High School Seniors’ College Plans: Gendered Variations in the Effects of AcademicAgency, Cultural and Social Capital

This research focused on gendered variations in the effects of academic agency, social and cultural capital on high school seniors’ college plans. Monitoring the Future (2012) data from a sample of 12,000 seniors, supplemented with interviews with education professionals found theoretically meaningful gender differences. College plans of males and females were directly influenced by their academic agency. Their parents were an additional direct positive influence, even if only for males. But, parental cultural capital and abstaining from controlled substances increased likelihood of pursuing college through increased academic agency for both males and females. These findings contributed to the literature on gendered higher education pathways and supported theories of social and cultural capital development

Analysis of Issues on Micro Credit—The Case of Two Villages in Punjab

The phenomenon of poverty was felt and observed more during the decade of 1990s, as the overall growth slowed down. While the slowed economic growth and recessionary trends contributed to poverty, the trickle “down effect” once thought, to improve living conditions, did not reach the lowest level owing largely to lack of accessibility of institutions, unjust and non-poor policies. For these reasons, in Pakistan during the decades of 60s and 80s, when the country experienced high growth rates of 6-7 percent, 34 percent of people still lived below the poverty line. Socio-economic development, improving the quality of life in general and of rural poor in particular, welfare have been the prime stated goals of government. Therefore, rural development programmes, such as, Village-Aid, Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), Peoples Works Programme, Tameer-e-watan Programme, Prime Minister’s Five Points Programme etc. were introduced to improve farm productivity, which would consequently improve incomes and quality of life of rural poor. This was done through the Department of Local Government and Rural Development. Little impact on the life of the rural poor, however, was observed partly because these were administered through closed, immutable and cloistered institutions of government which are not accessible and responsive to the needs of poor. Also, the lack of focus on community participation and need for it was evident. As these programmes were managed through government departments these lacked flexibility and out-reach. The approach of administering was fixed, rigid and lacked professionalism.

Enabling good housing decisions

To counteract clients’ bad mortgage choices, community groups must first understand the emotional component of housing decisions. The author explains how choice architecture can help prospective homebuyers avoid mistakes.Home ownership ; Mortgage loans

Impacts of Irrigation and Drainage Development Projects in Pakistan: Farmers’ Perceptions

Using well-designed sample, anecdotal evidence from farmers of a recently completed irrigation and drainage project in Bhawalnagar Pakistan, valuable impact indicators could be assessed. The case study suggests that although this simple and quick method is not a substitute for the detailed scientific survey, yet it can be handy, sufficient, and could be usefully used at a nominal cost as a supplementary method. The parameters approached were the depth to water-table, crop yields, cropping pattern, abandoned lands, water distribution, and seepage reduction, etc. The results showed that some of these, including the depth to water-table, seepage reduction, and cropping pattern compared well with previous technical studies, while some others did not. The physical interventions of the project under quick evaluation comprised concrete lining of about 170 kms of the distributary canals and 352 kms of surface drains. The paper concludes that the farmers’ perceptions, when carefully designed and analysed, offer substantial feedback for remedial actions and for planning future projects.

Energy conditions in f(T)f(T) gravity with non-minimal torsion-matter coupling

The present paper examines the validity of energy bounds in a modified theory of gravity involving non-minimal coupling of torsion scalar and perfect fluid matter. In this respect, we formulate the general inequalities of energy conditions by assuming the flat FRW universe. For the application of these bounds, we particularly focus on two specific models that are recently proposed in literature and also choose the power law cosmology. We find the feasible constraints on the involved free parameters and evaluate their possible ranges graphically for the consistency of these energy bounds.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Astrophys. Space Sc

Stochastic Optimization from Distributed, Streaming Data in Rate-limited Networks

Motivated by machine learning applications in networks of sensors, internet-of-things (IoT) devices, and autonomous agents, we propose techniques for distributed stochastic convex learning from high-rate data streams. The setup involves a network of nodes---each one of which has a stream of data arriving at a constant rate---that solve a stochastic convex optimization problem by collaborating with each other over rate-limited communication links. To this end, we present and analyze two algorithms---termed distributed stochastic approximation mirror descent (D-SAMD) and accelerated distributed stochastic approximation mirror descent (AD-SAMD)---that are based on two stochastic variants of mirror descent and in which nodes collaborate via approximate averaging of the local, noisy subgradients using distributed consensus. Our main contributions are (i) bounds on the convergence rates of D-SAMD and AD-SAMD in terms of the number of nodes, network topology, and ratio of the data streaming and communication rates, and (ii) sufficient conditions for order-optimum convergence of these algorithms. In particular, we show that for sufficiently well-connected networks, distributed learning schemes can obtain order-optimum convergence even if the communications rate is small. Further we find that the use of accelerated methods significantly enlarges the regime in which order-optimum convergence is achieved; this is in contrast to the centralized setting, where accelerated methods usually offer only a modest improvement. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms using numerical experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures; Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Network

Molecular Bio-imprinting of Biocatalysts

Energy conservation is the cry of the day. Attempts are made all over the world to occupy and use energy reserves. Increased industrialization and mechanization has led to the depletion of natural energy reserves. Its unavoidable to search for renewable sources of energy, which may be not used now but can be used by future generations. We are using the expertise of our ancestors. Thus exploiting the nature and newer techniques in this area would yield the best results. Bio-imprinting is one of those techniques whereby chemical modification is done in order to achieve highly expressed protein which can be stored in its highly active form in the specific solvent