Pirith is a special type of chanting; believed to be a protective doctrine preached by the Load Buddha in Pali language. Generally, a voice signal consists of the fundamental frequency, F0 and a series of harmonic frequencies called as formants, Fn. As reported by several other studies, characteristic formant frequency distributions are identified in chanting, contrast to normal speaking. This work is dedicated to developing a phonetic picture on Pirith chants investigating probability distribution of formants and quantify voiced to unvoiced ratio utilizing computer-aided tools. In this study, 25 samples of each Rathana, Karaneeya Metta and Angulimala Suttas recited by male monk chanters were recorded using high precision microphone array and then subjected to splitting of smaller voiced segments of frame length 10ms sampling at a rate of 44.1 kHz. In the computational speech model, a pre-emphasis filter is applied to the sampled time series of voiced segment to cancel out the effect of glottis. Then frame-by-frame analysis was used with hamming windows and liner predictive coding (LPC) and auto correlation to extract the formant values. Voiced to unvoiced ratio is assessed using zero crossing rate and energy content of the acoustic signal. Results of the Voiced to Unvoiced ratio over 75% of voiced frames in all types of Suttas despite number of monks involved in chanting. Having a high percentage of voiced frames interpret strong contribution of vibrating vocal folds involved in chanting of Pirith Suttas. Further, Probability Distribution Functions (PDFs) of each Sutta is generated and compared for first five formants. Angulimala Sutta and Ratana Sutta show similar patterns in terms of PDFs while Karaneeya Metta Sutta indicates a clear discrepancy demonstrating a unique set of characteristics.
Structural timber can be identified as a construction material which has high strength to weight ratio, therefore can be used for structural members with larger spans. Timber is used for construction of roofs, doors, windows and ceilings and for house construction. In order to construct a typical single story house of 100 m2, a volume of approximately 1.5 m3 timber is used for roofing. About 320,000 houses are built in a year locally which require more than 470,000 m3 volume of timber. This is approximately 110,000 trees are harvested per year. Timber is the most common structural material used for roof construction in Sri Lanka, especially in residential house construction, and Coconut and Kempas are the most common timber types used. In order to investigate the timber usage in residential houses’ roof construction in Sri Lanka, ten residential houses roofed with timber were selected in Colombo area and the timber element sizes of those houses were investigated. The structural members of the roofs such as rafters, purlins, ridges and wall plates of each of these houses were designed against bending, deflection, bulking, shear and bearing. These were designed in accordance with according to the timber design guideline BS 5268-2:2002 (British Standard, 2002) to meet the relevant loading conditions. The results were compared with the actual member sizes used in each house. The typical sections used for rafters, ridge plates, wall plates and purlins are 4”×2”, 7”×2”, 4”×3”, 4”×2” respectively. It was found that the timber in 60% of Coconut rafters, in 80% of Kempus ridges and wall plates and in 55% of Kempus purlins was overused. Such timber wastage can be minimized by designing the roof members according to the design guidelines. This can save a large amount of timber thereby saving trees and environment.
Show full item record
More women than men migrate internally in Sri Lanka, the majority of female migrants migrating to the urban areas of the Western Province either due to the availability of female -oriented job opportunities in industrial, commercial and service sectors or for marriage and family-related reasons. However, there is a lack of research on employment participation and its determinants with respect to women who have migrated. This paper investigates the status of migrant women's employment participation and its determinants, taking the Kalutara District as a case study. Migrant households were selected from 3 Urban Council areas using the simple random sampling method. The sample size was 582 urban migrant women (aged 18-59). Data were gathered through an interviewer administered questionnaire from April to June, 2014. The results related to the demographic and socio-economic determinants of the employment participation of women were presented based on descriptive and logistic regression analyses. Results based on descriptive analysis revealed that the mean age of migrant women was 36.4 years and that only about 30% of migrant women were employed. More than half of migrant women of the sample (59.0%) were Sinhalese, while Tamils and Moors were 7.0% and 34.0% respectively. Employment participation was higher among Sinhalese and Tamil migrant women (35.0% each) compared to Moors (21.1%). More than half of the women had an educational level of G.C.E O/L or below and more educated women (G.C.E. A/L and above) were employed compared to those with a lower level of education. More than half of the unemployed women would like to engage in home –based self-employment. The logistic regression results revealed that marital status, level of education, household size, ethnicity and household dependency status were significant predictors of employment participation of urban migrant women. These findings suggest that policies and programmes should focus on skill development and facilitate self-employment activities to improve the employability of urban migrant women
Urban ward family migration is one of the key aspects of internal migration process. Mainly it is influenced by rearranging population and workforce in urban areas. In the developing countries, urban ward family migration is increased due to the influence of factors such as socio-demographic, economic, political, and cultural and environments etc. Literature on migration in national and international level has focused on various approaches of internal migration. However, in local context family migration to urban areas and its consequences are rarely addressed. Selected urban communities in Colombo district by case studies and in-depth interviews to obtain qualitative data. Content analysis method used to analyze different areas of qualitative data. Findings revealed that the most migrant families tended to migrate to urban areas in Colombo district as a result of inadequate social amenities and poor economic background in the origin places. Further, movements of young respondents of the sample are unplanned. Therefore, they have faced the unemployment issues at the urban destination. Low educated and less experienced migrants are engaged as the employees of informal sector with low wages. Therefore, it is clear that parents’ aspirations towards their children’s education are low. As results of that, several less educated school children are addicted to use illegal drugs. Since increase the urban population density migrants as well as others have suffered from environmental issues; air pollution, traffic congestion, house congestion, land filling issues under constructions and flooding. Findings suggested that improving physical infrastructure and human capital utilization at rural contexts reduce the urban ward migration. Finally, as a longtime solution, government should create a favorable condition for the young and productive population to work and live in every part of the country.
