Search engine plants trees and finds results

Search engine plants trees and finds results

Some people prefer Google when exploring the Web. Some like Yahoo or Bing. But now more than 2.5 million people a month are using Ecosia, because every time they click “Search” they help plant a tree.

Ecosia donates an impressive 80 per cent of its income, after expenses, to programs that sow trees in Africa. The money, up to $75,000 a month (most of it from ads), is responsible for four new trees every minute, according to Ecosia spokesperson Jacey Bingler.

Spreading greenery projects in Africa

The group, based in Germany, had been funding a tree program in Brazil but last October it began financing WeForest’s reforestation project in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

It is part of a larger effort to spread greenery across dry regions of Africa. Bingler noted that the project has a larger purpose, too. “It’s about reviving drought-ravaged landscapes, nurturing, educating and empowering people, slowing the spread of disease and even reducing the likelihood of extremism and violent conflict.”

Ecosia’s goal is to sprout 1 billion trees by 2020. Originally it hoped to reach that level by this year, but planting costs were high and users did not quickly flock to the search engine.

Rapid progress

That is all picking up steam today. “We celebrated our first million trees in November 2014, the second million already in May 2015,” Bingler noted. And the cost in Burkina Faso works out to about 30 cents a tree, instead of the dollar being spent before.

Bingler noted that the search engine continues to improve; searches are now 34 per cent faster than they were last year. It is powered primarily by Bing and is enhanced with Ecosia’s own algorithms and technologies. Users can also click a “Google” button, which gives that engine’s results for the same inquiry.

Bingler added that Ecosia is an important alternative to the big players “because it empowers users to do good without spending a penny. Highly abstract everyday tasks, like searching the Web, can lead to something as tangible as a new tree.”

Source | Asian Age | 28 July 2015

 

Facebook rolls out new video tools and library for publishers

Facebook rolls out new video tools and library for publishers

Washington DC: Facebook has released new tools that provide publishers with more customization options when distributing their videos.

According to the Verge, Facebook in a blog post announced two groups of updates, the first centering on customization options when uploading videos and the second on improving the back-end tools publishers use to organize them.

The customization options have several new features to help limit the distribution process for publishers, mainly the ability to publish 'secret videos' and prevent embedding of videos on third-party sites.

The secret videos feature like YouTube's unlisted videos, cannot be searched for and can only be viewed by users who have a direct URL to the video.

The second group of updates has the Video Library tool which focuses on helping publishers organize a large collection of their videos, through which publishers can now make mass changes across multiple videos.

The publishers can also edit a video's metadata even after it has been uploaded, manage distribution options and choose to prevent third-party embeds. (ANI)

Source | http://zeenews.india.com/news/net-news/facebook-rolls-out-new-video-tools-and-library-for-publishers_1635359.html

 

Ineligible teachers check board answer papers: MLC

Ineligible teachers check board answer papers: MLC

Mumbai : Member of Legislative Council, Ramnath Mote, created a sensation by alleging that unauthorized teachers have been checking and evaluating the answer sheets of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSSC) examinations conducted by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE).

Mote, in a letter to education minister Vinod Tawde, alleged that scores of teachers who are checking SSC and HSC answer papers are not authorised by the education department. This raises a question mark over the quality of evaluation in the state board.

Every year, odd 3 million students appear for the SSC and HSSC examinations and over five lakh students appear for re-examination. According to the board guidelines, there should be one teacher for every 250 students and one moderator per ten teachers for evaluation work. Only experienced teachers should be given the task of paper checking and those who have long experience are entrusted with moderator’s responsibility. Only these authorised teachers should carry out the checking and monitoring task of board answer papers.

Mote alleged that board officials illegally give the task of paper checking to inexperienced teachers for their vested interests. These teachers do not have required educational qualification and teaching experience of the concerned subject.

Mote said that he made repeated complaints to the state board officials in this regards, however, the board did not take cognizance of it. He said that if the situation continues, then he will approach the court in this matter.

A board official, on the condition of anonymity, said, “On several occasions it is observed that major schools and senior teachers are reluctant to take responsibility of paper checking and moderation. Board always gives preference to experienced teachers and when they say refuse to carry out this work then the board goes for next in seniority.”

Source | Free Press Journal | 29 July 2015

 

A rare kind of book club

A rare kind of book club

 

With 50,000 members, the Rare Book Society of India is more than a digital library ­ it's also a forum for discussion and debate

 

Interest in Indian history is near universal, says Subbiah Yadalam, the founder of the Rare Book Society of India.

Within minutes of his posting details about a new (old) book on the society's vibrant, 50,000-member community page on Facebook, there are views and `likes' from places flung as far apart as Uganda, the US and Slovenia, says Yadalam, who started the society's website and Facebook page to connect with bibliophiles ­ especially those who share his passion for rare, out-ofprint books ­ from all over the world. “There are viewers from 72 countries at any given time,“ says the 52-year-old founder, who is as passionate about the power of sharing and social media as he is about rare books; his goal to make these books accessible to everyone through digitization and free downloads.

The obsession with rare books started a decade ago when Yadalam came across a book, The Castes and Tribes of Southern In dia, a scholarly and encyclopaedic tome by Edgar Thurston and Kadambi Rangachari published in 1909, at his club library. He found it fascinating and wanted to buy it from the club, which refused to sell it. But Yadalam had tasted blood and started hunting down old, rare titles at bookstores, auctions and online, starting with bibliophile KK Murthy's Select, where serendipity ­ a quality abundant in that most gloriously anarchic of bookstores ­ played a huge role in helping him start his collection.

Today , while his personal collection of rare books on Indian history numbers around 175 titles, Yadalam also sources digitized versions from websites such as Gutenberg.org and Archive.org. The focus of his collection is books on Indian history, and he has created a digital library of hundreds of rare, out-of-copyright books on the subject, meticulously digitized to retain the look and feel of the original volume.

Not just that, they are curated and tagged by subject; so if you are looking for books under the subject, say, `Pallava Expansion', you would find posts on the website related to the topic along with URLs, using which you can download PDF versions of the books. There's also an option to read them online.

“Many of these books could be considered as history , opinion or plain propaganda, but the aim is to show that there is no wasteful source in the study of history, there is only an added perspective,“ says Yadalam. He's proud of the fact that what started off as a group for rare book collectors has been transformed into a forum for history buffs, scholars and “the silent curious.“

Yadalam is fanatical about the need for us to go to primary sources to know more about historical events and personalities and form an objective opinion. The intermediation of historians, who always bring their own biases and slants into the interpretation, often results in a warped idea of history, he believes. “It is time for us to look at the reference sections of books and go read those books ourselves. Research empowers you, it makes you appreciate the fact that there are always many versions to the truth; that there is often no one `definitive version'. We need a society that can see layers and nuances, and this will only happen when we familiarize ourselves with the many versions of history,“ he says.

Source | Times of India | 30 July 2015

 

AP makes one million minutes of historical footage available on YouTube

AP makes one million minutes of historical footage available on YouTube

LONDON — The Associated Press and British Movietone, one of the world's most comprehensive newsreel archives, are together bringing more than 1 million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube. Showcasing the moments, people and events that shape the world, it will be the largest upload of historical news content on the video-sharing platform to date. 

 

The two channels will act as a view-on-demand visual encyclopedia, offering a unique perspective on the most significant moments of modern history. Available for all to explore, the channels will also be powerful educational tools and a source of inspiration for history enthusiasts and documentary filmmakers.

 

The YouTube channels will include more than 550,000 video stories dating from 1895 to the present day. For example, viewers can see video from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, exclusive footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marilyn Monroe captured on film in London in the 1950s and Twiggy modeling the fashions of the 1960s.

 

 

"The AP archive footage, combined with the British Movietone collection, creates an incredible visual journey of the people and events that have shaped our history," said Alwyn Lindsey, AP's director of international archive. "At AP we are always astonished at the sheer breadth of footage that we have access to, and the upload to YouTube means that, for the first time, the public can enjoy some of the oldest and most remarkable moments in history."

 

Stephen Nuttall, the director of YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, comments: "Making this content available on YouTube is a wonderful initiative from AP and British Movietone that will breathe new life into their footage and no doubt delight our global community - from students researching history projects to curious culture-vultures and the billions in between. It's an historical treasure trove that will give YouTube users around the world a moving window into the past and I can't wait to explore it."

 

Content on the channels will also include surprising videos from different regions across the UK, fashion through the ages, sporting coups, entertainment, extreme weather, technological innovations, the evolution of eating and drinking habits, political milestones and historical moments. They will be continually refreshed with up-to-date contemporary footage.

 

Source | http://www.ap.org

 

While reading, we see words as pictures

While reading, we see words as pictures

As your eyes scan these words, your brain seems to derive their meaning instantaneously. How are we able to recognise and interpret marks on a page so rapidly? A new study confirms that a specialised brain area recognises printed words as pictures rather than by their meaning, reports scientificamerican.com.

Researchers led by neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber of Georgetown University Medical Center scanned the brains of 12 subjects with functional MRI. They focused on a tiny area of the brain known to be involved in recognising words, the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), found on the surface of the brain, behind the left ear.

From face recognition to words

The VWFA’s right hemisphere analogue is the fusiform face area, which allows us to recognise faces. In young children and people who are illiterate, the VWFA region and the fusiform face area both respond to faces. As people learn to read, the VWFA region is co-opted for word recognition.

The researchers presented the subjects with a series of real words and made-up words. The nonsense words elicited responses from a wide pool of neurons in the VWFA, whereas distinct subsets of neurons responded to real words. After subjects were trained to recognise pseudo words, however, neurons responded as they did to real words, according to the paper published in March in the Journal of Neuroscience. Because the nonsense words had no meaning, Riesenhuber deduced that our neurons must respond to words’ orthography — how they look — rather than their meaning. As we become more proficient at reading, then we build up a visual dictionary in the VWFA — much as we accumulate a catalogue of familiar faces on the opposite side of our brain.

We “hear” written words in our head

Sound may have been the original vehicle for language, but writing allows us to create and understand words without it. Yet new research shows that sound remains a critical element of reading.

When people listen to speech, neural activity is correlated with each word’s “sound envelope” — the fluctuation of the audio signal over time corresponds to the fluctuation of neural activity over time. In the new study, Lorenzo Magrassi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pavia in Italy, and his colleagues made electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings from 16 individuals.

The researchers measured neural activity directly from the surface of the language-generating structure known as Broca’s area as subjects read text silently or aloud. (This measurement was made possible by the fact that participants were undergoing brain surgery while awake.)

Their neural activity was correlated with the sound envelope of the text they read, which was generated well before they spoke and even when they were not planning to speak, according to the report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

In other words, Broca’s area responded to silent reading much in the same way auditory neurons respond to text spoken aloud — as if Broca’s area was generating the sound of the words so the readers heard them internally.

The finding speaks to a debate about whether words are encoded in the brain by a neural pattern symbolic of their meaning or if they are encoded via simpler attributes, such as how they sound. The results add to mounting evidence that words are fundamentally processed and catalogued by their basic sounds and shapes.

Source | Asian Age | 30 July 2015

 

Regards

Teachers back to Learning

Teachers back to Learning

 

With the employability of Indian graduates being questioned left, right and centre, several organisations are attempting to make a change where it matters most—in the classroom, discovers Averil Nunes

 

Good Teacher, Good Student

“If you don’t have good teachers, how can you have good students?,” asked Ramraje Naik-Nimbalker, Chairperson, Maharashtra Legislative Council, at the Satara session of the ZEE and Rao IIT three-city seminar ‘Engineering the Future’. “We need to send our teachers abroad, so that they can learn the methods and technology that is used to teach there.”

And he’s not the only one who thinks so. “There should be a provision for students and faculty to visit and study at institutions of higher learning in developed countries, and thereby gain a world-class education. We should also be able to invite students and professors from foreign universities here, to learn and teach,” Infosys Founder, Narayana Murthy suggested, when recently asked to recommend ways that we could improve the Indian education system.

Student turned Teacher

But as with any given problem, there could be multiple solutions. Meghna Ghai Puri, President, Whistling Woods, nods in agreement when asked if she thinks Indian education is facing a dearth of good teachers. Her solution is simple, “I tell my students to come back and teach. I think it’s important to have working professionals in the system. They serve as an industry and reality connect. They’re in touch with the latest in their industry and are well equipped to teach. They can also help the students secure jobs”.

