In search of graduate attributes: A survey of six flagship programmes

The focus of this study is the emergence of distinctive graduate attributes in flagship programmes at Universities of Technology in South Africa. The theoretical framework chosen for this study, Legitimation Code Theory (Maton 2014), offers an explanation of the underlying knowledge principles that make different kinds of thinking, doing and being possible. This paper studies how favourable graduate attributes were achieved, identifies similarities across underpinning structures, and highlights the challenges faced by universities of technology in creating environments in which desired graduate attributes might be developed. The paper offers a means of understanding the potential for the emergence of graduate attributes across undergraduate programmes in vocational and professional higher education contexts

Postgraduate students’ experience of poverty and academic success at a university of technology in South Africa

Poverty within a developing context such as South Africa has been deepening, with the pressures of globalisation and neo-liberalism resulting in the widening gap between the rich and the poor. For students from a poor background an opportunity to study at a higher education institution is an opportunity to change their economic status at a personal and family level; however, it is difficult to achieve this goal when the very economic conditions they live in have an impact on their ability be academically successful. The study is concerned with poverty under which postgraduate students live, think and learn while studying and how this affects their academic success. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 34 postgraduate students. The main aim of the article is to contribute to an understanding of how funding of academic students by government and higher education institutions could be utilised to enable their academic success. Keywords: Academic success, poverty, universities, understanding, fundin

Tales of diversity: Genomic and morphological characteristics of forty-six <i>Arthrobacter</i> phages

<div><p>The vast bacteriophage population harbors an immense reservoir of genetic information. Almost 2000 phage genomes have been sequenced from phages infecting hosts in the phylum Actinobacteria, and analysis of these genomes reveals substantial diversity, pervasive mosaicism, and novel mechanisms for phage replication and lysogeny. Here, we describe the isolation and genomic characterization of 46 phages from environmental samples at various geographic locations in the U.S. infecting a single <i>Arthrobacter</i> sp. strain. These phages include representatives of all three virion morphologies, and Jasmine is the first sequenced podovirus of an actinobacterial host. The phages also span considerable sequence diversity, and can be grouped into 10 clusters according to their nucleotide diversity, and two singletons each with no close relatives. However, the clusters/singletons appear to be genomically well separated from each other, and relatively few genes are shared between clusters. Genome size varies from among the smallest of siphoviral phages (15,319 bp) to over 70 kbp, and G+C contents range from 45–68%, compared to 63.4% for the host genome. Although temperate phages are common among other actinobacterial hosts, these <i>Arthrobacter</i> phages are primarily lytic, and only the singleton Galaxy is likely temperate.</p></div

Genome organization of <i>Arthrobacter</i> phage Maggie, Cluster AN.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a> for details.</p

Genome organization of <i>Arthrobacter</i> phage Jawnski, Cluster AO.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a> for details.</p

Genome organization of <i>Arthrobacter</i> phage Circum, Cluster AM.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a> for details.</p

Pairwise alignment of clustered <i>Arthrobacter</i> phages.

<p>The genomes of 23 <i>Arthrobacter</i> phages are shown. Pairwise nucleotide sequence similarity is displayed by color-spectrum coloring between the genomes, with violet as most similar and red as least similar. Genes are shown as boxes above (transcribed rightwards) and below (transcribed leftwards) each genome line; boxes are colored according to the gene phamilies they are assigned [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.ref029" target="_blank">29</a>]. Maps were generated using Phamerator and its database Actinobacteriophage_692.</p

Genome organization of <i>Arthrobacter</i> phage KellEzio, Cluster AT.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a> for details.</p

Genome organization of <i>Arthrobacter</i> phage Laroye, Cluster AL.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a> for details.</p

Genome organization of <i>Arthrobacter</i> phage Gordon, Cluster AU.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180517#pone.0180517.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a> for details.</p