Addressing educational disparity : using district level education development indices for equitable resource allocations in India

The challenge of development work in the social sector in India today is one of bridging huge disparities across regions of the country, gender and social groups. Unless national and state policies specifically target resources to address these disparities, achieving higher level outcomes in an inclusive manner, which is the real goal for human development in education and health, will be a distant dream. This paper takes up the case of the Indian government’s Elementary Education for All Mission to understand how this flagship program relates investments to spatial and social disparities. For identifying the most deprived districts in terms of educational inputs, outputs and overall development, the authors estimate district level education development indices for 2003-2004. The contribution of the largest investment program is measured by"per child allocations"and expenditures at the state and district levels for 2005-2006. An analysis of comparing the ratio of allocations to expenditures with the ratio of district level indices to sub-dimensional indices shows that there is an apparent disconnect between the"real investment needs"of the districts, reflected in their level of educational development and the actual allocations made on an annual basis. The analysis shows that although all districts received more funds for investing in elementary education programs, the most disadvantaged and needy districts received proportionately more funds, which helped these districts to bridge access and infrastructure gaps and appoint more teachers. Benchmarking sector development by spatial entities helps not only in monitoring the outcomes, but also in targeting planning and funding to reduce disparities.Primary Education,Education For All,Gender and Education,Access&Equity in Basic Education,

A hatchery manual for the common, Chinese and Indian major carps (2nd rev ed.)

This major work on carp hatchery and nursery methods was part of an Asian Development Bank (ADB) project to improve carp seed production technology in ADB-member countries notably Bangladesh, Burma, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Designed as a reference source on carp seed production and as a mini-library for those stationed at seed production centers remote from scientific information channels.Fish culture, Hatcheries, Aquaculture techniques, Manuals Cyprinidae

Progress of modern aquaculture

The development of the aquaculture industry worldwide is discussed in detail with respect to activities conducted by various international organizations, considering in particular the leading role played by the FAO and its regional agencies. A brief examination is also made of the current situation regarding the industry in India and the potential for further development and improvement

Reservoir fisheries in India

Following an account of factors influencing the biological productivity of reservoirs in India, details are given of energy transformation through primary production. An ecosystem approach to the management of reservoir fisheries is discussed, considering also socio-economic factors to be taken into account

Evaluation of thallium-201 scanning for detection of latent coronary artery disease

The use of thallium imaging as a noninvasive method to accurately screen shuttle passengers for latent coronary artery disease was investigated. All radionuclide procedures were performed using an Anger type camera with a high resolution collimator. A minimum of 200,000 counts were collected for each image using a 20% window centered on the 69-83 keV X-rays. For the images obtained following injection with the patient at rest, the testing was begun 10 minutes after injection. Injections of TT during exercise were made at a point near the termination of the treadmill procedure as determined by either the appearance of ST segment changes on the electrocardiogram consistant with subendocardial ischemia, the appearance of angina-like chest pain in the patient or fatigue in the patient which required cessation of the test. The severity of heart disease was based on the medical history, physical exam, exercise electrocardiograms, chest X-rays and the coronary arteriogram

Performance Analysis of Microservices Behavior in Cloud vs Containerized Domain based on CPU Utilization

Enterprise application development is rapidly moving towards a microservices-based approach. Microservices development makes application deployment more reliable and responsive based on their architecture and the way of deployment. Still, the performance of microservices is different in all environments based on resources provided by the respective cloud and services provided in the backend such as auto-scaling, load balancer, and multiple monitoring parameters. So, it is strenuous to identify Scaling and monitoring of microservice-based applications are quick as compared to monolithic applications [1]. In this paper, we deployed microservice applications in cloud and containerized environments to analyze their CPU utilization over multiple network input requests. Monolithic applications are tightly coupled while microservices applications are loosely coupled which help the API gateway to easily interact with each service module. With reference to monitoring parameters, CPU utilization is 23 percent in cloud environment. Additionally, we deployed the equivalent microservice in a containerized environment with extended resources to minimize CPU utilization to 17 percent. Furthermore, we have shown the performance of the application with “Network IN” and “Network Out” requests

Application of Von Bertalanffy's growth model to Setipinna phasa (Hamlilton) when growth is allometric

A shape factor was introduced in the growth equation for S. phasa (Ham.) based on Von Bertalanffy's growth model and allometric growth. The estimates thus obtained fit the observed values better than those obtained with the assumption that growth is isometric. A new method of evaluating shape factor is described

