Searching for Mirrors: Preservice Teachers’ Journey Toward More Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Culturally relevant text selection and pedagogy support students’ motivation, engagement, literacy outcomes, and positive identity formation. Nevertheless, there is limited research on teacher preparation that fosters these outcomes. We explore 17 preservice teachers’ challenges and successes with culturally relevant text selection and pedagogy for their students’ literacy instruction. Data sources include reader responses, lesson plans, and reflections. Emergent coding and constant comparative analysis yielded four categories of challenges (resistance, limited view of culture, lack of knowledge about students’ cultures and identities, and lack of opportunities for students to develop critical consciousness) and three criteria for successes (knowledge about the students’ culture and identity, attention to multiple dimensions of text selection, and use of culturally relevant text selection and pedagogy in combination). Professional development should focus on supporting teachers’ learning about their students’ cultures and identities, applying this knowledge to text selection and pedagogy, and explicitly guiding this development over time

Maternal and perinatal outcome in patients with preterm labor pains receiving tocolytic therapy

Background: The objective of this study was to assess the maternal and neonatal outcomes in patients with preterm labor pains and also to correlate threatened abortion with preterm pains.Methods: The study conducted was a prospective observational study. 100 cases of preterm labor admitted to JK hospital, Bhopal over a period of 2 years with singleton gestation between 28 to 36+6 weeks were included.Results: Maximum preterm deliveries were in the late preterm group (80%). Correlation of preterm labor with threatened abortion was not significant (OR=1.03; p>0.05). 42% cases delivered vaginally and 58% by LSCS. Prolongation of pregnancy after tocolytic therapy was upto 12 hours in 35% cases, 12-24 hours in 40% cases and >24 hours in only 15% cases. The most commonly encountered neonatal complication was RDS, 37%, out of which 9% required resuscitation at birth and 8% required ventilator support followed by jaundice in 23%, sepsis in 3% cases and NEC in 4% cases. The association between gestational age and requirement of resuscitation at birth (X2=19.9; p=0.00), need of ventilator (X2=12.6; p=0.002) and neonatal RDS (X2=6.9; p=0.031) was found to be significant.Conclusions: Preterm births are major obstetric problem that have an extensive impact on neonatal morbidity and mortality

Sign Language Recognition for Static and Dynamic Gestures

Humans are called social animals, which makes communication a very important part of humans. Humans use shoes and non-verbal forms of language for communication purposes, but not all humans can give oral speech. Hearing impaired and mute people. Sign language became consequently advanced for them and nevertheless impairs communication. Therefore, this paper proposes a system that uses streams to use CNN networks for the classification of alphabets and numbers. Alphabet and number gestures are static gestures in Indian sign language, and CNN is used because it provides very good results for image classification. Use hand-masked (skin segmented) images for model training. For dynamic hand gestures, the system uses the LSTM network for classification tasks. LSTMs are known for their accurate prediction of time zone distributed data. This paper presents different types of hand gestures, namely two models for static and dynamic prediction, CNN and LSTM

Millennial Motivation and Engagement

Millennials, also referred to as Generation Y compose the largest proportion of the global workforce today and would form over 50% of the working population by as soon as 2020. Millennials are accused of being casual, individualistic, consumeristic, and materialistic, while they are also appreciated for being the most well-educated generation in history, technologically advanced, loyal, and socially responsible. This dissertation aims to understand their behaviours, points of view, and the values they believe in, to gauge what they are like at work. A review of the literature on motivation theories and generation theories reveals that there exists a gap in the theories, and that further research needs to be carried out to upgrade them to incorporate the value systems, contexts, and mindsets of the younger generations. Interpretive qualitative research was carried out for this dissertation, through interviewing 9 millennials from different parts of the world, to provide an in-depth understanding of millennial motivation and engagement. The findings revealed that millennials are intrinsically motivated individuals, who believe in flexibility and autonomy at work. They strive to meet challenges and aspire to live a purposeful life. Work-life balance and quality of life are more important to them than monetary rewards. They seek independence, are open to options, and don’t always have clearly defined career plans. It was concluded that despite being supportive of the existing literature, the data suggests that the implementation of the modern theories of motivation is still partial. Organisations continue to operate in the conventional ways, even in the more developed western economies. This dissertation builds a case for a more robust theory for motivation in organisational context, that focuses on the millennial generation, and its effective implementation for improved management of the otherwise deemed “unmanageable” generation Y

