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Curriculum and cultural nationalism: The case of Yorubaland, 1861 – 1931
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis draws from the fields of education and postcolonial studies, focusing on curriculum development in colonial Yorubaland from 1861 to 1931. Colonial Yorubaland was administered as both a Colony and a Protectorate. This research aims to understand how this political arrangement influenced curriculum development and cultural nationalism in primary and secondary schools.
The study is situated within the Critical Theory paradigm, examining how ideological forces shape educational institutions. An archival methodology was employed, involving the analysis of 1,617 pages of documents sourced from archives in both the United Kingdom and Nigeria. Critical discourse analysis was utilised to interpret these archival texts.
The findings reveal the following: (1) The 1882 Education Ordinance was instrumental in shaping the curriculum, aiming to accommodate the diverse ethnicities within the British West African colonies. (2) The curriculum’s inclusion of Yoruba language, history, and geography was closely tied to the pupils’ cultural context, fostering a sense of cultural identity, and belonging. (3) Educational institutions in the Lagos Colony received significantly more support from the British colonial government compared to those in other provinces of the Protectorate.
The implications of this study are significant for understanding social reproduction and knowledge production in curriculum development. The research illustrates how cultural capital functioned as a ‘hidden curriculum’, reinforcing a hierarchical social structure. The British colonial administration perpetuated social inequities by importing clerks and teachers from other British West African colonies, thereby shaping the content and structure of the curriculum in ways that undermined indigenous cultural values. This practice contributed to the perpetuation of inequality in curriculum development.
The findings suggest that curriculum planning needs to be scrutinised to understand the workings of power and reveal how social injustice, inequity, and exclusion are perpetuated through educational discourse
Memorandum on the problem of farm labour (1937)
Get PDFIn 1937, Max Gluckman submitted a memorandum to a commission of inquiry into the shortage of farm labour in South Africa. In the memorandum, he criticised the presumption that the government should induce African male migrants from the reserves to work on white-owned farms and sugar plantations as “wrong”. Gluckman observed that African men preferred more prestigious and better paid work in the mines and towns. Rather than increase the number of farm workers, he recommended that farm owners improve the conditions and productivity of labour tenants already resident in these farms. This required providing better nutrition and health care, more courteous treatment, the efficient coordination of labour and mechanisation. This intervention had no impact on the Commission’s report, and Gluckman’s outspokenness might well have contributed to the Native Affairs Department’s decision to revoke their permission for him to do further fieldwork in Zululand. This article reproduces the memorandum with only minor editorial corrections. In the introduction, Niehaus outlines the historical context in which Gluckman wrote the memorandum and shows how it provides crucial insights into his early career and his later pessimism about the prospects for applied anthropology.
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Em 1937, Max Gluckman apresentou um memorando a uma comissão de inquérito sobre a escassez de mão de obra agrícola na África do Sul. No memorando, ele criticou como “errada” a presunção de que o governo deveria induzir migrantes africanos do sexo masculino oriundos das reservas a trabalhar em fazendas de propriedade de brancos e em plantações de cana de açúcar. Gluckman observou que os homens africanos preferiam trabalhos mais prestigiosos e bem remunerados nas minas e nas cidades. Em vez de aumentar o número de trabalhadores agrícolas, ele recomendou que os proprietários das fazendas melhorassem as condições e a produtividade dos rendeiros já residentes nessas fazendas. Isso exigia fornecer melhor nutrição e assistência médica, tratamento mais cortês, coordenação eficiente do trabalho e mecanização. Essa intervenção não teve impacto no relatório da Comissão, e a franqueza de Gluckman pode muito bem ter contribuído para a decisão do Departamento de Assuntos Nativos de revogar sua permissão para fazer mais trabalho de campo na Zululândia. Este artigo reproduz o memorando com apenas pequenas correções editoriais. Na introdução, Niehaus descreve o contexto histórico em que Gluckman escreveu o memorando e mostra como ele fornece insights cruciais sobre o início de sua carreira e seu posterior pessimismo sobre as perspectivas da antropologia aplicada
