Building Digital Resources: Creating Facilities at INSA

Today libraries are at a transition phase where twin processes of paper-based environment and changing information-seeking patterns in the electronic/digital environment go hand-in-hand. Hence, all components of the information chain are in a state of flux. The rapid growth in computer and communication technologies have greatly benefited the advanced countries, while the developing countries have not adequately reaped the benefits of such facilities to the desired extent. The application of information technology (IT) in India started on a very modest scale. During the past decade or so several Indian libraries have initiated activities to create, acquire, and provide access to electronic resources. The establishment of networks has had a great impact on libraries and information centers (LICs) in the country, and have further buttressed the IT applications in the LICs to a certain extent. The emergence of the Internet, especially the World Wide Web (www), added a new dimension to information creation and delivery, which also globally triggered digitization programs. Buying access or acquiring digital resources started taking root. The digitization of records (document management) crept in, which attracted librarians and people from other professional backgrounds into records management. This was followed by content management, (currently a popular phrase in this part of the world), also known as digitization. The digitization of documents is now becoming a major activity in libraries and archives. The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a premier scientific body engaged in the dissemination of information to the scientific community at large, publishing and promoting scientific endeavors, besides having other multifaceted human welfare-oriented activities. The growing acceptance of digital media has resulted in libraries buying and providing access to Internet resources, acquiring CD-ROM-based data-sets, and providing services for stand alone or networked CD-ROM environments, and digitizing documents. The Academy library facilitates all three. The Academy has initiated several digitization initiatives for content development and management by way of the scanning of publications, image management, and conversion from digital documents to web-enabled resources. The Academy has adopted a three-pronged approach of providing access to digital resources, and acquiring and creating digital resources, for which INSA suitably augments with IT infrastructures and takes initiatives to provide links to requisite data sets for the benefit of its users. INSA developed and provided IT facilities at a modest scale to its users at a time when only a limited few had developed such facilities in the country. The facilities developed at INSA augur well with the initiation of pilot and sponsored projects pertaining to digitization of records and making provision for creating digital resource bases, thereby contributing to the national digital repository on the one hand and providing access and visibility to national resources on the other. The article dwells upon various elements that have contributed to providing services in the changing information seeking patterns of users in the electronic environment, and the building of digital resource bases, while facilitating others to get involved in digital content creation activities. It is hoped that such endeavors shall help in the building up of a national digital knowledge resource base for the country, and INSA would in the process act as a facilitator.     

AN INTERGENERATIONAL CURRICULAR MODULE FOR TEACHING AGING APPRECIATION TO SEVENTH-GRADERS

The research reported in this paper examines the influence of a one-week curriculum module on aging appreciation of the seventh-graders. Ninety-seven students completed the introductory questionnaire, and 98 students filled out the final questionnaire. A majority of the students were 13 years of age, boys, white, and had living maternal and paternal grandparents who lived in their own homes. T-test analyses revealed that the intervention curricular module showed significant improvement with regard to age perception, number of older people known, personal attributes of older people, and involvement in activities with older people. However, scores dropped significantly for the facts on aging. Several implications for extending this work are discussed.     

Auditory Processing of Amplitude Envelope Rise Time in Adults Diagnosed With Developmental Dyslexia

Studies of basic (nonspeech) auditory processing in adults thought to have developmental dyslexia have yielded a variety of data. Yet there has been little consensus regarding the explanatory value of auditory processing in accounting for reading difficulties. Recently, however, a number of studies of basic auditory processing in children with developmental dyslexia have suggested that a reduced ability to discriminate the rate of change in amplitude envelope onsets (rise time) may be linked to phonological processing difficulties and thereby to reading difficulties. Here, we select a range of different rise-time tasks used with children, and give them to adults with developmental dyslexia, along with 2 other auditory tasks (intensity discrimination and temporal order judgment). Deficits in both rise-time perception and temporal order judgment were found to predict literacy attainment in adults with developmental dyslexia, but the data were suggestive of different causal pathways.     

Analogical Reasoning: What Develops? A Review of Research and Theory

Analogical reasoning in children has been measured in 2 ways, either using the classical a:b::c:d item analogy task found on IQ tests, or by asking children to solve target problems after learning about analogous problems and their solutions. Theories based on the 2 kinds of measure are discussed and the evidence for them is assessed. It is concluded that structural views of analogical development, which have traditionally suggested that analogical reasoning is late developing, are wrong. Knowledge-based accounts of what develops are more appealing but cannot completely explain failures on analogical tasks. An account of analogical development that allows early analogical competence but that also postulates the later development of metalogical skills may provide the best account of the data.     

