132,145 research outputs found
D. H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450-1850
No full textChampion Catherine. D. H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy. The ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450-1850. In: L'Homme, 1992, tome 32 n°121. Anthropologie du proche. p. 204
Orthographic influences, vocabulary development and phonological awareness in deaf children who use cochlear implants
No full textIn the current study, we explore the influence of orthographic knowledge on phonological awareness in children with cochlear implants and compare developmental associations to those found for hearing children matched for word reading level or chronological age. We show an influence of orthographic knowledge on syllable and phoneme awareness in deaf and hearing children, but no orthographic effect on rhyme awareness. Nonorthographic rhyme awareness was a significant predictor of reading outcomes for all groups. However, whereas receptive vocabulary knowledge was the most important predictor of word reading variance in the cochlear implant group, rhyme awareness was the only important predictor of word reading variance in the reading level matched hearing group. Both vocabulary and rhyme awareness were equally important in predicting reading in the chronological age-matched hearing group. The data suggest that both deaf and hearing children are influenced by orthography when making phonological judgments, and that phonological awareness and vocabulary are both important for reading developmen
Genetic variation at the apolipoprotein B gene and associations with coronary heart disease and its factors.
No full textPhDCoronary heart disease (CED) is the major cause of mortality in Western societies.
The main risk factors are plasma lipoprotein concentrations, smoking, blood pressure and
family history. The effect of family history implies a genetic contribution to the aetiology,
support for which has also come from twin, and other heritability studies. The genetic
component of CHID may be studied by the candidate gene approach, whereby the genes of
products most likely to be involved in the processes leading to CHD, and in its risk factors,
are analysed. The plasma concentration of apolipoprotein (apo) B, the major protein
component of low density lipoprotein (LDL), is positively correlated with the risk of
developing CHD.
In this research, the gene for apo B was analysed for restriction enzyme fragment
length polymorphisms (RFLPs). A RFLP is caused by a sequence change in the DNA, and
results in length variation in the fragments. RFLPs for apo B have been shown to be
associated with CHD and the plasma concentrations of cholesterol, triglycerides and apo B
in some population studies. However, other studies have failed to confirm these relations.
The work described in this thesis was designed to overcome some of the problems which
niay have produced these inconsistencies. A random sample of 300 men, aged 49-65 years,
residing in South Wales was studied. RFLPs determined in these individuals were used to
generate genotypes and haplotypes (arrangements of specific alleles on a single
chromosome). Significant associations were found between some genotypes and some
haplotypes with altered concentrations of plasma total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol and
with risk of CHD and/or with obesity. Presence of Xbal site (X2X2 genotype) was
significantly associated with higher concentrations of plasma LDL cholesterol (p=0.0 19).
Absence of Mspl site (M 1) was associated with significantly elevated concentrations of
plasma total and LDL cholesterol (p < 0.05) by both the techniques of genotype and
haplotype analysis. EcoRl RFLP (absence of the site - El) was the minimum haplotype
necessary to detect a significant association with decreased plasma cholesterol
J Rajput- Williams Ph. D. Thesis Page 3
concentrations (p < 0.05). Genotypes generated from alleles defined by the Mspl-EcoRl
RFLPs were associated with significant variation in serum cholesterol concentration (p <
0.03), showing a stratification of concentration with the highest being associated with loss
of the Mspl site and the lowest with the presence of the EcoRl site. Both these RFLPs result
in charged aminoacid alterations, and lie close to the LDL receptor binding domain of apo
B. The minimum haplotype necessary for detection of apo B with CHD was Xbal-Mspl (p
< 0.05). The minimum haplotype associated with obesity was the RFLP pair Pvull-Xbal (p
< 0.05).
Further examination for mutations of the CpG dinucleotide which may influence
cholesterol metabolism was undertaken by screening around the putative LDL receptorbinding
domain (RBD) of the apo B gene. One variant was detected for aminoacid residue
3500 (Arg,,,,, 4 Gln) mutation, and two variants for aminoacid residue 3611 which also
corresponds to the MspI mutation (Arg,,, ,4
Gln)
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Serving Empire, Building Kingdoms: Rajput State Formation and Political Culture in the Mughal Empire, c. 1583 – 1694
No full textThis dissertation demonstrates that there was an unprecedented expansion of Rajput-governed “little kingdoms” under the aegis of the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century. The Rajputs, originating primarily from northwestern India, were elite Hindu upper-caste itinerant warriors. Rajputs belonging to notable clans served as administrative rank holders (manṣabdār) in the Mughal army and played key roles in battles that extended the frontiers of the empire. In addition to their military duties, these Rajput rank holders were assigned lands where they were responsible for the civil and revenue administration on behalf of the Mughal state. This dissertation examines the proliferation of Rajput claimants to kingship in early modern India in these hinterland agrarian subdistricts, and argues that Mughal territorial expansion directly cemented Rajput political authority in northwestern and central India. Indeed, several “little kingdoms” that the Rajput rank-holder kings settled survived the Mughal, Maratha, and British empires, and the descendants of those ruling families, their clan members, and their supporters remain elites and retain caste and political leadership to this day, despite the formal abolition of kingship in India in 1971.