Peer Firms’ Accounting Quality and Firm-Level Capital Investment
Get PDFData Availability: All data used in this paper have been obtained from publicly available sources identified in the paper. Data used in this study will be provided upon reasonable request.Declaration of Generating AI and AI-assisted Technologies in the Writing Process: During the preparation of this work the authors used no AI or AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.This study contributes to the literature on the externalities of firms’ financial reporting practices on their peer firm’s decision-making. If managers use their peer firms’ financial disclosures to make investment decisions, it is plausible that their investments are related to peer accounting quality. Using conditional conservatism and discretionary accruals as alternative measures of accounting quality, in a sample of FTSE All-Share Index firms, we find that a firm’s investment level and investment efficiency are both positively associated with its peers’ accounting quality. As an alternative approach to examining this externality, we provide evidence that a firm’s investment level and investment efficiency are both positively associated with its industry’s accounting quality. Additional analysis reveals some differences in the alignments of investment efficiency and conservatism vis a vis accruals quality. Most notably, we find that peer (industry) conservatism is more strongly associated with the efficiency of small-sized relative to large-sized investments, while peer (industry) accruals quality is more strongly associated with the efficiency of large-sized relative to small-sized investments. We attribute this to the differences in which changes in conservatism and accruals quality influence the decision-relevance of accounting information.This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors
Methodological concerns underlying a lack of evidence for cultural heterogeneity in the replication of psychological effects
Get PDFData availability: The data we used for analysis is secondary data that was kindly shared with us by the authors of the Many Labs 2 study. The full dataset contains personally identifiable information of participants and according to the authors of ML2 [15. Klein, R. A. et al. Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Samples and Settings. Adv. Methods Pract. Psychological Sci. 1, 443–490 (2018). doi url: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2515245918810225] cannot be publicly shared beyond what is available at ML2’s repository (https://osf.io/ux3eh/) [52. Klein, R. et al. Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Sample and Setting, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8CD4R (2022).]. The intermediate and final results of our analysis are available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QRDXC [53. Robin, S. et al. Many Labs 2 - Reanalysis. OSF Repository, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QRDXC (2024).].Code availability: We have shared our code at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QRDXC [53. Robin, S. et al. Many Labs 2 - Reanalysis. OSF Repository, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QRDXC (2024). ].The multi-site replication study, Many Labs 2, concluded that sample location and setting did not substantially affect the replicability of findings. Here, we examine theoretical and methodological considerations for a subset of the analyses, namely exploratory tests of heterogeneity in the replicability of studies between “WEIRD and less-WEIRD cultures”. We conducted a review of literature citing the study, a re-examination of the existing cultural variability, a power stimulation for detecting cultural heterogeneity, and re-analyses of the original exploratory tests. Findings indicate little cultural variability and low power to detect cultural heterogeneity effects in the Many Labs 2 data, yet the literature review indicates the study is cited regarding the moderating role of culture. Our reanalysis of the data found that using different operationalizations of culture slightly increased effect sizes but did not substantially alter the conclusions of Many Labs 2. Future studies of cultural heterogeneity can be improved with theoretical consideration of which effects and which cultures are likely to show variation as well as a priori methodological planning for appropriate operationalizations of culture and sufficient power to detect effects.M.M. acknowledges support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) grant no. CP22-005 and Templeton World Charity Foundation grant TWCF0612. R.S. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 100018_185417/1)
Vaccine Misinformation Detection in X using Cooperative Multimodal Framework
