There and back again : imperial and national space in British children's fantasy

PhD ThesisThis thesis examines the construction of space in a series of canonical British children’s fantasy novels published over the period of decolonisation. The end of empire necessitated a dramatic shift in the understanding of what constituted the territorial boundaries of “Britain,” and the location of national identity. Though the centrality of empire to nineteenth and early-twentieth century children’s literature has been studied at length, until now little attention has been paid to the postimperial context of the twentieth-century British children’s canon. Through an analysis of texts published between 1930 and 1980, the thesis argues that these novels utilise the fantasy genre to create heterotopic spaces—connected to but not of the dominant British space—within which changing ideas of “imperial” and “national” space can be negotiated. Organising the texts chronologically, I demonstrate a shift in focus over the period, from an outward-facing conception of British space as imperial space, to a domestic and inward-facing one. However, I trace the presence of both impulses (“there” and “back again”) in each of the texts under discussion, showing that the two are often intertwined, and that the fantastic spaces analysed here frequently slip between or exist simultaneously in both registers. This “Janus-faced ambivalence,” as Homi Bhabha has described it, creates an understanding of national space and thus national identity as unstable, contradictory, and in a constant state of negotiation that, I argue, underpins postimperial British children’s literature. My introduction undertakes to provide critical and cultural contexts, and demonstrates the heterotopian functions of imperial space. The early chapters offer detailed examinations of individual works or series—Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons (1930–1947), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). I trace the spatial relations of the nineteenth-century adventure novel within these texts and analyse the functions of the heterotopic spaces created by them. Chapters Five and Six respond to a flowering of children’s literature during the decades following the Second World War (the “second golden age”) through an analysis of particular types of British spaces, namely the home and the natural landscape, in a number of contemporary works by major writers of the period, including Mary Norton, Penelope Lively, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. Though these texts engage less directly with the end of empire than those discussed previously, through a series of contrapuntal readings I demonstrate the centrality to these novels of a changing discourse of nationhood and national space. Throughout the thesis I argue for the significance of children’s literature to this shifting discourse of nationhood. In undertaking to fill the gap in scholarship on the relationship between empire, nation, and children’s fantasy writing in the context of decolonisation, this thesis also contributes to larger contemporary debates about the construction of British national identity, imperial memory, and the place of immigrants in the national imaginary

Sleep duration in school-age children with epilepsy: A cross-sectional study

Background: Normal sleep is required for the optimal growth and development of the children. Ineffective or inadequate sleep is common in children with epilepsy. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to study the sleep duration and describe the factors affecting it in school-aged children with epilepsy attending the seizure clinic of a pediatric tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: 6–12-year-old children with epilepsy, attending the seizure clinic formed the study subjects. They were assessed for inclusion in the study using INCLEN diagnostic tool for epilepsy (INDT-Epi) to achieve a sample size of 139. Informed written consent was obtained from parents. Background sociodemographic information, seizure type and treatment details, and duration of sleep of the child were collected from the parents. The proportion of children with epilepsy who had sleep problems were expressed as percentage. Results: The mean age of study population was 9.07±2.09 years. The average sleep duration of the study population was 9.41±1.41 h. The mean nap time of the study population was 68.51±33.88 min. No significant association was seen among the factors that determine sleep duration. Conclusion: Children with epilepsy tend to sleep for lesser hours when compared to historic controls of normal school-age children reported in literature

Portable microfluidic chip for detection of Escherichia coli in produce and blood

Pathogenic agents can lead to severe clinical outcomes such as food poisoning, infection of open wounds, particularly in burn injuries and sepsis. Rapid detection of these pathogens can monitor these infections in a timely manner improving clinical outcomes. Conventional bacterial detection methods, such as agar plate culture or polymerase chain reaction, are time-consuming and dependent on complex and expensive instruments, which are not suitable for point-of-care (POC) settings. Therefore, there is an unmet need to develop a simple, rapid method for detection of pathogens such as Escherichia coli. Here, we present an immunobased microchip technology that can rapidly detect and quantify bacterial presence in various sources including physiologically relevant buffer solution (phosphate buffered saline [PBS]), blood, milk, and spinach. The microchip showed reliable capture of E. coli in PBS with an efficiency of 71.8% ± 5% at concentrations ranging from 50 to 4,000 CFUs/mL via lipopolysaccharide binding protein. The limits of detection of the microchip for PBS, blood, milk, and spinach samples were 50, 50, 50, and 500 CFUs/mL, respectively. The presented technology can be broadly applied to other pathogens at the POC, enabling various applications including surveillance of food supply and monitoring of bacteriology in patients with burn wounds

