With an exponential growth in archival of time-stamped documents such as newswire articles, blog posts and other web-pages, information retrieval (IR) has become a challenging task. The degree of complexity in this IR task increases when these archives cover long time-spans and the terminology in them has undergone significant changes. When users pose queries pertaining to historical informatio...

Narrative exposure therapy (NET) is a recently developed, short-term treatment for patients with a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of multiple trauma. NET can be applied very successfully in patients with complex trauma complaints (Jongedijk, 2014; Schauer, Neuner, & Elbert, 2011). An important feature of NET is that trauma processing is never an isolated event but is always em...

Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida L.) is used as an important ornamental tree in North America, Japan, and Europe. Since 1995, epidemics of powdery mildew caused by Erysiphe pulchra (Cooke and Peck) U. Braun & S. Takamatsu (syn. Microsphaera pulchra Cooke and Peck) have impeded production of flowering dogwood throughout much of the eastern United States. The fungus is an obligate parasite and g...

Any system to compensate countries for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) requires a historical reference level against which future performance can be measured. Here we examine the possibilities Sri Lanka, a small forest country with limited data on forest carbon stocks, has to get ready for REDD+. We construct a historical reference level using available fores...

INTRODUCTION The concept of emergency medical services (EMS) is new to Sri Lanka. This article describes the development, delivery, and future ideas for EMS in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka also faces frequent natural hazards that justify the establishment of an EMS service. METHODOLOGY Data and information regarding emergency medical care in Sri Lanka were collected and reviewed from resources includ...

BACKGROUND Following an unintended pregnancy, not every woman would invariably choose to undergo an unsafe abortion. It suggests that in the decision making process, women face both 'push' factors that favour abortion and 'pull' factors that work against it. This study assessed the circumstances that surrounded a woman's decision to undergo an unsafe abortion, compared to a decision to continue...

The core objective of this research is to identify the carbon footprint of rubber based products in relevance to different phases of the manufacturing process to identify greenhouse gas emission effect correlated at different stages to establish mitigation strategies. In order to carry out research objectives; ten unstructured interviews were conducted with the relevant professionals to identif...

INTRODUCTION Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a noninvasive, inexpensive, self-administered technique used throughout the world to relieve pain. In Sri Lanka, physiotherapists may use TENS for their patients as they receive a small amount of education about the principles and practice of TENS in their undergraduate training. To date, there have been no data gathered about t...

INTRODUCTION Selection of the artificial membrane feeding technique and blood meal source has been recognized as key considerations in mass rearing of vectors. METHODOLOGY Artificial membrane feeding techniques, namely, glass plate, metal plate, and Hemotek membrane feeding method, and three blood sources (human, cattle, and chicken) were evaluated based on feeding rates, fecundity, and hatch...