Thesis (M.A. (Social Work))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Parental involvement in education is accepted as an important aspect of learner academic achievement. In fact, there is research evidence that associates high learner achievement with high rates of parental involvement. However, judging by the poor levels of achievement attained by learners in, for instance, areas like reading, writing and numeracy in primary school grades, the question rises as to whether parental involvement is consciously promoted in primary schools. This empirical research intended to investigate how parental involvement is currently promoted in primary schools. The literature review revealed the basic obligations of schools and parents as expressed in Epstein's six typologies of parental involvement, which form the basis of all endeavours towards enhancing parental involvement. Consequently, it is concluded that strategies or programmes aimed at promoting parental involvement, must embody parenting, communication, volunteering, learning at home, participation in decision-making and collaboration with the community. In this regard, the child's environment should be regarded as an ecology consisting of the school, home and community. The main empirical research finding indicates generally, that the meaning attached to parental involvement falls short of its essence, and focuses on response activities from both school staff and parents. The main recommendation, therefore, is advocacy that begins with empowering all stakeholders with regard to the essence of parental involvement. In this regard, the Empowerment Approach to Parental Involvement (EAPI) recommended in this research, proposes a model that empowers individual schools and the community, through a school-based and cluster-based focus. The EAPI model presents a series of actions leading to a modus operandi that recognises the power of zenzele (do it yourself) for schools and parents, and masakhane (doing it for ourselves together) for school clusters and the community. Both concepts utilise principles based on ubuntu and express the adage: "it takes a village to raise a child." / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Parental involvement in education is accepted as an important aspect of learner academic achievement. In fact, there is research evidence that associates high learner achievement with high rates of parental involvement. However, judging by the poor levels of achievement attained by learners in, for instance, areas like reading, writing and numeracy in primary school grades, the question rises as to whether parental involvement is consciously promoted in primary schools. This empirical research intended to investigate how parental involvement is currently promoted in primary schools. The literature review revealed the basic obligations of schools and parents as expressed in Epstein's six typologies of parental involvement, which form the basis of all endeavours towards enhancing parental involvement. Consequently, it is concluded that strategies or programmes aimed at promoting parental involvement, must embody parenting, communication, volunteering, learning at home, participation in decision-making and collaboration with the community. In this regard, the child's environment should be regarded as an ecology consisting of the school, home and community. The main empirical research finding indicates generally, that the meaning attached to parental involvement falls short of its essence, and focuses on response activities from both school staff and parents. The main recommendation, therefore, is advocacy that begins with empowering all stakeholders with regard to the essence of parental involvement. In this regard, the Empowerment Approach to Parental Involvement (EAPI) recommended in this research, proposes a model that empowers individual schools and the community, through a school-based and cluster-based focus. The EAPI model presents a series of actions leading to a modus operandi that recognises the power of zenzele (do it yourself) for schools and parents, and masakhane (doing it for ourselves together) for school clusters and the community. Both concepts utilise principles based on ubuntu and express the adage: "it takes a village to raise a child." / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Thesis (M.A. (Social Work))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has gained a rapid growth in recent years. Newest information is accessible in this social web service through a large volume of real-time tweets. Tweets are short and they are more informative when they are coupled with URLs, which are addresses of interesting web pages related to the tweets. Due to tweet overload in Twitter, an accurate URL recommender system is a bene cial tool for information seekers. In this thesis, we focus on a neighborhoodbased recommender system that recommends URLs to Twitter users. We consider one of the major elements of tweets, hashtags, as the topic representatives of URLs in our approach. We propose methods for incorporating hashtags in measuring the relevancy of URLs. Our experiments show that our neighborhood-based recommender system outperforms a matrix factorization-based system significantly. We also show that the accuracy of URL recommendation in Twitter is time-dependent. A higher recommendation accuracy is obtained when more recent data is provided for recommendation. / Graduate / 0984 / y.nazpar@gmail.com

