On the existence of Scaling laws across Indian districts: A new prospect for urban scaling

Urban scaling analysis in generally performed based on cities. In this study, we have (empirically) explored a new prospect for urban scaling analysis based on relatively larger local administrative units, which are independently functional, within a country. For this purpose, we have studied the scaling laws across Indian districts for the various socio-economic indicators (SEIs) within four distinct urbanization classes, namely rural, semi-rural, semi-urban and urban districts, and presented the estimated values of the scaling factors for each classes for the years 2001 and 2011 along with their goodness-of-fit measured by the $R^2$ values. Our result shows that the scaling laws indeed exist even at the district level for all most of the SEIs considered, related to education, employment, housing, health, etc.; the $R^2$ values obtained for these SEIs are very high (often greater than 0.8 or 0.9) in both the the years. For a few SEIs, however, the validity of scaling law increases as we move from rural to urban class of districts. The linearity of the scaling index has been statistically tested and it has been found, at 95\% level of confidence, that not all the SEIs behave linearly; some of them are characterized by super-linear behaviour and some behave sub-linearly. Statistical hypothesis tests have also been performed to test the equality of two scaling factors corresponding to two distinct classes and two different years to understand the differences in scaling relationships among increasing urbanisation classes and their changes over time.Comment: Pre-prin

Transient absorption spectroscopy detection of sensitized delayed fluorescence in chiral benzophenone/naphthalene systems

Transient absorption spectroscopy has proven to be a powerful tool to investigate the formation and decay of excited singlet states upon triplet–triplet annihilation, following T–T energy transfer from a selectively excited sensitizer. Thus, upon selective excitation of benzophenone (BZP) by laser flash photolysis (LFP) at λ = 355 nm in the presence of naphthalene (NPT), a negative band centered at 340 nm has been detected, with growth and decay in the microsecond timescale. It has been assigned to the P-type NPT delayed-fluorescence. In the case of chiral BZP/NPT systems, stereodifferentiation has been observed in the kinetics of the involved photophysical processesFinancial support from the MICINN (Grant CTQ2010-14882 and predoctoral fellowship to P. B.) is gratefully acknowledged.Bonancía Roca, P.; Jiménez Molero, MC.; Miranda Alonso, MÁ. (2011). Transient absorption spectroscopy detection of sensitized delayed fluorescence in chiral benzophenone/naphthalene systems. Chemical Physics Letters. 515(1-3):194-196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cplett.2011.08.096S1941965151-

Networking and the development of professionals: Beginning teachers building social capital

Beginning teachers need support when starting their teaching career. Networking can help teachers develop social capital which supports their development as professionals on their career journey. This paper presents case studies of three secondary school trainee teachers during an English year-long initial teacher education programme. The relationships supporting trainees were characterised differently: for practice development as opposed to enhancing a sense of belonging to the profession. Whether supportive relationships developed depended not only on the trainees but also on others. The paper encourages those involved in teacher education to promote social-capital building as supportive of the development of teachers as professionals

Commercial cultivation of Aloe

85-87ArticleThe plant Aloe is as old as human civilization and its versatile properties for various purposes have been well documented. The genus is found in tropical and South Africa, Malagasy and Arabia and introduced in other places for ornamental and medicinal purposes. Several species of the genus have been in use under the common name of Aloe, viz. Aloe vera Linn., A. barbadensis Miller, A. ferox Miller, A. chinensis Baker, A. indica Royle, A. perryi Baker, etc., belonging to family Liliaceae