An Exploratory Study of Pre-service Primary Teachers’ Understanding of Uncertainty in Measurements in Singapore

This study was set in the context of a reform agenda for Singapore’s science curriculum to adopt inquiry in teaching and learning science (MOE, 2008). Teachers, including pre-service primary teachers (PSTs) who were subjects of this study, are expected to engage their students with scientific evidence including measurements taken during science investigations. The inherent nature of measurements is that they are always affected by errors that caused uncertainty. Understanding this, as well as other procedural ideas underpinning uncertainty would be important for understanding evidence before looking at data that are subjected to uncertainties in measurements. Such understandings would be important for the PSTs when they teach their future students how to obtain valid and reliable data, and to evaluate the methods of investigation or scientific conclusions based on evidence. This study, therefore, was aimed at exploring such understandings using the Concepts of Evidence (Gott, Duggan, and Roberts, 2008) as a theoretical framework. The lack of a research instrument customised to such a need motivated this study to develop one. The study was carried out in two phases. The first involved fifty-five PSTs and directed towards getting an accurate interpretation of procedural ideas underlying uncertainty by triangulating the evidence from questionnaire and interviews and iteratively refining the “probes” as the study progressed. The second phase focused on developing a questionnaire based on findings from the first and testing it on twenty PSTs. The results revealed that most PSTs could recognise uncertainties in measurements and suggest the right actions to deal with them, but they generally had difficulties explaining their actions implying shallow understanding of concepts underpinning uncertainty, and reliance on routine knowledge. This has strong implications for teacher preparatory programmes as well as the teaching of procedural understanding

Threshold Verification Technique for Network Intrusion Detection System

Internet has played a vital role in this modern world, the possibilities and opportunities offered are limitless. Despite all the hype, Internet services are liable to intrusion attack that could tamper the confidentiality and integrity of important information. An attack started with gathering the information of the attack target, this gathering of information activity can be done as either fast or slow attack. The defensive measure network administrator can take to overcome this liability is by introducing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) in their network. IDS have the capabilities to analyze the network traffic and recognize incoming and on-going intrusion. Unfortunately the combination of both modules in real time network traffic slowed down the detection process. In real time network, early detection of fast attack can prevent any further attack and reduce the unauthorized access on the targeted machine. The suitable set of feature selection and the correct threshold value, add an extra advantage for IDS to detect anomalies in the network. Therefore this paper discusses a new technique for selecting static threshold value from a minimum standard features in detecting fast attack from the victim perspective. In order to increase the confidence of the threshold value the result is verified using Statistical Process Control (SPC). The implementation of this approach shows that the threshold selected is suitable for identifying the fast attack in real time.Comment: 8 Pages, International Journal of Computer Science and Information Securit

High speed internet development in Africa using 4G-LTE technology-a review

The African continent is ranked second most populated region and has a huge amount of natural resources to be locally transformed or outsourced overseas. The traditional telecommunications system has helped connect people and enabled them to manage their businesses and trading in Africa for a long-time; many African countries have embarked early in changing their network and technology systems during the first years of the information age. Over a few decades ago, the introduction of new telecommunication methods and techniques have influenced much of African countries’ growth via different perspectives. The situation has triggered an enormous interest in people. They analyzed the factors supporting such changes, which in the case of this paper is all about the advent and adoption of LTE/4G-LTE technologies including its service commercialization in Africa. This review article attempts to provide an overview of 4G-LTE networks technologies and the internet; it includes the current evolution of telecommunication networks within and even beyond the African continent, assisted by the 4G-LTE expansion. An extended view is provided throughout this article’s development with respect to what could be expected (or is missing) for the sake of this continent’s telecommunication infrastructure enhancement and a better QoS to Africa’s dwellers

Impaired haematopoietic stem cell differentiation and enhanced skewing towards myeloid progenitors in aged caspase-2-deficient mice

The apoptotic cysteine protease caspase-2 has been shown to suppress tumourigenesis in mice and its reduced expression correlates with poor prognosis in some human malignancies. Caspase-2-deficient mice develop normally but show ageing-related traits and, when challenged by oncogenic stimuli or certain stress, show enhanced tumour development, often accompanied by extensive aneuploidy. As stem cells are susceptible to acquiring age-related functional defects because of their self-renewal and proliferative capacity, we examined whether loss of caspase-2 promotes such defects with age. Using young and aged Casp2−/− mice, we demonstrate that deficiency of caspase-2 results in enhanced aneuploidy and DNA damage in bone marrow (BM) cells with ageing. Furthermore, we demonstrate for the first time that caspase-2 loss results in significant increase in immunophenotypically defined short-term haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and multipotent progenitors fractions in BM with a skewed differentiation towards myeloid progenitors with ageing. Caspase-2 deficiency leads to enhanced granulocyte macrophage and erythroid progenitors in aged mice. Colony-forming assays and long-term culture-initiating assay further recapitulated these results. Our results provide the first evidence of caspase-2 in regulating HSC and progenitor differentiation, as well as aneuploidy, in vivo.Swati Dawar, Nur Hezrin Shahrin, Nikolina Sladojevic, Richard J D, Andrea, Loretta Dorstyn, Devendra K Hiwase and Sharad Kuma

Advanced Trace Pattern For Computer Intrusion Discovery

The number of crime committed based on the malware intrusion is never ending as the number of malware variants is growing tremendously and the usage of internet is expanding globally. Malicious codes easily obtained and use as one of weapon to gain their objective illegally. Hence, in this research, diverse logs from different OSI layer are explored to identify the traces left on the attacker and victim logs in order to establish worm trace pattern to defending against the attack and help revealing true attacker or victim. For the purpose of this paper, it focused on malware intrusion and traditional worm namely sasser worm variants. The concept of trace pattern is created by fusing the attacker's and victim's perspective. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to propose a general worm trace pattern for attacker's, victim's and multi-step (attacker/victim)'s by combining both perspectives. These three proposed worm trace patterns can be extended into research areas in alert correlation and computer forensic investigation.Comment: IEEE Publication Format, https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing

Assessment of factors related to treatment failure and recurrence of superficial dermatophytosis

Background: Superficial dermatophytosis, commonly known as ringworm, is a fungal infection of the skin, hair, or nails caused by dermatophytes, primarily belonging to the genera Trichophyton, Microsporum, and Epidermophyton. Despite being a superficial infection, the rising incidence of treatment failure and recurrence has become a matter of concern in recent years. Methods: This prospective observational study, conducted at the department of dermatology and venereology of Chittagong Medical College Hospital, aimed to investigate the epidemiological factors associated with treatment failure and recurrent cases of superficial dermatophytosis. The study spanned from March 2022 to February 2023, involving 249 participants diagnosed with Tinea corporis, Tinea cruris, Tinea facies, or Tinea pedis. Factors such as excessive sweating, use of warm water, clothing habits, sharing practices, and topical corticosteroid application were analyzed. Results: The most common age group affected was 21-30 years, with a male preponderance (1.6:1). Excessive sweating, wearing water-soaked garments, and sharing towels were prevalent among participants. After 4 weeks of treatment, 81.5% achieved complete cure, but 52.7% of these cases experienced a recurrence within the subsequent 4 weeks. Multivariate analysis identified sharing towels, family history of dermatophytosis, and past topical steroid use as significant risk factors for treatment failure/recurrence. Conclusions: The study emphasizes the importance of linen (sharing towels) in the transmission of dermatophytosis and highlights the increased risk associated with a family history of the condition. Additionally, the injudicious use of topical steroids emerged as a significant factor contributing to treatment failure and recurrence