ROLE OF TEAMWORK FOR ACTIVE LEARNING IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION

In engineering education, a project can rarely be completed without the involved students having to read extensively and search for extra information not available in their textbooks, lecture notes, or laboratory manuals. Students have to find extra information for their research-projects and combine them with their knowledge from the other courses. This important objective opens students’ eyes to the realization that the degree by which they have digested the fundamental ideas of their core lessons will dictate their ability to access more knowledge because they appear to face paradoxes when confronting new situations. The merits of teamwork have been sacrificed for the sake of giving the student a very clear idea of the meaning of scientific research and significance of published material. It is expected to aid the student in a future research-oriented career. Teamwork will increase the amount of time spent on out-of-class learning as defined by the student, can be more effective than in-class time, particularly if the focus is learning on higher order learning. The authors believe that the student will be sufficiently exposed to teamwork values during their future design projects.

Recipes for recombining DNA: A history of Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual

Laboratory instructions and recipes are sometimes edited into books with a wide circulation. Even in the late twentieth century, publications of this nature remained influential. For example, protocols from a 1980 summer course on gene cloning at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory provided the basis for a bestselling laboratory manual by Tom Maniatis, Ed Fritsch and Joe Sambrook. Not only did the Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual become a standard reference for molecular biologists (commonly called the ‘bible’), but also its recipes and clear instructions made gene cloning and recombinant DNA technologies accessible to non-specialists. Consequently, this laboratory manual contributed to the rapid spread of genetic-engineering techniques throughout the life sciences, as well as in industry. As is often the case with how-to books, however, finding a way to update methods in this rapidly changing field posed a challenge, and various molecular-biology reference books had different ways of dealing with knowledge obsolescence. This paper explores the origins of this manual, its publication history, its reception and its rivals – as well as the more recent migration of such laboratory manuals to the Internet.

‘Death Germs Through the Post’: Postal Pathology and Workplace Experiences of Disease in Britain, c.1895–1935

This article examines the emergence of postal pathology in Britain from around 1895 onwards. It focuses on the impact of laboratory-centred diagnostic practices on the working experiences and practices of medical and laboratory practitioners, Post Office (PO) management and PO workers as they operated within the medical marketplace. It demonstrates the critical role the PO played in facilitating the growth of remote laboratory diagnosis. Whilst primarily focussing on the idea of postal pathology as denoting a set of material practices and exchanges that took place between the PO, clinicians and laboratories for the purposes of diagnosing disease, it also hints at the ways in which the PO has at various points in its history itself been pathologised and made subject to new prophylactic regimens to protect against disease transmission. Through studying the issues that arose with the circulation of pathological specimens, this work touches upon several themes that help us to better understand the challenges historical actors encountered when working with such potentially dangerous material on a regular basis. Previously underutilised sources such as laboratory manuals, medical diaries and PO archival records will help to reconstruct the working experiences of medical practitioners, laboratory workers and PO workers. By doing so, we can begin to gain a better understanding of how diverging epidemiologies of infectious diseases emerged as historical actors worked to successfully navigate the demands of their respective workplaces at a time when pathological specimens became increasingly ubiquitous, mobile commodities.

Occurrence of Anthracnose Disease of Turkey Berry (Solanum torvum) at Bunso, Eastern Region, Ghana

Aims: To identify the causal agent of anthracnose disease of Solanum torvum, determine whether the pathogen is seedborne and also to ascertain the cross infection potential of the pathogen on other Solanaceous crops of economic importance. Place and Duration of Study: Bunso, in the East Akim District of the Eastern Region of Ghana, between January and October, 2017. Methodology: The disease symptoms on matured fruits, leaves, stems and flowers of Solanum torvum were carefully observed for documentation with magnifying glasses and the naked eyes. The pathogen was isolated on PDA after incubation for five days and the identification was based on the colony, morphology and conidial characteristics with reference to laboratory manuals. The virulence of the fungal isolates from the S. torvum fruits was determined through pathogenicity tests. A seed health test was conducted in accordance with the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) to determine whether the pathogen is seedborne. Conidial suspension of Colletotrichum acutatum (1×103 per ml) was used to inoculate pepper and eggplant fruits in a cross infectivity test. Results: Colletotrichum acutatum was repeatedly isolated and identified as the causal agent of the disease on the fruits and was also seedborne. In cross infectivity studies, the pathogen produced characteristic anthracnose symptoms on both eggplant and pepper which happens to belong to the same Solanaceae family just as the turkey berry. Conclusion: The anthracnose disease of Solanum torvum at Bunso, in the Eastern Region of Ghana is caused by Colletotrichum acutatum that has the potential to cross infect other Solanaceous species. This study is the first scientific report of the occurrence of anthracnose disease of S. torvum in Ghana.

Inquiry and industry inspired laboratories: the impact on students’ perceptions of skill development and engagements

Many examples exist in the chemical education literature of individual experiments, whole courses or even entire year levels that have been completely renewed under the tenets of context-based, inquiry-based or problem-based learning. The benefits of these changes are well documented and include higher student engagement, broader skill development and better perceived preparation for the workforce. However, no examples appear to have been reported in which an entire school's teaching laboratory programme has been significantly redesigned with these concepts in mind. Transforming Laboratory Learning (TLL) is a programme at Monash University that sought to incorporate industry inspired context-based, inquiry-based and problem-based learning into all the laboratory components of the School of Chemistry. One of the ways in which the effect of the programme was evaluated was through the use of an exit survey delivered to students at the completion of seven experiments that existed before the TLL programme as well as seven that were generated directly by the TLL programme. The survey consisted of 27 closed questions alongside three open questions. Overall, students found the new experiments more challenging but recognised that they were more contextualised and that they allowed students to make decisions. The students noted the lack of detailed guidance in the new laboratory manuals but raised the challenge, context and opportunity to undertake experimental design as reasons for enjoying the new experiments. Students' perceptions of their skill development shifted to reflect skills associated with experimental design when undertaking the more investigation driven experiments. These results are consistent with other literature and indicate the large scale potential success of the TLL programme, which is potentially developing graduates who are better prepared for the modern workforce.

Optimization of the balance between effort and yield in unilateral surgical transfer of mouse embryos

Surgical transfer of embryos is carried out daily in animal facilities worldwide for the rederivation of mouse strains/lines, among other purposes. Current protocols described in laboratory manuals recommend using a high number of embryos during transfer, typically in the range of 15 up to 25. To optimize the use of resources it is necessary to estimate and relate the effort required and the yield obtained. Here, we analyse the balance between the number of embryos transferred (the effort), and the yield as the number of born pups obtained from surgical embryo transfer. To accomplish this, we have analyzed data obtained during rederivation of nearly one hundred lines of mice to a new animal facility. Our results confirm that the use of increasing numbers of embryos per transfer increases the yields of born pups, as has been described previously in the literature, but they also highlight the disproportionate effort required, i.e. in the number of embryos that needed to be transferred. An estimate of the mean expected yields of surgical transfers and their comparison with the actual observed yields indicated that the balance between effort and yield is optimized when using lower numbers of embryos than in currently used protocols, in the range of 8 to 12. Given the heterogeneous nature of the data presented and analyzed here, which is from a population of mice that may be considered as representative of any animal facility, our optimization approach should help save resources in similar facilities and improve the yields of embryo transfer procedures.