Internships for Professors

The ITM Group of Institutions has another solution. It is proposing ‘internships for professors’. Prof R S S Mani, Vice President, Institutional Development, ITM explains, “I would describe this as an ‘industry sabbatical for faculty’. Often executives from companies spend time on campuses, where they take up a few courses, talk to the students and share experiences to enrich themselves and the students. In the academic sense, a sabbatical would imply a faculty member taking a break to study further, do more research and return with a higher level of knowledge. Systems sometimes have faculty with pure academic experience and no exposure to industry standards. Even faculty with prior work experience may be out of touch with the latest in their fields. The industry sabbatical would be like a refresher course for teaching professionals. A marketing professor could intern in advertising, market research or sales; an HR professor could intern in areas like training and development or recruitment. The knowledge they acquire in this process could enhance their impact in the classroom; primarily because they can bridge the gap between theory and practice”.

ITM plans to offer such internships to all faculty who have completed a minimum of one year teaching courses on their campus. Priority would be given to those who have no industry exposure. Additionally, other faculty interested in industry internships could pursue one. ITM is currently looking at three-four month internships across all industry segments. Accoridng to Prof Mani, “We have piloted the industry sabbatical in eight to nine companies and have received positive responses. We want to reach out to maximum companies, to motivate them to be part of this model. It’s a win-win situation.”

Teach the Teacher

While industry relevance may be the focus of the ITM approach to enhancing in-class teaching, “the student is the focus of our training programmes for teachers,” reveals Darpan Vasudev, VP, Next Education and Head of NextDeeksha, which has been working with 125 schools across Mumbai, including the Army Public School, Colaba; the Navy School, Colaba; St Mary’s ICSE and St Mary’s Multipurpose High School, Navi Mumbai; St Gregorios High School, Chembur and Jankidevi Public School, Versova.

The seven-year-old education consulting company, which aims to “make the teaching-learning mechanism more effective”, ventured into the teacher-training space about three years ago, when it realised the need to help students “navigate the system without losing on their inherent talent and creativity”. From doing a health check to determine the effectiveness of teaching-learning practices to conducting leadership sessions for principals and equipping teachers to deal with a special child or one with a short attention span and tackling common problems to customising training programmes, the company is in the business of enhancing teaching-learning efficacy.

“Children need overall development—through learning all sorts of skills, sport and cultural activities—to do well in the dynamically evolving global scenario. Most of their education is as per curriculum and is out of touch with their wealth of natural talent,” says Darpan. “From pre-primary storytelling and nurturing creativity to building an emotionally intelligent classroom and competency mapping at the higher levels, the goal is always to figure out how best to help the student and to resolve teaching-learning issues. We’re looking at developing children with the life skills to adapt to any situation. This means we need to train teachers to identify a child’s creativity and enhance their natural ability, whilst moving from the theoretical to the practical way of teaching subjects such as Math, English and Science. We try to help the teacher maintain the child’s creative sanctity and natural capability whilst enabling the child to perform well academically. And it all comes down to establishing a proper student-teacher connect,” says Darpan. “Technology is by-product; it can enhance the way students learn, but it can never eliminate the teacher”.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 28 July 2015

 

Making teachers specialists

Making teachers specialists

It is very hard to find any country that by design keeps the subject knowledge bar as low as India

 

If you haven’t already done it, then try teaching a child who is in Grades 5 to 8. Pick any topic, say volcanoes. Driven by the child’s curiosity and your own desire for her to learn, the conversation will quickly go deeper and broader than the notion of mountains spewing very hot, molten stuff. For example, you will talk about why is the stuff molten; what makes the core of the Earth hot; why don’t we have volcanoes all over the Earth; has it always been like this; what are the other ways rocks are formed.

 

For such a conversation to happen, many conditions must be met, e.g. a relationship of trust between you and the child, you need to be observant of the child’s emotional state and knowledge levels, and be patient. Let’s focus on one condition: you yourself need to understand all these things related to volcanoes, i.e. have “subject knowledge” on volcanoes. If your subject knowledge is deep and broad, and mine is shallow and limited, the child wouldn’t learn much from a conversation with me, but could learn with you.

 

Let’s call such deep and broad knowledge, good knowledge of the subject. It’s easy to appreciate that if we want the child to have good knowledge of any subject, the teacher must have better (i.e. deeper and broader) knowledge of the same subject than what we are expecting the child to develop. This is not in any way a contentious issue in education; there is ready agreement on this basic notion. With this background, let’s look at India’s school education.

 

To be a teacher for Grades 1 to 8 in India, a diploma in education (DEd) is the basic qualification. These norms on qualifications and all other aspects of teacher education are governed by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The entry to a DEd programme is after passing Grade 12. It is a two-year programme, and doesn’t have anything to do with subject knowledge of the future teacher. Its curriculum is designed for other educational aspects, e.g. child development, sociological issues of education, pedagogy.

 

The implication is that by design the teachers who teach students up to Grade 8 are expected to have subject knowledge at the level of Grade 12. There are many other deep flaws in the design and functioning of our teacher preparation system, but let’s just focus on this one aspect of subject knowledge.

 

Is Grade 12-level knowledge good enough to teach up to Grade 8? Is that knowledge adequately better (using the terminology of the example of volcanoes)? While there may not be a complete consensus on this matter, the overwhelming majority in education would say that the minimal subject knowledge requirement to teach up to Grade 8 is an undergraduate-level education.

It is very hard to find any country that by design keeps the subject knowledge bar as low as us. Most countries expect an undergraduate-level education in subjects, while their specific designs of the teacher preparation programmes may differ.

 

Till now, we have only talked about the flaw in the design of the system; now let’s look at the reality. We are quite familiar with the very inadequate learning levels of our schools. It’s with this low subject knowledge, even by school standards, that many of our elementary school teachers operate. It’s no surprise that you can find teachers in Grade 8 who don’t have subject knowledge that you would expect in a Grade 6 student. You see this reflected everywhere where teachers’ subject knowledge is assessed, e.g. the percentage of teachers qualifying through the central and state teacher eligibility tests (TETs) is routinely between 2% and 10%. Teachers who teach Grades 9-12 are expected to have a bachelor’s of education and an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject; some teachers in Grades 1-8 also have undergraduate degrees.

 

However, the quality of our undergraduate education is (in my estimate) worse than our school education. So, an undergraduate degree hardly seems to matter.

 

Let me point out three things. One, the motivation and engagement of teachers is a completely different aspect, but which is often affected negatively by a lack of subject knowledge. Two, there are many other capacities that are required to be an effective teacher, not only subject knowledge. Three, given that we are talking about eight million teachers, for sure there are some teachers who have good subject knowledge, i.e. there are large variations around a low mean.

