Self-writing in Tral, Kashmir

This article is an engagement with persistent efforts to (re) write history that I encountered in the form of letters, notes, poetry, and sketches given to me by ordinary students I met in the politically troubled region of South Kashmir, many of whom had come to be protestors and stone-pelters. It reflects on these reflexive engagements of students with their own lived histories, and in relation, on what they may suggest for understanding of the historical inscription of self and thought. The essay discusses particularly excerpts from three letters, selected randomly from several written by students in the Tral tehsil in Pulwama district, to attend more closely to relationships evinced between locality, time, and possibilities of (self) writing. Even as they were located in a given historical past, these self-writings were testimonies of personal experiences, interpretations of and struggles with a bitter present, and the looming despair of unresolved futures

Essays on the Political Economy of Institutions

There is a consensus among economists and political scientists that institutions are crucial for economic development. Different attributes of institutions like rule of law, property rights, legal environment, and constraints on executive have profound effects on a nation\u27s prosperity, growth and development. Recently economists have recognized that a system of strong institutions of property rights can enhance efficiency of financial sector. A significant part of the dissertation deals with the question that is it likely that causality operates the other way: Does a mature financial market acts as a strong catalyst for property rights? The first essay develops a theoretical model of financial intermediation with incomplete information to augment the notion. The model predicts that the relationship does exist and is in fact nonlinear. Thus finance acts as propellant for property rights only after crossing a certain threshold. The second essay presents empirical evidence of threshold effects in the cross country relationship between property rights and finance that are consistent with the theory. Further, in a panel of countries, I show that the exogenous component of financial development helps predict property rights in a sample of countries where financial markets have crossed a threshold level of development. The final essay of the dissertation deals with the effects of legal environment on financial market. More specifically, it explores the effects of collateral law reforms on firms\u27 perceived access to finance by taking a panel of developing countries. I find evidence that collateral law reforms are effective in improving perceived access to credit. Moreover the effects are more pronounced when they are accompanied by established collateral registries for movable and intangible assets. Finally these beneficial effects seem to increase in the size of the firms

'Sons of Bengal' and the Absent Daughters : Gender, Performativity and Nationalism in Bengali Juvenile Literature

This article looks at the asymmetrical bifurcation of gender roles and performativity that is reflected palpably within Bengali juvenile literature of the twentieth century. These writings strove to venerate a cult of hypermasculinity through the portrayal of brave, assertive Bengali heroes who engaged in various escapades in distant lands or in the solving of mysteries and crimes, either alone or accompanied by male confidantes who remain completely devoted to them. This dominant cultural trope was consciously employed as a challenge to the imperial, racist stereotypes of the effeminate Bengali man who was imagined to be inferior to the virile, robust and intellectually superior Englishman. However, the role of women within such diegetic portrayals is liminal or conspicuously absent; female readers are conditioned to "wallow in the reflected glory of their heroes" (Mukherjee para. 13). This paper also looks into the politics of sexuality and nationalism involved within the celebration of male homosocial bonding over heteronormative relationships, thereby leading to the almost complete effacement of female agency.Este artículo analiza la bifurcación asimétrica de los roles de género y la performatividad que se refleja de manera palpable en el género de los thrillers de aventuras bengalíes. Estos escritos se esforzaron por venerar un culto a la hipermasculinidad a través de la representación de héroes bengalíes valientes y asertivos que participaban en variadas escapadas en tierras lejanas o en la resolución de misterios y crímenes, ya fuera solos o acompañados de confidentes masculinos que permanecen completamente dedicados a ellos. Este tropo cultural dominante se empleó conscientemente como un desafío a los estereotipos racistas e imperiales del hombre bengalí afeminado que se imaginaba como inferior al inglés viril, robusto e intelectualmente superior. Sin embargo, el papel de la mujer dentro de tales representaciones diegéticas es liminal o notoriamente ausente; las lectoras están condicionadas a "revolcarse en la gloria reflejada de sus héroes" (Mukherjee párr. 13). Los lectores masculinos, de hecho, son llamados a dejar de lado cualquier vínculo con indulgencias femeninas o menos firmes que los desviarían del camino de moldearse a sí mismos para ser los hijos ideales de su patria. Este artículo también explora las políticas sexuales que rigen la celebración del vínculo homosocial masculino por encima de las relaciones heteronormativas, lo que lleva a la eliminación casi completa de la agencialidad femenina. También son críticamente examinadas las implicaciones de estas nociones de identidad y roles socioculturales de género y la desexualización perpetrada a través de dicha literatura en el contexto de una división público-privada más amplia, con el creciente impulso de la cuestión de la mujer en Bengala en una era de ferviente nacionalismo

