Democratic Development and the Role of Citizenship Education in Sub-Saharan African with a Case Focus on Zambia

In addressing issues related to problems of democratisation in Africa, this paper attempts to relate the issue to the need for citizenship education and the role that can play in social development. Citizenship should be central to the formation of viable civil societies that claim a tangible stake in national public spaces in post-Cold War Africa. These and related topics are discussed relative to new possibilities that could lead to the full realisation of the concept as well as the practice of enfranchised citizenship and inclusive social development in aspiring democracies in the Sub Saharan African context. The complexity of the development ‘problematique’ that Sub-Saharan Africa is facing is unique in that it is multi-dimensional, but above all else, politically located. It is, therefore, central to our discussions here that to correct the continent’s current schemes of underdevelopment, pragmatic schemes of governance must be achieved. To do that, we are suggesting, new possibilities of citizenship education should be formulated for the general African scene in general, and for democratising but still both institutionally and economically weakened Zambia

Closing Poverty-Related Attainment Gaps in Scotland's Schools : What Works?

The poverty-related attainment gap is an issue for every school and every local authority in Scotland. There are many different ways to tackle it, from greater parental involvement, to improving teacher retention and quality, to pedagogical and curriculum change, to school and authority-wide management measures. Successful change will be informed by research evidence of 'what works'. This IPPI Policy Brief distills research evidence into an "at a glance" guide to reducing poverty-related attainment gaps. Its aim is to inform teaching professionals, school and education leaders, policy makers, politicians, parents and citizens about the issue

Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings

We examined matching bias in syllogistic reasoning by analysing response times, confidence ratings, and individual differences. Roberts’ (2005) “negations paradigm” was used to generate conflict between the surface features of problems and the logical status of conclusions. The experiment replicated matching bias effects in conclusion evaluation (Stupple & Waterhouse, 2009), revealing increased processing times for matching/logic “conflict problems”. Results paralleled chronometric evidence from the belief bias paradigm indicating that logic/belief conflict problems take longer to process than non-conflict problems (Stupple, Ball, Evans, & Kamal-Smith, 2011). Individuals’ response times for conflict problems also showed patterns of association with the degree of overall normative responding. Acceptance rates, response times, metacognitive confidence judgements, and individual differences all converged in supporting dual-process theory. This is noteworthy because dual-process predictions about heuristic/analytic conflict in syllogistic reasoning generalised from the belief bias paradigm to a situation where matching features of conclusions, rather than beliefs, were set in opposition to logic

Experiment in Self-Instruction in General Biology

Author Institution: Department of Biology and Department of Psychology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohi

Light-cone averages in a swiss-cheese universe

We analyze a toy swiss-cheese cosmological model to study the averaging problem. In our model, the cheese is the EdS model and the holes are constructed from a LTB solution. We study the propagation of photons in the swiss-cheese model, and find a phenomenological homogeneous model to describe observables. Following a fitting procedure based on light-cone averages, we find that the the expansion scalar is unaffected by the inhomogeneities. This is because of spherical symmetry. However, the light-cone average of the density as a function of redshift is affected by inhomogeneities. The effect arises because, as the universe evolves, a photon spends more and more time in the (large) voids than in the (thin) high-density structures. The phenomenological homogeneous model describing the light-cone average of the density is similar to the concordance model. Although the sole source in the swiss-cheese model is matter, the phenomenological homogeneous model behaves as if it has a dark-energy component. Finally, we study how the equation of state of the phenomenological model depends on the size of the inhomogeneities, and find that the equation-of-state parameters w_0 and w_a follow a power-law dependence with a scaling exponent equal to unity. That is, the equation of state depends linearly on the distance the photon travels through voids. We conclude that within our toy model, the holes must have a present size of about 250 Mpc to be able to mimic the concordance model.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures; replaced to fit the version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Access to higher education : how might this be achieved for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds?

There are significant social inequalities in access to higher education internationally. Students from the most disadvantaged households remain persistently under-represented (Jerrim, Chmielewski, & Parker, 2015), are less likely to enter higher education, and when they do, are more likely to go to further education college rather than university (OECD, 2015; Scottish Funding Council, 2015; Sosu & Ellis, 2014). As a result, governments, supranational organisations such as the EU, and global agencies like UNESCO have expressed ambitions to reduce educational inequality and improve access to higher education (EHEA, 2012; UNESCO, 2015). Several factors such as academic performance, subject choice at secondary school and low motivation have been documented to account for this gap (e.g., Iannelli, Smyth, & Klein, 2015; (Iannelli, Smyth, & Klein, 2015; Chowdry, Crawford, Dearden, Goodman, & Vignoles, 2013; Gorard & Smith, 2006)

Age-dependent molecular alterations in the autophagy pathway in HIVE patients and in a gp120 tg mouse model: reversal with beclin-1 gene transfer.

Aged (>50 years old) human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients are the fastest-growing segment of the HIV-infected population in the USA and despite antiretroviral therapy, HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) prevalence has increased or remained the same among this group. Autophagy is an intracellular clearance pathway for aggregated proteins and aged organelles; dysregulation of autophagy is implicated in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and HAND. Here, we hypothesized that dysregulated autophagy may contribute to aging-related neuropathology in HIV-infected individuals. To explore this possibility, we surveyed autophagy marker levels in postmortem brain samples from a cohort of well-characterized <50 years old (young) and >50 years old (aged) HIV+ and HIV encephalitis (HIVE) patients. Detailed clinical and neuropathological data showed the young and aged HIVE patients had higher viral load, increased neuroinflammation and elevated neurodegeneration; however, aged HIVE postmortem brain tissues showed the most severe neurodegenerative pathology. Interestingly, young HIVE patients displayed an increase in beclin-1, cathepsin-D and light chain (LC)3, but these autophagy markers were reduced in aged HIVE cases compared to age-matched HIV+ donors. Similar alterations in autophagy markers were observed in aged gp120 transgenic (tg) mice; beclin-1 and LC3 were decreased in aged gp120 tg mice while mTor levels were increased. Lentivirus-mediated beclin-1 gene transfer, that is known to activate autophagy pathways, increased beclin-1, LC3, and microtubule-associated protein 2 expression while reducing glial fibrillary acidic protein and Iba1 expression in aged gp120 tg mice. These data indicate differential alterations in the autophagy pathway in young versus aged HIVE patients and that autophagy reactivation may ameliorate the neurodegenerative phenotype in these patients

Development of methods for the detection of trace amounts of selected carcinogenic and mutagenic amines in water

A great deal of concern exists over the presence of potentially carcinogenic and/or mutagenic substances in drinking water supplies. The general analytical schemes currently applied to water are less suited than specific methods for the detection of certain classes of organic contaminants such as aromatic amines because of their reactivity. We have concentrated our efforts at developing analytical schemes by which we are able to reliably detect, separate, and quantitate trace levels of a number of aromatic and heterocyclic amines. Both liquid and gas chromatographic methods have been developed. The relative strengths and limitations of the methods are discussed. Field evaluations of the final methods were carried out and reported.U.S. Department of the InteriorU.S. Geological SurveyOpe