Towards building an indigenous knowledge platform to enable culturally-sensitive education underpinned by technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK)
- Authors: Ntšekhe, Mathe , Terzoli, Alfredo , Thinyane, Mamello
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431424 , vital:72773 , http://proceedings.e-skillsconference.org/2014/e-skills275-284Ntsekhe821.pdf
- Description: The everyday use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is ingrained to the fabric of today’s society. A question open for debate is whether this use is or can be optimized to engender authentic solutions, which are aligned to the natural environment of the people? In this paper, we examine at the question from the vantage point of ed-ucating the rural African child. We engage with the sub-question: can ICTs facilitate education grounded in people's own realities, especially those of the marginalized rural poor? We believe this is possible under specific conditions, which include making Indigenous Knowledge (IK) readily available. We propose building an ICT platform that allows injec-tion of IK into the education process: develop a solution that valorizes IK, but also supports efforts to use ICTs in education driven by Tech-nology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The main goal of this framework is to facilitate effective teaching with tech-nology. TPACK partially embeds IK within pedagogical knowledge and ‘contexts’ of learning; we argue for explicit inclusion of IK within the framework to complement the other knowledges.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Towards developing a social science research agenda for the South African water sector
- Authors: Munnik, Victor , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , report
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436797 , vital:73306 , ISBN 978-1-4312-0511-0 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/KV%20325-13.pdf
- Description: The report explores what is meant by social research and introduces a synthetic, interdisciplinary framework for water research that side steps the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science debate by demonstrating how different disci-plines help us understand different layers of reality when dealing with complex challenges.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Transformative learning and individual adaptation
- Authors: Kronlid, David O , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437147 , vital:73347 , ISBN 978-1-137-42804-2 , https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428042_4
- Description: The first part of this chapter explores learning as a Capability to transformatively engage with the world in a climate change context. It draws on previous work that shows that modern as well as indigenous knowledge systems are being affected by climate change. There is no doubt that for societies to adapt to climate change, there is a need for substantive transformative learning, as people everywhere will need to learn new values, practices, relations, and new ways of being and becoming. Such learning on a societal scale has occurred before—as humans adapted to the emergence of the Industrial Revolu-tion, for example. However, the transformation in the climate change adaptation context in many ways is in response to maladaptations that emerged from previous massive societal transformation processes, making this complex to navigate. It is also well known that climate change is leaving many people insecure and highly vulnerable to climate change impacts; it is affecting us all, but the impacts are uneven (Field et al. 2014), requiring different kinds of transformative learning processes in different places and contexts. In this chapter, we therefore propose that, under climate change conditions, we view learning as a key Capability in climate adaptation contexts.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Trends in the TD-DFT calculations of porphyrin and phthalocyanine analogs
- Authors: Mack, John , Stone, Justin , Nyokong, Tebello
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/193882 , vital:45402 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1142/S108842461450045X"
- Description: In 2005, Kobayashi and coworkers reported trends in the TD-DFT spectra of 17 Zn (II) porphyrinoids [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005; 127: 17697] that were analyzed using Michl's perimeter model as part of a study of the anomalous magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectroscopy of zinc tetraphenyltetraacenaphthoporphyrin. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that TD-DFT calculations with the commonly used hybrid B3LYP exchange-correlation functional of the Gaussian software package are problematic in the B-band region of porphyrinoid spectra, since the degree of configurational interaction between the B and higher energy ππ* state appears to be significantly overestimated. The CAM-B3LYP functional is now often preferred for analyzing the optical properties of porphyrinoids, since it includes a long-range correction of the exchange potential, which incorporates an increasing fraction of Hartree–Fock (HF) exchange as the interelectronic separation increases, making it better suited for studying compounds where there is significant charge transfer in the electronic excited states. The trends in the TD-DFT calculations are reexamined with a wider range porphyrinoid compounds including several with pyrazino moieties and are found to provide a closer agreement with the experimental in the B-band region for complexes such as zinc tetraphenylporphyrin and phthalocyanine.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Understanding food security in a perfect storm: an ecosystem services approach
