Performance Appraisal in the Era of New Normal

Performance Appraisal is the process of assessing the accomplishments of workforce & to ac­knowledge their capabilities for facilitating development. Performance evaluation is one of the areas in Human resource management which is considerably affected by the spread of pandemic severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2. This virus outbreak posed new challenges for the companies across the globe. As a result in order to tackle this uncertainty various organiza­tions have taken measures to cut down the expenses like deferment in the appraisal cycle or for muted salary increments. Thus one of the objectives of this paper is to study the impact of Covid -19 on performance appraisal of employees. Further this pandemic is equally challenging for the managers also. As social distancing and working remotely have become a new normal, employees work remotely from each other and from managers, and this will be more common in the fu­ture. Managers are now searching for new ways to ‘do visibility’ without always being physically present. It has also become the vital demand of the situation as managers must be aware of the circumstances in which employees are working in. Therefore another objective of this paper is to suggest an approach to manage the performance evaluations of remote working employees. It is recommended that managers should adopt the choice based approach for performance evaluation instead of control based approach. The review is formed on articles and reports from various internet sources and journals. Further some ways of managing the performance assessment of remotely working employees and scope for the future are also discussed

Deconstructing the 1947 Partition: The Effect of the Central Recovery Operation through a Gendered Lens in India and Pakistan

The partition and subsequent creation of India and Pakistan in 1947 continues to mark a watershed moment in my life, as I am an Indian student of Punjabi descent. The dominant history of the partition remains rooted in patriarchal constructions of honor situated on women’s bodies. Though Pakistan was created a Muslim state, and India as a seemingly secular state, the Indian state fashioned Bharat Mata, Mother India, to justify its dominant Hindu practices and its overall existence. The Indian nation was created as a motherland, on a goddesses’ body. The states of India and Pakistan continued to articulate its borders on women’s bodies, specifically abducted women. Through the Inter-dominion Treaty and the Central Recovery Operation, the patriarchal state, community, and family communicated with each other by controlling women’s bodies, sexualities, and lives. Women were not considered autonomous beings with full citizenship in the nation building project. By focusing on women’s testimonies, I document and analyze their lived experiences in order to question and challenge the linear narrative of recovery put forward by the state. I honor women’s diverse testimonies in my aim to speak the truth, reinvestigate, and retell, reconstruct history to become herstory

PSORIASIFORM DRUG ERUPTION INDUCED BY ANTI-TUBERCULOSIS MEDICATION: A CASE REPORT

Objective: Psoriasiform drug eruptions can be induced by several drugs. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by T-cell-mediated cytokine production that drives the hyperproliferation and abnormal differentiation of keratinocytes. Drugs can cause new lesions when there is no prior history or family history of psoriasis. Based on the psoriatic drug eruption probability score, β‐blockers, synthetic anti‐malarial drugs, non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), lithium, digoxin and tetracycline antibiotics are relevant in psoriasis. Methods: A 58-year-old male was admitted to the Department of Respiratory Medicine at B. P. S G. M. C, Khanpur Kalan, Sonepat as a case of pulmonary tuberculosis and was put on anti-tubercular drugs CAT-I (according to RNTCP guidelines). The patient had a history of diabetes mellitus and hypertension for the past six years. On the third day of initiation of ATT, the patient started developing a psoriasiform rash. The psoriasiform rash began to improve within a few days after discontinuing the ATT. A causality assessment was done as per the WHO-UMC scale, which showed that the adverse events were likely caused due to the ATT. Results: Psoriasiform rash is a severe adverse drug reaction characterized by widespread lesions. Among all the various adverse drug reactions, lichenoid drug eruption is commonly associated with anti-tuberculosis medication and needs to be differentiated from psoriasiform eruption. The underlying pathomechanism of drug-induced psoriasiform eruptions remains uncertain, although several immunological interactions have been hypothesized. Conclusion: ATT has been reported to cause psoriasiform rash, and its drug component needs to be reconsidered in view of safer alternatives available

Source Apportionment of Atmospheric Particulate Matter in Developing Countries Using Trace Elements and Stable Metal Isotope Ratios

The work presented herein details the source apportionment of atmospheric particulate matter in developing countries (Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, metropolitan cities in Northern India, and Shenzhen in China) using trace elements and stable metal isotope ratios. The first study focused on the development of a novel method for the concomitant separation of rare-earth elements in environmental samples of any geological origin. The separation procedure is based on three extraction chromatographic materials, referred to as Sr.Spec, TRU.Spec, and Ln.Spec. This triple column arrangement enables the simultaneous isolation of pure Sr and Nd fractions in less than one day and with great reproducibility. This procedure greatly minimizes the consumption of acids necessary for the separation, allows high yields of Sr and Nd, and realizes very low blank levels. Using the aforementioned method, the second study focused on if Aral Sea sediments are an important source of particulate matter in Central Asia. Central Asia is dominated by an arid climate and desert-like conditions, leading to the potential for long-range transport of desert dust within and out of the region. One potential source of dust within Central Asia is the Aral Sea, which has receded in size due to water diversion. As a result, newly exposed sediments and associated contaminants are resuspended by the wind and are a potential new source of particulate matter within in the region. Results from this study showed that Central Asia is impacted by yet unidentified regional and distant dust that requires additional measurements of desert sands in and around Central Asia. The third study focused on the outcome of imposed pollution restrictions in Shenzhen during the 16th Universiade, an international multi-sport event, hosted in 2011. During this time, officials instituted several restrictions in the region in order to enhance the air quality of Shenzhen. The airborne PM2.5 was collected during the controlled (when the restrictions were in place) and uncontrolled periods. Results from this study showed a significant increase in the elemental concentrations during the uncontrolled periods. These studies describe the transport of dust and identify some of the geological characteristics of important source areas

