Post-modern India and Identity Politics in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: An Exploration

The White Tiger which has been charged of being a booker’s book and not a bright book of life shows us the rotten society of post-modern India. A society where corruption has become rampant; where politics is the roost of crooked people; where elections are sold and bought routinely for political mileage. The whole novel seems to be a game of identity where the haves are trying to maintain their self-hood and have-nots are seekers of self-hood. Adiga has tried to show how in the ruse of India-shining, India herself is hiding her original identity of India-struggling; in the ruse of the White Tiger the novelist depicts what is hidden and sidelined in the booklets of our diplomats

India Told and Exposed: A Reading of the Indian Booker Heavyweights

It’s always very dicey to speak anything about a multifarious country like India for sure. And from literature one must never expect a Kodak-camera realism. In little over a decade, three Indian writers bagged the prestigious Booker-prize, a tradition that the fiction giant Rushdie started in 1981. Here I intentionally drop V.S. Naipaul as he is of Indian ancestry and not of Indian origin. The works of all the four Indian Booker- prize winners depict a picture of the country that annoys many of the intellectuals and laymen as well. These novels have been received with considerable antagonism in India. In place of telling India, these novelists have been charged of selling India, keeping the western audience in their minds. They have been charged of tarnishing the image of the country

Broadband, Single wavelength, Continuous Spectral Control in a Polymer-Based Solid-State Random Laser

In this paper, we present a study on partially pumped, single wavelength random lasing with tunability controlled by temperature in a solid-state random laser based on DCM (4-dicyanomethylene-2-methyl-6-(p-dimethylaminostyryl)-4H-pyran) doped PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) dye. By carefully shaping the spatial profile of the pump, we achieve low-threshold, single-mode random lasing with excellent rejection of side lobes. Notably, we observe that varying the temperature induces changes in the refractive index of the PMMA-DCM layer, resulting in a blue-shift of the lasing wavelength. Moreover, we demonstrate continuous tunability of the lasing wavelength over an impressive bandwidth of 8 nm.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figur

2D tunable all-solid-state random laser in the visible

A two-dimensional (2D) solid-state random laser emitting in the visible is demonstrated, in which optical feedback is provided by a controlled disordered arrangement of air-holes in a dye-doped polymer film. We find an optimal scatterer density for which threshold is minimum and scattering is the strongest. We show that the laser emission can be red-shifted by either decreasing scatterer density or increasing pump area. We show that spatial coherence is easily controlled by varying pump area. Such a 2D random laser provides with a compact on-chip tunable laser source and a unique platform to explore non-Hermitian photonics in the visibleComment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Role of mifepristone in pre-induction cervical ripening: a double blind placebo-controlled study

Background: Mifepristone has been used for cervical priming and labour induction for long with modest success. This double-blind study compares mifepristone with placebo in causing cervical ripening and inducing spontaneous labour in women past their expected date of delivery.Methods: 200 women at 40 weeks gestation received mifepristone or placebo after Bishop score was assessed. 48 hours later, cervical score was rechecked. Improvement in Bishop score was noted as primary outcome measure. Incidence of spontaneous labour, cesarean delivery and meconium staining of liquor during labour was also monitored.Results: 16 women went into labour before 48 hours and 184 were evaluable. Improvement in Bishop score was noted in significantly more women in mifepristone group (82/94 versus 42/90, p<0.0001). Mean change in Bishop score was 3.22 in mifepristone group and 1.61 in placebo group. This advantage in cervical ripening with mifepristone did not translate into better obstetric outcome. The incidence of spontaneous labour (64/94 mifepristone versus 60/90 placebo), cesarean section (4/94 versus 12/90) and MSL (8/94 versus 10/90) was comparable in the two groups and did not reach statistical significance.Conclusions: Mifepristone has a beneficial effect on cervical ripening in term pregnancies but does not offer obstetric advantage in terms of higher rates of spontaneous labour or vaginal delivery.

