Establishment of sorghum cell suspension culture system for proteomics studies

This study describes the establishment of sorghum cell suspension culture system for use in proteomics studies. Friable sorghum callus was initiated from young shoots under completely dark conditions on MS medium supplemented with 3 mg/L 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2, 4-D) and 2.5 mg/L 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA). Additionally, sorghum cell suspension cultures have been initiated from the friable callus masses in liquid medium with the same composition as the callusinitiation medium. Total soluble proteins (TSP) and culture filtrate (CF) proteins were extracted from the cell culture system and solubilised in urea buffer (9 M urea, 2 M thiourea and 4% CHAPS). Both onedimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) gel analysis of these two proteomes show that the TSP and CF proteomes have different protein expression profiles. The sorghum TSP proteome, which is highlycomplex, is best resolved when separated on large format, 18 cm, pH 4 - 7 isoelectric focusing (IEF) immobilised pH gradient (IPG) strips. On the other hand, the sorghum CF proteome (secretome) is lesscomplex with most proteins being resolved on mini format, 7 cm, pH 3 - 10 IPG strips. Furthermore, narrowing down the pH range from 3 - 10 to 4 - 7 for the CF proteome resulted in improved protein spotresolution

Bye-bye Barack: dislocating afropolitanism, spectral marxism and dialectical disillusionment in two Obama-era novels

In contextually specific and formally distinctive ways, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers are fictional interrogations of Obama’s presidential pledge to resuscitate the American dream on the wake of the global financial crash. This paper explores how they supplement and challenge familiar tropes associated with African and American, rather than African-American, diaspora writing. Given broader debates within transnational literary studies about flows and exchanges (of people, finance, cultural production, dissemination, consumption et al.) linking the global South and North, I consider how these texts grapple with the complexities and complicities of contemporary neoliberalism through the lens of renascent African Marxisms. While my chosen writers could not be described as Marxist, I engage with more materially oriented scholarship, such as Krishnan’s Writing Spatiality in West Africa and Ngugi’s The Rise of the African Novel, to consider how Americanah and Behold the Dreamers circulate in a global literary marketplace where certain texts, not to mention authors, are seen as symptomatic of an African and/or Afropolitan and/or ‘Africapitalist’ renaissance. By grappling with Marxist-inflected scholarship, this paper interrogates the politics, as well as poetics, of the oft-conspicuous airbrushing of those socio-economic, specifically class concerns at the heart of these entangled debates

Independent and combined effects of improved water, sanitation, and hygiene, and improved complementary feeding, on child stunting and anaemia in rural Zimbabwe: a cluster-randomised trial.

BACKGROUND: Child stunting reduces survival and impairs neurodevelopment. We tested the independent and combined effects of improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), and improved infant and young child feeding (IYCF) on stunting and anaemia in in Zimbabwe. METHODS: We did a cluster-randomised, community-based, 2 × 2 factorial trial in two rural districts in Zimbabwe. Clusters were defined as the catchment area of between one and four village health workers employed by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Care. Women were eligible for inclusion if they permanently lived in clusters and were confirmed pregnant. Clusters were randomly assigned (1:1:1:1) to standard of care (52 clusters), IYCF (20 g of a small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplement per day from age 6 to 18 months plus complementary feeding counselling; 53 clusters), WASH (construction of a ventilated improved pit latrine, provision of two handwashing stations, liquid soap, chlorine, and play space plus hygiene counselling; 53 clusters), or IYCF plus WASH (53 clusters). A constrained randomisation technique was used to achieve balance across the groups for 14 variables related to geography, demography, water access, and community-level sanitation coverage. Masking of participants and fieldworkers was not possible. The primary outcomes were infant length-for-age Z score and haemoglobin concentrations at 18 months of age among children born to mothers who were HIV negative during pregnancy. These outcomes were analysed in the intention-to-treat population. We estimated the effects of the interventions by comparing the two IYCF groups with the two non-IYCF groups and the two WASH groups with the two non-WASH groups, except for outcomes that had an important statistical interaction between the interventions. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01824940. FINDINGS: Between Nov 22, 2012, and March 27, 2015, 5280 pregnant women were enrolled from 211 clusters. 3686 children born to HIV-negative mothers were assessed at age 18 months (884 in the standard of care group from 52 clusters, 893 in the IYCF group from 53 clusters, 918 in the WASH group from 53 clusters, and 991 in the IYCF plus WASH group from 51 clusters). In the IYCF intervention groups, the mean length-for-age Z score was 0·16 (95% CI 0·08-0·23) higher and the mean haemoglobin concentration was 2·03 g/L (1·28-2·79) higher than those in the non-IYCF intervention groups. The IYCF intervention reduced the number of stunted children from 620 (35%) of 1792 to 514 (27%) of 1879, and the number of children with anaemia from 245 (13·9%) of 1759 to 193 (10·5%) of 1845. The WASH intervention had no effect on either primary outcome. Neither intervention reduced the prevalence of diarrhoea at 12 or 18 months. No trial-related serious adverse events, and only three trial-related adverse events, were reported. INTERPRETATION: Household-level elementary WASH interventions implemented in rural areas in low-income countries are unlikely to reduce stunting or anaemia and might not reduce diarrhoea. Implementation of these WASH interventions in combination with IYCF interventions is unlikely to reduce stunting or anaemia more than implementation of IYCF alone. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UK Department for International Development, Wellcome Trust, Swiss Development Cooperation, UNICEF, and US National Institutes of Health.The SHINE trial is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1021542 and OPP113707); UK Department for International Development; Wellcome Trust, UK (093768/Z/10/Z, 108065/Z/15/Z and 203905/Z/16/Z); Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; US National Institutes of Health (2R01HD060338-06); and UNICEF (PCA-2017-0002)

