From open resources to educational opportunity

Since MIT’s bold announcement of the OpenCourseWare initiative in 2001, the content of over 700 of its courses have been published on the Web and made available for free to the world. Important infrastructure initiatives have also been launched recently with a view to enabling the sustainable implementation of these educational programmes, through strengthening organizational capacity as well as through building open, standards‐based technology. Each of these initiatives point to a rich palette of transformational possibilities for education; together with the growing open source movement, they offer glimpses of a sustainable ecology of substantial and quality educational resources. This discussion piece will highlight some of the educational opportunity presented by MIT’s current information technology‐enabled educational agenda and related initiatives, along with their strategic underpinnings and implications. It will address various dimensions of their impact on the form and function of education. It will examine how these ambitious programmes achieve a vision characterized by an abundance of sustainable, transformative educational opportunities, not merely pervasive technology

Efficacy of Microalgae on the Removal of Pollutants from Wastewater

Expansion of urban populations, increased coverage of domestic water supply and sewerage give rise to greater quantities of municipal wastewater. With the current emphasis on environmental health and water pollution issues, there is an increasing discharge of waste water in developing countries. Present technologies in developing countries for treating waste water are not sufficient and cost effective. Chlorella vulgaris is a form of green microalgae efficient for pond-based wastewater treatment, rather than bacterial strains for their ability to flocculate Chlorella vulgaris in a culture suspension. A microbial flocculent would be significantly cheaper than traditional flocculants and is believed to be less potentially toxic than synthetic polymers which are currently available. Chlorella vulgaris absorbed more pollutant compared to Chlamydomonas sp., which reveals that Chlorella vulgaris is efficient than Chlamydomonas sp., for treating waste water.

Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge

Given the abundance of open education initiatives that aim to make educational assets freely available online, the time seems ripe to explore the potential of open education to transform the economics and ecology of education. Despite the diversity of tools and resources already available -- from well-packaged course materials to simple games, for students, self-learners, faculty, and educational institutions -- we have yet to take full advantage of shared knowledge about how these are being used, what local innovations are emerging, and how to learn from and build on the experiences of others. Opening Up Education argues that we must develop not only the technical capability but also the intellectual capacity for transforming tacit pedagogical knowledge into commonly usable and visible knowledge: by providing incentives for faculty to use (and contribute to) open education goods, and by looking beyond institutional boundaries to connect a variety of settings and open source entrepreneurs.These essays by leaders in open education describe successes, challenges, and opportunities they have found in a range of open education initiatives. They approach -- from both macro and micro perspectives -- the central question of how open education tools, resources, and knowledge can improve the quality of education. The contributors (from leading foundations, academic institutions, associations, and projects) discuss the strategic underpinnings of their efforts first in terms of technology, then content, and finally knowledge. They also address the impact of their projects, and how close they come to achieving a vision of sustainable, transformative educational opportunities that amounts to much more than pervasive technology.Contributors:Richard Baraniuk, Randy Bass, Trent Batson, Dan Bernstein, John Seely Brown, Barbara Cambridge, Tom Carey, Catherine Casserly, James Dalziel, Bernadine Chuck Fong, Richard Gale, Gerard Hanley, Diane Harley, Mary Huber, Pat Hutchings, Toru Iiyoshi, David Kahle, M. S. Vijay Kumar, Andy Lane, Diana Laurillard, Stuart Lee, Steve Lerman, Marilyn Lombardi, Phil Long, Clifford Lynch, Christopher Mackie, Anne Margulies, Owen McGrath, Flora McMartin, Shigeru Miyagawa, Diana Oblinger, Neeru Paharia, Cheryl Richardson, Marshall Smith, Candace Thille, Edward Walker, and David WileyAbout the Editors:Toru Iiyoshi is Senior Scholar and Director of the Knowledge Media Lab at the Carnegie Foundation.M. S. Vijay Kumar is Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT

Phase Stability and Thermoelectric Properties of the Mineral FeS2: An Ab Initio Study