Get PDFIdentifying social media posts that spread vaccine misinformation can inform emerging public health risks and aid in designing effective communication interventions. Existing studies, while promising, often rely on single user posts, potentially leading to flawed conclusions. This highlights the necessity to model users' historical posts for a comprehensive understanding of their stance towards vaccines. However, users' historical posts may contain a diverse range of content that adds noise and leads to low performance. To address this gap, in this study, we present VaxMine, a cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning method that automatically selects relevant textual and visual content from a user's posts, reducing noise. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we create and release a new dataset of 2,072 users with historical posts due to the unavailability of publicly available datasets. The experimental results show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods with an F1-Score of 0.94 (an absolute increase of 13%), demonstrating that extracting relevant content from users' historical posts and understanding both modalities are essential to detecting anti-vaccine users on social media. We further analyze the robustness and generalizability of VaxMine, showing that extracting relevant textual and visual content from a user's posts improves performance. We conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of our study by explaining how computational methods used in surveillance can benefit from our work, with flow-on effects on the design of health communication interventions to counter vaccine misinformation on social media.Matloob Khushi is supported by UKRI NERC grant NE/X000192/12;
Jinman Kim by Telehealth and Technology Centre, Nepean Hospital
Two novel in vitro assays to screen chemicals for their capacity to inhibit thyroid hormone transmembrane transporter proteins OATP1C1 and OAT4
Get PDFData availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.Early brain development depends on adequate transport of thyroid hormones (THs) from the maternal circulation to the fetus. To reach the fetal brain, THs have to cross several physiological barriers, including the placenta, blood–brain-barrier and blood–cerebrospinal fluid-barrier. Transport across these barriers is facilitated by thyroid hormone transmembrane transporters (THTMTs). Some endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can interfere with the transport of THs by THTMTs. To screen chemicals for their capacity to disrupt THTMT facilitated TH transport, in vitro screening assays are required. In this study, we developed assays for two THTMTs, organic anion transporter polypeptide 1C1 (OATP1C1) and organic anion transporter 4 (OAT4), both known to play a role in the transport of THs across barriers. We used overexpressing cell models for both OATP1C1 and OAT4, which showed an increased uptake of radiolabeled T4 compared to control cell lines. Using these models, we screened various reference and environmental chemicals for their ability to inhibit T4 uptake by OATP1C1 and OAT4. Tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) was identified as an OATP1C1 inhibitor, more potent than any of the reference chemicals tested. Additionally perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluoroctanic acid (PFOA), pentachlorophenol and quercetin were identified as OATP1C1 inhibitors in a similar range of potency to the reference chemicals tested. Bromosulfophthalein, TBBPA, PFOA and PFOS were identified as potent OAT4 inhibitors. These results demonstrate that EDCs commonly found in our environment can disrupt TH transport by THTMTs, and contribute to the identification of molecular mechanisms underlying TH system disruption chemicals.EU Horizon 2020 project ATHENA (Assays for the identification of Thyroid Hormone axis-disrupting chemicals: Elaborating Novel Assessment strategies, under grant number 825161
Patient Satisfaction With the Health Care Services of a Government-Financed Health Protection Scheme in Bangladesh: Cross-Sectional Study
Get PDFData Availability:
The data sets generated or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Multimedia Appendix 1:
Overall satisfaction with the inpatient care services under the Shasthyo Surokhsha Karmasuchi (SSK) scheme is available online at: https://jmir.org/api/download?alt_name=formative_v8i1e49815_app1.png&filename=59ef5a26f85bfb986307fba91312177f.png (PNG File , 24 KB) .Background: Since 2016, the government of Bangladesh has been piloting a health protection scheme known as Shasthyo Surokhsha Karmasuchi (SSK), which specifically targets households living below the poverty line. This noncontributory scheme provides enrolled households access to inpatient health care services for 78 disease groups. Understanding patients’ experiences with health care utilization from the pilot SSK scheme is important for enhancing the quality of health care service delivery during the national-level scale-up of the scheme. Objective: We aimed to evaluate patient satisfaction with the health care services provided under the pilot health protection scheme in Bangladesh. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with the users of the SSK scheme from August to November 2019. Patients who had spent a minimum of 2 nights at health care facilities were selected for face-to-face exit interviews. During these interviews, we collected information on patients’ socioeconomic characteristics, care-seeking experiences, and level of satisfaction with various aspects of health care service delivery. To measure satisfaction, we employed a 5-point Likert scale (very satisfied, 5; satisfied, 4; neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 3; dissatisfied, 2; very dissatisfied, 1). Descriptive statistics, statistical inferential tests (t-test and 1-way ANOVA), and linear regression analyses were performed. Results: We found that 55.1% (241/438) of users were either very satisfied or satisfied with the health care services of the SSK scheme. The most satisfactory indicators were related to privacy maintained during diagnostic tests (mean 3.91, SD 0.64), physicians’ behaviors (mean 3.86, SD 0.77), services provided at the registration booth (mean 3.86, SD 0.62), confidentiality maintained regarding diseases (mean 3.78, SD 0.72), and nurses’ behaviors (mean 3.60, SD 0.83). Poor satisfaction was identified in the interaction of patients with providers about illness-related information (mean 2.14, SD 1.40), availability of drinking water (mean 1.46, SD 0.76), cleanliness of toilets (mean 2.85, SD 1.04), and cleanliness of the waiting room (mean 2.92, SD 1.09). Patient satisfaction significantly decreased by 0.20 points for registration times of 16-30 minutes and by 0.32 points for registration times of >30 minutes compared with registration times of ≤15 minutes. Similarly, patient satisfaction significantly decreased with an increase in the waiting time to obtain services. However, the satisfaction of users significantly increased if they received a complete course of medicines and all prescribed diagnostic services. Conclusions: More than half of the users were satisfied with the services provided under the SSK scheme. However, there is scope for improving user satisfaction. To improve the satisfaction level, the SSK scheme implementation authorities should pay attention to reducing the registration time and waiting time to obtain services and improving the availability of drugs and prescribed diagnostic services. The authorities should also ensure the supply of drinking water and enhance the cleanliness of the facility.This study received support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of USAID’s Research for Decision Makers (RDM) activity cooperative agreement number AID-388-A-17-00006. JMIR Publications provided article processing fee (APF) support for the publication of this article
The influence of particle morphology and breakage on the strength of sandy soil
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonWith the increasing global energy shortages and the expanding exploitation of marine
energy resources, geotechnical engineers have encountered numerous challenges related to pile
driving in calcareous sand-dominant offshore seafloors. These issues are related to the low
strength and high susceptibility to particle breakage of calcareous sands when used as a
foundation material. Additionally, large quantities of calcareous sands are utilized in offshore
land reclamation projects, serving as the primary foundation material for various infrastructural
developments. The unique properties of calcareous sands, such as high susceptibility to particle
breakage, can significantly influence the settlement behaviour, impacting the long-term
stability of such structures.
The primary objective of this study is to examine the influence of both particle breakage
and morphology on the strength and settlement behavior of calcareous sands. To provide a
comparative framework, river sand—one of the most commonly used construction materials
from terrestrial sources—was also included in the analysis. While both calcareous (CS) and
river sands (RS) are originated from aquatic environments, they exhibit significant differences
in their morphological features and susceptibility to crushing, offering valuable insights into
how these factors could affect their mechanical performance. Sand specimens with different
initial relative densities, and in different particle size ranges were prepared. To investigate the
influence of particle breakage and morphology on the deformation of sandy soils under load, a
series of one-dimensional consolidation tests under the vertical effective stress of up to 7.2
MPa were carried out. To investigate the influence of particle breakage and particle
morphology on the shear strength of sandy soils, a series of consolidated drained (CD) triaxial
compression tests were conducted under the effective confining pressure of up to 800 kPa.
