139 research outputs found
Kathleen Jamie, Chitra Ramaswamy & Amanda Thomson: Antlers of Water - Live Event
No full text‘When we read and write, when we love our fellow creatures, when we walk on the beach, when we just listen and notice, we are not little cogs in the machine, but part of the remedy.’ These luminous words by Kathleen Jamie form part of the introduction to Antlers of Water, an outstanding collection of contemporary Scottish writing about nature and landscape.
The generosity of Jamie’s approach as editor of the collection goes beyond the stellar selection of contributors such as Amy Liptrot, Karine Polwart and Malachy Tallack: she also invokes the agency of readers to make a difference. ‘If, by reading, you are encouraged or confirmed in your love of the natural world, if you’re inspired simply to… look outside, then our job is done.’
In a discussion led by the BBC's Clare English, Jamie is joined by award-winning journalist Chitra Ramaswamy as well as visual artist and writer Amanda Thomson – both contributors to the anthology – to discuss Scotland, landscape and the more-than-human world around us.
This is a live event, with an author Q&A.
Part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival Making Climate Change Personal festival theme
FEMININE VISIBILITY IN A MYTHOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI’S THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS
No full textChitra Banerjee Divakaruni an Indo-American author, works as a professor of English in the University of Houston. She is also a co-founder and former president of a helpline for South Asian women. She involves herself eagerly as a volunteer at women’s center at Berkeley and assists battered women through the organization. MAITRI, the organization was begun in 1991 by her with the help of a group of friends. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni an expatriate writer, pictures Indian womanhood how they are treated by men in their lives. An explicit attempt to retell the epic in novel form is Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions which will be analyzed in the following. The present paper analyzes how women is treated by male as a lifeless thing in the novel. This study is an attempt to illustrate how revisionist mythmaking is a feminist endeavor to revalue the experiences of women in patriarchy and redefine women from feminist perspectives.
 
Conformational characterization of the intrinsically disordered protein α-Synuclein: a replica exchange molecular dynamics study
No full textProteins in their functional forms play a vital role in all major processes in the cell.
Protein misfolding has been associated with a large number of diseased states.
Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs) have gained much attention because of their
involvement in key cellular processes and predominance in diseased states. A number of
neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s
diseases have been correlated with the aggregation of IDPs.
α-synuclein is a 140 amino acid archetypal IDP implicated in the pathology of
Parkinson's disease. Aggregation of α-synuclein is sensitive to changes in amino acid
substitutions along the sequence and changes in chemical environments. Characterizing
the monomeric form is essential to understanding the conformational changes leading to
the aggregated state. In this work, ensembles of structures generated from Replica
Exchange Molecular Dynamics simulations were used to characterize aggregation-prone
states of monomeric form of α-synuclein.
The conformational characteristics of α-synuclein were evaluated in terms of the
statistical properties of the chain over a range of solvent conditions and comparing with
predictions from polymer theory, using temperature as a proxy for solvent quality.
Results of this work indicate that α-synuclein behaves as expected for a homopolymer
chain at extremes of solvent quality while at intermediate values, the identity of the
monomeric units along the sequence significantly influence the polymeric and
conformational characteristics of the chain. Comparison of the back-calculated
experimental parameters for the simulation ensemble with that of the NMR observation
shows that ensembles that fit to experimental parameters describing both local and longrange
characteristics, represented by the experimental Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDC)
and Paramagnetic Relaxation Enhancements respectively, provides a better representation
of the experimental ensemble.
