Moulding lives, shaping destinies: motherhood and nation in celestial bodies by Jokha Alharthi and a golden age by Tahmima Anam

Female narratives hold an important place in literature as they tell stories from women’s perspectives, spatially and temporally. In Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi and A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam, the female characters play a significant role in determining the outcome of the story as their personal narratives run parallel to the history of Oman and Bangladesh in the 1970s, respectively. The paper examines the intersectionality of gendered narratives through the lens of motherhood and individual lives within a nation in both texts with the aim of uncovering its manifestation in both Omani and Bangladeshi societies. The methodology adopts the theory of parenting as a lens to examine the textual depiction of mothering within the two socio-cultural contexts of Oman and Bangladesh with a specific focus on Diana Baumrind’s categorisation of parenting styles. The findings suggest that the mothering styles portrayed in the two novels, namely authoritarian and permissive, are present in two distinct yet overlapping manners: one, within mother-daughter relationships grounded in cultural engagement, and two, through participation in nationhood. In addition, mothers in Celestial Bodies serve as witnesses to the cultural changes in Oman, creating intra-gender generational conflicts. In contrast, the mother figure in A Golden Age functions as the backbone of the youth’s participation in Bangladeshi liberation. Many of the choices made by the mothers in the two novels implicate the lives of the youth, society, and consequently the nation-states. The implication of this comparative reading shows that the mothering roles in women’s fiction are rich and multi-faceted as they partake in the pursuit of nationhood within and without the family institution

Pertimbangan dalam penggunaan pendekatan kajian kaedah gabungan (mix method approaches)

Kertas kerja ini saya sediakan untuk berkongsi pengalaman tentang bagaimana seseorang pengkaji menggunakan pendekatan kajian gabungan kaedah kuantitatif dan kualitatif (mixed method approaches) dalam melaksanakan kajian yang berbentuk komprehensif. Kandungan kertas kerja ini meliputi pertimbangan dalam memilih kaedah yang sesuai digunakan untuk mendapatkan data yang berbentuk perangkaan dan pemahaman menyeluruh tentang penggunaan buku teks (teks) Komponen Sastera (KOMSAS) dalam pengajaran Bahasa Melayu tingkatan 4. Dalam Bahagian A, saya akan menghuraikan pertimbangan yang diambil bagi memilih dan mengadun kaedah tinjauan bagi mendapatkan data berbentuk perangkaan untuk dijadikan data asas. Data asas ini akan digunakan sebagai garis panduan bagi merancang kajian kes secara kualitatif untuk mendapatkan data yang dijangka dapat memberikan pemahaman yang menyeluruh akan fenomena yang dikaji. Hal ini melibatkan penggubalan pemyataan masalah, tujuan/objektif dan soalan kajian serta kerangka teoritikal dan konseptual yang dapat merangkumi kedua-dua kaedah kajian yang dipilih. Reka bentuk kaedah gabungan 'Penjelasan Berikutan' yang diubah suai daripada model Creswell (2003) juga akan disentuh dalam kertas kerja ini. Selanjutnya, dalam dalam Bahagian B saya akan menerangkan bagaimana kajian yang menggunakan gabungan dua kaedah ini dijalankan di lokasi kajian. Hal ini merangkumi pelaksanaan kajian tinjauan di 100 buah sekolah menengah di Selangor yang telah dijalankan antara hujung Januari hingga pertengahan Mac 2006. Saya juga akan menjelaskan bagaimana proses analisis dan menulis laporan awal dapatan kajian tinjauan bagi menyediakan data asas yang akan digunakan dalam kajian kes secara kualitatif. Hal ini melibatkan kerja pengemaskinian tujuan dan soalan kajian, pemilihan dan penentuan tempat dan peserta kajian serta tempoh bagi kajian kes. Akhir sekali, saya berharap kertas kerja yang disediakan ini dapat dimanfaatkan bersama oleh rakan-rakan pengkaji, khususnya yang merancang kajian melibatkan lebih daripada satu kaedah kajian

A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

Numerical study of convective heat transfer from tube bank in cross flow using nanofluid

In this paper, laminar convective heat transfer of Al2O3 -water nanofluid flow over tube banks under constant wall temperature conditions has been numerically investigated. The circular-tube banks with staggered arrangement are considered in this study. The governing equations have been solved using finite volume approach based on SIMPLE technique in body-fitted coordinates. The numerical simulations have been conducted for Reynolds number ranging from 100 to 600 with nanoparticles volume fraction ranging from 0 to 0.05. The effect of longitudinal pitch, transverse pitch and nanoparticle concentration on the streamwise and temperature contours, average Nusselt number, friction factor and thermal-hydraulic performance factor have been investigated and discussed. Results showed that the best performance is obtained at longitudinal pitch ratio of 1.5, transverse pitch ratio of 2.5 and nanoparticles volume fraction of 5% over the ranges of Reynolds number

Near band-edge electron diffusion in electrospun Nb-doped anatase TiO 2 nanofibers probed by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

10.1063/1.3579194Applied Physics Letters9815-APPL

Continuous tubular nanofibers of vanadium pentoxide by electrospinning for energy storage devices

10.1007/s11051-012-1201-1Journal of Nanoparticle Research1411