Although Sufi-led political parties have been active in Bangladesh for almost four decades, they received little scholarly attention. Therefore, this article discusses the historical context within which post-independence Sufi/Pir-centred emerged, their interaction with other parties, and electoral performance. It also touches upon some basic issues relating to Pir-cum leaders: once a Pir becom...

BACKGROUND The Parent-Infant Relationship Global Assessment Scale (PIR-GAS) signifies a conceptually relevant development in the multi-axial, developmentally sensitive classification system DC:0-3R for preschool children. However, information about the reliability and validity of the PIR-GAS is rare. A review of the available empirical studies suggests that in research, PIR-GAS ratings can be b...

The retrieval of information from a remote database server typically demands providing the server with some search terms to assist with the retrieval task. However, keeping the search terms private without undermining the server’s ability to retrieve the desired information is a common requirement for many privacy-preservingsystems. Private information retrieval (PIR) provides a cryptographicme...

A series of Oligocene through Early Miocene terrestrial deposits preserved in the foothills of the Zinda Pir Dome of western Pakistan produce multiple, superposed fossil mammal localities. These include small mammal assemblages that shed light on the evolution of rodent lineages, especially Muroidea, in South Asia. Nine small mammal localities span approximately 28-19 Ma, an interval encompassi...

This work demonstrates the feasibility of building a PIR system with performance similar to non-PIR systems in real situations. Prior Chor PIR systems have chosen block sizes that are theoretically optimized to minimize communication. This (ironically) reduces the throughput of the resulting system by roughly 50x. We constructed a Chor PIR system called upPIR that is efficient by choosing block...

Sensitization of C57BL/6 (B6, H-2b) splenocytes against normal BALB/c (H-2d) leukocytes (B6 a/BALB) in bulk MLC induced CTL reactive against the syngeneic (H-2b) nonimmunogenic lymphoma PIR-2, in addition to the CTL directed against the corresponding (H-2d) allotargets. However, MLC-derived lymphocytes did not directly exhibit anti-PIR-2 cytotoxicity in spite of the high anti-PIR-2 CTL frequenc...

Mobile devices with global positioning capabilities allow users to retrieve points of interest (POI) in their proximity. To protect user privacy, it is important not to disclose exact user coordinates to un-trusted entities that provide location-based services. Currently, there are two main approaches to protect the location privacy of users: (i) hiding locations inside cloaking regions (CRs) a...

Pathogens are sensed by Toll-like receptors (TLRs) expressed in leukocytes in the innate immune system. However, excess stimulation of TLR pathways is supposed to be connected with provocation of autoimmunity. We show that paired immunoglobulin (Ig)-like receptor B (PIR-B), an immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motif-harboring receptor for major histocompatibility class I molecules, on re...

The MIPS group (Martinsried Institute for Protein Sequences) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried near Munich, Germany, collects, processes and distributes protein sequence data within the framework of the tripartite association of the PIR-International Protein Sequence Database (,). MIPS contributes nearly 50% of the data input to the PIR-International Protein Sequence Dat...