Policy Audit: A heteronormativity audit of RMSA -a higher education programme in Indian schools

How do sexual and gender norms affect school education in India? How do schools construct these norms? Are state policies and programmes addressing the linkages between sexuality, gender and school education? These are some of the questions that Nirantar, a Centre for Gender and Education, has been engaging with as part of its mandate to ensure that education is empowering for those marginalised because of gender, caste, sexuality and other dimensions of power. This report shares the findings of a sexuality and gender audit of a national1 government programme to strengthen secondary school education in India (ie the last four years of schooling). The programme is titled the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), a scheme for universalisation of access to and improvement of quality at the secondary stage.2 Since universalisation of elementary education has become a constitutional mandate,3 the goal of the RMSA scheme is to achieve universal secondary education. Its vision is to make quality education available and affordable to all young persons aged 14–18. RMSA aims to enhance access, quality and equity as they relate to secondary education, with a focus on marginalised young people such as girls, Dalits,4 Muslims and those who have disabilities.This report contributes to a new and emerging area of knowledge – and demonstrates how development policy and programme audits through the lens of sexuality and gender can be undertaken. This is an important and challenging area because, as we see in the case of RMSA, development policies and programmes tend not even to mention the word ‘sexuality’, while being replete with constructions of sexuality and with implicit or explicit messages about the need to be disciplined and to control one's desires. Such messages conflict with ground-level realities and have grave implications for the lives of those who are seen to break sexual and gender norms.DFI

Regulation of spindle behaviour by DNA replication and damage checkpoints in budding yeast

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

The Capaciousness of No: Affective Refusals as Literacy Practices

© 2020 The Authors. Reading Research Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Literacy Association The authors considered the capacious feeling that emerges from saying no to literacy practices, and the affective potential of saying no as a literacy practice. The authors highlight the affective possibilities of saying no to normative understandings of literacy, thinking with a series of vignettes in which children, young people, and teachers refused literacy practices in different ways. The authors use the term capacious to signal possibilities that are as yet unthought: a sense of broadening and opening out through enacting no. The authors examined how attention to affect ruptures humanist logics that inform normative approaches to literacy. Through attention to nonconscious, noncognitive, and transindividual bodily forces and capacities, affect deprivileges the human as the sole agent in an interaction, thus disrupting measurements of who counts as a literate subject and what counts as a literacy event. No is an affective moment. It can signal a pushback, an absence, or a silence. As a theoretical and methodological way of thinking/feeling with literacy, affect proposes problems rather than solutions, countering solution-focused research in which the resistance is to be overcome, co-opted, or solved. Affect operates as a crack or a chink, a tiny ripple, a barely perceivable gesture, that can persist and, in doing so, hold open the possibility for alternative futures

Increasing strength of single lap joints of metal adherends by taper minimization

The effect of tapering the ends of the adherend on the joint strength and joint deformation behavior of a single lap joint geometry was studied. The joints were geometrically modeled using finite element (FE) techniques involving linear, as well as nonlinear (bilinear) material behavior. The FEA results were then compared with the experimental results for different single lap configurations, which had aluminum and steel adherends with different surface etch conditions, bonded using two different adhesives. The FEA results were found to be consistent with the experimental results with the normal and shear stresses significantly decreasing in the modified (tapered) geometries over those in unmodified geometries. The joint strength increased with decreasing taper angle, reaching a maximum at the smallest value considered (~10°)

Novel Modalities in DNA Data Storage

10.1016/j.tibtech.2020.12.008TRENDS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY3910990-100

Going native: Complete removal of protein purification affinity tags by simple modification of existing tags and proteases

Protein purification typically involves expressing a recombinant gene comprising a target protein fused to a suitable affinity tag. After purification, it is often desirable to remove the affinity tag to prevent interference with downstream functions of the target protein. This is mainly accomplished by placing a protease site between the tag and the target protein. Typically, a small oligopeptide ‘stub’ C-terminal to the cleavage site remains attached to the target protein due to the requirements of sequence-specific proteases. Furthermore, steric hindrance can also limit protease efficiency. Here, we show that respectively fusing the interacting ePDZ-b/ARVCF protein-peptide pair to the target protein and a protease enables efficient processing of a minimised sequence comprising only residues N-terminal to the cleavage site. Interaction of the protein-peptide pair enforces proximity of the protease and its minimised cleavage sequence, enhancing both catalysis of a sub-optimal site and overcoming steric hindrance. This facilitates the high yield purification of fully native target proteins without recourse to specialised purification columns.NMRC (Natl Medical Research Council, S’pore)Published versio

High-efficiency dielectric resonator antennas in the terahertz range

We describe a technique for realizing high-efficiency dielectric resonator antennas composed of intrinsic silicon in the terahertz range. These dielectric resonator antennas are deployed in both uniform and nonuniform array configurations, for the manipulation of terahertz radiation. The uniform array configuration is analyzed in terms of quality factor, and is subsequently employed as a highly efficient magnetic mirror. The nonuniform configuration is an off-axis focusing mirror reflectarray. Both devices are characterized with terahertz timedomain spectroscopy, and their high-efficiency performance is verified.Daniel Headland, Withawat Withayachumnankul, Shruti Nirantar, Madhu Bhaskaran, Sharath Sriram and Christophe Fumeau