Youth and Youth’s Religiosity in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan youth and youth religiosity has indicated that youth as being hopeless and revolutionary, but this study shows that it is not always through when one closely looks at the everyday life of youth in a more ethnographical sense. The ethnographical accounts that researcher has presented; indicates the way young people behave, contest, and negotiate in the context of a sacred site as well as how youth assimilate and transform their religious heritage quite different even though they proclaim their affinity with religion. Youth pilgrims come to Sri Pada to worship and to ask for help. No doubt many youths do go to Sri Pāda for more than worshipping the sacred footprint and the deity, or than seeking favour from its divine powers for their worries and frustration. This paper explained their ‘sacred’ intentions are combined with the achievement of maximum pleasure. Both the pleasurable and the religious dimensions of these specific pilgrim groups were explored through the accounts of personal experiences (e.g., through case studies and memories of pilgrims). These youth pilgrims visit Sri Pada with different motivations and intentions, both ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. The interconnecting of both sacred and secular aspects of Sri Lankan youth have not been considered when they were identified as a sociological category and this paper is suggested to overcome that conceptual inadequacy of youth research in Sri Lanka

Anthropological Studies on South Asian Pilgrimage: Case of Buddhist Pilgrimage in Sri Lanka

Anthropological studies relating to South Asian pilgrimage have been of several types. Interest in the field can be traced back to at the time when Victor Turner was writing on this subject (notably, the works of Vidyarthi, 1961, 1979; Jha, 1985, 1995; Bhardwaj, 1973 and; Bharati, 1970). Among the relevant ethnographies for South Asia there are a number of studies which mainly concentrate on describing a pilgrimage centre or sacred place. In general, the emphasis of these studies is on priests, the organization of the pilgrim centres, and other occupants of the pilgrimage centres; in other words, they are more ‘sacred place’ oriented rather than focussing on the pilgrims themselves. The pilgrimage literature for South Asia, in general, lends greater support to the competing discourse perspective than to the Turnerian approach. However, most academic studies of pilgrimage in South Asia have concentrated on the explicitly religious domain, on the major religious traditions and on regional pilgrimage cults, and has placed far less emphasis on pilgrimage in secularized contexts such as the pilgrimage service economy, that has grown around pilgrimage centres, politics, nationalism, ethnicity, gender, pilgrimage sites associated with dead cultural heroes, touristic dimensions of pilgrimage, educational visits to sacred and historic locations, or simply pilgrimage for the sake of journeying (for ‘fun’). Anthropological studies of pilgrimage in Sri Lanka mainly derive theoretical orientation from the functionalist approach (Obeyesekere, 1966, 1978, 1981; Evers, 1972; Seneviratne, 1978). However, more recent studies by Pfaffenberger (1979), Nissan (1985, 1988), Stirrat (1982, 1991, 1992), Whitaker (1999), and Bastin (2002), mainly put their theoretical arguments against a ‘universalistic’ perspective and emphasise the importance of considering multiple historical representations of Buddhist pilgrimage centres in Sri Lanka, rather than studying them as a unified tradition. In this paper I will attempt to break down the boundaries around the anthropology of pilgrimage, questioning the dubious division between structure (e.g., Turnerian view), and process (e.g., competing discourse), religion and politics, and this and other worldly formulations. These dominant views in the anthropology of pilgrimage are tested with my ethnographical and historical materials particularly in relation to the Sri Pāda (Adam’s Peak) pilgrimage site and the pilgrims journeying to it. I would argue with my findings that it is hard to grasp an overall picture about the pilgrimage site, as well as the journey to it in the context of Buddhist pilgrimage in Sri Lanka, if too much emphasis is placed on either theoretical perspective

