Students' Engagement during Collection of Attendance: An Experience of a Pilot Study

In many medical colleges in India, the annual intake for an undergraduate course is 250. Recording attendance of 250 students is a humongous task. It involves an average of 8.93 ± 1.06 minutes, which is approximately 15% of the total time of the one-hour lecture. During this time, students commonly sit idly while waiting for their roll number call. Interestingly, continuous calling of 250 roll numbers at a stretch is an additional voice stress to the teachers. With this background, we designed a program – students’ engagement during collection of attendance (SEdCA). A comprehension test about the lecture topic was conducted in five minutes, and the answer sheets were collected in the next three minutes. These answer sheets were then scanned (i.e., looked at all parts of answer sheets) for roll numbers and were recorded in the register. This method keeps the students engaged in an academic activity during the time of attendance recording. It also helps in reduction of voice stress to the teachers. This method of attendance collection may be adapted by institutions according to available logistics especially when their student’s strength is more than 250

Solar or Diesel: A Comparison of Costs for Groundwater‐Fed Irrigation in Sub‐Saharan Africa Under Two Energy Solutions

Sub-Saharan Africa has long been beset with food insecurity and energy poverty. Expanding irrigated agriculture can help boost food production in the region, but this requires energy for accessing water, especially in groundwater-fed irrigation. This paper compared economic performance of groundwater pumping for irrigation under two energy solutions: solar photovoltaic (PV) and diesel fuel. We estimated the life-cycle costs of the power units of two pumping systems for a range of crop and irrigation method scenarios and mapped their relative cost-effectiveness over cropland in sub-Saharan Africa. As a renewable and clean energy source, solar energy has attracted much attention and there is keen interest in investing in solar PV to support the development of irrigated agriculture. Results of this study provide insights into the prospects of promoting solar irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa

Quantum random walk : effect of quenching

We study the effect of quenching on a discrete quantum random walk by removing a detector placed at a position $x_D$ abruptly at time $t_R$ from its path. The results show that this may lead to an enhancement of the occurrence probability at $x_D$ provided the time of removal $t_R < t_{R}^{lim}$ where $t_{R}^{lim}$ scales as $x_D{^2}$. The ratio of the occurrence probabilities for a quenched walker ($t_R \neq 0$) and free walker ($t_R =0$) shows that it scales as $1/t_R$ at large values of $t_R$ independent of $x_D$. On the other hand if $t_R$ is fixed this ratio varies as $x_{D}^{2}$ for small $x_D$. The results are compared to the classical case. We also calculate the correlations as functions of both time and position.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted version in PR