Parent involvement towards children’s reading habit: A focus group survey from Nashik, India

Abstract Purpose - This study was carried out to ascertain parents’ attitude about reading related activities of children, to discover parents’ efforts for instilling the reading habit in their children, to understand the challenges faced by parents in inculcating reading habit in their children, and to suggest possible solutions to the parents’ difficulties related to their children’s reading habits. Design/ Methodology - The research was conducted using the Survey method, with Focus Group Discussion used as the data collection tool. The research sample was 24 parents of pupils who were studying in the primary and secondary Marathi medium schools in Nashik district. An anonymous data was collected Qualitative descriptive analysis was carried out of the collected data. Findings - It was observed that parents knew that pleasure reading was important for the overall behavioral development of their children. However, less than half of them performed any substantial activities to instill the reading habit in their children. Children’s excessive usage of the internet, time constraints, children’s disinterest in reading, and parents’ incognizance about the effective reading material were the main challenges faced. Originality/ Value - This study is one of the first one of its kind in the Indian scenario. Uniquely collecting parents’ real experiences through focus group interviews, this paper provides concrete solutions to the difficulties of parents in inculcating reading habits among their children. Paper type - Research pape

Linear and nonlinear substructured Restricted Additive Schwarz iterations and preconditioning

Iterative substructuring Domain Decomposition (DD) methods have been extensively studied, and they are usually associated with nonoverlapping decompositions. It is less known that classical overlapping DD methods can also be formulated in substructured form, i.e., as iterative methods acting on variables defined exclusively on the interfaces of the overlapping domain decomposition. We call such formulations substructured domain decomposition methods. We introduce here a substructured version of Restricted Additive Schwarz (RAS) which we call SRAS. We show that RAS and SRAS are equivalent when used as iterative solvers, as they produce the same iterates, while they are substantially different when used as preconditioners for GMRES. We link the volume and substructured Krylov spaces and show that the iterates are different by deriving the least squares problems solved at each GMRES iteration. When used as iterative solvers, SRAS presents computational advantages over RAS, as it avoids computations with matrices and vectors at the volume level. When used as preconditioners, SRAS has the further advantage of allowing GMRES to store smaller vectors and perform orthogonalization in a lower dimensional space. We then consider nonlinear problems, and we introduce SRASPEN (Substructured Restricted Additive Schwarz Preconditioned Exact Newton), where SRAS is used as a preconditioner for Newton’s method. In contrast to the linear case, we prove that Newton’s method applied to the preconditioned volume and substructured formulation produces the same iterates in the nonlinear case. Next, we introduce two-level versions of nonlinear SRAS and SRASPEN. Finally, we validate our theoretical results with numerical experiments

Marine turtle conservation programs in villages of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra

Maharashtra is active in sea turtle conservation and its citizen actions with support of forest department are highly commendable particularly in some regions of southern Maharashtra. During the surveys conducted at Harne and Kolthare villages of Ratnagiri in March 2019 it was observed that local volunteers known as “Kasav Mitra” identified by Forest Department, in Ratnagiri District of Maharashtra are undertaking beach patrolling and relocating the eggs to secured enclosures for multiple reasons such as the egg sites being too close to tide water level, beaches open to public that can result in eggs being unknowingly crushed by beachgoers, or dug up by dogs or targeted poaching

Multiple carcasses of Olive Ridleys along Malvan Beach

The Olive Ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) is protected under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Maharashtra government along with NGOs are undertaking several efforts in conservation of sea turtles along the coast. There is a state sponsored incentive program of `500 for locating and sharing information with forest officials. Malvan coast in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra is known for turtle and fisheries interactions. Occasional turtle nestings can be seen between November to April

DEVELOPMENT OF SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC AND FLUOROMETRIC METHODS FOR ESTIMATION OF DARUNAVIR USING QBD APPROACH

Objective: The main objective of the present study is to develop newer simple, precise spectrophotometric and fluorometric methods of estimation for Darunavir using coupling agent O-pthaladehyde.Methods: The experimental work was designed for both spectroscopic and fluorometric method development and validation. The method is based on formation complex of Darunavir with O-pthaladehyde. QbD approach was applied by varying different parameters. These parameters were designed into Ishikawa diagram.Results: The complex Darunavir-Phthalaldehyde in methanol with 0.1 N HCl showed linearity for both spectrophotometric and fluorometric methods. The calibration curve by spectrophotometry is linear in concentration range of 2-22 µg/ml with regression coefficient (R2) = 0.998 at 355 nm and for fluorometry it is linear in concentration range of 0.5-5.0 ng/ml with regression coefficient (R2) = 0.999. This method was found to be rugged and robust in different testing criteria with % RSD less than 2. The limit of detection and limit of quantification was found to be 0.2 μg/ml and 0.8 μg/ml for a spectrophotometric method and 0.12 μg/ml and 0.43 μg/ml for fluorometric method respectively.Conclusion: Both methods were found to be precise with % RSD of less than 2. The % recovery of the spectrophotometric and fluorometric methods was found to be 101.04 %, 98.15 % respectively. In this way, the results of all validation parameter were within the limits as per International Conference on Harmonization guideline.Â

