Education for Peace in the Light of NCF–2005

We live in an age of unprecedented levels of violence, with constant threats posed by intolerance, fanaticism, dispute and discordance. Ethical action, peace and welfare are facing new challenges. A strong need is being felt by educationists, philosophers, scientists and political leaders to rejuvenate the human values, which may bring long lasting peace on this planet. The purpose of education goes beyond the propagation of knowledge. Delor’s     report (1996) on learning to live together as the central pillar of education proposes that education must be geared to promote a culture of peace, tolerance, democratic values, human rights and duties among students. With the reality of the alarming increase in violence in school life, the National Curriculum Framework (NCF)–2005 strongly advocates education for peace at all levels of schools. In this backdrop the present paper tries to epitomise the concept of education for peace in the light of NCF–2005. In the final section, approach, strategies, activities and teacher’s role in education for peace in the landscape of school education are also addressed as envisaged in the NCF–2005. Keywords : Education, Peace, Human Values, Harmony, NCF–2005

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation — An Appraisal

Education aims at making children capable of becoming responsible, productive and useful members of a society. Knowledge, skills and attitudes are built through learning experiences and opportunities created for learners in school. It is in the classroom that learners can analyse and evaluate their experiences, learn to doubt, to question, to investigate and to think independently. The aim of education simultaneously reflects the current needs and aspirations of a society as well as its lasting values and human ideals. As aspiration and expectations of each generation vary with time, constant review of curriculum and evaluation system becomes an essential exercise. The main purposes of evaluation is to help the learners improve their achievement in scholastic areas and to develop life skills and attitudes with reference to the larger context and canvas of life. In keeping with the above, reforms in the examination system are often recommended, sometimes discussed and rarely implemented. Introduction of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) is one of such reforms which have undergone a long journey. This article examines the concept continuous and comprehensive evaluation, its historical perspectives, its need and importance, its features and role of teacher in implementing CCE in the landscape of Indian school

Real-time analytics on large dynamic graphs

In today's fast-paced and interconnected digital world, the data generated by an increasing number of applications is being modeled as dynamic graphs. The graph structure encodes relationships among data items, while the structural changes to the graphs as well as the continuous stream of information produced by the entities in these graphs make them dynamic in nature. Examples include social networks where users post status updates, images, videos, etc.; phone call networks where nodes may send text messages or place phone calls; road traffic networks where the traffic behavior of the road segments changes constantly, and so on. There is a tremendous value in storing, managing, and analyzing such dynamic graphs and deriving meaningful insights in real-time. However, a majority of the work in graph analytics assumes a static setting, and there is a lack of systematic study of the various dynamic scenarios, the complexity they impose on the analysis tasks, and the challenges in building efficient systems that can support such tasks at a large scale. In this dissertation, I design a unified streaming graph data management framework, and develop prototype systems to support increasingly complex tasks on dynamic graphs. In the first part, I focus on the management and querying of distributed graph data. I develop a hybrid replication policy that monitors the read-write frequencies of the nodes to decide dynamically what data to replicate, and whether to do eager or lazy replication in order to minimize network communication and support low-latency querying. In the second part, I study parallel execution of continuous neighborhood-driven aggregates, where each node aggregates the information generated in its neighborhoods. I build my system around the notion of an aggregation overlay graph, a pre-compiled data structure that enables sharing of partial aggregates across different queries, and also allows partial pre-computation of the aggregates to minimize the query latencies and increase throughput. Finally, I extend the framework to support continuous detection and analysis of activity-based subgraphs, where subgraphs could be specified using both graph structure as well as activity conditions on the nodes. The query specification tasks in my system are expressed using a set of active structural primitives, which allows the query evaluator to use a set of novel optimization techniques, thereby achieving high throughput. Overall, in this dissertation, I define and investigate a set of novel tasks on dynamic graphs, design scalable optimization techniques, build prototype systems, and show the effectiveness of the proposed techniques through extensive evaluation using large-scale real and synthetic datasets