This study aimed to explore students&amp / #8217 / and teachers&amp / #8217 / perceptions with respect to biology education at high school level in order to reveal the reasons of students&amp / #8217 / low achievement in biology as indicated by the university entrance examinations between the years 1996-2002. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach. Therefore two separate interview schedules were developed to be conducted with 45 high school biology teachers and 45 eleventh grade science students in 10 schools including private, Anatolian, and public high schools. All the interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim by the researcher. Results revealed that there are serious problems in biology education such as biology curriculum covering high amounts of topics, unavailable time allocated to biology, insufficient economical conditions... The reasons of students&amp / #8217 / low achievement in biology can be summarized under the headings of students&amp / #8217 / perception of biology, the nature of biology lesson, questions asked in universityentrance examinations, students&amp / #8217 / perception of other science lessons, and biology education in Turkey.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is considered a prototype for studying non-segmented negative-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses. Livestock are naturally infected by VSV, causing severe economic impact due to lack of any effective treatment. RNA interference (RNAi)-based therapeutics are promising alternatives to control viral infections. Lentiviral vector systems deliver artificial short hairpin RNA (shRNA) into the genome of cells to activate the RNAi pathway. In this study, an RNAi-based approach to generate cell lines with reduced susceptibility to VSV (Indiana) infection was tested. First, eight shRNAs targeting either the nucleocapsid (N), phosphoprotein (P), or the polymerase (L) viral genes were designed and introduced into cell systems. To test the potency of the shRNAs for silencing the target viral transcripts, semi-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of viral N, P, and L transcripts was performed. Then, supernatants from infected groups were evaluated by microtitration and immunoblot. Finally, the effect of VSV genomic variability in the target region of shRNAs was predicted by partial sequencing field and laboratory-adapted strains. Viral transcripts were significantly reduced in cells stably expressing shRNAs targeting the N viral gene (nucleotides 67-97 or 1312-1332; p<0.05) or P gene (nucleotides 1772-1792; p&lt;0.05). Reduction in viral transcripts was not observed by other VSV-shRNAs tested. Reduction of viral transcripts by the N-shRNA (sh-1312) was accompanied by a decrease in viral protein. Also, a reduction in the viral particles shed from cells expressing N-shRNAs (nucleotides 67-97, p&lt;0.05) was noted. The results also showed complementarity of target gene sequences for shRNAs in the sequence from the laboratory-adapted strain and single base substitutions in the corresponding regions from VSV field isolates. However, these mismatches did not occur within the seed region of the shRNAs. In conclusion, partial silencing of viral transcripts by a single shRNA does not block VSIV replication; however, partial impairment of VSIV replication was observed in N-shRNAs expressing cells. During infection, the naturally high level of N gene transcription may have modulated the sh-RNA effect. The combination of the most potent shRNAs identified here into a multiple shRNA vector may result in further reduction of viral replication. These data contribute to ongoing development of effective RNAi-based technologies to combat viral diseases.

In Australia, the 0.22 calibre ammunition is the most encountered ammunition type found at a crime scene [1]. Previous analysis of gun shot residue (GSR) and unfired propellant has involved studying the inorganic constituents by Scanning Electron Microscopy or similar technique. However, due to the heavy metal build up that comes with some ammunition types, manufacturing companies are now making propellant that is safer to use. Therefore, it has become appropriate to study and analyse unfired propellant by other means. One such technique is unfired propellant analysis by gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This technique focuses on the organic constituent make up of the propellant paying particular attention to diphenylamine, ethyl centralite and dibutyl phthalate. It was proposed that different batches of ammunition could be discriminated or matched to each other by using this technique. However, since the main constituents of unfired propellant are highly reactive, it was not possible to accomplish batch determination of ammunition. However, by improving extraction techniques and by removing oxygen (a catalyst for the degradation of diphenylamine) a superior method was established to help in the analysis of unfired propellant. Furthermore, it was shown that whilst differentiating batches of the same ammunition was not possible, the improved methods have helped identify different types of the same brand of ammunition. With the aid of future studies to fully explore this avenue, the analysis of unfired propellant could one day become an integral part of forensic science.

In a period of significant global scientific and technological change tertiary students need to be more adequately prepared to effectively integrate into the competitive working environments of the 21st century. For this reason, these students need to be educated to use a variety of skills such as problem-solving and teamwork to support them in their future working conditions. These skills can be acquired through the use of a range of innovative approaches. A variety of these approaches is being introduced in a range of university courses in different institutions in the western world, including problem-based learning (PBL). The problem-based learning approach is also now being introduced to more traditional learning environments in Asian institutions such as Singapore and Malaysia. My study extends this innovative pedagogical approach, exploring the implementation of a PBL approach across a number of undergraduate classes in two universities in the South of Viet nam. It also reports on the students' perspectives in learning through a PBL approach. This study examines the impact of a PBL approach when it was introduced in a range of Vietnamese undergraduate courses. A group of eleven university teachers in two universities in the South of Vietnam were approached by the investigator and agreed to be involved in the study as individual cases for investigation. The teachers implemented a PBL approach to teaching in one of their undergraduate classes. In addition, 182 students from eleven different classes where a PBL approach was implemented agreed to discuss their perceptions of this shift in their learning approach. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted with both the teachers and their students for the purpose of gathering data related to the impact of the PBL approach on the student and staff experiences. The study shows that Vietnamese teachers and students effectively adopted a PBL approach, and they commented on the worth of PBL for their teaching and learning. Both the teaching staff and students engaged willingly with the PBL approach. Although some assessment approaches were used that reflected the focus of PBL, there was still a heavy reliance on testing as the major form of assessment. The study is expected to contribute to Vietnamese education by providing an evaluation of the PBL implementation processes. The examination of all aspects of PBL implementation has the potential to provide educators with a critical analysis of the processes in order to support their understandings when making the decision to broaden the teaching and learning approaches currently used. Further, the study affirms the implementation of PBL as a significant contribution in preparing learners to negotiate complex demands of the 21st century.