Dissenting Dalit Voices: An Analysis of Select Oral Songs of Dalit Women in Kerala

The caste and gender configurations in literary and socio-historic spheres that misrepresent or eliminate Dalit women’s voices in mainstream chronicles uphold the notion that caste subjugation has been unresponsively endured by Dalit women. This depiction of the gendered caste subaltern in the mainstream narratives is interrogated and countered by the oral songs of Dalit women in Kerala. This paper examines how the songs as the sites of the register of the voices of Dalit women hold cultural and historic significance carrying the bearings of the Dalit feminist standpoint. The oral songs which contain the feminist consciousness of the gendered caste subaltern in the nascent form provide a lineage to contemporary Dalit feminist writings

Non-Destructive Evaluation: Science and Technology

I shall make a review of the status of "Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) : Science and Technology". I am aware that this is a very mixed audience. There are the techn-icians and scientists of the laboratory; we have also members of the public, students and the media; so I would spend a few minutes explaining for the benefit of the uninitiated as to what non-destructive techniques are. The best way to carry the point home to all of you is to talk about the application of these techniques in medicine and physiology. I am sure all of you know about X-rays or most of you have been X-rayed sometime or the other when it was suspected that your human skeleton structure, bone structure, has undergone fracture due to an accident. Bones are opaque to x-rays, and if there is a fracture you are able to identify this in a two-dimensionalpicture, in a film or in a screen. There are similar other techniques. When we do computer aided scanning using X-rays, we use principles of mathematics to re-construct a three dime-nsional picture of the object that is being scanned; this is the technique of CATSCAN or computer aided tomograph

Early Childhood Classroom Quality and Preschool Learning Behaviors

The intelligence quotient (IQ) continues to dominate educational decision-making although it lacks descriptive quality indicative of how children learn best and precisely what contributes to learning differences among children. Researchers have advocated for the use of alternative assessment methods to describe differences in children\u27s learning. Limited research has been conducted in this area yet is supportive of learning behavior as an influential factor associated with scholastic achievement. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on preschool learning behaviors, despite their link to positive child outcomes. Early childhood environments have similarly been linked to children\u27s scholastic success and positive outcomes. This study examined the relationships between early childhood program quality, preschool learning behaviors, and early scholastic achievement among 123 preschool aged children enrolled in high, medium and low quality early childhood programs in western Pennsylvania. The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale -- Revised (ECERS-R) was used to evaluate program quality, while preschool learning behavior was assessed by the teacher completed Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS). The Basic School Skills Inventory-Third Edition (BSSI-3) was utilized to assess child competencies across the academic domains of reading, writing, mathematics, and spoken language. Additional measures were utilized to determine convergent validity for the PLBS. Analyses sought to verify the factor structure and validity of the PLBS, and to determine whether children participating in programs of varying quality differed in learning behavior development and scholastic achievement. Regression analyses were employed to determine which classroom quality factors were predictive of learning behavior. The potential mediating effect of learning behavior on the classroom quality-scholastic outcome relationship was also tested. Results of the study provide support for the validity of the PLBS, however results of factor analyses did not comport with previous findings. Results indicated that children participating in classrooms of various quality did not significantly differ in the quality of their learning behavior. However, significant differences were found among quality groups across areas of early scholastic achievement. Regression analyses indicated that two ECERS-R factors were predictive of learning behavior, and that preschool learning behavior had no mediating effect on the quality-achievement relationship. Suggestions for future research are provided

The Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment, Dark Matter and Naturalness in Supersymmetric Models

After the discovery of the Higgs at LHC and the measurements of its mass and couplings, the search for new physics has become more important than ever, with one of the most promising candidates being theories which exhibit Supersymmetry (SUSY). A space-time symmetry between fundamental integer and half-integer spin particles, SUSY proposes a plethora of new states which may be in reach of present-day collider technology, and for those of the future. As a consistent solution to the Hierarchy problem, the unnaturally large quantum corrections to the bare Higgs mass from short-distance scale physics, this thesis explores anomalies from experiment left unexplained by the very successful Standard Model of particle physics, offered consistently even in minimal supersymmetric extensions. With this in mind, we initially focus on the predictions from the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Our MSSM phenomenology explores two of the most sensitive observables - the muon anomalous magnetic moment and dark matter. In conjunction with collider and other searches, we find a number of parameter regions still viable, though future 100 TeV collider searches may even be able to narrow this further. Subsequently, we explore the idea of ‘naturalness’ (or fine-tuning) in the MSSM. In light of current experimental limits, we believe naturalness considerations hint towards the effectiveness of the MSSM up to new physics scales as low as 100 TeV. Finally, we propose simple modification to minimal supersymmetry and its place in the early universe, without altering the gauge structure or particle content, alleviating constraint on the allowable parameter space. The former focuses on the more comfortable accommodation of a 125 GeV Higgs mass within the framework of the MSSM through non-linear realization of electroweak gauge symmetry, whilst the latter accounts for a temporary cosmological dark matter (DM) decay phase, avoiding the commonly encountered overabundance of DM in the MSSM

Revolutionizing Agriculture Through Space Science and Technology Applications

KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT THE CENTRE FOR SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT ANNUAL WEEK, 2018 HELD AT THE CENTRE IN ABUJA ON 14 -15 AUGUST, 201