79 research outputs found
Women’s ‘Defence-Narrative’ and its Role in the Formation of the Novel
No full textThe practice of women defending themselves in writing, which is often called the “women’s defence-narrative,” is a tradition that emerged in the late medieval period and continued as a dominant strain in women’s writing through the early modern period. There have been studies on how Daniel Defoe, usually considered to be the first major English novelist, relied heavily on latter-day authors of the women’s defence-narrative, such as Mary Carleton. But there still remains room for detailed studies (as far as the history of the novel as a genre is concerned) critically examining the role played by the women’s defence-narratives in the formation of the novel. This article attempts to outline its history, with an emphasis on the seventeenth-century examples that contributed so importantly to the formation of the novel
Exploring Football as a Site for Discursive Construction and Disciplinary Power in Colonial India
No full textThis paper will use the body as an analytical tool in approaching the early history of football in India. It will demonstrate that football here acted as a means for the colonizers to construct and transform the Indian body. However and perhaps more importantly, it will show that the game also became implicated in Indian attempts to resist these colonial corporeal politics. The paper uses the twin themes of discourse and power from Said and Foucault respectively in an attempt to place the body at the centre of analysis in colonial politics with respect to football. The game provided the British an idiom for the discursive construction of the inferiority of the Indian body and the superiority of the European body that was so important to legitimizing colonial rule. The paper also points to football as an idiom in which local resistance to colonial discourses and interventions took place. The ironic evocation of the ‘beef-eating John Bull’ and the ‘rice-eating Bengali’ in the wake of the 1911 Mohun Bagan cup final victory demonstrates that Indians thought of colonialism in corporeal terms and used football at certain moments to challenge British representations of them as inferior
Fluorescent Au@Ag core-shell nanoparticles with controlled shell thickness and Hg<SUP>II</SUP> sensing
No full textAu-Ag core-shell nanoparticles have been synthesized using synthetic fluorescent dipeptide β-Ala-Trp (β-Ala is β-alanine; Trp is L-tryptophan) in water at pH 6.94 and at room temperature. The synthesis of the Au-Ag core-shell nanomaterial does not involve any external reducing and stabilizing agents, and the constituents of dipeptide β-alanine and L-tryptophan are naturally occurring. Therefore, the synthesis procedure is ecofriendly. Moreover, the shell thickness has also been controlled, and the optical property of the core-shell nanomaterial varies with the shell thickness. The core-shell nanomaterial exhibits a fascinating fluorescence property. This fluorescent Au@Ag core-shell nanoparticle can detect toxic HgII ions ultrasensitively (with a lower limit of detection of 9 nM) even in presence of Zn(II), Cd(II), and other bivalent metal ions (CaII, MgII, NiII, MnII, BaII, SrII, PbII, and FeII). Au-Ag core-shell nanomaterials can also be reused for sensing HgII ions
Mucocutaneous manifestations of HIV infection
No full textBACKGROUND AND AIMS: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is associated
with various mucocutaneous features, which may be the first pointer
towards the existence of HIV infection. This study was done to note the
different mucocutaneous lesions present in the HIV population in
eastern India. METHODS: Four hundred and ten HIV seropositive patients
attending the outpatient and inpatient departments were included in the
study. RESULTS: Out of 410 HIV positives, 40% had mucocutaneous
involvement at presentation. The mean age of the study population was
29 years and male to female ratio was 2.5:1. The common mucocutaneous
morbidities included oral candidiasis (36%), dermatophytosis and
gingivitis (13% each), herpes zoster (6%), herpes simplex and scabies
(5% each). A striking feature, noted in 36% males, was straightening of
hairs. Genital herpes was the commonest genital ulcer disease. Lesions
associated with declining immunity included oral candidiasis, oral
hairy leukoplakia and herpes zoster with median CD4 counts of 98, 62
