Socio-Economic and Educational Status of Muslim Women: A Comparative Outlook

One-fourth of the entire population of West Bengal, an Indian state,  are the  Muslims who have been well thought-out as the second largest religious group and meanwhile the biggest minority of the state representing about ninety six percent to the total state minority population according to the census report of 2001 in spite of that it has been reported that in contrast to other religious communities or groups residing in West Bengal, the Muslims with special reference to the Muslim women are lagged behind the mainstream in almost every spheres of social development viz. socio-economic standing, educational attainment, empowerment, political participation and decision making and so on due to various external and internal factors. The proposed paper attempts to explore the status of Muslim women in West Bengal in a comparative perspective. Emphasis has also been given to enquire the pattern of work participation, employment and inclusion of Muslim women in comparison to the women in other religious groups of West Bengal. An endeavor has also been made to pinpoint the factors which are operating as bottleneck in their social change and development and to provide some suggestions and way forward. The present paper is based on facts gathered through both secondary and primary sources of data. Numerous relevant published literatures were consulted besides the author’s empirical field studies to produce this piece of writing. Keywords: Muslim women; status; backwardness; development; problems; way forward

Designing Experiential Learning Projects for Teaching Marketing Courses

Business schools are putting more emphasis on the improvement of teaching and learning methods to better prepare their graduates and meet the industry demands. This improvement has been sought through the use of face to face teaching approach blended with industry projects and experiential exercises. This study reports on a similar effort initiated in teaching the international marketing course in an undergraduate business program. An experiment is conducted in which a combination of face to face classroom and experiential learning project is used. Through this experiment, the author describes a semester-long, international marketing project that is structured to elicit active student engagement with international marketing course material and promote hands-on, real-world experience. Students learning enhanced tremendously as reflected in their papers and reports. The managers of the participating firms also appreciated the students’ efforts. The participating firms benefited by getting objective views of some of their international marketing problems and issues

Isolation of a flavone glucoside from Glycosmis mauritiana (Rutaceae)

AbstractFrom the ethyl acetate extract of the roots of Glycosmis mauritiana a flavone glucoside, luteolin 8-C-β-d-glucopyranoside was isolated. The structure was established by UV, IR, NMR and mass spectral studies

Design, Development, and Examination of New Lightweight High-Entropy Alloy for Structural Applications

The use of lightweight materials for structural applications can reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions towards climate change mitigation. However, lightweight materials must be carefully designed without compromising strength and safety; hence the continued search for high specific-strength materials. This thesis contributes to these efforts: to discover, develop, and characterize lightweight high-entropy alloys (LHEAs) for structural applications. Obtaining solid-solution (SS) in alloys instead of intermetallic (IM) compounds is usually desirable because IM compounds can detrimentally reduce ductility and corrosion resistance. HEAs are multi-principal element alloys in which complex pair-wise interactions between constituent elements can favour IM compound formation. As such, empirical rules for predicting SS formation (over IM compound) and crystal structure in HEAs exist—atomic size difference, enthalpy of mixing, mixing entropy, entropy to enthalpy ratio, Pauling electronegativity difference, and valence electron concentration. However, these rules break down. This thesis first re-examines the empirical rules’ effectiveness by conducting a systematic study that isolates the effect of processing pathways known to impact phase stability. A new conservative phase and SS formation criteria for AlTiCuZn-based LHEAs are proposed; the revised rules are verified by developing new LHEAs that are accurately predicted—AlTi0.37CuZn0.97 and AlTi0.56Cu1.24Zn1.2. As a next step, the thermal degradation pattern of a new dual-phase AlTi0.45CuZn LHEA (ρ=5.71 g/cc) from phase decomposition to evaporation was further investigated. Using multimodal advanced characterization techniques, AlTi0.45CuZn is found to be thermally-stable up to between 250 and 360 °C. Beyond this limit, multistep decomposition occurs: phase decomposition at ~360 °C forms Al-Ti phase off the AlTi0.45CuZn matrix due to the largest negative mixing enthalpy for Al-Ti than other binary pairs; Zn evaporation at ~750 °C due to its faster evaporation rate than other constituent elements; and LHEA melting at 880 °C. The LHEA possesses sluggish grain growth and better nano-indentation hardness among other LHEAs of close density range due to combined grain size and phase strengthening effects. This work offers new insight into the processing-structure-properties relationship of LHEAs and further advances the field’s understanding of LHEA thermal deteriorative behavior in structural applications at elevated temperatures

Comparison of the physical properties and sealing ability of MTA and Portland cement

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

The emerging role of oxylipins in thrombosis and diabetes.

The prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD), the leading cause of death in the US, is predicted to increase due to the shift in age of the general population and increase in CVD risk factors such as obesity and diabetes. New therapies are required to decrease the prevalence of CVD risk factors (obesity and diabetes) as well as reduce atherothrombosis, the major cause of CVD related mortality. Oxylipins, bioactive metabolites derived from the oxygenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids, play a role in the progression of CVD risk factors and thrombosis. Aspirin, a cyclooxygenase-1 inhibitor, decreases atherothrombotic associated mortality by 25%. These potent effects of aspirin have shown the utility of modulating oxylipin signaling pathways to decrease CVD mortality. The role of many oxylipins in the progression of CVD, however, is still uncertain or controversial. An increased understanding of the role oxylipins play in CVD risk factors and thrombosis could lead to new therapies to decrease the prevalence of CVD and its associated mortality

Real time tracking using nature-inspired algorithms

This thesis investigates the core difficulties in the tracking field of computer vision. The aim is to develop a suitable tuning free optimisation strategy so that a real time tracking could be achieved. The population and multi-solution based approaches have been applied first to analyse the convergence behaviours in the evolutionary test cases. The aim is to identify the core misconceptions in the manner the search characteristics of particles are defined in the literature. A general perception in the scientific community is that the particle based methods are not suitable for the real time applications. This thesis improves the convergence properties of particles by a novel scale free correlation approach. By altering the fundamental definition of a particle and by avoiding the nostalgic operations the tracking was expedited to a rate of 250 FPS. There is a reasonable amount of similarity between the tracking landscapes and the ones generated by three dimensional evolutionary test cases. Several experimental studies are conducted that compares the performances of the novel optimisation to the ones observed with the swarming methods. It is therefore concluded that the modified particle behaviour outclassed the traditional approaches by huge margins in almost every test scenario