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This article focuses on postcolonial Pakistan, which is divided on ethnic, economic, religious, linguistic, and political lines, and reveals the negotiations, sufferings and experiences of racism and nationalism. Through the lens of “postcolonial nationalism”, this study examines the heightened consciousness of “national identity”, quest for “belonging”, and the loss of “continuity” as depicted in Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography and Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia. In the current “war on terror” scenario, many Pakistani people are failing to find security and shelter within and across border. The corrupt establishment as well as the religious and political mafias has deprived and shattered people’s belief in themselves by crushing their dreams of freedom. The Pakistani people have stood on the verge of their “promised land” only to watch how callously their beloved home is stricken by the superseding local and global powers under the guises of patriotism and nationalism. Furthermore, the severe consequences of 9/11 have generated a strong sense of alienation, insecurity, and recurrent fear in Pakistani diaspora, who have failed to assimilate in their host countries and remain in search of “home”.

The recipient of the Women’s Rights Award and a longtime human rights advocate, Masih Alinejad recounts her fight for freedom in modern Iran in The Wind in My Hair. She poignantly paints a vivid pi...

Originally an animal, human attains rational maturity and becomes ethically conscious. He then sheds his bestiality and evolves into homo sapiens. As a result, the essential difference that distinguishes human from beast is believed to be the sense of ethics his rationality bestows upon him. Nevertheless, human is not angel. Not without his flaws, human still retains certain characteristics of animals, which has ever fuelled the ethical enigma of Sphinx that human is Sphinx-like as he is half human and half animal. The Sphinx Riddle in Greek Mythology has provided an important instance for better understanding human ethical consciousness. The celebrated play of Hamlet by Shakespeare offers another meaningful example of human ethical tragedy. This chapter argues that the emotional lamentation and plea for redemption in the end of the soliloquy provide a key to understanding Hamlet’s tragedy and factually unveil the very ethical enigma of human life.

A new kind of acid sensitive tetrahydrofuranyl (THF) linker was synthesized and then reacted with 5-(6)-carboxytetramethylrhodaminesuccinimidyl ester (5(6)-TAMRA, SE), followed by di(N-succinimidyl) carbonate (DSC) and modified 2'-deoxyuridine triphosphate (dUTP); the final product, as a reversible terminator for DNA sequencing by synthesis (DNA SBS), was given obtained and confirmed by 1H-NMR, 31P-NMR, and HRMS with purity of up to 99%. The synthesized dye-labeled terminator incorporated into DNA strand successfully, and the fluorophore was cleaved completely under acidic conditions. The preliminary results encourage us to explore more acid-sensitive linkers for DNA SBS to increase the cleavage efficiency under weakly acidic conditions.

The milling experiment of GH3039 nickel-based Super alloy was made using the hard alloy tools RCKT1204MO-PM S30T and RPMT10T3MOE-41 under the same cutting parameters. The variation of the cutting force has been researched when milling GH3039 nickel-based Super alloy, through the experiment. It was found that under the same cutting parameters the stability of RCKT1204MO-PM S30T was better than RPMT10T3MOE-41's. In the cutting process, with the increase in cutting speed, there was a significant impact on the cutting force of X, Y, Z-direction of RPMT10T3MOE-41. However, there was a little change on the cutting force of X, Z-direction of RCKT1204MO-PM S30T, and cutting force of its Y-direction force changed obviously. Increasing the feed rate, the cutting force of X, Y-direction increased, no significant change to cutting force of Z-direction.

This paper focuses on the analysis of modeling the growth rate of private equity investments and determining its related underlying factors. We calculate the growth rate based on the formula presented by Takahashi and Alexander (2001) and then model the growth rate to be related to the cumulative contribution rate and growth rate of price and earnings(with some lags) in public equity market. First we test the reliability of the model constructed by Hoek using the data of US private equity market from 1990 to 2002. Then we update the dataset up to 2006 for both US and European markets and redo the ordinary linear regression to test the reliability of our newly constructed model. We find that Hoek?s model is not quite reliable and persuasive in associating the growth rate of US private equity market to excess stock market return. In contrast, based on the derivation of change in net asset value (NAV) and results of statistical tests, the growth rate of US and European private equity markets seem to only depend on changes in the price of public equity markets but with the lag of one year for the US market and three years for European market.

ObjectiveWe sought to test the hypothesis that Polygenic Risk Scores (PRSs) have strong capacity to discriminate cases of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) from healthy controls and individuals in the community with chronic back pain.MethodsPRSs were developed and validated in individuals of European and East Asian ethnicity, using data from genome-wide association studies in 15 585 AS cases and 20 452 controls. The discriminatory values of PRSs in these populations were compared with other widely used diagnostic tests, including C-reactive protein (CRP), HLA-B27 and sacroiliac MRI.ResultsIn people of European descent, PRS had high discriminatory capacity with area under the curve (AUC) in receiver operator characteristic analysis of 0.924. This was significantly better than for HLA-B27 testing alone (AUC=0.869), MRI (AUC=0.885) or C-reactive protein (AUC=0.700). PRS developed and validated in individuals of East Asian descent performed similarly (AUC=0.948). Assuming a prior probability of AS of 10% such as in patients with chronic back pain under 45 years of age, compared with HLA-B27 testing alone, PRS provides higher positive values for 35% of patients and negative predictive values for 67.5% of patients. For PRS, in people of European descent, the maximum positive predictive value was 78.2% and negative predictive value was 100%, whereas for HLA-B27, these values were 51.9% and 97.9%, respectively.ConclusionsPRS have higher discriminatory capacity for AS than CRP, sacroiliac MRI or HLA-B27 status alone. For optimal performance, PRS should be developed for use in the specific ethnic groups to which they are to be applied.