Charms & Harms: Noni

‘Charms’ in Childrearing

Traditional or cultural practices are time honored rituals and beliefs which are prevalent in the community and they may pertain to a wide range of activities. A charm is defined as something worn about the person to ward off evil or ensure good fortune. Commonest purpose for use of a charm is for general wellbeing, and is found to be higher among people living in rural areas in joint family wi...

“whatever Charms Is Alien”: John Ashbery’s Everything

When Three Charms but Four Alarms

How many positive claims should be used to produce the most positive impression of a product or service? This article posits that in settings where consumers know that the message source has a persuasion motive, the optimal number of positive claims is three. More claims are better until the fourth claim, at which time consumers’ persuasion knowledge causes them to see all the claims with skept...

Noni (Morinda citrifolia).

Noni is an evergreen plant prevalent in Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Polynesian islands. It is used in traditional medicine for wound healing, infections, skin conditions, diarrhea, and as a tonic. Noni products have gained worldwide popularity over the past 2 decades and are aggressively marketed for immunostimulation and for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome and cancer. Preliminary ...

Object-Oriented Hierarchical Mesh Refinement with CHARMS

A new approach to the construction of adaptive approximations on finite element meshes and also in more general settings, including approximations on subdivision surfaces, had been recently proposed by Krysl, Grinspun, and Schröder. This paper outlines how the general refinement algorithms may be specialized to some common finite element discretizations in two and three dimensions, discusses th...