TVET in the 21st Century: A Focus on Innovative Teaching and Competency Indicators

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has played a vital role in equipping individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge for employability and socio-economic development. In the twenty-first century, it has become imperative for TVET institutions to evolve and adapt to the rapidly changing global landscape, focusing on innovative teaching and competency indicators. TVET in the twenty-first century must embrace innovative teaching approaches and focus on developing the necessary competencies to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world. By incorporating problem-based learning, blended learning, flipped classrooms, and work-integrated learning, TVET institutions can create an engaging and effective learning environment. Furthermore, by emphasizing green skills, digital literacy, entrepreneurship and innovation, and soft skills development, TVET can better prepare students for success in the global workforce. By incorporating the latest teaching practices and aligning them with industry needs, TVET institutions can ensure graduates are well-prepared to succeed in the workforce. This chapter delves into the innovative teaching approaches and the competency indicators that are shaping TVET in the twenty-first century. This chapter also offers recommendations for improving TVET programs

Mathematical Modelling to Predict the Effect of Vaccination on Delay and Rise of COVID-19 Cases Management

In this paper, a mathematical model based on COVID-19 is developed to study and manage disease outbreaks. The effect of vaccination with regard to its efficacy and percentage of population vaccinated in a closed population is investigated. To study virus transmission, the system employs six nonlinear ordinary differential equations with susceptible–exposed–asymptomatic–infected–vaccinated–recovered populations and the basic reproduction number are calculated. The proposed model describes for highly infectious diseases (such as COVID-19) in a closed containment area with no migration. This paper considers that the percentage of vaccinated population has a significant impact on the number of COVID-19 positive cases during the pandemic wave and examines how the pandemic rise time is delayed. Numerical simulation to investigate disease outbreaks when the community is undergoing vaccination is performed, taking the efficacy rate of the vaccine into account. Sensitivity Index values are calculated for the reproduction number and their relations with few other parameters are depicted

Efficient outlier detection in text corpus using rare frequency and ranking

Outlier detection in text data collections has become significant due to the need of finding anomalies in the myriad of text data sources. High feature dimensionality, together with the larger size of these document collections, presents a need for developing accurate outlier detection methods with high efficiency. Traditional outlier detection methods face several challenges including data sparseness, distance concentration, and the presence of a larger number of sub-groups when dealing with text data. In this article, we propose to address these issues by developing novel concepts such as presenting documents with the rare document frequency, finding ranking-based neighborhood for similarity computation, and identifying sub-dense local neighborhoods in high dimensions. To improve the proposed primary method based on rare document frequency, we present several novel ensemble approaches using the ranking concept to reduce the false identifications while finding the higher number of true outliers. Extensive empirical analysis shows that the proposed method and its ensemble variations improve the quality of outlier detection in document repositories as well as they are found scalable compared to the relevant benchmarking methods. </p

The International Society of Nephrology Advancing Clinical Trials (ISN-ACT) Network:current activities and future goals

The value of randomized trials as the optimal method for determining the benefits of health care interventions in clinical practice has been highlighted repeatedly during the current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Despite being considered an “academic specialty,” nephrology lags behind its internal medicine counterparts in the conduct of high-quality clinical trials. As a result, many of the treatments used in routine nephrology care (e.g., phosphate binders) remain poorly supported by evidence from randomized trials

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF SCREENING, EARLY IDENTIFICATION AND INTERVENTION PROGRAMMES FOR CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE: PROTOCOL FOR A SCOPING REVIEW

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major threat to public health, especially in low-income and lower middle-income countries, where resources for treating patients with advanced CKD are scarce. Although early CKD identification and intervention hold promise for reducing the burden of CKD and risk factors, it remains unclear if an uniform strategy can be applicable across all income groups. The aim of this scoping review is to synthesise available evidence on early CKD identification programmes in all world regions and income groups. The study will also identify efforts that have been made to use interventions and implementation of early identification programmes for CKD across countries and income groups. Methods and analysis This review will be guided by the methodological framework for conducting scoping studies developed by Arksey and O’Malley. Empirical (Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, ISI Web of Science and PsycINFO) and grey literature references will be searched to identify studies on CKD screening, early identification and interventions across all populations. Two reviewers will independently screen references in consecutive stages of title/abstract screening and then full-text screening. We will use a general descriptive overview, tabular summaries and content analysis on extracted data. Ethics and dissemination The findings from our planned scoping review will enable us to identify items in early identification programmes that can be used in developing screening toolkits for CKD. We will disseminate our findings using traditional approaches that include open access peer-reviewed publication, scientific presentations and a white paper (call to action) report. Ethical approval will not be required for this scoping review as the data will be extracted from already published studie

Capacity for the management of kidney failure in the International Society of Nephrology South Asia region: report from the 2023 ISN Global Kidney Health Atlas (ISN-GKHA).

The South Asia region is facing a high burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) with limited health resources and low expenditure on health care. In addition to the burden of CKD and kidney failure from traditional risk factors, CKD of unknown etiologies from India and Sri Lanka compounds the challenges of optimal management of CKD in the region. From the third edition of the International Society of Nephrology Global Kidney Health Atlas (ISN-GKHA), we present the status of CKD burden, infrastructure, funding, resources, and health care personnel using the World Health Organizations building blocks for health systems in the ISN South Asia region. The poor status of the public health care system and low health care expenditure resulted in high out-of-pocket expenditures for people with kidney disease, which further compounded the situation. There is insufficient country capacity across the region to provide kidney replacement therapies to cover the burden. The infrastructure was also not uniformly distributed among the countries in the region. There were no chronic hemodialysis centers in Afghanistan, and peritoneal dialysis services were only available in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Kidney transplantation was not available in Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Maldives. Conservative kidney management was reported as available in 63% (n&nbsp;= 5) of the countries, yet no country reported availability of the core CKM care components. There was a high hospitalization rate and early mortality because of inadequate kidney care. The lack of national registries and actual disease burden estimates reported in the region prevent policymakers attention to CKD as an important cause of morbidity and mortality. Data from the 2023 ISN-GKHA, although with some limitations, may be used for advocacy and improving CKD care in the region