University of Sri Jayewardenepura: Journals & Proceedings
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Environmental Changes Caused by Illegal Gem Mining in Sri Lanka
No full textAs a major source of income in Sri Lanka, gem mining has a positive impact on revenue generation while also having negative effects on the environment. As an industry, people benefit from the operation of thousands of legal and illegal gem pits each year. Exploring the environmental effects of illegal gem mining and discussing the solutions that can control those environmental issues are the main objectives of this study. The major gem mining region in Sri Lanka, which is Ratnapura, comprised the population of the study. The sample consisted of five tunnel gem mines and five river gem mines selected using the cluster sampling method. Both primary and secondary data were collected through field observations, interviews and journals, reports and books. This study introduces an integration of green criminology into the examination of environmental harm caused by illegal gem mining, emphasizing both of the ecological consequences and socio-legal aspects of the industry. The research demonstrates the connection between criminal activity, unsustainable resource extraction and environmental impact. The study reveals that in areas where productive lands and forests are converted into gem pits and processing areas, changes in land use are a noticeable issue. The impacts on the terrestrial environment are numerous, including the loss of vegetation cover, disturbance to the soil profile, and alteration of ecological balance with the habitat. Long-term impacts include the formation of sinkholes, contamination of groundwater, surface water, and soil. Tunneling under roads and unsustainable mechanized digging have been reported to damage essential infrastructure. As suggested in this study, government regulations are required to minimize the impact of gem mining activities on the environment.
Keywords: Gem mining, Gemming, Environmental impact, Environmental safet
A GIS and Remote Sensing Based Analysis on Spatio-Temporal Changes of Water Retention Capacity of the Udawalawe Reservoir
No full textThe Udawalawe Reservoir in Sri Lanka supports irrigation, cultivation, and power generation while experiencing water level fluctuations due to seasonal climatic variations. This study analyzes the reservoir's spatio-temporal changes in water retention capacity from 1993 to 2023 using Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing techniques. This study aims to fill the knowledge gap by analyzing the influencing factors such as climate change and land use/land cover (LULC) alterations. The study utilized temporal Landsat data including Landsat 4-5TM images from 1993 and 2003, Landsat 8/9 OLI/TIRS images in 2013 and 2023 to extract the surface water area of the reservoir during both dry (July) and wet (November) seasons using Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). Additionally, same temporal satellite data were employed to derive LULC maps for the respective years through supervised image classification technique, specifically using the maximum likelihood algorithm. Climatic data were derived from the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) data portal to analyze the temporal precipitation and temperature trends. The findings reveal a declining trend in water capacity from 1993 to 2023. During the wet season, water capacity decreased from 349,472.09 ac.ft to 200,158.02 ac.ft respectively. The dry season depicts an even sharper decline, from 224,695.15 ac.ft to 2,509.53 ac.ft. LULC changes indicated a reduction in forest cover from 49,479.28 acres to 37,695.81 acres, while built-up areas expanded from 177.46 acres to 2,852.81 acres, reflecting substantial transformations in LULC. Notably, the lowest recorded temperature of 25°C in November 1993 corresponded with the highest water capacity of 349,472.09 acre-feet, whereas the highest temperature of 36°C in 2023 aligned with the lowest capacity of 2,509.53 acre-feet. Overall, the findings demonstrate a consistent decrease in water capacity during both seasons over the 30-year period, alongside a steady rise in temperatures. This observed oscillation in water capacity, influenced by deforestation, urbanization, and climate change, underscores the impact of both climatic and anthropogenic factors on the retention capacity of the reservoir.
