Long before Boko Haram, dissenters were driven to the brink in Northern Nigeria

As Boko Haram continues its deadly campaign in Nigeria, Shobana Shankar explores parallels between Boko Haram and other marginalised groups in the history of the northern part of the country

Singing and Sensing the Unknown: An Embodied History of Hindu Practice in Ghana

Hinduism fits well into the “sound-filled” West African religious soundscape, which is a scene of competition and conflict. This article explores the soundscape of devotional singing, mantras, and prayers as a central part of the embodiment and embedment of Hinduism among Africans in Ghana, where the Indian diaspora has been relatively small and the indigenous movement of Hinduism entirely through African initiative. Using ethnographic and written sources to examine the Hindu Monastery of Africa, founded by the Ghanaian monk Swami Ghanananda in 1975, I examine how the oral and aural popular devotions crafted by the swami have shifted attention away from worship through idols toward sensory exploration of the unmanifest form of the divine. Such practices have made irrelevant the issues of translatability and conversion found in other religions. The Hindu Monastery’s sound-production as a communal calling—without respect to language or school of Hindu teaching—has created unexpected new directions in public piety, including the celebration in Ghana of the annual Sabarimala pilgrimage to a sexually ambiguous deity that has in India been the scene of protest over gender and caste discrimination. The Monastery has transformed into a sanctuary for singers and seekers of all religions, including many Indian migrants and gurus, as well as an Indian woman swami, giving Hinduism a new life in Ghana following the death of Swami Ghanananda in 2016

Exploring the dynamics of chronic conflict in four selected schools in the Durban Region.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Using reflexive narrative and autoethnography, this study explores the nature and manifestation of ‘chronic conflict’ in school leadership. With autoethnography as a method in this study, the researcher employs a systematic self-reflective analysis in exploring her own life story within a sociocultural and historical context in which it occurred, alongside those of her colleagues. This approach challenges traditional ways of doing research and presents research as a socially conscious activity, the reflexive nature of which makes it both a process and product. In presenting the rationale for the study, it is argued that educational leaders should become reflective practitioners since they engage with educational reform and find ways to facilitate and sustain school improvement. The purpose of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of conflict as experienced by school principals and educators during their interaction with staff and important stakeholders, like governing body members. The use of the term “chronic” in this thesis is a borrowing from a medical disease model where chronic conflict is regarded as an illness that develops slowly over time, producing symptoms that remain continuous or intermittent. The research confines itself to a series of in-depth narrations by selected participants of four schools, two secondary and two primary where the narrators of each of these institutions presents a vivid account of recurring conflicts at their specific schools. The case study approach used in this study responds to the key questions of this study, namely, what is the nature of chronic conflict at schools; how is chronic conflict manifested at schools, and why does chronic conflict manifest in the way it does at these schools? Complexity theory, one of the main theories to dominate the conflict theory landscape is used to underpin the observations and analysis of conflict in this study. This theory asserts that changes in any system are non-linear, unpredictable and the product of complex processes and multi-systems, which necessitates deep self-reflection, original strategy development and intervention for each conflict scenario. 6 The findings reflect that the manifestation of conflicts multiply in frequency and intensity which, over a prolonged period, “mastasizes” and forges an array of “intractable” consequences which contributes to the idea of chronicity

Virtues for Life in Thirumantiram

The literature about Saivism, who worship lord Shiva as the supreme deity, is Saivism literature. Saivism literature was composed to sing the praises of Shiva, to spread to Saivism and it records the norms of Saivism. From 7th to 12th century several works such as Sitrilakyam, Perungappiyam and Saiva Panuvals in Saiva literatures were composed. Man, who first worshipped nature started worshipping various gods according to his wish. They worshipped deities in two levels as minor and major deity. Of these the major deities are Shiva as Saivite God and Thirumal as Vaishnava God. India has developed under such metamorphoses. This article analyzes and explains the virtous for life as stated in the book Thirumantram written by Seikkilar, which is the 10th of the total twelve Thirumarai

Develop Prototype of Web-Based Computer Problem Information System

The aim of this project is to develop a prototype of Web based Computer Problem Information System. This system is an assistant tool for user to find information regarding computer problem especially in finding solution. It applies knowledge base and web base application in order to add element such as user friendly, usefulness, pleasing and informative. This prototype has been developed using Object-oriented approach focusing on Object Modeling Technique methodology and Rapid Application Development with Unified Modeling Language notation. The development of this prototype starts with analysis phase and ended with testing. This project discusses some findings, problem encountered and limitation of the project’s development. Finally, brief recommendation given as contribution to the future development