Optimization of effective doping concentration of emitter for ideal c-Si solar cell device with PC1D simulation

Increasing silicon solar cell efficiency plays a vital role in improving the dominant market share of photo-voltaic systems in the renewable energy sector. The performance of the solar cells can be evaluated by making a profound analysis on various effective parameters, such as the sheet resistance, doping concentration, thickness of the solar cell, arbitrary dopant profile, etc., using software simulation tools, such as PC1D. In this paper, we present the observations obtained from the evaluation carried out on the impact of sheet resistance on the solar cell’s parameters using PC1D software. After which, the EDNA2 simulation tool was used to analyse the emitter saturation current density for the chosen arbitrary dopant profile. Results indicated that the diffusion profile with low surface concentration and shallow junction depth can improve the blue response at the frontal side of the solar cell. The emitter saturation current density decreases from 66.52 to 36.82 fA/cm2 for the subsequent increase in sheet resistance. The blue response also increased from 89.6% to 97.5% with rise in sheet resistance. In addition, the short circuit density and open circuit voltage was also observed to be improved by 0.6 mA/cm2 and 3 mV for the sheet resistance value of 130 Ω/sq, which resulted in achieving the highest efficiency of 20.6%

Security enhancements for networks in smart grid systems

Since the past decade, Smart Grid technology has seen an exponential increase. Smart grid is an intelligent power network which is built to supply power and manage power consumption in a reliable and efficient manner. Effective integration of information and communication technologies makes Smart grids an important feature in power systems. As such, security in the smart grid are of utmost importance as it manages important information such as energy distribution and metering. As such, it is crucial to ensure that these smart grid networks are not prone to any attacks. Due to its massiveness, the vulnerabilities in smart grid systems are increased. It is important to address the weaknesses as it may result in the disruption of the entire network. In this project, existing security measures in Smart Grids are analyzed to see if there is any weakness which intruders can use to their benefit. Solutions are proposed to enhance security measures in the smart grid systems so as to protect them from any malicious attacks.Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Board(er) Games: Space, Culture, and Empire in Jumanji and Its Intertexts

Two recent transmedia narratives—Karuna Riazi’s 2017 middle-grade novel The Gauntlet and the 2017 film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle—have attempted to reclaim the 1995 film Jumanji’s colonial narrative (adapted from Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 picture book). Both present forms of the “portal fantasy,” in which a protagonist supernaturally breaches the borders of another world. The Gauntlet transports its Muslim Bangladeshi American protagonist to a fantastical board game, whereas Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle reconfigures the genre as multimedia immersive gameplay in a fictional “other” realm. Although these reworkings seemingly destabilize white supremacy by centring multi-ethnic American identities, their negotiations with the board game, itself a product of imperial history and a manifestation of the “gamification” of empire (wherein progress is measured by control of the board) complicate this. The creation of an American neo-colonial nationalism through a system of orientalizing these fantastic spaces (the jungle within the 2017 film and Riazi’s clockwork Islamic city) affirms the need for their control or eventual destruction by the protagonists. This effectively creates cultural borders that extend into these fictional spaces, playing out historical systems of empire in a bid to gain access to neo-empire

Reuse of paths within years (i.e., their thickness, a proxy for the directedness of movement) decreased in response to wildfire despite an increase in overall number of paths.

Points and error bars are fitted means and 95% confidence intervals from glmm, for burned (magenta points) or unburned (yellow points) areas.</p

Overall number of deer paths in burned sites counteracted temporal trends observed in unburned sites.

Given that our data unexpectedly showed a decrease in the number of paths over time in unburned ‘control’ sites (see Discussion for possible mechanisms), the inset shows expected change in path density between burned and unburned sites if wildfire had no influence on land use by deer (i.e., to help the reader develop a null expectation given these unexpected temporal trends). The data suggest that wildfire increased land use by deer relative to the unburned baseline. Points and error bars are fitted means and 95% confidence intervals from glmm, for burned (magenta points) or unburned (yellow points) areas.</p

Example of path fidelity within and between years.

Contingency table (A) counts the number of path appearances in 2018, path disappearances from 2014, and thickness transitions for recurring paths between both years for a hypothetical site (B). The “None” categories represent an absence of a path in the respective year. For example, the table shows that (1) three thin paths disappeared by 2018, (2) one new medium path was created by 2018, (3) one medium path was shorter in 2018 but did not change in thickness, and (4) one medium path became thicker in 2018. (PDF)</p