Singapore Writer Ma. Ilankannan's Disadvantages of Short Story Ideals - A Social Perspective

One of the most important applications of literature is to express the ‘presence’ of society. In that aspect, Ma. Ilankannan, the creator has succeeded in portraying the successes, failures, ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses of the Sinhalese Tamils through his short stories. His collection of short stories 'Thoondil Meen’ (Bait Fish) was awarded the 'Singapore Literary Award' by the National Book Development Council of Singapore in 2004. The protagonists of the short story ‘Elatchiyangalin Unangal’ (Disabilities of Ideals) featured in it are Pichaimuthu Kizhavar and Kuvepatti who emigrated from their native country and settled in Singai. These characters that lost their limbs and personal ties during World War II are struggling every day to survive. The purpose of this article is to explore how their dream of visiting their motherland once and for all is disabled like a dumb dream

Multi-wavelength study of a flare and burst associated coronal mass ejection

The present study consists of the radio emissions observed on 15 May 2013 by ground based and space based radio observations. An intensive solar X-ray flare from the location N12E64 was associated with a halo coronal mass ejection (CME) of speed 1366 km/s observed in white light by Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)/Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) coronagraph. Metric type II and IV radio emission were detected by Culgoora and Bruny island radio spectrograph (BIRS) after flare onset. Also, decameter-hectometric (DH) type II radio burst was detected by wind/radio and plasma wave experiment (WAVES). The low frequency radio signature was found to be generated between 8-42 Ro (Ro = one solar radius). From the analysis, both the high and low frequency type II radio signatures seem to be generated due to shock driven by the CME. This CME was also associated with SEP, IP shock and geomagnetic storm

Effectiveness of facilitated tucking on level of pain among preterm infants undergoing painful procedure at selected hospitals, Chennai, 2015

Aim and objective: To assess and compare the effectiveness of facilitated tucking on level of pain among preterm infants undergoing painful procedure. Methodology: Quantitative approach, quasi experimental post-test only design was adopted to assess the effectiveness of facilitated tucking on level of pain among 60 preterm infants (30 in study and 30 in control group) undergoing painful procedure who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria at Amma Hospital, Choolaimedu & Sir Ivan Stedeford Hospital, Ambattur, Chennai. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to select the samples. Facilitated tucking was performed on the preterm infants during painful procedure and the level of pain was assessed after the procedure and interpreted using Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) Scale. Results: The study findings revealed that the post test mean pain score of preterm infants undergoing painful procedure in the study group was 3.2 with standard deviation of 2.7 and post test mean pain score of preterm infants in control group was 8.3 with standard deviation of 4.8. -5.051) indicated that there was high statistical significance in the post test mean pain score among the preterm infants undergoing painful procedure at p<0.001 level. Conclusion: The result revealed that facilitated tucking was effective in reducing pain during painful procedures and can be practiced as a part of routine nursing care of preterm infants during painful procedures

Performance Evaluation of Energy Efficient Optimized Routing Protocol for WBANs Using PSO Protocol

A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a network that may be worn on the human body or implanted in the human body to transmit data, audio, and video in real-time to assess how vital organs are performing. A WBAN may be either an inter-WBAN or an intra-WBAN network. Intra-WBAN communication occurs when the various body sensors can share information. This is known as inter-WBAN communication, which occurs when two or more WBANs can exchange data with one another. One difficulty involves getting data traffic from wireless sensor nodes to the gateway with as little wasted energy, dropped packets, and downtime as possible. In this paper, the WBAN protocols have been compared with WBAN under Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and the performance of various parameters has been analysed for different simulation areas. The WBAN under the PSO protocol reduces the energy consumption by 43.2% against the SIMPLE protocoldue to the effective selection of forwarding nodes based on PSO optimization. In addition to that the experimental WBAN testbed is conducted in indoor environment to study the performance of the routing metrics towards energy and packet reception.

Treatment of synthetic textile wastewater containing dye mixtures with microcosms

The aim was to assess the ability of microcosms (laboratory-scale shallow ponds) as a post polishing stage for the remediation of artificial textile wastewater comprising two commercial dyes (basic red 46 (BR46) and reactive blue 198 (RB198)) as a mixture. The objectives were to evaluate the impact of Lemna minor L. (common duckweed) on the water quality outflows; the elimination of dye mixtures, organic matter, and nutrients; and the impact of synthetic textile wastewater comprising dye mixtures on the L. minor plant growth. Three mixtures were prepared providing a total dye concentration of 10 mg/l. Findings showed that the planted simulated ponds possess a significant (p &lt; 0.05) potential for improving the outflow characteristics and eliminate dyes, ammonium-nitrogen (NH4-N), and nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) in all mixtures compared with the corresponding unplanted ponds. The removal of mixed dyes in planted ponds was mainly due to phyto-transformation and adsorption of BR46 with complete aromatic amine mineralisation. For ponds containing 2 mg/l of RB198 and 8 mg/l of BR46, removals were around 53%, which was significantly higher than those for other mixtures: 5 mg/l of RB198 and 5 mg/l of BR46 and 8 mg/l of RB198 and 2 mg/l of BR46 achieved only 41 and 26% removals, respectively. Dye mixtures stopped the growth of L. minor, and the presence of artificial wastewater reduced their development

A Sol-Gel Modified Alternative Nafion-Silica Composite Membrane for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

Nafion-silica composite membranes are fabricated by embedding silica particles as inorganic fillers in perfluorosulfonic acid ionomer by a novel water hydrolysis process. The process precludes the use of an added acid but exploits the acidic characteristic of Nafion facilitating an in situ polymerization reaction through a sol-gel route. The use of Nafion as acid helps in forming silica/siloxane polymer within the membrane. The inorganic filler materials have high affinity to water and assist proton transport across the electrolyte membrane of the polymer electrolyte fuel cell �PEFC� even under low relative humidity �RH� conditions. In the present study, composite membranes have been tested in hydrogen/oxygen PEFCs at varying RH between 100 and 18% at elevated temperatures. Attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy studies suggest an evenly distributed siloxane polymer with Si–OH and Si–O–Si network structures in the composite membrane. At the operational cell voltage of 0.4 V, the PEFC with an optimized silica–Nafion composite membrane delivers a peak power density value five times higher than that achievable with a PEFC with conventional Nafion-1135 membrane electrolyte while operating at a RH of 18% at atmospheric pressures