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Adolescent Pregnancy

Pregnancy among adolescents has become a major problem in today’s society and most of these pregnancies come as a shock to these young girls who don’t think about the consequences when they indulge in intercourse. When girls who haven’t reached adulthood and those between the age group of 13-19 become pregnant, it can be termed as teen pregnancy. The number of girls who become pregnant between the ages of 10-19 varies from country to country but either way these pregnancies are not safe or they put both the mother and child at risk. It also has long term implications on them as a person and in the society. Most of the times unwanted pregnancies happen because of coerced sex bringing in a lot of turmoil into the life of the girl.

A positive home pregnancy test after a skipped period confirms the pregnancy and if the doctor also confirms it after a check-up, then it is time for the girl and family to think how to deal with the situation; whether they should abort the child or give birth and raise the baby or give birth and give the baby for adoption. All these are agonizing and harrowing experiences for the girl and her family and to add up to these teen pregnancies carry health risks too. The best way to solve this is to tell the young girls how to protect themselves during sex and prevent these unwanted pregnancies and complications that arise from them.

The best way to avoid pregnancy is to abstain from sex till marriage. In case they decide to have sex, it’s best to be informed on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Learn to say NO to boyfriends when it comes to having any type of physical contact, have sex, or have sex without protection.  Know what will result in pregnancy and learn to use the different types of birth control and use them. It is always to visit a doctor and find out in detail because many types of contraception don’t work consistently. Be aware of the consequences and learn to indulge in safe sex and make it an enjoyable experience rather than making grave mistakes and regretting it for the rest of your lives.

Timothy Bausa

Perovskite solar cell

Perovskite solar cell in China
Introducing solar cell
Solar cell is a device that can directly converts solar energy into electrical energy. A basic structure for a solar cell can be demonstrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Schematic drawing of a silicon solar cell.
Usually, the n-type is made the emitter layer receiving sunlight. When the emitter layer absorbs enough solar energy greater than the bandgap energy, some of the electrons in the valence band will jump to the conduction band and leave a hole behind, creating an electron-hole pair. When the pair gets close to the depletion region, the hole will get swept across the junction by the electric field while the electron will be pushed away and travel to the load through the metal contact (Figure 2). This process is called collection. The two carriers will meet and recombine at the rear contact, after which the circuit has been completed.

Figure 2. Movement of charge carriers inside a solar cell
However, the electron-hole pair can only exist for a length of time equal to the minority carrier lifetime before they recombine. The distance that the pair can travel during its life time is the diffusion length. If the pair is generated somewhere not close to the depletion region (distance to interface > diffusion length), the electron and the hole will recombine and thus provide no contribution to current generation. Therefore, lowering the chances for recombination can effectively improve the efficiency.
Perovskite Solar cell
Perovskite solar cell uses Perovskite as the light absorbing material. It has ABX3 crystal structure. Because perovskite has relatively lower recombination rate and higher carrier mobility, its carrier diffusion length and carrier lifetime is thus longer, improving the solar cell efficiency. A complete perovskite solar cell should also have HTL (hole transport layer) and ETL (electron transport layer) to facilitate the movement of carriers.
Perovskite, as a synthetic material, has made a big splash since 2009 when it was first tried to be used in photovoltaic power generation because of its excellent performance, low cost and great commercial value. In recent years, the world’s top research institutions and large multinational companies, such as Oxford University, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Japan’s Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, etc., have invested a lot of manpower and resources to strive for early mass production.
In February 2017, Fibrina Optronics broke the world efficiency record of calcium-titanium ore panel with a conversion efficiency of 15.2% for the first time, which was previously held by Japan for a long time. After that, in May and December of that year, they broke the world record three times a year with 16% and 17.4% conversion efficiency respectively. This time, they increased the conversion efficiency of the perovskite module to 17.9%, with a steady-state output efficiency of 17.3%. The results once again demonstrate the technological leadership of Chinese scientists in the field of chalcogenide.

