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Dissent is a way of life for a few. Mahasweta Devi, a daring and tireless political activist, academician, journalist and creative writer, is one among those few who register their dissent at every given opportunity. She is widely acknowledged as one of India's foremost literary personalities. A prolific creative writer, she has to her credit over a hundred books including novels, plays, collections of stories, children's books and journalistic literature. Most of her works have been originally written in Bengali and translated into English and a number of other languages. The stark realities and systemic injustice around her paved way to become a writer – activist. Her involvement in the People’s Theatre movement of Bengal, the wake of Naxalite movement of the 1950’s and the first hand experience of the life and struggles of tribals in Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh shaped her life and career. Major part of her journalistic writings describe the “police atrocities, failures in the implementation of government programmes, exploitation of sharecroppers and miners, unemployment and landlessness, environmental degradation, and the need to protect and foster tribal languages and identity” opines Resil B. Mojares in a vehement tone. Even in her late eighties, Mahasweta Devi travels extensively and collect first hand knowledge about the people she writes about. The unique features that distinguish Mahasweta Devi mainly from the rest of the authors are her strong convictions and concerns over the ordinary people, who wage their battles in extremely ordinary circumstances. She wants her work to be read as a plea for the insertion of tribals into the Indian mainstream from which they have been hitherto excluded. Mahasweta Devi thinks that there are innumerable social evils that constrain tribal development in India and her works lend themselves to readings within sociological critical framework. Among her contemporary Indian writers, Devi occupies a unique position through her exceptional perspectives on social and political life apart from the commitment to the poor, downtrodden and the de-notified tribals. More than any other writer either in Indian languages or in Indian English, she is able to mix her political and social convictions and activism with writing. Her writings not only give voice to India’s marginalized tribal people but also stress the abject subordination of women in Indian society. Her most memorable characters are often women - Draupadi, Doulati, Mary, Jashoda, Sanichari etc. These women are oppressed and marginalized by society in many ways. Yet their spirit of resistance and resilience transform these ordinary women extra ordinary. Scholars see her powerful tales of exploitation and struggle as extremely rich sites of feminist discourse. India is a country where activist writing is a recent phenomenon. Devi’s activism distinguishes her from her contemporaries from across the country. Through translation her works are widely read and winning readers across the world. While most writers are keeping themselves away from the everyday struggles of the common people and concentrate on the imaginary worlds where romance, glamour and existential dilemma rules the roost, Mahasweta Devi’s works are a slice of our society. “The Breast- Giver” is a part of a trilogy entitled Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi translated into English by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. It is the story of a female subaltern, a housemaid from post-colonial India who is subjected to exploitation, sexual harassment and oppression from patriarchy and male-dominated society. She finally succumbs to death in the most painful way, leading the readers to compare her with the dying Mother Earth. This paper attempts to explore how Mahasweta Devi's protagonist Jashoda in the short story " Breast–Giver” identifies herself with the Mother Earth and finds solace in the lap of nature.

This study investigates the existence of trade credit as a short term financing channel during tight credit conditions, offsetting conjecture of trade credit channel with traditional credit channel of transmission of monetary policy and subsequently relative adjustments in inventory dynamics covering a large panel of 145 Pakistani firms over the period of 2000-2011.The generalization of Lovell’s target adjustment model using Arellano & Bond approach for dynamic panel data has been employed using first difference GMM estimator .The model has been augmented with the short term bank borrowing and trade credit ratios by differentiating the firms either more or less likely to face financing constraints with the hypothesis of making high or low use of trade credit. The findings suggest that there exist a strong evidence of trade credit channel in moderating the credit channel of transmission of monetary policy. Financially constrained firms are found to have less availability of short term bank borrowings and a high dependence on trade credit in tight monetary episodes.

This study is to find out the best optimum ratio of the mixed waste materials of high-density polyethylene and wood’s flour by comparing the mechanical properties of recycled product (WPC). In this study, the fabrication process of wood plastic composite (WPC) contained of virgin material, post-consumer high-density polyethylene, and wood’s flour is through a twin-screw extruder and hot compression machine. The WPC product with four different ratio filler content based on weight percentage, i.e. 0 wt %, 20 wt %, 30 wt % and 40 wt % , were tested using universal tensile machine and impact tester according to ASTM D 3039, ASTM D 790, and ASTM D 6110 . The results of experiment showed that tensile and flexural properties of the composite increased with the adding of the wood’s flour material. The testing showed, however, totally opposite to the result of the impact test. In overall, the results of observations showed that recycled WPC have better mechanical properties compared to non-recycled WPC.