Three things that are in progress must be deepened and expanded to address this situation. Teacher appointments, both in private and public schools, must be contingent on qualifying through (improved) TETs. Investment must be increased in effective in-service support for existing teachers on subject knowledge. The design of teacher preparation must be changed such that all teachers go through a five-year integrated programme on subjects and teacher education. NCTE has already taken steps in this direction and the Prime Minister has endorsed this idea publicly. However, given the entrenched interests in the 16,000-odd existing teacher education institutions, this will need some doing.

 

Source | Daily News Analysis | 23 July 2015

Set up learning disability centres in each district: HC

Set up learning disability centres in each district: HC

In court | At present, children from across the state have to travel long distances to only three centres in Mumbai and one in Pune

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday directed the state government to set up special centres to help students with learning disability to get their certificates and assessment done. The court told the state to set up one such centre in each district.

A division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice AK Menon has formed an expert committee comprising doctors of KEM hospital, BYL Nair hospital, Dr Harish Shetty, and the Directors of the Medical Education Research and Public Health departments to provide technical assistance to the state for setting up these centres.

At the moment there are only four centres, three in Mumbai and one in Pune; in other places, learning disability assessment and certificate issuance is the work of civil surgeons.

Speaking before the court, Dr Shetty said that children have to travel from far off places and stay overnight to get certificates from the existing centres. As per government data last year, there were around 37,358 students in schools suffering from learning disability.

The Union Ministry of Social Justice has introduced a Bill in the Rajya Sabha, adding 12 more entries- one of which is learning disability- to the list of disabilities.

Now, the court has also issued instructions to the Expert Committee of the Union Ministry of Social Justice to devise a method to assess learning disability. This disability cannot be measured in terms of percentage of severity like other disabilities, experts say. Either a child is learning disabled or not, they explain.

The court has asked the Union government to refer the matter to experts.

In a related development, the court has directed the SSC and HSC exam boards to provide writers to students with learning disabilities who will take the repeaters’ exams to be held in October.

The directions were given during the hearing of a suo-moto petition based on a letter written by Dr Harish Shetty and Dr Sanghnaik Meshram, highlighting the difficulties faced by learning-disabled students.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 23 July 2015

Making teachers specialists

Making teachers specialists

It is very hard to find any country that by design keeps the subject knowledge bar as low as India

 

If you haven’t already done it, then try teaching a child who is in Grades 5 to 8. Pick any topic, say volcanoes. Driven by the child’s curiosity and your own desire for her to learn, the conversation will quickly go deeper and broader than the notion of mountains spewing very hot, molten stuff. For example, you will talk about why is the stuff molten; what makes the core of the Earth hot; why don’t we have volcanoes all over the Earth; has it always been like this; what are the other ways rocks are formed.

 

For such a conversation to happen, many conditions must be met, e.g. a relationship of trust between you and the child, you need to be observant of the child’s emotional state and knowledge levels, and be patient. Let’s focus on one condition: you yourself need to understand all these things related to volcanoes, i.e. have “subject knowledge” on volcanoes. If your subject knowledge is deep and broad, and mine is shallow and limited, the child wouldn’t learn much from a conversation with me, but could learn with you.

 

Let’s call such deep and broad knowledge, good knowledge of the subject. It’s easy to appreciate that if we want the child to have good knowledge of any subject, the teacher must have better (i.e. deeper and broader) knowledge of the same subject than what we are expecting the child to develop. This is not in any way a contentious issue in education; there is ready agreement on this basic notion. With this background, let’s look at India’s school education.

 

To be a teacher for Grades 1 to 8 in India, a diploma in education (DEd) is the basic qualification. These norms on qualifications and all other aspects of teacher education are governed by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The entry to a DEd programme is after passing Grade 12. It is a two-year programme, and doesn’t have anything to do with subject knowledge of the future teacher. Its curriculum is designed for other educational aspects, e.g. child development, sociological issues of education, pedagogy.

 

The implication is that by design the teachers who teach students up to Grade 8 are expected to have subject knowledge at the level of Grade 12. There are many other deep flaws in the design and functioning of our teacher preparation system, but let’s just focus on this one aspect of subject knowledge.

 

Is Grade 12-level knowledge good enough to teach up to Grade 8? Is that knowledge adequately better (using the terminology of the example of volcanoes)? While there may not be a complete consensus on this matter, the overwhelming majority in education would say that the minimal subject knowledge requirement to teach up to Grade 8 is an undergraduate-level education.

It is very hard to find any country that by design keeps the subject knowledge bar as low as us. Most countries expect an undergraduate-level education in subjects, while their specific designs of the teacher preparation programmes may differ.

 

Till now, we have only talked about the flaw in the design of the system; now let’s look at the reality. We are quite familiar with the very inadequate learning levels of our schools. It’s with this low subject knowledge, even by school standards, that many of our elementary school teachers operate. It’s no surprise that you can find teachers in Grade 8 who don’t have subject knowledge that you would expect in a Grade 6 student. You see this reflected everywhere where teachers’ subject knowledge is assessed, e.g. the percentage of teachers qualifying through the central and state teacher eligibility tests (TETs) is routinely between 2% and 10%. Teachers who teach Grades 9-12 are expected to have a bachelor’s of education and an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject; some teachers in Grades 1-8 also have undergraduate degrees.

 

However, the quality of our undergraduate education is (in my estimate) worse than our school education. So, an undergraduate degree hardly seems to matter.

 

Let me point out three things. One, the motivation and engagement of teachers is a completely different aspect, but which is often affected negatively by a lack of subject knowledge. Two, there are many other capacities that are required to be an effective teacher, not only subject knowledge. Three, given that we are talking about eight million teachers, for sure there are some teachers who have good subject knowledge, i.e. there are large variations around a low mean.

Three things that are in progress must be deepened and expanded to address this situation. Teacher appointments, both in private and public schools, must be contingent on qualifying through (improved) TETs. Investment must be increased in effective in-service support for existing teachers on subject knowledge. The design of teacher preparation must be changed such that all teachers go through a five-year integrated programme on subjects and teacher education. NCTE has already taken steps in this direction and the Prime Minister has endorsed this idea publicly. However, given the entrenched interests in the 16,000-odd existing teacher education institutions, this will need some doing.