Indoor pollution from solid biomass fuel and rural health damage: A micro-environmental study in rural area of Burdwan, West Bengal

AbstractEmissions from biomass combustion are a major source of indoor and outdoor air pollution, and are estimated to cause millions of premature deaths worldwide annually. In this study, we assessed the effect of exposure to biomass smoke on various health status including blood pressure, gaseous component and ventilation pattern of kitchen and living room. For this investigation, a number of measurements were done to obtain indoor air quality (IAQ) data (indoor humidity, temperature, CO, CO2 and O3 concentration). Blood pressure was measured at baseline and one hour post-exposure. Results highlighted that a higher concentration of CO2 was released during burning of dry leaf, straw, cow dung compared to that from straw and LPG gas. Moreover, correlation study showed a strong negative relationship between CO and humidity (r=−0.609, p<0.000). Symptoms like eye irritation, shortness of breath, cough and dizziness were highly prevalent among biomass users. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure showed a strong positive (p<0.05) relationship with age of biomass users. However, wood users suffer from high systolic pressure (p<0.037). On the other hand, a very poor ventilation pattern was recorded in the studied population

Loss of BRD7 promotes breast cancer lung metastasis by reprogramming the tumor immune microenvironment

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Effects of ultraviolet radiation on pigmentation and malondialdehyde content of three aquatic macrophytes

A study has been done in order to evaluate the ill effects of UV-A,UV-B and UV-C on pigmentation and malondialdehyde content of floating macrophytes (Lemna sp., Pistia sp. and Eichhornia sp.) in one, three, and five days interval. Study results revealed that all types of ultraviolet light (UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C) did not produce same extent of ill effects on the studied macrophytes. Pistia sp. and Eichhornia sp. showed similar reduction pattern of chl a/chl b ratio with respect to control. Results also suggest that among the three types of radiation only UV-B showed higher level of changes in both the pigment and malondialdehyde content. Moreover, among the three tested macrophytes only Lemna sp. showed some protective role against UV radiation compared to other to macrophytes

A wastewater bacterium 'Bacillus' sp. KUJM2 acts as an agent for remediation of potentially toxic elements and promoter of plant ('Lens culinaris') growth

This study investigated the role of an allochthonous Gram-positive wastewater bacterium (Bacillus sp. KUJM2) selected through rigorous screening, for the removal of potentially toxic elements (PTEs; As, Cd, Cu, Ni) and promotion of plant growth under PTE-stress conditions. The dried biomass of the bacterial strain removed PTEs (5 mg L−1) from water by 90.17–94.75 and 60.4–81.41%, whereas live cells removed 87.15–91.69 and 57.5–78.8%, respectively, under single-PTE and co-contaminated conditions. When subjected to a single PTE, the bacterial production of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) reached the maxima with Cu (67.66%) and Ni (64.33%), but Cd showed an inhibitory effect beyond 5 mg L−1 level. The multiple-PTE treatment induced IAA production only up to 5 mg L−1 beyond which inhibition ensued. Enhanced germination rate, germination index and seed production of lentil plant (Lens culinaris) under the bacterial inoculation indicated the plant growth promotion potential of the microbial strain. Lentil plants, as a result of bacterial inoculation, responded with higher shoot length (7.1–27.61%), shoot dry weight (18.22–36.3%) and seed production (19.23–29.17%) under PTE-stress conditions. The PTE uptake in lentil shoots decreased by 67.02–79.85% and 65.94–78.08%, respectively, under single- and multiple-PTE contaminated conditions. Similarly, PTE uptake was reduced in seeds up to 72.82–86.62% and 68.68–85.94%, respectively. The bacteria-mediated inhibition of PTE translocation in lentil plant was confirmed from the translocation factor of the respective PTEs. Thus, the selected bacterium (Bacillus sp. KUJM2) offered considerable potential as a PTE remediating agent, plant growth promoter and regulator of PTE translocation curtailing environmental and human health risks