Ideal child in the ideal nation : gender, class and work in a school lesson

The influence of schooling on shaping childhood identity is a relatively under-researched area, especially within the Indian context. Although it is acknowledged that schools form significant sites of secondary socialisation, they tended to be treated as 'black boxes', leaving little scope for ethnographic and other inquiry into school processes which form a critical part of the lifeworld of the school child. These processes are distinguished by social markers like gender, class, caste, religion and location, which make the study of identity formation in childhood through schooling complex and challenging. Textbooks play a crucial role in school socialisation. Embodying a selection of knowledge deemed to be worthy of teaching and learning, or what some refer to as 'official' knowledge, textbooks frame and normativise notions of childhood, citizenship and nation within the institutional space of the school. Socialisation into citizenship through textbook knowledge involves explicit and implicit references to the duties and responsibilities of the child as citizen to the modern nation state. This paper attempts to ethnographically capture the process of socialisation of children into the ideal of labour in the modern nation, through examination of one lesson in a textbook for Grade 4, and its transaction in a classroom in an urban government primary school in a city in Gujarat, India. Textual analysis, classroom observations and interviews with children and teachers were used in a larger study of which this paper is a part. The text and classroom discussion discursively produce the nation and the importance of 'kadi mehnat' to its progress, through the elaboration of different areas of work and labour and their significance to the project of the modernising nation-state. The manner in which textbooks function to socialise children into normative notions of work in the nation are highly gendered and distinctly marked by class, as well as caste and urban/rural location. The ideal child of the ideal nation is discursively produced through narratives of valour, discipline and dedication. Gender pervades the discourse of the ideal nation, with women represented as key agents in its moral reproduction. Children from poor communities take part in the ritual performance of classroom participation, in which subjectivity and the real conditions of their lives find no place, and knowing that structural realities will not allow for the realisation of these ideals. This paper problematises the assumptions underlying the pedagogical aims of official school knowledge and shows how these are profoundly gendered. It argues for incorporation of insights from school ethnographies that examine constructions of the normative learnersubject from a gender perspective into the sociology of contemporary Indian childhood

Myopic investment view of the Indian mutual fund industry

This paper examines the investment behavior of Indian mutual fund industry. Since the majority of investors who invest in mutual funds are salaried individuals or individuals that own SMEs, the Indian Mutual Fund industry should have a long term investment horizon. However, the data from all mutual funds for the periods December 2007 to May 2008 and December 2008 to May 2009 reveals that the mutual fund industry has adjusted its position on a short term basis in tandem with the short term volatility of the market. The findings substantiate the SEBI Chairman’s observation that there is an urgent need to set up investment norms with regard to the holding period for stocks owned by the Indian mutual fund industryMutual Fund, short term volatility, asset under management, investment churn.

The Hindutva View of History: Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States

Organizations associated with India’s BJP political party and the Sangh Parivar have attempted to fundamentally and inaccurately revise textbooks to propagate a Hindu nationalist view in Californian and Indian schoolbooks.Sanskrit and Indian Studie

On spatial birth-death and matching processes, and Poisson shot-noise fields

In this dissertation we deal with certain spatial stochastic processes that are closely related to Spatial birth-death (SBD) processes. These processes are stochastic processes that model the time-evolution of interacting individuals in a population, where the interaction between individuals depends on their relative locations in space. In this dissertaion, we consider three models of such processes with births and deaths that are amenable to long-term analysis. A common feature of all these models is that the particles in the system interact at a distance of oneMathematic

Hydrodynamics and Mass Transfer in Bubble Columns

Bubble columns and slurry bubble columns are multiphase reactors used for a wide range of applications in the biochemical, chemical, petrochemical, and metallurgical industries. In spite of their widespread usage, the scale-up of bubble columns remains an ongoing challenge. Various scale-up approaches, based on concepts ranging from ideal mixing to complex 3-D multiphase CFD models, have been used for assessing the effect of column size and gas and liquid flow rates on column hydrodynamics and reactor performance. Among these approaches, phenomenological models based on either single-class or multi-class bubbles that were validated on cold flow systems have been successful in predicting the residence time distributions of gas and liquid in pilot-scale bubble columns (Chen et al., 2004) (Gupta, 2002). However, such models are not entirely predictive, since they are validated using columns having the same size as hot operating units. To provide better predictive capability, we need prior knowledge of local hold-up, transport coefficients, and bubble dynamics. This dissertation provides an improved understanding of the key design parameters (gas hold-up, volumetric mass transfer coefficients, gas-liquid interfacial area, and their spatial distribution) for predictive scale-up of bubble columns. In this work, a 4-point optical probe is used to estimate local gas hold-up and bubble dynamics (specific interfacial area, frequency, bubble velocity, and bubble chord-lengths) and their radial profiles in a cold-flow slurry bubble column and a bubble column photo-bioreactor. Along with local bubble dynamics, the effect of superficial gas velocity on volumetric mass transport coefficients in several sizes of bubble columns, with and without internals, and in slurry bubble columns and photo-bioreactors are studied. Key findings: In the bubbly flow regime, bubble dynamics in photo-bioreactors with suspended algae were dominated by the physicochemical properties of the liquid, as distinguished from the churn-turbulent flow regime in the slurry bubble columns, where bubble dynamics were mainly affected by turbulent intensities. In the bubbly-flow regime, volumetric mass transfer coefficients increased with an increase in superficial gas velocity. However, in the churn-turbulent flow regime, they approached a constant value with an increase in the superficial gas velocity. A new methodology was proposed to identify the flow regime from optical probe signals based on the support vector machine algorithm, which can uniquely classify flow regimes for various systems on a single flow regime map. A new model for the liquid phase mixing, that with a proper choice of the mass transfer coefficients enables a good match of the predicted and measured tracer response is described. This model provides a better prediction of volumetric mass transfer coefficients than the currently used well mixed model for the liquid phase (CSTR). The dissertation improves the fundamental understanding of the connection between bubble dynamics and mass transfer. Using the 4-point optical probe as a tool, it demonstrates a connection between bubble dynamics and volumetric mass transfer coefficients. Present work addresses the need of industries to have a method that can be used as an online process control tool to identify flow regime, this method has been tested at cold flow conditions and needs to be implemented at hot flow conditions. The parameters (radial distributions of gas hold-up, bubble velocities, and volumetric mass transfer coefficient) that are evaluated in the present work can be used to validate phenomenological models and CFD results at cold flow conditions, which can later be combined with process chemistry to accomplish scale-up (Chen et al., 2004). The open literature on multiphase reactors is mainly limited to cold flow condition, and techniques such as the optical probe need to be extended to hot flow conditions. The optical probe described here can withstand high temperature and pressure, but for hot flow conditions it requires a better binding agent to hold the probe tips together, one that will not dissolve in industrial solvents

Xeroderma Pigmentosum Type A Deficiency Results in Increased Generation of Microvesicle Particles in Response to Ultraviolet B Radiation and Solar Simulated Light via Platelet-activating Factor Receptor Signaling Pathway

Increased vulnerability to the DNA-damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a hallmark of the uncommon genetic disorder Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP). The Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) route uses the DNA Damage Recognition and Repair component XPA to identify and get rid of damaged DNA segments. Although the solar UVB (290-320 nm) radiation is necessary for humans to produce vitamin D, it may also induce erythema and inflammatory reactions, and in some pathological situations, such as XPA deficiency, results in increased UV responses (photosensitivity). Our group has previously shown, using cell lines and mice, that increased synthesis of the lipid mediator Platelet-activating factor (PAF) is what causes UVB-induced amplified effects linked to XPA deficiency. Importantly, our team has recently found that PAF-receptor (PAFR) signaling induces the activation of the enzyme acid sphingomyelinase (aSMase), resulting in the release of tiny subcellular membrane-bound particles known as microvesicle particles (MVPs) from the plasma membrane of keratinocytes. The objective of the ongoing research is to ascertain whether XPA deficiency stimulates increased MVP synthesis in response to UVB and more clinically significant solar-stimulated light (SSL; includes all UV associated with sunlight) via the PAFR signaling pathway and whether inhibiting PAFR or aSMase can significantly decrease photosensitivity. Studies using a keratinocyte cell line deficient in XPA showed more MVP release when exposed to UVB and SSL radiation than XPA-positive cells. UVB and SSL treatment of XPA KO mice resulted in increased MVP release, exaggerated erythema, and cytokine production in comparison to wild-type mice. It was discovered through genetic methods utilizing mice lacking in PAFRs and aSMase that these heightened UV responses depended on a new route involving PAFR-mediated aSMase activation. Finally, experiments on mice showed that administration with the aSMase inhibitor imipramine prevented UV-induced photosensitivity. This research pinpoints a model MVP route that is responsible for the aberrant UV responses linked to XPA deficiency. These investigations also provide novel treatment targets for photosensitivity