Foctors that prevent children from gaining access to schooling : a study of Delhi Slum households

This paper examines the factors that prevent slum children aged 5 to 14 from gaining access to schooling in light of the worsening urban poverty and sizable increase in rural-to-urban migration. Bias against social disadvantage in terms of gender and caste is not clearly manifested in schooling, while migrated children are less likely to attend school. I argue that the lack of preparation for schooling in the pre-schooling ages and school admission procedures are the main obstacles for migrated children. The most important implication for universal elementary education in urban India is raising parental awareness and simplifying the admission procedures.

The informal labour market in India : transitory or permanent employment for migrants?

The informal economy is a very important sector of the Indian economy. The National Council of Applied Economic Research estimates that the informal sector - "unorganised sector" - generates about 62% of GDP and provides for about 55% of total employment (ILO 2002, p. 14). This paper studies the characteristics of the workers in the informal economy and whether internal migrants treat this sector as a temporary location before moving on to the organised or formal sector to improve their lifetime income and living conditions. We limit our study to the Indian urban (non-agricultural) sector and study the characteristics of the household heads that belong to the informal sector (self-employed and informal wage workers) and the formal sector. We find that household heads that are less educated, come from poorer households, and/or are in lower social groups (castes and religions) are more likely to be in the informal sector. In addition, our results show strong evidence that the longer a rural migrant household head has been working in the urban sector, ceteris paribus, the more likely that individual has moved out of the informal wage sector. These results support the hypothesis that, for internal migrants, the informal wage labour market is a stepping stone to a better and more certain life in the formal sector.

From school to work : Muslim youths' education and employment strategies in a community in Uttar Pradesh, India

India's Muslim community, which accounts for 14.4 percent of India’s vast population and is thus the largest of all religious minorities, has been the subject of considerable development discourse as Muslims have the lowest level of educational attainment and standard of living among socio-religious groups in the country. This study addresses the meaning of education and career opportunities for Muslim youths in relation to their educational credentials and social position in the hierarchy of Muslim class and caste groups, with particular reference to a community in Uttar Pradesh. The author contends that the career opportunities, possibilities, and strategies of Muslim youths in Indian society depend on multiple factors: social hierarchy, opportunities to utilize economic resources, social networks, cultural capital, and the wider structural disparities within which the Muslims are situated and wherein they question the value of higher education in gaining them admission to socially recognized and established employment sectors.

Timed mind maps using MINDMANAGER & MS-PROJECT for educational innovation

The adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is becoming a great challenge for the University Community, especially for its teaching and research staff, which is involved actively in the teaching-learning process. It is also inducing a paradigm change for lecturers and students. Among the methodologies used for processes of teaching innovation, system thinking plays an important role when working mainly with mind maps, and is focused to highlighting the essence of the knowledge, allowing its visual representation. In this paper, a method for using these mind maps for organizing a particular subject is explained. This organization is completed with the definition of duration, precedence relationships and resources for each of these activities, as well as with their corresponding monitoring. Mind maps are generated by means of the MINDMANAGER package whilst Ms-PROJECT is used for establishing tasks relationships, durations, resources, and monitoring. Summarizing, a procedure and the necessary set of applications for self organizing and managing (timed) scheduled teaching tasks has been described in this paper.

Timed mind maps using mindmanager & msproject for educational innovation

The adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is becoming a great challenge for the University Community, especially for its teaching and research staff, which is involved actively in the teaching-learning process. It is also inducing a paradigm change for lecturers and students. Among the methodologies used for processes of teaching innovation, system thinking plays an important role when working mainly with mind maps, and is focused to highlighting the essence of the knowledge, allowing its visual representation. In this paper, a method for using these mind maps for organizing a particular subject is explained. This organization is completed with the definition of duration, precedence relationships and resources for each of these activities, as well as with their corresponding monitoring. Mind maps are generated by means of the MINDMANAGER package whilst Ms-PROJECT is used for establishing tasks relationships, durations, resources, and monitoring. Summarizing, a procedure and the necessary set of applications for self organizing and managing (timed) scheduled teaching tasks has been described in this paper

A segment-swapping approach for executing trapped computations

We consider the problem of supporting goal-level, independent andparallelism (IAP) in the presence of non-determinism. IAP is exploited when two or more goals which will not interfere at run time are scheduled for simultaneous execution. Backtracking over non-deterministic parallel goals runs into the wellknown trapped goal and garbage slot problems. The proposed solutions for these problems generally require complex low-level machinery which makes systems difficult to maintain and extend, and in some cases can even affect sequential execution performance. In this paper we propose a novel solution to the problem of trapped nondeterministic goals and garbage slots which is based on a single stack reordering operation and offers several advantages over previous proposals. While the implementation of this operation itself is not simple, in return it does not impose constraints on the scheduler. As a result, the scheduler and the rest of the run-time machinery can safely ignore the trapped goal and garbage slot problems and their implementation is greatly simplified. Also, standard sequential execution remains unaffected. In addition to describing the solution we report on an implementation and provide performance results. We also suggest other possible applications of the proposed approach beyond parallel execution.

