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We offer the concept of proximate ambivalence to highlight the ambiguity inherent in the social and spatial relations of higher education's digitally-mediated teaching and learning that replaced in-person seminars during the COVID-19 pandemic. By proximate ambivalence, we refer to one's simultaneous proximity and distance in relation to an object, person, or space. We employ affect theories (i.e. collective bodies and affective atmospheres) and affective methodology—grounding our analysis in our lived experiences as illustrative examples—to demonstrate how proximate ambivalence manifests. We first show how proximate ambivalence manifested as digital technologies facilitated and disrupted collective bodies' emergence. Second, we illuminate how proximate ambivalence materialized as affective atmospheres changed while differentiated spaces and the transitions therein faded. We argue that proximate ambivalence helps reveal interconnections between affect, bodies, and space in digitally-mediated teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a summary and analysis of four books that explore the concept of time in higher education. The books discuss various aspects of academic life, such as teaching, research, and collegiality, and offer strategies for embracing a slower approach to academia. The author praises the books for their insights and strategies, but also criticizes them for their limited perspectives, particularly in terms of social difference and ontological discussions of time. The author suggests that a more inclusive and diverse approach to studying time in higher education is needed. [Extracted from the article]

We offer a Cultural Studies approach—a transdisciplinary field of study critically examining contemporary culture—to illuminate the roles of cultural producers and consumers in mediating the meaning of university rankings amidst a global media landscape. Using the case study of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and drawing on the concepts of a) meaning-making, b) cultural texts, and c) audiencing, we illuminate how QS, as a commercial ranker, aims to 'fix' meanings about quality and excellence in global higher education (HE) through its various outreach efforts. Based on a multi-method analysis of QS' digital texts, specifically a YouTube video and a press release, we demonstrate how interactions between cultural producers and consumers complicate a ranker's efforts to fix and diffuse meanings about HE. We argue that a Cultural Studies approach helps us probe the meaning-making process underlying university rankings amid a digital media culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms among urban adults in Bangladesh and explores the associated socio-demographic factors. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted from March to May 2021 among the adults living in Dhaka City, Bangladesh, using a standard questionnaire designed using Google Forms and sent via a unique uniform resource locator (URL). The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21) was employed to assess symptoms of mental health issues. The survey included responses from 993 participants. The results indicate that about 40% of the urban adults had moderate-severe anxiety symptoms, while about 46% had depression symptoms. Urban adults’ level of education, gender, occupation, place of birth, and asset quintile were found to have a significant correlation with increased anxiety and depression. The findings stressed the need for developing effective mental health services and educational programs for urban people to meet their mental health needs and prevention mechanisms. There is an urgent need for interventions that specifically target mental health issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiment was studied to evaluate the fourteen different fungicides against M. oryzae pv. triticum in laboratory and pot experiment from August 2016 to October 2017. The result of the in-vitro evaluation showed that a 100% reduction of radial mycelial growth was obtained in Amiscore 32.5 SC, Bavistin DF, Cabrio Top, Xtracare 300 EC, Nativo 75 WG, Provax 200 WP and Trooper 75 WP. Nativo 75 WG (0.2%) revealed the highest (85.38%) reduction of disease incidence over control while Provax 200 WP (0.3%) showed an efficacy of 82.14% in reducing disease incidence in the pot experiment. The lowest (3.70%) disease severity was found in Nativo 75 WG, and Provax 200 WP also exhibited 4.40% disease severity. A maximum number of healthy grain/ear (16.40) was observed in Nativo 75 WG, and Provax 200 WP was demonstrated with healthy grain (15.00), which was close to Nativo 75 WG. In grain weight/ear, Nativo 75 WG (0.2%) led to an impressive increase of 160.47% over control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant viruses infect a wide variety of economically important crop plants and cause significant loss in agricultural production around the world. Conventional control strategies are insufficient to combat rapidly evolving plant viruses. In recent years, genome editing technologies have paved new ways for manipulating viral genomes (DNA or RNA). Among them, the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) system has been seen to be able to engineer plant virus resistance by directly targeting the viral genome as well as by inactivating host susceptibility genes. In this review, we survey genome editing tools targeting viral genomes, with an emphasis on CRISPR/Cas9. The advantages of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for combating plant viruses as well as its limitations are discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estimation of the slope parameter of a simple linear regression model in the presence of nonsample prior information under the reflected normal loss function is considered. Usually, the traditional estimation methods such as the least squared (LS) error are used to estimate the slope parameter. Sometimes the researcher has information about the unknown slope parameter from experience as a point guess, the nonsample prior information. In this paper, the shrinkage pretest estimators are introduced and their risk functions are derived under the reflected normal loss function. Several methods of finding distrust coefficient of the shrinkage pretest estimators are