A Critique on Nazism: A Study of The Dog Beneath the Skin and Rhinoceros

This paper looks at English Poetic Drama and its influence on Absurd Drama, in its evocation of anti-totalitarian structure of power in Europe between the Inter-War period. The plays of Auden & Isherwood are examined to analyse their use of fantasy, animal imagery to critique the rise of Nazism. A Comparative reading of Ionesco’s use of fantasy and animal image to depict ideological transformation of people at any given time, is undertaken to compare and contrast the two major theatre traditions of Poetic Drama and Absurd Drama. Ionesco had subsequently commented that he was depicting Nazification of a country in his play Rhinoceros. The specific, historical markers and ideological standpoint of Auden & Isherwood’s plays are juxtaposed to an ideologically non-committed representation of fear and herd mindset through fantasy in Ionesco’s play. The paper looks at the thirties to sixties of the 20th Century as reflected in the plays of the three playwrights under study

V. S. Naipaul’s Exploration of India: A Reading of Land, People and the Self

This paper examines the non-fiction of the novelist, V.S. Naipaul, in particular, his writings on India. The paper argues that Naipaul’s repeated exploration of India, over three decades (1964-1990) can be read as his attempts at exploration of the Self. In his An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilisation, India: A Million Mutinies Now and in his Collection of Journalistic Essays, Naipaul examines the land of his ancestors, its people, its culture, polity, literature. But the most fascinating part of this journey pertains to his exploration of his own inner self. The paper juxtaposes his critique of India to probe an interesting analysis of the entity of a country, through a geographical, cultural and inner exploration of the writer

Violence Against Marginalized Women: Literary Representations in Tamil

This paper discusses representations of marginalized women on grounds of caste and religion in literary works in Tamil. An analysis of writings of Bama, Sivakami, Salma foreground the forms of oppression on women’s labour, both physical and sexual. The violent containment of women’s bodies, repression of their sexuality by family, and state institutions is highlighted. The institutionalizing of violence on Dalit women and the collusion of patriarchy and religious institutions alerts us to the dehumanizing of marginalized women. The paper argues for recognizing a heterogeneity among women to be reckoned with, in feminist discourse on grounds of class, caste, religious identity and to make feminist standpoint an inter-sectional one

Negotiating Literary Transactions: Translation as Mapping Empowerment through Dissemination

This paper argues for wider negotiation of Dalit literary discourse through translation amongst Indian languages. This would provide a marshalling of cultural and political solidarity amongst Dalit communities and help in the movement for social justice and inclusive transformation in a pluralist culture that is the core marker of Indian social rubric. The paper argues that a translator works under constraints imposed by the publishing industry regarding choice of author to be translated, themes and genres to be accessed, thereby restricting wider dissemination of powerful narratives in regional languages. A translator has to negotiate a subversive strategy to initiate a healthier exchange of literary discourse amongst Indian languages and English. The paper analyses possibilities through translation of the same text in English and an Indian language to illustrate the political, activist choices of choosing an Indian language over English in a translation project

Data-Efficient Classification of Birdcall Through Convolutional Neural Networks Transfer Learning

Deep learning Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models are powerful classification models but require a large amount of training data. In niche domains such as bird acoustics, it is expensive and difficult to obtain a large number of training samples. One method of classifying data with a limited number of training samples is to employ transfer learning. In this research, we evaluated the effectiveness of birdcall classification using transfer learning from a larger base dataset (2814 samples in 46 classes) to a smaller target dataset (351 samples in 10 classes) using the ResNet-50 CNN. We obtained 79% average validation accuracy on the target dataset in 5-fold cross-validation. The methodology of transfer learning from an ImageNet-trained CNN to a project-specific and a much smaller set of classes and images was extended to the domain of spectrogram images, where the base dataset effectively played the role of the ImageNet.Comment: Accepted for IEEE Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications, 2019 (DICTA 2019), 2-4 December 2019 in Perth, Australia, http://dicta2019.dictaconference.org/index.htm

Sesquiterpene Lactones Isolated from Elephantopus scaber L. Inhibits Human Lymphocyte Proliferation and the Growth of Tumour Cell Lines and Induces Apoptosis In Vitro

This study was designed to isolate the compounds responsible for the cytotoxic properties of South Indian Elephantopus scaber L. and further investigate their effects on quiescent and proliferating cells. Bioassay-guided isolation of the whole plant of chloroform extract of South Indian Elephantopus scaber afforded the known sesquiterpene lactone, deoxyelephantopin, and isodeoxyelephantopin whose structures were determined by spectroscopic methods. These compounds caused a dose dependent reduction in the viability of L-929 tumour cells in 72 h culture (IC50 value of 2.7 μg/mL and 3.3 μg/mL) by the cell viability assay. Both the compounds act selectively on quiescent and PHA-stimulated proliferating human lymphocytes and inhibited tritiated thymidine incorporation into cellular DNA of DLA tumour cells. The compound deoxyelephantopin at a concentration of 3 μg/mL caused maximum apoptotic cells. It also exhibited significant in vivo antitumour efficacy against DLA tumour cells. The results, therefore, indicate that the antiproliferative property of deoxyelephantopin and isodeoxyelephantopin could be used in regimens for treating tumors with extensive proliferative potencies

On the psychological origins of tool use

The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans' engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined-(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes underlie tool use in humans and nonhuman animals? (3) Which of these psychological processes are exclusive to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are exclusive to Homo sapiens? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a surprising degree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own