Atmospheric Propagation at 100 and 300 GHz: Assessment of a Method to Identify Rainy Conditions during Radiosoundings

The influence of atmospheric gases and tropospheric phenomena becomes more relevant at frequencies within the THz band (100 GHz to 10 THz), severely affecting the propagation conditions. The use of radiosoundings in propagation studies is a well established measurement technique in order to collect information about the vertical structure of the atmosphere, from which gaseous and cloud attenuation can be estimated with the use of propagation models. However, some of these prediction models are not suitable to be used under rainy conditions. In the present study, a method to identify the presence of rainy conditions during radiosoundings is introduced, with the aim of filtering out these events from yearly statistics of predicted atmospheric attenuation. The detection procedure is based on the analysis of a set of parameters, some of them extracted from synoptical observations of weather (SYNOP reports) and other derived from radiosonde observations (RAOBs). The performance of the method has been evaluated under different climatic conditions, corresponding to three locations in Spain, where colocated rain gauge data were available. Rain events detected by the method have been compared with those precipitations identified by the rain gauge. The pertinence Received 26 June 2012, Accepted 31 July 2012, Scheduled 15 August 2012 * Corresponding author: Gustavo Adolfo Siles Soria (gsiles@grc.ssr.upm.es). 258 Siles et al. of the method is discussed on the basis of an analysis of cumulative distributions of total attenuation at 100 and 300 GHz. This study demonstrates that the proposed method can be useful to identify events probably associated to rainy conditions. Hence, it can be considered as a suitable algorithm in order to filter out this kind of events from annual attenuation statistics.

Criterios para el dimensionamiento de redes de riego robustas frente a cambios en la alternativa de cultivos

En los años 50 y 60 del siglo XX se produjo en Europa un cambio en la concepción de los sistemas de riego, en los cuales se pasó del regadío por superficie al presurizado y con ello del riego por turnos al riego a la demanda. Las ventajas de este nuevo sistema de riego dieron lugar a una gran expansión de las redes colectivas de riego a presión, especialmente en los países del arco mediterráneo y del Sur de Europa (Francia, España, Italia, Portugal y Grecia). Desde entonces el riego presurizado a la demanda ha tenido una evolución permanente, en la que han mejorado los equipos y las técnicas de aplicación del riego, siempre con una clara orientación hacía el incremento de la productividad. Esta evolución unida a los vaivenes de los mercados, al abaratamiento de los transportes y la globalización, y a las subvenciones agrícolas, ha propiciado que las alternativas de cultivos previstas hayan sufrido cambios. El cambio de la alternativa de cultivos hacia otros más exigentes desde el punto de vista de las necesidades hídricas tiene como consecuencia el aumento de los consumos, circunstancia para cual debe estar capacitada la red. Otros fenómenos como el cambio climático, de amplio interés a día de hoy, presentan algunos escenarios en lo que se prevé un incremento de las temperaturas que unido a una reducción en las precipitaciones, supondría también que se elevarían las necesidades de riego de los cultivos. Todas estas circunstancias deben ser contempladas en la redacción de los proyectos de transformación de nuevas zonas regables y en los de modernización de las existentes. Las redes de riego deben estar dimensionadas para poder atender dichos incrementos de consumo. La fortaleza de la red para atender variaciones en las demandas de agua se convierte por tanto en una premisa del proyecto. Dicha fortaleza se puede conseguir de formas diferentes y a costos distintos, puesto que en el proceso de dimensionamiento estadístico de los caudales circulantes en punta de campaña intervienen muchas variables y parámetros de riego. En la presente tesis doctoral se analiza en detalle el estado del arte en la materia, se efectúa un análisis de la función específica y la influencia en el cálculo de cada uno de los parámetros, se establece un procedimiento de actuación que optimice el dimensionamiento de la red colectiva para que ésta disponga de la robustez necesaria para hacer frente a incrementos potenciales de consumo de agua sobre la previsiones de base del proyecto y se establecen los criterios, rangos y combinaciones de parámetros que permiten dotar a la red de la fortaleza necesaria de la manera más eficiente posible. During the 1950s and 1960s the design of irrigation systems in Europe underwent change. Traditional surface irrigation was replaced by pressure irrigation, with the delivery method shifting from a scheduled type to an on-demand one. The advantages obtained with this new system led to a significant development of on-demand pressurised irrigation districts, especially in the Southern countries (France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). On-demand pressurised irrigation has since evolved in a continuous manner in which, with the purpose of gaining productivity, on-farm equipment and automation instruments have seen improvements. Such developments, along with market fluctuations, reductions in transport costs, globalisation and the influence of agricultural subsidies, have resulted in changes in the crop pattern. The farming of new crops may require more water and the consumption may become greater. In addition to this, other phenomena, such as the frequently-debated effects of climate change, reveal scenarios in which an increase in temperatures and the accompanying reductions in rainfall are expected. One consequence of this would be an increase in irrigation requirements and subsequent impact on irrigation networks. All such circumstances should be taken into account in both the design of new irrigation districts and the upgrading of the existing ones. Irrigation networks should be of a size that allows them to meet increases in consumption. The robustness of the network, defined as its capacity to absorb increments in water requirements, becomes a key point to be taken into account in the design phase. Given that there are several parameters that influence the calculus of design flows, such robustness may be obtained in different ways and at varying costs. In the context of this, the thesis reviews the state of the art, analyses the role and influence of each parameter, establishes a procedure for checking the design and robustness of on-demand irrigation networks, and sets design criteria for selecting the most effective range and combination of parameters that provide the network with such robustness.

"Innovatio educativa tertio millennio": 12 years evoluting from learning from learning to teaching in courses on educational innovation and collaboration with the UNESCO chair of mining and industrial heritage

Twelve years ago a group of teachers began to work in educational innovation. In 2002 we received an award for educational innovation, undergoing several stages. Recently, we have decided to focus on being teachers of educational innovation. We create a web scheduled in Joomla offering various services, among which we emphasize teaching courses of educational innovation. The “Instituto de Ciencias de la Educacion” in “Universidad Politécnica de Madrid” has recently incorporated two of these courses, which has been highly praised. These courses will be reissued in new calls, and we are going to offer them to more Universities. We are in contact with several institutions, radio programs, the UNESCO Chair of Mining and Industrial Heritage, and we are working with them in the creation of heritage courses using methods that we have developed.

Simulation of academic performance rates, estimation of indicators of subjects and of a complete degree

The purpose of this paper is to present a program written in Matlab-Octave for the simulation of the time evolution of student curricula, i.e, how students pass their subjects along time until graduation. The program computes, from the simulations, the academic performance rates for the subjects of the study plan for each semester as well as the overall rates, which are a) the efficiency rate defined as the ratio of the number of students passing the exam to the number of students who registered for it and b) the success rate, defined as the ratio of the number of students passing the exam to the number of students who not only registered for it but also actually took it. Additionally, we compute the rates for the bachelor academic degree which are established for Spain by the National Quality Evaluation and Accreditation Agency (ANECA) and which are the graduation rate (measured as the percentage of students who finish as scheduled in the plan or taking an extra year) and the efficiency rate (measured as the percentage of credits which a student who graduated has really taken). The simulation is done in terms of the probabilities of passing all the subjects in their study plan. The application of the simulator to Polytech students in Madrid, where requirements for passing are specially stiff in first and second year subjects, is particularly relevant to analyze student cohorts and the probabilities of students finishing in the minimum of four years, or taking and extra year or two extra years, and so forth. It is a very useful tool when designing new study plans. The calculation of the probability distribution of the random variable "number of semesters a student has taken to complete the curricula and graduate" is difficult or even unfeasible to obtain analytically, and this is even truer when we incorporate uncertainty in parameter estimation. This is why we apply Monte Carlo simulation which not only provides illustration of the stochastic process but also a method for computation. The stochastic simulator is proving to be a useful tool for identification of the subjects most critical in the distribution of the number of semesters for curriculum vitae (CV) completion and subsequently for a decision making process in terms of CV planning and passing standards in the University. Simulations are performed through a graphical interface where also the results are presented in appropriate figures. The Project has been funded by the Call for Innovation in Education Projects of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) through a Project of its school Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales ETSII during the period September 2010-September 2011.