Transitive Relational Mappings in Three- and Four-Year-Olds: The Analogy of Goldilocks and the Three Bears

3 experiments examined the ability of a group of 3- and 4-year-old children to make transitive relational mappings based on size. In the first experiment, the children were asked to map relative size from 1 array of objects to another when the absolute sizes of the stimuli were either identical or different, and when the spatial positions of the relationally similar stimuli in each array were also either identical or different. In the second experiment, the concrete representation of size relations between the arrays was varied by asking the children to map relative size to relative proportion. In this cross-representational mapping task, the spatial position of the relationally similar stimuli was again either identical or different. In Experiment 3, the children were asked to map relative size to a variety of different perceptual dimensions including temperature, pitch, and loudness. This more abstract mapping task required the use of mentally represented transitive relations. Each experiment presented the mapping task using the analogy of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The results are discussed in terms of theories of structure mapping and the development of logical reasoning.     

Reading,complexity and the brain

Brain imaging offers a new technology for understanding the acquisition of reading by children. It can contribute novel evidence concerning the key mechanisms supporting reading, and the brain systems that are involved. The extensive neural architecture that develops to support efficient reading testifies to the complex developmental processes that underpin the acquisition of literacy. Here, I provide a brief overview of recent studies, analysed within a cognitive framework of reading development.     

Auditory Sensory Processing and Phonological Development in High IQ and Exceptional Readers,Typically Developing Readers,and Children With Dyslexia: A Longitudinal Study

Phonological difficulties characterize children with developmental dyslexia across languages, but whether impaired auditory processing underlies these phonological difficulties is debated. Here the causal question is addressed by exploring whether individual differences in sensory processing predict the development of phonological awareness in 86 English-speaking lower- and middle-class children aged 8 years in 2005 who had dyslexia, or were age-matched typically developing children, some with exceptional reading/high IQ. The predictive relations between auditory processing and phonological development are robust for this sample even when phonological awareness at Time 1 (the autoregressor) is controlled. High reading/IQ does not much impact these relations. The data suggest that basic sensory abilities are significant longitudinal predictors of growth in phonological awareness in children.     

Identification and characterization of polyubiquitin gene from cDNA library of aspergillus fumigatus

Aspergillus fumigatus (Afu) causes allergic and invasive forms of diseases in humans. In order to identify genes relevant for pathogenesis, a total of 235 cDNA clones were randomly selected and sequenced from cDNA library of Afu. One of the partially sequenced cDNA clones was homologous to polyubiquitin. Sequencing of the complete cDNA clone showed an open reading frame of 912 bases. Comparison with genomic sequence of Afu using BlastN program, revealed that polyubiquitin gene comprises of 992 bases and contains one intron of 80 bases. The recombinant expression of fusion protein showed an approximately molecular weight of 43-kDa on SDS-PAGE. The translation product of the cDNA sequence showed four tandem repeats of 76 amino acid residues in a single polyubiquitin protein and showed 100% identity with polyubiquitin protein sequences of S. cerevisiae, N. crassa, C. albicans, S. pombe, and M. grisae. Polyubiquitin gene is known to play important role in a variety of cellular processes and recently have been implicated in fungal pathogenesis. Identification of polyubiquitin gene of Afu has opened up scope to study its role in understanding Aspergillus biology and pathogenesis.     

Detection ofAspergillus Fumigatus based on Asp fl gene in clinical specimens

Oligonucleotide primers were synthesised based on the gene sequence of an 18 kDa allergen/antigen ofA. fumigatus isolated from a pathogenic strain. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was carried out using the forward and reverse primers and genomic DNA ofA. fumigatus, A. flavus andA. niger as template. This resulted in a PCR product of 480 bp with onlyA. fumigatus. The absence of PCR product inA. flavus andA. niger with the primers of Asp fl facilitated use of these primers for detection ofA. fumigatus in clinical specimens of patients. The results were compared with microscopy, culture and serology. Application of PCR test to clinical samples of aspergillosis patients is discussed.