Women Identity and Self-Assertion: A Study of Two Contemporary Retellings of Mahabharata

Mythology has been very foundation of many cultures and civilizations. The western world has inherited the base from the classical mythology of Greek and Roman civilization but for India this is all about the rich heritage of its own mythology which is culturally and religiously much more vibrant. In this project, the retellings, refolding and revisiting of mythology has been greatly emphasized which shows the especially perspective of women. It is also describing the changing role of women in our society. The two major epics that hugely influenced the Indian culture are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, for this paper I found the Mahabharata interesting and convincing. This study will analyse how the female perception differs from the male discourse especially by contrasting the myths from the Mahabharata. Indian feminist begun to step out from the shadow and rewrote mythology, which was written by Man. This was necessary because male discourse elides women. Men written myths have the functions to infantilize women, to irradiate the dysfunction women have to write for themselves in discourse. From these retelling of mythology I have taken two of the novels for my study i.e. “The Palace of Illusions” by Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni and “Karna’s wife: the Outcast Queen” by Kavita Kane. The objective of the study is to contemporizing the past and bringing mythical era to the present. The second objective is to blurring the line between the past and mythology for this 21st century society

Compression Strength of Saline Water Exposed Epoxy System Containing Red Mud Particles

Polymers materials by themselves have found extensive use in non critical products. Such products are used in advanced engineering applications when reinforced with stronger materials. Among the reinforcements, the fibrous variety, whether continuous or discontinuous, occupies a key position. Hence, many inorganic fiber reinforced polymer system have made their entry at various application levels. Because of their large aspect ratio, they yield components, which have anisotropy when the reinforcements are aligned. In order to secure isentropic properties in composites, reinforcements with near spherical shapes have been tried e.g., glass micro spheres are known as micro balloons. Such man made reinforcements, through yield attractive mechanical properties, are expensive. Hence, a search for cheaper reinforcements is a key subject that needs the attention of material scientists. One such inexpensive filler to fit the slot is red mud. Being a by product of alumina plants, its disposal causes considerable environmental problems. Hence, there is need to tap this inexpensive material for possible use with other system including the polymer based ones. The present study looks at how this pozzolanic red mud, when introduced into a thermoset, responds the exposure to an aqueous medium like laboratory prepared saline water. The results show that when the red mud content in the system is large, the absorption levels are high. The results further revealed that the unexposed samples generally record an increasing strength value with red mud content

Nanoparticles in the environment: assessment using the causal diagram approach

Nanoparticles (NPs) cause concern for health and safety as their impact on the environment and humans is not known. Relatively few studies have investigated the toxicological and environmental effects of exposure to naturally occurring NPs (NNPs) and man-made or engineered NPs (ENPs) that are known to have a wide variety of effects once taken up into an organism

Do Carbon Nanotubes and Asbestos Fibers Exhibit Common Toxicity Mechanisms?

During the last two decades several nanoscale materials were engineered for industrial and medical applications. Among them carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are the most exploited nanomaterials with global production of around 1000 tons/year. Besides several commercial benefits of CNTs, the fiber-like structures and their bio-persistency in lung tissues raise serious concerns about the possible adverse human health effects resembling those of asbestos fibers. In this review, we present a comparative analysis between CNTs and asbestos fibers using the following four parameters: (1) fibrous needle-like shape, (2) bio-persistent nature, (3) high surface to volume ratio and (4) capacity to adsorb toxicants/pollutants on the surface. We also compare mechanisms underlying the toxicity caused by certain diameters and lengths of CNTs and asbestos fibers using downstream pathways associated with altered gene expression data from both asbestos and CNT exposure. Our results suggest that indeed certain types of CNTs are emulating asbestos fiber as far as associated toxicity is concerned

Do Carbon Nanotubes and Asbestos Fibers Exhibit Common Toxicity Mechanisms?

During the last two decades several nanoscale materials were engineered for industrial and medical applications. Among them carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are the most exploited nanomaterials with global production of around 1000 tons/year. Besides several commercial benefits of CNTs, the fiber-like structures and their bio-persistency in lung tissues raise serious concerns about the possible adverse human health effects resembling those of asbestos fibers. In this review, we present a comparative analysis between CNTs and asbestos fibers using the following four parameters: (1) fibrous needle-like shape, (2) bio-persistent nature, (3) high surface to volume ratio and (4) capacity to adsorb toxicants/pollutants on the surface. We also compare mechanisms underlying the toxicity caused by certain diameters and lengths of CNTs and asbestos fibers using downstream pathways associated with altered gene expression data from both asbestos and CNT exposure. Our results suggest that indeed certain types of CNTs are emulating asbestos fiber as far as associated toxicity is concerned

Sequence-based approach for rapid identification of cross-clade CD8+ T-cell vaccine candidates from all high-risk HPV strains

Human papilloma virus (HPV) is the primary etiological agent responsible for cervical cancer in women. Although in total 16 high-risk HPV strains have been identified so far. Currently available commercial vaccines are designed by targeting mainly HPV16 and HPV18 viral strains as these are the most common strains associated with cervical cancer. Because of the high level of antigenic specificity of HPV capsid antigens, the currently available vaccines are not suitable to provide cross-protection from all other high-risk HPV strains. Due to increasing reports of cervical cancer cases from other HPV high-risk strains other than HPV16 and 18, it is crucial to design vaccine that generate reasonable CD8+ T-cell responses for possibly all the high-risk strains. With this aim, we have developed a computational workflow to identify conserved cross-clade CD8+ T-cell HPV vaccine candidates by considering E1, E2, E6 and E7 proteins from all the high-risk HPV strains. We have identified a set of 14 immunogenic conserved peptide fragments that are supposed to provide protection against infection from any of the high-risk HPV strains across globe