Assessing students in community settings: the role of peer evaluation

The assessment of students in community settings faces unique difficulties. Since students are usually posted in small groups in different community settings and since the learning (largely) takes place outside the classroom, assessing student performance becomes an intrinsically complex endeavor. In this article, the proposition is made and tested that peers may be used to accurately assess particular aspects of performance, in particular those which need extensive and close observation. Examples are: Effort displayed while working in a community, quality of the interaction with that community, display of leadership, and subject-matter contributions

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

A comprehensive Software Copy Protection and Digital Rights Management platform

This article proposes a Powerful and Flexible System for Software Copy Protection (SCP) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) standards. Software protection is achieved through a multi-phase methodology with both static and dynamic processing of the executable file. The system defeats most of the attacks and cracking techniques and makes sure that the protected software is never in a flat form, with a suitable portion of it always being encrypted during execution. A novel performance-tuning algorithm is proposed to lower the overhead of the protection process to its minimum depending on the software dynamic execution behavior. All system calls to access resources and objects such as files, and input/output devices are intercepted and encapsulated with secure rights management code to enforce the required license model. The system can be integrated with hardware authentication techniques (like dongles), and to Internet based activation and DRM servers over the cloud. The system is flexible to apply any model of licensing including state-based license such as expiration dates and number of trials. The usage of a standard markup language (XrML) to describe the license makes it easier to apply new licensing operations like re-sale and content rental

STRUCTURE STUDIES OF LOW-LYING O+ STATES IN THE DEFORMED RARE-EARTH REGION

To better understand the structure of the low lying O/sup +/ states of even-even nuclides in the deformed rare-earth region, we have carried out calculations to generate the wavefunctions, energies and pair transfer rates from/to these states within a framework of exact diagonalization of the residual pairing and n-p forces. First we carried out exact diagonalization for the neutron and proton systems separately, using as a basis space the 126 vector space of four/five pairs within nine appropriate deformed Nilsson orbitals. For the pairing force we included both monopole and quadrupole terms. Next, we used the lowest eight eigenfunctions from both the neutron and the proton systems to generate a new basis space composed of the 64 possible neutron-proton product vectors. The n-p force was approximated by a quadrupole-quadrupole force term which was then diagonalized within the new basis space. The resulting wave functions were used to calculate the neutron pair transfer strength from and to the various low O/sup +/ states below 3 MeV in the even-even Gd, Dy and Er isotopes. Furthermore, for the case where the deformation parameters do not change appreciably between the pair of nuclides involved in the pair transfer reaction, reasonable global agreement was obtained for the measured (t,p) and (p,t) pair transfer reaction strengths both to the ground and excited states O/sup +/ states accessible in these isotopes. The observed enhancement of (t,p) pair transfer strength to excited states in some of these isotopes was reproduced by the calculation. The enhancement is due to subshell gap and large relative pair transfer amplitude for an orbital near the Fermi surface. 24 refs., 7 figs

Poly (acrylonitrile-co-methyl methacrylate) nanoparticles: I. Preparation and characterization

This work concerns the preparation and characterization of poly (acrylonitrile-co-methyl methacrylate) Copolymer, P(AN-co-MMA), nano-particles using precipitation polymerization technique. Potassium per-sulfate redox initiation system was used to perform polymerization process in an alcoholic aqueous system. The impact of different polymerization conditions such as comonomer concentration and ratio, polymerization time, polymerization temperatures, initiator concentration and co-solvent composition on the polymerization yield and particle size was studied. Maximum polymerization yield, 70%, was obtained with MMA:AN (90%:10%) comonomer composition. Particle sizes ranging from 16 nm to 1483 nm were obtained and controlled by variation of polymerization conditions. The co-polymerization process was approved by FT-IR and TGA analysis. The copolymer composition was investigated by nitrogen content analysis. Copolymers with a progressive percentage of PAN show thermal stabilities close to PAN Homopolymer. SEM photographs prove spherical structure of the produced copolymers. The investigated system shows promising future in the preparation of nanoparticles from comonomers without using emulsifiers or dispersive agents