A Study of Brand Loyalty and it's Effect on Buying Behaviour In Case of Selected Cosmetics Products in the State of Gujarat

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Analysis of sidechain interactions within and between proteins

This thesis deals with the analysis of protein structures and their complexes which has been made possible by the high number of good quality protein structures available. It essentially falls into parts whereby the first part deals with the role of sidechains within proteins and the second part deals with the role of sidechains between proteins. For the first part of this thesis a statistical analysis of the atomic environments around the sidechains of arginine and phenylalanine was performed. A database of 62 high resolution protein structures was used. The contact preferences and the geometrical distributions of 19 different atom types around the sidechains were studied. The results show that polarity, covalent constraints, volume occlusion and solvent accessibility are the key factors governing the packing arrangements of the atoms around the sidechains. Theoretical methods were used then to try and 'predict' these experimental atom-sidechain distributions. For this purpose a commercially available energetics package was used. In due course it is hoped that the results of these studies will be successfully incorporated into a novel algorithm regarding the development of new drug molecules. Preliminary results are promising. The second part of this thesis presents an extensive analysis of the mode of binding of peptidic inhibitors to the aspartyl proteinase endothiapepsin. Endothiapepsin is an enzymic protein which belongs to the same family as the medically important HIV-1 protease. A general pattern emerged whereby the inner residues of the peptidic inhibitors were found to bind more tightly to the enzyme than the outer residues. The results of this study together with information about the binding constants of the inhibitors in their complexes have led to the suggestion of alternative designs of the inhibitors which may function equally well or even better

The clarity incentive for issue engagement in campaigns

Although parties focus disproportionately on favorable issues in their election campaigns, it is also the case that parties spend much of the ‘short campaign’ addressing the same issues – and especially salient issues. If able to influence the importance of issues for voters through their emphasis, it is puzzling that parties spend any time on unfavourable issue positions. We suggest that while parties prefer to emphasize popular issue positions, they also face an additional incentive to emphasize issues that are salient to voters: clarifying their positions on these issues for sympathetic voters. Leveraging the surprise general election victory of the British Conservative party in 2015—which brought about a hitherto unexpected referendum on EU membership—we show that, consistent with this hypothesis, voter uncertainty is especially costly for parties on salient issues. We formalize this argument using a model of party strategy with endogenous issue salience.Othe

PoLyScriber: Integrated Training of Extractor and Lyrics Transcriber for Polyphonic Music

Lyrics transcription of polyphonic music is challenging as the background music affects lyrics intelligibility. Typically, lyrics transcription can be performed by a two step pipeline, i.e. singing vocal extraction frontend, followed by a lyrics transcriber backend, where the frontend and backend are trained separately. Such a two step pipeline suffers from both imperfect vocal extraction and mismatch between frontend and backend. In this work, we propose a novel end-to-end integrated training framework, that we call PoLyScriber, to globally optimize the vocal extractor front-end and lyrics transcriber backend for lyrics transcription in polyphonic music. The experimental results show that our proposed integrated training model achieves substantial improvements over the existing approaches on publicly available test datasets.Comment: 13 page

Closed-Loop Tuning of Cascade Controller for Load Frequency Control of Multi-Area Distributed Generation Resources Optimized by ASOS Algorithm

This paper provides closed loop tuning of cascaded-tilted integral derivative controller (CC-TID) for load frequency control (LFC) of micro grid system. A micro grid system is the arrangement of distributed generation resources such as wind turbine generator (WTG), fuel cell (FC), aqua electrolyser (AE), diesel engine generator (DEG) and battery energy storage system (BESS). Different controllers such as proportional integral derivative (PID), two degree of freedom (2DOFPID), three degree of freedom (3DOFPID) and tilted integral derivative (TID) are used not only to sustain the disparity between real power generation and load demand but also accomplish zero steady state error to enrich the frequency and tie power regulations. The anticipated controller encompasses both the value of cascade (CC) and fractional order (FO) controls for better elimination of system instabilities. In the proposed CC-3DOFPID-TID controller, TID controller is castoff as a slave controller and 3DOFPID controller aided the role of dominant controller. The controlled parameters are optimized by adaptive symbiotic organism search (ASOS) algorithm for keen results of difficulties in LFC. To persist in ecosystem, symbiotic relations are predictable by organism through imitators. Further the dynamic behaviours of controller optimized by ASOS, teaching learning based optimization (TLBO) and differential evolution particle swarm optimization (DEPSO) are compared by extensive simulations in MATLAB/SIMULINK. Moreover the supremacy of proposed controller is performed through system dynamics comparison among PID, 2DOFPID, 3DOF-PID and CC-3DOFPID-TID controllers. Finally sensitivity of proposed controller has proven though random load perturbation