Sri Pāda: diversity and exclusion in a sacred site in Sri Lanka

This thesis is divided into two interconnected parts. The first part explores the major competing discourses that have been arisen during its political and religious history and the second part is mainly focussed on the style of religiosity and the social composition of pilgrims, and explores social factors in the practices of worship. One chapter deals with the style of "official" Buddhist religiosity found at this centre and two further chapters look at devotional and expressive forms of religiosity of pilgrims, which is oriented to the Buddha rather than the gods and as such is markedly different from that documented by anthropologists working in other parts of the island. The final chapter investigates links between devotional styles and the shifting socio¬ political contexts. The documentation of the prevailing styles ofreligiosity at Sri Pada enable me to show on one hand how such religiosity further undermines the broadly Weberian antinomies that have dominated the anthropology of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, and on other hand the intensity or scale of Buddhicization of the historically viewed 'sacred site'.The thesis is an ethnohistorical study of one major pilgrimage site in Sri Lanka, known as Sri Pada (Adam's Peak), where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually visit to worship the sacred footprint which is located in the mountain top temple. This sacred footprint has different sacred connotations for Sri Lanka's major religious groups (Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Catholic). However, this pilgrimage site, which was considered a multi-religious site until the turn of the twentieth century, has now been constructed or ordered into an ethnic majoritarian Buddhist space. My thesis, therefore, concentrates in part on the historical process which has led to the construction of the pilgrimage site as a Buddhist space, and then locates this process within the wider context of the rise of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. My work highlights the powerful role pilgrimage can play in particular religious discourses and the manner it legitimates certain ways of envisaging power and relationships of domination at particular conjunctures, which is clearly apparent in the contemporary Sinhala Buddhist cultural nationalism in Sri Lanka

Modeling and predicting foreign tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka: A comparison of three different methods

Purpose: This study compares three different methods to predict foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) to Sri Lanka from top-ten countries and also attempts to find the best-fitted forecasting model for each country using five model performance evaluation criteria. Methods: This study employs two different univariate-time-series approaches and one Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach to develop models that best explain the tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka from the top-ten tourist generating countries. The univariate-time series approach contains two main types of statistical models, namely Deterministic Models and Stochastic Models. Results: The results show that Winter’s exponential smoothing and ARIMA are the best methods to forecast tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the results show that the accuracy of the best forecasting model based on MAPE criteria for the models of India, China, Germany, Russia, and Australia fall between 5 to 9 percent, whereas the accuracy levels of models for the UK, France, USA, Japan, and the Maldives fall between 10 to 15 percent. Implications: The overall results of this study provide valuable insights into tourism management and policy development for Sri Lanka. Successful forecasting of FTAs for each market source provide a practical planning tool to destination decision-makers

Statistical Model for the Quality of Panoramic Images of Mural Paintings

Panoramic image creation is crucial in area of digital imaging. It is developed by combining an overlapped image component series of a large image, which is difficult to be focused on using a normal camera due to a large field of view. Measuring the quality of panoramic images is a challenging task. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to find the attributes of visual quality of panoramic images and to propose predictor variables for a statistical model for the quality of panoramic images of mural paintings. Authors have used a proposed novel method for creating panoramic images of mural painting. In this study, authors researched on the quality attributes of digital images. Accordingly, color balance, noise and distortion were identified as the two most critical factors which affect the overall quality of the panoramic images. Authors visited three temples and captured digital images of mural paintings of large scale using a simple method. Then, panoramic images were created using three methods: the novel method with other two methods, Photoshop (available in the market) and Hugin (open source software). Subjective evaluation was applied through experts in the field of Visual Arts. Participants were asked to rate the quality using four-point Likert scale for color balance, noise and distortion as predictor variables and overall quality as the response variable of panoramic images. Ordinal logistic regression was fitted through Minitab statistical package and the results showed that color balance and noise and distortion are two important attributes for the quality of the panoramic images. Moreover, the collected data fit the model at a higher accuracy. Full paper submission of ICIET 202

Simulation of Three Dimensional Flows in Hydraulic Pumps

Hydraulic efficiency of the centrifugal pump is mainly depends on mass flow rate, Head and RPM. Finding the best combination with the above said parameters and the best geometry of the pump is possible by using three dimensional CFD simulations. For designers, prediction of operating characteristics curve is most important. All theoretical methods for prediction of efficiency merely give a value; but one is unable to determine the root cause for the poor performance. Due to the development of CFD code, one can get the efficiency value as well as observe actual behaviour. One can find the root cause for poor performance by using CFD Analysis of equipment. We have considered centrifugal pump for the three dimensional fluid flow analyses and validated the pump hydraulic efficiency with the experiment results. We observed the behaviour of the hydraulic efficiency with respect to the pump performance characteristics. Centrifugal pumps should be run at best efficiency point. Generally the radial force developed on the shaft will be high, if operates away from the BEP and it may leads to shaft damage. So it is important to find out best efficiency point