 

Source | Daily News Analysis | 23 July 2015

Regards

Schools told to up use of e-learning

Schools told to up use of e-learning

In a much-needed relief for students across the state, the state government has put a cap on the weight of school bags at 10% of a student's body weight. A government resolution to this effect was issued on Tuesday and a report was tabled in the legis lative council on Wednesday.

“In an earlier government resolution (GR) to reduce the weight of school bags, there was no clarity on what the maximum weight should be due to which it was difficult to judge if it was being implemented. Hence, despite two GRs, there were several complaints about the weights,“ said school education secretary , Nand Kumar in the resolution. The prescribed weight of the bags for students of classes I to VIII is between 1,800 gms and 3,425 gms.

The government had set up a committee to suggest ways to reduce the weight of school bags. The committee had made 44 recommendations which were put up on the state department's website for suggestions from stakeholders.

The guidelines call upon both parents and schools to ensure that the weight of the school bags does not exceed the prescribed limit of 10% of a student's body weight. Parents have been asked to ensure that students carry only those books which are essential for the day and not send additional activity books or material. Parents have been advised to turn their attention towards keeping the child's body mass index (BMI) healthy .“Eating junk food increases the weight of a child but does not make the child stronger.Schools providing midday meals and parents must ensure that a healthy BMI is main tained,“ said the GR.

Schools have been asked to increase the use of e-learning, conduct frequent checks of the weight and make play equipment available for the well being of the students. Another change suggested is to have lesser periods of the same subject. “Currently, a period is between 30 and 35 minutes. An additional 10 minutes are required when students move classes. Hence, the duration of one period could be increased. However, care must be taken that one period does not exceed one hour,“ said the GR.

Schools and the parents have been asked to collaborate to ensure that the students need not carry a big water bottle or heavy food box by making available clean water and food in school premises.

In its role, the state and education boards are expected to make efforts to provide e-textbooks, carry out checks at schools if there are any complaints and make recommendations to reduce the weight of the bags further.

Source | Times of India | 23 July 2015

Stress – Busting at Office - growing need for recreational activities in offices to keep employees motivated

Dear All

Please find attached Press Release on “Stress – Busting at Office”.

Article talk about the growing need for recreational activities in offices to keep employees motivated.

PDF Link | http://epaperbeta.mid-day.com//epaperpdf/mumbai/15072015/15072015-md-mn-28.pdf

Online Link | http://epaper2.mid-day.com/epaper/15-jul-2015-252-edition-Mumbai-Page-1.html

Source | Mid Day | 15 July 2015

IIT-B, Nehru Science Centre to bring internet to rural schools across state

The initiative is being launched as part of ‘Techfest’, the annual science and technology festival of IIT Bombay.

To provide hands-on internet experience to students in rural schools, IIT Bombay is collaborating with the Nehru Science Centre in which volunteers trained by the students and faculty of IIT Bombay will show how content can be accessed with a click. The “internet for all” project, which is being piloted at 26 rural schools in Nashik district and was launched Tuesday, will be a facility incorporated in Nehru Science Centre’s mobile science exhibition bus and will cover a distance of 650 km. The aim is to literally take internet to the doorsteps of students studying in remote parts of the state.

“Conventional education is extremely rigid with little scope for creative thinking. Such outside syllabus exposure is the need of the day to motivate students. We need to tell students, who have no idea about the internet, that there’s something called connectivity and web pages, how the net works, how browser works. Digital divide, in my opinion, could be worse than social divide,” said IIT Bombay Professor D B Phatak.

The initiative is being launched as part of ‘Techfest’, the annual science and technology festival of IIT Bombay, which is scheduled to be held in December this year. Phatak also said that by year-end, an executable plan for scaling up the project will be ready, which can include net capsules in multiple languages. “As connectivity progresses to villages, we should already have children who know how to use the internet,” he added.

According to Professor Phatak, after accessing Marathi sites with interesting content, the latter was downloaded on a single server, which can simulate several servers.

Each bus will have three volunteers, a laptop with Wi-Fi connectivity and five Aakash tablets. “All tablets will be connected to the laptop and students will be able to access meaningful content in Marathi. They will first see the science exhibits on the bus and subsequently experience the internet. Taking a cue from this project, we are planning to scale it up. We can have 20 such buses, 20 laptops, 100 Aakash tablets and internet capsules or content can be created in multiple local languages. The only bottleneck could be selection and training of volunteers for the project,” he said.

The mobile science exhibition is an exhibition on wheels in which 20 theme-based models are mounted on a specially designed bus and was started in 1965. It is the flagship rural outreach science education programme of the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM). Currently, NCSM has a fleet of 20 such buses, attached to various science centres across India.

The exhibition remains on tours for six to seven months in a year in two phases and covers upto 50 sites in each phase. The idea is to enthuse students to take up careers in science and technology and the bus remains in a rural school for two days at each site.

“The bus will travel to rural areas fully equipped with equipments and infrastructure. Besides giving hands-on internet experience, volunteers will be responsible for educating rural school students about the power of the internet in delivering services in areas like health, education, agriculture, banking etc in rural areas,” said Shivaprasad Khened, Nehru Science Centre director.

Source | Indian Express | 16 July 2015

KVS Written Test Dates PGT 20.09.2015-TGT and PRT 04.10.2015FREENOKRINEWS.COM

KVS Written Test Dates PGT 20.09.2015-TGT and PRT 04.10.2015FREENOKRINEWS.COM
http://www.freenokrinews.com/2015/07/KVS-Written-Test-Dates-PGT-20.09.2015-TGT-and-PRT-04.10.2015.html#.VaTIM_GL7Vk.gmail

Oxford to soon launch 3 digital platform programmes - for school children in India

Oxford to soon launch 3 digital platform programmes - for school children in India

Oxford University Press is launching this year three major programmes, mostly for school children in India, by using the digital platform.

The Press' Indian division is 103 years old and has a unique plan to get a stronger foothold in the Indian market.

"We have three main programmes on the digital platform

·         Oxford Educate Premium,

·         Oxford Achievers

·         My Map

 

Which we are launching soon," says Ranjan Kaul, Managing Director of OUP India.

Oxford Educate Premium is a digital aid that integrates an e-book with interactive tools and learning materials. It incorporates a variety of resources: interactive animations, videos, poem and prose animations and audios for different courses, instructional slide shows, lesson plans, answer keys, additional worksheets, image references and much more.

