Examining the status of professional learning communities in private and public secondary schools in Makindye division, Kampala, Uganda

The power of collective synergy while participating in professional learning communities is a relatively recent phenomenon in educational professional development. It has received a great deal of attention on the educational scene due to its roots in the majority of developed countries. Fortunately, professional learning communities are equated to what is referred to as site-based learning for teachers in Uganda\u27s continuous professional development framework for teachers. This is a teacher-led initiative aimed at improving teacher quality and encouraging collaborative professional development. Since its introduction by the Education Ministry (MoES, 2017), the practice and implementation, as well as the rate of adoption, have been unknown and highly ambivalent. Several research studies have been conducted to examine how PLCs are implemented in schools in most developed western countries, but very few or no findings reflect their practice in East Africa, particularly in Uganda. As a result, the objective of this mixed-methods research, which centered on five Makindye secondary schools in Uganda, was to investigate the status of professional learning communities in public and private schools. The study discovered that PLC practice is extremely low, indicating that those demonstrating PLC practices are unable to put a name to what they do. Generally, this indicates that the practices are not understood, and a significant knowledge gap exists. Heavy teacher workload and negative workplace culture were the main impediments to establishing and implementing PLCs for CPD. The study\u27s findings suggest that relevant education policies and adequate funding should be considered to revitalize PLCs in Ugandan school education

A bluetooth educational content distribution system modelled on a service-oriented architecture

In this research, we design and prototype an educational content distribution system modeled on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm and implemented using Web services, XML and Bluetooth technology. In the prototype, we use an Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) Sakai implemented in Java and branded Vula for the University of Cape Town (UCT). Web services and its specification of SOAP, XML and Bluetooth technology are used to integrate the disparate technologies that form the service architecture. The disparate technologies include among others Bluetooth enabled mobile phones and PDAs, services (modules) which may be running on different operating systems, and deployed over Local Area Networks (LANs) or Internet. The service is meant to leverage the existing infrastructure to provide a new, cheap channel for education content distribution to mobile devices in learning institutions especially Universities in the developing world and Africa in particular. We design, implement and evaluate the prototype for performance and scalability. During the designing and implementation of the architecture, we incorporate SOA principles of service/module re-use, service composition, loose-coupling, standard data exchange within the system or services, and extensibility of the services among others. The aim of the service is to distribute education content uploaded in Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to Bluetooth enabled mobile devices that are increasingly held by students in developing world Universities. The service is intended to supplement existing Web-based and lecture room content distribution channels by opening up the mobile device space. For the prototype, we focus on repackaging structured text content and distributing it to Bluetooth enabled phones and PDAs using Bluetooth technology. We evaluate our prototype for performance using experimental studies

How accurate are autistic adults and those high in autistic traits at making face-to-face line-of-sight judgements?

Being able to follow the direction of another person’s line-of-sight facilitates social communication. To date, much research on the processes involved in social communication has been conducted using computer-based tasks that lack ecological validity. The current paradigm assesses how accurately participants can follow a social partner’s line-of-sight in a face-to-face scenario. In Study 1, autistic and neurotypical adults were asked to identify which location, on a grid of 36 potential locations, the experimenter was looking at on a series of discrete trials. All participants (both autistic and neurotypical) were able to effectively make line-of-sight judgements, scoring significantly above chance. Participants were also just as effective at making these judgements from either a brief, 1s, glance or from a prolonged, 5s, stare. However, at the group level, autistic participants were significantly less accurate than neurotypical participants overall. In Study 2, potential variation in performance along the broad autism phenotype was considered using the same paradigm. Bayesian analyses demonstrated that line-of-sight judgement accuracy was not related to the amount of autistic traits. Overall, these findings advance the understanding of the mechanistic processes of social communication in relation to autism and autistic traits in a face-to-face setting

Social partner gaze direction and conversational phase; factors affecting social attention during face-to-face conversations in autistic adults?

Social attention is atypical in autism. However, the majority of evidence for this claim comes from studies where the social partner is not physically present and the participants are children. Consequently, to ensure acquisition of a comprehensive overview of social attention in autism, systematic analysis of factors known to influence face-to-face social attention in neurotypicals is necessary and evidence from adulthood is required. This study assessed the influence of experimenter gaze direction (direct or averted) and conversational phase (speaking or listening) on social attention during a face-to-face conversation. Eye-tracking analyses indicated that when the experimenter looked directly at the participant, autistic adults looked at the experimenter's face less than did neurotypical adults. However, this between-group difference was significantly reduced when the experimenter's gaze was averted. Therefore, opportunities for reciprocal social gaze are missed by autistic adults when the social partner makes direct eye contact. A greater proportion of time was spent fixating the experimenter's eye region when participants were speaking compared to listening in both neurotypical and autistic adults. Overall, this study provides a rich picture of the nature of social attention in face-to-face conversations adopted by autistic adults and demonstrates individual variation in social attention styles

A study of flow characteristics in a low-pressure ejector installation

Production processes sometimes are accompanied by the release of hazardous substances, the composition and volume of which is determined by the production technology. When designing ventilation systems for paint departments, special attention is paid to safety concerns, since all paint coatings are corrosive and flammable substances. Besides, solvent vapors are explosive. For local ventilation of painting chambers, it is rational to use safe exhaust systems with an ejector, which works sturdily, regardless of the release of flammable and explosive impurities. The ejector is simple in design and can operate in a wide range of changes in the parameters of the state of airflow. The model of the ejection unit is synthesized using the universal modeling package ChemCad, which contains a highly developed database of airflow parameters, which allows for solving various applied problems. Numerical modeling was carried out using the software package - FLUENT. In work, a calculation was carried out and a low-pressure ejector was designed for a typical painting booth. The calculation results are presented in the form of graphs and tables of pressures, velocities, flow rates in characteristic sections, pressure losses in the sections of the ejector installation.The ejection coefficient was also calculated

Computational MHC-I epitope predictor identifies 95% of experimentally mapped HIV-1 clade A and D epitopes in a Ugandan cohort.

BACKGROUND: Identifying immunogens that induce HIV-1-specific immune responses is a lengthy process that can benefit from computational methods, which predict T-cell epitopes for various HLA types. METHODS: We tested the performance of the NetMHCpan4.0 computational neural network in re-identifying 93 T-cell epitopes that had been previously independently mapped using the whole proteome IFN-γ ELISPOT assays in 6 HLA class I typed Ugandan individuals infected with HIV-1 subtypes A1 and D. To provide a benchmark we compared the predictions for NetMHCpan4.0 to MHCflurry1.2.0 and NetCTL1.2. RESULTS: NetMHCpan4.0 performed best correctly predicting 88 of the 93 experimentally mapped epitopes for a set length of 9-mer and matched HLA class I alleles. Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analysis gave an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.928. Setting NetMHCpan4.0 to predict 11-14mer length did not improve the prediction (37-79 of 93 peptides) with an inverse correlation between the number of predictions and length set. Late time point peptides were significantly stronger binders than early peptides (Wilcoxon signed rank test: p = 0.0000005). MHCflurry1.2.0 similarly predicted all but 2 of the peptides that NetMHCpan4.0 predicted and NetCTL1.2 predicted only 14 of the 93 experimental peptides. CONCLUSION: NetMHCpan4.0 class I epitope predictions covered 95% of the epitope responses identified in six HIV-1 infected individuals, and would have reduced the number of experimental confirmatory tests by > 80%. Algorithmic epitope prediction in conjunction with HLA allele frequency information can cost-effectively assist immunogen design through minimizing the experimental effort

Calculating the exhaust ejection system in the ventilation of the painting chamber

Problem statement: The ventilation system plays a decisive role in the creation of the microclimate in various premises. It is known that the ejection ventilation system is well proven both for high-rise residential and office buildings, and for industrial premises. All paint coatings are corrosive and easily flammable substances. In addition, solvent vapors are explosive. It is therefore desirable to use ejection ventilation system in the design of the ventilation system of paint booths. The ejector is simple in design; it can work in a wide range of parameters of state of steam-air mixtures.Results: The calculation and design of a low-pressure ejector have been performed. An ejection ventilation system has been synthesized using the universal modeling package ChemCad that contains highly developed database to calculate thermophysical properties of various substances and their mixtures.Conclusions: The obtained results can be recommended in the layout of the ventilation gadget of paint booths both new and reconstructed. The Usage of the software allows carrying out multiple calculations, which are indispensable for the solution of optimization problems

Emergence and spread of a SARS-CoV-2 lineage A variant (A.23.1) with altered spike protein in Uganda

Here, we report SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance from March 2020 until January 2021 in Uganda, a landlocked East African country with a population of approximately 40 million people. We report 322 full SARS-CoV-2 genomes from 39,424 reported SARS-CoV-2 infections, thus representing 0.8% of the reported cases. Phylogenetic analyses of these sequences revealed the emergence of lineage A.23.1 from lineage A.23. Lineage A.23.1 represented 88% of the genomes observed in December 2020, then 100% of the genomes observed in January 2021. The A.23.1 lineage was also reported in 26 other countries. Although the precise changes in A.23.1 differ from those reported in the first three SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs), the A.23.1 spike-protein-coding region has changes similar to VOCs including a change at position 613, a change in the furin cleavage site that extends the basic amino acid motif and multiple changes in the immunogenic N-terminal domain. In addition, the A.23.1 lineage has changes in non-spike proteins including nsp6, ORF8 and ORF9 that are also altered in other VOCs. The clinical impact of the A.23.1 variant is not yet clear and it has not been designated as a VOC. However, our findings of emergence and spread of this variant indicate that careful monitoring of this variant, together with assessment of the consequences of the spike protein changes for COVID-19 vaccine performance, are advisable