The conformations of the neutral and low pH ensembles of α-synuclein were
characterized by integrating molecular simulations with experimental NMR observations,
to elucidate the effect of the altered charge distribution with change in pH on the
structural properties of these ensembles. The results from this study indicate a significant
structural reorganization with change in pH in terms of the long-range interactions,
compaction of the C-terminal region at low pH leading to faster aggregation at low pH.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Chitra Narayana
The Impact of In-Classroom Non-Digital Game-Based Learning Activities on Students Transitioning to Higher Education
No full textThe initial phase of learning at a university has a bearing on students’ long-term academic development and plays a crucial role in enabling them to successfully transition to higher education. While higher education institutes have long been struggling to address the challenge of student retention and student success, the new generation of learners (millennials and Generation Z) entering universities have brought in further complexity. This study explores the impact of in-classroom, non-digital game-based learning techniques on the academic performance, classroom engagement, and peer interaction among the first-year university students studying computing qualification. The study aimed to deduce how the overall enhanced learning experience of these students enables them to integrate into the new learning environment in the university, thereby helping them to successfully transition to higher education. Data for this study were taken from among the first-year computing students across two consecutive years of study (N = 251). The results corroborated the findings from previous studies and highlighted how academic performance, classroom engagement, and peer interaction considerably enhance students’ academic integration. The study concludes with a discussion of the limitations and implications for practice and future research
IMS experience centre A real-life test network for IMS services
No full text3GPP standardized IP multimedia subsystem is yet to witness large-scale commercial deployment. This is a surprising fact, considering the advantages offered by the IMS technology, such as open standards architecture, rapid service deployment features, reduction in operational expenses amongst the others. In order to identify the IMS deployment hurdles as well as to measure the realistic performance of the IMS technology and the existing IMS services, there is a need for a real-life test network. On one hand, network testing grounds are traditionally restricted to laboratories where the setup is highly controlled and isolated from real-life scenarios, on the other hand testing on commercial networks is typically forbidden at the risk of disrupting the live services. Thus, majority of the existing communication test-beds lack the scale, flexibility and the infrastructure to represent and emulate a true next-generation networking environment. This paper presents a test network that is connected to a live mobile operator network that is designed to emulate a ldquoreal-liferdquo next-generation operator network that not only provisions next generation IMS-based multimedia services, but also presents a service creation environment enabling new and innovative services. This test network is termed as the ldquoIMS Experience Centrerdquo reflecting the fact that it enables real-life experience of IMS technology and services. This is achieved by integrating the currently existing heterogeneous access technologies with a 3GPP standards based IMS core network and an adequate service creation layer with service enablers and highly abstracted application development environments
Enabling Technologies for Smart City Services and Applications
No full textSmart mobile devices are fast becoming the epicentre of people's lives. Most smart phones are currently embedded with powerful and programmable sensors such as GPS, gyroscope, microphone, camera, accelerometer etc. These sensor-enabled smart-phones would form an important element of the future networked-infrastructure. A new wave of services is bound to erupt from such connected infrastructure and smart devices that will influence all aspects of our social ecosystem. In the context of Smart Cities, this position paper and the associated invited talk presents the Mobile Technology perspective of the Smart-city architecture by presenting a conceptualized framework and highlights the open and emerging research challenges in this landscape
Bound States and Quantum Correlations: A special issue in honour of Prof. A.R.P. Rau
No full textWe (Chitra Rangan and Sai Vinjanampathy) are honoured to write this introduction to this special issue of the Canadian Journal of Physics celebrating Prof. A Ravi Prakash Rau’s scientific influence in his 80th year.The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author
Myth & Gender: A Critical Reading of Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni’s Before We Visit the Goddess
No full textA great story teller Chitra Banerjee in her latest novel portrayed three generations and their strong bond even after getting apart from each other. This research paper focuses on the use of myth and gender as entwined by the author in the novel. The novel unfolds the journey of women to womanhood. The novel is a discourse of identity and independence as strived and achieved by all the characters
The Supremacy of Feminine Regality in the Fictions of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
No full textChitra Banerjee Divakaruni, a prominent contemporary Indian-American author, has consistently portrayed women as regal, empowered, and resilient figures in her literary oeuvre. From mythological retellings to diaspora fiction, her female protagonists exhibit moral strength, independence, and transformative agency. This paper explores how women's regality defined as their inherent dignity, sovereignty, and inner power remains a dominant theme in Divakaruni’s work, particularly focusing on her novels The Palace of Illusions, The Forest of Enchantments, and Sister of My Heart. The study emphasizes on Divakaruni’s reclaiming women's voices and challenges of patriarchal paradigms through mythic reimagining and immigrant narratives
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Novels: Tools for Teaching Multicultural Literature
No full textThe primary objective of this research paper is to discuss the way in which literary works of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni can be used as an efficient educational tool when teaching multicultural literature. Her novels and short stories with immigrant themes support cultural and gender-related motifs that allow critical student discussion and help the learners obtain multicultural comprehension. The paper evaluates Divakaruni’s literary methods through evaluation of narrative voice and characterization together with thematic analysis of multicultural content. A qualitative research design coupled textual investigation of selected Divakaruni’s works together with a review of multicultural literature scholarship formed the research methodology. Research outcomes demonstrate how Divakaruni’s writings create important chances to teach empathy skills while stimulating logical analysis so learners better grasp modern multicultural life. This paper ends with the author discussing study boundaries while presenting recommended research paths for upcoming investigations
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