Millennial Motivation and Engagement

Millennials, also referred to as Generation Y compose the largest proportion of the global workforce today and would form over 50% of the working population by as soon as 2020. Millennials are accused of being casual, individualistic, consumeristic, and materialistic, while they are also appreciated for being the most well-educated generation in history, technologically advanced, loyal, and socially responsible. This dissertation aims to understand their behaviours, points of view, and the values they believe in, to gauge what they are like at work. A review of the literature on motivation theories and generation theories reveals that there exists a gap in the theories, and that further research needs to be carried out to upgrade them to incorporate the value systems, contexts, and mindsets of the younger generations. Interpretive qualitative research was carried out for this dissertation, through interviewing 9 millennials from different parts of the world, to provide an in-depth understanding of millennial motivation and engagement. The findings revealed that millennials are intrinsically motivated individuals, who believe in flexibility and autonomy at work. They strive to meet challenges and aspire to live a purposeful life. Work-life balance and quality of life are more important to them than monetary rewards. They seek independence, are open to options, and don’t always have clearly defined career plans. It was concluded that despite being supportive of the existing literature, the data suggests that the implementation of the modern theories of motivation is still partial. Organisations continue to operate in the conventional ways, even in the more developed western economies. This dissertation builds a case for a more robust theory for motivation in organisational context, that focuses on the millennial generation, and its effective implementation for improved management of the otherwise deemed “unmanageable” generation Y

QSAR of 1,3,5-triazine compounds towards inhibition of toxoplasmosis utilizing computed molecular descriptors

Growing attention has been focussed towards a considerable amount of experimental and theoretical study of anti toxoplasmosis compounds having inhibitory activities against toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is a dangerous disease in both urban as well as rural areas. It is caused by Toxoplasma gondii. The life cycle involves feline species such as both domestic and wild cats, and other felids such as lions, etc. There are various targets for developing anti toxoplasmosis agents. One of the most promising targets is dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR). 1,3,5-Triazine compounds have been reported to inhibit the T. gondii. But there is hardly any formulation of quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) involving 1,3,5-triazine inhibitors to date. Therefore, it is our target in the present study to develop QSAR models based on the computed theoretical molecular descriptors to scale the essential features responsible for the DHFR inhibition. These screened features of the selected compounds will help to design the potent congeneric series.

Design of ultra small microstrip patch antenna for wireless communication applications

This paper presents a narrow band microstrip patch antenna for wireless communication. A microstrip patch antenna consists of a radiating patch on one side of a dielectric substrate and has a ground plane on the other side. The main radiator is a rectangular patch made up of copper. The advantages of this type of narrowband antennas are planar, smaller in size, simple structure, low in cost and easy to be fabricated, etc. thus attractive for wireless applications. Simulation of the antenna and subsequent adjustments of parameters gives apt values for the antenna to work efficiently at low cost. At the later stage, comparison between different antenna shapes has been provided and comparative study has been done in order to list the advantages of each shape and decide which shape is best suited for the desired wireless frequency of 1.7GHz. Also this work explores the performance enhancement of multiple patch antennas. Comparative studies between the array and individual unit have proved the betterment of results for wireless applications at 1.7GHz

Vegetable and Herbal Extracts: A Way towards Preventive and Therapeutics Regimen

The traditional and herbal medicines play significant role in the treatment of several diseases. These medicines are the outcome of extensive research on therapeutic and preventive activity of various plant species and their specific parts. Administration of various plant parts, vegetables, fruits and other herbal constituents have significant impact on reduction of clinical, carcinogenic and genotoxic effects of various environmental toxicants. Various parts of plant such as wood, bark, stem, leaf and pod are rich in antioxidants which are known for their free radical scavenging activity. Currently, the treatment options rely significantly using natural anti-oxidants which are extracted from plant products because these are largely available, cost effective and non-toxic as compared to the synthetic drugs. Some potent natural anti-oxidants include tocopherol, ascorbic acid, flavonoids, quercetin, carotene, cinnamic acid, peptides and phenolic compounds which are extensively available in various herbal extracts. The present chapter will focus upon availability of various antioxidants in vegetables and other medicinal plants and their potential activities against xenobiotics