Analysis of WCET in an experimental satellite software development.

This paper describes a case study in WCET analysis of an on-board spacecraft software system. The attitude control system of UPMSat-2, an experimental micro-satellite which is scheduled to be launched in 2013, is used for an experiment on analysing the worst-case execution time of code automatically generated from a Simulink model. In order to properly test the code, a hardware-in-the-loop configuration with a simulation model of the spacecraft environment has been used as a test bench. The code has been analysed with RapiTime, with some modifications to the original instrumentation routines, in order to take into account the particularities of the test configuration. Results from the experiment are described and commented in the paper.

On-line breath analysis of volatile organic compounds as a method for colorectal cancer detection

Background: Analysis of exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath is an emerging approach for cancer diagnosis, but little is known about its potential use as a biomarker for colorectal cancer (CRC). We investigated whether a combination of VOCs could distinct CRC patients from healthy volunteers. Methods: In a pilot study, we prospectively analyzed breath exhalations of 38 CRC patient and 43 healthy controls all scheduled for colonoscopy, older than 50 in the average-risk category. The samples were ionized and analyzed using a Secondary ElectroSpray Ionization (SESI) coupled with a Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (SESI-MS). After a minimum of 2 hours fasting, volunteers deeply exhaled into the system. Each test requires three soft exhalations and takes less than ten minutes. No breath condensate or collection are required and VOCs masses are detected in real time, also allowing for a spirometric profile to be analyzed along with the VOCs. A new sampling system precludes ambient air from entering the system, so background contamination is reduced by an overall factor of ten. Potential confounding variables from the patient or the environment that could interfere with results were analyzed. Results: 255 VOCs, with masses ranging from 30 to 431 Dalton have been identified in the exhaled breath. Using a classification technique based on the ROC curve for each VOC, a set of 9 biomarkers discriminating the presence of CRC from healthy volunteers was obtained, showing an average recognition rate of 81.94%, a sensitivity of 87.04% and specificity of 76.85%. Conclusions: A combination of cualitative and cuantitative analysis of VOCs in the exhaled breath could be a powerful diagnostic tool for average-risk CRC population. These results should be taken with precaution, as many endogenous or exogenous contaminants could interfere as confounding variables. On-line analysis with SESI-MS is less time-consuming and doesn’t need sample preparation. We are recruiting in a new pilot study including breath cleaning procedures and spirometric analysis incorporated into the postprocessing algorithms, to better control for confounding variables.

Hands-on training in Nonimaging Optics for SME's: the SMETHODS experience

A 5-day training in Nonimaging Optics for European SME’s employees was carried out in June 2012 in the framework of the FP7 funded Support Action "SMETHODS". The training combined theoretical introduction and hands-on practice. The experience was very positive, and the lessons learned will improve the next scheduled sessions. Introduction The FP7 funded Support Action "SMETHODS" [1] is an initiative of seven European academic institutions to strengthen Europe's optics and photonics industry, which has started on 1 September 2011. Participation in training sessions is free for participants, who are selected with priority will be given to employees of small and medium sized European enterprises (SMEs). The consortium in SMETHODS is formed by seven partners that are the most prominent academic institutions in optical design in their countries. Through fully integrated collaborative training sessions, the consortium provides professional assistance as well as hands-on training in a variety of design tasks in four domains: (1) imaging optics, (2) nonimaging optics, (3) wave optics, and (4) diffractive optics. For each of this domains domain, 5-day training sessions are scheduled to be hold in different locations throughout Europe, four times in two years, the teach four times in a 2.5 years period.

An Agent Architecture to fulfill Real-Time Requirements

In this paper we present AMSIA, an agent architecture that combines the possibility of using di erent reasoning methods with a mechanism to control the resources needed by the agent to ful ll its high level objectives. The architecture is based on the blackboard paradigm which o ers the possibility of combining di erent reasoning techniques and opportunistic behavior. The AMSIA architecture adds a representation of plans of objectives allowing di erent reasoning activities to create plans to guide the future behavior of the agent. The opportunism is in the acquisition of high-level objectives and in the modi cation of the predicted activity when something doesn't happen as expected. A control mechanism is responsible for the translation of plans of objectives to concrete activities, considering resource-boundedness. To do so, all the activity in the agent (including control) is explicitly scheduled, but allowing the necessary exibility to make changes in the face of contingencies that are expected in dynamic environments. Experimental work is also presented.