Keywords: Water retention capacity, Spatio-temporal analysis, GIS and Remote sensing, Climate change, Land Use/Land Cover Chang
Preliminary Assessment of Coloured Pan Traps for Insect Sampling in Sri Lankan Home Gardens
No full textSri Lankan ecosystems are understudied, particularly concerning lower taxa, due to a lack of optimized sampling techniques suited to native conditions. This study assesses the effectiveness of coloured pan traps for insect sampling in low-land home gardens of Sri Lanka. Coloured pan traps, known for their adaptability in size, shape, colour, and installation height, are widely used to collect diurnal, flying, and visually foraging insects, especially pollinators. Their non-selectivity allows them to capture a diverse range of insect taxa effectively. This study’s sampling was conducted in eight selected locations in the wet and intermediate zones. Circular plastic bowls; 15 cm in diameter; 6 cm in depth were used as traps in three colours; yellow, white, and blue. Traps were placed on the ground in an equilateral triangle formation, one meter apart, and filled with a soap solution. Traps were set at each site from 9.00 to 15.00 hours, and the captured specimens were subsequently identified in the laboratory to the highest possible taxonomic level. Results indicated three arthropod classes: Arachnida, Collembola, and Insecta, with insects comprising over 80% of the specimens across seven orders. Hymenoptera was the most abundant order, followed by Diptera, Hemiptera, Orthoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, and Thysanoptera. The species diversity of the orders followed a similar pattern. Order Hymenoptera exhibited the highest frequency of occurrence, followed by Diptera, and Hemiptera. Orders Thysanoptera and Lepidoptera had the lowest frequencies of occurrence. Yellow traps captured the highest number of specimens, followed by blue traps with white traps recording the fewest. This trend is consistent at the species level, though the differences are less pronounced. Results indicate that both yellow and white traps captured insects from all the orders while blue traps recorded a smaller number of orders. Hymenoptera, Diptera, Orthoptera, and Lepidoptera showed the highest capture in yellow. Hemiptera and Coleoptera had the highest capture in blue, while Thysanoptera showed the highest capture in white. Yellow and white traps captured more insects compared to blue traps in both the Wet and Intermediate zones. The traps resulted in a small bycatch of 17% (±14%) displaying a good specificity. In conclusion, yellow traps consistently resulted in a higher capture and species richness across most insect orders and locations. Anthophilic insect orders like Hymenoptera and Diptera showed the highest captures, confirming the suitability of yellow colour pan traps for pollinator monitoring in Sri Lanka. Further extensive sampling is recommended to validate these findings and to develop habitat-specific insect sampling techniques for Sri Lanka.
Keywords: Coloured pan traps, Insect monitoring, Arthropod sampling, Home gardens, Biodiversit
An Ethnobotanical Survey of Medicinal Plants in Thoranamalai Hill in Thirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India
Get PDFThoranamalai hill looks like an elephant; hence it is called as Vaarana hill. It was believed that Agathiyar stayed here and did research on medicines. The way from downhill to hilltop is full of greenery. There are herbal plants all along the way to the hill temple. The temple’s specialty being that there are sixty-four natural water springs (Sunai) around the Hill. It is believed that if devotees take bath in these springs will cure their skin diseases. An Ethno-botanical survey was carried out to record information on medicinal plants from Thoranamalai hill. The aim of the study is to identified and documented the Medicinal plants available in the Thoranamalai Hill. Field survey was done, and Medicinal plants were identified with the help of the common public and data was confirmed by traditional practitioners with direct interview conversation. According to this survey, 216 Medicinal Plants were identified and documented. Commonly, These Medicinal plants were belonging to Fabaceae Family. 57% of Shrub taxonomy medicinal plants were recorded. Most of the medicinal plants have medicinal properties. Six rare medicinal plants were identified. Identified Medicinal plants were conservatized and preserved in ornamental areas. Medicinal plants can collect from wild resources and utilized for medicine preparation and get more efficacy to treat the diseases.
Keywords: Thoranamalai Hill, Medicinal plants, Ethno-botany, Traditional medicine
DOES GENDER-BASED OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION AFFECT EMPLOYEES’ EARNINGS AND LABOUR SUPPLY IN SRI LANKA?
Get PDFAs a result of gender dominance in various occupations, each job becomes a job that is occupied more or less by the respective gender. It can be interpreted as a situation of occupational segregation based on gender. The main objective of the study is to identify how earnings and working hours of employees are affected due to gender based occupational segregation. Human Capital theory, Becker’s model, discrimination, and other feminist theories were grounded for the study. It uses an endogenous switching regression model to examine how the monthly earnings and weekly working hours of employees in male-dominated and female-dominated jobs differ with changes in selected variables. The study uses 29170 data to represent employees in Male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-integrated jobs classified according to the percentage of men and women in each occupation. The findings show that there are significant earnings differentials and labour supply differences in terms of working hours due to occupational segregation. To promote the equality of labour market participation, organizations should give priority to gender-neutral recruitment opportunities, supporting parents in continuing work-life balance through adjustable work arrangements with the government career guidance support. In future research direction, it’s important to focus more on vertical occupational segregation
Alliances on Balance of Power in International Peace and Security in the East Asian Hub and Spokes
Get PDFThis study sought to evaluate the workings of alliances in the exercise of Balance of Power (BOP) in international relations, importantly whether BOP undermines or enhances international peace and security in reference to East Asian ‘Hub and Spokes’. The discourse on international peace is a very delicate area of inquiry among scholars of global studies and practitioners. Available new thinking experts know peace as a situation that represents an occurrence when human people are endowed with real human dignity that depicts their life and they are able to carry out their daily transactions without regard to who they are, where they are, and what they do. This study used three objectives as a guide to answer whether BOP undermines or enhances desired peace and security. The objectives of this study are 1) examining nature of security alliance in the global dispensation and why they have existed, 2) establishing whether alliances on balance of power undermine or enhance international peace and security, and 3) evaluation of alliances in relation to East Asian ‘Hub and Spokes’. The study employed a desktop research, using available relevant literature to the research surrounding the objective themes. Conclusions indicate; these states seem to forget what they should do in anarchic international system; balancing the most powerful states or balancing the most threatening ones, no country claims to form military alliances to contain China in Asia as had happened to the Soviet Union, and other realists suggest soft balancing under unipolarity.
Keywords: Balance of Power, Global Security, Hub and Spokes, International Peace, International Relations, International Security, Military Alliances, Non-Military Alliance, Unipolarit
Optimizing Acne Severity Detection: A Deep Learning Approach with Electronic Medical Record System Integration and Diverse Image Data
Get PDFAcne vulgaris is the 8th most common skin ailment in the world. Although there are many studies in European countries to predict the severity level of acne, there is a significant gap in predicting South Asian skin texture, which is different due to inherent biological differences such as the thickness of the dermis, complexion, and frequency of skin sensitivity. Therefore, the study aims to address this gap with a deep learning (DL) algorithm based on images from different nationalities with different skin colours and features who have low-resolution images and often contain more than one acne lesions. The modal was deployed as a Progressive Web Application (PWA) and embedded in an Electronic Medical Record (EMR). 1,148 training images and 100 testing images were acquired from several resources and labelled into five main categories: from 1 (Clear) to 5 (Severe). A transfer learning approach was implemented by extracting image features using a ResNet-152 pre-trained model, then a fully connected layer was added and trained to learn the target severity level from labelled images. OpenCV (Facial landmark and One-Eye modal) is used to find facial landmarks and extract key skin patches from the images. To address the spatial sensitivity of CNN models, an existing image rolling augmentation approach was used to help the trained CNN model to generalise better on testing data. Theoretically, it causes acne lesions to appear in more locations in the training images and improves the generalisation of the CNN model on test images. Finally, the model’s performance was evaluated on 100 test images using RMSE concerning a consensus among experts. In this research, we obtained a lower RMSE value (0.37) compared to the previous studies, and severity levels are categorised into five alphabetical values.
