Aspiring india: The Politics of Mothering, Education Reforms, and English

This dissertation is an ethnography of aspirational mobilities emergent under contexts of profound material and social change. To explore the unprecedented expansion of educational aspirations in post market reform India, specifically surging parental desires for English-medium schooling, I conducted fieldwork at a low-fee private English-medium school and a neighboring state-funded Malayalam-medium school in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Further, to record state responses to non-elite educational aspirations, my fieldwork was distributed along diverse agencies that supported and regulated English learning in Kerala and across the country. This dissertation makes two key arguments. Firstly, transitions from a previously austere socialist economy to a consumption saturated society has radically altered gendered everyday lives and unsettled entrenched social hierarchies. Negotiating these changes, non-elite mothers are reimagining possible futures for their children. Since social recognition and economic security was and continues to be entangled with higher education and English proficiencies, this has intensified desires for English-medium schooling from the earliest grades. Secondly, intensifying non-elite desires for English learning reveals how educational systems in India are geared towards meeting the aspirations of privileged citizens. Analyzing the provision of English language learning in state-funded and private school systems, I argue that emergent emphases on conversational skills defines “knowing” English as predicated on the ability to socialize in English. While this shift benefits internationally mobile elite Indians, it marginalizes non-elite learning communities whose pedagogic resources are skewed towards literacy rather than orality skills. To conclude, aspirational mobilities in contemporary India are diverse and even oppositional, and dependent on aspirational locations as well as the resources that groups are able to mobilize

Native Title, land rights and Aboriginal self-determination

The paper explores the relationship between land rights campaigns and self-determination for Indigenous Australians, and argues that Native Title has effectively complicated and undermined the land recovery process that Indigenous Australians achieved under various State land rights acts. KeywordsLand rights, Native Title, self determinatio

Dynamic Motivation to Lead: Construct Validity of Motivation to Lead

Although motivation to lead (MTL) was characterized as stable, recent research suggested otherwise. This study explored the malleability of MTL and its predictors. Individuals with high affective-identity MTL are motivated to lead because they enjoy leading. Individuals with high social normative MTL are motivated by an obligation to lead. Individuals with high noncalculative MTL are drawn to leadership because they avoid weighing the costs and benefits of leading. Applicants to a California college were sent a questionnaire on MTL and leadership self-efficacy (LSE) (Time 1 assessment, N = 2704). Four years later (Time 2), participants who responded at Time 1 were sent a survey on motivation to lead, leadership self-efficacy, college leadership experience, and leader identity (LID) (N = 96). Results showed that participants’ affective-identity and noncalculative MTL have decreased over time. Leadership self-efficacy at Time 2 and leader identity at Time 2 were related to the changes in all 3 categories of MTL. Only specific college leadership experiences related to changes in affective-identity MTL. Lastly, leader identity at Time 2 mediated the relationship between affective-identity MTL at Time 1 and Time 2. Most high school students applied to college aspiring to be leaders, but only students who cultivate their leader identity should continue to be motivated to lead. Implications are discussed in the context of the construct validity of MTL, specifically for student leadership development in higher education

Elemental ratios in stars vs planets

Context. The chemical composition of planets is an important constraint for planet formation and subsequent differentiation. While theoretical studies try to derive the compositions of planets from planet formation models in order to link the composition and formation process of planets, other studies assume that the elemental ratios in the formed planet and in the host star are the same. Aims. Using a chemical model combined with a planet formation model, we aim to link the composition of stars with solar mass and luminosity with the composition of the hosted planets. For this purpose, we study the three most important elemental ratios that control the internal structure of a planet: Fe/Si, Mg/Si, and C/O. Methods. A set of 18 different observed stellar compositions was used to cover a wide range of these elemental ratios. The Gibbs energy minimization assumption was used to derive the composition of planets, taking stellar abundances as proxies for nebular abundances, and to generate planets in a self-consistent planet formation model. We computed the elemental ratios Fe/Si, Mg/Si and C/O in three types of planets (rocky, icy, and giant planets) formed in different protoplanetary discs, and compared them to stellar abundances. Results. We show that the elemental ratios Mg/Si and Fe/Si in planets are essentially identical to those in the star. Some deviations are shown for planets that formed in specific regions of the disc, but the relationship remains valid within the ranges encompassed in our study. The C/O ratio shows only a very weak dependence on the stellar value.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

Optical second harmonic generation in WTe2

We study second harmonic generation (SHG) in an acentric Weyl semimetal, tungsten ditelluride (WTe2), and estimate its second-order electric susceptibility, χ(2). WTe2 is a layered material that has a natural cleavage plane perpendicular to the c-axis, but the crystal symmetry prohibits SHG emission when light is normally incident on the natural planar surface. Hence, we measure the SHG susceptibility in a laser scanning microscope, where it is easier to measure the SHG from the striated edges of the crystal. We determine the susceptibility from the variation of the SHG images with incident power, using a model that accounts for both the statistics of the SHG detection process and the surface inhomogeneities of the sample. A preliminary estimate shows that χ(2) in WTe2 is comparable to that of GaAs, a well studied nonlinear crystal with large second-order susceptibility

