After the Phase-I therapy, the defects were equally divided into two groups and treated with concentrated growth factor and bovine porous bone mineral and bovine porous bone mineral alone. Clinical parameters such as plaque index (PI), gingival bleeding index (GBI), probing pocket depth (PPD), and clinical attachment level (CAL) were recorded at baseline, 6 months and 1 year post-operatively. In both the groups, radiographic analysis was performed at baseline, 6 months and 1 year post operatively. RESULTS: Significant reduction in the mean probing depth and gain in clinical attachment level was observed in CGF=BPBM and BPBM groups as compared to baseline but there was no significant difference between the two groups at 6 months (p=0.655 and p=0.250 respectively) and 1 year (p=0.247 and p=0.70 respectively). Radiographically, bone fill%, bone crest change% and defect resolution% was significantly higher in CGF=BPBM group than BPBM group at the end of 6 months (p=0.005, p=0.02, p=0.019 respectively) and at 1 year (p=0.000, p=0.007, p=0.001 respectively). CONCLUSION: Within the limits of the present study, it can be concluded that both the modalities of treatment were efficient in improving the clinical as well as radiographic parameters. The addition of concentrated growth factor to bovine porous bone mineral has demonstrated significantly successful and promising results. Thus in future, clinical trials with larger sample size may be employed to further explore the potential benefits of CGF as a grafting material

Agewise Outcome of Speech and Hearing in Prelingually Deaf Children after Cochlear Implantation

BACKGROUND: Early onset profound hearing loss has shown to have devastating consequences for the development of language. Prelingual sensorineural deafness in children is a major cause for disability in our country which affects the development of the child in all fields. The cochlear implant surgery has created a paradigm shift in the treatment of sensorineural hearing loss. This provides the necessary auditory stimulus necessary for speech development. Knowing the ideal age for implantation is beneficial for the patient as well as for cost benefit analysis of doing the surgery in older children. AIM OF THE STUDY: 1. To assess the hearing and speech outcome of prelingually deaf children who underwent cochlear implantation over a period of 1 year. 2. To evaluate the outcome of cochlear implantation in prelingually deaf children. 3. To identify the ideal age for cochlear implantation in terms of best outcome. 4. To assess the benefit of cochlear implantation in older children. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY: The study was carried out on 50 children who underwent cochlear implantation surgery at Coimbatore medical college hospital. The list of the patients enrolled in the study is appended along with the dissertation. Speech and hearing was first assessed prior to the surgery. Informed signed consent from the guardians of the patients were obtained. The duration of the study was one year from July 2014 to June 2015. The children divided into two groups, < 3 years of age of implantation and 3 – 6 years at the time of implantation. The parameters recorded include Category of auditory perception, speech intelligibility rating scale, meaningful auditory integration scale and meaningful use of speech scale. First a pre op evaluation was done and then the parameters were recorded at 3 months, 6 months, and 12 month. The improvement was then compared based on the age of the child at implantation. RESULTS: Among the 50 patients 24 children were below 3 years and 26 children between 3 – 6 years. And of the 50, 29 male and 21 female children were present. The average CAP score in the < 3 year group was 5.17 ±0.702 and in the 3-6 year group it was 3.62 ± 0.983. The average SIR score of the < 3 year group was 4.04 ± 0.624 and in the 3 – 6 year group was 2.23± 0.863. These observations were found to be statistically significant. The MAIS and MUSS grading and scoring of the children also showed highly significant difference between children implanted at age <3 years and between 3 – 6years with the earlier implanted children showing better response. CONCLUSION: All children studied showed improvement in their hearing and speech abilities at the end of 1 year. The maximum benefit was seen in the younger age group (< 3 years at the time of implant) indicating a positive correlation between age and outcome in terms of clinical benefit. So it can be concluded that severe to profound hearing loss should be identified at the earliest in prelingually deaf children and considered for cochlear implantation in order to provide maximum benefit to the child

The Effect of Patent Foramen Ovale Closure on Visual Aura Without Headache or Typical Aura With Migraine Headache