Reading the Disnarrated: : Traumatic Memory, Disrupted Communication, and the Crisis of Modernity in Jeet Thayil’s Low

This paper reads Jeet Thayil’s Low (2020) as a disjointed narrative that defies linearity to accentuate the circular nature of traumatic memory and grief. Chasing forgetfulness, Dominic Ullis flies to a modern Bombay to immerse his wife, Aki’s ashes and submerge his traumatic memories, but his attempts are thwarted by an involuntary recall of events that may have led to her suicide, contextualised within her recurrent retreats to ‘the low’ – a melancholic space she claimed to have access to. By observing past instances of miscommunication and missed communication between Ullis and Aki, and their hallucinatory conversation in the present, the paper examines how Ullis’s journey is guided by Gerald Prince’s concept of ‘the disnarrated’ to narrate his unresolved emotions surrounding traumatic loss retrospectively. Constituting “events that did not happen, but, nonetheless, are referred to,” the disnarrated, the paper argues, manifests itself in Ullis’s traumatic memory, as he gets flashbacks to events that did occur between him and Aki to express his regret for the ones that did not but could have (Prince 3). Drawing upon John F. Schumaker’s arguments connecting mental health with modernity, the paper proposes that Aki’s depressive condition, as residing in ‘the low,’ and her eventual suicide are consequences of her loneliness and unfulfilled relationships aggravated by the modernisation that characterises the urban landscape. Finally, it establishes disnarration as a powerful tool for mediating between an imaginary, hopeful world premised on possibilities of communication and the bleaker modern reality where mental health issues are silenced or stigmatised and thus fail to be expressed – allowing for a socio-cultural critique

DID POLICING OF IMMIGRATION CHANGE DURING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

In 2017, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) renewed its implementation of the “Secure Communities� initiative. It was ostensibly intended to intensify policing of undocumented immigrants who violated criminal laws while in the United States. This policy expanded the scope of immigration policing by enabling local policing agencies to confirm the immigration status of all persons arrested during booking, collect biometric info about arrestees, and share it with Homeland Security (U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2010). This program was intended to reduce the cost of identifying illegal immigrants by broadening the scope of powers allotted to local law enforcement (Cox & Miles, 2012, p.88). A basic but essential question that is not answered is whether the reinstatement of Secure Communities in 2017 led to racial profiling of Hispanics and other brown people. In order to empirically investigate the possibility that the reinstatement of Secure Communities led to racial profiling of Hispanics and Hispanic-looking people, a quantitative thesis project was conducted that analyzed demographic patterns about traffic stop characteristics using data from North Carolina law enforcement agencies between 2015 and 2019. The analysis examined patterns in drivers stopped by police (race, gender, age, and other characteristics of drivers). This is done by analyzing traffic stop data from the two years before Secure Communities was re-instituted under Trump (2015-2016) and the 2 years after it was re-instituted (2018 -2019). The impact of the implementation of Secure Communities is assessed by quantifying if there is a change in traffic stops for Hispanic individuals between the two time periods that coincide with its re-introduction. Additionally, a discussion of the current context of immigration in the United States and how that has impacted interactions between Hispanic residents and local police

Optimizing the Performance of X-Ray Optics for MaGIXS

The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-Ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) is an X-ray imaging spectrometer that will observe the solar corona in the soft X-ray regime with both spatial and spectral resolution. The science goal of MaGIXS is to better understand the problem of coronal heating by measuring the temperature distribution, composition, and temporal variability of hot plasmas (>4 MK) in active regions. In order to do this, the instrument will observe the corona with a fast cadence (~5 seconds) in wavelengths between 6-24 A with a 6” spatial resolution and a 0.1 A spectral resolution. To ensure that this instrument can achieve such a resolution, it is crucial to have exact measurements of the focal lengths of the mirrors. The mirrors will be aligned and mounted using the Centroid Detector Assembly (CDA) (a steerable laser originally developed for aligning the AXAF mirrors), a CMM Romer arm, and Hartmann aperture masks to perform the focal length measurements. We have designed metrology supports that elevate the aperture mask and mirror up to the height of the optical axis defined by the CDA of the laser, allows the aperture mask 3 translational degrees of freedom, and the allows the mirror 3 translational and 3 rotational degrees of freedom needed for alignment. The measured and verified focal lengths will then be used to carry out the alignment of the mirrors as the MaGIXS instrument is assembled for launch

Education in South Sudan: focusing on inequality of provision and implications for national cohesion

This article examines the provision of basic education services after the end of the Second Sudanese Civil War in 2005, focusing on the condition of the services and its implications for national cohesion during the period after the birth of the South Sudanese state. It argues that the way basic education services were provided after the Second Sudanese Civil War has contributed to the trajectory of inequality that characterised the period before the onset of this war. This trajectory significantly deviated from the vision the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) promised during its bloody armed struggle against Sudanese regimes based in the national capital, Khartoum

A Comparison of Routing Protocols, Applications in VANET

VANET (Vehicular Ad-hoc Network) is another innovation which has taken huge consideration in the current years. The consolidated impromptu system, remote LAN (WLAN) and cell innovation to accomplish clever between vehicle correspondences and enhance street movement security and productivity is advanced. VANET is a subclass of Versatile specially appointed systems which gives a recognized way to deal with Insightful Transport Framework (ITS). VANETs are recognized from different sorts of specially appointed systems by their mixture arrange designs, attributes, and application situations.In this paper, we discussed characteristics, advantages, applications of VANETs and survey recent protocols based on routing. Lastly,the paper accomplishes by a horizontal comparison of the numerous routing protocols for VANET