Historicizing Anglophone theater in postcolonial South Africa: Select political and protest plays

This article explores the ways in which Anglophone dramas in postcolonial South Africa became a tool of political and protest theater. It examines the emergence of Anglophone theater, explores its development into political praxis and discusses the performance or non-performance contexts, as well as their specific socio-political milieux, with reference to the select plays from South Africa. These plays are compelling as they characterize specific tensions internal to South Africa, while alluding to colonial legacies and global coercion. Historicization is a crucial phase in this study and the key part of the methodology that establishes their political and aesthetic significance, both at the time of performance and after. The central argument of the article is that Anglophone theater of South Africa is subjected to – and bound by – socio-political and cultural dynamics of the country; the emergence of political and protest theater is often caused by subtle or overt subterfuges of biopolitics exercised internally within this postcolonial territory. KEYWORDS: Postcolonial Drama, Athol Fugard, Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island, Mbongeni Ngema, Asinamal

Human trafficking and surveillance: a close examination of Manjula Padmanabhan’s Drama Harvest

Human trafficking –  defined as organ and sex trafficking, and slavery materialized through numerous stratagems – is a growing problem worldwide. There has been a rising interest in the topic of human trafficking, and its mounting complexity and challenge. However, research has scarcely included literary representations of human trafficking achieved via e-surveillance processes: in this respect, Asian plays have received no sufficient critical attention. This article aims to redress this dearth by investigating the processes of human trafficking as depicted in the Indian playwright Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest, which premiered in 1999 in Greece. The play, a literary testimony to the complexity and subtlety of human trafficking processes, features storylines about human trafficking exercised through the forms of coercion, abduction, sexual seduction, fraud, deception, and abuse of power. Therefore, Harvest is closely read through Fanon’s, Foucault’s, and Bauman and Lyon’s perspectives of surveillance in this article. Reading the play provides a point of discussion of the third world’s vulnerability and its resistance to the first world’s human trafficking. It sheds much light on diverse human harvesting means such as organ harvesting and repopulation, and miscegenation, utilized through e-surveillance. The article offers complex insights into human trafficking victims of surveillance – both their vulnerability and the attempts of their agency.   KEYWORDS: E-surveillance, Panopticon, Postcolonial drama, Third/First World, Indian  playwrigh

Rebels and Biopolitics: Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority—is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel Foucault’s work on the regulation of human beings through the production of power serves as an initial medium of investigation into biopolitics. Yet, Giorgio Agamben probes the covert and overt presence of biopolitical violence in society, particularly through his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The Indian playwright Mahasweta Devi’s Anglophone play-text Mother of 1084 (1973) enables scholars to participate in a critical forum on biopolitical praxis, because of its pervasive and explicit representation of state violence and rebels. Nonetheless, the play-text is often renowned for its reference to feminist ideology and mother-son relationship. Existing scholarship has overlooked the manifestation of torture and dead bodies on-stage represented in it. The play is also on the periphery of the mainstream literary criticism. By engaging with a textual portrayal of the play through Foucauldian and Agambenian critical lenses, this article interrogates the ways in which biopolitics coerces populations within the contemporary socio-political milieu. The analysis implies a potential to understand the biopolitical logic more meaningfully, and to be resistant to its stratagems of coercion. It adds to the existing body of literature on biopolitics by creating a specific account of life-politics as characterised in postcolonial theatre, provides a supplemental standpoint to debates on biopolitical subjugation and specifically contributes to current discussions of the play

Parametrization of Steel Lazy Wave Riser Configuration for Fatigue Considerations at the Touch Down Point

With the advancement of technologies, deepwater oil and gas exploration has shown promising results worldwide. Production risers are integral in offshore hydrocarbon exploration because they transfer oil and gas from the subsea wells to the topsides. Steel Catenary Riser (SCR) is a favourable riser solution for deepwater developments due to its low cost and less complexity in implementation. With the increasing water depths and large floater motions, SCR has raised major concerns about fatigue performance at the touch down zone (TDZ). This can be solved by introducing buoyancy modules to the SCR, forming the Steel Lazy Wave Riser (SLWR) configuration. SLWR has shown better fatigue performance near the TDZ due to their ability to decouple vessel motion from TDZ. The initial phase of the thesis presents static, dynamic and fatigue analysis and design of an SLWR connected to a Floating Production and Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel in 2000m water depth in Santos basin in Offshore Brazil. The riser has an internal diameter of 254mm and a wall thickness of 25mm and is made of API 5L X65 Carbon steel with a coating thickness of 70mm. Analyses are performed using OrcaFlex software, and the design is based on Load Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) guidelines as per DNV-OS-F201: Dynamic Risers. The latter part of the thesis presents the parametric study on fatigue life near the Touch Down Point (TDP) for different SLWR configurations. Four different water depths (1500m, 2000m, 2500m, 3000m) and two different coating thicknesses (70mm: production riser, 3mm: injection riser) are considered, creating eight different scenarios. Each scenario considers 25 different SLWR configurations by changing the riser’s wave height (DB: distance between sag bend and hog bend) and distance from sag bend to the seabed (DS). In total, 200 different SLWR configurations are analysed during the research. Results show that fatigue life always increases with the increase of DB value irrespective of the DS value, water depth and coating thickness. In contrast, increasing the DS value does not always yield high fatigue life, and the rate of fatigue life change is marginal. Keywords: Santos Basin, Offshore Brazil, Deepwater, FPSO, Steel Lazy Wave Riser (SLWR), Parametric Study, Fatigue Analysis, Fatigue Life, Touch Down Point (TDP

Microwave-assisted synthesis and processing of transparent conducting oxides and thin film fabrication by aerosol-assisted deposition

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) have become an integral part of modern life through their essential role in touchscreen technology. The growing demand for cheap and superior transparent conducting layers, primarily driven by the smart phone market, has led to renewed efforts to develop novel TCOs. Currently, the most widely used material for transparent conducting applications is Sn-doped indium oxide (ITO), which has outstanding optical and electrical properties. This material is expensive though, due to the extensive use of In, and efforts to develop new low-cost transparent conducting oxides (TCO) have become increasingly important. Similarly attempts to reduce the cost of the fabrication and post-sintering steps used in making doped metal oxide thin films through innovative technologies have gained a lot of attention. With these points in mind, this research project has focused on the development of a novel low-cost aerosol assisted physical deposition method for TCO thin film fabrication and the development of new highly conducting materials to replace the expensive ITO for TCO applications. In this study, a new and simple aerosol assisted vapour deposition technique (i.e AACT) is developed to fabricate TCO films using TCO nanoparticle suspensions. Firstly, to test the validity of the method, ITO thin films are fabricated on float glass substrates from a nanoparticle suspension. The influence of the deposition parameters on the structural and opto-electronic properties of the thin films are investigated to understand the intricacies of the process. In order to investigate the fabrication of replacement materials for ITO, a range of doped zinc oxide powders are synthesised and processed using microwave radiation. Nominally, Al doped ZnO (AZO), Ga doped ZnO (GZO), Si doped ZnO (SZO), Cu doped ZnO (CZO) and Mn doped ZnO (MZO) singly doped ZnO powders are all investigated to determine the best metal dopants for transparent conducting ZnO. AZO and GZO pellets are found to present the best electrical conductivity for the singly doped microwave fabricated powders with values of 4.4 x 10-3 and 4.3 x 10-3 Ω.cm achieved reproducibly. In an effort to further improve the properties of ZnO, co-doping experiments, utilising the two best dopants from the previous work (i.e. Al and Ga) is investigated. ZnO structures that are co-doped with Al and Ga (AGZO) are found to exhibit significantly enhanced electrical properties than the singly doped powders. Typically, electrical conductivity value of 5.6 x 10-4 Ω.cm is obtained for AGZO pellets, which is an order of magnitude better than the previously fabricated materials. Finally, the best AZO, GZO and AGZO materials are utilised to fabricate thin films using the previously verified AACT technique. Further investigations into the opto-electrical properties of the resulting thin films is presented prior to the utilisation of the best films in a practical application. Transparent heaters are fabricated using the best AGZO thin films, which are capable of reaching a mean temperature of 132.3 °C after applying a voltage of 18 V for 10 min. This work highlights the potential for using highly conducting AGZO, particularly fabricated by the microwave synthesis route, as a potential alternative for ITO in a wide variety of applications. The research also highlights the advantages of using microwaves in the thermal processing of TCO materials which significantly reduces the energy impact of the production process

Developing an a-Priori Model of Online Review Process

More and more online feedback is being relied upon to make choices about the purchases and services we use daily. Conversely, companies rely on online reviews to find new customers and understand how people perceive them. Therefore, the online reviewing process and all its entities and processes are salient. Hence, in this research, we analyse online review related trends in research between the years 2000–2021 with an inductive categorization of 181 articles, in over fifty leading academic outlets. Using this categorization, we next investigate trends in the discussion and research on the online reviewer, online review, and review reaction. From these trends, we develop a nomological a-priori net of the online review process. Further, we discuss, some limitations of the current literature, posit research directions for future scholars and address the gaps in the current research on the online review process

Do Social Media Impact Consumer Buying Decisions in the Fashion Industry during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Impact on consumer shopping behavior ramped up despite the fluctuations in the pandemic and lockdown in the past year due to of the social media. Because the advent of social media has changed the globe and the whole way it operates, putting the society and its peoples closer together even as a means of boosting customer assets through powerful communication during this challenging period. The purpose of this study is to define the characteristics of social media marketing factors and to examine the impact of those perceived factors upon customer purchasing decisions, given the immense concern in using social media marketing among fashion brands during the period of covid-19 pandemic. This research primarily fixated on five variables in social media, such as entertainment, interactions, trendiness, customization and word of mouth effect on the consumer purchasing decisions. A deductive methodology was taken, and 100 questionnaires, via the Google online form, were circulated to gather data. For data interpretation using SPSS, descriptive and inferential statistics were used such as mean value, standard deviation and correlation and regression analysis. The study of the data shows that social media-marketing factors like entertainment, communications, trends, customizing and word of mouth influence customer buying decisions, and that these factors have a positive relation with consumer purchase decisions. These results also revealed that women and individuals aged twenty-five to thirty-four years of age are more inclined to buy fashion-related products during this pandemic situation and suggested to develop marketing tools targeted at this particular category. Further, the results of this study will help fashion companies more specifically forecast the purchasing habits of their customers and control their investments and marketing efforts in this challenging period

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Approach to Measuring Energy Consumption in Data Centre Facilities

Data centres are at the heart of the modern digital world; However, at the same time it accounts for 10% of the world electricity supply. To improve energy efficiency, measuring energy consumption is an important step. However, it is a challenging task, especially in small to medium-sized data centres. Due to the setup of such facilities, it is not always feasible to measure the energy consumption (e.g. due to being positioned in mixed use buildings). This research project addresses this problem by providing the tools and models to help estimate the energy consumption of data centres, with particular emphasis on smaller facilities. The work made two main novel contributions. First, energy models along with a web-based user-friendly tool were developed. The tool is capable of calculating energy consumption of each DC equipment type to then approximate the overall energy consumption of the facility. This tool is available for DC managers and operators. It uses publicly available benchmark data as input for the calculations. One of the limitations of the first set of models is their reliance on pre-existing data for specific hardware. However, there are many ways hardware can be configured, meaning benchmark data was not available to all types of servers. As such, the second research contribution was the design of new machine learning algorithms capable of predicting energy consumption of servers based on a small number of features within 12% error rate. An open source software tool, MALEP, was also developed based on the machine learning algorithms to automate the prediction of the energy consumption of any servers, irrespective of the presence of benchmark data. The software is made available open source under the GNU General Public Licence and downloadable from GitHub. Although this work focused on servers which account for the largest part of energy consumption in data centres, in future, we hope to extend this work to create such models for storage and networking equipment