ICT for Curriculum Support and Teaching

This paper presents an overview of the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in education, with a focus on the tools, framework architecture for designing curriculum and impact on teaching, curriculum and learning environment of ICT. The government’s current ICT policy in education is then explained, together with a review of the status in the implementation, regarding the four aspects of access and connectivity, teacher ennoblement, curriculum and support, and community-wide culture. Issues and concerns facing teachers and schools are addressed in this movement towards the integration of technology in education

Classifying Mechanisms of Spiral Wave Breakup Underlying Cardiac Fibrillation Using Quantitative Metrics

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the world and manifest themselves in several forms, including arrhythmias. These disruptions in the normal rhythm of the heart inhibit the regular transmission of electrical signals that are essential for the heart to contract and pump blood to the rest of the body. During reentrant arrhythmias, spiral or scroll waves of electrical activation are conducted through the cardiac tissue and excite it repeatedly. As these waves propagate through the heart, they can break up in an irregular manner, leading to the onset of fibrillation. There are several mechanisms by which these reentrant waves can destabilize, but they are known mostly from computational studies. Experimentally, it has not been possible so far to distinguish among these mechanisms based on straightforward observations of the heart\u27s voltage during fibrillation. As a preliminary step in this direction, we aim to determine whether quantifying certain observable properties of the system will allow us to identify the mechanism underlying a given fibrillation episode. Toward this end, we propose a number of metrics that could help us classify mechanisms underlying fibrillation, including chaos in the system as assessed by the largest Lyapunov exponent; the amount of information (mutual information) and dependency (spatial correlation) shared by various spatial points in the domain; and reentrant wave properties like the number of reentries, wave birth and death rates, reentrant wave lifetimes, and spiral wave tip speeds. We implement and apply these metrics to simulated data obtained by numerically solving partial differential equations describing electrical wave propagation in the heart. Specifically, we analyze data achieved through six different mechanisms of reentrant wave breakup: steep APD restitution, discordant alternans, bistability, Doppler effect, supernormal conduction velocity and periodic boundary conditions. Our results suggest that of the various reentrant wave properties, the distribution of the number of reentries over time serves to be the most useful metric by providing a visual representation of how the breakup proceeds with time for each mechanism. When the mutual information and spatial correlation are studied in the context of the distribution of reentries over time, they help us gauge any spatial dependencies that may be present in the system. To validate our findings, we carried out a blind test to classify breakup mechanisms in four provided data sets with established breakup mechanisms. Our metrics correctly classified the mechanisms for three of these cases, and we are condent that further optimization could improve the reliability of our approach. Our work forms the basis for future studies that apply these and other metrics towards identifying the mechanisms responsible for fibrillation in experimental settings

Quantum uncertainties in coupled harmonic oscillator

In this paper we analyze the quantum uncertainties and the photon statistics in the interaction between the two modes of radiation by treating them as coupled harmonic oscillator with the motivation of controlling quantum properties of one light beam by another. Under the rotating wave approximation (RWA) we show that if initially one of the modes is coherent and the other one squeezed, then the squeezing and non-Poissonianness of the photon statistics can transfer from one mode to the other. We give a parametric study of these properties depending upon interaction time and the degree of initial squeezing in one of the modes.Comment: RevTex, 7pages preprint, figures available on request to [email protected], replaced version is same but without some LaTex corrextion

Bulk Disposal of Unserviceable Toxic Cresylic Acid Waste Using Polymerisation Technique

A bulk amount of unserviceable toxic cresylic acid waste has been disposed off in a safe and environmentally benign manner. A process to immobilize this waste into non-toxic solid cresol formaldehyde polymer has been developed. Initial study was performed for 1.0 Kg batch size for optimizing the process parameters and conditions, and on the basis of this data, process was scaled-up for bulk disposal (100 Kg / batch). The effect of ratio of reactants, type of catalyst [H2SO4, NaOH and Ca(OH)2], catalyst concentration, reaction temperature and reaction time have been studied in a batch process. Maximum immobilization in the 1.0 Kg batch studies was obtained when cresylic acid and formaldehyde were taken in a molar ratio 1 : 1.5 using NaOH as a catalyst. For bulk polymerization, a ratio of 1.0 : 1.2 (cresylic acid : formaldehyde) with NaOH {0.7 % (wt. / wt. of total charge)} was found optimum. The final polymerized product has been buried as per standard procedure in two brick lined pits and finally, the site has been declared as free from the toxic waste.Defence Science Journal, 2011, 61(5), pp.505-511, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.61.51