BACKGROUND There is a severe healthcare workforce shortage in sub Saharan Africa, which threatens achieving the Millennium Development Goals and attaining an AIDS-free generation. The strength of a healthcare system depends on the skills, competencies, values and availability of its workforce. A well-trained and competent laboratory technologist ensures accurate and reliable results for use in ...

Conflicts can occur between the principle of freedom of information treasured by librarians and ethical standards of scientific research involving the propriety of using data derived from immoral or dishonorable experimentation. A prime example of this conflict was brought to the attention of the medical and library communities in 1995 when articles claiming that the subjects of the illustratio...

E-learning technology is currently pushed by several factors. Among these, the advantage of computer-based courses of sharing and reusing existing teacher materials, in addition to the possibility of personalizing courses according to students needs, preferences and capabilities. To provide such features, in this paper we introduce an architecture organized into four layers: a database layer to...

Although people are generally interested in how the brain functions, neuroscience education for the public is hampered by a lack of low cost and engaging teaching materials. To address this, we developed an open-source tool, the SpikerBox, which is appropriate for use in middle/high school educational programs and by amateurs. This device can be used in easy experiments in which students insert...

In the UK, the General Medical Council clearly stipulates that upon completion of training, medical students should be able to discuss the principles underlying the development of health and health service policy, including issues relating to health economics. In response, researchers from the UK and other countries have called for a need to incorporate health economics training into the underg...

The paper describes a novel social network-based open educational resource for practicing foreign languages with native speakers, based on the predefined teaching materials. This virtual learning platform, called i2istudy, eliminates misunderstanding by providing prepared and predefined scenarios, enabling the participants to understand each other and, as a consequence, to communicate freely. T...

UNLABELLED Distance education has emerged to minimize the anxiety of many professionals who need to update their knowledge, but do not have the time and opportunity to travel to educational centers. OBJECTIVES To describe the development of a CD-ROM to provide distance continuing education to basic school teachers that addresses issues related to written language. MATERIAL AND METHODS Previ...

The question of how machines can be endowed with the ability to acquire and robustly manipulate commonsense knowledge is a fundamental scientific problem. Here we formulate an approach to this problem that we call knowledge infusion. We argue that robust logic offers an appropriate semantics for this endeavor because it supports provably efficient algorithms for a basic set of necessary learnin...

This paper re-examines the relevance of three academic norms to contemporary academic life – communism, universalism and disinterestedness – based on the work of Robert Merton. The results of a web-based survey elicited responses to a series of value statements and were analysed using the weighted average method and through crosstabulation. Results indicate strong support for communism as an ac...

Network security topics are gaining importance but they are often taught using traditional, passive methods via lectures and textbooks. This paper describes our efforts to change this situation by developing teaching materials and technical support for use of network testbeds in security education. This practice cannot replace the traditional teaching approach but should complement it to better...