proposed. The behavior of the estimators are compared using a simulation study. The results show that the shrinkage pretest estimator outperforms the LS estimator when nonsample prior information is close to the real value. A real data set is analyzed for illustrating the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review paper highlights the significant research conducted on fungi belonging to the genus Ampelomyces. Phylogeny based on both ITS and actin sequences has grouped Ampelomyces into different lineages. However, the ITS2 spacer, one constituent of the ITS region, together with their secondary structures (S2s), showed that these lineages are represented by different S2s; also, evidence of pseudogene formation in nuclear ribosomal genes of two isolates was reported, and S2s in Ampelomyces mycoparasites are different from those in Phoma-like fungi. Ampelomyces taxonomy is unresolved and future multi-locus analysis will assist in delimiting species. Members of the genus Ampelomyces are among the first mycoparasites used to control powdery mildew fungi as they can efficiently eliminate mycelial growth and reduce the overwintering inoculum of their mycohosts. In addition, Ampelomyces isolates were found to be resistant to some fungicides and insecticides, e.g. pyrazophos, an attractive feature for their selection as biocontrol agents. Transcriptome analyses have revealed that expression of the genes that encode proteins putatively associated with virulence and plant immune responses were enhanced during host recognition, while genes-encoding proteins linked to antibiotic resistance were predicted within the Ampelomyces genome. Proteomic studies are needed to confirm whether these proteins function in virulence and can therefore be used for biocontrol purposes or as bacterial antibiotic-resistant proteins, and which of these may trigger plant immune responses to facilitate plant protection. We encourage the continuation of these studies to benefit crop protection research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microplastics (MPs) pollution of environments due to human activities is a global concern. In the present study, we examined the occurrence of MPs in coastal hill soils (burned and non-burned) collected from the Rohingya Refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The total number of MPs per kg of burned soil (402–403 items/kg) sample was significantly higher than that in non-burned soil (210 items/kg) sample. Fibers (24–57%) dominated in all the samples, followed by fragments (18–51%), sheet (12–29%), and microbeads (12–13%). The most common color of MPs was blue (16–68%), followed by red (14–25%), transparent (14–24%) and brown (14–22%). Among the size groups, MPs of 0.5-<1.0 mm (34–44%) dominated in all the samples, followed by 1.0–5.0 mm (27–45%) and <0.5 mm (14–29%). Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy analysis confirmed the most abundant polymer type in burned soil was polystyrene (28%) followed by polypropylene (23%), polyethylene (21%), polyamide (15%), ethylene-vinyl acetate (8%), and polyvinyl chloride (3%). The study confirms the presence of high MPs loads in burned soil, with high potential of trophic transfer to plants and washed out to aquatic environment and will appear as base line information for further assessment of MPs effects on biota. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodological nationalism (MN) pervades higher education scholarship and practice, particularly in the arena of globalisation of higher education (HE) (Shahjahan and Kezar 2013). MN refers to the assumption that national boundaries define the natural category or unit of analysis for society. Drawing on affect theories, this conceptual article aims to problematise how the 'nation state' as a natural category (or container) pervades global HE practices and policies. Affect refers to emotions, responses, reactions and feelings that are relational and transpersonal, and an object's (e.g., nation-state) continuous emergence and unfolding in a world driven by intensities and feelings. Based on three real-life examples in/about South Asian HE, we demonstrate how the 'nation-state' category comes into being (and becomes 'sticky') through the experienced and imagined encounters among: (a) individuals, (b) national policy and (c) transnational actors. We show how, through imaginaries and practices, the 'global' manifested through using the 'nation-state', indicating a strong and evolving relationship between the two categories, informed by emotional and imaginative futures. We argue that an affect lens illuminates how MN is perpetuated as the nation-state becomes a naturalised container for (potential) encounters in the enactments of HE globalisation and moving beyond MN requires an ontological shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrity lies at the center of state-society interactions, with broad implications for the practice of public administration, governance, and public service delivery. The Pandora Papers leaks are hard examples of integrity violations, shining a light on how public administration operates in practice. The integrity deficits revealed not only threaten people's wellbeing, but also put on display the state's leniency toward rich and powerful people accumulating wealth through corruption, fraud, and tax evasion, among other crimes. In this context, this article attempts to understand whether the Pandora Papers leaks violate of the fundamentals of integrity. Drawing on cases and examples, the findings of the article show that the Pandora Papers illustrate the integrity deficit of statesmen, political leaders, businesspersons, and bureaucrats, the people responsible for ensuring integrity in managing the state and statecraft. The article further elucidates that bad governance affects integrity, both nationally and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current additive manufacturing (AM) technologies use various raw materials such as plastics and metals to fabricate parts. Moreover, the increasing use of metallic parts makes AM applicable to commercial use such as aeronautical, and medical field. For this reason, manufacturing process quality evaluation becomes essential to achieve higher quality products. Quality control and material property assessment for AM parts is a major challenge due to the complexity of the materials and geometry of the parts. Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) is being proposed as a cost-effective way to evaluate the quality of the product. For this reason, the nanoindentation, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) techniques are being used as useful forms of NDT techniques to assess the quality and material characteristics in metal AM samples. The material properties of additively manufactured Titanium 6Al-4 V alloy are studied to verify the in-situ process monitoring published results at different manufacturing process conditions. The comparison of material properties of three different process conditions made by direct energy deposition (DED) metal additive manufacturing is discussed to understand the variation. The results show that the characteristics of materials are a function of process parameters and have a strong correlation to the expected in-situ monitoring indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory research was conducted with adolescent girls and women in three isolated rural communities of Bangladesh to assess their perspectives and the role of social and gender norms on the construction of knowledge regarding menstruation, pregnancy and abortion. Norms of privacy and silence, local beliefs and a culture of shame held that the human body is 'natural' and does not require formal sexual and reproductive health care. Instead, participants sought out traditional healers and used herbal plants as natural remedies. Participants reported being restricted in performing religious activities, cooking and food consumption during menstruation. Because sanitary protection was expensive, women used old cloths to soak up menstrual blood and used them repeatedly without washing with soap or drying in the open air, due to shame and the fear of evil spirits. The local incidence of child marriage was high, which also limited women's agency and voice. Contraceptive use was irregular and inappropriate; none of participants or their husbands used contraceptives, resulting in unwanted pregnancy often followed by unsafe abortion. Programmes and interventions are needed that engage with women's experiences within the sociocultural context of studied communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates our spiritual journey, as Black and Brown scholars, to globalize and further temporalize the discussion of whiteness in the field of higher education. By employing the spiritual ontoepistemologies of communities of color, we recount our journey in developing a critical race temporal heuristic, Whiteness as Futurity (Shahjahan & Edwards, 2022). We illuminate the three lessons we learned on this path: (1) trust in multiple ways of knowing, (2) spiritual healing in collaboration, and (3) community within interdependence. Our lessons highlight the complexities and potential of collaboration on conceptual research for Black and Brown people. We argue that spiritually and communally-informed scholarly practice creates the necessary psychic space to locate nuanced analyses of whiteness not readily available with traditional analytics while also supporting humanized ways of being for scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A concerted attempt to offer an affect (emotions, desires, moods, and/or attitudes) lens underlying the global university rankings (GURs) phenomenon remains absent. Using two commercial ranker case studies (Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS)), this article provides a critical policy analysis illuminating how rankers use emoscapes (affective landscapes) in globalizing HE policy. Based on an analysis of publicly available rankers' texts, it demonstrates how such rankers construct, exploit, and mobilize emoscapes framing policy problems and offering solutions, thus establishing and maintaining their global HE authority. It reveals two ways this happens. First, by capitalizing on a global precarity emoscape, rankers mobilize policy through affective representational infrastructures to sell policy ideas and tools aimed at enhancing institutions' global prestige defined by their own ranking measures. Second, rankers mobilize a trust emoscape by sponsoring and co-ordinating HE gatherings (another form of affective infrastructure), thus shaping the 'public moods' and binding people's desires for best practices, student mobility, and/or student recruitment. It concludes that emoscapes are vital to these rankers' activities in framing policy and selling their policy solutions, and requires more attention in future critical policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global university rankings (GURs) have garnered increasing media attention since their inception. Yet to date, a concerted attempt to offer an affect lens – emotions, responses, reactions and feelings that are relational and transpersonal – underlying the mediatisation of GURs remains absent. Drawing on affect theories, we analysed the Indian national media's coverage of Times Higher Education rankings and Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. rankings (between 2018–2019). Amid a globalised media ecology, we illuminate how affect plays a pivotal role in how the mediatisation process infuses ranking logic into a national context that is at the periphery of GUR outcomes. We argue that national media uses affect to confer and open up GURs for localised meaning making, allowing GURs to persevere despite their questionable legitimacy in a Global South context, thus globalising higher education policy. We suggest that affect is essential in the expansion of GURs through mediatisation in national policy arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper engages in 'paradigmatic talk' about public outcomes of higher education (HE). We were drawn to this paradigmatic discussion because of its inherent 'cultural' dimensions and the opportunity for us to be self-reflexive about the ontological values underlying 'cultures' that shape the articulation, representation, and enactment of HE's public outcomes. While we agree with Marginson and Yang (forthcoming) that comparisons of public outcomes of HE across cultures are not neutral, we argue that such comparisons are rooted in and driven by ontological values and commitments. We offer an analysis of how our understandings of 'public' and 'outcomes' may shift when ontological commitments and values consider representations of culture, public, affect, and temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid debates about global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs' media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine 135 publicly available visual media (photographs) in the Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) websites to uncover the rankers' 'Asian visual gaze' to extend our understandings of GURs and the significance of Asian universities within global discourse. Drawing on Arjun Appadurai's 'imaginary,' Stuart Hall's heuristics of representation, and attending to photographic techniques, we posit that THE and QS GUR imagery constructs a 'social imaginary' of Asian HE simultaneously as a: 1) technological frontier, 2) site of educational prestige, and 3) environmental and cultural paradise. We argue that these constructed visual imaginaries of Asian HE serve as sites for social consumption, reproduce particular imagined communities and imagined selves, and serve as scripts for action, in an era of platform capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A concerted attempt to offer a temporal lens (the way we make sense of and relate to time changes) underlying decolonizing pedagogy and curriculum (DCP) remains absent. Drawing on student resistance as an entry point, we offer a temporal account of DCP by unearthing the entanglements between past, present, and future underlying DCP enactments. We explore timescapes shaping DCP from three specific temporal perspectives on student resistance: a) student orientations to the past, b) student perspectives on present allocations of time and c) student orientations to the future. We argue that to deliver DCP effectively, educators need to engage the temporal aspects of DCP, particularly students' temporal assemblages receiving and engaging with DCP. We suggest that future DCP research and enactments require probing the entangled timescapes underlying HE institutions, disciplines, classrooms, students' lives, and past/future aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic variations in the root traits of rice remain unexplored in relation to varietal groups and diverse ecosystems. Therefore, we evaluated 257 Bangladeshi accessions, which included landraces and improved varieties belonging to four ecotypes (Aus, Aman, Boro and Jhum), to understand genetic variations in the total root length (TRL), maximum root length and root number under different concentrations of ammonium and nitrate nitrogen in hydroponic culture. There were large variations in all traits across all nitrogen levels. Active elongation of individual roots of the landrace type across all nitrogen conditions suggested a higher potential for the uptake of nutrients by extending roots distribution in any nitrogen environment, while the active development of primary root primordia in the improved type in the presence of nitrate suggested a higher potential for the uptake of nitrate from the soil surface by extending roots distribution around soil surface. Cluster analysis classified the examined accessions into two groups according to their TRL: cluster I with a longer TRL and cluster II with a shorter TRL across all nitrogen conditions. Each of these groups was further divided into two sub-clusters: sub-cluster Ia, in which the longer TRL resulted from active development of primary root primordia, sub-cluster Ib, in which the longer TRL resulted from active elongation of individual roots, sub-cluster IIa, in which the shorter TRL resulted from severe reduction of the elongation of individual roots, and sub-cluster IIb, in which the shorter TRL resulted from a moderate reduction in the elongation of individual roots. Further investigation revealed a difference in the composition of these four sub-clusters among the four ecotypes, indicating that Aman was the most diverse ecotype, followed by Aus. The root traits of these promising accessions could be exploited in the future to understand genetic and physiological mechanism(s) of adaptation to diverse ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 hundreds of thousands of 'Rohingya' fled to camps for Forcefully Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN) in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. To describe the FDMNs presenting for care at public health facilities in Bangladesh so as to understand the health problems faced by the FDMNs and the burden on these public health facilities. This study combined a retrospective review of existing hospital and clinic data with prospective surveillance in government health care centres. The retrospective data showed a 26% increase in the number of consultations at the Kutupalong community clinic, the primary health facility closest to the camps, from 19,567 in 2015 to 26,309 in 2019. There was a corresponding 11% increase in admissions to health facilities in the area, from 80,991 in 2017 to 91,424 in 2019. Prospective surveillance of 9,421 FDMNs seeking health care from July 2018 to December 2019 showed that 29% had an infectious disease, 20% nutritional problems, 12% pregnancy-related conditions and 7% trauma or injury. Great uncertainty remains regarding the return of FDMN to their home country of Myanmar. The current on-going protests following the military coup adds further insecurity to the status of the Rohingya. The presence of a large migrant population relative to a smaller host community burdens the limited facilities and resources of the public health sector. Continued support by the international public health community and civil society organizations is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid growing studies of time in higher education, few have theorized the interconnections between affect, academic work, and temporality – the way we make sense of and relate to time changes – in the neoliberal academy. By interconnecting temporality with shame, this article presents a critique of dominant temporalities of neoliberal higher education by exploring the differing existential temporalities associated with academic work. It presents and teases out the various manifestations of a dominant 'temporality mirror' and its relationship with affect. It argues that academic life's temporality mirror is embedded in shame logics (i.e. 'Being for others'). The temporality mirror acts both a) as an external thing (i.e. external object of reflection triggering self-evaluation) and b) internal way of knowing/being (i.e. internal node of existential/embodied self-evaluation). Such shame logics manifest through various temporal dimensions such as: a) temporal norms, b) future selves, and c) the future of others. This article proposes a set of questions that may open the possibility of delinking from the dominant temporality mirror and concludes with implications for academic subjectivity, higher education institutions, and higher education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articles of this special issue explore the problems of public policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (including Turkey, excluding Iran) as well as why the role of public policy is relatively limited in achieving the overall development in the region. Although many countries in the region experienced political upheavals (Arab Spring) to improve the quality of governance, the situation has only symbolically changed since then. The articles presented in this special issue have portrayed the relationship between society and public policy from their contextual perspectives. The editors anticipate that these articles will contribute to the advancement of literature on public policy and administration in the MENA region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid debates about the role and impact of global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine publicly available visual media of students in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and US News and World Report websites. Drawing on Stuart Hall's heuristics of representation and attending to visual grammars, we argue whiteness maintains its racial hegemony in GURs' student imagery through its flexibility and in/visbility. Furthermore, whiteness is entangled with other systems of oppression, particularly patriarchy, homonormativity, and heterosexuality. We suggest that GURs rankings media are not simply constructing and informing us about the quality and excellence of HE, but simultaneously teaching us how to view students, often reproducing oppressive racialized and gendered ideologies. We end with methodological implications of visual cultural studies in comparative education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing debate about scholarly impact, an analysis of the onto-epistemic grammar underlying impact has remained absent. By taking a different analytical approach to examining impact, we interrogate the concept through the lens of decolonial thought. We offer an empathetic review of the impact scholarship and illuminate the limits of the modern imaginary that circumscribe critiques of impact in the literature, making visible the Eurocentric and provincial horizons of modern reason underlying these critiques and impact in general. Drawing on Śūnyatā ontological perspective, we seek to articulate from modernity imaginary's edges and suggest imagining and being otherwise. We argue that the question of scholarly impact is intimately structured by and connected to the modern subject's desire for ontological security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research introduces a learning model that estimates the cognitive perception of aesthetics. Taking psychology into account, this bridges the gap between human and machine. The goal is to build a machine-learning model that can estimate beauty in images perceived by human eyes. We have summand our research [Firoze, A., Osman, T., Psyche, S. S., & Rahman, R. M. (2018). Scoring photographic rule of thirds in a large MIRFLICKR dataset: A showdown between machine perception and human perception of image aesthetics. Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems (pp. 466–475), Springer; Osman, T., Psyche, S. S., Deb, T., Firoze, A., & Rahman, R. M. (2018). Differential color harmony: A robust approach for extracting Harmonic Color features and perceive aesthetics in a large dataset. International Conference on Big Data and Cloud Computing, Springer] together with the idea of humans' personal preferences and achieved higher than state of the art performances. An extensive user study (374 participants) has been conducted to support claims. Several photographical compositional metrics have been used. Colour gradient, rule of thirds and human subject's psychology has been picked as features. The consideration of user's perspective or psychology is one of the key contributions of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is an emerging nanotechnology and a possible alternative solution to the limitation of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. One of the most attractive fields in QCA is the implementation of configurable digital systems. This article presents a novel multifunctional gate called the modified-majority voter (MMV). The proposed gate works on the explicit interaction of the cell characteristic property for the implementation of digital circuits. This prominent feature of the proposed gate reduces the maximum hardware cost and implements highly efficient QCA structures. To verify the functionality of the proposed gate, some physical proofs, truth table and computational simulation results are performed. These results assured the validity of the existence of the proposed gate. It also dissipates less energy which has been calculated under three separate tunnelling energy levels using the QCAPro tool. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed MMV gate, several optimal irreversible arithmetic circuits such as three-input XOR, half-adder and full-adder are proposed. The modular layouts are verified with the freely available QCADesigner tool version 2.0.3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DFT-based ab-initio calculations have been performed to study the mechanical, structural, electronic, optical and thermodynamic properties of Mg-based vanadium oxide MgV2O6. The evaluated unit cell parameters exhibit satisfactory agreement with the available experimental data. The second-order elastic constants and the other relevant quantities such as the shear modulus, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, compressibility, anisotropy factor, sound velocity and the Debye temperature have been calculated. After analysing the calculated elastic constants, it is shown that the compound under study is mechanically stable. The analysis of the electronic band structure shows that this compound reveals semiconducting nature with band gap 2.195 eV. Most of the contribution predominantly comes from O-2s states. Furthermore, in order to get deep insight into the optical transitions of MgV2O6, the refractive index, complex dielectric function, reflectivity, loss function, absorption coefficient and the photoconductivity are computed and discussed in details. Also we have computed the Debye temperature , using our calculated elastic constants data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the objective of the special issue which is to understand the status of public administration in six profiled countries - Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Turkey - in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The special issue explores public administration as a concept—the diversity of guiding general principles that determines how governments administer the affairs of state in the context of their governance frameworks—and as praxis—the diversity of public administration structures, procedures and practice, and reform initiatives. It is evident that the countries profiled have adopted a mode of public administration and governance that mirrors its history, and its cultural, geo-political, socio-economic, and conflictive environments. In this context, the editors hope that the articles presented in this special issue will contribute to advancing the public administration literature in MENA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pipeline metaphors are ubiquitous in theorizing and interpreting college access processes. In this conceptual article, we explore how a lemonade metaphor can open new possibilities to reimagining higher education access and going processes. We argue that using food metaphors, particularly the processes of mixing, tasting, and digesting lemonade, may help constitute new meanings of college going. Rather than focus on production, mechanization, and ignoring social justice, a lemonade metaphor emphasizes the nonlinear aspects of college-going processes, foregrounds power relations within these processes, and humanizes educational purposes and journeys. We encourage educational researchers to take up taste as a heuristic device to reveal something different about educational phenomena that will, in turn, have material consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes tests for equality of intercepts of two simple regression models when non sample prior information is available on the equality of two slopes. For three different scenarios on the values of the slope, namely (i) unknown (unspecified), (ii) known (specified), and (iii) suspected, we derive the unrestricted test (UT), restricted test (RT), and pre-test test (PTT) for testing the equality of intercepts. The test statistics, their sampling distributions, and power functions of the tests are obtained. Comparison of power function and size of the tests reveals that the PTT has a reasonable dominance over the UT and RT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes the singly and doubly correlated bivariate noncentral F (BNCF) distributions. The probability density function (pdf) and the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the distributions are derived for arbitrary values of the parameters. The pdf and cdf of the distributions for different arbitrary values of the parameters are computed, and their graphs are plotted by writing and implementing new R codes. An application of the correlated BNCF distribution is illustrated in the computations of the power function of the pre-test test for the multivariate simple regression model (MSRM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While other scholars have analyzed the way that international organizations (IOs) in higher education policy may contribute to neocolonial domination, this paper illuminates not only on how IOs' epistemic activities promulgate one-size fit all solutions, but centers the colonial structures of knowledge/ power that inform the why (or logic) of these IOs' epistemic activities and their effects. A decolonial analysis of discursive artifacts and tools such as policy reports, performance indicators, and technical assistance, of the OECD and World Bank, suggests that standardized IO policy processes and practices reproduce global inequities. In collusion with other policy actors, these IOs constitute and perpetuate coloniality in global higher education, through enacting a god-eye point of view, colonial difference, and the geopolitics of knowledge. This article proposes a set of questions that may open the possibility of 'delinking' from modern/colonial world systems and pushes us to decolonize our imaginaries of the landscape of global HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Series of observed flood intervals, defined as the time intervals between successive flood peaks over a threshold, were extracted directly from 11 approximately 100-year streamflow datasets from Queensland, Australia. A range of discharge thresholds were analysed that correspond to return periods of approximately 3.7 months to 6.3 years. Flood interval histograms at South East Queensland gauges were consistently unimodal whereas those of the North and Central Queensland sites were often multimodal. The exponential probability distribution (pd) is often used to describe interval exceedence probabilities, but fitting utilizing the Anderson-Darling statistic found little evidence that it is the most suitable. The fatigue life pd dominated subyear return periods (<1 year), often transitioning to a log Pearson 3 pd at above-year return periods. Fatigue life pd is used in analysis of the lifetime to structural failure when a threshold is exceeded, and this paper demonstrates its relevance also to the elapsed time between above-threshold floods. At most sites, the interval medians were substantially less than the means for sub-year return periods. Statistically the median is a better measure of the central tendency of skewed distributions but the mean is generally used in practice to describe the classical concept of flood return period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars have analyzed global higher education (HE) competition, they have largely failed to address how global spaces of equivalence are tied both to coloniality and to competition. Using the OECD’s International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) as a case study and drawing on concepts from coloniality including Fanon’s zone of being/non-being and Mignolo’s geopolitics of knowledge, we reveal how coloniality underpins the desire for global spaces of equivalence through: the desire for opportunity and belonging; and the desire for recognition and pride. We illuminate how the nature of global competition is not simply tied to market-based economic or political rationalities, but also operates under psychosocial dimensions interlinked with belonging in the international community. We argue that AHELO represents the mediation and internalization of a HE competition focused on teaching and learning, which reproduces coloniality by valuing characteristics of the enterprising, globally competitive institution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper was to explore the antecedents of consumer innovativeness (CI) which are fashion opinion leadership (FOL), product involvement (PI) and consumer need for uniqueness (CNU) and the effect of morning TV shows as intervening variable in the choice of fashion clothing. Results revealed that CI is strongly dependent on FOL and CNU. The impact of morning TV shows on the purchase intentions of innovative consumers was not found to be significant. However, this study expands the existing knowledge by highlighting the role of media and media-vehicles in the purchase of fashion clothing among female consumers in Pakistan. It also offers the impetus for the researchers and marketing managers to further explore the effects of media on the fashion innovativeness of women in the apparel category in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amid growing debates around international assessment tools in educational policy, few have critically examined how students themselves are cast in policy tool production processes and discourse. Drawing on Stuart Hall's concept of representation, we show how higher education (HE) ‘students’ are constructed, fixed and normalized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) initiative. Based on an analysis of AHELO texts, we argue that the OECD, during the early stages of test production, fixes and circulates the meaning of ‘students’ as represented objects. We identify and analyze two distinct representational practices at work in AHELO texts:classifying and organizing,andmarking. We posit that by fixing images of the student as an object of learning and as a consumer–investor subject, the OECD creates ‘usable’ representations of ‘students’ to claim jurisdiction over teaching and learning in HE and to justify intervention through standardized testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to our understanding of whether democratic governance can be achieved in post-revolution Egypt. It explores the status of three key pillars of democratic governance in the context of the January 2011 People’s Revolution and subsequent political developments through August 2013: (1) inclusive participation, (2) responsive institutions, and (3) adherence to international practices and principles. Available evidence suggests that none of the democratic governance pillars has been realized so far as a result of political instability in Egypt. The article argues that the current political environment is not favorable to achieving democratic governance in Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholars have critiqued norms of neoliberal higher education (HE) by calling for embodied and anti-oppressive teaching and learning. Implicit in these accounts, but lacking elaboration, is a concern with reformulating the notion of ‘time’ and temporalities of academic life. Employing a coloniality perspective, this article argues that in order to reconnect our minds to our bodies and center embodied pedagogy in the classroom, we should disrupt Eurocentric notions of time that colonize our academic lives. I show how this entails slowing down and ‘being lazy’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academia has traditionally valued cognition and intellectual processes, eschewing the significance of other bodily domains involved in teaching, learning, and theorizing. Grounding the analysis in our experiences as diversely positioned academics, we argue that embodied teaching and theorizing provide a unique means of delivering material consistent with the aims of social justice education, while simultaneously challenging neoliberal paradigms. Acknowledging both students' and faculty members' discomfort and/or resistance to embodied approaches, this analysis contributes to discussions about critical approaches to dismantling neoliberalism and developing an alternative framework of understanding through which conventional paradigms of thought may be challenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of inducers of laccase produced byPleurotus ostreatus-P1 on the physicochemical properties of solid waste compost was investigated. In order to examine the degree of humification and time period for maturity and stability of compost, three different treatments (T: laccase; T1: laccase+CuSO4; and T2: laccase+CuSO4+CaCl2) were inoculated on solid waste in the initial stage of the composting process. During the composting process, the carbon nitrogen ratio (C/N), nitrate (), ammonium nitrogen (), cation exchange capacity (CEC), humic acid (HA) and fulvic acid (FA) humification rate (HR), Humification Index (HI), and degree of polymerization (DP) were assessed for the evaluation of compost maturity and stability, and it was found that T2treatment C/N, CEC, and HI was greater, 46.8%, 37.2%, and 38.46%, respectively, than T at the end of the maturation phase. Optimum degree of maturity was also appraised by the Germination Index, 98.25% was attained by T2, whereas 88.65% and 71.23% by T1and T, respectively. Significant Pearson correlation was also found between compost characteristics such as C/N, CEC, HA, FA, DP, HI, and HR. In addition, also obstinate the mineralization's of nitrogen under laboratory incubation, using soil amended by 50 and 100 kg-N/ha and examined an increasing trend in nitrogen mineralization with the application rate. Moreover, it was concluded that the laccase inducers increase the disintegration and humification process during solid waste composting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although international student assessments and the role of international organisations (IOs) in governing education via an evidence-based educational policy discourse are of growing interest to educational researchers, few have explored the complex ways in which an IO, such as the OECD, gains considerable influence in governing education during the early stages of test production. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the production of two international tests – the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) – we show how the OECD legitimises its power, and expertise, and defines ‘what counts’ in education. The OECD deploys three mechanisms of educational governance: (1) building on past OECD successes; (2) assembling knowledge capacity; and (3) deploying bureaucratic resources. We argue that the early stages of test production by IOs are significant sites in which the global governance of education is legitimated and enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Various scholars have suggested ways to resist neoliberal conditions in higher education (HE). In analysing current neoliberal policies and practices in HE, I suggest that postcolonial theories of resistance can enhance our ability as faculty and administrators to understand and ‘resist’ these policies and practices. In this article, I review four modes of postcolonial resistance as described by David Jeffress (2008), mobilizing a critique of resistance as writing and cultural practice and challenging the reactionary nature of subversion and opposition. I argue that we need to place emphasis on transformational resistance, or the creation of new ways of being, knowing and doing in HE in order to transform the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on racial domination related violence in the U.S. and feeling of desensitization. It mentions that whiteness continues to define violence among social groups due to colonial hegemony's history and black people suffer from incarceration, racial profiling and death. It informs that sharing of historically ignored stories with public pedagogy such as television, news, and counter media helps in understanding violence.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently engaging in a worldwide feasibility study entitled International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO). This feasibility study seeks to develop measures that would assess student learning outcomes that would be valid across different languages, cultures, and higher education institutions. Drawing on anticolonial perspectives, this article provides a critical policy analysis of the AHELO project. Based on a review of the AHELO texts, it presents two themes: (1) crisis and imperial logic in policy production and (2) Anglo-Eurocentrism as global designs and colonial relationships. It argues that, through AHELO, OECD is striving to construct a global space of equivalence for teaching and learning in higher education, and in so doing, perpetuates coloniality in global higher education. It concludes by noting some comparative observations between AHELO and Programme for International Student Achievement in terms of the increasing role of global knowledge for policy tools in educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estimation of the location vector of ap-variate elliptically contoured distribution (ECD) is considered using independent random samples from two multivariate elliptically contoured populations when it is apriori suspected that the location vectors of the two populations are equal. For the setting where the covariance structure of the populations is the same, we define the maximum likelihood, Stein-type shrinkage and positive-rule shrinkage estimators. The exact expressions for the bias and quadratic risk functions of the estimators are derived. The comparison of the quadratic risk functions reveals the dominance of the Stein-type estimators if p ≥ 3. A graphical illustration of the risk functions under a “typical” member of the elliptically contoured family of distributions is provided to confirm the analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role political leadership plays in achieving good governance in Kazakhstan, a post-communist country in Central Asia. Since its withdrawal from the USSR, Kazakhstan maintains an authoritative political leadership, where President Nazarbayev, his trusted “inner-circle,” and the stalwarts of the Nur Otan party effectively rule the country. Opposition political parties are weak and disorganized, and their leaders are not quite capable of mobilizing favorable public opinion. The finding of the study suggests that the Kazakhstani political leadership has limited success in achieving good governance in Kazakhstan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated river basin management (IRBM) emphasizes the need for managing the river as a system irrespective of administrative boundaries. Although IRBM is being adopted for many trans-boundary rivers, progress can be slow, particularly where there is a history of dispute. The Ganges basin in South Asia is one such case that experienced numerous conflicts over water between the riparian states, notably between India and Bangladesh. The power imbalance between states, mistrust and antagonism, prevailing national interest over the regional benefit, and most importantly lack of an effective institutional mechanism contributed to the complexity of implementing IRBM in the Ganges context. Despite these challenges, there is a consensus about the significant benefits that could be gained through multilateral regional cooperation over water. This paper analyses the challenges of multilateral cooperation towards IRBM in the Ganges context and examines the scope for overcoming these challenges. The paper argues that IRBM in the Ganges context depends on cooperation towards a basin-wide management approach, and a basin organization is a prerequisite to that. It suggests creation of a basin organization in the Ganges context by sharing experiences from other parts of the world and concludes with a framework for adopting IRBM in the Ganges basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]