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of right-to-left (R to L) shunt in patients with visual aura and evaluate the effect of shunt closure on resolution of aura.BackgroundRight-to-left shunting is associated with migraine headache (MH) with aura. Some patients present with visual aura without headaches. It is unclear whether visual aura without headache is a form of migraine or a transient neurologic dysfunction.MethodsOf patients referred to the University of California, Los Angeles for suspected patent foramen ovale (PFO), 225 had visual aura with or without MH. Patients were assessed for a shunt and evaluated for MH and/or visual aura. They were divided into 3 groups: 1) visual aura associated with MH; 2) visual aura unrelated in time to MH; and 3) visual aura without MH. The frequency of R to L shunt was compared with a control group of 200 patients. Eighty patients underwent PFO closure. Residual shunts, MH, and visual aura were reassessed after 3 and 12 months.ResultsThe prevalence of R to L shunt in Groups A, B, and C was 96%, 72%, and 67%, respectively, versus 18% in the control group (p < 0.0001). The frequency of shunting was similar in Group B versus Group C, but much higher in all 3 groups compared with control subjects. Twelve months after PFO closure, symptoms of aura were resolved in 52%, 75%, and 80% of patients in Groups A, B, and C, respectively (p = NS).ConclusionsThe similar distribution of R to L shunting in all 3 patient groups and the correlation between PFO closure and improvement of aura suggests a similar pathophysiology between the presence of PFO and the visual aura phenomenon, whether or not headache is present in the symptom complex

A new paradigm based on agents applied to free-hand sketch recognition

Important advances in natural calligraphic interfaces for CAD (Computer Aided Design) applications are being achieved, enabling the development of CAS (Computer Aided Sketching) devices that allow facing up to the conceptual design phase of a product. Recognizers play an important role in this field, allowing the interpretation of the user’s intention, but they still present some important lacks. This paper proposes a new recognition paradigm using an agent-based architecture that does not depend on the drawing sequence and takes context information into account to help decisions. Another improvement is the absence of operation modes, that is, no button is needed to distinguish geometry from symbols or gestures, and also “interspersing” and “overtracing” are accomplishedThe Spanish Ministry of Science and Education and the FEDER Funds, through the CUESKETCH project (Ref. DPI2007-66755-C02-01), partially supported this work.Fernández Pacheco, D.; Albert Gil, FE.; Aleixos Borrás, MN.; Conesa Pastor, J. (2012). A new paradigm based on agents applied to free-hand sketch recognition. Expert Systems with Applications. 39(8):7181-7195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.01.063S7181719539

New method to find corner and tangent vertices in sketches using parametric cubic curves approximation

Some recent approaches have been presented as simple and highly accurate corner finders in the sketches including curves, which is useful to support natural human-computer interaction, but these in most cases do not consider tangent vertices (smooth points between two geometric entities, present in engineering models), what implies an important drawback in the field of design. In this article we present a robust approach based on the approximation to parametric cubic curves of the stroke for further radius function calculation in order to detect corner and tangent vertices. We have called our approach Tangent and Corner Vertices Detection (TCVD), and it works in the following way. First, corner vertices are obtained as minimum radius peaks in the discrete radius function, where radius is obtained from differences. Second, approximated piecewise parametric curves on the stroke are obtained and the analytic radius function is calculated. Then, curves are obtained from stretches of the stroke that have a small radius. Finally, the tangent vertices are found between straight lines and curves or between curves, where no corner vertices are previously located. The radius function to obtain curves is calculated from approximated piecewise curves, which is much more noise free than discrete radius calculation. Several tests have been carried out to compare our approach to that of the current best benchmarked, and the obtained results show that our approach achieves a significant accuracy even better finding corner vertices, and moreover, tangent vertices are detected with an Accuracy near to 92% and a False Positive Rate near to 2%.Spanish Ministry of Science and Education and the FEDER Funds, through CUESKETCH (Ref. DPI2007-66755-C02-01) and HYMAS projects (Ref. DPI2010-19457) partially supported this work.Albert Gil, FE.; García Fernández-Pacheco, D.; Aleixos Borrás, MN. (2013). New method to find corner and tangent vertices in sketches using parametric cubic curves approximation. Pattern Recognition. 46(5):1433-1448. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2012.11.006S1433144846