Rongke Xu

Attitudes toward the emission trading system

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed rapid and vigorous industrial advances, and as a result, emissions of various pollutants, particularly carbon dioxide, have increased sharply and threaten the environment at the global level in a phenomenon widely referred to as global warming. To mitigate global warming, international agencies have considered the concept of the “carbon trading system” or the “emission trading system” (ETS) and attempted to apply it to various countries. Many E.U. countries currently participate, and a few countries in Asia have been willing to consider the idea. However, powerful countries such as the U.S. and China have not fully embracing this scheme. This study examines the differences between the U.S., a developed country, and Korea, a developing country, in their attitudes toward the most important aspect of the ETS as well as their choice. The results based on a sample of 60 students (30 Korean students and 30 U.S. students) indicate that the respondents generally perceived a need for the ETS. Korean students were more likely to perceive a need for the ETS. The respondents generally had favorable attitudes toward the ETS, and Korean students were more likely to have favorable attitudes toward the ETS. The respondents generally emphasized low economic pressure as the most important factor influencing ETS success. These results have important implications for international agencies and policymakers wishing to identify practical methods for mitigating the issue of global warming.

B.Yoo

TRUE UNDERSTANDING

“OPTIMISM” what is that? I heard that word first time two days ago. Until I found the word in Oxford English Dictionary. Only I know that. “An optimist finds opportunity in every problem”.

Oh? That’s nice. I evaluate myself as a pessimist who finds problems in every opportunity. I don’t know what is right and what is wrong. I know one thing.Whatever I do .That is wrong. Absolutely wrong. Everyday I ask myself. “Am I get- ting any closer to my goal in my life”?

My answer is always NO . NO ?????. So I realized that I have just wasted a day of my life. One day I came to my classroom. The thought written on the right side of the Green Board struck my heart.

“Great things can be done by great sacrifices only”. It remained on the board for three or four days. But no one took any notice of it.

I asked to myself ,What can I sacrifice for a good thing. How to translate pos- itive thinking into attitude, ambition, and action. I sacrifice a thing which is more and more valuable for my life for the sake of some- thing else. Now I am happy.“Thank God”.

“Happiness is like a butterfly. If we run after it ,it keeps fly- ing away. If we stand still, it comes and sits on our shoulder. Now I forget the mis- takes of the past and press on to greater achievements in the future. But there are other people who cannot enjoy health, because they think they may be sick tomorrow, and stop sleeping in bed when they hear that , more people died in bed than anywhere else. Hoooooooooooo. Now I conclude with the words of Edwin-c-Bliss.

“Success does not mean the absence of failures ; It means the attain- ment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle”.

 

Student: AKHIL K P

The effect of font type on a school’s ink cost

Summary
Ink costs are a large, recurring expense for school districts worldwide. Moreover, ink production, usage, and disposal have a detrimental effect on the environment. Decreasing the amount of ink used can therefore have a positive impact on a school district’s budget and on the environment. This study identifies fonts that use ink most efficiently and estimates the amount of money a single school and a school district can save on ink by choosing efficient fonts for student handouts. From a carefully selected sample of handouts used by the school’s teachers, the frequency distribution of character usage was determined. Based on these data, a document modeling an “average” school handout in terms of character frequency was created. This document was replicated with different fonts reflecting the current preferences of the teachers in the school. APVSoft APFill® Ink Coverage Software was used to estimate the ink usage for each of these font types (i.e., the percentage of a printed page that contained ink). A novel experiment was performed to verify these findings by cutting out enlarged shapes of the most frequently used letters in the most preferred fonts; the masses of these cutouts were then determined in order to estimate the relative difference in ink usage for different fonts. Based on the analysis, it was concluded that a switch to Garamond, the most efficient font, would reduce ink consumption by 24%, thereby decreasing environmental damage and saving the school district approximately $21,000 per year.

 

Suvir Mirchandani and Peter Pinko

Click here for PDF file: March2014(3)