Understanding Postcolonial South Asian Communities Through Bollywood

Inspired by my personal experience as a South Asian-American, I chose to create a series of paintings that seek to analyze the relationship between South Asians and a Western environment. I was further influenced by Bollywood painted posters, which I argue encapsulate postcolonial aesthetics in the form of fair skin, colored eyes, and exoticism. Moreover, I believe that Bollywood has continued to disseminate these aesthetics to the South Asian collective community. Bollywood and its implicit fascination with the West, in addition to its inherently South Asian identity, embody the struggle that many South Asians face. This struggle, which I as a South Asian-American woman painter have also experienced, includes a constant internal conflict between desiring to fit into Western culture and trying to maintain one’s cultural heritage within a Western environment. Ultimately, through these paintings and this essay, I seek to shed light on this complex relationship between South Asian culture and a Western context

Women Surrealists: Muses or Seekers?

Surrealism has often been labeled as a misogynistic movement that sought to provide man with an avenue into a higher reality at the expense of the humanity of women. By perceiving the opposite sex as their muses, Surrealist men rendered women as mysterious sources of the marvelous, the name given to the higher realm, which they desired to attain. I propose that Surrealist women were empowered by the fact that ‘woman’, as an abstract concept, and femininity were synonymous with the marvelous. This entailed that Surrealist women had the advantage of being “sources of revelation, as provokers of wonder, dreams, and freedom,” whose intellectual agency allowed them to delve into their own femininity in order to attain the higher reality that Surrealism was devoted to unlocking. In contrast from Surrealist men who relied on the image of woman to lead them to this superior realm, Surrealist women were able to look within themselves in order to comprehend the marvelous. Conversely, Surrealist women often reversed the idea of the muse, by exploring their feminine unconscious through the objectification of men

Design of a contactless body temperature measurement system using arduino

The recent advances in electronics and microelectronics devices allow the development of newly low-cost monitoring tools used by peoples for health preventive purposes. Sensors used in medical equipments convert various forms of human body vital signs into electrical signals. Therefore, the healthcare monitoring systems considering non-invasive and wearable sensors with integrated communication mediums allow an efficient solution to live a comfortable home life. This paper presents the remote monitoring of human body temperature (HBT) wirelessly by means of Arduino controller with different sensors and open source internet connection. The proposed monitoring system uses an internet network via wireless fieldity (wifi) connection to be linked with online portal on smart phone or computer. The proposed system is comprised of an Arduino controller, LM-35 (S1), MLX-90614 (S2) temperature sensors and ESP-wifi shield module. The obtained result has shown that real time temperature monitoring data can be transferred to authentic observer by utilizing internet of things (IoT) applications. The findings from this research indicates that the difference of average temperature in between Sensor S1 and S2 is about 15 0C

The impact of Involvement in CRM Initiative on Inter-functional Integration and Organizational Performance: Evidence from Pakistani Enterprises

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is IT based system that manage customer long term relationship, and also inter-function relationship within the organization with the ultimate purpose of creating customer value by sharing concise, sufficient, accurate, reliable, and timely valuable information has greatly enhanced inter-functional integration (IFI) and organizational performance (OP). The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among three constructs: 1) Involvement (IN) of marketing and IT departments in CRM initiative, 2) IFI, and 3) OP, and presents conceptual model based on this relationship in which involvement in CRM initiative can affect OP either directly or indirectly through IFI. Data collected based on online survey from 30 large companies in Pakistan are analyzed in accordance with research objectives by using correlation, descriptive statistics, simple linear regression and other statistical tools of SPSS. Research findings suggest that involvement in planning, implementation, and usage of CRM system has positive but no significant immediate effect on OP and instead that it improves OP via indirect significant and potential positive effect on IFI highlight the importance for management to endorse IFI and consider involvement of stakeholders in CRM initiative as enabler

Marker Assisted Selection for Relative Water Content, Excised leaf Water Loss and Cell Membrane Stability in Cotton

Background: Drought stress is a major limitation in agricultural productivity. In cotton, drought tolerance is a multi-genic trait. The quantitative trait loci (QTLs), conferring drought tolerance in cotton, could be exploited for stress breeding using marker assisted selection.Methods: We have screened drought related varieties of Pakistan using DNA markers to identify reported QTLs for drought tolerance. A total of 44 of these varieties were selected. All varieties were sown in the field to record relative water content, excised leaf water loss and cell membrane stability under drought stress condition. QTLs for relative water content, excised leaf water loss and cell membrane stability were checked from all varieties by using DNA markers NAU-2954, NAU-2715, NAU-6672, NAU-8406 and NAU-6790.Results: Genotypic and phenotypic results showed that the QTL for relative water content qtlRWC-1 present on chromosome 23, linked marker NAU-2954, could be a major QTL conferring drought tolerance in cotton. Using Marker Assisted Selection the variety CRIS-134 showed all concerned QTLs for drought tolerance.Conclusion: QTL for relative water content qtlRWC-1 could be a major QTL for drought stress tolerance in cotton. The variety CRIS-134 may be used for breeding drought tolerant cultivar

