Culturally Responsive Teaching: Connecting Mathematics to Art (pp. 7--17)

The author presents an activity designed to help preservice mathematics teachers begin to understand how they can make their lessons more culturally responsive by connecting content to everyday contexts while incorporating students’ interests and culture in their teaching

Advocacy Corner: From Gatekeeper to Gateway---The Role of Quantitative Reasoning

We present Quantitative Reasoning (QR) as a pathway to smooth students’ mathematical transition from high school to higher education. We explain what QR is, why it is important, and for whom it is most appropriate. A current leader in the QR movement, Ohio has flourishing secondary and postsecondary QR courses, which we describe

Photosynthesis and photoassimilate partitioning in determinate and indeterminate Vicia faba L

Imperial Users onl

Enhancing emergency services access through a mobile based directory

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the award of the Degree of Master of Science in Mobile Telecommunication and Innovation at Strathmore UniversityAn emergency is any situation that poses an immediate risk to property, life, environment or health. The emergency situations demand urgent intervention to avoid more damage. Worse still, it is usually difficult to predict the occurrence of a given emergency and therefore impacting negatively on response. In most cases, the victims or the people around a given victim lack a reliable and professional contact during emergency periods and might end up increasing the magnitude of the damage. With the advent of mobile technology in Kenya, the previously used printed directories are less popular. It should be noted that emergency contacts in the directories are at times location dependent and do not operate in the victim’s current location hence delaying any response. In addition, some of the currently available contact-directories are web based and in the event of an emergency, the panic stricken victims may lack the emotional strength and composure to conduct the web searches for a given emergency facility. Based on the aforementioned challenges, this dissertation presents a geo-location based mobile emergency directory that allows the user to get the nearby emergency centres from any location. The system leverages on the phone’s geo-locating features, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) to identify the user’s location. This is then used to search from a database of available emergency centres for the centre(s) that are closest to the user and responds with the centres’ contact information, which can then be used to reach them. Professional response from the emergency centres can then be enhanced. The development of the solution followed the Waterfall Software Development Methodology. The developed solution comprises of two main components: a mobile application which serves as the client side and a backend. The proposed solution has been tested and recorded positive feedback in terms of accuracy, performance and reliability

Assessment in online and blended learning environments /

Comprend des références bibliograhiques

Characterization of a composite with enhanced attraction to savannah tsetse flies from constituents or analogues of tsetse refractory waterbuck (Kobus defassa) body odor.

Savannah tsetse flies avoid flying toward tsetse fly-refractory waterbuck (Kobus defassa) mediated by a repellent blend of volatile compounds in their body odor comprised of δ-octalactone, geranyl acetone, phenols (guaiacol and carvacrol), and homologues of carboxylic acids (C5-C10) and 2-alkanones (C8-C13). However, although the blends of carboxylic acids and that of 2-alkanones contributed incrementally to the repellency of the waterbuck odor to savannah tsetse flies, some waterbuck constituents (particularly, nonanoic acid and 2-nonanone) showed significant attractive properties. In another study, increasing the ring size of δ-octalactone from six to seven membered ring changed the activity of the resulting molecule (ε-nonalactone) on the savannah tsetse flies from repellency to attraction. In the present study, we first compared the effect of blending ε-nonalactone, nonanoic acid and 2-nonanone in 1:1 binary and 1:1:1 ternary combination on responses of Glossina pallidipes and Glossina morsitans morsitans tsetse flies in a two-choice wind tunnel. The compounds showed clear synergistic effects in the blends, with the ternary blend demonstrating higher attraction than the binary blends and individual compounds. Our follow up laboratory comparisons of tsetse fly responses to ternary combinations with different relative proportions of the three components showed that the blend in 1:3:2 proportion was most attractive relative to fermented cow urine (FCU) to both tsetse species. In our field experiments at Shimba Hills game reserve in Kenya, where G. pallidipes are dominant, the pattern of tsetse catches we obtained with different proportions of the three compounds were similar to those we observed in the laboratory. Interestingly, the three-component blend in 1:3:2 proportion when released at optimized rate of 13.71mg/h was 235% more attractive to G. pallidipes than a combination of POCA (3-n-Propylphenol, 1-Octen-3-ol, 4-Cresol, and Acetone) and fermented cattle urine (FCU). This constitutes a novel finding with potential for downstream deployment in bait technologies for more effective control of G. pallidipes, G. m. morsitans, and perhaps other savannah tsetse fly species, in 'pull' and 'pull-push' tactics

Promoting data harmonization to evaluate vaccine hesitancy in LMICs: approach and applications

Abstract Background Factors influencing the health of populations are subjects of interdisciplinary study. However, datasets relevant to public health often lack interdisciplinary breath. It is difficult to combine data on health outcomes with datasets on potentially important contextual factors, like political violence or development, due to incompatible levels of geographic support; differing data formats and structures; differences in sampling procedures and wording; and the stability of temporal trends. We present a computational package to combine spatially misaligned datasets, and provide an illustrative analysis of multi-dimensional factors in health outcomes. Methods We rely on a new software toolkit, Sub-National Geospatial Data Archive (SUNGEO), to combine data across disciplinary domains and demonstrate a use case on vaccine hesitancy in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). We use data from the World Bank’s High Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) from Kenya, Indonesia, and Malawi. We curate and combine these surveys with data on political violence, elections, economic development, and other contextual factors, using SUNGEO. We then develop a stochastic model to analyze the integrated data and evaluate 1) the stability of vaccination preferences in all three countries over time, and 2) the association between local contextual factors and vaccination preferences. Results In all three countries, vaccine-acceptance is more persistent than vaccine-hesitancy from round to round: the long-run probability of staying vaccine-acceptant (hesitant) was 0.96 (0.65) in Indonesia, 0.89 (0.21) in Kenya, and 0.76 (0.40) in Malawi. However, vaccine acceptance was significantly less durable in areas exposed to political violence, with percentage point differences (ppd) in vaccine acceptance of -10 (Indonesia), -5 (Kenya), and -64 (Malawi). In Indonesia and Kenya, although not Malawi, vaccine acceptance was also significantly less durable in locations without competitive elections (-19 and -6 ppd, respectively) and in locations with more limited transportation infrastructure (-11 and -8 ppd). Conclusion With SUNGEO, researchers can combine spatially misaligned and incompatible datasets. As an illustrative example, we find that vaccination hesitancy is correlated with political violence, electoral uncompetitiveness and limited access to public goods, consistent with past results that vaccination hesitancy is associated with government distrust

Additional file 1 of Promoting data harmonization to evaluate vaccine hesitancy in LMICs: approach and applications

Additional file 1