Secularization processes in Malawi and Great Britain: a comparative inquiry

The major purpose of the study was to critically examine the applicability of manifestations and factors of secularization in Britain to Malawi. In examining the manifestations and factors the study had to examine the process of secularization in Britain and its causal factors using theoretical frameworks and examine manifestations and causal factors of secularization in Malawi using field research work as a major source supported by the theoretical frame works of secularization. The study was guided by the key research question, “Are the manifestations and factors of secularization in Britain applicable to Malawi?” The question was supported by other follow up questions, namely, “What were the factors that contributed to the rise of secularization in Britain?” “What is the connection between Britain and Malawi?” “To what extent does secularization in Britain affect that in Malawi?” “Does Malawi have unique factors that are specific or are the same factors at work that have contributed to the process of secularization in Britain?” The conceptual framework for this research was derived from the literature on “secularization” from different scholars, in particular, the work of Dobbelaere (2002) whose analysis of secularization provided the theoretical frame work for this study. Learning from Dobbelaere (2002) the study used three types of secularizations, namely, societal, organizational and individual. Dobbelaere (2002:24ff) distinguishes the three types of secularization in a very simple way: individual secularization, the lack of individual practice, societal secularization, the loss of influence on society, and organizational secularization as the effect on religious organizations by changes in society. The methodological approach to the study was the mixed methods approach that involved three types of research methodologies: the qualitative, quantitative and case studies approaches. Data was collected through personal and focus group interviews. It was supported by secondary sources which include books, minutes of meetings in various institutions and the internet. The study notes that all the three types of secularization are being experienced in Malawi; societal secularization has been manifested by the removal of religious connected syllabus in schools, suspension of homosexuality laws and involvement of religious leaders in different immoral issues just like non-believers. Organizational secularization has been manifested by fights among religious institutions e.g. boarder disputes that have been given as case studies in chapter five and finally the individual secularization is being manifested in Malawi as membership records indicate that there is a big decline in church attendance and participation in religious activities. New knowledge that this study is proposing is that secularization is manifested in Malawi through the partial influence from Britain because of strong links between the two countries and the effects of modernization. The study further proposes that donor influences, Islam, lack of well educated religious leaders and African Traditional Religion are the unique factors of secularization in Malawi, while modernization, urbanization, industrialization are factors that are partially applicable to Malawi, and religious pluralism is fully applicable to both Britain and Malawi as a factor of secularization. Finally the study proposes that a proper training of religious leaders is vital for the sustainability of the church as it experiences the manifestations of secularization.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 201

Secularization processes in Malawi and Great Britain: a comparative inquiry

The major purpose of the study was to critically examine the applicability of manifestations and factors of secularization in Britain to Malawi. In examining the manifestations and factors the study had to examine the process of secularization in Britain and its causal factors using theoretical frameworks and examine manifestations and causal factors of secularization in Malawi using field research work as a major source supported by the theoretical frame works of secularization. The study was guided by the key research question, “Are the manifestations and factors of secularization in Britain applicable to Malawi?” The question was supported by other follow up questions, namely, “What were the factors that contributed to the rise of secularization in Britain?” “What is the connection between Britain and Malawi?” “To what extent does secularization in Britain affect that in Malawi?” “Does Malawi have unique factors that are specific or are the same factors at work that have contributed to the process of secularization in Britain?” The conceptual framework for this research was derived from the literature on “secularization” from different scholars, in particular, the work of Dobbelaere (2002) whose analysis of secularization provided the theoretical frame work for this study. Learning from Dobbelaere (2002) the study used three types of secularizations, namely, societal, organizational and individual. Dobbelaere (2002:24ff) distinguishes the three types of secularization in a very simple way: individual secularization, the lack of individual practice, societal secularization, the loss of influence on society, and organizational secularization as the effect on religious organizations by changes in society. The methodological approach to the study was the mixed methods approach that involved three types of research methodologies: the qualitative, quantitative and case studies approaches. Data was collected through personal and focus group interviews. It was supported by secondary sources which include books, minutes of meetings in various institutions and the internet. The study notes that all the three types of secularization are being experienced in Malawi; societal secularization has been manifested by the removal of religious connected syllabus in schools, suspension of homosexuality laws and involvement of religious leaders in different immoral issues just like non-believers. Organizational secularization has been manifested by fights among religious institutions e.g. boarder disputes that have been given as case studies in chapter five and finally the individual secularization is being manifested in Malawi as membership records indicate that there is a big decline in church attendance and participation in religious activities. New knowledge that this study is proposing is that secularization is manifested in Malawi through the partial influence from Britain because of strong links between the two countries and the effects of modernization. The study further proposes that donor influences, Islam, lack of well educated religious leaders and African Traditional Religion are the unique factors of secularization in Malawi, while modernization, urbanization, industrialization are factors that are partially applicable to Malawi, and religious pluralism is fully applicable to both Britain and Malawi as a factor of secularization. Finally the study proposes that a proper training of religious leaders is vital for the sustainability of the church as it experiences the manifestations of secularization.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 201

Novel method for prediction of combinatorial phase-variable gene expression states

Short sequence repeat mediated phase variation results in diverse phenotype presentation in many bacteria including Campylobacter and Neisseria species. Current methods for identifying the expression states of phase-variable genes involve taking a high number of single colonies. This approach is subject to bias, sampling effects and high workloads that reduce the ability to perform intermediary sampling. The use of high concentration colony sweeps provides a work around but reduces the resolution of combinatorial expression profiles (termed phasotypes). A parsimonious approach combining both single colony and sweep data was developed to overcome these limitations. The critical methodological advance is the use of an algorithm that utilises the experimental data from the two sample types and a parsimonious, iterative mathematical analysis that outputs the phasotype distribution with the highest likelihood of underpinning the experimental data sets. The advantages of this unified method are increased resolution and accuracy of gene expression state combinations as compared to conventional single colony sampling, reduced requirement for sampling large numbers of colonies leading to reduced costs, and a higher capacity for collecting samples and replicates. • Inputting of sweep and single colony data into an algorithm for a rapid determination of the combinatorial phase variation states (phasotypes) for repeat-mediated phase-variable bacterial genes • This method reduces the number of single colony samples required to produce accurate estimates of phasotypes • This method will reduce the costs of phasotype analyses and increase potential to analyse more time points or sample sites leading to an improved understanding of how phase variation contributes to bacterial host persistence and the ability to cause diseas

A DenseNet CNN-based liver lesion prediction and classification for future medical diagnosis

Liver disease diagnosis is a major medical challenge in developing nations. Every year around 30 billion people face liver failure issues resulting in their death. The past liver abnormality detection models have faced less accuracy and high theory of constraint metrics. The lesion on the liver hasn't been identified clearly with earlier models, so an advanced, efficient, and effective liver disease detection is essential. To overcome the limitations of existing models, this approach proposes a deep liver abnormality detection with DenseNet convolutional neural network (CNN) based deep learning technique. This work collected liver Computed Tomography (CT) scan images from Kaggle dataset for training in the initial stage. The pre-processing has been performed with region-growing segmentation, and training is performed through DenseNet CNN. The real-time test images are collected from Government General Hospital Vijayawada (10,000 samples), verified on proposed DenseNet CNN to diagnose whether the input has a liver lesion. Finally, the results obtained and derived confusion matrix summarizes the performance of the proposed methodology with following metrics of accuracy at 98.34%, sensitivity at 99.72%, recall at 97.84%, throughput at 98.43% and detection rate at 93.41%. The comparison results reveals that the proposed technique attains more accuracy and outperforms the other pioneer methodologies