An examination of microfinance self-help groups and the poorest of the poor women in Tamil Nadu, India

This study examined the formation and operation of women's microfinance self-help groups in southern India and investigated whether or not the poorest of the poor women were accepted as members of those groups. The study found that caste was used as a selection criterion. Many eligible women excluded themselves from joining the self-help group due to their own lack of education, age, poor health, poverty and lack of trust in the system. The research revealed that self-help groups enhanced women's income and education, improved village infrastructure, and reduced household conflict. Factors that might prevent inclusion of the poorest of the poor in future microfinance programs were identified.

Strong evidence for a novel schizophrenia risk locus on chromosome 1p31.1 in homogeneous pedigrees from Tamil Nadu, India

OBJECTIVE: The study of ethnically homogeneous populations may help to identify schizophrenia risk loci. The authors conducted a genomewide linkage scan for schizophrenia in an Indian population. METHOD: Participants were 441 individuals (262 affected probands and siblings) who were recruited primarily from one ethnically homogeneous group, the Tamil Brahmin caste, although individuals from other geographically proximal castes also participated. Genotyping of 124 affected sibling pair pedigrees was performed with 402 short tandem repeat polymorphisms. Linkage analyses were conducted using nonparametric exponential LOD (logarithm of the odds ratio for linkage) scores and parametric heterogeneity LOD scores. Parametric heterogeneity scores were calculated using simple dominant and recessive models, correcting for multiple statistics. The data were examined for evidence of consanguinity. Genomewide significance levels were determined using 10,000 gene dropping simulations. RESULTS: These findings revealed genomewide significant linkage to chromosome 1p31.1, through the use of both exponential and heterogeneity LOD scores, incorporating correction for multiple statistics and mild consanguinity. The estimated sibling recurrence risk associated with this putative locus was 1.95. Analysis for heterogeneity LOD scores also detected suggestive linkage to chromosomes 13q22.1 and 16q12.2. Using 117 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), family-based association analyses of phosphodiesterase 4B (PDE4B), the closest schizophrenia candidate gene, detected no convincing evidence of association, suggesting that the chromosome 1 peak represents a novel risk locus. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study-to the authors' knowledge-to report significant linkage of schizophrenia to chromosome 1p31.1. Further investigation of this chromosome region in diverse populations is warranted to identify underlying sequence variants.

The Hindraf saga : media and citizenship in Malaysia

In the early part of 2008, a major political upset was pulled off in the Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia when the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (National Front), lost its long-held parliamentary majority after the general elections. Given the astonishingly high profile of political bloggers and relatively well established alternative online new sites within the nation, it was not surprising that many new media proponents saw the result as a major triumph of the medium. Through a brief account of the Hindraf (Hindu Rights Action Force) saga and the socio-political dissent nursed, in part, through new media in contemporary Malaysia, this paper seeks to lend context to the events that precede and surround the election as an example of the relationship between media and citizenship in praxis. In so doing it argues that the political turnaround, if indeed it proves to be, cannot be considered the consequence of new media alone. Rather, that to comprehensively assess the implications of new media for citizenship is to take into account the specific histories, conditions and actions (or lack of) of the various social actors involved.

A preliminary theory of dark network resilience

A crucial contemporary policy question for governments across the globe is how to cope with international crime and terrorist networks. Many such “dark” networks—that is, networks that operate covertly and illegally—display a remarkable level of resilience when faced with shocks and attacks. Based on an in-depth study of three cases (MK, the armed wing of the African National Congress in South Africa during apartheid; FARC, the Marxist guerrilla movement in Colombia; and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, in Sri Lanka), we present a set of propositions to outline how shocks impact dark network characteristics (resources and legitimacy) and networked capabilities (replacing actors, linkages, balancing integration and differentiation) and how these in turn affect a dark network's resilience over time. We discuss the implications of our findings for policymakers.

Solder joint defects classification using the Log-Gabor Filter, the Discrete Wavelet Transform and the Discrete Cosine Transform

Inspection of solder joints has been a critical process in the electronic manufacturing industry to reduce manufacturing cost, improve yield, and ensure project quality and reliability. This paper proposes the use of the Log-Gabor filter bank, Discrete Wavelet Transform and Discrete Cosine Transform for feature extraction of solder joint images on Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). A distance based on the Mahalanobis Cosine metric is also presented for classification of five different types of solder joints. From the experimental results, this methodology achieved high accuracy and a well generalised performance. This can be an effective method to reduce cost and improve quality in the production of PCBs in the manufacturing industry.

Analysing the Sri Lankan conflict using Michael Mann's four-dimensional model of social power

This thesis provides an overview of the Sri Lankan civil war with a view to identifying some of the factors that contributed to the dispute between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. It adopts a multi-causal explanation of the conflict by reference to the theories of social power developed by Michael Mann. The conflict has been variously described as an ethnic or political conflict, or has been characterised as a determined by a number of interacting factors (including colonialism, ethnicity, religion, economy, politics and globalisation). Mann’s four-dimensional model of social power is deployed to analyse the causal relationships, together with their inter-connections, which clarify the origins of the dispute. It argues that Mann’s theoretical framework helps to highlight some of the interconnected elements that contributed to the conflict.

Inpatient facial expression recognition with SMS alert

Facial expression recognition (FER) has been dramatically developed in recent years, thanks to the advancements in related fields, especially machine learning, image processing and human recognition. Accordingly, the impact and potential usage of automatic FER have been growing in a wide range of applications, including human-computer interaction, robot control and driver state surveillance. However, to date, robust recognition of facial expressions from images and videos is still a challenging task due to the difficulty in accurately extracting the useful emotional features. These features are often represented in different forms, such as static, dynamic, point-based geometric or region-based appearance. Facial movement features, which include feature position and shape changes, are generally caused by the movements of facial elements and muscles during the course of emotional expression. The facial elements, especially key elements, will constantly change their positions when subjects are expressing emotions. As a consequence, the same feature in different images usually has different positions. In some cases, the shape of the feature may also be distorted due to the subtle facial muscle movements. Therefore, for any feature representing a certain emotion, the geometric-based position and appearance-based shape normally changes from one image to another image in image databases, as well as in videos. This kind of movement features represents a rich pool of both static and dynamic characteristics of expressions, which playa critical role for FER. The vast majority of the past work on FER does not take the dynamics of facial expressions into account. Some efforts have been made on capturing and utilizing facial movement features, and almost all of them are static based. These efforts try to adopt either geometric features of the tracked facial points, or appearance difference between holistic facial regions in consequent frames or texture and motion changes in loca- facial regions. Although achieved promising results, these approaches often require accurate location and tracking of facial points, which remains problematic.