A Study of Cultural Hybridity and Liminality in the Works of Hala Alyan

The concept of Liminality emerged from the anthropological works of Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner. Liminality refers to the "threshold". The liminal stage is a transitional or in-between phase of different characters and situations. In the era of postcolonialism, liminality has been applied in the context of culture. Concept of hybridity was at first used in the field of science and later in postcolonial scenario, it got associated with the mixing of cultures. Liminality theory has put a significant impact on postcolonial studies because it provides a framework for understanding the complex experiences of people who have been displaced and dislocated. In the postcolonial context, liminality and cultural hybridity are often experienced by people who have migrated from one place to another. The migrants face the challenge of adapting to a new culture while also maintaining their own cultural identity. They may also find themselves caught in a liminal state, in between two cultures, feeling like they don't fully belong to either one. On the other hand, they may feel that they belong to both cultures in equal measure and form a new hybrid culture which is mixture of the culture of their homeland and native state. The Palestinian American writer Hala Alyan’s novels and poems are full of such characters and situations which explore the themes of liminality and cultural hybridity.&nbsp

Negotiating Feminine Identities in Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters

This research delves into the exploration of women’s identities within a society dominated by men as depicted in Manju Kapur’s known novel, Difficult Daughters. Grounded in theory, the study examines how Kapur’s female characters navigate the complexities of a male dominated world while grappling with layers of identity formation. By adopting a perspective, the analysis sheds light on the challenges faced by these protagonists as they strive to transcend expectations and traditional gender roles. The narrative lens of this novel serves as a reflection of societal norms that restrict women’s aspirations and autonomy. Through examination of the text this research uncovers the dualities faced by the characters that are simultaneously constrained by ingrained gender norms and driven by their desire, for personal fulfilment. Their journey unfolds as a negotiation between conforming to expectations and pursuing their individuality. By analysing character dynamics, narrative arcs and social contexts this study showcases how the protagonists, in Kapur’s novel grapple with issues related to marriage, education and self-determination. Drawing upon theory it reveals how these characters confront challenges push against normative boundaries and strive to carve out their own space within a patriarchal society. The analysis delves into the relationships of the characters whether it be with their families, society or, within themselves. It closely examines the challenges that these women encounter as they try to balance their dreams and desires with the expectations imposed upon them by society

Broken Minds and Shattered Bodies: Re-mapping the British Society in Hilary Mantel’s Every Day is Mother’s Day and Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel, a well-established British novelist, needs no introduction as her fame rests not only on the basis of the volumes of works she has published but also on the basis of awards and honours she has received due to her prominent works. The present research paper seeks to explore some hidden aspects of the British society and the hollowness of the relationships. She has taken the themes how even the family members do not show the ultimate devotion, keenness and loyalty to one another. There is no comfort even in the royal court. She has depicted the Tudor dynasty in her novel Wolf Hall. This novel has won the Booker Prize in 2009 and after that its sequel Bring up the Bodies has also won the same prize in 2012. Mantel is known as a historical novelist and present paper encompasses such recurring themes and motifs in her select novels. In this paper two novels Every Day is Mother’s Day and Wolf Hall have been taken for analysis from the critical camera. The theories ‘Simulacra’ and ‘Hyperreality’ coined by Jean Baudrillard also have been applied on Hilary Mantel’snovels

Arun Joshi: A Literary Artist of Existential Writing

Existentialism, a very important literary movement of the twentieth century, occupies a very important place in the world literature. The major proponents of this theory are Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and others.  The key features associated with the existential literature are the depiction of sense of alienation, detachment, loneliness, aloofness, anxiety among the denizens of the modern world. Although, to begin with it was a European phenomenon, it soon spread to other parts of the world and impacted the writers all over the world. India also came under its influence. Many Indian writers exhibited existential traits in their works. Arun Joshi was the most prominent of them. His works, especially all novels, very beautifully incorporates existential elements. The present paper intends to study and exhibit the existential traits in the novels of Arun Joshi

Plagiarism detection in software using efficient string matching

String matching refers to the problem of finding occurrence(s) of a pattern string within another string or body of a text. It plays a vital role in plagiarism detectionin software codes, where it is required to identify similar program in a large populations. String matching has been used as a tool in a software metrics, which is used to measure the quality of software development process. In the recent years, many algorithms exist for solving the string matching problem. Among them, Berry---Ravindran algorithm was found to be fairly efficient. Further refinement of this algorithm is made in TVSBS and SSABS algorithms. However, these algorithms do not give the best possible shift in the search phase. In this paper, we propose an algorithm which gives the best possible shift in the search phase and is faster than the previously known algorithms. This algorithm behaves like Berry-Ravindran in the worst case. Further extension of this algorithm has been made for parameterized string matching which is able to detect plagiarism in a software code

Strategies to Build Viable Community Seed System in Dry land Ecosystems for Sustainable Seed and Food Security in India