Using Online Surveys for Evaluating School-based Drug Prevention Programs

Background: The primary context for providing substance abuse prevention education to adolescents in the United States has been through schools and other local educational agencies. Federal and state spending for such programs is increasingly being tied to school commitments to monitor such prevention programs and evaluate their effectiveness.   Purpose: Over the past decade, access to computers and the Internet has become almost universal in U.S. elementary and middle schools. Our purpose is to outline the potential of Web-based surveys as a data collection tool that can significantly lower program evaluation and monitoring costs and to present preliminary evidence on the feasibility of online survey administration in school settings.   Setting: The empirical part of the article draws on input from teachers, administrators, and practitioners responsible for youth drug prevention and evaluation efforts in schools and communities.   Subjects: Sixteen focus group participants were recruited from counties in and around the San Francisco Bay area in Northern California. Eight of the participants were district-level prevention coordinators and county-level health administrators who administered State and Federal grants to schools within their counties. The remaining subjects were recipients of prevention funding: school teachers, health educators, and practitioners in youth drug prevention and treatment centers. In addition, telephone interviews were conducted with twenty-five Title IV coordinators and drug prevention specialists from various state education and health departments.   Intervention: The article focuses on efforts undertaken in schools to implement and evaluate drug prevention programs, how the use of online surveys can facilitate these efforts, and the feasibility of such methods in school settings. Research Design: Our research design adopted a qualitative approach and included nationwide telephone interviews and in-house focus group discussions over a six-month period.   Data Collection and Analysis: Data collection included structured, in-person forty-five-minute interviews and discussion notes. In addition, a short, closed-ended survey was administered to focus group participants for collecting information on their school characteristics (population served, school size, Internet, and computer facilities). Survey data were analyzed with simple descriptive statistics.   Findings: The focus group discussions and telephone interviews indicated a high degree of interest in using Web-based surveys for data collection and evaluation of youth drug prevention programs. Access to computers was not viewed as an impediment. Some schools in the Bay area were already using online surveys for assessing teacher performance. Further, states like Kentucky, California, and Wisconsin have already moved to Web-based uniform reporting system that required uploading survey data online. This suggests that Web-based data collection in schools is likely to become widespread.   Conclusions: The use of online surveys in classrooms can significantly enhance the evaluation and monitoring capabilities of schools and communities by minimizing the time required for creating and administering surveys and reducing the time required for data processing. As more states move towards a central reporting database, schools and communities are likely to adopt Web-based mechanisms for collecting and reporting program outcomes

Automatic Application-Specific Customization of Softcore Processor Microarchitecture, Masters Thesis, May 2006

Applications for constrained embedded systems are subject to strict runtime and resource utilization bounds. With soft core processors, application developers can customize the processor for their application, constrained by available hardware resources but aimed at high application performance. The more reconfigurable the processor is, the more options the application developers will have for customization and hence increased potential for improving application performance. However, such customization entails developing in-depth familiarity with all the parameters, in order to configure them effectively. This is typically infeasible, given the tight time-to-market pressure on the developers. Alternatively, developers could explore all possible configurations, but being exponential, this is infeasible even given only tens of parameters. This thesis presents an approach based on an assumption of parameter independence, for automatic microarchitecture customization. This approach is linear with the number of parameter values and hence, feasible and scalable. For the dimensions that we customize, namely application runtime and hardware resources, we formulate their costs as a constrained binary integer nonlinear optimization program. Though the results are not guaranteed to be optimal, we find they are near-optimal in practice. Our technique itself is general and can be applied to other design-space exploration problems

Fabrication of nanofiber scaffolds by electrospinning and it\u27s potential for tissue engineering

Electrospinning is a fabrication process that uses an electric field to control the deposition of polymer fibers on to a target substrate. This electrospinning strategy can be used to fabricate fibrous polymer mats composed of fiber diameters ranging from several microns down to tens of nanometers. This study assesses the potential of electrospinning, as an alternative scaffold fabrication technique for tissue engineering applications. In this study, electrospinning is adapted to produce tissue-engineering scaffolds of two different size ranges composed of non-woven poly-L-lactide (PLLA) nanofibers and as a first study, the potential use of these scaffolds as tissue engineering scaffolds was assessed with the cell proliferation of Mesenchymal stem cells. Electrospun fibers were characterized for fiber diameter, porosity, pore size and its distribution. The electrospun scaffolds achieved a high surface area and porosity. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) were seeded on to electrospun PLLA scaffolds having two different fiber diameters. The cell-polymer constructs were cultured under static culture conditions. Cell proliferation study was performed. The results showed that MSC tend to proliferate well on nanofibers than on microfibers

VIRTUAL SCREENING, PHARMACOPHORE MODELING, AND QUANTITATIVE STRUCTURE ACTIVITY RELATIONSHIP STUDIES ON HISTAMINE 4 RECEPTOR

  Objective: To find out novel inhibitors for histamine 4 receptor (H4R), the target for various allergic and inflammatory pathophysiological conditions.Methods: Homology modeling of H4R was performed using easy modeler and validated using structure analysis and verification server, and with the modeled structure, virtual screening, pharmacophore modeling, and quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) studies were performed using the Schrodinger 9.3 software.Results: Among all the synthetic and natural ligands, hesperidin, vitexin, and diosmin were found to have the highest dock score, and with that, a five-point pharmacophore model was developed consisting of two hydrogen bond acceptor and three ring atoms, and the pharmacophore hypothesis yielded a statistically significant three-dimensional QSAR (3D-QSAR) model with a correlation coefficient of r2=0.8962 as well as good predictive power.Conclusion: The pharmacophore-based 3D-QSAR model generated from natural antihistamines can provide intricate structural knowledge about a new class of anti-allergic and anti-inflammatory drug research

GENOME-WIDE ANALYSIS OF LONG NON-CODING RNA (LNCRNA) OF AUTOIMMUNE THYROID DISEASES USING BIOINFORMATICS APPROACHES

Objective: Long non-coding RNA's (lncRNA's) have a crucial role in cancer biology. In this study, the genome sequence analysis of lncRNA expression in autoimmune thyroid disease is done to identify novel targets for further study of the disease.Methods: All the data were collected from Disgenet and Ensemble genome browser. Gene ontology and network analysis were performed using the standard enrichment annotation method. Association of lncRNA and their targeted mRNA were analyzed by GENEMANIA.Results: Of the all 334 lncRNA transcripts identified, only four had coding potential. LncRNA'stranscripts ENST00000462973, ENST00000555326 were involved in autoimmune thyroid disease pathway which corresponds to thyroid peroxidase (TPO) and thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR), and this could provide better insights to therapeutics.Conclusion: Our current study on the potential link between lncRNAs and autoimmune thyroid disease presents a novel area for further investigations into the target genes of such lncRNAs, leading to therapeutic strategies for the disease.Keywords: lncRNA, Autoimmune thyroid disease, GENEMANI