Fractals and the large-scale structure in the Universe

During the last decade it has been argued by some investigators that the distribution of galaxies in the Universe is a fractal. This is contrary to the standard view that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. In this article, the basic concepts of fractals and their characterization are introduced with the help of simple examples. The applications of these concepts in the context of cosmology will be discussed in the second part. A K Mittal is currently a visiting scientist at Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, on leave from the University of Allahabad. His research interests include chaos, fractals and their applications, partleularly in cosmology and in weather prodiction. T H Seshadri is at the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi. He is presently on lien from Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. Areas of his interest include cosmic microwave background radiation, large scale structures in the Universe and application of fractals in these.     

Hydrodynamic lubrication

This article gives the principle of hydrodynamic lubrication and also presents the new phenomenon of levitating drops over liquid film flow, which is explained using hydrodynamic lubrication theory.     

Novelty versus retrieval cue value of visual contextual stimuli in pigeons

Learning & Behavior - Thomas and Empedocles (1992) proposed that in a retention test, the relative enhancement of responding when the context that had accompanied training is again present...     

Making ethnic citizens: The politics and practice of education in Malaysia

This paper examines the politics and practice of education in Malaysia within the context of ethnicity and nation building. Public education in Malaysia—particularly, but not exclusively, at the pre-university level—is promoted as a nation-building tool, seeking to inculcate a sense of Malaysian-ness and patriotism. Simultaneously, however, public education—particularly, but not exclusively, at the university level—is used as a tool for the promotion of ethnic Malay interests. These two objectives are not necessarily contradictory; indeed the assertion that a vital ingredient in the creation of a ‘Malaysian nation’ is the eradication of inter-ethnic economic disparities has been at the heart of the Malaysian regime's discourse on nation building since the ethnic riots of May 1969. Hence, in this view, preferential policies for the economically disadvantaged but numerically dominant Malays are a necessary component of the nation-building project. Nonetheless, there are at least clear tensions between these two functions of education—tensions, which, I shall argue, help explain both the particularly sensitive politics of education in Malaysia, and the discursive stance the Malaysian regime has adopted within the educational field.     

Cognitive correlates of visual speech understanding in hearing-impaired individuals

This study examined the extent to which different measures of speechreading performance correlated with particular cognitive abilities in a population of hearing-impaired people. Although the three speechreading tasks (isolated word identification, sentence comprehension, and text tracking) were highly intercorrelated, they tapped different cognitive skills. In this population, younger participants were better speechreaders, and, when age was taken into account, speech tracking correlated primarily with (written) lexical decision speed. In contrast, speechreading for sentence comprehension correlated most strongly with performance on a phonological processing task (written pseudohomophone detection) but also on a span measure that may have utilized visual, nonverbal memory for letters. We discuss the implications of this pattern.