A Abba - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by A Abba

Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, 2017

Many critics of Esiaba Irobi's Nwokedi have contended that the play portrays an atmosphere of ter... more Many critics of Esiaba Irobi's Nwokedi have contended that the play portrays an atmosphere of terror and irrationality, which reflects Irobi's fascination with an 'invitation to orgy' (Eagleton) as the panacea to the oppressive political leadership in his postcolonial Nigeria. Beyond this observation, however, the position that in his obsession with power, Nwokedi, the protagonist snowballs into an object of terror himself has not been fully examined. Seeking to further this point of reflection, this paper engages the Hegelian theory of freedom in relation to the Dionysian myth of irrationality as a paradigm for examining the ironical attitude of power in Nwokedi. It interrogates the lure of power and the attempt to reinvent primordial human blood ritual in the play. Nwokedi's positive riot of perversity, set against a politician's economics of exploitation results in the death-drive that commands its beholder to relish human annihilation at that point where the opposition between law and personal desire is 'most dramatically dismantled' (Eagleton). The paper concludes that if the enchanted ritual revolutionist becomes at once deity and rebel, judge and outlaw, autocrat and anarchist, he equally plunges headlong into that solitude which is both self-willed and tragic.

2013 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (2013 NSS/MIC), 2013

In this contribution, we present a digital fully configurable emulator of radiation detectors and... more In this contribution, we present a digital fully configurable emulator of radiation detectors and front-end electronics of image acquisition systems. The instrument has 64 independent channels with the capability of growing an image that has been a-priori programmed. The growth faithfully emulates the real-time behavior of an acquisition array constituted by 64 detectors (either based on silicon or photomultipliers) that are exposed to a source spatially distributed. The implemented emulation process achieves the performance of 106 counts per second, i.e. emulated samples of generated charge. The instrument has also the features of adding spatial and temporal pile-up and noise with fully programmable characteristics. Each output channel consists of a digital stream that can be converted in analog shape by means of DAC clocked at 125 MSPS.

2012 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference Record (NSS/MIC), 2012

In this paper we present the development of an integrated circuit and of a data acquisition syste... more In this paper we present the development of an integrated circuit and of a data acquisition system for the readout of silicon drift detector (S DD) arrays to be coupled to scintillators for gamma-ray spectroscopy in the range 150 kev-15 Mev. The final goal is to develop a spectrometer based on an array of 81 silicon drift detectors (SDDs) coupled to a labr3:ce scintillator. The SDD photo-detectors are readout by 3 ASICs (27-channel each) and digitalized by a custom data acquisition (DAQ). Every channel includes a high order semi-Gaussian shaper amplifier with selectable gains and peaking times (from 2 J.1s up to 6 J.1s), a baseline holder and a peak stretcher. The ASIC also includes 27:1 analog multiplexer, custom digital control logic and an output amplifier. The DAQ board converts all the data coming from the three ASICs, with a resolution of 16 bits, and sends them to the host pc via an Ethernet interface. Main features of the electronic digital acquisition system are re-configurability, linearity, low noise and processing data rate through hardware and firmware architecture solutions that also allow the system to operate in presence of disturbances and electromagnetic noise.

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2018

Human dread of death is as old as humanity. Across cultures, this dread seems to be inaugurated b... more Human dread of death is as old as humanity. Across cultures, this dread seems to be inaugurated by the belief that death constitutes the site of final becoming. Isidore Diala’s The Lure of Ash makes a fascinating incursion into the strange interrelationship of life, death, and rebirth, and reveals that, beyond its conception as the final destination of all flesh and the abyss to which all human strivings must return, death proves to be the only phenomenon that could truly satisfy the soul’s implacable yearning for eternal rejuvenation. The critics of Diala’s poetry seem not to have examined this cyclic kinesis, which is rooted in African cosmologies. This article, seeking to cover this gap, contends that despite the attention which The Lure of Ash draws to humanity’s eternal dread of death, there is a revelation that death is not a completely mournful experience robbed of the possibility of hope. Examining the notion of birth–death–rebirth cyclic movement in “The Hues of Ash”, which...

Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 2016

The enchanted discourse of intercultural communication and globalization cannot be sufficiently e... more The enchanted discourse of intercultural communication and globalization cannot be sufficiently enacted without the recognition of the revered place of folktales as cultural products. This paper, while developing its argument on the preponderance of the spider folktale across world cultures, argues that folklore has provided and continues to provide the framework for the breakthrough in inter-cultural communication and global networking. Such terms as the "web spider" and the "world wide web" which are associated with Information technology are hints on the myth of the spider as a global inter-connector. Throughout history, there have been many cultural depictions of the spider in folklore, popular culture, mythology and symbolism. From European, Asian, American, Australian down to African folklores, the spider has been depicted in varied forms ranging from: the cursed to the revered; from the tormentor to the protector, and from the greedy to the inspirer. Altho...

So much critical works have examined Camus’s The Plague as an allegorical representation of the N... more So much critical works have examined Camus’s The Plague as an allegorical representation of the Nazi terror in France as well as an exploration of Camus’s Absurdist philosophy. From the latter perspective, the thematic preoccupation of the work is likened to the Sisyphean myth of man’s abiding condemnation to meaningless toil. Although these criticisms are insightful in interpreting the work, they hardly illuminate the tragic hopefulness that enables the central character to transcend mere passive struggle, and hit boldly at the door of cruel fate in order to wrest freedom for the community. As this paper argues, Camus's idea of the absurd is rooted in the tragic sense of life in which man's confrontation with the ‘more than man’ is affirmed and reaffirmed. Although the argument in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus that suicide is not legitimate, has further implication for the entire European disaster, the myth dwells on the premise that even within the limits of nihilism it is ...

Le projet "Eau, sol, arbre" s'inscrit dans la logique et la continuite du projet de... more Le projet "Eau, sol, arbre" s'inscrit dans la logique et la continuite du projet de developpement paysannal et de gestion de terroir (DPGT). Il reprend l'essentiel des activites du volet "fertilite". Il sera donc charge de poursuivre les investigations et d'accroitre la diffusion de techniques dans les domaines de la gestion de la fertilite et des ressources renouvelables. Le maitre d'ouvrage du projet est le Ministere de l'agriculture (Minagri), representant le Gouvernement. La Sodecoton en est le maitre d'oeuvre. La politique sectorielle: La politique agricole et de developpement rural du projet "Eau, sol, arbre" repond a la politique nationale qui vise, entre autres, a la liberalisation des activites economiques, la lutte contre la pauvrete et a la decentralisation. Appliquant les objectifs generaux, la politique agricole, dans sa forme revisee et validee par les operateurs economiques nationaux prives, se traduit desormais pa...

GLOBAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED, MANAGEMENT AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2017

The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the ... more The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the colonial West has indeed led to the erosion of African values. Despite the terrors orchestrated by alien religions across the globe in general and Africa in particular, only a few scholars have called for the demarginalization of indigenous African spirituality as a means of rebuilding the man and his world. For instance, Soyinka, one of Africa’s foremost literary scholars has contended that African spirituality has been marginalized by the aggressive, often bloody intrusion of Christianity and Islam on African soil. And for him, African spirituality provides sources of spiritual strength to its people and acts as rallying point in their struggle for liberation and human dignity. In its attempt to further this line of thought, this paper argues that African indigenous deities have been misrepresented, demonized and pushed outside the margins of the continent’s discourse of spirituality b...

Research in African Literatures, 2021

ABSTRACT:Although Chimamanda Adichie has received much critical engagement since the publication ... more ABSTRACT:Although Chimamanda Adichie has received much critical engagement since the publication of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck, Adichie's attempt to engage Half of a Yellow Sun as a literary platform both for articulating the trauma of Biafran experience and negotiating postwar reconciliation in Nigeria has been largely ignored. Seeking to cover this gap, this paper argues that while the novel attempts to reconstruct love and coherence from the heap of historical disorder by offering a seemingly unbiased diagnosis of the events of the war, it however makes the urgency for dialogue and reconciliation its symbolic gesture. Examining the experiences and reactions of the central characters in the novel, the paper contends that Adichie offers a new perspective that challenges the perpetuation of the ethics of national disintegration. Deploying Edward Said's postcolonial theory of nationalism in articulating the novel's insistence on integration rather than separation, this paper seeks to demonstrate, therefore, how Adichie's artistic projections suggest that postwar dialogue is a necessary step toward engendering viable togetherness in Nigeria.

