The African President Center President-in-Residence inaugural lecture by His Excellency Rupiah B. Banda

This is the archive of a speech given by President Banda of Zambia, APC's 8th President in Residence, on April 2, 2012

Resource value, productivity and ecosystem integrity: an intertemporal water resource management tool in a river basin

River basinsWater allocationWater resource managementModelsFarmersPastoralism

A knowledge-based expert system for scheduling of airborne astronomical observations

The Kuiper Airborne Observatory Scheduler (KAOS) is a knowledge-based expert system developed at NASA Ames Research Center to assist in route planning of a C-141 flying astronomical observatory. This program determines a sequence of flight legs that enables sequential observations of a set of heavenly bodies derived from a list of desirable objects. The possible flight legs are constrained by problems of observability, avoiding flyovers of warning and restricted military zones, and running out of fuel. A significant contribution of the KAOS program is that it couples computational capability with a reasoning system

Controlled Delivery of Sdf-1 Alpha and Igf-1: Cxcr4(+) Cell Recruitment and Functional Skeletal Muscle Recovery

Therapeutic delivery of regeneration-promoting biological factors directly to the site of injury has demonstrated its efficacy in various injury models. Several reports describe improved tissue regeneration following local injection of tissue specific growth factors, cytokines and chemokines. Evidence exists that combined cytokine/growth factor treatment is superior for optimizing tissue repair by targeting different aspects of the regeneration response. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic potential of the controlled delivery of stromal cell-derived factor-1alpha (SDF-1 alpha) alone or in combination with insulin-like growth factor-I (SDF-1 alpha/IGF-I) for the treatment of tourniquet-induced ischemia/reperfusion injury (TK-I/R) of skeletal muscle. We hypothesized that SDF-1 alpha will promote sustained stem cell recruitment to the site of muscle injury, while IGF-I will induce progenitor cell differentiation to effectively restore muscle contractile function after TK-I/R injury while concurrently reducing apoptosis. Utilizing a novel poly-ethylene glycol PEGylated fibrin gel matrix (PEG-Fib), we incorporated SDF-1 alpha alone (PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha) or in combination with IGF-I (PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha/IGF-I) for controlled release at the site of acute muscle injury. Despite enhanced cell recruitment and revascularization of the regenerating muscle after SDF-1 alpha treatment, functional analysis showed no benefit from PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha therapy, while dual delivery of PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha/IGF-I resulted in IGF-I-mediated improvement of maximal force recovery and SDF-1 alpha-driven in vivo neovasculogenesis. Histological data supported functional data, as well as highlighted the important differences in the regeneration process among treatment groups. This study provides evidence that while revascularization may be necessary for maximizing muscle force recovery, without modulation of other effects of inflammation it is insufficient.Kinesiology and Health Educatio

Implementing Groundness Analysis with Definite Boolean Functions

The domain of definite Boolean functions, Def, can be used to express the groundness of, and trace grounding dependencies between, program variables in (constraint) logic programs. In this paper, previously unexploited computational properties of Def are utilised to develop an efficient and succinct groundness analyser that can be coded in Prolog. In particular, entailment checking is used to prevent unnecessary least upper bound calculations. It is also demonstrated that join can be defined in terms of other operations, thereby eliminating code and removing the need for preprocessing formulae to a normal form. This saves space and time. Furthermore, the join can be adapted to straightforwardly implement the downward closure operator that arises in set sharing analyses. Experimental results indicate that the new Def implementation gives favourable results in comparison with BDD-based groundness analyses

Prevalence of Dermatophytes and other Associated Fungi among School Children

The study investigated the prevalence of dermatophytosis and associated non-dermatophytes among Islamiyya school children of ages 5 – 13 years old in Kano metropolis. A total of 100 samples were collected and 91 (91%) yielded positive to fungal growth from which 66 (72.5%) were identified from males and 25 (27.5%) from females school children respectively. Dermatophytes amounting to 53 (58.2%) in frequency were recorded out of which 39 (73.6%) were isolated from males and 14 (26.4%) on females. Non-dermatophytes were also more in males (27 isolates) than females which had 11. The etiological agents of dermatophycoses recorded in this study in descending order of prevalence are M. ferrugineum (15.4%), M. canis (15.4%), M. audounii (9.9%), T. concentricum (5.5%), T. verrucosum (3.3%), T. rubrum (3.3%), T. mentagrophyte (2.2%), T. tonsorans (1.1%) and T. schoenleini (1.1%). A. flavus (9.9%), A. niger (8.8%), Penicillium sp. (7.7%), Candida albicans (5.5%), Mucor sp. (4.4%), Trichoderma sp. (3.3%) and A. fumigatus (2.2%) constituted the non-dermatophytes associated with these cutaneous infections. Higher frequency of dermatophytosis occurred more in children with greater propensity for play, interaction with domestic animals and who lacked the luxury of school seats during classroom learnin

Observatory's linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space

Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an "African Corner" within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with highly mobile, technological and multicultural citizens. It is argued that changes in the LL are part of the act of claiming and appropriating space wherein space becomes summarily recontexualized and hence reinvented and "owned" by new actors. It is also argued that space ownership can be concealed through what we have called "brand anonymity" strategies in which the identity of the owner is deliberately concealed behind global brands. We conclude that space is pliable and mobile, and that, it is the people within space who carve out new social practices in their appropriated space.IBS

An Exploration of Latinx Generation Z Secondary Teachers’ Lived Experiences, Motivations, and Retention Factors to Teach in the Rio Grande Valley

Generation Z teachers have encountered pivotal events in their lives that have empowered them into becoming change agents in society. They have entered the classrooms during a time of great change in education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing teacher shortages in schools. Generation Z teachers have had to adapt to the changes in education and endure the challenges of transitioning back to face-to-face instruction. As school districts prepare for the post-pandemic era, it is important to capture the lived experiences of Latinx Generation Z secondary teachers to understand the motivation and retention factors that influence their decision to remain in the classroom. This qualitative phenomenological study explores three Latinx Generation Z secondary teachers’ from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Through semi-structured interviews, rich descriptions of the teachers’ experiences, motivations, and retention factors are discovered. To retain and motivate the newest generational cohort of teachers, in a multigenerational workforce, district leaders may want to consider reevaluating their frameworks to increase motivation and teacher retention in the school districts. The findings reveal how important it is for district leaders to recognize the Generation Z teachers’ efforts, provide them with strong support systems and mentorships, and create a campus culture of compassion and empathy

Abstract verification and debugging of constraint logic programs

The technique of Abstract Interpretation [13] has allowed the development of sophisticated program analyses which are provably correct and practical. The semantic approximations produced by such analyses have been traditionally applied to optimization during program compilation. However, recently, novel and promising applications of semantic approximations have been proposed in the more general context of program verification and debugging [3],[10],[7]