The Emergence of Rupkatha as a Literary Genre in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Bengal: : A Historical Enquiry

The indigenous rupkatha collections that appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Bengal, while purporting to be written transcriptions of an oral tradition, were effectively creating a new literary tradition distinct from the oral storytelling traditions that existed in the region. This paper will investigate the historical circumstances of its emergence, particularly the intersectional politics of Bengal’s colonial encounter with Europe and the emergence of a nascent nationalist consciousness that laid stress on indigenous culture. This paper will argue how the emergence of the Bengali rupkatha as a literary genre was interrelated with the widespread popularity of the European fairytale, and as an indigenous literary genre was intended to contrast and compete with the Western literary genre. The circumstances of its emergence in turn shaped the popular ideas associated with the genre and determined the way generations of readers approached and interpreted the texts

A DEA-TOPSIS-based approach for performance evaluation of Indian technical institutes

Since independence, India has been one of the few developing countries to invest extensively in both science and technical education. In India, technical education plays a pivotal role in human resource development while creating skilled manpower, increasing industrial productivity and enhancing the quality of life. If a technical institute means to be effective in developing learned and qualified engineers, then it would be useful to know the performance of that technical institution. However, measuring the performance of a technical institution has received very little attention because it is very difficult to measure its output. Thus, this paper focuses on assessing the performance of eight Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) using a combined approach of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and technique of order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). In the first phase, DEA is applied to shortlist the efficient IITs having the desired characteristics from the stakeholders’ point of view, and TOPSIS method is then employed to rank those efficient IITs while also identifying the best performing IIT. It is observed that IIT Kharagpur outperforms all the considered IITs which exactly corroborates with the findings of the recently published surveys/reports

The Masculinist Construction of the National Woman and Her Gendered Practice of Love in the Colonial Bengali Fairy Tale Tradition

This article will concentrate on the discourses that circulated around the literary genre of the Bengali fairy tale as it developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century India, especially regarding its ownership and genesis, and the interaction of this with the political/social debates/discourses surrounding the position and role of women. The discourses generated through the various prefaces and commentaries that accompanied the story collections, constructed a certain idea of the national woman as the bearer of tradition. They posit a theory of the sustenance of indigenous cultural traditions (which included story telling traditions) in her tremendous capacity for all-consuming love. At the same time, the story texts presented and focused on self-sacrificing heroines who fit into the model of indigenous womanhood that was being constructed during this period. This article will argue that these discourses were built on a series of erasures of women’s voices, life stages and emotional spectrums but were serving the purpose of proving the superiority of indigenous traditions over that of the British imperialists. This project of defending Indian tradition, a central aspect of the cultural resistance to British imperialism, was a masculinist project. It reduced women to being mere sites and objects of knowledge

FACTORS INFLUENCING DELAYED RELEASE FOLLOWED BY RAPID PULSE RELEASE OF DRUGS FROM COMPRESSION COATED TABLETS FOR COLON TARGETING

Objective: This work was undertaken to develop colon targeted tablets that can minimize premature release of ibuprofen (IBP) and metronidazole (MNZ) in a lag period of 7h during which the tablets are likely to remain in the upper gastro-intestinal tract, and produce rapid pulse release within 1-5 h after the lag period when the tablets could be located in the colon with or without intervention of colonic microflora.Methods: Core tablets of ibuprofen and metronidazole containing different amounts of tri-sodium citrate (TSC) as osmogen were compression coated with locust bean gum (LBG) and carboxymethyl LBG (CMLBG). In vitro drug release studies were performed in a dynamic pH shift condition with or without rat cecal matters. The release of the drugs were also monitored at different hydrodynamic conditions.Results: In vitro release studies revealed that increase in the amount of TSC, decrease in coat-weight and change in hydrodynamic conditions influenced the drug release considerably. While LBG coated tablets under the stated conditions failed to provide complete release of the drugs in 12 h, CMLBG coated tablets produced complete release rapidly in the post lag period minimizing the release in the initial 7 h. Presence of rat cecal matter in dissolution medium further accentuated the release of the drugs from CMLBG compression coated tablets in the post lag period.Conclusion: The study revealed that tablets containing appropriate amount of osmogen in the core and compression coated with suitable amount of CMLBG may be suitable for colon targeting of drugs even in the absence of colonic microflora

Unravelling the gut bacteriome of Ips (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae): identifying core bacterial assemblage and their ecological relevance

Bark beetles often serve as forest damaging agents, causing landscape-level mortality. Understanding the biology and ecology of beetles are important for both, gathering knowledge about important forest insects and forest protection. Knowledge about the bark beetle gut-associated bacteria is one of the crucial yet surprisingly neglected areas of research with European tree-killing bark beetles. Hence, in this study, we survey the gut bacteriome from five Ips and one non-Ips bark beetles from Scolytinae. Results reveal 69 core bacterial genera among five Ips beetles that may perform conserved functions within the bark beetle holobiont. The most abundant bacterial genera from different bark beetle gut include Erwinia, Sodalis, Serratia, Tyzzerella, Raoultella, Rahnella, Wolbachia, Spiroplasma, Vibrio, and Pseudoxanthomonas. Notable differences in gut-associated bacterial community richness and diversity among the beetle species are observed. Furthermore, the impact of sampling location on the overall bark beetle gut bacterial community assemblage is also documented, which warrants further investigations. Nevertheless, our data expanded the current knowledge about core gut bacterial communities in Ips bark beetles and their putative function such as cellulose degradation, nitrogen fixation, detoxification of defensive plant compounds, and inhibition of pathogens, which could serve as a basis for further metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics investigations

