The Use of Rhyme, Rhythm, and Melody as a Form of Repetition Priming to Aid in Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval of Semantic Memories in Alzheimer’s Patients

Millions are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease annually which can have debilitating effects on patient memory. Thus, finding new ways to help facilitate memory in these patients, especially through non-pharmaceutical means, has become increasingly important. I examined the use of melody, rhyme, and rhythm as encoding mechanisms to aid in the retrieval of long term semantic information by juxtaposing scholarly articles detailing experiments, each of which examined the effects of various facets of memory facilitation; this helped produce an idea of which devices are most effective. Additionally, I surveyed studies highlighting limitations of song implementation to craft an effective plan to aid Alzheimer’s patients. Melody, rhyme, and rhythm provide an organizational structure to facilitate the encoding of information. Specifically, chunking, the grouping of smaller units into larger ‘chunks’, helps facilitate long term encoding in patients, and is the byproduct of the organizational structure of a text. A major drawback of using these devices is the loss in the depth of encoding semantic information; however, it is important to recognize music still assists general content memory. Therefore, Alzheimer’s patients would benefit from the use of melody as it would provide a moral support, helping familiarity with their surroundings, although they would not benefit from instructional song. Future experiments may study the combination of discussed factors in various settings to examine the unique benefits of music on memory in Alzheimer’s patients

Civil Servants’ Salary Structure

The paper looks at the trends in nominal and real salaries of the Federal Government employees over the period 1990-2006. It examines the structural defects in the existing salary structure and the anomalies in the allowances structure to show that appropriate remuneration for the civil servants requires serious and urgent consideration. The widening gap in the emoluments of government employees versus the public sector corporations and private sector employees has a strong bearing on the motivation and ability to work. The paper makes serious recommendations to overhaul the existing structure of salaries and perks to make the public sector employment competitive and cost-effective.nominal and real salaries, salary, public sector

Conceptual design of harvesting energy system for road application

Energy harvesting becomes more and more important in our life. It refers to the practice of acquiring energy from the environment which would be otherwise wasted and converting it into usable electric energy. For this, every kind of energy can be exploited such as solar, wind or strain and kinetic energy. The idea is to propose a conceptual design that will carry out a suitable energy harvesting conversion to be applied for road application. Harvesting energy using piezoelectric generators has been chosen for this project. The project conduct a simulation analysis using a piezoelectric generator based on a model by S Roundy and P K Wright. The data used from a 15 mm x 3.2 mm x 0.14 mm single layer piezoelectric bending element which produce 0.95mW with a 1.727e6 Nm of input stress. The simulation is done using MATLAB-Simulink-SimPowerSystems which also tested with others value by Luigi Pinna et al.. Piezoelectric generator can be one of the green solutions for sustainable development in energy generation

An Analysis of Budget Deficits, Debt Accumulation, and Debt Instability

In Pakistan all the macro indicators have been adversely affected by the persistently high deficits and the strategy adopted to finance them in the last two decades. The excessive domestic borrowing at high rates to finance deficits without any attempts at domestic resource mobilisation and controlling of the deficits over extended periods absorbed all available domestic and external resources. The resulting debttrap led to increased external borrowings at high rates with short-term maturity. This, coupled with massive exchange rate depreciation throughout the last two decades, resulted in rapid debt accumulation. The recent fiscal space created in the wake of events of 9/11, resulting in high reserves, follows considerable debt relief and availability of massive funds on very soft terms. However, the decline in budget deficit continues to occur at the expense of development expenditure, along with some increase in tax revenues. This trend in expenditure needs to be reversed if serious progress in debt reduction is the aim.

The effect of flower-like tatania towards characteristics and performance of polysulfone mixed matrix membrane

For ages, the polymeric membrane such as PSf is widely used in liquid separation for various application as the polymer itself offer versatile and attractive properties. However, due to strong hydrophobic nature of PSf property that create serious fouling problem to most of the separation process, thus modification of membrane by integrating strong hydrophilic particles is always practically used among industries and researchers. In this research, the effect of FLT as an additive in the PSf membrane was investigated. With consideration of the FLT that offer larger specific surface area as compared to ST that able to generate better performances and properties of polymer MMM. In this work, the polymer MMM of PSf/FLT and PSf/ST membranes were prepared via phase inversion method at five different concentrations of additive. Membrane characterization involved several observations such as cross-section area, particle distribution, surface roughness, hydrophilicity property, mean pore size, mechanical strength and porosity. Meanwhile, membrane performances were evaluated in terms of HA rejection, PWF, antifouling, antibacterial activity and photocatalytic properties based on self-cleaning antifouling efficiency. From the result, the addition of FLT was strongly influenced overall structure and characteristics of the membrane compared to ST. With a larger surface area of FLT and homogenous distribution inside membrane structure have resulted in better hydrophilicity effect thus improved the membrane performances. The PWF result was increased from 61.33 L/m2h to 137.81 L/m2h for PSf/ST and 155.46 L/m2h for PSf/FLT as increased additive to 3 wt%. Same results were obtained by rejection analysis where the PSf/FLT membrane able to reject more than 96% of HA and improved antifouling and self-cleaning efficiency. It is clearly shown that the present of higher specific surface area of FLT has improved overall characteristics and performances of the membrane compared to ST especially at 3 wt% of concentration

