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Covid-19 and school management
The breakout of COVID-19 from Wuhan, China has shaken the world economy, giving a traumatic experience to people across the world. Most of the countries have locked down their business enterprises. Schools have started teaching online, and teachers have moved to online teaching in no time. School managers are making quick decisions on various challenges faced by their schools. These uncertain conditions have led to the present study. The present study explores the impact of COVID-19 on various dimensions of school management, such as finance, infrastructure, staff training, student enrollment, student retention, student welfare activities, co-curricular activities, and challenges and opportunities; how to maintain efficiency amidst COVID-19 pandemic; and how to reduce the pandemic effect in schools. This research employed the phenomenological qualitative method to address the research problems. The data was collected from the semi-structured online interview and review of related literature. The study describes the effect of COVID-19 on various dimensions of school management. 2022, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Innovative instructional strategies that motivate students to learn during the pandemic
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread all over the world affecting public health at the outset of 2020. This has slowed down almost every sector of human life including education. However, few of the private educational institutes have risen to the occasion immediately and have continued providing education online. Teachers were forced to adapt themselves to teach online. Students started to attend online classes from home. Inevitably, parents had to invest in purchasing computers or smartphones and internet connections to support their children's education. Though all these changes began with an overwhelming spirit from all stakeholders, in no time it has become a monotony. This has led to the present study to find innovative instructional strategies that can motivate learners to learn and sustain interest in learning during pandemics. The present study employs a qualitative research design to address this issue. 2022, IGI Global. -
Mid-career dilemmas of female academics: An Indian perspective
Historically, many studies have shown discrimination, bias, and barriers for women entering leadership roles in Indian institutions of higher education. The objective of the present .study is to understand the mid-career dilemma of Indian women leaders based on their personal experiences. The study follows a phenomenological approach. The phenomenological approach as a qualitative research methodology provides for analysing the subjective experiences of individuals and their interpretations of these experiences. Data for the study were collected using a structured questionnaire. The study aggregates the views of women leaders and understands the challenges they face in pursuing their careers and maintaining their leadership roles. The study explored the transitions experienced by women through the ages, and hence, a qualitative paradigm with thematic analysis provided a better scope for understanding the experiences of women leaders. 2022, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Advancing equity in digital classrooms: A personalized learning framework for higher education institutions
Since the introduction of technology-enabled education systems, personalizing the learning process has become more regarded as a promising methodology for revolutionizing the academe. Acknowledging the difference in the learning capability of students across various levels of the academic segment, a personalized learning approach is of paramount importance, especially when teachers cannot efficiently monitor each student (e.g., during emergency remote education). This chapter focused on the necessity for higher education institutions that offer courses from various streams to adopt a personalized learning initiative as a means of offering better online education services. For the successful creation of a personalized online learning experience, this chapter likewise developed a framework that provides a step-by-step guide to educational institutions in moving in this direction. As online education is a trend for future learning, this blueprint could be valuable as well in the post-pandemic era. 2022, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
An invisible race from exclusiveness to inclusiveness of queer employees at workplace
Queer theory has been a significant part of the field of queer studies. Its presence can be found in women's studies, gay and lesbian studies and feminist theory, and postmodern and poststructuralist theories. Many types of research came around during the 1990s. One of the significant studies was in 1991. Teresa de Lauret coined the term "queer theory" to characterize a school of thought that rejected heterosexuality and binary gender constructions favoring a more open view of identity. Michel Foucault and Judith Butler's study is widely regarded as the founding text of this philosophy. This study adopts the lens of gender and sexuality to challenge people's cultural norms and ideals. There is hesitation among people regarding the acceptance of the third gender that exists in society. The queer theory suggests how the rest sees the queer community of the world. While studying the conditions of the queer community in India, it is imperative to undertake the recently legalized Section 377. The Indian Penal Code says that it is no more a crime to have sexual conduct between adults of the same gender as people have no control over their sexual orientation. The study discusses the practices and protocols of transgender inclusion at the workplace and how to look beyond the labels of the LGBT community. There are various issues when the company wants to employ transgender people at the workplace and accept the community. Qualitative research methods will be used in this research by reading several databases and conducting a systematic review. This chapter will also highlight how trans people confront significant job and career-related problems and barriers in the workplace and the concessions employers should make to ensure that trans people have a safe and discrimination-free workplace. This chapter observes how queer theory can be used as a conceptual framework to advance research in organizational research on trans people's several and many times conflicting needs. Ways could be explored to reach their goals around gender transgression and congruency, work, and career, by laying out some of the crucial concepts associated with the study of trans people in the workplace. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. -