EFFECT OF LOWER ETHANOL GASOLINE BLENDS ON PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SINGLE CYLINDER SI ENGINE

Alcohols, basically ethanol is considered as a leading alternative fuel for automotive application because of its ability to reduce the air pollution and cost of the fuel. This paper investigates the effect of lower ethanol gasoline blends (up to 20% by volume) on performance and emission characteristics of the single cylinder four stroke SI engine. Tests were carried out for power, torque, fuel consumption and brake mean effective pressure, while exhaust emissions were analyzed for CO, CO2, and HC by using different ethanol gasoline blends on volume basis at wide open throttle and variable engine speed from 4000 to 8000 rpm. Results were compared with the pure gasoline. It showed that as the ethanol content increases the power, torque, fuel consumption, brake mean effective pressure and CO2 emission while reduces HC and CO emission

EFFECT OF CANNA INDICA L. EXTRACT AGAINST CAFFEINE-NICOTINE CO-ADMINISTRATION-INDUCED EXAGGERATION IN TYPE 2 DIABETIC RATS

Objective: This study was designed to evaluate the protective effect of Canna indica L. extract against caffeine-nicotine administration-induced type 2 diabetes exaggeration in rats.Methods: A study was conducted for three weeks in four rat groups (n=6); viz.  type 2 diabetic control group, a caffeine-nicotine diabetic control group (20mg/kg, 0.4mg/kg, ip twice daily),  and Canna indica L. extract and caffeine-nicotine treatment group and  standard drug treated caffeine-nicotine diabetic group (Glibencamide, 5mg/kg, once daily). Type 2 diabetes was induced by two weeks high fatty diet and a single dose streptozotocin (50mg/kg, ip) on 1th day of the study in all groups. Blood and urine samples were collected every week for serum biochemical analysis.Results: Results of extract treatment and standard drug treatment were compared with untreated caffeine-nicotine co-administration group. Difference in each relevant serum parameter was analyzed through ANOVA and Dunett's t test. Extract treated caffeine-nicotine-diabetic group showed about 150-200mg/dL (p<0.001) reduction in the serum glucose than untreated caffeine-nicotine-diabetic control group. Extract treatment reduces serum glucose by 10-15 mg/dL than glibenclamide treatment with higher significance (p<0.001). Extract treatment showed better results than standard drug in liver and kidney function test and exhibited its better potential in controlling diabetic complications. Extract treatment increased HDL-C and reduced triglycerides, LDL-C, VLDL-C and TC much better and with higher significance than standard drug. Extract treatment reduced TC by at least 60-80mg/dL (p<0.01) in comparison to caffeine-nicotine-diabetic control group. Extract treatment reduced 10-15mg/dL of more total cholesterol than that of standard drug.Conclusion: Caffeine-nicotine co-administration-induced exaggeration of type 2 diabetes was better treated by CI extract than that of standard drug gibenclamide. Keywords: Type 2 diabetes, Streptozotocin, Caffeine, Nicotine, Diabetic complication, Ra

DROM: Enabling Efficient and Effortless Malleability for Resource Managers

In the design of future HPC systems, research in resource management is showing an increasing interest in a more dynamic control of the available resources. It has been proven that enabling the jobs to change the number of computing resources at run time, i.e. their malleability, can significantly improve HPC system performance. However, job schedulers and applications typically do not support malleability due to the common belief that it introduces additional programming complexity and performance impact. This paper presents DROM, an interface that provides efficient malleability with no effort for program developers. The running application is enabled to adapt the number of threads to the number of assigned computing resources in a completely transparent way to the user through the integration of DROM with standard programming models, such as OpenMP/OmpSs, and MPI. We designed the APIs to be easily used by any programming model, application and job scheduler or resource manager. Our experimental results from two realistic use cases analysis, based on malleability by reducing the number of cores a job is using per node and jobs co-allocation, show the potential of DROM for improving the performance of HPC systems. In particular, the workload of two MPI+OpenMP neuro-simulators are tested, reporting improvement in system metrics, such as total run time and average response time, up to 8% and 48%, respectively.This work is partially supported by the Span- ish Government through Programa Severo Ochoa (SEV-2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through TIN2015-65316-P project, by the Generalitat de Catalunya (contract 2017-SGR-1414) and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 under grant agreement No 785907 (HBP SGA2)Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft