ACTIVITY-BASED TEACHING IMPROVES GROSS MOTOR SKILLS AND EARLY ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AMONG NORTH CHENNAI NURSERY STUDENTS: A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVE

Objective: Gross motor skills and cognitive skills are essential prerequisites for the physical development of an early childhood. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed normal age ranges for the achievement of motor milestones by healthy children. The current study aimed to assess the gross motor skills, cognitive skills related to development achievements and its associated factors among North Chennai nursery students. Materials and Methods: A prospective study was conducted among nursery students from B.V. Victory Nursery and Primary School, Thiruvotriyur, North Chennai, India. Gross motor skills and cognitive skills were assessed through 14 and 13 activities, respectively. The assessment and the scores evaluated as per standard methods and it was recorded and analyzed using Microsoft Excel based tools. Results: Overall, 16 children aged 3–4 years old were included in the study. Of the 16 students, 9 boys and 7 girls were assessed for the gross motor skills and cognitive skills using various activities. From this study, girl’s performance was better than the boy’s performance in various activities. Activities performance and their physical and mental growth were significantly associated with the timely achievement of gross motor and cognitive milestones. Conclusion: This study suggests that students’ gross motor skills and cognitive skills may explore during activity-based teaching module compared to blackboard based study. Hence, we conclude, the activity-based teaching methods for nursery and primary students may help in exploring the student’s potential to the maximum extent with the acquisition of various skills

Optimization of drafting zone variables in ring spinning for the production of cotton/milkweed blended yarns

Cotton/milkweed (60/40) blended yarn of 29.5 tex has been produced on a ring spinning system. The influence of fibre friction, front zone roller setting and front top roller pressure at speed frame and ring frame on yarn properties has been studied using the Box and Behnken design. The optimum conditions within the processing limits of the machines are established. It is observed that a higher fibre friction gives higher yarn tenacity and lower yarn unevenness, imperfection and hairiness. The roller setting and top roller pressure also influence the yarn properties at speed frame and ring frame. With the increase in roller setting the yarn tenacity increases initially and then decreases, while other yarn properties deteriorate at wider roller settings. The increase in top roller pressure leads to reduction in yarn unevenness, imperfection and hairiness due to better control of milkweed fibres in the drafting zone. In general, blends of cotton/alkali-treated milkweed fibres with moderate to lower roller setting and moderate to higher level of top roller pressure give better results

Spinnability of cotton/milkweed blends on ring, compact and rotor spinning systems

The physical characteristics of cotton/milkweed yarns spun on ring, compact and rotor spinning systems in relation to blend proportion and chemical treatment of milkweed fibres have been studied. During spinning of milkweed fibre blends, greater fibre losses in carding and flies during drafting are observed in further stages. It is observed that amongst the ring, compact and rotor yarns, the compact-spun blended yarns show higher yarn tenacity and elongation values followed by ring and rotor-spun yarns. The rotor-spun blended yarns show lower yarn unevenness, imperfections and hairiness values than compact and ring-spun yarns due to its mechanism of yarn formation. With the increase in milkweed proportion, the yarn quality deteriorates, irrespective of spinning systems due to lack of cohesiveness and brittleness of milkweed fibres, and drastic reduction in yarn quality is noticed for 40/60 cotton/milkweed blend. By considering the effect of chemical treatment of milkweed fibres, it is observed that the alkali-treated milkweed fibre blended yarns show better yarn properties due to improvement in fibre friction and elongation values followed by dyed and untreated milkweed fibres

Optimization of process variables in rotor spinning for the production of cotton/milkweed blended yarns

Cotton/milkweed (60/40) blended yarn of 29.5 tex has been produced on rotor spinning system. The influence of fibre friction, opening roller speed and sliver linear density on rotor yarn properties has been studied using Box and Behnken factorial design and the optimum conditions within the processing limits of the machines are established. The results show that fibre friction is the dominant factor in determining the tensile properties and other properties of rotor-spun yarn. It is observed that a higher fibre friction gives higher yarn tenacity, and lower yarn unevenness, imperfection and hairiness. The opening roller speed also has a greater influence on rotor yarn properties.  With an increase in opening roller speed, the number of points per fibre increases, which results in better fibre separation and improvement in yarn properties. But very high opening roller speed deteriorates the yarn properties and increases the end breakage rate mainly due to fibre breakage and low fibre straightness. Generally, heavier sliver weight leads to higher spinning draft which deteriorates the yarn properties

A Non-Linear Controller for Forecasting the Rising Demand for Electric Vehicles Applicable to Indian Road Conditions

These days load forecasting is much more required  in order to reduce the wastage of energy. This paper is to implement & develop the idea of short term load forecasting by using Artificial Neural Network, the design of the neural network model, input data selection and Training & Testing by using short term load forecasting will be described in paper. For the EV load forecasting only 2 variables are being used as temperature and humidity to forecast the output as load. This type of designed ANN model will be mapped by using historical data of temperature and humidity (taken from meteorological sites), whereas it is being Trained & Tested by using historical data of loading of EV charging stations (Chetan maini ,Bangalore) of a particular area as Coimbatore to give the desired result. Training & Testing done by using large amount of historical data of weather conditions and loading data (kV). By the help of this model they can predict their daily loads (next day's load) by putting historical data in the acquired algorithm

Analysis of structural properties of cotton/milkweed blended ring, compact and rotor yarns

This study has been conducted to explore the relationship between yarn structure and yarn characteristics of cotton/milkweed (C/M) blended yarns. The fibre migration index values reveal that the milkweed fibres are predominantly in the yarn sheath of C/M 80/20 yarn, whereas it occupies the yarn core in C/M 60/40 and 40/60 combinations as small clusters. Fibre migration studies reveal that the compact spun yarns have higher fibre migration factor which is responsible for their tenacity followed by ring- and rotor-spun yarns. The effective packing density of C/M blended yarn decreases with the increase in milkweed blend proportion due to less cohesiveness and poor self locking structure of fibres in the yarn cross-section