Integration of blockchain to IoT: Possibilities and pitfalls
[No abstract available] -
Biofuels from bio-waste and biomass
The planet's limited natural fossil fuel reserves are anticipated to be very soon owing to massive usage. Biofuels would be a critical alternative source that may reduce global warming and CO2 emissions. The food-versus-fuel dilemma is, however, one of the key drawbacks of first-generation biofuels like corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol, etc. Cellulose and hemicellulose, the primary constituents of lignocellulosic feedstocks, could be reduced to sugars by either thermochemical/biological processes before being fermented to generate biofuels. However, owing to structural heterogeneity, more complicated operational techniques are required before the production technology can be commercialized, and several challenges must be addressed. This chapter provided an assessment of various feedstocks, availability, various processing techniques, obstacles, and current technical developments in the generation of biofuels from biomass. 2023, IGI Global. -
Revolutionizing legal services with blockchain and artificial intelligence
[No abstract available] -
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was a profound and rare Islamic scholar, writer, thinker, freedom fighter who promoted the idea of 'universal humanism'. He was well versed in poetry, art and music besides having a flair for writing. He was a multi-faceted personality with a progressive outlook. Though he had a rationalist outlook, he was very well versed in Islamic lore and history. His view of Islam did not necessarily come into conflict with territorial nationalism, Pan-Islamism and anti-imperialism. In this sense, he had interpreted Islam from a rationalist perspective. Maulana Azad had given a clarion call to the Muslims to join hands with the Hindus to achieve the common goal of ending British rule and domination in India. In fact, he considered this as the duty of the Indian Muslims, because according to him Muslims were created not for despondency but for 'hope'. As a revolutionary journalist the Maulana heralded a new era in Urdu journalism. His weekly 'Al-Hilal' grew in readership to such an extent that ultimately the British Government had to ban it. This chapter will analyse the thoughts, ideas and contribution of Maulana Azad to the freedom movement and nation-building in the post-independent India. Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022. All rights reserved. -
Servant leadership and diversity: A focus on ethnic and cultural diversity
Business organizations becoming global is nothing new in the current world due to the ever-shrinking physical and communication boundaries. Going global has its benefits and limitations. Benefits would be less expensive land, labor, and resources and reduced transportation cost by being present in countries with vast requirements for an organization's products or services. At the same time, the limitations would be to manage people or lead them toward shared organizational goals. India being a country with enormous opportunities has diverse cultures and practices. Thus, leading various people as employees would be a challenge. What may work in the Western countries may not work in India due to its vast diversity in culture, language, and ethnicity. This research aims to understand the servant leadership approach and if it would be applicable in India. In the context of diverse cultures, the authors analyze the servant leader's role in an organization and compare the practices of servant leadership in various other countries. 2023 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Pandemic recovery strategies: A disaster management tourism framework
Purpose: The leisure industry is colossally impacted by varied types of crisis. Assessing the volatility; an attempt is made towards disaster planning and a response system. This chapter indicates an all-inclusive integrated approach to deal with disasters and narrates conceptual and latest factual findings in the space of disaster management. An efficient and self-equipped attraction demands a competent and efficient disaster management system in place. Methodology: This chapter devises measures to deal with the capacity of a destination during pandemic and proposes recovering strategies for the leisure business. Destination governance and disaster management techniques are well explored in the proposed chapter. Findings: An imperative study of this nature will determine the role of cultural perceptions of varied risk and threats in a pandemic scenario. Innovative practices of disaster governance and Post-disaster recovery strategies are crucial mechanisms for the sustenance of tourism and hospitality sector. Originality-Value: The conceptual ideas and outcomes obtained in this chapter helps policy makers not only to find new strategies to placate the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the organic image of tourist destinations but also assists in accelerating the recovery timeframe just after the pandemic. 2022 Joseph Chacko Chennattuserry, Bindi Varghese, N Elangovan and H Sandhya. -
Recent advances in lightweight epoxy-based composites for X-Ray and y-Ray shielding applications
