A spatial and social study of the relationship between public place and retail activity: the temples of Chennai, south India

Chennai, South India, is a city whose historicity and modernity are evident, both culturally and physically. It is a typical example of an Indian city which has many of its temples in its urban landscape, each having varied commercial activity around them, often in the form of retail activity. The researcher's initial curiosity about why, where and how the retail activity related to Chennai temple -locations developed into an inquiry about the contextual meaning of this relationship. The approach taken was to study the spatial and social contexts of Chennai that shape this particular urban phenomenon. The literature review examined both contemporary and historic Middle -Eastern mosques and European churches to establish their relationship with retail activity, while at the same time, considering the historic and current relationship of South Indian temples to similar activity. The empirical, case -study research explored the contemporary spatial and social contexts of 36 temples in Chennai city and established how these contexts exemplify the relationship between the temples and retail activity. The spatial study used Space Syntax analysis (Hiller eetal.), land -use and figure -ground studies, from which the researcher derived five typologies to look at spatial heterogeneity, namely, a set of principles that would show the spatial relationships. The social study used a questionnaire survey and found significant socio- economic and socio- cultural patterns that impinge on these two activities. The research conclusion chapter: a) examines contemporary and historical contexts to establish the development of the relationship between the temple location and retail activity; b) draws comparisons with international contexts in order to gain a wider perspective of the religious /commercial relationships that have existed or currently exist in other places and to establish any associated retail activity patterns that have existed or exist at these sites, and the significance of these findings in relation to the Chennai case studies; c) correlates the findings from the empirical investigation, namely, the social and spatial studies in order to establish the social meanings behind the spatial landscape and CO presents recommendations that would help the future of Chennai city

Efficient Resource Matching in Heterogeneous Grid Using Resource Vector

In this paper, a method for efficient scheduling to obtain optimum job throughput in a distributed campus grid environment is presented; Traditional job schedulers determine job scheduling using user and job resource attributes. User attributes are related to current usage, historical usage, user priority and project access. Job resource attributes mainly comprise of soft requirements (compilers, libraries) and hard requirements like memory, storage and interconnect. A job scheduler dispatches jobs to a resource if a job's hard and soft requirements are met by a resource. In current scenario during execution of a job, if a resource becomes unavailable, schedulers are presented with limited options, namely re-queuing job or migrating job to a different resource. Both options are expensive in terms of data and compute time. These situations can be avoided, if the often ignored factor, availability time of a resource in a grid environment is considered. We propose resource rank approach, in which jobs are dispatched to a resource which has the highest rank among all resources that match the job's requirement. The results show that our approach can increase throughput of many serial / monolithic jobs.Comment: 10 page

Biopharmaceutic and Pharmacokinetic Evaluation of Hesperidin and Hesperetin for Ocular Delivery

The bioflavonoid hesperidin and its aglycone hesperetin are promising candidates for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema because of their pharmacological properties. The objective of this project was to characterize the biopharmaceutic and pharmacokinetic characteristics of hesperidin and hesperetin for ocular delivery, especially with respect to the distribution of these compounds to the posterior segment of the eye. Hesperidin and hesperetin were found to be water insoluble compounds. Although they demonstrated good permeability across the ocular tissues, hesperetin\u27s permeability was found to be higher than that of hesperidin. Hesperidin demonstrated symmetrical transcorneal and transretinal permeation whereas hesperetin exhibited asymmetrical transcorneal and symmetrical transretinal transport. However, none of the influx or efflux transporters, expressed on the cornea, were involved in hesperetin\u27s corneal transport. It was concluded that hesperetin\u27s physicochemical properties, ultrastructure of the cornea and components of the diffusion media play a major role in the passive asymmetric transport. Results from the intravitreal kinetic studies of hesperidin, hesperetin and glucosyl-hesperidin (a water soluble derivative of hesperidin), following intravitreal injection, revealed that all three compounds have relatively short half-lives (\u3c 8h) in the vitreous humor. Hesperetin demonstrated the shortest half-life, consistent with its physiochemical characteristics. All three compounds exhibited linear pharmacokinetics, within the dose range tested. This information will be critical in the design of ocular drug delivery systems for these compounds. The ocular bioavailability studies following systemic administration suggested that vitreal bioavailability is negligible because of rapid conversion of both hesperidin and hesperetin into their hydrophilic metabolite, hesperetin-glucuronide, in the plasma. In contrast, topical instillation produced significant concentrations of hesperidin and hesperetin in the ocular tissues. Hesperetin\u27s diffusion into the ocular tissues, in vivo, was high compared to hesperidin; however, very low levels were observed in the vitreous humor. Inclusion of benzalkonium chloride, as a penetration enhancer/preservative, significantly improved the vitreal levels of hesperetin. In conclusion, topical administration would be ideal for the delivery of hesperetin to the deeper ocular tissues. Development of a controlled release drug delivery system and specialized ophthalmic formulations will reduce the frequency of administration needed to sustain the levels at the target site

A CASE STUDY ON THE USE OF DESIGN EXEMPLAR AS A SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL TOOL

This thesis presents a case study examining the suitability of design exemplar technology as a CAD query tool for an industrial scenario. The search and retrieval of geometrically similar mold inserts to save tooling cost for a tire manufacturing company is taken as the case study. During the implementation of the design exemplar as a CAD search and retrieval tool, several limitations of it are identified, such as the difficulty and tediousness in authoring exemplars for real world problems. To overcome these limitations, a new mathematical-based exemplar approach (mathematical model) is developed for tire mold insert retrieval. This approach calculates a set of maxima and minima based on the specifications of the target mold insert and identifies similar molds that fall within these specifications. Though the mathematical model requires less effort to author the exemplar queries than the initial boundary envelope approach, it has an unreasonably high time complexity when implemented using design exemplar. A partially developed mathematical-based exemplar takes 30 seconds to run through a sample database of 10 mold inserts. Assuming that a fully built exemplar would take more time when run on a database of 7,000 mold inserts as it would have more number of constraints added to it, the approach was not implemented through design exemplar tool. However, as this exemplar approach gives a satisfactory theoretical solution to the problem, the exemplar is hard-coded in an independent C++ program to suit the requirements at hand. The mathematical-model which is implemented in an independent C++ program successfully searches through the complete database of 7,000 tire mold inserts, retrieving similar mold inserts, in a span of one second, a huge efficiency gain when compared with the traditional exemplar system. Apart from the time reduction for the search and retrieval, the exemplar inspired program has an additional advantage in that no geometrical entities must be handled to build exemplars. However, the mathematical model may result in several false positives that must be manually eliminated. In an experiment, 15 mold inserts were randomly selected from the database and were searched for similar mold inserts using the program developed. In the experiment, it was observed that there were no false negatives and the number of false positive ranged from 0 - 10 among the 11 retrieved mold inserts. Considering the size of the database which is roughly 7000 mold inserts, the mathematical still provides advantages in search and retrieval. It is still good because 7,000 have been reduced on an average to 11. During the experiment, it as been found that 80 percent of the mold inserts which were tested have similar mold inserts. The design exemplar tool could have helped company to save the tooling cost of $184,000 per annum by providing them with a search and retrieval tool. However, it was not implemented because of some of the limitations mentioned above. Still the strategies of design exemplar are valid for querying CAD models. This is proved by the fact that the mathematical model which is an essentially an exemplar can successfully finds and retrieves similar mold inserts

ATTITUDE TOWARDS HOME WORK AMONG TEACHERS AT SECONDARY LEVEL IN COIMBATORE DISTRICT

Homework is defined as a set of tasks assigned to students by their teachers to be completed outside the class. Common homework assignments may include a quantity or period of reading to be performed, writing or typing to be completed, problems to be solved, a school project to be built (such as a diorama or display), or other skills to be practiced. The study aimed to examine the attitude towards home work among teachers at secondary levels. The investigator adopted survey method to study the attitude towards home work among teachers at secondary levels. For this study a sample of 300 secondary level teachers from five Govt and Private schools which are situated in and around Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu were selected by the investigator using simple random sampling technique. The findings reveal that is inferred that there is a difference in the level of attitude towards homework among school teachers at secondary level

Optimization of casting process parameters for synthesis of Al-Nb-B master alloy

Al-Nb-B master alloys were synthesized using commercial pure aluminum, niobium, and KBF4 salts. Two different sources of Nb (pure Nb powder and Al-60%Nb powder) were used to prepare the master alloy. Casting process parameters such as reaction time and melt stir time interval were varied to enhance the formation of in situ intermetallic particles in the master alloys. The size, shape and distribution of intermetallic particles in these master alloys were studied using microscopy techniques. The results show that the Al-5Nb-1B master alloy prepared with Al-60%Nb powders has a uniform distribution of intermetallic particles as compared to the master alloy prepared with pure Nb powders. Increase in boron content from 1 wt.% to 2 wt.% in the master alloys resulted in a higher fraction of intermetallic particles. Among all the master alloys synthesized, Al-5Nb-2B was observed to have the highest number of well-distributed intermetallic particles which could act as potential grain refiners of aluminum alloys

Modification of Al-Si alloys by Ce or Ce with Sr

Al-Si alloys were modified by addition of cerium (Ce) or Ce plus strontium (Sr) to study the effect on the eutectic silicon (Si) morphology. The modified alloys were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, and thermal analysis to understand the effect of Ce and Sr on their microstructure. The results showed that addition of 1% Ce resulted in only partial modification of the Si phase, whereas addition of Ce with 0.04% Sr resulted in complete modification of the alloy. Addition of 1% Ce decreased the eutectic arrest temperature by about 10°C, compared with a 5°C drop with Sr addition only. SEM energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and XRD results revealed formation of Al2Si2Ce intermetallic in the Ce-modified Al-Si alloys. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) showed that the intermetallic formed just before the eutectic phase

Development of a Geometric Model Retrieval System: A design exemplar case study

This paper presents a case study examining design exemplar technology implemented as a search and retrieval tool for tyre mould inserts. Limitations of using the geometric-based exemplar approach, such as tediousness of authoring exemplars and time complexity, are identified and addressed through a new parametric-based exemplar approach. Here, the maxima and minima are calculated based upon the specifications of the query mould insert. The design exemplar is demonstrated to be useful primarily in prototyping query mechanisms. Ultimately, customer requirements necessitated implementing the parametric approach as a dedicated software package grounded on the exemplar-based prototyped query mechanism

Laparoscopic Nephroureterectomy: The Distal Ureteral Dilemma

Transitional cell carcinoma affecting the upper urinary tract, though uncommon, constitutes a serious urologic disease. Radical nephroureterectomy remains the treatment of choice but has undergone numerous modifications over the years. Although the standard technique has not been defined, the laparoscopic approach has gained in popularity in the last two decades. The most appropriate oncological management of the distal ureteral and bladder cuff has been a subject of much debate. The aim of the nephroureterectomy procedure is to remove the entire ipsilateral upper tract in continuity while avoiding extravesical transfer of tumor-containing urine during bladder surgery. A myriad of technical modifications have been described. In this article, we review the literature and present an overview of the options for dealing with the lower ureter during radical nephroureterectomy

3D atom probe tomography study on segregation of yttrium in modified Al-Si alloys

Yttrium segregation behavior in Al-Si alloys has been studied using the three-dimensional atom probe tomography technique. Al-Si alloys were prepared by casting method, and yttrium was added to modify the eutectic silicon morphology in these alloys. The results indicated that yttrium is preferentially located within the Si phase, with the highest concentration at the interface between eutectic Al and eutectic Si