Implementing Online Marking at Tertiary Level: Lecturers’ Reactions

The advent of information and communication technology brings with it new ways of performing lecturer roles in higher educational institutions. At Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU), among the new ways lecturers have to perform their assessment roles, has been the use of e-marking. In its 2017 Strategic Plan, ZOU proposed that all students studying master’s degree programmes were to submit all coursework online starting from the first semester in 2017. E-marking was introduced for the marking of all assignments in the teacher development department in the second semester of 2017. Lecturers were apprehensive of the large-scale innovation and feared it would not be successful for there were some challenges the lecturers envisaged. A case study was conducted to investigate challenges faced by ZOU lecturers in the teacher development department at the Midlands regional campus at the time e-marking of assignments was initially introduced. Employing convenience sampling, sixteen lecturers who took part in the initial e-marking of assignments during the second semester of 2017 were selected, interviewed and requested to complete an open-ended questionnaire sent to each one of them via e-mail. Data were analysed thematically. The study established that e-marking of assignments was painstakingly slow and posed a health hazard to markers’ eyes. These challenges caused lecturers to fail  to meet assignment marking deadlines. Lecturers failed to deal with cases of plagiarism, and lecturers experienced rising workloads due to the introduction of e-marking assignments. The study recommends thorough and comprehensive empowering of lecturers at the face of any innovation and ZOU to provide tutorials to students on assignment submission to ease the work of lecturers in e-marking. Further studies can be carried out in other regional campuses at ZOU

Barriers to the Use of ICT by Students on Teaching Practice: Student Teacher and Lecturer Input

In this digital world, information and communication technology (ICT) makes it critical and mandatory for teachers to use ICT in didactic situations. Mounting pressure from pupils who are advanced in the use of ICT, influence of local education and general perceived usefulness of ICT to pupils and teachers, make it binding for teachers to make use of ICT. In spite of these developments, it seems there is very minimal use of ICT by Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) students during their teaching practice (TP). A case study involving student teachers and ZOU lecturers at ZOU Midlands Campus was conducted to determine causes of the minimal use of ICT in student teachers’ teaching and to obtain participant views on how the perceived limited use of ICT by student teachers could be attended to. Data were generated via open-ended questionnaire, interviews and analysis of students’ teaching documents. The findings of the study indicated that although students were aware of some benefits of ICT use in teaching and learning, most students did not utilise ICT due to a number of prohibitive determinants, among which were absence of connectivity, absence of practicals in the coverage of the educational media and technology (EMT) module and peer and microteaching, resulting in students not having ICT skills. Furthermore, the practice in some schools restricted use of school computers to some individual teachers only and there is inadequate ICT equipment and lack of ICT culture in some schools in rural areas. The study recommended revised school policies on the use of ICT, incorporation of ICT in teacher development courses and monitoring and support of government or ministerial policies on using ICT in schools

