Archives-December 

The Twentieth century has brought forth the realisation of the need to emancipate, develop and grow oneself in every area of human life. Women too have not lagged behind in this. Novelists like Shashi Deshpande and Kundanika Kapadiya have captured this dream of woman to break the shackles of tradition, custom and patriarchy and stretch the horizons to fly in the limitless skies.

A survey on mobile adhoc network networks have experienced strong growth due to their ability to provide an additional and complementary support for existing infrastructure communication systems. In such a network, routers are supposed to be fixed for short (e.g. public safety deployment) or long (e.g. network operator extension) period. This relative stability of infrastructure makes proactive routing protocols appropriate. One of the well known proactive routing protocols is OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing), which routing decisions are based on exchanges of topology information using all-to-all flooding of local information in order for each router to build a global knowledge of the topology. This study first goal is to improve the performance of topology information flooding in OLSR by introducing network coding techniques, which leads to a decrease of signaling overhead.

Steganography techniques are helpful to hide the secret information in cover media and thus aid in enhancing the security of sensitive data during transmission and storage. Applying discrete wavelet transform helps to convert the image to the frequency domain. Haar wavelet transform is used to obtain the low frequency approximate (LL) detail and three high frequency detailed (LH, HL, HH) details. As the detailed sub bands have less sensitive information these are used for embedding the secret information. The secret information in the form of image can be reduced to one fourth size using haar transform. Encoding methods can be used to reduce the size of the image and encrypting the compressed data with the known key can help to enhance the security. The quality of stegoimage is measured using PSNR. The hiding capacity can be measured to compare with the other techniques of steganography.

Based on a well-known saying in the field of language teaching, teaching language is nothing but teaching culture. This study is also another evidence for this saying. In other words, the aim of this study was, in fact, to highlight the role of teaching foreign language culture in language learning and teaching. To conduct the intended purpose, two questionnaires were distributed among the student and teacher participants of the study in Shiraz, Iran. The purpose of using the two questionnaires was to find out first, to what extent teachers and students are aware of the role of foreign culture awareness in language learning and teaching; and second, to what extent does teachers are aware of the strategies and techniques of teaching foreign language culture and how students benefit from it. The study revealed that first, both students and teachers do believe that culture and language are inseparable and second, teachers were able to conduct strategies and techniques of teaching foreign language culture to emphasize it in class. The study also provides a few implications regarding the culture and language teaching.

A rapid, sensitive reversed phase stability-indicating high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) assay method was developed and validated for quantitative determination of carmustine in bulk drugs and the degradation products generated from forced degradation. A gradient, reversed phase HPLC method was developed to separate the drug from the degradation products, using an YMC ODS-A C18 (250mm x 4.6) mm,5u column and the Mobile phase-A 0.01 M Potassium dihydrogen phosphate in water, adjust PH 3.2 with orthophosphuric acid and mobile phase-B methanol was used as mobile phase. The detection was carried out at wavelength 230 nm and 205 nm. The chromatographic resolution between its degraded products was found to be greater than two. The carmustine was subjected to stress conditions of acid, base, oxidation (30 % H2O2), thermal degradation and photolytic degradation. The degradation was observed for carmustine in alkali, acid and in thermal hydrolysis. The mass balance was close to 100 in all the stress conditions. The degraded products were well resolved from main peak. The developed method was validated with respect to linearity, accuracy, recovery, precision, system suitability, selectivity, robustness and forced degradation studies prove the stability indicating ability of the method.

Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to the grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. This paper will analyze the language death and the revitalization process with emphasis on the collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. Linguistic ideas are still considered important, but have suffered considerably subsequently under rhetorical developments aimed at showing how linguistics had changed or was changing with the times. A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund. Language death may manifest itself when language change begins in a low-level environment such as the home or a high-level environment such as the government, The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original language. language revitalization is often to recover the spoken use of the language. Although the goals of language revitalization vary by community and situation, a goal of many communities is to return a language that is extinct or endangered to daily use. The process of language revitalization is the reverse of language death.

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.