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2020

Nigerian poet Amechi Akwanya’s Pilgrim Foot: A Collection of Poems (2005) has not received much c... more Nigerian poet Amechi Akwanya’s Pilgrim Foot: A Collection of Poems (2005) has not received much critical attention. This is despite the collection’s important poetic meditation on human suffering, a subject that has troubled the imagination since time immemorial. Although scholars have read the central theme of the first sequence of this collection as man’s dispossession by his creator, its illumination of man’s confrontation with the tragic contradiction evident in human suffering has largely been ignored. Florence Orabueze (2015), for instance, has argued that Akwanya deploys the symbolism of the cross to signify man’s endless suffering in the face of natural disasters, suggesting that the search for freedom from these sufferings always ends in futility. Seeking to extend this argument, and relying on theoretical strategies drawn from the study of tragedy, this article examines the first sequence of Akwanya’s Pilgrim Foot: A Collection of Poems. I argue that the sequence belongs t...

Humanities, 2020

Scholarship on Niger Delta ecopoetry has concentrated on the economic, socio-political and cultur... more Scholarship on Niger Delta ecopoetry has concentrated on the economic, socio-political and cultural implications of eco-degradation in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of the South-South in Nigeria, but falls short of addressing the trope of eco-alienation, the sense of separation between people and nature, which seems to be a significant idea in Niger Delta ecopoetics. For sure, literary studies in particular and the Humanities at large have shown considerable interest in the concept of the Anthropocene and the resultant eco-alienation which has dominated contemporary global ecopoetics since the 18th century. In the age of the Anthropocene, human beings deploy their exceptional capabilities to alter nature and its essence, including the ecosystem, which invariably leads to eco-alienation, a sense of breach in the relationship between people and nature. For the Humanities, if this Anthropocentric positioning of humans has brought socio-economic advancement to humans, it has equally e...

2014 37th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO), 2014

ABSTRACT The conventional binary weighted array SAR ADC is the common topology adopted to achieve... more ABSTRACT The conventional binary weighted array SAR ADC is the common topology adopted to achieve high efficiency con-version, i.e. with less than 10 fJ/conversion-step, even requiring extra effort to design and simulate full custom sub-fF capacitors. This paper presents the design and the optimization of an asyn-chronous SAR ADC with attenuation capacitor achieving an effi-ciency similar to conventional binary weighted array converters but adopting standard MiM capacitors. A monotonic switching algorithm further reduces the capacitive array consumption while an asynchronous and fully-differential dynamic logic minimizes the digital power consumption. A 10-bit prototype has been fabricated in a 0.13-µm CMOS technology. At 0.5-V supply and 200-kSps sampling frequency, the ADC achieves a SNDR of 52.6 dB, an ENOB of 8.45, and a power consumption of 420 nW, corresponding to a figure-of-merit (FOM) of 6 fJ/conversion-step. This efficiency is comparable to the best results published so far and it&#39;s the lowest among ADCs in 130-nm or less scaled technology. The ADC core occupies an area of only 0.045 mm 2 .

Journal of Instrumentation, 2015

We present results of an R&D study for a specialized processor capable of precisely reconstructin... more We present results of an R&D study for a specialized processor capable of precisely reconstructing, in pixel detectors, hundreds of charged-particle tracks from high-energy collisions at 40 MHz rate. We apply a highly parallel pattern-recognition algorithm, inspired by studies of the processing of visual images by the brain as it happens in nature, and describe in detail an efficient hardware implementation in high-speed, high-bandwidth FPGA devices. This is the first detailed demonstration of reconstruction of offline-quality tracks at 40 MHz and makes the device suitable for processing Large Hadron Collider events at the full crossing frequency.

2011 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2011

ABSTRACT The increasing development of configurable electronic systems for digital processing of ... more ABSTRACT The increasing development of configurable electronic systems for digital processing of signals from radiation detectors highlights the convenience of having more and more advanced equipment for support design and test of processing architectures from the hardware and firmware point of view. We propose a configurable design and test equipment that is able to emulate the detection process output on the basis of a description of detector and front-end electronics response that can be analytically calculated or experimentally measured. As case study, we fully developed the emulation of data in applications needing a precise knowledge of the time of occurrence of the events (e.g. coincidence/anti-coincidence, position detection, etc.) in strategic areas of medicine (e.g. PET imaging) such as particle physics (e.g. TDC, beam analysis).

