This paper attempts the historiographical analysis of the caste as it reflects in Sindhi progressive literature and rural politics. In an attempt to reframe the harmonious image of Sindhi society, ...the Progressives popularised certain slogans, phrases and historical events as the metaphors of the nationalist and class struggle. Tracing from the early Partition phase (the 1940s), this paper interrogates the progressive’s orientalist literary trajectory that reframes caste metaphors and constructs the Sindhi nationalist narrative. It is contended that the reframing of some key historical events of Dalits and peasants seem uncritical and apologetic of caste friction, create an illusion of neutrality and at times even sanction casteism as a functional aspect of Sindhi society. The ‘progressive’ literature condones caste hierarchies and flattens the question of caste adding to the pre-existing hegemonic relations between the historically dominant and the subordinated caste groups. This diminishes the possibility of deploying the framework of caste-as-class for understanding caste, organising Dalits reckoning their agency as it may shape their immanent narratives and subverting caste hierarchies.
This paper is an attempt to investigate the discursive bases of the categorical and identity-based choices available to the Dalits under the Ashrafia hegemony, and the resultant denial of Dalitness ...prevalent among the Dalits and the Sindhi civil society in, Pakistan. Informed by the Ambedkarian (subaltern) perspective, I analyse the conversational interviews conducted with the Dalit activists (mostly Scheduled Castes), and with their Ashrafia class counterparts. Interrogating the superior status of Sayed caste(s), I contend that the the denial of casteism, the opposition to the use of the ‘Dalit’ identity marker and the negation of the Dalitness seemed to have as much to do with the belief in Ashrafia values as it had with the normative sanction of the Savarna. values.Both the Savarna and the Ashrafia values seemed to seek legitimacy from the dominant ethnocentric forms of the politicized Sufism. Political Sufism merges the Savarna and Ashrafia norms by means of the syncretic narrative based on interfaith harmony and the civilisational rhetoric. Ashrafisation (also Savarnisation) and the reverence towards Sayeds were the key self-perpetuating hegemonic processes underlying the attempts by the Dalits and the civil society activists to dissipate cognitive dissonance underlying the existing Dalitness and the Ashrafia hegemony. I, therefore, conclude that the practices and the narratives prevalent in Sindhi civil society undermined the Dalit agency to come up with their own counter-hegemonic and emancipatory narrative(s).
An automated system for analyzing daily dietary intake is essential for human well-being and healthcare. This work presents a novel wearable necklace embedded with a piezoelectric sensor and a ...microcontroller to monitor food ingestion of users. To effectively represent the food ingestion patterns, the sensor signal is dynamically segmented using a bidirectional search technique. Each segmented food intake pattern consists of a chewing sequence and a swallow peak. We exploit wavelet transform to decompose the complex food ingestion patterns, collected by the sensor, into frequency sub-bands at discrete scales. The frequency sub-bands are used as sequences to train long short-term memory (LSTM) for the recognition of 5 food categories. Our proposed recognition model based on wavelet-LSTM recognizes 5 food classes with an accuracy of 98.1%
This paper is an attempt to investigate the historical trajectory of Ashrafia hegemony in Sindh, the province of Pakistan. I begin with the analysis of biopolitics of caste, class and religion ...organised around Hindu–Muslim binarism and unity as it unfolded during and after the partition of the Indian subcontinent. I particularly analyse the demographic shifts, the official categorisation of populations, and the communal and ethnonationalist claims that led to the specific kind of interpretation of religion, caste and class. Informed by the Ambedkarian subaltern perspective and based on the analysis of ethnographic data and vernacular literature, I explain that nationalist ideologies framed in the narratives of political Islam and Sufism tend to organise politics around Hindu–Muslim otherness, as in case of Pakistani nationalism, and Hindu–Muslim harmony, as in case of Sindhi nationalism. Based on that understanding, I argue that Ashrafia advantage, by and large, is the product of pre-existing historical hegemonic relations than any conscious strategy, and or directly imposed domination. Since both the Ashrafia narratives primarily imagine people through religious binaries, they lack the counter-hegemonic elements that could confront casteism that lies at the intersection of class and religion. None of the narratives, being performative projections of the ideal religious society, brought casteism in their focus while dealing with the structural inequalities, social hierarchies and the issues of political representation of the Dalit class. It resulted in the unwarranted legitimacy for Ashrafia hegemony, Jati Hindu domination and Dalit subordination. This re-hierarchised caste groups and continue to (re)distribute the caste capital by (re)producing Sayedism, Dalit exclusion and caste-class oligarchies.
Traditional polymer processing techniques results in thermal degradation of the desired mechanical properties of a component. Incremental sheet forming (ISF), an innovative flexible cold forming ...process, can avoid this issue. However, this type of cold processing suffers from serious drawback of spring back due to elastic recovery. Therefore, process control is mandatory to achieve the desired part accuracy. This requires employment of a conducive set of process parameters, thereby turning this into an optimization problem. Using statistical techniques, though beneficial, does not result in an acceptable mean squared error (MSE). In this paper, we explore the use of machine learning methods for error prediction and parameter optimization. Particularly, we propose to use the combination of genetic algorithm and artificial neural network hybrid model for optimized set of parameters that result in a greedy minimized shape error. Experiments on Polypropylene sheet show that the proposed approach results in better optimization compared to statistical technique in minimizing the MSE.