To achieve a more precise and comparable quantification of particle morphology,
specimens were analysed using the dynamic image analysis (DIA) techniques both before and
after the tests. This approach allows for a detailed assessment of morphological parameters and
offers an alternative approach to quantify particle breakage. The quantified particle breakage
results can then be compared with those obtained from traditional sieving methods, ensuring a
more comprehensive and accurate analysis of particle behaviour. To analyse the initiation and progression of micro-mechanical processes such as particle breakage, acoustic emission (AE)
recording techniques were employed in conjunction with the one-dimensional consolidation
experiments. This innovative application allowed for a detailed examination of the deformation
behaviour of calcareous sand samples, offering insights into distinguishing different microactivities
such as particle sliding and breakage. Furthermore, the technique enabled the
quantification of the intensity of these micro-activities, providing a novel method to assess the
internal processes that influence the mechanical response of calcareous sands.
The main contributions of this research include a comprehensive analysis of the
mechanical behaviour of calcareous sands under varying initial relative densities and particle
sizes. The influence of particle breakage on compressibility and strength have been
quantitatively evaluated. Additionally, the study advances the quantification of morphological
changes occurring during both compression and shearing of sandy soil, and validates a novel
method for assessing particle breakage based on morphological parameters. An innovative
aspect of this research is the application of AE recording technique, which facilitated the
differentiation and quantification of microscopic activities in calcareous sands. This research
also offers valuable insights into how particle breakage and morphology affect the overall
strength characteristics of sandy soil
Resource optimisation of networks on chip for high performance system on chip applications
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis presents a novel methodology for resource optimisation of 3D Network-on-Chip
(NoC) architectures in High-Performance System-on-Chip (SoC) applications.
The proposed approach combines hypergraph-based modelling and genetic algorithm optimisation
to efficiently explore the design space and identify optimal combinations of topology and
routing algorithms tailored to specific application requirements. Two compute-intensive, yet
different use cases were chosen to validate the approach; namely, the double SHA256 attack
as applied to Bitcoin mining, and real-time facial recognition.
In addition to hypergraph modelling and GA optimisation, a unique aspect of this work is the
development of the Performance-to-Cost-Ratio function concept, as an effective, yet simple
method to steer the fitness evaluation during the optimisation phase.
In contrast to existing research that focuses on narrow perspectives of the problem, this work
offers a more holistic approach, by considering the interplay of routing strategies, buffer and
message sizing, bandwidth, and latency factors, together with resource utilisation.
The results and insights obtained contribute to the overall understanding of the design and
optimisation of 3D NoC architectures and their impact on system performance and resource
utilisation.
Three specific research questions are addressed. First, the effective utilisation of hypergraphs
as a design and implementation space exploration modelling tool for 3D NoCs; Second, is
the justification and use of genetic algorithms as an optimisation technique, once a suitable
topology is identified; and finally, the combination of the ideas of hypergraph modelling and
GA optimisation as framework in high-performance SoC designs employing 3D NoCs.
Extensive simulations and comparative analyses carried out showed significant performance
improvements in latency, throughput, bandwidth and resource utilisation, versus the chosen
3D Mesh baseline architecture.
The optimised architectures also lead to an observable energy efficiency characteristic, when
tested on an actual FPGA implementation.
The proposed methodology provides a systematic and automated design space exploration
and optimisation approach in the domain, eliminating the need for manual design space exploration, this enabling architects and designers to make informed decisions based on the
specific requirements of the target application, from the onset.
The insights and techniques presented in this thesis have far reaching implications for developing
efficient and scalable NoC solutions in the era of kilo- and mega-core SoC applications
Large Language Model-Based Wireless Network Design
Get PDFIn this letter, we present the Large Language Model-based combinatorial optimizer (LMCO) for wireless network optimization and planning tasks, focusing on optimizing the number and the placement of wireless access point placement. The performance and efficiency of LMCO are evaluated and compared with the well-established Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. The results indicate that LMCO exhibits superior performance, particularly as the complexity of the problem increases. These findings also underscore the significant potential of LLM-based algorithms in revolutionizing combinatorial optimization across a wide range of applications.10.13039/501100005302-Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation;
10.13039/501100005411-Foundation for Education and European Culture;
Royal Society Industry Fellow Scheme (Grant Number: IF-R2-23200104);
10.13039/501100000288-Royal Society Project (Grant Number: IEC-NSFC-211264)
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