Oxford Achievers is a web-based assessment programme that will help in measuring the impact of a teaching-and-learning process.

"This is a diagnostic tool. It was successfully used in Hong Kong and now customised in India. We have pilot tested it in about 10 schools and have got positive feedback," Kaul told PTI in an interview.

"My Map is being used in the UK and we are customising the product to the Indian curriculum. It is also an online product and uses simple animation," he says.

With methods of learning changing and children becoming more visual learners, he says the teaching methods have to undergo changes so that they become adaptable to the learning. Kaul sees digitisation as an opportunity and not as a challenge.

"We are content developers. Print is a vehicle to deliver that content. Digital is an equally good vehicle and even a better vehicle," he says.

Two of OUP's popular products - Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Oxford School Atlas - have completed 100 years.

"Advanced Learner's Dictionary is still popular in India. It is a very useful learning tool. We have been changing the format and design of this dictionary so as to help users, like helping people in writing," Kaul says.

The Atlas had its 34th edition printed recently.

 

"We have our own cartography team now. Our 34th edition incorporates the new state of Telangana following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh," Kaul says.

 

Source | Business Standard | 13 July 2015

Apps for learning English

Apps for learning English

With gadgets as the new-age teachers, smart services help you learn English quicker

 

The English language doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. However, new-age learning methods are changing that, very quickly. And the smartphone is playing a very important role.

 

Hello English app, which was updated on 8 July, has been developed by the Jaipur-based start-up CultureAlley. The developers claim the app has 3 million users. According to app analytics website App Annie, Hello English is the 98th most downloaded app in India on Android phones as of 8 July—and is the most popular among educational apps.

 

It is currently available as a free download on the Google Play store, and it doesn’t cost a dime as you progress through the different levels of learning—there are pop-up ads within the app, and that is how the developers earn money.

 

The app can teach translation from almost any Indian language to English—at the time of writing this, the options included Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam and Kannada. The idea is to allow users to link back to their primary dialect to gain a better understanding of the new language. Once you start learning, there are a total of 200 preset lessons that focus on grammar and conversational English—each answer to a question is immediately checked and suggestions offered to the user. In-app virtual currency is accumulated on the successful completion of each lesson—this allows the user to unlock the next, more advanced lesson. The most interesting part is the availability of a tutor over a WhatsApp-like chat feature—if you have any queries, you can discuss them then and there. More lessons and dictionary additions will happen with future app updates that will be downloadable from the Play store itself.

 

And it is not just the smartphone which is changing the way we learn a new language. The good old computer and the idiot box are also learning avenues.

 

Source | http://www.livemint.com

Snooze your email

Snooze your email

If you wake up each morning to the sound of your email’s overflowing inbox, then the first thing you need to do is set it free

 

Before I even get into the topic of email clients in general and email snoozing in particular, I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear: Nothing is going to help you with your “email situation” if you have 3,433 emails in your inbox, 2,456 of which are unread and date from the summer of 2004. If that is the case…then I am afraid there is nothing I can do to help you. There is no app, no software, no logic, no technique, and no “lifehack” that can possibly help you manage your inbox.

Everything you read in this week’s Untangler is dependent on you having a semblance of control over your email situation. So if you wake up each morning to the sound of your overflowing inbox laughing in your face with an assortment of beeps and whistles, then the first thing you need to do is set it free. Clean it up.

 

Now promise me you’ll never let your inbox tumble out of control again. Good.

So onwards to email clients. This week I’d like to focus on just one particular type of email client: the type that allows you to snooze email. Which means that they allow you to temporarily make emails go away only to return them at a future date when you are ready to deal with them. Popular examples of such clients are Mailbox and the new Outlook app by Microsoft. You can also use apps or services such as Boomerang or ReminderBaba.

 

All these apps allow you to deal with something that I hinted at above. If you have to keep your inbox clean, you have to keep processing messages and getting them out of sight. But what if you are not in a position to respond to something right away? Wouldn’t letting the email just linger in your inbox violate our agreement?

 

Yes it would. Which is where the snoozing comes in.

 

For instance, someone tells you to give them a ring the next time you are in New Delhi. You expect to be in New Delhi around Christmas, and promise to drop a line. And then snooze the email till 10am on 23 December. Poof! The email has vanished. Only to reappear exactly in time for you to confirm your trip and make that call.

 

This way you can keep clearing away messages with mid- and long-term goals with the reassurance that the messages will come back when you need them.

 

But wait a minute. How is this different from just entering things into a calendar?

 

Good question. For me, this is a matter of personal taste. I only like to put things in a calendar if it involves physically making sure I am somewhere—driving lessons—or having to do something within a particular time window—visa interview or tax returns.

 

I deeply dislike clogging up my calendar with little reminders and to-dos. With an app like Mailbox, I relegate much of that to my email inbox.

 

I’ve been using Mailbox for months—on my phone and Mac desktop—and it has changed my life. The ability to snooze emails mean that you eventually develop a good sense of priorities. Alumni association updates? Snoozed to Sunday morning. Clarification email from marketing? Maybe 4pm tomorrow. And so on.

 

Also, having no more than 10-20 emails in your inbox is a real stress reliever. It gives you a sense of calm and control. I’ve also felt that it allows you to focus on your email one at a time (ever had that moment when you’re reading one message but already pre-emptively worrying about the next?).

 

The real trick, and this can take a while to perfect, is to snooze smartly. Don’t be tempted to take a whole bunch and hit “Tomorrow Morning”. You’ll soon end up in a snooze loop, pushing away difficult emails indefinitely. Instead, be ruthless with your processing.

 

Can I do it now? Do it.

Do it later? Snooze.

Don’t care? Delete.

 

You’ll soon realize that keeping a clean inbox is not only a good work and life habit, but also good for the soul and the mind. Procrastinate wisely.

Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 14 July 2015

Journal of Diabetes & Metabolism Open Access

Diabetes is the most common metabolic disorder out of various lifestyle diseases associated with many complications including childhood diabetes, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, diabetes cholestrol, endocrine system diseases, complications of hypoglycemia, complications of hyperglycemia, advanced type 2 diabetes treatment, advanced type 1 diabetes treatment, diabetes statistics, pathophysiology of diabetes, obesity and diabetes, diabetes and weight loss, diabetes for dummies, diabetic diet, diabetes and alcohol, reverse diabetes, latest research on diabetes, diabetes lipid metabolism, medical diabetes, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, etc. The condition develops due to abnormalities in carbohydrate metabolism and insulin synthesis resulting in high blood sugar with symptoms such as elevated hunger and thirst, polyuria, glycosuria, lethargy etc. The journal is focused on cutting edge research in the prevention, pharmacological treatment, management, and education of diabetes and related disorders.
Journal of Diabetes & Metabolism is a scholarly Journal publishing articles on all aspects of diabetes including Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus) or juvenile diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus), Gestational Diabetes, Endocrinology, Diabetes Therapy, Diabetic Drugs, Genetics of Diabetes, obesity with relation to diabetes, risk factors, associated metabolic disorders etc.
Diabetes Journals are the peer reviewed journals and to maintain the quality and standard of the journal content, reviewer’s agreement and respective editor’s acceptance is must for publication of an article in this journal. This journal ensures the barrier-free distribution of its content through online open access and thus helps in improving the citations for authors and attaining a good impact factor.
Submit manuscript at http://editorialmanager.com/acrgroup/ or send as an e-mail attachment to the Editorial Office at editor.jdm@omicsonline.org

Childhood Diabetes

Childhood diabetes, previously called juvenile diabetes, occurs when the pancreas is unable to produce enough of the hormone insulin. Children with the condition will require lifelong insulin injections and blood sugar monitoring, and a change in diet may be needed.

Type 1 Diabetes

Diabetes mellitus type 1, also known as type 1 diabetes, formerly insulin-dependent diabetes or juvenile diabetes is a form of diabetes mellitus that results from the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. The subsequent lack of insulin leads to increased blood and urine glucose. Currently there is no way to prevent type 1 diabetes, but ongoing studies are exploring ways to prevent diabetes in those who are most likely to develop it.

Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes mellitus type 2, formerly noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder that is characterized by hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) in the context of insulin resistance and relative lack of insulin.In type 2 diabetes, the cells in your child's body don’t respond to the insulin, and glucose builds up in her bloodstream. This is called insulin resistance. This could lead to other conditions in the future, like heart disease, blindness, and kidney failure.

Diabetes Cholestrol

High cholesterol levels are as serious as high blood pressure, whether a person is diabetic or non-diabetic. Heart disease and stroke have both been linked to high cholesterol and are two of the leading causes of death for diabetics.

Endocrine System Diseases

Endocrine disorders are classified into two categories:
• Endocrine disease that results when a gland produces too much or too little of an endocrine hormone, called a hormone imbalance.
• Endocrine disease due to the development of lesions (such as nodules or tumors) in the endocrine system, which may or may not affect hormone levels

Complications of Hypoglycemia

Over time, repeated episodes of hypoglycemia can lead to hypoglycemia unawareness. The body and brain no longer produce signs and symptoms that warn of a low blood sugar, such as shakiness or irregular heartbeats. When this happens, the risk of severe, life-threatening hypoglycemia is increased. Severe low blood sugar is a medical emergency. It can cause seizures and brain damage. Severe low blood sugar that causes you to become unconscious is called insulin shock.

Complications of Hyperglycemia

Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar (also spelled hyperglycaemia, not to be confused with the opposite disorder, hypoglycemia) is a condition in which an excessive amount of glucose circulates in the blood plasma. Temporary hyperglycemia is often benign and asymptomatic. Blood glucose levels can rise well above normal for significant periods without producing any permanent effects or symptoms.

Advances of Diabetes cure

Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) is a relatively new technology which has the potential to assist people living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes and treated with insulin to achieve the goal of optimum control of blood glucose.

Advanced Type 2 Diabetes Treatment

Type 2 diabetes, although less common in very young children, can occur when not enough insulin is produced or it is not working properly. As a result, glucose can accumulate in the bloodstream. The condition can often be managed through a change in diet, increasing exercise and maintaining a healthy weight, although some patients may require diabetes medication - such as metformin - or insulin therapy. Type 2 diabetes prevention is possible by adopting some healthy lifestyle habits and paying attention to specific preventable diabetes complications associated with this disease. Maintaining a healthy diet is important for everyone, but it is especially important for people with diabetes.

Advanced Type 1 Diabetes Treatment

Type 1 diabetes in children, previously called juvenile diabetes, occurs when the pancreas is unable to produce enough of the hormone insulin. Children with the condition will require lifelong insulin injections and blood sugar monitoring, and a change in diet may be needed. Type 1 diabetes requires lifelong treatment to keep blood sugar levels within a target range. Currently there is no way to prevent type 1 diabetes, but ongoing studies are exploring ways to prevent diabetes in those who are most likely to develop it.

Diabetes Statistics

In 2012, 29.1 million Americans, or 9.3% of the population, had diabetes. Approximately 1.25 million American children and adults have type 1 diabetes.
• Undiagnosed: Of the 29.1 million, 21.0 million were diagnosed, and 8.1 million were undiagnosed.
• Prevalence in Seniors: The percentage of Americans age 65 and older remains high, at 25.9%, or 11.8 million seniors (diagnosed and undiagnosed).
• New Cases: The incidence of diabetes in 2012 was 1.7 million new diagnoses/year; in 2010 it was 1.9 million.
• Prediabetes: In 2012, 86 million Americans age 20 and older had prediabetes; this is up from 79 million in 2010.
• Deaths: Diabetes remains the 7th leading cause of death in the United States in 2010, with 69,071 death certificates listing it as the underlying cause of death, and a total of 234,051 death certificates listing diabetes as an underlying or contributing cause of death.

Pathophysiology of Diabetes

In normal persons the hormone insulin, which is made by the beta cells of the pancreas, regulates how much glucose is in the blood. When there is excess of glucose in blood, insulin stimulates cells to absorb enough glucose from the blood for the energy that they need. In this condition the immune system attacks and destroys the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. There is beta cell deficiency leading to complete insulin deficiency. Thus is it termed an autoimmune disease where there are anti insulin or anti-islet cell antibodies present in blood. These cause lymphocytic infiltration and destruction of the pancreas islets. The destruction may take time but the onset of the disease is rapid and may occur over a few days to weeks.