Modeling and predicting foreign tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka: A comparison of three different methods

Purpose: This study compares three different methods to predict foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) to Sri Lanka from top-ten countries and also attempts to find the best-fitted forecasting model for each country using five model performance evaluation criteria. Methods: This study employs two different univariate-time-series approaches and one Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach to develop models that best explain the tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka from the top-ten tourist generating countries. The univariate-time series approach contains two main types of statistical models, namely Deterministic Models and Stochastic Models. Results: The results show that Winter’s exponential smoothing and ARIMA are the best methods to forecast tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the results show that the accuracy of the best forecasting model based on MAPE criteria for the models of India, China, Germany, Russia, and Australia fall between 5 to 9 percent, whereas the accuracy levels of models for the UK, France, USA, Japan, and the Maldives fall between 10 to 15 percent. Implications: The overall results of this study provide valuable insights into tourism management and policy development for Sri Lanka. Successful forecasting of FTAs for each market source provide a practical planning tool to destination decision-makers

Enhancing object detection robustness: A synthetic and natural perturbation approach

Robustness against real-world distribution shifts is crucial for the successful deployment of object detection models in practical applications. In this paper, we address the problem of assessing and enhancing the robustness of object detection models against natural perturbations, such as varying lighting conditions, blur, and brightness. We analyze four state-of-the-art deep neural network models, Detr-ResNet-101, Detr-ResNet-50, YOLOv4, and YOLOv4-tiny, using the COCO 2017 dataset and ExDark dataset. By simulating synthetic perturbations with the AugLy package, we systematically explore the optimal level of synthetic perturbation required to improve the models robustness through data augmentation techniques. Our comprehensive ablation study meticulously evaluates the impact of synthetic perturbations on object detection models performance against real-world distribution shifts, establishing a tangible connection between synthetic augmentation and real-world robustness. Our findings not only substantiate the effectiveness of synthetic perturbations in improving model robustness, but also provide valuable insights for researchers and practitioners in developing more robust and reliable object detection models tailored for real-world applications.Comment: 09 pages, 4 figure

Impediments in Energy Efficient Building Retrofitting: With Special Reference to Public University Buildings in Sri Lanka

In a world where sustainability and energy conservation have taken center stage, the building sector, which happens to be the largest consumer of energy, finds itself at a critical crossroads. As sustainability and energy reduction become increasingly important, building retrofitting is recognized as a viable and sustainable solution. Retrofitting involves integrating new features and technology into existing buildings to enhance their efficiency. Despite the acknowledged need for building retrofitting, there is relatively low concern within the public sector, including university buildings. Various barriers hinder the adoption, implementation, and operation of energy-efficient retrofits in public university buildings in Sri Lanka. This study aimed to investigate these impediments. Qualitative methods were employed, and five professionals, including three architects and two institutional hierarchical heads in Finance and Legal Units, were interviewed. Data analysis was conducted using content analysis. The findings highlighted financial, procurement, energy assessment, technical, and legal aspects as barriers to energy-efficient retrofitting in public university buildings. Among these, technical barriers emerged as the predominant impeding category. Therefore, the authors recommend future studies to focus on in-depth examinations of technical barriers and their impacts on building retrofitting. Authors suggested several policy level implications as well

The synergistic neurotoxins of palmyrah (Borassus flabellifer L.) flour

Palmyrah (Borassus flabellifer L.) is consumed in various forms in different parts of Sri Lanka. Although a neurotoxic syndrome had been described in rats it is being consumed by humans. However, the chemical nature of the neurotoxin is unknown. Thus the objective of the present study was to determine the neurotoxic principle using palmyrah seed shoot and bioactivity directed separations. Two primary amines were isolated. These were not toxic individually but toxic when given together showing synergism. Studies of the amines by 1H NMR and 13C-NMR showed a steroidal aglycone (spirostane) linked to a carbohydrate moiety containing three a-rhamnosyl residues and a b-pyranosyl residue. Comparison with known spectral data showed that the b-pyranosyl is likely to be a β-glucosaminosyl which is probably in position 6 of glucose in one compound and most likely to be in the position 3 of glucose in the other. Synergism appears to be at two levels (i.e. at the absorption level) where the high content of neutral saponins present appears to be needed to facilitate absorption of the cationic toxin and at the point of action. The synergistic mechanism of the toxic amines remains to be explained