and 198/\u3bcL respectively. CONCLUSION: Early recognition of
mucocutaneous manifestations and associated STDs help in better
management of HIV/AIDS
Predictors of mortality among HIV–infected patients initiating anti retroviral therapy at a tertiary care hospital in Eastern India
No full textAbstractObjectiveTo assess early mortality and identify its predictors among the ART naive HIV–infected patients initiating anti retroviral therapy (ART) available free of cost at the ART Centres.MethodsA retrospective cohort analysis of routinely collected programme data was done for assessing mortality of all ART naive adult patients who received first-line ART at a government tertiary care hospital in eastern India during 1st March 2009 and 28th February 2010. Bivariate and multiple regression analyses of the baseline demographic, clinical and laboratory records using SPSS 15.0 were done to identify independent predictors of mortality.ResultsThe mortality rate at one year was estimated to be 7.66 (95% CI 5.84-9.83) deaths/100 patient-years and more than 50% of the deaths occurred during first three months of ART initiation with a median time interval of 73 days. Tuberculosis was the major cause of death. ART naive patients with baseline serum albumin <3.5 mg/dL were eight (OR 7.9; 95% CI: 3.8-16.5) at risk of death than those with higher serum albumin levels and patients with CD4 count <100 cells/μ L were two times (OR 2.2; 95% CI1.1–4.4) at risk of death compared to higher CD4 counts.ConclusionsRisk of mortality is increased when ART is initiated at advanced stages of immunosuppression denoted by low serum albumin levels and CD4 cell counts. This highlights the importance of early detection of HIV infection, early management of opportunistic infections including tuberculosis and timely initiation of the antiretroviral drugs in the resource-limited countries, now available free in the Indian national ART programme
Collective dissipation of oscillator dipoles strongly coupled to one-dimensional electromagnetic reservoirs
No full textWe study the collective dissipative dynamics of dipoles modeled as harmonic oscillators coupled to one-dimensional electromagnetic reservoirs. The bosonic nature of the dipole oscillators as well as the reservoir modes allows an exact numerical simulation of the dynamics for arbitrary coupling strengths. At weak coupling, apart from essentially recovering the dynamics expected from a Markovian Lindblad master equation, we also obtain non-Markovian effects for spatially separated two-level emitters. In the so-called ultrastrong coupling regime, we find the dynamics and steady state depends on the choice of the reservoir which is chosen as either an ideal cavity with equispaced, unbounded dispersion or a cavity array with a bounded dispersion. Moreover, at even higher coupling strengths, we find a decoupling between the light and matter degrees of freedom attributable to the increased importance of the diamagnetic term in the Hamiltonian. In this regime we find that the dependence of the dynamics on the separation between the dipoles is not important and the dynamics is dominated by the occupation of the polariton mode of lowest energy
Fluorescent Au@Ag Core–Shell Nanoparticles with Controlled Shell Thickness and Hg<sup>II</sup> Sensing
No full textAu–Ag core–shell nanoparticles have been synthesized using synthetic fluorescent dipeptide β-Ala-Trp (β-Ala is β-alanine; Trp is l-tryptophan) in water at pH 6.94 and at room temperature. The synthesis of the Au–Ag core–shell nanomaterial does not involve any external reducing and stabilizing agents, and the constituents of dipeptide β-alanine and l-tryptophan are naturally occurring. Therefore, the synthesis procedure is ecofriendly. Moreover, the shell thickness has also been controlled, and the optical property of the core–shell nanomaterial varies with the shell thickness. The core–shell nanomaterial exhibits a fascinating fluorescence property. This fluorescent Au@Ag core–shell nanoparticle can detect toxic HgII ions ultrasensitively (with a lower limit of detection of 9 nM) even in presence of ZnII, CdII, and other bivalent metal ions (CaII, MgII, NiII, MnII, BaII, SrII, PbII, and FeII). Au–Ag core–shell nanomaterials can also be reused for sensing HgII ions
Study of changes in lipid profile and fasting blood glucose in protease inhibitor exposed HIV/AIDS patients in School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata
No full text- …
