Fractured Identities: A Study of Diasporic Reality & Identity Crisis in Agha

Diaspora is much talked and celebrated discourse across the disciplines. Confrontation of diasporic community with native community gives rise to multi-dimensional problems. Diasporic community thus undergoes different levels of realities that change their perception as person who migrated from his/her homeland in search of new opportunities. Their perception as a segment in foreign land is marked with the sense of alienation, hybridity, identity crisis and many other mental and physical, cultural-religious, and spatial-geographical turmoil. In a sense they come across the diasporic reality. Diasporic reality is a combined study of Diaspora and problems of migrants. This paper explores the meaning of diaspora through the definitions of different writers and the problems of migrants.  It specifically attempts to trace the problems of identity crisis and hybridity as confrontation with different often contradictory socio-cultural, religious, and different historical backdrop in which diasporic community is located in

Energy conservation through solar energy assisted dryer for plastic processing industry

Consumption of plastics is directly linked with economic growth of plastic industry of respective country. India's plastics consumption is only about 2% of the world. Despite of proposed growth, higher cost of Energy requirement for processing are obstructing growth of plasticulture. Energy efficiency/ conservation measures in plastic processing requires attention to harness alternate energy sources through technological modifications during material processing. This paper depicts practical solution for partial usage of non- conventional energy source; solar energy in conventional plastic process method. About3-5 % of total energy required for processing is utilized for drying and precondition of material. Thus attempt is made to use solar energy for drying of Nylon-6 and polypropylene (PP) by designing natural convection based Solar Dryer. Drying of Nylon-6 is found to be in the falling rate period. Nylon-6 took nearly 6 hrs. (1days) to reach 0.15% moisture content value. Effective diffusivity is varied from 4 - 6.5 X 10-9cm2/sec. Temperature rise for PP material is achieved up to 70°C in the dryer, hence preheating is achieved with same dryer design. Solar dryer can certainly reduce conventional energy consumption during plastic processing at industrial scale. Cost benefit analysis shows that adaptation of solar energy dryer for plastic process industry lead to economic production of plastic goods. © 2014 The Authors

Direct transfer of micro-molded electrodes for enhanced mass transport and water management in PEMFC

Soft lithography technique is used to micropattern the electrodes on the electrolyte membrane of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC) in order to alleviate the issues due to poor water management and inadequate reactant distribution in the fuel cell environment. Membrane electrode assembly with the micropatterned electrode has shown an increase in power density at a higher temperature as well as at a higher relative humidity when compared to a flat electrode. Consistency in cell performance is observed in the case of micropatterned electrodes