Temperature-controlled spectral tuning of a single wavelength polymer-based solid-state random laser

Funding. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC[EP/V029975/1]); PICS-ALAMO; Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education of Israel (2015-2018); United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF #2022158, NSF/BSF #2015694, NSF/BSF #2021811); Israel Science Foundation (1871/15,2074/15, 2630/20).We demonstrate temperature-controlled spectral tunability of a partially-pumped single-wavelength random laser in a solid-state random laser based on DCM (4-dicyanomethylene-2-methyl-6-(p-dimethylaminostyryl)-4H-pyran) doped PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) dye. By carefully shaping the spatial profile of the pump, we first achieve low-threshold, single-mode random lasing with excellent side lobes rejection. Notably, we show how temperature-induced changes in the refractive index of the PMMA-DCM layer result in a blue shift of this single lasing mode. We demonstrate spectral tunability over an 8nm-wide bandwidth.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Comparative Study of Colour Doppler versus Non Stress Test as a predictor of Perinatal outcome in PIH and IUGR

Background: Hypertensive disorders and intrauterine growth restriction are common complications encountered during pregnancy. This study was conducted to observe the usefulness of systolic/ diastolic (S/D) ratio in umbilical artery as compared with non-stress test (NST) to predict perinatal outcome in pregnancies complicated with hypertensive disorders and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Methods: It was a prospective observational which was conducted on patients undergoing antenatal visits at the department of obstetrics and gynaecology, Army hospital research and referral, New Delhi from May 2017 to April 2019. NST was started at 32 weeks twice weekly in all patients. All patients were subjected to umbilical artery Doppler velocimetry waveform on weekly basis or every third day in cases of nonreactive NST. Results: Out of 140 patients, 53 patients (37.9%) had PIH and 44 (31.4%) had IUGR. 43 cases (30.7%) had both PIH and IUGR. Among the 140 patients, 40 patients (28.6%) had non-reactive NST and 60 patients (42.9%) of the patients had abnormal doppler. Abnormal doppler and non-reactive NST were associated with APGAR score of less than 7 at 5 minutes in the newborn. Abnormal perinatal outcome was more in abnormal doppler than normal doppler and the finding was statistically significant (p<0.05). Conclusions: Overall sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy of Doppler is better as compared to that of NST in terms of detecting adverse perinatal outcomes

A multi-objective evolutionary optimisation model for heterogeneous vehicles routing and relief items scheduling in humanitarian crises

In a disaster scenario, relief items distribution is required as early as possible for the disaster victims to reduce the associated risks. For the distribution tasks, an effective and efficient relief items distribution model to generated relief items distribution schedules is essential to minimise the impact of disaster to the disaster victims. However, developing efficient distribution schedules is challenging as the relief items distribution problem has multiple objectives to look after where the objectives are mostly contradictorily creating a barrier to simultaneous optimisation of each objective. Also, the relief items distribution model has added complexity with the consideration of multiple supply points having heterogeneous and limited vehicles with varying capacity, cost and time. In this paper, multi-objective evolutionary optimisation with the greedy heuristic search has been applied for the generation of relief items distribution schedules under heterogeneous vehicles condition at supply points. The evolutionary algorithm generates the disaster region distribution sequence by applying a global greedy heuristic search along with a local search that finds the efficient assignment of heterogeneous vehicles for the distribution. This multi-objective evolutionary approach provides Pareto optimal solutions that decision-makers can apply to generate effective distribution schedules that optimise the distribution time and vehicles’ operational cost. In addition, this optimisation also incorporated the minimisation of unmet relief items demand at the disaster regions. The optimised distribution schedules with the proposed approach are compared with the single-objective optimisation, weighted single-objective optimisation and greedy multi-objective optimisation approaches. The comparative results showed that the proposed multi-objective evolutionary approach is an efficient alternative for finding the distribution schedules with optimisation of distribution time and operational cost for the relief items distribution with heterogeneous vehicles