Indigenous Food Practices of the Dambana Vedda Community in Sri Lanka: Past and Present Scenario

Veddas are considered to be the indigenous community of Sri Lanka. A century ago, the Veddas had scattered across the Eastern Province, North-Central and Uva Provinces. Presently, their main settlement is confined to Dambana in the Badulla district. They inherit unique indigenous knowledge from their ancestors to hunt animals, gather forest goods, collect honey and dig yams to fulfill their food needs as ‘Forest dwellers’. Therefore, they had simple and efficient indigenous techniques for gathering and processing food. The main objective of the present study was to identify and document the past indigenous food practices and current food practices of the Dambana Vedda community. Focus group discussions were carried out with the different age categories of the Vedda community at Dambana to collect information. The indigenous lifestyle of the Vedda community was affected by modernization and civilization. Wild Veddas who lived in the forest have transmitted to village Veddas in colonies with modified food culture. Their indigenous food culture is mixed with the neighboring Sinhalese and Tamil communities. However, with forest reserves restricted, the Veddas are still engaging in a questionable struggle to protect their indigenous tradition and culture. Consequently, they have consumed indigenous foods rarely and novel food varieties become the daily diets of Veddas. Therefore, Veddas have been facing many challenges to protect their unique indigenous food practices for future generations.     DOI: http://doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v08i02.0

The utilisation of acid sulphate soils for shrimp (Penaeus monodon) culture on the west coast of Sri Lanka

Continued pressure on land resources for shrimp culture has resulted in many shrimp culture developments on acid sulphate soils in South East Asia which are marginal or difficult to manage. The present study included a survey to identify and classify different acid sulphate and potential acid sulphate soils in the areas earmarked for shrimp culture on the West Coast of Sri Lanka. This was supported by on farm investigations into the behavior and kinetics of metals in culture ponds, time series studies on water and soil quality over a culture cycle, plus morphological and histopathological changes in cultured shrimps and monitoring of calcium and magnesium contents in selected tissues. Although the general environment and water quality criteria in the study areas provided promising conditions for culture of Penaeus monodon, survival (35.1%) and production (1240 kg/ha/ crop) wore found to be significantly lower on acid sulphate soils than that on neutral soils. The stability of metals, particularly that of Iron, which is governed by the redox potential-pH relationships of the pond environment, appears to play a significant role in the processes that increase the potential stress to the shrimps cultured in an acid sulphate environment. Under acid sulphate conditions, shrimps showed elevated levels of iron (119.9 pg/g dry wt) and manganese (38.4 pg/g dry wt) in their muscles and unusually high levels of these heavy metals were recorded in gills (1588 and 93.2 pg/g dry wt of iron and manganese respectively) and carapace (778 and 34 pg/g dry wt of iron and manganese respectively) during the latter part of the culture period. Calcium levels in the carapace were relatively low (136 to 260 mg/ g dry wt) throughout the culture period and showed a negative correlation with culture time (r - -0.950; p - .001). Accumulation of hydrated oxides of iron in gills as a result of oxidation of pyrites was confirmed by the Eh-pH relationships monitored in the pond environment and by histochemical, SEM and TEM studies. These insoluble oxides appear to be primarily responsible for gill colour changes and concomitant histological changes in giil, heart and hepatopancreatic tissues. They are clearly detrimental to the normal gill functions of cultured shrimps. Statistically significant correlations were observed between iron in shrimp gills and muscles with iron in the surface sediments (p -.004 and .010 respectively) and the culture period (p >.013 and .010 respectively). Manganese in gills and carapace of cultured shrimps was correlated to the Iron concentration in those tissues (p >.016 and .002 respectively). Traditional management strategies (drying the pond bottom, liming and artificial aeration) although creating promising conditions for shrimp culture under favourable soil conditions, create adverse conditions by favouring the formation of iron (III) oxides in F>onds on acid sulphate soils. Detailed studies on mapping, classification and identification of profile forms in coastal soils provided vital information necessary for land use planning and development of these sediments in shrimp culture. Development of soil classes; sulphidic sand, unripe sulphidic peat, unripe sulphidic muck, acid sulphate muck, raw acid sulphate muck and raw acid sulphate clay have the most serious implications on cultured shrimps and the environment. Ripe clay with sulphidic subsoil, ripe clay with raw acid sulphate sub-soil, half ripe clay with acid sulphate subsoil and sand with acid sulphate sub- soil appear to be the least harmful soil classes for shrimp culture among the sediment types investigated

