Situation Analysis of Nation Building Efforts in Sri Lanka: From Early Years of Independence to Contemporary Days

Despite the smooth transition of power from the British colonists to the Sri Lankan Sinhalese in 1949, Sri Lanka inherited considerable challenges. After the culmination of the civil war, from 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka confronted numerous obstacles in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the country. Drawing from Birch’s model of national integration, this study attempts to examine the diverse political, economic, and social challenges facing Sri Lanka. The review shows that Sri Lanka needs critical nation building in the following areas: (i) Infrastructural development; (ii) Resettlements and rehabilitation of displaced populations; (iii) Ethnic and religious integration; (iv) Equality in political representation; (v) Educational and employment policies; (vi) Gender equality policies; and (vii) Mental health interventions for children and women. The role of international bodies, like the United Nations Human Rights Council, and neighboring countries is key to creating pressure for national integration and growth. There is fear that if national unity is not at the forefront of state and international policy for Sri Lanka, conflict and instability may arise again.

Raman Spectroscopy Based Diagnosis of Dengue Virus Infection in Human Blood Serum.

Dengue virus (DENV) infection is a mosquito born infectious disease. Its diagnostic is utmost important for treatment, as the symptoms of disease are quite similar to other diseases. Current pathological diagnostics methods available are reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RT-PCR is used to detect the virus itself while ELISA is used to detect non-structural protein-1 (NS1) and antibodies like immunoglobulin-M (IgM) and immunoglobulin-G (IgG). Existing methods e.g. virus isolation, RT-PCR and ELISA have certain disadvantages like more time consuming, false-positive/false-negative results and expensive as compared to Raman spectroscopy. Raman spectroscopic technique provides molecular signatures, minimum running cost and online results. Raman spectra of biological samples combined with a suitable statistical data-mining technique like partial least squares (PLS) regression can be used to devise a new method for diagnosis of DENV infection in human blood sera. In present studies, this technique is successfully applied for the diagnostic of DENV infection based on three steps. A graphical user interface (GUI) was specially designed and its code was developed in MATLAB (Mathworks 2009a) programming language to implement PLS for the presented research work. First step: Raman spectra of ELISA confirmed NS1 positive and negative sera samples are discriminated by PLS regression. Analysis of regression coefficients, which differentiate these groups, shows an increasing trend for phosphatidylinositol, ceramide and amide-III, and a decreasing trend for thiocyanate in the DENV infected serum. Second step: Raman spectra of samples, with known value of ELISA based AI of IgM are discriminated by PLS regression. Analysis of regression coefficients revealed that concentration of asparagine, glutamate, galactosamine etc. were found to increase while concentration of fructose, cholesterol, cellobiose, and arabinose were found to decrease with increasing values of antibody index (AI) of IgM. Third step: Raman spectra of samples, with known value of ELISA based AI of IgG are discriminated by PLS regression. Analysis of regression coefficients revealed that myristic acid, coenzyme-A, alanine etc. were found to increase, while amide III, collagen, proteins, fatty acids, phospholipids and fucose were found to decrease with increasing values of AI of IgG. Raman spectroscopy provides not only the diagnosis of DENV infection, but it also enables the detailed insight of the abnormalities appearing in molecular composition of a sample. Importantly, Raman spectra @ 532 nm excitation were used to investigate the possible use of lactate as biomarker for DENV infection. It was found that spectral difference in healthy and infected samples is due to an elevated level of lactate in DENV infected group.