Lecturer Induction Programmes: A Case Study of Midlands State University and Zimbabwe Open University in the City of Gweru, Zimbabwe

Staff induction is designed to give newly appointed employees the support they need in any organisation. If properly designed and provided, induction activities can be instrumental in ensuring that new staff become productive in the shortest possible time. In their new organisation, new staff should be familiarised with the environment and processes, introduced to key persons, and trained in the use and application of new IT systems. Despite the many ways in which staff induction is critical to efficiency in institutions, it was necessary to find out whether universities also provide apposite inductions for new staff. A case study was conducted to investigate the views of newly appointed lecturers on the adequacy of their induction at Midlands State University (MSU) and Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) in the city of Gweru in Zimbabwe. Twenty-two lecturers were conveniently and purposively sampled to participate in this study. The findings of the study indicated that some critical components such as familiarisation with the work environment and formalised knowledge transfer needed by the lecturers to conduct their work were done at the two universities under study. Nonetheless, the induction disregarded the work load and the majority of participants did not get training in new IT systems. The study recommends that university staff inductions, inter alia, should be load related, done timeously, and incorporate all critical components

Biological Nitrogen Removal Database: A Manually Curated Data Resource

Biological nitrogen removal (BNR) technologies are the most effective approaches for the remediation of environmental nitrogen pollutants from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Presently, research is going on to elucidate the structure and function of BNR microbial communities and optimizing BNR treatment systems to enhance nitrogen removal efficiency. The literature on BNR microbial communities and experimental datasets is not unified across various repositories, while a uniform resource for the collection, annotation, and structuring of these BNR datasets is still unavailable. Herein, we present the Biological Nitrogen Removal Database (BNRdb), an integrated resource containing various manually curated BNR-related data. At present, BNRdb contains 23,308 microbial strains, 46 gene families, 24 enzymes, 18 reactions, 301 BNR treatment datasets, 860 BNR-associated next-generation sequencing datasets, and 6 common BNR bioreactor systems. BNRdb provides a user-friendly interface enabling interactive data browsing. To our knowledge, BNRdb is the first BNR data resource that systematically integrates BNR data from archaeal, bacterial, and fungal communities. We believe that BNRdb will contribute to a better understanding of BNR process and nitrogen bioremediation research

Sistesis Material Karbon Nanodots dari Buah Sirsak dengan Logam Besi dan Kajian Spektrum Serapannya

Dalam penelitian ini, kami mendemonstrasikan proses fabrikasi, sintesis dan analisis spektrum serapan material karbon nanodots (K-dots) dari buah sirsak asal Kabupaten Kupag, Propinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur. Proses fabrikasi material K-dots ini menggunakan metode microwave. Jus sirsak (0,5 gram, 5 mL aquades) dipanskan dengan microwave selama satu jam pada daya 900 watt. Warna sampel setelah pemanasan pada kondisi ini adalah hitam kecoklatan yang mengindikasikan telah terbentuknya material K-dots. Selanjutnya 60 mL aquades ditambahkan ke dalam sampel ini dan disonikasi selama 30 menit dan disentrifugasi pada 1500 rpm selama 20 menit. Sampel ini disaring dan dimurnikan dengan aquades. Dengan iradiasi lampu UV 365 nm, material K-dots ini memancarkan warna biru keabuan yang menunjukkan bahwa material K-dots berfluoresens biru keabuan. Berdasarkan spektrum serapannya, jangkauan spektrum serapan material K-dots ini adalah 200 – 450 nm dengan puncak serapan terjadi pada 241-300 nm yang merupakan karakteristik material K-dots.  Setelah disintesis dengan logam besi, jangkauan spektrum serapannya adalah 200 sampai 450 nm tetapi intensitas serapannya menurun yang menunjukkan adanya ikatan antara material K-dots dengan ion logam besi. Hasil ini mengindikasikan bahwa  material K-dots ini berpotensi untuk diaplikasikan sebagai material sensing ion logam besi.  Dengan demikian, hasil-hasil penelitian ini dapat membuka peluang yang besar tentang pemanfaatan material K-dots sebagai sensor logam Fe dan ion-ion logam lainnya