Social Issues in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’ novels mirror his age. His purpose was to focus attention on the various evils of his time. Dickens has described in his novels the bitter issues of life, especially those of children. He has attacked the prevailing evils of his day as a satirist. He has thrown light on the dark haunts of vice, crime and suffering. He has lime lighted the poor state of education, the miserable condition of jails, injustice, bureaucracy, nepotism, laissez faire, acquisitive worldliness and many others evils. He is specially the novelist of the London life, and has described the disparity of life- the life of the slums and the life of the wealthy persons in whom the wealth of the nation is concentrated

Hungry Bengal: War, Famine, Riots, and the End of Empire, 1939-1946

Representing both a major front in the Indian struggle against colonial rule, as well as a crucial front in the British/American conflict with Japan during World War II, Bengal stood at the crossroads of complex and contentious forces that served to define an era of political uncertainty, social turmoil, and collective violence. The period between 1939 and 1946 in Bengal, can be defined, above all, by three interrelated events: World War II, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Calcutta riots of 1946. Mobilization for war began in 1939, but Britain's sense of urgency was difficult to impress upon a skeptical Indian population already chaffing under the injustices of colonial rule and grave economic hardship. When Japan bombed Calcutta in 1942, the injustices and hardships only multiplied. This attack on Britain's most easterly industrial port brought the Second World War home to India, causing a mass exodus from the former colonial capital and driving residents of the city into the rural districts of Bengal. As conflict between Allied forces and Japan in Southeast Asia intensified, Calcutta emerged as a primary supply-front in the war-effort. This prioritization of Calcutta, in turn, led to the economic destabilization of the entire region, resulting in an abrupt rise in prices, which precipitated catastrophic famine throughout the province. With starvation decimating the countryside by early 1943, residents of Bengal poured into Calcutta seeking relief. Subsequently Calcutta's already fragile infrastructure buckled under the immense pressure of famine refugees, becoming a grim landscape of starvation and disease. While colonial officials sidelined the elected provincial government and communitarian-defined parties jockeyed for popular support in anticipation of the end of colonial rule, at least three million residents of Bengal died. As famine became increasingly entangled in rancorous political debate, social stratification intensified, and communal identities congealed. As such, Calcutta was still deeply enmeshed in famine when it was plunged into still deeper turmoil by the communal riots that rocked the city in August of 1946. This dissertation examines these cumulatively devastating events, and traces the human impact of this period of acute scarcity, violent dislocation, and enduring calamity.Ph.D.Anthropology and HistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86383/1/jsmuk_1.pd

, 2, 3-TRIAZOLE DERIVATIVES AS POSSIBLE ANTI- INFLAMMATORY AGENTS

ABSTRACT The syntheses of a series of novel Some 4, 5-Dihydro-1H-1, 2, 3-Triazoles derived from 2-azido-N-phenyl acetamide are described. A total of four new compounds were synthesized and characterized by spectral and elemental analyses. Some compounds were screened for their anti-inflammatory activity. All compounds carring aryl substituents at position five and the 1, 2, 3-triazole moiety at position one or two showed reasonable antiinflammatory activity

The future of 3D food printing: opportunities for space applications

Over the past decade or so, there have been major advances in the development of 3D printing technology to create innovative food products, including for printing foods in homes, restaurants, schools, hospitals, and even space flight missions. 3D food printing has the potential to customize foods for individuals based on their personal preferences for specific visual, textural, mouthfeel, flavor, or nutritional attributes. Material extrusion is the most common process currently used to 3D print foods, which is based on forcing a fluid or semi-solid food “ink” through a nozzle and then solidifying it. This type of 3D printing application for space missions is particularly promising because a wide range of foods can be produced from a limited number of food inks in a confined area. This is especially important for extended space missions because astronauts desire and require a variety of foods, but space and resources are minimal. This review highlights the potential applications of 3D printing for creating custom-made foods in space and the challenges that need to be addressed

α2-Adrenergic modulation of Ih in adult-born granule cells in the olfactory bulb

In the olfactory bulb (OB), a large population of axon-less inhibitory interneurons, the granule cells (GCs), coordinate network activity and tune the output of principal neurons, the mitral and tufted cells (MCs), through dendrodendritic interactions. Furthermore, GCs undergo neurogenesis throughout life, providing a source of plasticity to the neural network of the OB. The function and integration of GCs in the OB are regulated by several afferent neuromodulatory signals, including noradrenaline (NA), a state-dependent neuromodulator that plays a crucial role in the regulation of cortical function and task-specific decision processes. However, the mechanisms by which NA regulates GC function are not fully understood. Here, we show that NA modulates hyperpolarization-activated currents (Ih) via the activation of α2-adrenergic receptors (ARs) in adult-born GCs (abGCs), thus directly acting on channels that play essential roles in regulating neuronal excitability and network oscillations in the brain. This modulation affects the dendrodendritic output of GCs leading to an enhancement of lateral inhibition onto the MCs. Furthermore, we show that NA modulates subthreshold resonance in GCs, which could affect the temporal integration of abGCs. Together, these results provide a novel mechanism by which a state-dependent neuromodulator acting on Ih can regulate GC function in the OB

Hungry Bengal: War, Famine, Riots, and the End of Empire 1939--1946.

Representing both a major front in the Indian struggle against colonial rule, as well as a crucial front in the British/American conflict with Japan during World War II, Bengal stood at the crossroads of complex and contentious forces that served to define an era of political uncertainty, social turmoil, and collective violence. The period between 1939 and 1946 in Bengal, can be defined, above all, by three interrelated events: World War II, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Calcutta riots of 1946. Mobilization for war began in 1939, but Britain's sense of urgency was difficult to impress upon a skeptical Indian population already chaffing under the injustices of colonial rule and grave economic hardship. When Japan bombed Calcutta in 1942, the injustices and hardships only multiplied. This attack on Britain's most easterly industrial port brought the Second World War home to India, causing a mass exodus from the former colonial capital and driving residents of the city into the rural districts of Bengal. As conflict between Allied forces and Japan in Southeast Asia intensified, Calcutta emerged as a primary supply-front in the war-effort. This prioritization of Calcutta, in turn, led to the economic destabilization of the entire region, resulting in an abrupt rise in prices, which precipitated catastrophic famine throughout the province. With starvation decimating the countryside by early 1943, residents of Bengal poured into Calcutta seeking relief. Subsequently Calcutta's already fragile infrastructure buckled under the immense pressure of famine refugees, becoming a grim landscape of starvation and disease. While colonial officials sidelined the elected provincial government and communitarian-defined parties jockeyed for popular support in anticipation of the end of colonial rule, at least three million residents of Bengal died. As famine became increasingly entangled in rancorous political debate, social stratification intensified, and communal identities congealed. As such, Calcutta was still deeply enmeshed in famine when it was plunged into still deeper turmoil by the communal riots that rocked the city in August of 1946. This dissertation examines these cumulatively devastating events, and traces the human impact of this period of acute scarcity, violent dislocation, and enduring calamity.Ph.D.Asian historyCultural anthropologySocial SciencesSouth Asian studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127194/2/3476777.pd

Interface Recombination in TiO2/Silicon Heterojunctions for Silicon Photovoltaic Applications

Solar photovoltaics (PV), the technology that converts sunlight into electricity, has immense potential to become a significant electricity source. Nevertheless, the laws of economics dictate that to grow from the current 2% of U.S. electricity generation and to achieve large scale adoption of solar PV, the cost needs to be reduced to the point where it achieves grid parity. For silicon solar cells, which form 90% of the PV market, a significant and slowly declining component of the cost is due to the high-temperature (> 900 °C) processing required to form p-n junctions. In this thesis, the replacement of the high-temperature p-n junction with a low-temperature amorphous titanium dioxide (TiO2)/silicon heterojunction is investigated. The TiO2/Si heterojunction forms an electron-selective, hole-blocking contact. A chemical vapor deposition method using only one precursor is utilized, leading to a maximum deposition condition of 100 °C. High-quality passivation of the TiO2/Si interface is achieved, with a minimum surface recombination velocity of 28 cm/s. This passivated TiO2 is used in a double-sided PEDOT/n-Si/TiO2 solar cell, demonstrating an open-circuit voltage increase of 45 mV. Further, a heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) method is developed to investigate the current mechanisms across the TiO2/p-Si heterojunction, leading to the determination that 4nm of TiO2 provides the optimal thickness. And finally, an analytical model is developed to explain the current mechanisms observed across the TiO2/Si interface. From this model, it is determined that once ΔEV (TiO2/Si) is large enough (400 meV), the two key parameters are the Schottky barrier height (resulting in band-bending in silicon) and the recombination velocity at the TiO2/Si interface. Data corroborates this, indicating the hole-blocking mechanism is due to band-bending induced by the unpinning of the Al/Si interface and TiO2 charge, as opposed to due to the TiO2 valence band edge

Branch and Bound Method to Solve Multiple Objective Function

This paper presents a branch and bound algorithm for sequencing a set of n jobs on a single machine to minimize multiobjective: total cost of flow time, maximum earliness and sum of tardy jobs, when the jobs may have unequal ready time. Two lower bounds were proposed and  heuristic method to get an upper bound. Some special cases were proved and some dominance  rules were proposed and proved, the problem solved up to 35 jobs

Social, Historical and Psychological Realism in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things depicts realistic picture of the current issues of the typical Indian society. Arundhati Roy has tried her best to cover almost all the details of social and historical setting so that the readers may be able to acquaint with the pattern of living, daily routine, rites, customs, rituals and habits. The book explores how the small things affect people's behaviour and their lives. During that time in India, class was a major issue and still is in many parts of India. Inferiority complex is clearly visible in the interactions between Untouchables and Touchables in Ayemenem. The novel also shows that The Untouchables were considered polluted beings. Betrayal is also a constant theme in this story. Love, ideals, and confidence are all forsaken, consciously and unconsciously, innocently and maliciously, and these deceptions affect all of the characters deeply

Four-Element Microstrip Patch Array Antenna with Corporate-Series Feed Network for 5G Communication

The paper proposes a simple four-element microstrip patch array antenna fed with corporate-series technique. The paper compares the proposed design with four-element antennas fed with only series-fed and corporate-fed microstrip antennas. All three antenna designs use rectangular microstrip patch elements with two insets and slots on both sides of the patch. The patch elements are accompanied by Yagi elements: three director elements and two reflector elements. Through comparison of simulation results, the paper shows that four-element array antenna with combined corporate-series feeding technique performs better compared to antennas with only either series or corporate feeding network. The proposed corporate-series fed antenna achieves better performance with wide frequency bandwidth of 25.04–30.87 GHz and gain of 9.5 dB. The antenna has an end-fire radiation pattern. Overall performance shows that the proposed corporate-series-fed microstrip patch antenna with Yagi elements is suitable for next generation 5G communication