STRATEGIC CULTURE AND INTER-STATE RELATIONS: A CASE OF PAKISTAN AND INDIA

Geography, culture and history play a central role in shaping a nation's perceptions, biases and images of adversaries. The combination of these factors constitutes strategic culture. Strategic communities tend to adopt diverse approaches to interpreting, analysing and reacting to a given situation. They may incline to pick peculiar strategic choices, such as using force or relying on external alliances, while not opting for a range of others. Decisions and choices are affected by patterns of thinking that evolved over the years. Strategic culture has evolved and generated significant discussion on theoretical frameworks and potential applications in a regional and international security context. Pakistan-India strategic equation is a complex phenomenon, fraught with hostility and mistrust, impregnated with conventional and non-conventional hazards. India views Pakistan as a stumbling block in realising her power ambition, while Pakistan considers India an existential threat. The article analyses the effect of strategic culture on inter-state relations with emphasis on Pakistan-India relations. Unique historical events, geography, the influence of dominant strategic strata and perception biases shape respective strategic cultures. It further analyses strategic culture based on Hofstede's Model, besides pondering upon symbols and philosophical influences.   Bibliography Entry Ali, Shehzad. 2022. "Strategic Culture and Inter-State Relations: A Case of Pakistan and India." Margalla Papers 26 (1): 121-131

The Secret Dream World of Ángela Carballino in Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir

Critics have long held that Miguel de Unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, mártir concerns a village priest, Manuel Bueno, who suppresses his private doubts in order to preserve the happiness and simple faith of his parishioners. Notwithstanding critical tradition, a close look at the novella reveals that Manuel belongs to the secret dream world of its first-person narrator, Ángela Carballino. This paper peers into the hidden world of a protagonist who becomes a mother through her dreams

The Deadly Cash Nexus in the Slave Narrative of Venture Smith

This article examines Venture Smith‟s slave narrative, one of the very first in the United States, in which Smith recounts his African childhood and his struggle to purchase his freedom. Smith describes various financial transactions including one that led to the death of his son. Because he exploits other African Americans in pursuit of his freedom, Smith is implicated in the very system that had enslaved him. In his mordant narrative Smith delegitimizes slavery by showing how it converts human beings into commodities. At its conclusion, the narrative conveys the sorrow of a man relegated to social death by the institution of slavery.Este artículo analiza el relato de esclavitud de Venture Smith, uno de los primeros de los Estados Unidos, en el que Smith narra su infancia africana y su lucha para obtener la libertad. Smith describe varias transacciones financieras incluyendo la que resultó en la muerte de su hijo. Al explotar a otros afroamericanos en búsqueda de su libertad, Smith se ve envuelto en el mismo sistema que lo esclavizó. A través de una narración llena de amargura Smith deslegitima la esclavitud mostrando cómo convierte a los seres humanos en mercancías. El relato concluye mostrando la tristeza del hombre condenado a una muerte social por culpa de la esclavitud

LINGUISTIC VARIATION AMONG SOUTH ASIAN ENGLISHES: A CORPUS-BASED MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS

Pakistani English is considered to be a distinct variety of English on the basis of its comparison with British English and American English. However, this claim is partial as its distinction from other varieties of English particularly used in South Asia has not yet been established. Thus, there is a need to investigate the similarities and differences between Pakistani and South Asian Englishes, and to analyse how far Pakistani English is distinct from other South Asian Englishes. Therefore, the present study aims at analyzing the linguistic features of Pakistani English as a separate variety from other varieties of English used in India and Bangladesh. For this purpose, a corpus of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi English newspaper reportage was developed and analyzed using Biber’s (1988) multivariate/ multidimensional approach. The findings indicated that Pakistani press reportage is different from Indian and Bangladeshi press reportage on all the five dimensions, especially on Dimension 2, in which Pakistani press reportage is narrative, while Bangladeshi press reportage is non-narrative in nature. On Dimension 3, the press reportage of Pakistan is highly explicit as compared to Indian and Bangladeshi press reportage. Further, the sub-categories of Pakistani press reportage also exhibit variation when compared to the sub-categories of Indian and Bangladeshi press reportage. The possible causes of linguistic variation among these countries are their culture and geographical origin. It is further suggested that South Asian Englishes are evolving rapidly and linguistic variation among them certainly be a worth researchable area. Keywords: Multidimensional analysis, Pakistani English, press reportage, South Asian Englishes, world Englishes. Cite as: Ali, S. & Shehzad, W. (2019). Linguistic variation among South Asian Englishes: A corpus-based multidimensional analysis. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 4(1), 69-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol4iss1pp69-9

Influence of Packaging Material and Ethylene Scavenger on Biochemical Composition and Enzyme Activity of Apricot Cv. Habi at Ambient Storage