Beekeeping is a very longstanding practice in the farming communities of the Tigray region and it plays a significant role as a source of additional cash income which is also an integral part in the smallholder farming system of the region. The overall objective of the study was to analyze honey marketing opportunities and challenges in the study area. A total of 135 beekeepers were proportionately and randomly selected from each study districts. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics using SPSS ver.16. According to the data analysis, the mean price of honey is birr 63.45 (September to November), 61.77 (December to February), 62.20 (March to May) and 59.69 (June to August) and most of the respondents (62.5%) sold their honey at district market while the rest sold at farm gate, kebelle market, other kebelles’/districts’ market and regional market. The honey marketing system of the study area has been reported to have faced with some challenging factors such as poor extension services related to honey marketing (96.6%), absence of local cooperatives that can activity participate in the honey marketing (89.8%), and limitation in participation of wholesalers and processors in the marketing system of honey are the main among the others. Despite these limitations, there are many opportunities for honey marketing in the study area; stable honey price, accesses to market information, access to nearby market and accesses to credit in relation to honey marketing, existence of good market infrastructure particularly, road and mobile networks, and presence of credit institutes such as Dedebit Credit and Saving Institution (DCSI) in the research location.

This study examines the medicinal uses and marketing of desert date in Kaduna North Local Government Area of Kaduna State. A total of one hundred marketers were randomly selected among the traders in the markets located in the study area. Information on the traditional uses of the plant was equally gathered from the respondents using a well structured questionnaire with personal interview. Eighty-eight (88%) of the total questionnaires were successfully utilized for the analysis. Economic tools such as Gross Margin (GM) and Marketing Efficiency (ME) were used to determine the profitability of Balanite aegyptiaca (desert date) marketing while the socio-economic characteristics of the traders and uses of the plant were analysed using simple descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage. The business is male-dominant and the uses of the plant are basically for medicinal purposes in the treatment of ailment such as schistosomiasis, dizziness/body weakness, stomach upset/pain, ulcer, and as food. Plant parts used include the leaf, root, seed and fruit. Gross Marketing Margin was calculated to be N140, 856.40, Net Marketing Margin was N137, 256.94 while the Marketing Efficiency (ME) was calculated to be 39.13%.

Our aim is to assess nutrient status and pigment content of Uzunçay?r Dam Lake during period from May of 2013 to April of 2014. We sampled at different depths (0, 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10 m) from nine stations selected and investigated chlorophyll concentrations and carotenoid content in samples. The concentrations of chlorophyll were high in the spring and autumn that the values ranged from surface 19.06 to deeper parts 97.15 µg L-1. The highest value was determined as 13.14 µg L-1.Based on our data, Uzunçay?r Dam Lake can be classified as oligotrophic.

Tabernaemontana divaricata (L) R. Br. (Apocynaceae) commonly known as Tagar in Bengali. It is a garden plant in tropical countries and found throughout the Indian subcontinent. The present investigation assessed the scavenging potential by 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) assay. All of the extracts exhibited potent in vitro free radical scavenging activity that increased with extract concentrations. The methanol extract was found to be the most potent in this regard, followed by the benzene and ethyl acetate extracts. Therefore, the present study confirms marked in vitro free radical scavenging activity Tabernaemontana divaricata leaves.

Hopfield Network is able to convert noisy data provided to the network because it can act as content addressable memory. Hopfield Network can convert images of noisy fingerprint to the noiseless images or the images with the minimum noise by training through receivable models set. In this research, fingerprint recognition process has been performed through Hamming Distance and effect of use of Hopfield network on fingerprint recognition process has been mentioned. In case those Hamming Distance operations are performed after Hopfield Networks processing, error of fingerprint recognition will be reduced.

Despite the many benefits of modern urban life, it has some disadvantages as well. One of the most important disadvantages is that modern urban life affects the mental and physical health problems due to exposure to urbanize problems such as air and noise pollutions, behavioral disorders including lawbreaking and law violation. Therefore, it seems crucial to allocate a special time to leisure activities in the natural or quasi natural environment to reduce the impacts of urban life.Parks can be one of the most suitable places for spending leisure time. Most parks, particularly urban parks are rarely designed and constructed based on scientific criteria. Thus, redesigning of urban parks based on cultural, educational and environmental criteria should be taken into consideration. Urban parks are one of the most important places that have the highest crime rates due to their inappropriate design. Urban parks are often designed in low quality due to the lack of implementation of standard rules such as massive vegetative areas, low lighting, dark corners and informal investigation. This makes the park less effective and its quantity, quality and sustainability can be affected. Therefore, the only solution for sustainable use of parks, especially the urban parks, which are not designed based on scientific criteria, is to redesign them. The ultimate aim of the present study is to resolve the problems relevant to lack of information discussed above by designing the park with creating priority maps needed for redesigning a park and by a comparative study of the correspondence between the criteria used in designing the Azadi Park in Shiraz and the actual ecological and socio-cultural criteria that are used in designing by a descriptive approach and data analysis using ANP method

Stress is an adaptive response, mediated by individual characteristics and/or psychological processes that are a consequence of any external action, situation or event that places special physical and/or psychological demands upon a person. A total of 112 out of 132 rehabilitation counsellors completed occupational stress questionnaire and 13 administrators were interviewed in five counties. Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation and percentages) were used to analyse the data. Results of the study revealed that the causes of occupational stress were found to be workload, clients’, organisational and interpersonal demands. The study further revealed that demographic and work characteristics interacted with the causes of occupational stress. This study recommends that regular assessment of occupational stress for preventive measures be done among the respondents.