From stellar nebula to planets: the refractory components

We computed the abundance of refractory elements in planetary bodies formed in stellar systems with solar chemical composition by combining models for chemical composition and planet formation. We also consider the formation of refractory organic compounds, which have been ignored in previous studies on this topic. We used the commercial software package HSC Chemistry in order to compute the condensation sequence and chemical composition of refractory minerals incorporated into planets. The problem of refractory organic material is approached with two distinct model calculations: the first considers that the fraction of atoms used in the formation of organic compounds is removed from the system (i.e. organic compounds are formed in the gas phase and are nonreactive); and the second assumes that organic compounds are formed by the reaction between different compounds that had previously condensed from the gas phase. Results show that refractory material represents more than 50 wt % of the mass of solids accreted by the simulated planets, with up to 30 wt % of the total mass composed of refractory organic compounds. Carbide and silicate abundances are consistent with C/O and Mg/Si elemental ratios of 0.5 and 1.02 for the Sun. Less than 1 wt % of carbides; pyroxene and olivine in similar quantities are formed. The model predicts planets that are similar in composition to those of the Solar system. It also shows that, starting from a common initial nebula composition, a wide variety of chemically different planets can form, which means that the differences in planetary compositions are due to differences in the planetary formation process. We show that a model in which refractory organic material is absent from the system is more compatible with observations. The use of a planet formation model is essential to form a wide diversity of planets in a consistent way.Comment: 18 pages, 29 figures. Accepted for publication in A&

Management of pain using transdermal patches

Transdermal delivery is a non-invasive route of   drug administration through the skin surface that can deliver the drug at a predetermined rate across the dermis to achieve a local or systemic effect. It  is  potentially used as an alternative to oral route of drugs and hypodermic injections. Analgesics are mostly used for various diseases as most of them are associated with severe or mild pain .The use of analgesics as a pain relief patch is now being used commonly. A transdermal analgesic or pain relief patch is a medicated adhesive patch used to relieve minor to severe pain. Currently, the patches are available for many Opioids , Non opioids analgesics. Local anesthetics  and antianginal drugs. The drugs include Fentanyl, Buprenorphine ketoprofen, diclofenacepolamine , piroxicam , Capsaicin ,Nitroglycerine  and Lignocaine . They are available as both matrix and reservoir patches. This review explores the various drugs used to manage pain and their route of administration in terms of frequency, complications and effects  Â

The Galactic Cosmic Ray Intensity over the Past 106-109 Years as Recorded by Cosmogenic Nuclides in Meteorites and Terrestrial Samples

Concentrations of stable and radioactive nuclides produced by cosmic ray particles in meteorites allow us to track the long term average of the primary flux of galactic cosmic rays (GCR). During the past ∼10Ma, the average GCR flux remained constant over timescales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and, if corrected for known variations in solar modulation, also during the past several years to hundreds of years. Because the cosmic ray concentrations in meteorites represent integral signals, it is difficult to assess the limits of uncertainty of this statement, but they are larger than the often quoted analytical and model uncertainties of some 30%. Time series of concentrations of the radionuclide 10Be in terrestrial samples strengthen the conclusions drawn from meteorite studies, indicating that the GCR intensity on a ∼0.5 million year scale has remained constant within some ±10% during the past ∼10 million years. The very long-lived radioactive nuclide 40K allows to assess the GCR flux over about the past one billion years. The flux over the past few million years has been the same as the longer-term average in the past 0.5-1 billion years within a factor of ∼1.5. However, newer data do not confirm a long-held belief that the flux in the past few million years has been higher by some 30-50% than the very long term average. Neither does our analysis confirm a hypothesis that the iron meteorite data indicate a ∼150 million year periodicity in the cosmic ray flux, possibly related to variations in the long-term terrestrial climat

Item-Graph2vec: a Efficient and Effective Approach using Item Co-occurrence Graph Embedding for Collaborative Filtering

Current item-item collaborative filtering algorithms based on artificial neural network, such as Item2vec, have become ubiquitous and are widely applied in the modern recommender system. However, these approaches do not apply to the large-scale item-based recommendation system because of their extremely long training time. To overcome the shortcoming that current algorithms have high training time costs and poor stability when dealing with large-scale data sets, the item graph embedding algorithm Item-Graph2vec is described here. This algorithm transforms the users' shopping list into a item co-occurrence graph, obtains item sequences through randomly travelling on this co-occurrence graph and finally trains item vectors through sequence samples. We posit that because of the stable size of item, the size and density of the item co-occurrence graph change slightly with the increase in the training corpus. Therefore, Item-Graph2vec has a stable runtime on the large scale data set, and its performance advantage becomes more and more obvious with the growth of the training corpus. Extensive experiments conducted on real-world data sets demonstrate that Item-Graph2vec outperforms Item2vec by 3 times in terms of efficiency on douban data set, while the error generated by the random walk sampling is small

A Bio-Inspired Tensegrity Manipulator with Multi-DOF, Structurally Compliant Joints

Most traditional robotic mechanisms feature inelastic joints that are unable to robustly handle large deformations and off-axis moments. As a result, the applied loads are transferred rigidly throughout the entire structure. The disadvantage of this approach is that the exerted leverage is magnified at each subsequent joint possibly damaging the mechanism. In this paper, we present two lightweight, elastic, bio-inspired tensegrity robotics arms which mitigate this danger while improving their mechanism's functionality. Our solutions feature modular tensegrity structures that function similarly to the human elbow and the human shoulder when connected. Like their biological counterparts, the proposed robotic joints are flexible and comply with unanticipated forces. Both proposed structures have multiple passive degrees of freedom and four active degrees of freedom (two from the shoulder and two from the elbow). The structural advantages demonstrated by the joints in these manipulators illustrate a solution to the fundamental issue of elegantly handling off-axis compliance.Comment: IROS 201