Richa Gupta

Slices of Life' is a collection of short stories or vignettes that provide an immersive and entertaining experience of diverse scenarios of life in motion. They are slivers of existence with the ingredients of plot and characters, sprinkled with human emotion, pervaded by the aroma of human dilemmas and served in the platter of lucid language. Sometimes searing with agony and often pervaded with beauty and yearning in the midst of travails in a contemporary or futuristic reality, they explore relationships and the human struggle to find meaning amidst chaos. They describe the consequences of our choices and characters who are at the threshold of a discovery or have reached the zenith of tolerance. The universal themes and enduring images of commonplace individuals in the swirl of life are embedded in a mixed bag of genres ranging from bathos and futuristic Sci-Fi to grim Realistic fiction and a suspenseful Whodunit.

Reconfigurability of an antenna is one of the major design considerations of the presented research work in this book. Reconfigurable antenna represents a recent innovation in antenna design, in which some of the antenna parameters like gain, frequency, polarization and radiation pattern can be changed without changing the physical structure of the antenna. Various services like WLAN, WI-FI, WI-MAX, and Bluetooth can be clubbed on a single device using reconfigurable antenna. Hence, the use of these antenna causes significant reduction in overall size of system and reduce system cost. Dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) and patch antenna have been used for decades, but their major limitation is low bandwidth and less gain. A hybrid design of DRA and patch antenna, applying Magneto hydrodynamic technique has been presented. In past few decades, researchers have presented various techniques to achieve reconfigurability, this work presents literature review of various techniques to achieve reconfigurability, high gain and large bandwidth.

"There are instances when the truth suddenly pitches at us with an undeniable impact. Our buried feelings come to the fore due to a trigger in our environment." What happens when the skeins of life of 16 diverse Indian women, aged 25 to 67, get entwined when they travel to Spain and Portugal in an all-women's tour? With a galaxy of identifiable characters from modern urban India depicted with light-hearted mirth in a travel environment, the novel explores serious issues, such as the quest for an independent identity and economic independence, the violence within and outside our homes, the loneliness of old age and the need for constructive channelization of youthful energy. Spanning events across a little more than a year, Skeins depicts how self-expression and a supportive environment trigger a cataclysmic effect and stimulate the women to realize their dreams.