In this contribution, we present the experimental proof of concept of a fully integrated digital ... more In this contribution, we present the experimental proof of concept of a fully integrated digital architecture that directly interfaces to detection units and returns data ready for the synthesis of the images. The proposed system is fed by the output of each detector preamplifier and correspondingly calculates energy and occurrence time of events. The convenience of such a choice is self-evident, starting from re-configurabiIity, linearity, low-noise, resolution to finish with hardware and firmware topologies that also allow the system to operate with optimal EMI performance.

Mathematics plays an important role in solving real life problems. Chemistry is one of the main s... more Mathematics plays an important role in solving real life problems. Chemistry is one of the main sciences that benefits from the development of new mathematical techniques for modelling the experimental data. In this talk I shall present two different types of approaches for determination of models for data collected in industrial environment, comparing the classical approaches with the new ones from the artificial intelligence and emphasizing the advantages of each method by the results of our research.

A Digital Pulse Processor (DPP) developed for high resolution and ultra-fast X-Ray Spectroscopy i... more A Digital Pulse Processor (DPP) developed for high resolution and ultra-fast X-Ray Spectroscopy is presented. The system is principally suitable for spectrometers based on last generation Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) used in application with high speed elemental mapping.

2008 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2008

... phone: +390223996107, e-mail: manenti@3e1et.polimi.it Andrea Suardi, phone: +390223996107, e-... more ... phone: +390223996107, e-mail: manenti@3e1et.polimi.it Andrea Suardi, phone: +390223996107, e-mail: suardi@3elet.polimi.it Carlo Fiorini, phone: +390223993733, e-mail: suardi@3elet.polimi. it Angelo Geraci, phone: +390223996095, e ... [6] Aiello, S.; Anzalone, A.; Bartolucci ...

ABSTRACT The dwindling supplies of fresh natural aggregates for making concrete and the desire fo... more ABSTRACT The dwindling supplies of fresh natural aggregates for making concrete and the desire for sustainable concrete practices have opened up the possibility for using demolition concrete as recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) in new concrete mixes However researchers in the past have discovered that simple replacement of virgin aggregates by an equivalent volume or weight of RCA in a conventional concrete mix leads to a mix with lower elastic modulus and higher creep and shrinkage and possibly lower durability, than the original mix without RCA In this study we first describe the potential sustainability benefits of RCA concrete and subsequently explain the reasons for the previously reported results Next, we describe a novel method of concrete mix design which can be used to avoid the above problems of RCA-concrete, i.e. concrete made with RCA The results of the most comprehensive experimental program ever mounted on this subject will be subsequently presented The experimental program involved different types of RCA and their detailed material characterization, determination of their mechanical and physical properties and their durability, long-term creep and shrinkage behaviour In addition, the structural performance of RCA-concrete members was investigated by testing large scale reinforced RCA-concrete members under flexure and shear The principal conclusion of this comprehensive study is that the properties of RCA-concrete are mainly dependent on its mix proportions and due to the fact that RCA is a two phase composite material and not a homogeneous material like natural aggregate, the volumetric ratio and properties of each phase must be explicitly considered in the mix design Towards this end, a novel concrete mix proportioning method was developed and tested, which verified the basic assumptions of the method

ABSTRACT Today’s world has the need to be under deep surveillance: various techniques are used fo... more ABSTRACT Today’s world has the need to be under deep surveillance: various techniques are used for this purpose, ranging from radar systems to networks of surveillance cameras. Often, such methods cannot be used, due to technical limitations or privacy issues. The localization of audio sources using the Multilateration technique is a solution able to overcome these problems, and represents a powerful functionality to be added to surveillance systems. This paper will show how it is possible to develop an embedded application for audio source localization involving an ATMEL DIOPSIS D940 dual core processor and a custom made board used to pre-amplify audio signals and to rotate a webcam following the audio source, using the data obtained by solving the Multilateration equations.