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the influence of different packaging materials and ethylene absorbent on biochemical composition, antioxidant and enzyme activity of apricot cv. Habi during ambient storage. Perforated (0.25%) polyethylene films of low, medium and high densities and wrapping paper were used along with KMnO4 dipped sponge cubes. Biochemical characteristics (pH, ascorbic acid, phenolics and carotenoids), antioxidants and enzyme activity were determined at 2 day intervals during storage. The results demonstrated that low density polyethylene retained maximum chemical and bioactive compounds, higher antioxidant activity and lower enzyme activities during storage, while the maximum loss of quality was observed in control and paper wrapped sets followed by high and medium density packaging films. It was concluded that apricot harvested at commercial maturity stage and packed with low density polyethylene films along with ethylene scavenger (KMnO4) can be successfully stored at ambient conditions up to two weeks. Keywords: Apricot, biochemical composition, packaging material; ethylene absorbent, ambient storag

Addressing care-seeking as well as insurance-seeking selection biases in estimating the impact of health insurance on out-of-pocket expenditure

Health Insurance (HI) programmes in low-income countries aim to reduce the burden of individual out-of-pocket (OOP) health care expenditure. However, if the decisions to purchase insurance and to seek care when ill are correlated with the expected healthcare expenditure, the use of naïve models may produce biased estimates of the impact of insurance membership on OOP expenditure. Whilst many studies in the literature have accounted for the endogeneity of the insurance decision, the potential selection bias due to the care-seeking decision has not been taken into account. We extend the Heckman selection model to account simultaneously for both care-seeking and insurance-seeking selection biases in the healthcare expenditure regression model. The proposed model is illustrated in the context of a Vietnamese HI programme using data from a household survey of 1192 individuals conducted in 1999. Results were compared with those of alternative econometric models making no or partial allowance for selection bias. In this illustrative example, the impact of insurance membership on reducing OOP expenditures was underestimated by 21 percentage points when selection biases were not taken into account. We believe this is an important methodological contribution that will be relevant to future empirical work

DIAMOnDS - DIstributed Agents for MObile & Dynamic Services

Distributed Services Architecture with support for mobile agents between services, offer significantly improved communication and computational flexibility. The uses of agents allow execution of complex operations that involve large amounts of data to be processed effectively using distributed resources. The prototype system Distributed Agents for Mobile and Dynamic Services (DIAMOnDS), allows a service to send agents on its behalf, to other services, to perform data manipulation and processing. Agents have been implemented as mobile services that are discovered using the Jini Lookup mechanism and used by other services for task management and communication. Agents provide proxies for interaction with other services as well as specific GUI to monitor and control the agent activity. Thus agents acting on behalf of one service cooperate with other services to carry out a job, providing inter-operation of loosely coupled services in a semi-autonomous way. Remote file system access functionality has been incorporated by the agent framework and allows services to dynamically share and browse the file system resources of hosts, running the services. Generic database access functionality has been implemented in the mobile agent framework that allows performing complex data mining and processing operations efficiently in distributed system. A basic data searching agent is also implemented that performs a query based search in a file system. The testing of the framework was carried out on WAN by moving Connectivity Test agents between AgentStations in CERN, Switzerland and NUST, Pakistan.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, CHEP03, La Jolla, California, March 24-28, 200

A comprehensive review on preparation of pure immunoglobulins

Immunoglobulins are also known as antibodies. Plasma cells are responsible for the production of immunoglobulins. Beta cells are activated against a pathogenic attack and facilitated the formation of different types of immunoglobulins naturally. These immunoglobulins are also artificially synthesized by non-specific laboratorial techniques include fractionation precipitation, electrophoretic methods, gel filtration chromatography, ion exchange chromatography, hydrophobic chromatography and by the specific immuno- adsorbent methods. Third generation immunoglobulins are effectively used for therapeutic purpose against viral infections intravenously. Second generation immunoglobulins synthesis involved removal of anti-complement contaminants and IgG aggregates, through enzymatic degradation and chemical modification. The harmful effects of intravenous immunoglobulins can be reduced by using ultraviolet light, P-propiolactone, and pepsin at pH 4. Intravenous immunoglobulin drugs lead to anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects in various infections. The mechanism of action of intravenous immunoglobulins is dependent on the binding between the Fc portion of injected IgG and target cell receptors. Radiolabeling is performed by two methods as in vivo, in which radiolabeled antibodies are incorporated into the body to bind with the antibodies and in vitro method, radioactive material is bound with already formed antibodies. This chapter highlighted the artificial methods adopted for production of radiolabeled immunoglobulins holding significant therapeutic and diagnostic applications

King, Conscience, and the Monstrous Other in Calderón’s Amor, honor y poder

Dans sa première comédie Amor, honor y poder (Amour, Honneur et Pouvoir) qui est la réincarnation littéraire de la légende de la Comtesse de Salisbury, Calderón dépeint la résistance à la tyrannie par une sujette du roi, pour laquelle les sacrements et la conscience prévalent sur l’obéissance d’un vassal à son suzerain. Quoique d’abord le roi, Edouard, n’ait pas réussi à séduire la fille du comte de Salveric (Salisbury), à la fin il contraint sa sujette vertueuse à l’épouser. Ce dénouement apparemment heureux de la pièce provoque un effet troublant qui sape l’idéologie officielle de l’absolutisme royal en Espagne de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle