Introducing ICT into Teacher-Training Programs: Problems in Bangladesh

Information and Communication Technology can offer more adaptable and efficient ways of teacher training for improvement of quality of professional development programs. But the use of ICT into teacher training usually faces certain obstacles. In this paper, we identified different barriers of introducing ICT into teacher training model (this model had been discussed by the authors in a separate paper, titled as “A model for integrating ICT into teacher training programs in Bangladesh based on TPCK) in Bangladesh, a developing country. We then described the strategies to overcome these problems for improving the current status of ICT integration into teacher training. Finally, we concluded with emerging research issues and offered pertinent recommendation with respect to ICT integration into teacher training program for improving quality of teaching in Bangladesh. Keywords: ICT integration, Teacher-training, knowledge and skil

Time Series Modelling of the Contribution of Agriculture to GDP of Bangladesh

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a basic measure of a country's overall economic performance. Bangladesh is basically an agriculture country and therefore agriculture plays important role on GDP. To assist in the decision making process, this article proposes a time series model based on the contribution of Agriculture to GDP from fiscal year 1972 to 2010. In this paper, we have identified ARIMA (1, 2, 1) model as a reasonable model to forecast the yearly growth rate of GDP of Bangladesh. We also found that the GARCH (1, 1) model with a specified set of parameters is the best fit for our concerned data set. The proposed models help to identify the influence of the agricultural sector on GDP. Key words: GDP, Stationarity, Stochastic Model, Arima Model, Garch Model, AIC, AICc and BIC

Pathways to well-being: the role of female education and empowerment in Bangladesh

Female education and empowerment are both prerequisites for, and outcomes of, sustainable economic development. This dissertation empirically examines the extent to which women’s empowerment results in well-being within the household. To this end, we use a nationally representative cross-sectional household survey dataset viz. Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) 2012. This dataset has unique information on various aspects of well-being for both primary male and female members of the same household along with empowerment data across five domains e.g. agricultural production decisions, access to productive resources, control of income, community leadership, and time allocation. We begin by exploring mechanisms through which mothers’ formal education impacts three health indicators—height, weight, and immunisation—for a sample of 887 children. We consider a range of pathways including mother’s participation in the income generating activities, autonomy in spending decisions, exposure to media, access to health information, health knowledge, use of antenatal service, and diversified diet. In addition to including these pathway variables to pick up ‘unobservable’ variation in the error term, we also include controls for differences in parental health, household income, location, and demographic characteristics of the children. Irrespective of inclusion of the pathway variables, maternal education is found significantly and positively correlated with child health markers; while father's education is found insignificant throughout. Next we analyse whether mothers’ empowerment, measured by a five-domain empowerment index, has any impact on (a) household members’ nutrient intake, (b) the household’s diet composition, and (c) the intra-household allocation of food. Since these food security indicators and mothers’ empowerment may be influenced by common unobservable household-specific gender norms, we instrument the latter using information on the number of community activities in which the mothers had participated in the past 12 months. While greater involvement in community activities is expected to empower the mothers; it is unlikely to have any direct causal impact on individuals’ nutrient intake and dietary variation. The regression results, based on a sample of household members from 3,843 agricultural households, show that mothers’ empowerment significantly increases not only the household members’ calorie and protein intake but also the households’ dietary diversity. Mothers’ education is also positively correlated with the households’ dietary diversity. Finally we examine whether empowerment influences the subjective well-being (SWB)— measured in terms of life satisfaction scores—of women once again using data from the 3,843 agricultural households. The ordered probit estimates show a positive association between the empowerment index and SWB: notably women appeared significantly happier than their husbands after accounting for the difference in common household, community, and demographic (e.g. religion) characteristics. Education is found to improve the SWB of both, yet its impact is stronger for the women. Given the possibility of reverse causation between empowerment and life satisfaction, we estimate the SWB function using the instrumental variable (IV) method. We use the average number of community activities participated in by women at village level in order to instrument their empowerment index. The IV results suggest that while women’s life satisfaction is significantly determined by empowerment; men’s life satisfaction is not. The gender gap in well-being partly arises owing to the fact that men and women differ in respect of drawing satisfaction from different domains of the empowerment. To conclude, our study underscores both the instrumental as well as the intrinsic importance of women’s education and empowerment for the well-being of households

The effects of turbulent cross-winds on combusting jets at low velocity ratios

Gas flares have been distinguished as a potential major source of hydrocarbon emissions from refineries and chemical plants. Flaring is the burning of waste gasses through a flare stack or other combustion device. By generating atmospheric turbulence in wind tunnel, an in-depth study has been conducted to capture the mechanics involving the reactive jet and stack-wake regions, which resembles the real world scenario of gas flaring, but at a reduced scale. In this study, a methodology has been described to generate atmospheric turbulence by passive grid to obtain the ideal turbulence intensities (Iu) and length scales (Lx) for model flare stacks. The entire flame is depicted by capturing flame images using multiple cameras. It is examined how the upstream turbulent flow interacts with non-premixed reactive jets at low velocity ratios. The size of the recirculation zone decreases with an enhanced turbulent cross-wind. In addition to that, a comprehensive study of discrete flame packets are carried out using instantaneous images. The colour of the flame is closely analyzed in order to distinguish the mixing phenomena of crossflow fluid and jet fluid in the near field. Moreover, empirical equation is proposed for predicting flame length in the presence of cross-wind. The changes in flame length, discrete flame packets, and colour are monitored for the different upstream turbulent cross-wind. It is observed in the current study that cross-wind turbulence affects the flame lengths, wake recirculation zone, vertical and lateral spread of the flame

Comments on Information Erasure in Black Hole

We analyze the Kim, Lee & Lee model of information erasure by black holes and find contradictions with standard physical laws. We demonstrate that the erasure model leads to arbitrarily fast information erasure; the proposed physical interpretation of information freezing at the event horizon as observed by an asymptotic observer is problematic; and information erasure, whatever the process may be, near the black hole horizon leads to contradictions with quantum mechanics if Landauer's principle is assumed. The later part of the work demonstrates the significance of the "erasure entropy." We show that the erasure entropy is the mutual information between two subsystems.Comment: 13 pages, clarified some issues in detai

Women's empowerment and gender-differentiated food allocation in Bangladesh

This paper analyzes the impact of women’s empowerment on two aspects of food security – calorie and protein intake of children - using data on agricultural households from the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. We are interested both in the differential impact of mother’s empowerment on the food security of boys and girls as well as in whether different aspects of empowerment have different effects. There are 10 different aspects of empowerment including making production decisions, owning and selling assets, being a member of a group and so on. Our estimates suggest that, in households with more empowered women, children enjoy higher calorie and protein intake but that daughters are disadvantaged relative to sons. Most importantly, mother’s empowerment is an important source of gender discrimination. When considering the sub-components of empowerment, we find that input into production decisions are important for both calorie consumption and protein. These findings are robust to a host of controls including household poverty, sibling composition, community social norms and individual characteristics

Empowerment and life satisfaction: evidence from Bangladesh

In this paper, we examine the relationship between life satisfaction and empowerment in rural Bangladesh. We analyse this relationship across region, religion, gender and income categories using data from the BIHS 2012. This dataset has detailed socio-economic information on co-resident couples and also provides information on the empowerment of individuals within the household. We correct for endogeneity both by including a range of community and household fixed effects to capture the impact of omitted variables as well as by estimating an instrumental variable model in which the average participation rate in community activities is our identifying variable. Our results are robust and indicate a positive relationship between empowerment and life satisfaction. Analysing the sub-components of the empowerment index, we find that women draw less satisfaction from having a say in production decisions and use of borrowed money but gain more satisfaction from membership in groups. The puzzle of “contented women” (i.e. the gender gap in life satisfaction) therefore is partly explained by the fact that men and women differ in the way they draw satisfaction from different domains of empowerment