Obesity and Diabetes

Being overweight places extra stress on your body in a variety of ways, including your body’s ability to maintain proper blood glucose levels. In fact, being overweight can cause your body to become resistant to insulin. If you already have diabetes, this means you will need to take even more insulin to get sugar into your cells. And if you don’t have diabetes, the prolonged effects of the insulin resistance can eventually cause you to develop the disease. Almost 90% of people living with type 2 diabetes are overweight or have obesity. People who are overweight or have obesity have added pressure on their body's ability to use insulin to properly control blood sugar levels, and are therefore more likely to develop diabetes.

Diabetes and Weight Loss

Cutting back on just one meal can affect the delicate balance of blood sugar, insulin, and medication in your body. So it's important to work with an expert when you diet. Unintentional or unexplained weight loss can be caused by a number of things, including depression, certain medication and diabetes. In people with diabetes, insufficient insulin prevents the body from getting glucose from the blood into the body's cells to use as energy. When this occurs, the body starts burning fat and muscle for energy, causing a reduction in overall body weight.

Diabetes for Dummies

Without the pancreas producing this insulin, the sugar will stay in our blood and begin to create serious health issues. High blood sugar can cause blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, and other organ function problems. And without treating high blood sugar, it can be fatal. In diabetes for dummy's, it is vital to get tested regularly to make sure your normal blood sugar levels are safe. In the meantime, diabetes for dummy says to check your blood sugar levels, and know what they are. You only have one body and we all need to take care of it as best we can.

Diabetic Diet

A diabetes meal plan is a guide that tells you how much and what kinds of food you can choose to eat at meals and snack times. A good meal plan should fit in with your schedule and eating habits. Some meal planning tools include:
• The plate method
• Carb counting
• Glycemic index.
The right meal plan will help you improve your blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol numbers and also help keep your weight on track. Whether you need to lose weight or stay where you are, your meal plan can help.

Diabetes and Alcohol

If you have diabetes, drinking alcohol will cause your blood sugar to rise. Plus, alcohol has a lot of calories. If you drink, do it occasionally and only when your diabetes and blood sugar level are well-controlled. If you are following a calorie-controlled meal plan, one drink of alcohol should be counted as two fat exchanges. Here are some other ways that alcohol can affect diabetes:
• Beer and sweet wine contain carbohydrates and may raise blood sugar.
• Alcohol stimulates your appetite, which can cause you to overeat and may affect your blood sugar control.
• Alcohol may also affect your judgment or willpower, causing you to make poor food choices.
• Alcohol can interfere with the positive effects of oral diabetes medicines or insulin.
• Alcohol may increase triglyceride levels

Reverse Diabetes

Reversing diabetes is a term used to describe interventions that reduce dependency on type 2 diabetes medications, effectively reversing the progression of the illness. With time and dedication, type 2 diabetes can be reversed and the results can be very rewarding with less tiredness and better all round health. Loss of body weight can be particularly beneficial in helping to reverse the progression of diabetes. In some cases, people may find they are able to come off medication, although blood sugar levels should be checked regularly as reversing progression of diabetes is not a cure.

Latest Research on Diabetes

There is a lot of research on diabetes happening all around the world and the latest include:
March 19, 2015: Research to Identify and Correctly Treat Rare Forms of Diabetes Some very rare forms of diabetes are caused by single gene mutations. They are called "monogenic" forms of diabetes and new research is opening the door to specific treatments for these patients.
November 7, 2014: A Close-Up View of Glucose Transport Association-funded researcher Dr. Tamir Gonen recently published a critical study that provides the information needed to design new diabetes drugs. But it almost didn’t happen.
October 31, 2014: A Genetic Link to Type 2 Diabetes in Obesity Although obesity is known to be a significant risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes, most obese people never develop diabetes. An Association-funded researcher aims to understand what factors contribute to diabetes risk in the setting of obesity.

Diabetes Lipid Metabolism

The metabolism of people with diabetes differs to the metabolism of people without it. In type 2 diabetes, the effectiveness of insulin is reduced and in type 1 diabetes, insulin levels in the body are very low. There is a strong correlation between BMI and body fat. One of the correlates of insulin resistance is the blood fatty acid (FA) level. FA levels are strong predictors of muscle insulin resistance. Muscle fat content is increased in obesity and more so in type 2 diabetes. Electron microscopy shows decreased mitochondrial size in muscle from individuals with type 2 diabetes.

Medical Diabetes

Diabetes is a chronic disease in which the body cannot regulate the amount of sugar in the blood. People with diabetes have high blood sugar because their body cannot move sugar from the blood into muscle and fat cells to be burned or stored for energy, and because their liver makes too much glucose and releases it into the blood. This is because either:
• Their pancreas does not make enough insulin
• Their cells do not respond to insulin normally
• Both of the above
• Type 2 diabetes may be reversed with lifestyle changes, especially losing weight with exercise and by eating healthier foods. Some cases of type 2 diabetes can also be improved with weight-loss surgery.
• There is no cure for type 1 diabetes.
• Keeping an ideal body weight and an active lifestyle may prevent or delay the start of type 2 diabetes.
• Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented.

Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome

The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of the most dangerous heart attack risk factors: diabetes and prediabetes, abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. A quarter of the world’s adults have metabolic syndrome. People with metabolic syndrome are twice as likely to die from, and three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared with people without the syndrome. People with metabolic syndrome have a five-fold greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Upto 80% of the 200 million people with diabetes globally will die of cardiovascular disease.
OMICS Group International through its Open Access Initiative is committed to make genuine and reliable contributions to the scientific community. OMICS Group hosts over 700 leading-edge peer reviewed Open Access Journals and organizes over 1000 International Conferences annually all over the world. OMICS Publishing Group journals have over 10 million readers and the fame and success of the same can be attributed to the strong editorial board which contains over 50000 eminent personalities that ensure a rapid, quality and quick review process. OMICS Group signed an agreement with more than 1000 International Societies to make healthcare information Open Access. OMICS Group Conferences make the perfect platform for global networking as it brings together renowned speakers and scientists across the globe to a most exciting and memorable scientific event filled with much enlightening interactive sessions, world class exhibitions and poster presentations.
Journal of Diabetes & Metabolism is associated with our international conference "6th Global Diabetes Summit and Medicare Expo Dubai" (Diabetes-2015) during November 02-04, 2015, 2015 Dubai, UAE with a theme “Emerging Interventions & Advancements In Treatment Of Diabetes”. The major sessions include Clinical Diabetes and Diagnostic Approaches, Diabetes Management. its complications, Treatment of Type 1 Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes Genetics of Diabetes, Transplantation for Diabetes and many other.