Features extraction of geometry defect monitoring in cylindrical piping

This study aims to investigate the features of wave in the single Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) cylindrical pipeline. This project involved the monitoring process of without defect and defect single pipeline. The experiment process involved the simple geometry defect including the horizontal and vertical cracks. The sensor used in this project is the Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensor (PWAS) which the sensors use to detect the lamb wave. As a part of non-destructive test process, this crack detection process involving the process of analyzing wave obtained from the sensor. The size of defect is the manipulated variables use in this project which including the size of crack start from 1 cm to 5 cm. However, this project is only concentrate only on the semicircular part of the cross-section of the pipeline. Because of that, all the six sensors used in this project attached only in the distance 36º between each sensor. This project indicates the different pattern of wave for each sensor as each sensor has own angle from the midpoint of the circular cross-section. The different pattern produced by each sensor in the present of crack and for normal pipe was analyzed for the understanding the effect of the defect in the normal single PVC pipeline. The data produced by each sensor then was filter to get the best accurate and consistent data. Filter data next to analyzed followed by the features choice for time domain including the maximum peak, minimum peak, velocity of the wave and maximum amplitude versus angle of the sensors for both horizontal and vertical defect. The results of each features is discussed graphically in results and discussion chapter

P-Star Model: A Leading Indicator of Inflation for Pakistan

The P-star inflation model is based on the long-term quantity theory of money and puts together the long-term determinants of the price level and the short-run changes in current inflation. The P-star model-based indicator has replaced the previous monetary policy procedures in a number of countries because it offers by far more information and predictive power than monitoring movements in money supply and the rate of monetary growth. In this paper we used the P-star model to calculate the leading indicator of inflation, and also to test the forecasting performance of the P-star model-based leading indicator of inflation. The results of the study show that compared to the simple autoregressive model and the M2 growth augmented model, the P-star model can be used to obtain the leading indicator of inflation in Pakistan because it has additional information about the future rate of inflation. Therefore, this paper provides a useful tool to the policy-makers to assess the future movement of inflation in Pakistan.Inflation; P-star model; Forecasting: Pakistan

Impact of foreign direct investment on poverty alleviation in Pakistan by using CGE model

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of FDI on poverty alleviation in Pakistan by using CGE model framework The First approach Micro simulation CGE approach which consists of using large number of FDI role in reducing the poverty in Pakistan. The second approach is simple household CGE model in which FDI role in household spending in Pakistan. Consequently this paper makes strong statements and tries to argue its case from the perspectives of the urban- poor. The positions taken and arguments made are not new and may be found in the current development literature. They are also not comprehensive and may be just one side of the coin. Other positions and arguments may be just as valid. Participants at the High-level Regional Meeting are encouraged to voice their views on the issues raised and approaches suggested in this paper during the various symposia. The both approaches systematic positive results FDI has significant role in reducing the urban poverty in Pakistan but in rural poverty is increasing day by day with no significant impact on the rural household. While the issue of poverty has been the direct or indirect focus of development initiatives in Asia and special in case of Pakistan were recently huge FDI investment has been taken place in 1992-07. The poverty has gained prominence only in the last two to three decades. Two basic “levels” or “types" of poverty are identified in the development literature: absolute poverty and relative poverty. The FDI has invested 2,096 million in 2006-07. It has general impact on the urban population. Due to the poor policies made by the government rural household is not getting benefit on it

Automated Mapping of UML Activity Diagrams to Formal Specifications for Supporting Containment Checking

Business analysts and domain experts are often sketching the behaviors of a software system using high-level models that are technology- and platform-independent. The developers will refine and enrich these high-level models with technical details. As a consequence, the refined models can deviate from the original models over time, especially when the two kinds of models evolve independently. In this context, we focus on behavior models; that is, we aim to ensure that the refined, low-level behavior models conform to the corresponding high-level behavior models. Based on existing formal verification techniques, we propose containment checking as a means to assess whether the system's behaviors described by the low-level models satisfy what has been specified in the high-level counterparts. One of the major obstacles is how to lessen the burden of creating formal specifications of the behavior models as well as consistency constraints, which is a tedious and error-prone task when done manually. Our approach presented in this paper aims at alleviating the aforementioned challenges by considering the behavior models as verification inputs and devising automated mappings of behavior models onto formal properties and descriptions that can be directly used by model checkers. We discuss various challenges in our approach and show the applicability of our approach in illustrative scenarios.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2014, arXiv:1404.043

National Income Accounting and Environment: A Case Study of Waterlogging and Salinity in Pakistan

Irrigation plays a crucial role in improving agricultural productivity, it has resulted in waterlogging and salinity problems in Pakistan due to both water seepage from canals and overdoses of water encouraged by inappropriate water pricing practices. As many as 2.2 million hectares of land forming 13 percent of the cultivated area in Pakistan suffer from an acute problem of waterlogging and salinity, i.e., water table is less than 5 feet from the normal surface level. [See Government of Pakistan (1993)]. Despite the government’s effort to resolve the problem through an expansive network of public tubewells under the salinity control and reclamation project (SCARP), the problem seems to have worsened over time. The higher water doses may increase the growth of output in the short run, but by degrading the agricultural lands and increasing impurities of potable water, etc., they adversely affect the long-run growth. These adverse effects of the inappropriate irrigation practices on agricultural productivity are generally not accounted for in the national income accounting system. Accordingly, there is a need to account for the forgone economic, social, and environmental benefits. In this regard, the environmental resource accounting provides a valuable information base for integrated development planning and policy. The approach allows for segregation and elaboration of all environment-related flows and stocks of traditional accounts, linkage of physical accounts with monetary environmental accounts and balance sheets, assessment of environmental costs and benefits, accounting for the maintenance of tangible wealth, and elaboration and measurement of the indicators of environmentally-adjusted production and income.