First principles calculations were carried out to study the phase stability and thermoelectric properties of the naturally occurring marcasite phase of FeS$_2$ at ambient condition as well as under pressure. Two distinct density functional approaches has been used to investigate the above mentioned properties. The plane wave pseudopotential approach was used to study the phase stability and structural, elastic, and vibrational properties. The full potential linear augment plane wave method has been used to study the electronic structure and thermoelectric properties. From the total energy calculations, it is clearly seen that marcasite FeS$_2$ is stable at ambient conditions, and it undergoes a first order phase transition to pyrite FeS$_2$ at around 3.7 GPa with a volume collapse of about 3$\%$. The calculated ground state properties such as lattice parameters, bond lengths and bulk modulus of marcasite FeS$_2$ agree quite well with the experiment. Apart from the above studies, phonon dispersion curves unambiguously indicate that marcasite phase is stable under ambient conditions. Further, we do not observe any phonon softening across the marcasite to pyrite transition and the possible reason driving the transition is also analyzed in the present study, which has not been attempted earlier. In addition, we have also calculated the electronic structure and thermoelectric properties of the both marcasite and pyrite FeS$_2$. We find a high thermopower for both the phases, especially with p-type doping, which enables us to predict that FeS$_2$ might find promising applications as good thermoelectric materials.Comment: 10 Figure

Evaluation of antioxidant activity of ormeloxifene: in vitro study

Background: Ormeloxifene (Centchroman) is a Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulator (SERM) which acts as estrogen antagonist and having anti progestogenic activity also. It is being used in the management of dysfunctional uterine bleeding and as nonhormonal oral contraceptive. It is also being investigated for the indications such as osteoporosis, breast and endometrial carcinoma. In this study, we have evaluated the Antioxidant potential of drug by using DPPH and NO synthase Assay. It was found that ormeloxifene has significant antioxidant activity which could be cause for its use in various gynaecological and other conditions.Methods: In this study, we have demonstrated in vitro antioxidant activity of ormeloxifene. DPPH and NO synthase assay tests were done for different concentrations of ormeloxifene.Results: In our study, it showed that the free radical scavenging activity of ormeloxifene was less in lower concentration and increased in the higher concentration in DPPH assay. The free radical scavenging activity of drug ormeloxifene was 22% at 100µg/ml and 27% for the concentrations of 1000µg/ml in DPPH assay. No scavenging activity was 3% at 100µg/ml and 11% at 1000µg/ml.Conclusions: The invitro antioxidant analysis of ormeloxifene, was proved to be a potent antioxidant

Opening up Educational Possibilities through Content, Pedagogy and Technology(Session 2: What Are We After? Defining Success in Distance Learning,Networks without Borders : Towards Cross-Cultural Learning Communities)

"It has been 30 years since MIT last saw such a groundswell of educational innovation and it\u27s beginning to transform the classroom experience". Indeed, initiatives that have been launched over the past few years such as the OpenCourseWare (OCW), the Singapore MIT Alliance (SMA) and I-campus amply support this headline from an article in the May 2002 edition of Technology Review, about the unprecedented nature of MIT\u27s engagement with technology-enabled educational transformation. These ambitious programs have the potential to transform higher education on a number of dimensions. Important infrastructure initiatives have also been launched recently with a view to enabling the sustainable implementation of these educational programs, through strengthening organizational capacity and alignment as well as through building technology platforms and facilities. A key infrastructure initiative that has been launched is the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I). This MIT-led collaborative project is developing an open architecture to promote the development of portable and sustainable applications that can be easily integrated into existing infrastructure

Quasi Switched Capacitor based integrated Boost Series Parallel Fly-back Converter for energy Storage Applications

711-715A quasi-Switched Capacitor technique (QSC) is used to control the switch in Interconnected Boost Series Parallel Fly-Back Converter (IBSPFC). The QSC based IBSPFC does not require any snubber circuits for all the MOSFET switches presented at primary and secondary side and power can also be transferred even if one the winding gets damage. The primary side winding of the fly-back transformer is coupled in series across with bulk capacitor to minimize switch voltage stress and the secondary winding of the 1:1 fly-back transformer is coupled with dc voltage source, three switches and capacitor which forms a Quasi switched capacitor technique. Working techniques of quasi-switched capacitor with IBSPFC have been introduced. A 75v input, 100v output and DC-DC isolated Converter switching at frequency of 100 kHz is modeled using FPGA SPARTAN6LX9 and experimental results have been presented