Liberalisation and political decay : Sri Lanka's journey from welfare state to a brutalised society

economic recession;economic liberalization;Sri Lanka;political conditions

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Sri Lanka

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Female parliamentarians and economic growth: evidence from a large panel

This article investigates whether female political representation affects economic growth. Panel estimates for 119 democracies using fixed-effects specifications and a system generalized method of moments approach suggest that, over recent decades, countries with higher shares of women in parliament have had faster growing economies

Lattice Green functions and diffusion for modelling traffic routing in ad hoc networks

We describe basic properties of Markov chains on finite state spaces and their application to Green functions, partial differential equations, and their (approximate) solution using random walks on a graph. Attention is paid to the influence of boundary conditions (Dirichlet/von Neumann). We apply these ideas to the study of traffic propagation and distribution in ad hoc networks

Highly Cited Works in Animal Clinical Trials: A Scientometric mapping of Research Publications

This paper analyses the 2555 publications with more than 100 citations indexed in Web of Science under research in Animal Clinical Trials. These publications have been received 556159 Citations, written by 13280 authors from 2833 institutes across the world. The most productive countries are: USA is the leading country with 1442 (56.4%), UK with 304 (11.9%), Germany 209 (8.2%), Canada 179(7%), Australia (130), Italy (132), Netherlands (116). It is noted that 13 Countries registered more than 10000 Citations, 23 with more than 5000 Citations, 38 Countries with more than 1000 Citations. The most cited Institutions are: Harvard University is leading with 27478 Citations for 108 publications followed University of California San Diego with 14896 Citations for 46 Publications, University of Pettsburgh with 13746 Citations for 38 Publications, Johns Hopikins University with 12120 Citations for 53 Publications. There are 929 periodicals are preferred and also with high impact. The most cited journals are: Cancer Research published the largest number of the highly cited publications (50 papers, 10620 Citations), followed by Circulation with 9998 Citations for 37 Publications, PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA with 9317 Citations for 32 Publications, Lancet with 9181 Citations, JAMA-JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION with 7547 Citations for 21 Publications and New England Journal of Medicine with 6944 Citations for 11 Publications. The most cited authors are: Ahmad N with 4554 Citations for 4 Publications followed by Kellum JA and Ronco C with 4372 Citations for 2 publications respectively, Altman DG with 4231 Citations for 3 Publications. The most cited one is “Bellomo R, Ronco C, Kellum JA, Mehta RL, Palevsky P (2004). Acute renal failure - definition, outcome measures, animal models, fluid therapy and information technology needs: the Second International Consensus Conference of the Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) Group”, published in CRITICAL CARE with 4181 Citations

Research output on Covid-19/Coronavirus Vaccine: A Scientometric Study

This article presents a Scientometric analysis of Covid-19 Vaccine research Literature indexed by Web of Science. Assessing research activity is important for planning future protective and adaptive policies. The objective of the current study was to assess research activity on Covid-19 Vaccine literature. A Scientometric method was applied using Scopus, Documents on “Covid-19 literature”. The study period was from 1971 to 2020. The search query found 7181 documents in Coronavirus Vaccine literature. The growth of publications showed 4402 in 2020. Documents published in Vaccine journal received the highest number of publications (203) followed by Journal of Virology with 104 Publications, Nature with 96 Publications. The most productive countries are i.e. the United States with 2178 (H-Index-114), Chine with 1068 (H-Index-75, India with 678 (H-Index-26), and the United Kingdom with 614 (H-Index-53)

Surgical polarimetric endoscopy for the detection of laryngeal cancer

The standard-of-care for the detection of laryngeal pathologies involves distinguishing suspicious lesions from surrounding healthy tissue via contrasts in colour and texture captured by white-light endoscopy. However, the technique is insufficiently sensitive and thus leads to unsatisfactory rates of false negatives. Here we show that laryngeal lesions can be better detected in real time by taking advantage of differences in the light-polarization properties of cancer and healthy tissues. By measuring differences in polarized-light retardance and depolarization, the technique, which we named 'surgical polarimetric endoscopy' (SPE), generates about one-order-of-magnitude greater contrast than white-light endoscopy, and hence allows for the better discrimination of cancerous lesions, as we show with patients diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. Polarimetric imaging of excised and stained slices of laryngeal tissue indicated that changes in the retardance of polarized light can be largely attributed to architectural features of the tissue. We also assessed SPE to aid routine transoral laser surgery for the removal of a cancerous lesion, indicating that SPE can complement white-light endoscopy for the detection of laryngeal cancer

Physiological Epicotyl Dormancy and Recalcitrant Storage Behaviour in Seeds of Two Tropical Fabaceae (Subfamily Caesalpinioideae) Species

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Physiological epicotyl dormancy in which the epicotyl elongates inside the seed before the shoot emerges has been reported for only a few tropical rainforest species, all of which are trees that produce recalcitrant seeds. In studies on seeds of Fabaceae in Sri Lanka, we observed a considerable time delay in shoot emergence following root emergence in seeds of the introduced caesalpinioid legumes Brownea coccinea and Cynometra cauliflora. Thus, our aim was to determine if seeds of these two tropical rainforest trees have physiological epicotyl dormancy, and also if they are recalcitrant, i.e. desiccation sensitive. METHODOLOGY: Fresh seeds were (i) dried to various moisture levels, and (ii) stored at -1 and 5 °C to determine loss (or not) of viability and thus type of seed storage behaviour (orthodox, recalcitrant or intermediate). To identify the kind of dormancy, we tested the effect of scarification on imbibition and monitored radicle emergence and epicotyl growth (inside the seed) and emergence. PRINCIPAL RESULTS: FRESH SEEDS OF BOTH SPECIES HAD HIGH MOISTURE CONTENT (MC): 50 % for C. cauliflora and 30 % for B. coccinea. Further, all seeds of C. cauliflora and the majority of those of B. coccinea lost viability when dried to 15 % MC; most seeds of both species also lost viability during storage at -1 or 5 °C. Intact seeds of both species were water permeable, and radicles emerged in a high percentage of them inHowever, shoot emergence lagged behind root emergence by 77 ± 14 days in B. coccinea and by 38 ± 4 days in C. cauliflora. Further, plumule growth inside seeds of C. cauliflora began almost immediately after radicle emergence but not until ∼30-35 days in B. coccinea seeds. CONCLUSIONS: Seeds of both species are recalcitrant and have physiological epicotyl dormancy. The kind of physiological epicotyl dormancy in seeds of C. cauliflora has not been described previously; the formula is C(nd) (root)-[Formula: see text] (epicotyl)