In vivo nuclear magnetic resonance imaging

A number of physiological changes have been demonstrated in bone, muscle and blood after exposure of humans and animals to microgravity. Determining mechanisms and the development of effective countermeasures for long duration space missions is an important NASA goal. The advent of tomographic nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR or MRI) gives NASA a way to greatly extend early studies of this phenomena in ways not previously possible; NMR is also noninvasive and safe. NMR provides both superb anatomical images for volume assessments of individual organs and quantification of chemical/physical changes induced in the examined tissues. The feasibility of NMR as a tool for human physiological research as it is affected by microgravity is demonstrated. The animal studies employed the rear limb suspended rat as a model of mucle atrophy that results from microgravity. And bedrest of normal male subjects was used to simulate the effects of microgravity on bone and muscle

VIV Excitation Competition Between Bare and Buoyant Segments of Flexible Cylinders

This paper addresses a practical problem: “Under which coverage of buoyancy modules, would the Vortex Induced Vibration (VIV) excitation on buoyant segments dominate the response?” This paper explores the excitation competition between bare and buoyant segments of a 38 meter long model riser. The source of data is a recent model test, conducted by SHELL Exploration and Production at the MARINTEK Ocean Basin in Trondheim Norway. A pipe model with five buoyancy configurations was tested. The results of these tests show that (1) the excitation on the bare and buoyant regions could be identified by frequency, because the bare and buoyant regions are associated with two different frequencies due to the different diameters; (2) a new phenomenon was observed; A third frequency in the spectrum is found not to be a multiple of the frequency associated with either bare or buoyancy regions, but the sum of the frequency associated with bare region and twice of the frequency associated with buoyancy region; (3) the contribution of the response at this third frequency to the total amplitude is small; (4) the power dissipated by damping at each excitation frequency is the metric used to determine the winner of excitation competition. For most buoyancy configurations, the excitation on buoyancy regions dominates the VIV response; (5) a formula is proposed to predict the winner of the excitation competition between bare and buoyant segments for a given buoyancy coverage.DeepStar (Consortium)SHEAR7 JI

Drag amplification and fatigue damage in vortex-induced vibrations

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-184).Fatigue damage and drag force amplification due to Vortex-Induced-Vibrations (VIV) continue to cause significant problems in the design of structures which operate in ocean current environments. These problems are magnified by the uncertainty in VIV prediction, particularly with regard to fatigue damage. Although the last fifteen years has seen significant advancement in VIV prediction, important fatigue and drag related questions remain unanswered. This research addresses two important problems. The first is the difficulty in measuring local drag coefficients on long flexible cylinders, excited by VIV. At best engineers are forced to use spatially averaged drag coefficients. This is especially inaccurate when the pipe and flow properties change, either due to partial coverage with VIV mitigation devices, such as strakes or fairings, or shear in the incident current profile. The second problem is the lack of design procedures that account for the effect on fatigue damage due to the higher harmonics in the VIV strain response. To address these problems, two experiments were performed to collect data, the first in October of 2004 and the second in October of 2006. Both of these experiments were designed specifically to collect strain measurements from a densely instrumented pipe undergoing VIV at high mode numbers when subjected to current profiles with varying amounts of shear. Data from these experiments was used to develop a method to extract local drag forces from the measured mean strain. This method, when applied to a partially faired pipe undergoing VIV, successfully and accurately distinguished the dissimilar local drag coefficient between the bare pipe region and the region with fairings. In bare pipes, for the first time the method allowed for the measurement of the variation of local drag coefficient along the length of a flexible pipe undergoing VIV in sheared current.(cont.) Further by using filtering techniques, the higher harmonics were isolated and analyzed, particularly for their magnitude and phase response characteristics. Interesting features about the phase relationships between the first, second and third harmonics were observed when the primary VIV response was in the form of a traveling wave. Finally, data revealed some inaccuracies in the fatigue estimation techniques currently being used by the oil and gas industry. Two methods are suggested to incorporate the higher harmonics in VIV related fatigue design while correcting the observed inaccuracies in the current methods. The results revealed limitations in the commonly used, vibration-amplitude based methods of calculating local drag coefficients and may lead to modifications to correct these limitations. These findings also provide tools for researchers to include the higher harmonics in VIV related fatigue damage calculations and remove some of the uncertainty involved in VIV fatigue estimation and could lead to smaller safety factors in VIV fatigue design.by Vikas Gopal Jhingran.Ph.D