 
Examine the challenges encountered by undergraduates pursuing external degrees offered by the University of Sri Jayewardenepura regarding the conduct of lectures at the university
Get PDFStudents who register for the distance learning degrees (External degrees) offered by the University of Sri Jayewardenepura are in different age categories. Most have been employed (Kuruppuarachchi, and Karunanayake, 2017). Also, they live and work in other areas of the country. Some of them have been married and have babies. Therefore, External students cannot regularly attend the lectures, participate in the field work, or frequently visit the university to take and hand in the assignments. Existing literature suggests applying a distance or blended mode to deliver the external degrees of the government universities of Sri Lanka. Using a survey research methodology, this study was done to understand the problems faced by undergraduates of external degrees offered by the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Research revealed that using E-Learning techniques to deliver external degrees is at a minimum level. As a result, students face many difficulties participating in the onsite lectures and completing their degrees on time
Abnormal Vibration Triangulation Modelling Methods in Internal Combustion Engines
Get PDFThis paper presents a comprehensive review of vibration analysis techniques for fault detection in internal combustion engines (ICEs). The use of vibro-acoustic signals has been pivotal in diagnosing complex issues related to ICE sub-components such as the pistons, bearings, and turbochargers. Traditional signal analysis methods, including Fourier transforms, wavelet analysis, and empirical mode decomposition (EMD), have been evaluated alongside advanced computational techniques like support vector machines (SVM) and artificial neural networks (ANN). The findings suggest that combining multiple domains of signal analysis (time, frequency, and angular domains) offers a robust mechanism for detecting and diagnosing faults. Furthermore, the potential integration of these techniques with real-time monitoring systems is discussed
A Glimpse into the Multiplicity of Traditional Home Garden Agroforestry Systems in the Wet Lowlands of Sri Lanka A Qualitative Study
Get PDFTraditional homegardens (HGs) of Sri Lanka represent small-scale agroforestry systems. However, across the country they vary due to bio-climatic conditions, resource availability, land size and other socio-cultural factors. While Kandyan HGs in wet highlands are well-studied, traditional wet lowland HGs (WLHGs), comprising 28.8% of Sri Lanka’s total HGs, are less explored. The study aims to qualitatively categorize WLHGs based on landscape arrangement, plant selection, and adoption of indigenous knowledge practices. The study used 30 randomly selected homegardens (<1 ha) for observations across 22 GN divisions in Matara, Galle, Kalutara, and Colombo districts, following an initial screening through local contacts on willingness to share information, access and photograph homegardens. Householders were interviewed using a questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions. Based on the position in relation to the landscape features, vertical structure, and predominant crops, six distinct types of traditional HGs were identified: island-type in paddy field, mixed, Ovita, Wadula, multi-component and communal HGs. Island-type HGs, situated as small plots within paddy fields, frequently employ vertical stratification to grow multiple crops, demonstrating an effective way of land optimization. Ovita HGs adjoining paddy fields are continued as an indigenous practice for growing vegetables. Wadula HGs, typically located near forested areas, feature unorganized landscapes that blend cultivated and wild plants, forming natural arbors that create shaded, cooling, and visually pleasing environments, while supporting to deliver many ecosystem services. Multi-component HGs (usually>0.5ha), though more maintenance-intensive, demonstrate the highest land-use efficiency, offering many provisioning services including food, medicine, energy and construction materials for the neighborhood. Wadula and multi-component HGs, typically over 10 years old, are valuable repositories of genetic resources, particularly traditional crop varieties and landraces. Communal HGs (usually>0.5 ha) represent a new model in which multiple families share a home garden, either on private or communal land. This approach encourages the exchange of indigenous knowledge and expertise, highlighting socio-cultural benefits while focusing on commercial production alongside supplementary subsistence farming. Many WLHGs exhibit indigenous practices for fencing and cultivation set-ups, including methods like Paththi, Mesi, Koratu, and Wala. Diverse water management systems can be seen, with dug wells being a common feature in nearly every traditional WLHG. Additionally, WLHGs incorporate pollinator attraction and pest control methods, notably through traditional Kem practices, especially in certain GN divisions of Matara and Galle. Commercial monocropping, frequent floods following monsoon rain, lack of motivation for maintenance by the family members, diminishing use of indigenous knowledge are identified key threats for the existence of WLHGs. These are vital reservoirs of biodiversity and culture, and their conservation value is recognized as a unique sustainable agro-ecosystem in wet lowlands benefiting both nature and people.
Keywords: Agroforestry, Homegardens, Traditional, Wet lowlands, Sri Lanka