- Authors: Poppy, G M , Chiotha, S , Eigenbrod, Felix , Harvey, Celia A , Honza´k, M , Hudson, Malcolm D , Jarvis, A , Madise, Nyovani J , Schreckenberg, Kate , Shackleton, Charlie M , Villa, F , Dawson, Terrence P
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/398423 , vital:69410 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0288"
- Description: Achieving food security in a ‘perfect storm’ scenario is a grand challenge for society. Climate change and an expanding global population act in concert to make global food security even more complex and demanding. As achieving food security and the millennium development goal (MDG) to eradicate hunger influences the attainment of other MDGs, it is imperative that we offer solutions which are complementary and do not oppose one another. Sustainable intensification of agriculture has been proposed as a way to address hunger while also minimizing further environmental impact. However, the desire to raise productivity and yields has historically led to a degraded environment, reduced biodiversity and a reduction in ecosystem services (ES), with the greatest impacts affecting the poor. This paper proposes that the ES framework coupled with a policy response framework, for example Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR), can allow food security to be delivered alongside healthy ecosystems, which provide many other valuable services to humankind. Too often, agro-ecosystems have been considered as separate from other natural ecosystems and insufficient attention has been paid to the way in which services can flow to and from the agro-ecosystem to surrounding ecosystems. Highlighting recent research in a large multi-disciplinary project (ASSETS), we illustrate the ES approach to food security using a case study from the Zomba district of Malawi.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Unsymmetrically substituted nickel triazatetra-benzcorrole and phthalocynanine complexes
- Authors: Adegoke, Oluwasesan , Nyokong, Tebello
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/189818 , vital:44934 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-013-1317-4"
- Description: We report on the design and application of fluorescent nanoprobes based on the covalent linking of L-glutathione-capped CdSe@ZnS quantum dots (QDs) to newly synthesized unsymmetrically substituted nickel mercaptosuccinic acid triazatetra-benzcorrole (3) and phthalocyanine (4) complexes. Fluorescence quenching of the QDs occurred on conjugation to complexes 3 or 4. The nanoprobes were selectively screened in the presence of different cations and Hg2+ showed excellent affinity in “turning ON” the fluorescence of the nanoprobes. Experimental results showed that the sensitivity of QDs-4 towards Hg2+ was much higher than that of QDs-3 nanoprobe. The mechanism of reaction has been elucidated based on the ability of Hg2+ to coordinate with the sulphur atom of the Ni complex ring and apparently “turn ON” the fluorescence of the linked QDs.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Voltammetric investigation of complex growth media at a bare glassy carbon electrode: a case study of oxytetracycline
- Authors: Kruid, Jan , Fogel Ronen , Limson, Janice
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431206 , vital:72753 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2013.08.188"
- Description: Reports regarding the voltammetric properties of microbiological growth media are scarce in the literature and limited focus has been placed towards the application of electroanalysis for analyte monitoring in these complex media. This work aims to investigate the viability of voltammetry as a quantification method for analytes in microbiological growth media, using oxytetracycline (OTC) as a model analyte. Analysis of both commercially available and laboratory prepared growth media indicated the presence of interfering media components which produced anodic peaks at potentials ranging from ∼+0.85 V to ∼+1.30 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) under acidic conditions and ∼+0.62 V to ∼+1.35 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) under neutral pH. These peaks were identified as originating from proteinaceous components of growth media and correlated to the presence of peptone, malt extract and yeast extract. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy demonstrated significant increases in the charge transfer resistance for Fe(CN)63−/4− redox probes at glassy carbon electrodes in the presence of peptone-comprised media (130.3 Ω) compared to media-free buffer (50.4 Ω). Adsorption of the aforementioned media components to the electrode surface thus contributes to analytical interference through faradaic and non-faradaic processes. By adapting the growth media for analyte detection purposes, this study proves the feasibility of detecting OTC, as well as the use of dilution of the media to further decrease the interferent effects of growth media. A 50-fold dilution of the media provided a 96.7% recovery of the OTC peak current at 20 μM concentration. The empirical detection limit of OTC in 50-fold diluted media was determined to be 0.5 μM, which makes it applicable to current industrial OTC fermentation processes.
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- Date Issued: 2014