Grappling the Invisible Roots, Nostalgia, Identity, Home and Nation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies: An Interpretation of Imagery and Symbolism

Mass immigration is now a part and parcel of globalization in the post-colonial era due existential as well as non -existential reasons. Some migrate for uplifting their economic conditions while some others for intellectual pursuits; in any case this has now become the way of the world and the accepted norm in the present times. On the one hand it has given a booster to man’s living and luxury on the other it has mushroomed a plenty of allied strife’s and struggles in the migrants’ lives like they cross geographical borders to create new history. In the bargain they are forced to embrace the new challenges like loss of identity, cultural dilemma, a constant yearning to search for the invisible and imaginary roots unwillingly. Many diasporic writers have discussed these problems; Jhumpa Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant has dealt with the same in greater depths

The Paradigm shift from Conventional Mythology to the Vortex of Feminist ideology in Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of the Night

Githa Hariharan (born in 1954) is primarily known for her novel, The Thousand Faces of Night. She won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Novel. But here she reveals herself as a master of the short narrative as well. The second published literary works of the renowned Indian English writer, The Art of Dying (1993) won wide applause for its relevant and bold theme. She is also a social activist who portrays social issues in her literary works. She belongs to the new generation of Indian writers who have earned greater visibility and readership for Indian English Literature. As a writer she is preoccupied with human condition which to her is the pre-requisite and the essence of creative writing in general and of literature in particular. Apparently, she chooses a small space for almost all her novels but endeavors to enlarge the limited space to such an extent that it becomes an elaborate presentation of human condition. Hariharan believes in inclusiveness, which extends and broadens an individual's social horizon. She thinks that writers have a socio‑political responsibility as well

Shashi Tharoor as a Gentleman Politician

Shashi Tharoor is an outstanding politician ranked the best among the present day leaders.  His past UN career, his authoritative clout on every matter pertaining to India and his charismatic personality make him the most sought out among the political leaders of India. Entering the Indian political arena directly landing into the middle of the medley, he has been in the eye of many controversies that have projected him as a nonconformist and impractical outsider whose views and dreams for India are unrealistic. However, Shashi Tharoor has proved the cynics wrong and has manifested himself as an able leader and darling of his constituency who have chosen him two times consecutively.  He is among the first generation of techsavvy new generation political leaders to make full use of the internet and reach his followers instantaneously and continuously, thus demonstrating an elected public servant’s style of functioning could also be accountable and transparent. His stupendous academic achievements and outstanding literary works set him apart in the firmament of successful personalities of India holding a promise to the future of the country.  Even in his short term political career, Shashi Tharoor has proved himself to be a gentleman politician who is sincere and honest in his commitment to his voters and strives his best to fulfill his promises. Such dedicated politicians who are ready to serve the nation selflessly are the need of the hour in today’s India and Shashi Tharoor is a fine example of the proper role a true political leader can play in a disgraced democratic country like ours and serve as an instrument of change for bettering the miserable lives of millions of innocent trusting citizens of the country, at least in the coming century

An Enhanced Cuckoo Search for Optimization of Bloom Filter in Spam Filtering

Bloom Filter BF is a simple but powerful data structure that can check membership to a static set The tradeoff to use Bloom filter is a certain configurable risk of false positives The odds of a false positive can be made very low if the hash bitmap is sufficiently large Spam is an irrelevant or inappropriate message sent on the internet to a large number of newsgroups or users A spam word is a list of well-known words that often appear in spam mails The proposed system of Bin Bloom Filter BBF groups the words into number of bins with different false positive rates based on the weights of the spam words An Enhanced Cuckoo Search ECS algorithm is employed to minimize the total membership invalidation cost of the BFs by finding the optimal false positive rates and number of elements stored in every bin The experimental results have demonstrated for CS and ECS for various numbers of bin

Evaluation of organisms present in the gut of Hirudinaria granulosa or Indian cattle leech used for the purpose of Hirudotherapy (Jalukavacharana) in Ayurveda - A Metagenomic study

In Ayurveda, Shalyatantra envisages surgical (Shastra Karma) and minimally invasive surgical methods (Anushastra Karma) for the management of various diseases. Among minimally invasive surgery, blood letting (Raktamokshana) plays an important role. Hirudotherapy or therapeutic use of leeches (Jalukavacharana) has been lauded for its role in the management of abscess, inflammation, cellulitis, non-healing ulcers, skin diseases etc. Leeches are applied to the venous-congested sites to withdraw obstructive blood and also the presence of anticoagulating and vasodilating agents further reduce circulatory obstruction and facilitate blood flow through the area. However, the advantages of leech therapy are confounded by more recent and widely reported occurrences of leech-borne infections at the bite wound, which may cause septicaemia in the patient when left untreated. It has been observed that the infection of the surgical site with bacterial species, necessitates prophylactic antibiotic cover. The study was undertaken to check for the presence and dominance of the various classes of bacteria in the gut of Indian Cattle leech which is used for the purpose of Jalukavacharana by Ayurvedic surgeons. Microbes belonging to the Phylum Proteobacteria were the most dominant followed by Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes. In the phylum Proteobacteria, the abundance of bacteria belonging to the family Enterobacteriacea was observed. Presence of genera classified under Alcaligenaceae, Aeromonadaceae and Rhodospirillaceae were recorded to a significant extent. This study on the presence of microbes can probably shed light on the scientific value of Poorvakarma told by Sushrutha, where he advises to keep leeches in Haridra before being used for therapy to avoid transmission of infections

Burden of disease scenarios for 204 countries and territories, 2022–2050: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background: Future trends in disease burden and drivers of health are of great interest to policy makers and the public at large. This information can be used for policy and long-term health investment, planning, and prioritisation. We have expanded and improved upon previous forecasts produced as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) and provide a reference forecast (the most likely future), and alternative scenarios assessing disease burden trajectories if selected sets of risk factors were eliminated from current levels by 2050. Methods: Using forecasts of major drivers of health such as the Socio-demographic Index (SDI; a composite measure of lag-distributed income per capita, mean years of education, and total fertility under 25 years of age) and the full set of risk factor exposures captured by GBD, we provide cause-specific forecasts of mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) by age and sex from 2022 to 2050 for 204 countries and territories, 21 GBD regions, seven super-regions, and the world. All analyses were done at the cause-specific level so that only risk factors deemed causal by the GBD comparative risk assessment influenced future trajectories of mortality for each disease. Cause-specific mortality was modelled using mixed-effects models with SDI and time as the main covariates, and the combined impact of causal risk factors as an offset in the model. At the all-cause mortality level, we captured unexplained variation by modelling residuals with an autoregressive integrated moving average model with drift attenuation. These all-cause forecasts constrained the cause-specific forecasts at successively deeper levels of the GBD cause hierarchy using cascading mortality models, thus ensuring a robust estimate of cause-specific mortality. For non-fatal measures (eg, low back pain), incidence and prevalence were forecasted from mixed-effects models with SDI as the main covariate, and YLDs were computed from the resulting prevalence forecasts and average disability weights from GBD. Alternative future scenarios were constructed by replacing appropriate reference trajectories for risk factors with hypothetical trajectories of gradual elimination of risk factor exposure from current levels to 2050. The scenarios were constructed from various sets of risk factors: environmental risks (Safer Environment scenario), risks associated with communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases (CMNNs; Improved Childhood Nutrition and Vaccination scenario), risks associated with major non-communicable diseases (NCDs; Improved Behavioural and Metabolic Risks scenario), and the combined effects of these three scenarios. Using the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways climate scenarios SSP2-4.5 as reference and SSP1-1.9 as an optimistic alternative in the Safer Environment scenario, we accounted for climate change impact on health by using the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change temperature forecasts and published trajectories of ambient air pollution for the same two scenarios. Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy were computed using standard methods. The forecasting framework includes computing the age-sex-specific future population for each location and separately for each scenario. 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) for each individual future estimate were derived from the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles of distributions generated from propagating 500 draws through the multistage computational pipeline. Findings: In the reference scenario forecast, global and super-regional life expectancy increased from 2022 to 2050, but improvement was at a slower pace than in the three decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic (beginning in 2020). Gains in future life expectancy were forecasted to be greatest in super-regions with comparatively low life expectancies (such as sub-Saharan Africa) compared with super-regions with higher life expectancies (such as the high-income super-region), leading to a trend towards convergence in life expectancy across locations between now and 2050. At the super-region level, forecasted healthy life expectancy patterns were similar to those of life expectancies. Forecasts for the reference scenario found that health will improve in the coming decades, with all-cause age-standardised DALY rates decreasing in every GBD super-region. The total DALY burden measured in counts, however, will increase in every super-region, largely a function of population ageing and growth. We also forecasted that both DALY counts and age-standardised DALY rates will continue to shift from CMNNs to NCDs, with the most pronounced shifts occurring in sub-Saharan Africa (60·1% [95% UI 56·8–63·1] of DALYs were from CMNNs in 2022 compared with 35·8% [31·0–45·0] in 2050) and south Asia (31·7% [29·2–34·1] to 15·5% [13·7–17·5]). This shift is reflected in the leading global causes of DALYs, with the top four causes in 2050 being ischaemic heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, compared with 2022, with ischaemic heart disease, neonatal disorders, stroke, and lower respiratory infections at the top. The global proportion of DALYs due to YLDs likewise increased from 33·8% (27·4–40·3) to 41·1% (33·9–48·1) from 2022 to 2050, demonstrating an important shift in overall disease burden towards morbidity and away from premature death. The largest shift of this kind was forecasted for sub-Saharan Africa, from 20·1% (15·6–25·3) of DALYs due to YLDs in 2022 to 35·6% (26·5–43·0) in 2050. In the assessment of alternative future scenarios, the combined effects of the scenarios (Safer Environment, Improved Childhood Nutrition and Vaccination, and Improved Behavioural and Metabolic Risks scenarios) demonstrated an important decrease in the global burden of DALYs in 2050 of 15·4% (13·5–17·5) compared with the reference scenario, with decreases across super-regions ranging from 10·4% (9·7–11·3) in the high-income super-region to 23·9% (20·7–27·3) in north Africa and the Middle East. The Safer Environment scenario had its largest decrease in sub-Saharan Africa (5·2% [3·5–6·8]), the Improved Behavioural and Metabolic Risks scenario in north Africa and the Middle East (23·2% [20·2–26·5]), and the Improved Nutrition and Vaccination scenario in sub-Saharan Africa (2·0% [–0·6 to 3·6]). Interpretation: Globally, life expectancy and age-standardised disease burden were forecasted to improve between 2022 and 2050, with the majority of the burden continuing to shift from CMNNs to NCDs. That said, continued progress on reducing the CMNN disease burden will be dependent on maintaining investment in and policy emphasis on CMNN disease prevention and treatment. Mostly due to growth and ageing of populations, the number of deaths and DALYs due to all causes combined will generally increase. By constructing alternative future scenarios wherein certain risk exposures are eliminated by 2050, we have shown that opportunities exist to substantially improve health outcomes in the future through concerted efforts to prevent exposure to well established risk factors and to expand access to key health interventions