Accounting in new public management (NPM) and shifting organizational boundaries: Evidence from the Greek Show Caves

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how accounting is implicated in the creation and maintenance of organizational boundaries. The analysis focuses on organizations subjected to conflicting objectives as a result of new public management (NPM) reforms. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on case studies of four cultural organizations (Show Caves) in Greece. Data are collected from semi-structured interviews, informal discussions and document analysis. The paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts of “field”, “capital” and “habitus” and Llewellyn’s analysis of organizational boundary maintenance. Findings – The study observes that NPM reforms contributed to shifting organizational boundaries – from cultural/archaeological to economic/financial and this resulted in conflicting organizational objectives. This subsequently created conflicts between key actors (municipal politicians, professional managers and anthropologists). These actors, depending on the positions (and habitus) they occupy, and the capital (political, cultural and symbolic) they hold, are able to bargain for resources (economic capital). The conflicting objectives (archaeological/cultural/historical, political and commercial) that emerged and the tensions that arose between the key players shaped the identities and boundaries of the Show Caves. Originality/value – The study makes an original contribution by revealing the complexity and struggle between actors and the role of accounting in managing the boundaries. For example, the study explains how financial threshold and accountability structures function within these cultural organizations that are subjected to conflicting objectives in the context of NPM reforms

Process Simulation-based Net Energy Analysis for Future Bioethanol Production as Commercial Biofuel from Waste Rice Straw in Sri Lanka

As the staple food crop in Sri Lanka, paddy rice occupies around 34% (over 0.87 million hectares of land) of the total arable area in the country, corresponding to an average rice production of 3,774,344 t/year. Rice straw is the major biomass waste from rice cultivation, which approximates to an average of 2,830,758 t/year generation at a theoretical straw/grain ratio of 0.75. Open burning of rice straw in paddy fields is the common practice, which could result in an average GHG emissions of 92 kg CO2 eq/t of dry rice straw and other harmful airborne emissions. Application of rice straw into soil as an organic fertiliser is also an inefficient practice, compared to bioenergy generation using rice straw. The average composition of the Sri Lankan rice straw (i.e. 30.0 wt.% cellulose, 3.9 wt.% hemicellulose, 38.2% lignin, 16.1 wt.% wax, and 12.3 wt.% silica) shows the possibility to be used as a second-generation bioethanol feedstock. Existing studies indicate that bioethanol production from rice straw is more environmentally-benign, compared to alternative options, such as gasification for combined heat and power and dimethyl ether (DME) production. This study analyses the net energy indicators of a possible bioethanol production process from rice straw in Sri Lanka. Chemical process simulations using Aspen Plus software were utilised to evaluate the bioethanol production process from rice straw, with a plant output capacity of 1,000 litres/hr of dehydrated bioethanol (99.7 vol.% ethanol) that can be blended with gasoline as a commercial fuel (e.g. E10: 10% bioethanol+gasoline) without any vehicle engine modification. The cradle to gate bioethanol production process from waste rice straw, considered for net energy analysis consists of three major stages: 1. Rice straw preparation, 2. Rice straw transportation, and 3. Bioethanol conversion. The results show that the considered bioethanol production process has a positive net energy gain and increased renewability factor. Detailed analysis indicates that only around 8% of the total process energy consumption is utilised for the bioethanol dehydration operation that is favourable for converting any existing rice straw ethanol plant into commercial gasohol production plant. The sensitivity of bioethanol yield and process energy parameters for the net energy indicator results are further analysed and discussed. The findings from this study can support decision making for a future waste-to-biofuel plant using waste rice straw in Sri Lanka.Keywords: Rice straw, Bioethanol production, Net energy analysis, Process simulation, Waste-to-biofue

Remote sensing and hydrologic models for performance assessment in Sirsa Irrigation Circle, India

Irrigation management / Irrigation systems / Irrigation canals / Performance evaluation / Remote sensing / GIS / Models / Irrigated farming / Hydrology / Satellite surveys / Irrigation scheduling / Evapotranspiration / India

Task assignment in server farms under realistic workload conditions

Server farms have become very popular in recent years since they effectively address the problem of large delays, a common problem faced by many organisations whose systems receive high volumes of traffic. Recently, there has been a wide use of these server farms in two main areas, namely, Web hosting and scientific computing. The performance of such server farms is highly reliant on the underlying task assignment policy, a specific set of rules that defines how the incoming tasks are assigned to and processed at hosts. The aim of a task assignment policy is to optimise certain performance criteria such as the expected waiting time and slowdown. One of the key factors that affect the performance of these policies is the service time distribution of tasks. There is extensive evidence indicating that the service times of modern computer workloads closely follow heavy-tailed distributions that possess high variance. However, in certain environments, the service time distributions of tasks are unknown. Imposing parametric assumptions in such cases can lead to inaccurate and unreliable inferences. Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to devise efficient policies. Although these policies perform well under specific workload conditions, they have several major limitations. These include the assumption of known service times, inability to efficiently assign tasks in time sharing server farms, poor performance under changing workload conditions and poor performance under multiple server farms. This thesis aims at proposing novel task assignment policies for assigning tasks in server farms under two main classes of realistic workload conditions, namely, the heavy-tailed and arbitrary service time distributions. Arbitrary service time distributions are assumed, for cases where the underlying service time distribution of tasks is unknown. First we investigate ways to optimise the performance in a time-sharing server. We concentrate on a particular scheduling policy called multi-level time sharing policy (MLTP). We provide an extensive performance analysis of MTLP and show that MLTP can result in significant performance improvements under certain traffic conditions. Second we investigate how to improve the performance in time sharing server farms using MLTP. Three task assignment policies are proposed for time sharing server farms. Third we investigate how to design efficient task assignment policies to assign tasks in multiple server farms. We propose MCTPM which is based on a multi-tier host architecture. MCTPM supports preemptive task migration and it controls the traffic flow into server farms via a global dispatching device so as to optimise the performance. Finally, we investigate ways to design adaptive task assignment policies that make no assumptions regarding the underlying service time distribution of tasks. We propose a novel task assignment policy, called ADAPT-POLICY, which is based on a set of static-based task assignment policies. ADAPT-POLICY is based on a set of policies for the server farm and it adaptively changes the task assignment policy to suit the most recent traffic conditions. The experimental performance analysis of ADAPT-POLICY shows that ADAPT-POLICY outperforms other policies under a range of traffic conditions

Malaria and land use: a spatial and temporal risk analysis in Southern Sri Lanka

Malaria / Waterborne diseases / Disease vectors / Land use / Water use / GIS / Statistical analysis / Risks / Mapping / Public health / Sri Lanka / Uda Walawe / Thanamalvila / Embilipitiya

Creating Equal Opportunities: Evaluating Physical Facilities for Undergraduate Students with Special Needs

Every individual in the world desires to carry out their daily tasks with ease. The surrounding environment plays a crucial role in facilitating this. While able-bodied individuals seamlessly navigate their surroundings, people with special needs often face significant challenges in meeting their requirements. Therefore, it is essential for them to have a moral understanding of the support they receive from their environment. The main objective of this research is to investigate the available physical facilities that were provided to the visually impaired and physically disabled undergraduates by their universities. The purposive sample contained 100 differently abled undergraduates from five universities namely; Sri Jayewardenepura, Colombo, Kelaniya, Jaffna, and Eastern university. A structured interview schedule was used for data collection. According to the results, students had a certain level of awareness regarding library facilities (46%), elevator facilities (53%), cafeteria facilities (75%) and sanitary facilities (67%). They have a moderate level of satisfaction on access to the library (30%), lecture halls (22%), gymnasium (41%) and hostels (29%) at their respective universities. Results revealed that there are some issues that visually impaired students face during their education that need to be addressed. Implementing equal opportunities is essential to create a user-friendly environment at universities and hostels to provide the students a satisfactory experience during their university education in spite of the disability. DOI: http://doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v08i02.0

An Efficient, Modular Approach for the Synthesis of (+)-Strictifolione and a Related Natural Product

An efficient, library amenable, “pot economical” total synthesis of (+)-strictifolione and the related natural product, (6R)-6[(E,4R,6R)-4,6-dihydroxy-10-phenyl-1-decenyl]-5,6-dihydro-2H-2-pyrone are reported. This modular approach takes advantage of two consecutive phosphate tether-mediated, one-pot, sequential protocols, followed by a final cross metathesis to deliver both antifungal natural products in a three-pot process from the respective enantiomeric (R,R)- and (S,S)-trienes with minimal purification. A salient feature of this route is that additional protecting groups are not required as a result of the orthogonal protecting- and leaving-group properties innate to phosphate triesters