ANALGESIC, ANTIMICROBIAL AND CYTOTOXIC EFFECT OF CYPERUS ROTUNDUS ETHANOL EXTRACT

ABSTRACT In present study preliminary screening was carried on Cyperus routunds crude extract which showed the presence of tannins, sapanins, carbohydrate in colour reaction method while the alkaloids, protein and sterol were absent. Tail flick method was used for the determination of analgesic activity. The temperature and duration were 51 ± 1C° and 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours respectively. The test drug was used in the concentrations of 300 and 500mg/kg orally. . This test was carried out in different concentration of crude extract that is 0.3125, 0.625, 1.25 and 5mg/ml. Significant result were obtained in all groups at higher concentrations. A quick and low cost toxicity test (Brine shrimp bioassay) was used to find out toxic action of drug in comparison to Etoposide standard drug (LD 50 =7.4625). The drug showed non toxic significant effects at 10, 100, 1000 µg/ml concentration

A comparative study on the regulations of anabolic steroids in domestic use: between Malaysia and United Kingdom / Mohamad Asif Mohd Noor … [et al.]

This research has been conducted to analyse the existing legal enforcement in Malaysia governing the use, sale and distribution of anabolic steroids, where, special references have been made to the legal position in United Kingdom. This research aims to examine the adequacy of the existing law Poison Act 1952, Sale of Drugs Act 1952 and Control of Drugs and Cosmetic Regulations 1984 which are ought to be revised in order to handle cases that involves in illegal use and illicit sale and distributions of anabolic steroids. This study also reveals how currently in Malaysia there exist no specific law that focuses on illegal personal use of anabolic steroids and how its enforcement are given very little attention upon. The continuing evolution of the trend of gaining a well-developed aesthetic physical appearance is the main drive that contributes to the demand the anabolic steroids from the market, which in a way leads to a rampant illicit distribution and sale throughout the country. Thus, a comparative study between, Malaysia and United Kingdom has been carried out in this study to determine the present parameters of the law and its enforcement of the illegal use, and illicit sale and distributions

Investigating the varying relevance of CSR dimensions on firm leverage: The implications for internationalized firms

We empirically investigate the varying role of CSR dimensions such as community, diversity, employee relations, environment, human rights, and product on US firms’ leverage. Overall CSR performance and dimensions relating to diversity, employee relations and environment are negatively associated to firm leverage, implying easier access to equity financing. Contrastingly, the human rights dimension is positively associated to firm leverage. For internationalized firms, particularly operating in non-environmentally sensitive industries, the relationship is however reversed for overall CSR performance and dimensions related to diversity, employee relations and environment, while community performance is negatively associated to firm leverage. Drawing on the stakeholder theory of capital structure and stakeholder salience, we highlight the heterogeneous consequences of CSR dimensions as channels that both enable and limit access to equity financing. Our results are robust to alternative explanations and proxies and highlight the need for managing specific CSR dimension performance, the more so when operating multi-nationally

A Robust Multilevel Inverter Topology for Operation under Fault Conditions

Multilevel inverters (MLIs) are new demanding topologies that have low total harmonic distortion (THD) and low voltage stress across the switches make them ideal for medium and high-power applications. The authenticity of semiconductor devices is one of the main concerns for these MLIs to operate properly. With an increment in the number of switches in multilevel inverters, the pos-sibility of the fault also arises. Hence, a reliable 5- level inverter topology with fault-tolerant ability has been proposed. The proposed topology can withstand against of Open Circuit (OC) fault caused when any single switch fails. The proposed configuration is fault-tolerant and reliable as compared to the conventional multilevel inverters. Simulation of the proposed topology is done in MATLAB-Simulink and PLECS software packages, and the results obtained for normal (pre-fault), during the fault, and post-fault conditions are discussed. Experimental results also prove the proposed cell topology's robustness and effectiveness in tolerating OC faults across the switches. Furthermore, a thorough comparison is provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed topology in comparison to recently published topologies that have fault-tolerant featurespublishedVersio