Perceptions of Head Teachers about Whole School Development Plan in the Province of Punjab

The present study aimed to check the perception of head teachers about the whole school development plan in the province of Punjab. The research design was qualitative in nature and the main objectives of the study were; to know the perceptions of head teachers of the whole school development plan, to find out the role of head teachers in implementing of whole school development plan, to identify the factors affecting the implementation of whole school development plan and to find out the impact of school development plan on quality education. The population of the study was all the head teachers of high and higher secondary schools in Punjab. The sample was randomly selected and consisted of ten (10) head teachers. An interview schedule was developed by the researchers following the three sections i.e. planning process, implementation and evaluation. Data were collected by the researchers through face-to-face interviews with the head teachers. Data were analyzed by interpreting the results in schematic form. The main finding of the study was that the Whole School Development Plan (WSDP) was designed for 2-3 years on the basis of the need assessment of the school and by setting priorities in order to achieve the set targets. The WSDP was implemented under the leadership of the head teacher with community engagement and proved to be a very effective activity in order to meet the quality of education

Performance evaluation of GWO/PID approach in control of ball hoop system with different objective functions and perturbation

The present work deals with robustness and comparative analysis of grey wolf optimization (GWO)/proportional-integral-derivative (PID) approach in control of a ball and hoop (BH) system with different objective functions. The BH system is a device consisting of a ball rolling on the rim of a hoop and can be used to analyse the dynamics of liquid slosh problems. The commonly used objective functions are integral absolute error (IAE), integral square error (ISE), integral of square time multiplied by absolute error (ISTAE) and integral of time multiplied absolute error (ITAE). These objective functions have been minimized with the GWO algorithm to obtain parameters of the PID controller for the control of BH system. The robustness analysis of the proposed GWO/PID approach has also been carried out with ±5% perturbation in locations of the poles. The poles of BH system are perturbed by ±5% of the nominal value and the same PID controller tuned by the GWO algorithm has been applied on the perturbed systems. The comparative analysis of GWO/PID approach is demonstrated with several other existing techniques in terms of the transient response’s parameters. The results of the GWO/PID approach outperform certain of the existing techniques in the literature, and the performance of the controller hardly alters with perturbation and objective functions; after it is tuned by GWO

Pharmacokinetic evaluation, molecular docking and in vitro biological evaluation of 1, 3, 4-oxadiazole derivatives as potent antioxidants and STAT3 inhibitors

1, 3, 4-Oxadiazole derivatives (4a–5f) were previously synthesized to investigate their anticancer properties. However, studies relating to their antioxidant potential and signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) inhibition have not been performed. We investigated previously synthesized 1, 3, 4-oxadiazole derivatives (4a–5f) for various radical scavenging properties using several in vitro antioxidant assays and also for direct inhibition of STAT3 through molecular docking. The data obtained from various antioxidant assays such as 2, 2,-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH), nitric oxide, hydrogen peroxide, and superoxide anion radical revealed that among all the derivatives, compound 5e displayed high antioxidant activities than the standard antioxidant L-ascorbic acid. Additionally, the total reduction assay and antioxidant capacity assay further confirmed the antioxidant potential of compound 5e. Furthermore, the molecular docking studies performed for all derivatives along with the standard inhibitor STX-0119 showed that binding energy released in direct binding with the SH2 domain of STAT3 was the highest for compound 5e (-9.91kcal/mol). Through virtual screening, compound 5e was found to exhibit optimum competency in inhibiting STAT3 activity. Compound 5e decreased the activation of STAT3 as observed with Western blot. In brief, compound 5e was identified as a potent antioxidant agent and STAT3 inhibitor and effective agent for cancer treatment. Keywords: 1, 3, 4-oxadiazoles, Structure-activity relationship (SAR), Antioxidant activities, STAT3 inhibitors, Molecular dockin