Rapidly advancing technologies in the nuclear industry have led to the increased use of X-rays and ?-rays in our day-to-day life. They have emerged to be an integral part of several industries including medical diagnostics and imaging, nuclear medicine, reactor research facilities, industrial gauging, agricultural irradiation, geological exploration and security purposes. However, considering the adverse effects of prolonged exposure to these radiations on human health, this is also a cause of concern for mankind and radiation shielding and protection have become issues of paramount importance. In the search for alternatives to conventional shielding materials such as lead, metals, glass composites, ceramics and concretes, epoxy-based composites have emerged as promising X-ray and ?-ray shields. Material properties like high mechanical and bonding strength, high temperature resistance, low electrical conductivity and thermal expansion coefficients, dielectric constant with minimal shrinking stress and lightweight structure render epoxy composites to be particularly suitable for structural applications. Epoxy composites incorporated with fillers/additives such as inorganic metal oxides, carbon fibers, clay and carbon nanotubes are an emerging class of high-performance materials. The primary focus of this article is to present a detailed review on the recent research directed towards developing epoxy-based materials for radiation shielding applications. Influence of filler loading, filler size and interfacial adhesion on microstructural, thermo-mechanical and radioprotective efficacy of epoxy composites are discussed. We present a general overview and propose new possibilities for further research in this direction. 2022 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. -
Environmental applications of microbial fuel cells
The world is facing an energy crisis for non-renewable resources for the last decade. Hence, there is a search for highly efficient energy transformation techniques which utilizes alternate renewable energy sources. One such renewable energy production technology is Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) based on dynamic organisms like microbes. MFCs allow producing electricity using renewable organic waste through microbial cellular respiration, which helps in reducing the carbon footprint as well as the environmental pollution. MFCs can also be used in metal recovery by bio electrochemical recovery, because metal ions can be reduced and deposited on an electrode by bacteria, algae, yeasts, and fungi. Microbial carbon capture cells are advancements to MFC, where algal biomass provides oxygen for cathodic reduction in the cathodic chamber and is ideally considered as the plausible technologies to tackle the ever-increasing problem of global warming and increased CO2 concentration. The MFCs find application in environmental remediation with respect to harmful organic pollutants by neutralizing/degrading contaminated water and soil. The harmful organic pollutants that can be neutralized include organic dyes, pesticides, insecticides, antibiotics, phenolic nitro phenolic compounds, and many others. This gives a long-term solution for pollutant degradation that is also environmentally acceptable. MFC-based biosensors have recently emerged as the next-generation biosensing technique for environmental monitoring. 2022 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. -
A survey on various applications of internet of things on blockchain platform
[No abstract available] -
Punching above the weight? Role of Sri Lanka in BIMSTEC
[No abstract available] -
Deep neural network architecture and applications in healthcare
Gaining insights related to medical data has always been a challenge, as limited technology delays treatment. Various types of data are collected from the medical field, such as sensor data, that are heterogeneous in nature. All of these are very poorly maintained and require more structuring. For this reason, deep learning is becoming more and more popular in this area. There are many challenges due to inadequate and irrelevant data. Insufficient domain knowledge also adds to the challenge. Modern deep learning models can help understand the dataset. This chapter provides an overview of deep learning, its various architectures, and convolutional neural networks. It also highlights how deep learning technologies can help advance healthcare. 2022 River Publishers. -
Sustainable practices in Indian aviation
Air travel produces about three percent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. The air travel industry requires an enduring vision that focuses on sustainable practices in the entire aviation sector, which will be a significant aspect of the future of civil aviation. The study adopts a systematic review to portray significant challenges, issues, and best practices in the worldwide aviation industry, highlighting the Indian scenario to establish future exploration in India. The chapter extensively investigates the latest sustainable developments in the airline business, the logical agreement on its ecological effects, and steps taken for sustainability. 2023, IGI Global. All rights reserved. -
Data-driven behaviour finance for mutual fund investment decision making
When it comes to money and investing funds, the individual portfolio investor isn't always as logical as he feels he is, which is why there's a whole school of thought dedicated to explaining why people behave in irrational and weird ways. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the effects of five major behavioural biases on individual investor decisions in a metro city India, with a focus on mutual funds, as well as to examine how individuals make decisions to ensure that their investments generate greater returns for a better future. The statistical evidence shows that a variety of behavioural elements have a significant part in people' investment decision-making patterns, which has an impact on the population's economic situation. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how an individual's perspective, attitude, and conduct affect mutual fund investments. 2023, IGI Global. -
Perceived cyber security challenges in adoption and diffusion of FinTech services in India
FinTech is a term that refers to a new type of digital technology that intends to build up and automate the distribution and management of financial services. FinTech is an abbreviation for "financial technology." FinTech, or financial technology, assists companies, business holders, and consumers in managing their financial procedures and methods. The high adoption rate of fintech services creates a whole ecosystem of looters and hackers. This indeed is scary, and this chapter makes an attempt to understand the adoption rate of fintech services and diffusion challenges at the same time. 2023, IGI Global.