To make available and affordable good quality seed at the right time requires a well functioning seed supply system. This in turn will help to ensure seed security and enhancing productivity in dryland areas. Given the critical role that improved varieties can potentially play in increasing the production of conventional cropping systems, developing an integrated and effective seed system capable of generating and delivering improved seed varieties in a cost-effective ways is a challenge. Farmers' seed systems in agrarian communities have stood the test oftime to enable evolution of modern agriculture. Thus the informal seed sector has ensured conservation of agro-bio-diyersity, at the gene, ecosystem, and farmer levels to ensure food security. A relatively recent analysis has led to an understanding of the crucial role that women have played in sustaining the informal seed sector, and more widely, in ensuring food security. However, this sector is solely dependent on local resources and inputs, and seed supply is highly vulnerable to disaster and socio-political disruptions. Sowing the seeds of innovation therefore assumes great urgency if one is to strengthen local seed systems. While the hybrid seed industry led by the private sector in formal seed systems has focused on profit-making species and crops, the informal sector has concentrated on those crops and seed systems which underpin local food production, mainly those predominantly self pollinating and open pollinated. Given this scenario, national seed policies must devote more effort to sustaining and strengthening the informal seed sector. Most of the international support to strengthening seed systems focuses on the formal seed sector; the time has come for matching support to the informal sector

Drought and salinity stresses induced physio-biochemical changes in sugarcane: an overview of tolerance mechanism and mitigating approaches

Sugarcane productivity is being hampered globally under changing environmental scenarios like drought and salinity. The highly complex nature of the plant responses against these stresses is determined by a variety of factors such as genotype, developmental phase of the plant, progression rate and stress, intensity, and duration. These factors influence plant responses and can determine whether mitigation approaches associated with acclimation are implemented. In this review, we attempt to summarize the effects of drought and salinity on sugarcane growth, specifically on the plant’s responses at various levels, viz., physiological, biochemical, and metabolic responses, to these stresses. Furthermore, mitigation strategies for dealing with these stresses have been discussed. Despite sugarcane’s complex genomes, conventional breeding approaches can be utilized in conjunction with molecular breeding and omics technologies to develop drought- and salinity-tolerant cultivars. The significant role of plant growth-promoting bacteria in sustaining sugarcane productivity under drought and salinity cannot be overlooked

Unzipping flood vulnerability and functionality loss:tale of struggle for existence of riparian buildings

Floods pose significant risk to riparian buildings as evidenced during many historical events. Although structural resilience to tsunami flooding is well studied in the literature, high-velocity and debris-laden floods in steep terrains are not considered adequately so far. Historical floods in steep terrains necessitate the need for flood vulnerability analysis of buildings. To this end, we report vulnerability of riparian-reinforced concrete buildings using forensic damage interpretations and empirical/analytical vulnerability analyses. Furthermore, we propose the concept and implications of functionality loss due to flooding in residential reinforced concrete (RC) buildings using empirical data. Fragility functions using inundation depth and momentum flux are presented for RC buildings considering a recent flooding event in Nepal. The results show that flow velocity and sediment load, rather than hydrostatic load, govern the damages in riparian RC buildings. However, at larger inundation depth, hydrostatic force alone may collapse some of the RC buildings

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Mapping development and health effects of cooking with solid fuels in low-income and middle-income countries, 2000-18 : a geospatial modelling study

Background More than 3 billion people do not have access to clean energy and primarily use solid fuels to cook. Use of solid fuels generates household air pollution, which was associated with more than 2 million deaths in 2019. Although local patterns in cooking vary systematically, subnational trends in use of solid fuels have yet to be comprehensively analysed. We estimated the prevalence of solid-fuel use with high spatial resolution to explore subnational inequalities, assess local progress, and assess the effects on health in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) without universal access to clean fuels.Methods We did a geospatial modelling study to map the prevalence of solid-fuel use for cooking at a 5 km x 5 km resolution in 98 LMICs based on 2.1 million household observations of the primary cooking fuel used from 663 population-based household surveys over the years 2000 to 2018. We use observed temporal patterns to forecast household air pollution in 2030 and to assess the probability of attaining the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target indicator for clean cooking. We aligned our estimates of household air pollution to geospatial estimates of ambient air pollution to establish the risk transition occurring in LMICs. Finally, we quantified the effect of residual primary solid-fuel use for cooking on child health by doing a counterfactual risk assessment to estimate the proportion of deaths from lower respiratory tract infections in children younger than 5 years that could be associated with household air pollution.Findings Although primary reliance on solid-fuel use for cooking has declined globally, it remains widespread. 593 million people live in districts where the prevalence of solid-fuel use for cooking exceeds 95%. 66% of people in LMICs live in districts that are not on track to meet the SDG target for universal access to clean energy by 2030. Household air pollution continues to be a major contributor to particulate exposure in LMICs, and rising ambient air pollution is undermining potential gains from reductions in the prevalence of solid-fuel use for cooking in many countries. We estimated that, in 2018, 205000 (95% uncertainty interval 147000-257000) children younger than 5 years died from lower respiratory tract infections that could be attributed to household air pollution.Interpretation Efforts to accelerate the adoption of clean cooking fuels need to be substantially increased and recalibrated to account for subnational inequalities, because there are substantial opportunities to improve air quality and avert child mortality associated with household air pollution. Copyright (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe