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Dalit, one of the lowest rungs in the Indian caste society, has been historically marginalized on all fronts; social, political, cultural. The term Dalit is an identity of self-assertion, a political identity which has been chosen by the community themselves. In the article I want to highlight the contributions of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, one of the greatest icons from the Dalit community in India, who fought for the rights of the oppressed communities, and sought their emancipation, and his influence which makes him not just a political figure or an anti-caste revolutionary and philosopher but which has also established him as an icon. There are many visual indicators to suggest the same, in terms of the numerous statues build all over India reflecting the socio-political assertion of the Dalit community and their belief in the struggles of Dr. Ambedkar and his ideologies. This assertion also gets attacked and vandalized by the upper castes forces which have always worked in the society to oppress the lower castes and keep the privileges of power and domination restricted to their own community. In the paper I will try to explore the Dalit visual culture and the use of Dalit imageries and iconography to assert a politically conscious Dalit identity. This paper will highlight the ideological basis of the socio-political and cultural movement of the Dalit communities and the influence of Dr. Ambedkar and religious conversion over the same.

Dalit, one of the lowest rungs in the Indian caste society, has been historically marginalized on all fronts; social, political, cultural. The term Dalit is an identity of self-assertion, a political identity which has been chosen by the community themselves. In the article I want to highlight the contributions of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, one of the greatest icons from the Dalit community in India, who fought for the rights of the oppressed communities, and sought their emancipation, and his influence which makes him not just a political figure or an anti-caste revolutionary and philosopher but which has also established him as an icon. There are many visual indicators to suggest the same, in terms of the numerous statues build all over India reflecting the socio-political assertion of the Dalit community and their belief in the struggles of Dr. Ambedkar and his ideologies. This assertion also gets attacked and vandalized by the upper castes forces which have always worked in the society to oppress the lower castes and keep the privileges of power and domination restricted to their own community. In the paper I will try to explore the Dalit visual culture and the use of Dalit imageries and iconography to assert a politically conscious Dalit identity. This paper will highlight the ideological basis of the socio-political and cultural movement of the Dalit communities and the influence of Dr. Ambedkar and religious conversion over the same.

Shabana Amanda Ali,1 Kathleen Ellen Walsh,2 Marita Kloseck1 1Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, 2Faculty of Science, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada Introduction: Although there is no cure for osteoarthritis (OA), there are lifestyle modifications that can mitigate symptoms such as pain, and improve management of the disease. This information is not always translated to community-dwelling seniors. Individuals in rural areas often face additional challenges due to geographic isolation and decreased access to community services. Methods: We used qualitative research methodology (hermeneutic phenomenology) to better understand the lived experiences of urban and rural community-dwelling seniors diagnosed with OA. We explored their sources of information about OA, how they manage their OA pain, and how OA management could be improved in the community. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit 20 information-rich participants (11 urban, 9 rural) in Ontario, Canada. All participants were aged >65 and diagnosed with OA. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, audio recorded, and transcribed verbatim. NVivo 11 Pro qualitative software was used to code transcripts. Results: Thematic analysis revealed 9 key themes where 8 were common to urban and rural participants, and 1 was unique to rural participants. Most significant among the common themes was the description of the social network as a source of OA information, the trial-and-error approach used for OA management, and the individual contextualization of OA management. Our results suggest that there are several common experiences among urban- and rural-dwelling seniors living with OA, including the desire for support over time, but also a unique experience to rural-dwelling seniors, namely lack of access to local care. Conclusion: These findings can be used to improve translation of OA information in both urban and rural communities in Canada, highlighting that

The current state of the art in medical genetics is to identify and classify the functional (deleterious) or non-functional (neutral) single amino acid substitutions (SAPs), also known as non-synonymous SNPs (nsSNPs). The primary goal is to elucidate the mechanisms through which functional SAPs exert their effects, and ultimately interrogating this information for association with complex phenotypes. This work focuses on coagulation factors involved in the coagulation cascade pathway which plays a vital role in the maintenance of homeostasis in the human system. We developed an integrated coagulation variation database, CoagVDb, which makes use of the biological information from various public databases such as NCBI, OMIM, UniProt, PDB and SAPs (rsIDs/variant). CoagVDb enriched with computational prediction scores classify SAPs as either deleterious or tolerated. Also, various other properties are incorporated such as amino acid composition, secondary structure elements, solvent accessibility, ordered/disordered regions, conservation, and the presence of disulfide bonds. This specialized database provides integration of various prediction scores from different computational methods along with gene, protein, and disease information. We hope our database will act as a useful reference resource for hematologists to reveal protein structure-function relationship and disease genotype-phenotype correlation.