Postage stamps and digital philately: Worldwide and Indian scenario

‘Postage stamps’, basically as a token for payment of postal taxes, are now being recognized as an information source and historical document in recording national achievements that visually convey four core elements: denomination, country name, graphical design, and the textual element. They are a valuable means of communication easily available anywhere to anybody. Realizing them as source of extra revenue, commemorative stamps are made available over time. The information technology (IT) wave changed the hobby of stamp collection to Digital Philately, while information and communication technology (ICT) developments accelerated the hobby further to Virtual Philately.This paper focuses on the aspects of digital and virtual philately. This study aims to evaluate The World Association for the Development of Philately (WADP) Numbering System (WNS) database, which provides free access to authentic postage stamps issued by Universal Postal Union (UPU) member countries and territories. A total of 48,159 stamps with 48 themes were found registered by 184 countries at the time of study. Indian stamps totaled 554 entries with the highest number of entries, 1258, from France, and followed by 1006 from Japan. A ranking was done using themes whereas “Fauna” was observed to be the most popular theme at 14.1% or 6800 stamps under study. For Indian stamps, politics and government, architecture and literature, press and comics are the most prevalent themes with 14.3, 9.8 and 9.8% respectively of the national contribution. The paper also presents a detailed analysis of the 15 Indian stamps commemorating the 14 Indian traditional universities issued over the 50 years of India’s independence.     

Varieties of innovation and business survival: Does pursuit of incremental or far-ranging innovation make manufacturing establishments more resilient?

The transition from an industrial economy to an innovation economy poses two critical questions for the manufacturing sector in advanced countries. First, given the diffusion of modern manufacturing practices around the world, what level of innovation (incremental, more far-ranging, or radical) is most likely to support a resilient domestic manufacturing sector? Second, are assumed differences in the innovative capacity across space likely to hasten the decline of rural manufacturing? To answer these questions this research combines comprehensive measures of self-reported innovation able to reliably differentiate incremental and more far-ranging innovation with establishment-level data able to examine the geographical distribution of these different innovation strategies. The data used for the analysis includes a two-period panel of manufacturing establishments surveyed in 1996 and 2013 with annual employment data indicating survival in the intervening years. Our findings suggest that long-surviving manufacturing plants overwhelmingly gravitate away from non-innovation strategies toward incremental or more far-ranging innovation orientations. A survival advantage of far-ranging innovation over incremental innovation is observed for standalone firms. We do not identify a difference in the innovation orientations of rural and urban manufacturing establishments.     

Investigating educational change: The Aga Khan University Institute for educational development teacher education for school improvement model

This article continues the analyses of the impact of an innovative teacher education programme aimed at school improvement in a developing country context (A. Khamis, P. Sammons, 2004. The development of a cadre of teacher educators: some lessons from Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Development, 24(3), 255–268). Building on recent publications that have analysed outcomes of the teacher education programme and how the cadre of teacher educators has worked to initiate improvement in schools in Pakistan. The article considers the ‘teacher education for school improvement model’ based on findings from the case studies of nine co-operating school. Lessons are presented to further inform the development of teacher education programmes and the measurement of effectiveness of such programmes in developing country contexts. The article further considers relevant international research on educational change and reform to draw further lessons. These lessons include the need to pay greater attention to the cultural contexts and milieu in Pakistan, and the need to create models of school improvement and teacher education that originate within developing country contexts rather than the adaptation of European/North American models that are based on sources of data in those contexts. The article concludes by arguing for the need to develop better theoretical understandings from the current innovations underway and placing the onus on intervening agencies to better inform educational change strategies promoted in developing country contexts.     

Nikola Tesla — The creator of the electric age

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors of all times. He can be placed along with Faraday and Edison as a prolific inventor who touched on almost every aspect of electricity. In fact he invented electricity as we know it today and hence ushered in the modern age. Anil K Rajvanshi is a mechanical engineer by profession. He was educated in IIT Kanpur and did his PhD from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1979. He has more than 25 years of experience in rural development and runs a rural NGO called Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute in Maharashtra. Besides his technological work he also has interests in issues of technology and spirituality and writes extensively on this subject.     

Modeling unidimensional categorization in monkeys

The categorization performance of monkeys on a unidimensional perceptual categorization task was examined with reference to decision bound and exemplar theories of categorization. Three rhesus monkeys were presented with stimuli varying along a single dimension, the displacement of a target light from a fixation point. Left or right saccade responses were probabilistically reinforced according to one of three functions, two of which were nonmonotonic at one end of the stimulus space. The monkeys all showed a monotonic increase in response probability as a function of target light displacement in this region, consistent with decision bound theory. Fits of a single-boundary model (GRT; Ashby & Gott, 1988) and two exemplar models—one using a probabilistic response function (GCM; Nosofsky, 1986), the other using a deterministic response function (DEM; Ashby & Maddox, 1993)—revealed overall support for the decision bound model. The results suggest that monkeys used a perceptual decision boundary to perform the task.     

Numeracy for everyone

Most techniques in statistics are used in many disciplines besides ecology and have a wide range of applications from anthropology to zoology. They are used in industry, agriculture, social sciences and business. That is why we have called this series ’Numeracy for Everyone’. In the forthcoming parts, we will discuss applications of statistics in some of these fields. But some techniques are developed specially for ecological problems. Let us briefly look at a selection of those techniques.     

Sickle Cell Trait Presenting as Chronic Calcific Pancreatitis with Pseudocyst- A Case Report

Sickle cell disease is known to cause acute pancreatitis either due to gall stones obstructing the pancreatic duct or by vaso-occlusive mechanism. However chronic pancreatitis is a very rare complication in sickle cell anemia. We report a case of sickle cell trait presenting with chronic pancreatitis with pseudo cyst. USG abdomen and CT abdomen confirmed the diagnosis of chronic calcific pancreatitis with pseudocyst. Etiological work up for other causes did not reveal anything except sickle cell trait. This case represents a rare association between chronic calcific pancreatitis and sickle cell trait.