Teacher-Student Interactions and Science Classroom Learning Environments in India

The research reported in this thesis is an in-depth study of teacher-student interactions and science classroom learning environments in Jammu, India. Jammu city is the winter capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, situated at the extreme north of India. This is the first time that any learning environment research has been conducted and reported from this part of the world. The objective of this research was to provide further validation information about two already existing learning environment instruments with Indian students and describe, discuss and analyse information on the associations between student’s perceptions of learning environment and their attitudes and cognitive achievements. Differences in the perceptions of different groups namely gender, religious and cultural were also investigated. The present study commenced with a more positivistic framework, with an aim of providing a large-scale quantitative overview. The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI), the What is Happening in this Class? (WIHIC) and an Attitude Scale were administered to 1,021 students from 32 science classes in seven different co-educational private schools in Jammu. The data were analysed to determine the reliability, validity and mean of each scale. Students were interviewed to determine further the reliability of the questionnaires, in addition to providing information that might explain the QTI and WIHIC mean scale scores. As a result of critical reflection, the study moved towards a more interpretative framework, drawing on elements of the constructivist and critical theory paradigms. Multiple research methods were used to member and deepen the researchers understanding of the learning environments in Jammu. An educational critique was used to describe the social and cultural factors that could influence the prevailing learning environments

Note on a fishery of Parapenaeus longipes along the Veraval Coast

Parapenaeus longipes, commonly known as “Flamingo shrimp” and locally as “Bhoonsi”,it is not known to occur exclusively as fishery in any area of India and abroad

Pattern of drug utilization in pediatric out patient department of a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Drug utilization studies have special significance among paediatric age groups as infant and children represent about 42% of the population in developing countries. This is the vital period of rapid growth and development. Therefore, drugs should be used very cautiously and rationally among these sub groups. The present study is conducted to analyse the prescribing pattern of drugs in paediatric age group for various illnesses. Methods: It was a prospective observational study, conducted in paediatric outpatient department of Raja Rajeswari medical college and research hospital for a period of 6 months after obtaining approval from institutional ethical committee. Descriptive statistical was used to determine the frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation.Results: In the present study, fever (30.8%) followed by respiratory diseases were most common diseases seen. The commonly used drugs include antipyretics (66%), antimicrobials (53.6%), cough syrups (34.4%), antihistaminic (31.2%) and nasal decongestants (23.2%). Prescribing indicator shows existence of polypharmacy. Prescribing drugs by generic name was seen only in 8.1% and 47.82% of the drugs were prescribed from EDL. The frequency of use of injectables in our study was 5.8%. Conclusions: Irrational use of antibiotics and polypharmacy needs to be curbed. Prescribing drugs in their generic name and prescribing drugs from EDL need to be promoted. The present prescribing pattern can be improved by advocating rational drug prescribing, patient education and improving hospitals

Study on assessment of awareness about concepts in undergraduate pharmacology curriculum among clinicians in a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Rational prescribing forms the corner stone of successful implementation of rational drug use. To boost the cause of rational use of Medicine, the P-drug concept was given in late nineties. The idea was to make Physicians familiar with few personal drugs chosen from National Essential drug list based on efficacy, safety, suitability and cost. The present study was conducted to assess the awareness of clinicians about basic pharmacological concepts.Methods: It is a cross sectional study with a study population of 100, conducted in RRMCH for a period of one month. It is a questionnaire based study involving clinicians and post graduates working in this hospital. Descriptive statistical analysis has been carried out in the present study.Results: In our study, 38% of physicians were aware of the term Essential drugs and 26% of doctors prescribed drugs from National Essential drug list. 56% of respondents were aware of term rational drug use but only 1/3 of them were aware of adverse effects, drug interactions of the drugs they prescribed. Majority of physicians (85%) used standard text book as the source of drug information.Conclusions: Lack of knowledge among physicians about new concepts like p-drug, rational drug use and essential drugs points towards need for having more CMEs on basic pharmacological concepts

SSI Routing Scheme for Heterogeneous MANETs

Studies towards heterogeneous Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) as well as inter-domain routing is still in much infancy stage. After reviewing the existing literaturs, it was found that problems associated with scalability, interoperability, and security is not defined up to the mark as it should be part of pervasive computing in future networks. Moreover, it was found that existing studies do not consider the complexities associated with heterogeneous MANET to a large extent leading to narrowed research scope. Hence, this paper introduces a novel scheme called as Secure, Scalable and Interoperable (SSI )routing, where a joint algorithm is designed, developed, and implemented. The outcome exhibits the correctness of this scheme by simulation assisted by analysis for inter-domain routing

Role of oral misoprostol 600 mcg in active management of third stage of labour: a comparative study with carboprost 125 mcg, intramuscular

Background: Objectives: To compare misoprostol 600 mcg, oral with carboprost 125 mcg, i.m., in the active management of third stage of labour.Methods: A total of 200 pregnant women of 38-42 weeks of gestation delivering vaginally in the Shivamogga institute of medical sciences, Shivamogga, Karnataka, India were selected for study. 100 women received misoprostol 600 mcg, orally and 100 women received carboprost 125 mcg, i.m. immediately after delivery of baby and cord clamping by the method of randomisation.Results: In the misoprostol group, mean blood loss is 134.9 ml, mean duration of the third stage of labour is 4.07 min and mean fall in hemoglobin is 0.34 g/dl. In the carboprost group, mean blood loss is 123.7 ml, mean duration of the third stage of labour is 3.73 min and mean fall in hemoglobin is 0.28 g/dl. There was no significant difference between the two groups with regard to the above mentioned factors. There were 5 cases of PPH in the misoprostol group and 3 cases in the carboprost group. 21 cases in the misoprostol group and 14 cases in the carboprost group required additional oxytocics. Unpleasant side effects like diarrhoea and vomiting were more in carboprost group.  Conclusion: Oral misoprostol is as effective as carboprost in AMTSL and can be used safely in vaginal deliveries for prevention of PPH, especially in non-institutional deliveries and in places of low resource settings.

Power Flow Control and Current Ripple Minimization of HVDC Converter System by Using Zero-Sequence Voltage Injection Control

This paper introduces the Zero_Sequence Voltage_Injection(ZSVI) based Model Predictive_Control (MPC) to minimize the ripples in dc current & voltage and concurrently regulate the power_flow & dc_current. This paper takes the benefits to calculate and inject best possible zero_sequence_voltage_components to Parallel_Hybrid Modular Multilevel_Converter (PHMMC) dc bus voltage. Dc line current has been derived by discrete_time_dynamic model and also it expands the predictive_model. Required amount of zero sequence voltage is injected to reference voltage of dc bus by using predictive model. Compared to triplen_harmonic injection_method, the proposed scheme improves the PHMMC_performance by minimizing the ripples of dc_voltage ¤t. Execution of the proposed methodology of PHMMC-based HVDC system is done using SIMULINK/MATLAB