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Epoxy is widely adopted in the coating industry because of its excellent performance, which can be applied to the surfaces of metal and non-metal structures for protection and/or decoration purposes. ...The strength of adhesion and cohesion is an essential prerequisite for coating, which will directly affect the performance and its applications. In the light of the mechanisms of adhesion and cohesion, state-of-the-art of technical enhancements on epoxy-based coating systems, performed over the past few years, are summarized and analyzed in this work. Considering the difference of failure modes, comparisons between the technical methods in terms of the effect in improvement, supporting mechanism, occasions of use, etc. Were compiled. It should be pointed out that research referring to the methods for improving the adhesive and cohesive strength of the applied coating mainly focused on the substrates, fillers and resins, whereas the work related to micro-scale mechanism of adhesion and cohesion, hybridizing nanoscale fillers, and compounded methods have already become a popular path for related research till the moment.
•The conception of adhesion and cohesion strength and the significance of their enhancement has been explained.•The adhesion strength comes from mechanical interlocking, the secondary bonding forces and chemical forces, and the interaction between the fillers and metal substrate.•The adhesion and cohesion strength can be increased by surface treatments, modification of fillers and improvement on intrinsic properties of the epoxy matrix.•The latest techniques in adhesion strength improvements have been studied and the eco-friendly methods are worth taking into consideration.•With an explicit focus on improving adhesion and cohesion strength simultaneously, and the methods of incorporating nanoparticle into the epoxy-based coating improving the adhesion and cohesion strength are discussed in detail.
Pakistan is often discussed at domestic and international forums in the context of its treatment of the religious minorities and more particularly the alleged forced religious conversions to Islam. ...This paper is in continuation of a recent report by the author that discussed the narrative of systematic and organized forced religious conversions in Pakistan to show that it is not supported by any data or verifiable evidence. The paper presents preliminary results of the fieldwork that collected data from the province of Sindh in Pakistan. The data gathered comprises audio-visual interviews from a cross-section of the society, official documents, and data of converts. While the study could not find cases of forced conversion, it notes that the force is used against the neo-converts through various means. It identifies 13 push and pull factors that contribute to religious conversions in the context of the area of this study. It also looks into the widespread perception of only women being converted, or the age of converted individuals generally being below 18 years.
The Communist Party of China's 19th National Congress underlined the necessity of speeding the development of a manufacturing powerhouse and advanced manufacturing sector by supporting the deep ...integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and the real economy. This study employed principal component analysis to extract the prominent risk factors from questionnaire data in order to manage the risks connected with the Internet strategic transformation of manufacturing firms. To confirm the major risk factors, a structural equation modeling was created using Amos-24 software. The findings revealed that risk factors of Internet strategic transformation in manufacturing businesses are mostly expressed in equipment flexibility risks, organizational versatility risks, smart technology risks, Internet technology risks, flexible management risks, and financing management risks. The paper offers useful theoretical and practical insights into the risks of China's manufacturing businesses' Internet strategic transformation. The findings can assist manufacturing firms in better identifying and managing these risks, supporting their smooth transition to the Internet economy.
Peripheral nerve injury is a complex condition with a variety of signs and symptoms such as numbness, tingling, jabbing, throbbing, burning or sharp pain. Peripheral nerves are fragile in nature and ...can easily get damaged due to acute compression or trauma which may lead to the sensory and motor functions deficits and even lifelong disability. After lesion, the neuronal cell body becomes disconnected from the axon's distal portion to the injury site leading to the axonal degeneration and dismantlement of neuromuscular junctions of targeted muscles. In spite of extensive research on this aspect, complete functional recovery still remains a challenge to be resolved. This review highlights detailed pathophysiological events after an injury to a peripheral nerve and the associated factors that can either hinder or promote the regenerative machinery. In addition, it throws light on the available therapeutic strategies including supporting therapies, surgical and non-surgical interventions to ameliorate the axonal regeneration, neuronal survival, and reinnervation of peripheral targets. Despite the availability of various treatment options, we are still lacking the optimal treatments for a perfect and complete functional regain. The need for the present age is to discover or design such potent compounds that would be able to execute the complete functional retrieval. In this regard, plant-derived compounds are getting more attention and several recent reports validate their remedial effects. A plethora of plants and plant-derived phytochemicals have been suggested with curative effects against a number of diseases in general and neuronal injury in particular. They can be a ray of hope for the suffering individuals.
•The spin valve effect is reviewed in lateral and vertical magnetic junctions.•Temperature dependence, gate tunability and mechanisms of spin relaxation are studied.•Spin transport mechanism is ...thoroughly explored by studying the role of different 2D materials.•Spin dependent various parameters such as interface quality and temperature are investigated.
Two-dimensional (2D) materials comprising of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have revealed fascinating properties in various spintronic architectures. Here, we review spin valve effect in lateral and vertical magnetic junctions incorporating 2D materials as non-magnetic layer between ferromagnetic (FM) electrodes. The magnetic field dependent spin transport properties are studied by measuring non-local resistance (RNL) and relative magnetoresistance ratio (MR) for lateral and vertical structures, respectively. The review consists of (i) studying spin lifetimes and spin diffusion length thereby exploring the effect of tunneling and transparent contacts in lateral spin valve structures, temperature dependence, gate tunability and contrasting mechanisms of spin relaxation in single layer graphene (SLG) and bilayer graphene (BLG) devices. (ii) Perpendicular spin valve devices are thoroughly investigated thereby studying the role of different 2D materials in vertical spin dynamics. The dependence of spin valve signal on interface quality, temperature and various other parameters is also investigated. Furthermore, the spin reversal in graphene-hBN hybrid system is examined on the basis of Julliere model.
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