26 research outputs found
Duality of Illusion and Reality in Desai\u27s In Custody
Get PDFIn his article Duality of Illusion and Reality in Desai\u27s In Custody, Narinder K. Sharma analyses Anita Desai\u27s internal confrontation of choices. In the novel, Desai\u27s narration offers various options at every step and the author suggests that it becomes difficult to decide what actually should be done. The attempt is to personalize impersonal time and space thereby brings it into the domain of conflicting choices signifying an existential desire to manifest freedom. Going a step further, it can be deciphered that the individual desires to make an ideal choice to experience authenticity ; however, the desire of making an ideal choice results in the creation of psychic tension. Thus, for Desai, the subject often feels a psychic pull which signifies a lack, a void, or a possibility of something ideal left out or missed. In Sharma\u27s analysis of In Custody the contradiction that splits an individual apart as subjective reflection takes place with relation to making an existential choice
Addressing the Class Imbalance Problem in Medical Image Segmentation via Accelerated Tversky Loss Function
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Music of living: an autoethnographic study of Sikhi through Gurbani Kirtan
No full textA dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of University of Wolverhampton for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Gurbani kirtan is a musical and singing form of devotional worship in the Sikh faith. Gurmat sangit is a term used to describe gurbani kirtan performed on traditional stringed instruments that were customary during the Sikh Guru period (late 15th – 17th century). In seeking authenticity and a closer connection to the Sikh heritage there has been an increased interest in kirtan performed on traditional stringed instruments within the British Sikh diaspora.
This research uses autoethnography under the umbrella of integrated crystallization to explore the practice of kirtan as a method for cultivating Sikhi, the living of the Sikh teachings, through a relationship with its music. Crystallization is a methodology that combines multiple methods (journaling, interview, questionnaire, reflection on kirtan practice etc.) and genres (storytelling, audio sounds, imagery) into a single output (thesis), In choosing autoethnography within crystallization to highlight the researchers' positionality is intentional to decentre the ego’s need to create absolutes and equally important as the content.
Approaching kirtan as a feature of lived religion this research combines theory (ethnographic, historical, and textual sources), praxis (reflections on learning and playing kirtan) and gurbani (wisdom of the Sikh Gurus) to create rich and deliberately partial narratives. The research contributes multiple perspectives on the subject of kirtan by an exploration of the places where gurbani kirtan is passively encountered, actively engaged, and uniquely lived and understood through the eyes of the author. The vision is to motivate readers to ‘not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; [but to] seek what they sought’ by reflecting on their own experiences and recontextualising their understanding of those experiences from an encounter with my shared narrative to discover coherence in the embodiment of realisation.University of Wolverhampton Dean's scholarship
Testing Big Data Applications
Get PDFToday big data has become the basis of discussion for the organizations. The big task associated with big data stream is coping with its various challenges and performing the appropriate testing for the optimal analysis of the data which may benefit the processing of various activities, especially from a business perspective. Big data term follows the massive volume of data, (might be in units of petabytes or exabytes) exceeding the processing and analytical capacity of the conventional systems and thereby raising the need for analyzing and testing the big data before applications can be put into use. Testing such huge data coming from the various number of sources like the internet, smartphones, audios, videos, media, etc. is a challenge itself. The most favourable solution to test big data follows the automated/programmed approach. This paper outlines the big data characteristics, and various challenges associated with it followed by the approach, strategy, and proposed framework for testing big data applications
Electroless deposition of nickel-boron coatings using low frequency ultrasonic agitation: Effect of ultrasonic frequency on the coatings properties and the deposition of electroless Ni-B composite.
No full texte-MINDS COST Action MP 1407 Workshop
October 25-27, 2017, Barcelona, SPAIN
Electroless deposition of nickel-boron coatings using low frequency ultrasonic agitation: Effect of ultrasonic frequency on the coatings properties and the deposition of electroless Ni-B composite.
L. Bonin1, N. Bains2, V. Vitry1, A.J. Cobley2
1 Metallurgy Lab, UMONS, 20 place du Parc, 7000 Mons, Belgium
2The Functional Materials Research Group, Centre for Manufacturing and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, the Environment and Computing, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK
Abstract
A complementar e-MINDS COST Action MP1407 was carried out at the Coventry Univerisy on february 2016 in collaboration with the University of Mons. The 2 e-MINDS institutions have complementary expertise that ensured a successful outcome for the project. The University of Mons has an impresive back ground on the deposition of electroless Ni-B coatings and determination of mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of coatings. In the other side the Coventry University is specialized in the use of ultrasound in electrodeposition and electroless.
During the one moth mission the effect of ultrasound on the properties of Nickel-Boron (NiB) coatings was investigated. NiB coatings were fabricated by electroless deposition using either ultrasonic or mechanical agitation. The deposition of Ni occurred in an aqueous bath containing a reducible metal salt (nickel chloride), reducing agent (sodium borohydride), complexing agent (ethylenediamine) and stabilizer (lead tungstate). Deposition was performed in three different configurations: one with a classical mechanical agitation at 300 rpm and the other two employing ultrasound at a frequency of either 20 or 35 kHz. The results showed that low frequency ultrasonic agitation could be used to produce coatings from an alkaline NiB bath and that the thickness of coatings obtained could be increased by over 50% compared to those produced using mechanical agitation. Although ultrasonic agitation produced a smoother coating and some alteration of the deposit morphology was observed, the mechanical and corrosion properties were very similar to those found when using mechanical agitation.
The second part of the work was focused on electroless composite coating of nickel-boron (Ni-B) with tungsten carbide (WC) particles. The coatings were produced using an alkaline bath composed of NiCl2 as nickel source and NaBH4 as reducing agent. The WC particles were around 200 nm in size. A preliminary study about the WC particles dispersion in high pH solutions was necessary before starting this study. A comparison of properties of Ni-B, Ni-B-WC and low frequency, high power ultrasound assisted Ni-B-WC coatings in their as deposited states is presented. The surface morphology study reveals the formation of uniform, dense and fine-grained deposit in Ni-B-WC composite coatings deposited with ultrasound assistance. However, in the case of Ni-B-WC without ultrasound the surface analysis shows a deposit with large number of particles agglomeration. When compared with Ni-B samples, for the same time of deposition, the presence of particles increases the coating thickness. The hardness results demonstrate that the addition of WC into the Ni-B matrix results in significant improvement in hardness. As expected after the surface morphology analysis, the roughness increased in the case of the composite coatings, particularly if ultrasound was not used.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the e-MINDS COST Action MP1407 for financial support in the framework of the short-term scientific mission collaboration