“Serving Empire, Building Kingdoms” shows that Rajput kingship flourished and transformed through a close engagement with the Mughal state and its apparatuses. The central question animating the project is how Hindu kingship evolved under the Islamicate Mughal Empire. Following the Mughal conquest of north India (1526), the Mughal emperor became the subcontinent’s sovereign authority, Padshah. This dissertation shows how Rajput warriors ascended the ranks of the Mughal nobility, and became hereditary rulers or “little kings” in the hinterlands. They took on the mantle of Raja (king), a durable template embedded in Sanskrit and Brahminical traditions. Rajput kingship was characterized by an emphasis on masculinity, combining Mughal courtly etiquette, ideals of chivalry, and a normative performance of the caste-based code of kshatriya dharma (warrior duty). In this way, Islamic rule in South Asia paradoxically served as a cradle for Hindu kingship. By analyzing the infrastructural, ideological, religiopolitical, and economic factors that reinforced Rajput kingship in the Mughal Empire, this dissertation offers a ground-up study of the Mughal Empire’s facilitative role in the crystallization of local power. Specifically, this dissertation examines one such instantiation of Rajput ascendancy—the founding of little kingdoms in northwestern and central India by Mahesdas (d. 1647), a scion of a minor branch of the prestigious Rathor family, and the subsequent administrative infrastructure and governance provided by his successors.
To provide a comprehensive study of Rajput state formation in Mughal hinterlands, this dissertation turns to a combination of imperial sources in Persian, as well as materials in English and Sanskrit and an array of vernacular languages including Marwari, Braj, Hindi, Dingal, Malvi, and Pingal. Sources include Persian Mughal chronicles, courtly records, biographical compilations, land grants, poetry, newsletters, Marwari and Malvi chronicles on Rajput kingdoms, local administrative records, land grants, stone and copper-plate inscriptions, Rajput courtly literature in Braj, martyrological and heroic works in Dingal and Pingal, translated Sanskrit treatises, as well as British colonial-era ethnographic records, visual materials, built landscapes, field notes, and oral histories collected from central India and Rajasthan. Thus, besides standard sources in imperial and regional sources, “Serving Empire, Building Kingdoms,” foregrounds local texts and tales in marginal languages hitherto neglected in academic histories, bringing the little-known grassroots politics of the hinterlands to life.
Undergirded by this multilingual archive, this work makes three key contributions to the study of South Asian history. First, it challenges the conventional position that local autonomy fragments empires. Rather, this dissertation shows that the proliferation of Rajput kingdoms expedited the consolidation of Mughal authority over the empire’s hinterlands and establishes how Mughal and Rajput political authority and ideologies of rule mutually reinforced each other in the localities. Indeed, Rajput rulers in the hinterlands consciously nested their claims to kingship within Mughal sovereignty. Next, this dissertation shows how Rajput kingship thrived under Islamic sovereignty. Successful Rajput Mughal rank-holder kings developed a version of kingship in the Mughal hinterlands that was simultaneously predicated on warrior-caste leadership and Mughal sovereignty. Whilst Hindu sacral authority provided a claim over kingship for Rajput military officers, Mughal legitimacy simultaneously afforded the necessary administrative power to enact, perform, and uphold kingship. The Mughal rank-holding system, this dissertation shows, was the bedrock for this political arrangement, even though the little kings’ kingship was largely unacknowledged in imperial sources. Third, “Serving Empire, Building Kingdoms” reorients Mughal historiography’s gaze from the imperial center to the political transformations brewing in the hinterlands. Contrary to the mainstream view that Mughal decline in the eighteenth century spurred the creation of regional successor states, this project shows that subordinate kingdoms with delineated systems of governance already operated in the Mughal hinterlands
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Rāgs Around the Clock: A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style
No full textRāgs Around the Clock is a rich and vibrant compendium for the discovery and study of North Indian classical music. The theory and practice of rāg are explored through two interlinked resources: a handbook of essays and analyses offering technical, historical, cultural and aesthetic perspectives; and two online albums – Rāg samay cakra and Twilight Rāgs from North India – featuring khayāl singer Vijay Rajput and accompanists.Extracts from the albums are also embedded into the text to enhance learning and understanding. Each rāg is accompanied by a description of its chief characteristics and technical features, a notation of the song (bandiś) on which the performance is based, and a transliteration and translation of the song text. Distinctively, Rāg samay cakra also includes spoken renditions of each of the texts, helping non-Hindavi speakers to achieve the correct pronunciation.Sharing insights from both theory and practice, this collection draws on recent scholarship while also showcasing the vocal idiom – the gāyakī – of Vijay Rajput, a disciple of the late Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. It offers invaluable reading for students and researchers of Indian classical music, world music and ethnomusicology, and a rich repository for teacher and student practitioners of the khayāl vocal style. The combination of an aural and written exploration of rāg will appeal to anyone drawn to this form of music – whether newcomer, student (śiṣyā) or aficionado (rasika)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
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