Inertness and Other Properties of Thin Ruthenium Electrodes in ReRAM Applications

Building nonvolatile memory such as resistive random access memory (ReRAM) directly into a CMOS backend (BEOL) would reduce latency in connectivity-constrained devices and reduce chip’s footprint by stacking non-volatile memory (NVM) on top of the logic circuits. This co-integration is facilitated by a broad commonality between ReRAM and BEOL as both rely on the same basic metal–insulator–metal (MIM) structure. One good candidate for a ReRAM cell is the Cu/TaOx/Pt device. As platinum (Pt) is not an economic choice, a BEOL-compatible replacement is desirable. A good candidate to replace Pt electrode is ruthenium (Ru), currently being used as a liner/diffusion barrier in sub-15 nm technology nodes and soon to supplant tungsten as via, and copper (Cu) as interconnect materials. We report on extensive characterization of a Cu/TaOx/Ru device and compare its performance and reliability with extant ReRAM devices. Against the background of well-characterized non-Ru ReRAM devices, Cu/TaOx/Ru cell constitutes a micro-laboratory for testing a wide range of Ru properties with the Cu nanofilament as a probe. Since the temperature of the cell can be controlled internally from 27°C to ∼1100°C, thin Ru layers can be subjected to much more comprehensive tests than it is possible in the interconnect MIM structures and reveal and confirm interesting material properties, including the impact of embedment

SYNERGISTIC IMMUNOMODULATORY ACTIVITY OF AQUEOUS ROOT EXTRACT OF ASPARAGUS RACEMOSUS WILLD AND ETHANOL WHOLE PLANT EXTRACT OF BOERHAVIA DIFFUSA LINN

Objective: On the basis of traditional use and Ethno pharmacological evidences Boerhavia diffusa whole plant and root part of Asparagus racemosus (Shatavari) both are widely used to enhance the immunity. But in combination there is no scientific evidence so current study was designed. Methods: Laboratory based study, namely, carbon clearance, cyclophosphamide induced immune suppression and neutrophil adhesion was designed using mice as an experimental animals in different combination of aqueous whole plant extract of B. diffusa and methanol extract of root part of A. racemosus were used as a test drug in the ratio 1:1, 1:2, and 2:1 (100 mg/kg) against the established standard drug Ashwagandha. Results: The results revealed that animals treated with combined extract (1:1, 1:2, and 2:1) at a dose of 100 mg/kg increase rate of carbon clearance from blood, there is significance alternation in blood parameter in cyclophosphamide group and also improve the Neutrophil adhesion when treated with different combination of polyherbal formulation treated groups. Conclusion: The polyherbal formulation in different ratio showing good significant immunomodulatory activity as compare to standard

Sesame lignans as promising anti-inflammatory agent: Exploring novel therapeutic avenues with in silico and computational approach

Innumerable health-beneficial properties of sesame lignans like sesamol, sesamolin, sesamin and sesaminol make them lucrative agents in the pharmaceutical industry. To specify the mode of action of these phytochemicals, detailed computational physicochemical properties evaluation, and toxicity assessment (using free web servers and databases), as well as binding interactions with physiological inflammatory effectors (such as COX-2, TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6) by means of rigid ligand-receptor docking (using software), have been thoroughly investigated. Interestingly, sesame lignans are conformed to have drug-likeness, indicating their efficacy and suitability like established therapeutics. These bioactive lignans possess drug-like attributes and effectively act as ligands in the present in-silico study. The basic pharmacokinetic profile of these compounds has suggested non-polar solvents or delivery systems for them to enhance their bioavailability in physiological systems. However, all the sesame lignans are toxic to the liver cells with a50 % lethal dose in the range of 500-1500 mg/kg. Toxicity study indicated minimum toxicity of lignans to normal cellular milieu, but noticeable cytotoxic effects against several cancerous cell lines suggesting their anti-carcinogenic properties. Finally, the findings of the molecular docking study have depicted a high affinity of these ligands for target proteins, even better than traditional anti-inflammatory drugs- Indomethacin and Ibuprofen. The molecular interactions have represented sesaminol as the most effective and Sesamol as the least potent ligand for target receptor whereas COX-2 seems to be the most vulnerable target. The docking scores varied widely (-4.7 to -11.0 kcal/mol). The present in-silico approach is expected to provide valuable resources for optimizing bioactive molecules as future-generation therapeutics before pre-clinical and clinical studies

Shell-Isolated Assembly of Atomically Precise Nanoclusters on Gold Nanorods for Integrated Plasmonic-Luminescent Nanocomposites

In this work, we integrate atomically precise noble metal nanoclusters (NCs) on gold nanorods (AuNRs) to create hybrid plasmonic-luminescent nanomaterials. Initially, we assemble luminescent Ag29(LA)12 NC (LA = lipoic acid) to silica shell-encapsulated AuNRs. The resulting nanostructure shows plasmon-enhanced luminescence in aqueous medium as well as in the solid state. Atomic precision of the fluorophores used in this case allows detailed characterization of individual nanocomposites by diverse techniques, including transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and 3D electron tomographic reconstruction. We extend this strategy to prepare similar structures with gold NC protected with bovine serum albumin (Au30BSA). These two examples demonstrate the generic nature of the present strategy in preparing plasmonic-luminescent hybrid nanostructures using atomically precise NCs.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe