A critique of participatory development in Pakistan

This study, a critical analysis of participatory development, was empirically conducted within a participatory development NGO in Pakistan, namely the Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP). It critically analysed participatory development in relation to micro and macro level forces, such as government, bilateral and multilateral donors and local power structures.The study found the ideal of participatory development to be infeasible. The government undermined participatory development by controlling and co-opting the SRSP, which is a government initiated NGO, to perform its dictated functions. The government arranged funds for its activities from its own established fund, backed by bilateral and multilateral donors, namely, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund.Donor agencies impeded participatory development by requiring the SRSP to attain a pre-determined target in a given time. Donors' restrictions prompted the SRSP to follow the quantitative target by sacrificing its documented and idealized participatory development theory. Furthermore, at the micro level, the local power structure not only hijacked the SRSP's activities but also discouraged women and poor men from representing their actual needs. Hence, all these macro and micro-level forces, instead of adopting facilitative structural changes, reinforced each other and co-opted the SRSP for their own inherent objectives. The SRSP's position, constrained by the macro level forces in particular, made it a 'subcontractor' carrying out its activities without following the required process of structural transformation.Furthermore, the study found that participatory development has lost its critical edge over the earlier development theories as a result of by being co-opted by the modernization theories at the theoretical level, and by donors, states and local power structures at the practical level. This co-option, under the neo-liberal agenda, at both levels, reduced it to little more than fashionable lip service

Maternity leave

A numerous off-days which a woman is legally approved to be absent from work in the weeks prenatal and postnatal recovery phase after giving birth defines maternity leave. It is stated that at least 60 consecutive days of paid maternity leave were entitled to all female workers in Malaysia if they have worked at least 90 days with their current employers in four months leading up to their confinement period, except for exempted categories (Employment Act 1955) During the maternity leave, female workers are entitled to be provided with all relevant contractual benefits and paid with full salary as if they are in an active employment excluding the benefits that are tied to active work. The right to resume working upon their return from maternity leave is also protected

COVID-19 and the Level of Cloud Computing Adoption: A Study of Sri Lankan Information Technology Organisations

The study’s main objective is to analyse the level of cloud computing adoption and usage during COVID-19 in Sri Lanka, especially in Information Technology (IT) organisations. Using senior IT employees, this study investigates what extent their organisation adopts with cloud computing, the level of cloud computing usage, current use of cloud service model, usage of cloud deployment model, preferred cloud service providers and reasons for adopting and not adopting cloud computing. The study also describes why cloud computing is a solution for new normal situations and the cloud-enabled services used during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The finding suggests that 87.7% of the organisations currently use cloud-enabled services, whereas 12.3% do not and intend to adopt. Considering the benefits, cloud computing is the solution post COVID-19 pandemic to run the business way forward. Keywords: Cloud Computing, COVID-19, COVID-19 Pandemic, Cloud-enabled Services, Sri Lanka DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/13-2-02 Publication date:March 31st 202

Male Hegemony through Education: Construction of Gendered Identities

The fundamental presupposition of this paper is that ‘gender’ is a social category, hence a social construction, which can be negotiated and left fluid instead of something fixed and eternal. To examine the gendered social order, this study focuses on how hegemonic masculinity and feminine subordination are naturalized by positioning men as physically strong and women as weak on the ground of biological differences between the sexes. The study is informed by social constructionist understandings of gender. The main focus of the paper is to highlight how gendered discourses in Pakistan inform textbooks as objective and true knowledge. The data for the study comes from 28 educationists (11 females and 17 males). The study’s findings revealed that, despite prevailing claims to establishing gender equality and equity education, educationists are active in the production of gender/sexual identities and hierarchies in a ways that reinforces hegemonic ‘masculinity’ and a fixed notion of ‘femininity’. The paper concludes that what ends up as school knowledge arises from gendered power/knowledge relations

Male Hegemony through Education: Construction of Gendered Identities

The fundamental presupposition of this paper is that ‘gender’ is a social category, hence a social construction, which can be negotiated and left fluid instead of something fixed and eternal. To examine the gendered social order, this study focuses on how hegemonic masculinity and feminine subordination are naturalized by positioning men as physically strong and women as weak on the ground of biological differences between the sexes. The study is informed by social constructionist understandings of gender. The main focus of the paper is to highlight how gendered discourses in Pakistan inform textbooks as objective and true knowledge. The data for the study comes from 28 educationists (11 females and 17 males). The study’s findings revealed that, despite prevailing claims to establishing gender equality and equity education, educationists are active in the production of gender/sexual identities and hierarchies in a ways that reinforces hegemonic ‘masculinity’ and a fixed notion of ‘femininity’. The paper concludes that what ends up as school knowledge arises from gendered power/knowledge relations

Social Media and the Spiral of Silence: The Case of Kuwaiti Female Students Political Discourse on Twitter

The theory of the Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984), explained why the view of a minority is not presented when the majority view dominates the public sphere. For years the theory of the spiral of silence was used to describe the isolation of minority opinions when seeking help from traditional media, which play a significant role in increasing the isolation. The fear of isolation makes many people afraid of exchanging their views face-to-face with others. The main fear comes from identifying the people who hold a minority opinion. However, with the proliferation of social networks people have moved online to exchange their views, whether they hold a minority or a majority opinion, as long as their identities are concealed. Although women are the majority population in many Arab societies, their voices are still considered a minority view. In addition to the effects described in the spiral of silence, there are other obstacles to self-expression. Religion, culture, tradition, and education may have a negative effect, preventing women’s voice being made public. Social networks have helped to promote women’s voices while removing offline obstacles. This paper uses the theory of the spiral of silence in relation to women’s online political participation in Twitter, even though they may not be willing to share their opinions offline (face-to-face), to learn whether the theory is still useful as an account of online relationships. The results show that the spiral of silence does not explain the behavior of women, either face-to-face or online

WaveCNV: allele-specific copy number alterations in primary tumors and xenograft models from next-generation sequencing.

MotivationCopy number variations (CNVs) are a major source of genomic variability and are especially significant in cancer. Until recently microarray technologies have been used to characterize CNVs in genomes. However, advances in next-generation sequencing technology offer significant opportunities to deduce copy number directly from genome sequencing data. Unfortunately cancer genomes differ from normal genomes in several aspects that make them far less amenable to copy number detection. For example, cancer genomes are often aneuploid and an admixture of diploid/non-tumor cell fractions. Also patient-derived xenograft models can be laden with mouse contamination that strongly affects accurate assignment of copy number. Hence, there is a need to develop analytical tools that can take into account cancer-specific parameters for detecting CNVs directly from genome sequencing data.ResultsWe have developed WaveCNV, a software package to identify copy number alterations by detecting breakpoints of CNVs using translation-invariant discrete wavelet transforms and assign digitized copy numbers to each event using next-generation sequencing data. We also assign alleles specifying the chromosomal ratio following duplication/loss. We verified copy number calls using both microarray (correlation coefficient 0.97) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (correlation coefficient 0.94) and found them to be highly concordant. We demonstrate its utility in pancreatic primary and xenograft sequencing data.Availability and implementationSource code and executables are available at https://github.com/WaveCNV. The segmentation algorithm is implemented in MATLAB, and copy number assignment is implemented [email protected] informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Photocatalysis and Bandgap Engineering Using ZnO Nanocomposites

Nanocomposites have a great potential to work as efficient, multifunctional materials for energy conversion and photoelectrochemical reactions. Nanocomposites may reveal more improved photocatalysis by implying the improvements of their electronic and structural properties than pure photocatalyst. This paper presents the recent work carried out on photoelectrochemical reactions using the composite materials of ZnO with CdS, ZnO with SnO2, ZnO with TiO2, ZnO with Ag2S, and ZnO with graphene and graphene oxide. The photocatalytic efficiency mainly depends upon the light harvesting span of a material, lifetime of photogenerated electron-hole pair, and reactive sites available in the photocatalyst. We reviewed the UV-Vis absorption spectrum of nanocomposite and photodegradation reported by the same material and how photodegradation depends upon the factors described above. Finally the improvement in the absorption band edge of nanocomposite material is discussed

Evaluation of Factors Affecting Polyhydroxyalkanoates Production by Comamonas sp. EB172 Using Central Composite Design

Aims: Statistical approach, central composite design (CCD) was used to investigate the complex interaction among temperature (25-37 °C), initial medium pH (5-9), inoculum size (4-10 % (v/v)), concentration of (NH4)2SO4 (0-1 g/L) and concentration of mixed organic acids (5-10 g/L) in the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates by Comamonas sp. EB172.Methodology and Results: Mixed organic acids derived from anaerobically treated palm oil mill effluent (POME) containing acetic:propionic:butyric (ratio of 3:1:1) were used as carbon source in the batch culture of Comamonas sp. EB172 to produce polyhydoxyalkanoates (PHAs). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that all five factors were significantly important in the batch fermentation by shake flask with a P value of less than 0.001. The optimal temperature, initial medium pH, inoculum size, concentration of (NH4)2SO4 and concentration of mixed organic acids were 30 °C, 7.04, 4.0 % (v/v), 0.01 g/L and 5.05 g/L respectively.Conclusion, significance and impact of study: Optimization of the production medium containing mixed organic acids has improved the PHA production for more than 2 folds. Under optimal condition in the shake flask fermentation, the predicted growth is 2.98 g/L of dry cell weight (DCW) with 47.07 wt % of PHA content. The highest yield of PHA was 0.28 g of PHA per g mixed organic acids