Key words: Internal migration, issues, urban areas, Consequences
Acknowledgement: Authors would like to thank to the University of Colombo for providing research grant (AP/3/2012/CG/07) to undertake this research.
Department of Geography, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.
This study investigates the impact of strategic purchasing on purchasing performance in the presence of a mediating impact of supplier development with a special reference to Sri Lankan apparel sector. This study also examines how supplier involvement mediates the relationship between strategic purchasing and supplier development. A theoretically grounded conceptual model is proposed and empirically tested using structural equation modeling approach. Data collected from a random sample of 85 apparel sector firms located in the Western Province in Sri Lanka are used to test the proposed model. Findings reveal that all hypotheses tested in the model are supported. Thus, this study concludes that supplier development acts as a partial mediator to boost the positive impact of strategic purchasing on the purchasing performance of the buyer firms. It is also evident from the findings that the supplier involvement partially mediates the relationship between strategic performance and supplier development. Ultimately, this study helps the management of Sri Lankan apparel sector firms to better understand how to uplift the purchasing function and increase its role in the firm for better performance.
Migration to urban areas significantly effect on population growth of urban area's in Colombo District. In Sri Lankan context, people can move to place to place without any barriers of constitution or other restrictions. Most low educated migrants enter to the informal sector employments due to easy accessing into the informal sector. Informal sector is the largest sector of the economy in most developing countries. Although employments in the informal economy play a vital role in Sri Lankan urban economy like other developing economies, most migrants have to face employment issues. However in local context researchers have not addressed this issue adequately Therefore, this study tried to examine socioeconomic aspects of urban migrants' employments in the urban informal sector with respect to their livelihoods, working conditions and wages. Qualitative data was collected from randomly selected 40 migrant households through in-depth interviews and content analysis was applied to analysis of the data. Findings reveal that the youngest aged household heads are decided to migrate to increase opportunities of earning for more comfortable lives. Migrants' poor skills and low level of education have been leaded to low wages and income discriminations. Although, migrants have spent money to migrate to urban locations, most of them were unable to achieve their objectives since increasing the urban population and employment insecurity of informal sector. Conclusion made is that urban ward migration induced to increase employment issues and negative implications on themselves and the urban communities.
KeyWords: Employment Issues, Implications, Informal, Migration, Wages
*
Coral reefs are known to undergo phase shift in to macro-algae and they have lost the capacity to remain in or return to a coral-dominated state. This shift will not only affect corals, but the others heavily depend on heterogeneous habitat afforded by corals.
Sallitivu in Panichchankerni, eastern province, is a small island (41328 m2). The Island is surrounded by a ring of coral reef with an elevated breaking reef crest, seaward slope and centred shallow lagoon (<1.2m at high tide). The shore is entirely a thick layer of washed coral rubbles. The archived aerial photographs confirmed these coral rubbles present only after 2004 tsunami.
Underwater visual census were carried out within the reef lagoon and three sites in reef slope using 30 m long belt transect. In addition to diversity of corals and algae, percentages of live, dead and bleached coral cover were recorded.
The reef lagoon is shallow (10-60 cm) and much of the reef crest is exposed at low tide. Within the reef lagoon, the live coral cover was <5%. Around 15 % was observed recently bleached, 12 % were overgrown by algae; Padina sp, Halimeda sp, Sargassum sp, Caulerpa recemosa and Dictyota sp, and the rest was dead corals smothered by sediments. The seaward slope with high wave action was mostly smothered dead corals with live corals <3 %. Coral colonies were represented by Acroporidae (branching and table corals) - Acropora cytherea, A. divaricata, A. formosa, A. gemmifera, A. grandis, A. hemprichii, A. hyacinthus, A. latistella, Acropora sp., A. nobilis, and A. robusta; (Foliaceous)- Montipora aequituberculata and M. hispida; Faviidae (sub massive and encrusting) - Favites halicora, Favites spinosa, Leptastrea purpurea and Platygyra daedalea; Pocilloporidae (Lace /cauliflower) -Pocillopora damicornis; Poritidae (Massive /submassive)- Porites evermanni, P. paliformis, and P. rus.
Live corals observed were immature. Southern end of the reef slope had emerging corals among unstable coral rubbles. It is assumed that the degradation was started post-tsunami and continued due to natural stresses. The recovery of corals may hindered by macro-algal growth and resulting accumulation of sediments, smothering due to less wave action within reef lagoon and resulting recruitment and settlement failure. Recent bleaching would be due to exposure to direct sunlight during the change of tides and low sea level. Increasing oxygen level due to algal blooms would also prone for bleaching.
Avoiding such undesirable phase shifts from coral dominance to algae and reverse them when occur, requires an urgent reform of scientific approaches to understand the processes causing the degradation. A better understanding on why some reefs rapidly degrade and others do not is critical. Most reef conservation efforts are directed toward reserve implementation, but new approaches are needed to sustain ecosystem function since demarcation of a marine reserve alone would not benefit in improving reef resilience.