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Instructional leadership is widely recognized as important for school improvement and a significant tool for creating an effective teaching and learning environment. The British Council is committed to promoting and developing instructional leadership and is offering programmes to develop it in several African countries, including Tanzania. These programmes focus on developing and improving instructional leadership in schools. The programme is provided by British Council facilitators to school leaders and is delivered over a period of six to nine months, including time for a school-based project. Previous research shows that leadership in many sub-Saharan African countries, including Tanzania, is primarily administrative and that instructional leadership is often neglected. Data were collected with 20 participants of the British Council programme, all primary school leaders, chosen through volunteer and purposive sampling. The findings show many reported gains from participation, notably greater understanding of key concepts such as vision and missions distributed leadership, and instructional leadership processes, notably classroom observation.

Teacher professional learning workshops have been frequently used to prepare in-service and pre-service teachers for effective use of technology in education. Evaluation of these workshops is crucial to identify the effectiveness of these programmes in terms of improving teaching skills, increasing knowledge, changing attitudes, and developing capabilities which support the achievement of student learning outcomes. Multiple approaches for evaluating professional development programmes have been developed, though each with different emphases and theoretical positioning. In this systematic review, 41 research-oriented teacher professional development workshops on technology use were critically analysed to understand how such workshops are evaluated. This study examines content evaluation, instrument types, and common professional development frameworks in teacher professional development workshops and reports on their usage and alignment. Based on the findings, the majority of papers in the systematic review did not deploy comprehensive professional development evaluation models to assess teacher professional development workshops. The majority of studies did not report on the use of established instruments for the purposes of data collection. It was further observed that the majority of these studies did not attempt to evaluate different dimensions of teacher change or different dimensions related to evaluation.

Background and Objective: Aloe vera (Aloe barbadensis M.) as a medicinal herb is practiced in wound healing. This study was carried out to assess the effect of Aloe vera gel (mucilage) on TGF-β gene expression in incisional skin wound in BALB/c mice. Method: In this experimental study, 36 BALB/c male mice with weight range 22±2 gr were allocated equally into negative control (no wound), sham-operated (wound treated with physiological serum) and teratment (wound treated with Aloe vera gel). Two equal full-thickness skin wounds of 10±2mm were made on either side of the vertebral column in the sacral region. The animals in the teratment group were received daily, 2 gram of Aloe vera gel (without any bandage) as a thin layer for a period of 16 days. On 8th and 16th post wounding day, TGF-β gene expression in incisional wounds and Malonyldialdehyde (as end-product of lipid peroxidation) in serum samples was measured using RT-PCR and spectrophotometry methods, respectively. Results: TGF-β gene expression in incisional skin wound increased in Aloe vera gel treated group in compared to negative control and sham-operated groups (P

Advances in Information Technology (IT) and computer science have without a doubt had a significant impact on our daily lives. The past few decades have witnessed the advancement of IT enabled processes in generating actionable insights in various fields, encouraging research based applications of modern Data Science methods. Among many other fields, education research has also been adopting different analytical approaches to advance the state of education systems. Moreover, developments in software engineering and web-based applications have made collection of education data possible at large scales. This systematic review aims to explore the 21st century's state of the art applications of text mining methods used in the field of education. We analyse the metadata of all publications that use text mining or natural language processing in educational settings to report on the key themes of application of text mining methods in educational studies providing an overview of the current state of the art and the future directions for research and applications.

The relationship between the vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene and many pathogenic pathways in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) remains unclear. Given the significance of the topic, we conducted this study to explore the correlation between vitamin D receptor gene polymorphisms and clinical and inflammatory factors in patients suffering from relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. The current research is a case/control study conducted based on the Helsinki Ethical Principles. RRMS disease was confirmed based on history, clinical symptoms, radiological signs and neurologist diagnosis. The research population consisted of healthy people and patients with RRMS who were referred to Hazrat Rasool Akram Hospital between 2021 and 2023. For each person participating in the study (RRMS patient and healthy), five milliliters of peripheral blood containing the anticoagulant EDTA was collected. Polymerase chain reaction was performed using two specific and appropriate oligonucleotide primers. The restriction fragment length polymorphism technique was used, one of the standard methods for identifying polymorphisms. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software version 23. The odds ratio and 95% confidence limits were calculated. The SNP Analyzer software was used to analyze the allele frequency of each polymorphism in healthy and RRMS individuals and compare the values. Prism version 5 software was used to draw diagrams. In the present study, a statistically significant difference was observed between the percentage of FokI genotypes in RRMS patients and healthy individuals. FokI polymorphism showed a significantly increased risk with an odds ratio of 7.28 in patients with the FF genotype compared to healthy individuals. ApaI, TaqI, and BsmI were not significantly different between the two groups. Based on the findings of the present study, FokI polymorphism showed a significant risk increase in RRMS patients with FF genotype compared to healthy individuals.

Salah satu aspek penting dalam perencanaan infrastruktur jaringan seluler adalah Base Transceiver Station (BTS) yang merupakan sebuah pemancar dan penerima sinyal telephone seluler. Di satu sisi, peningkatan jumlah menara memang akan mendukung tercapainya pemenuhan kebutuhan masyarakat terhadap layanan telekomunikasi. Namun di sisi lain, penempatan menara yang tanpa perencanaan serta koordinasi yang tepat akan menimbulkan jumlah menara yang berlebih sehingga dapat mengganggu estetika lingkungan, tata ruang suatu wilayah, dan radiasi gelombang radio yang tidak terkontrol sehingga sangat mengganggu. Berdasarkan permasalahan diatas, maka dapat diselesaikan dengan cara menyusun suatu master plan yang lengkap dan rinci tentang penataan lokasi menara di Kabupaten Mojokerto untuk lima tahun mendatang. Penataan lokasi menara dilakukan dengan menggunakan algoritma Differential Evolution (DE) untuk menemukan solusi penataan menara yang baik berdasarkan luas cakupan area sel yang dihasilkan, kemudian menggunakan software MapInfo sebagai media visualisasi peta lokasi penempatan menara telekomunikasi. Dalam perancangan menara BTS tahun 2019, Kabupaten Mojokerto membutuhkan 106 menara BTS 2G dan 36 menara BTS 3G. Penempatan menara BTS 2G dan 3G menggunakan algoritma differential evolution mampu mengoptimalkan 2,94% dari luas wilayah Kabupaten Mojokerto

Biological age, distinct from an individual's chronological age, has been studied extensively through predictive aging clocks. However, these clocks have limited accuracy in short time-scales. Here we trained deep learning models on fundus images from the EyePACS dataset to predict individuals' chronological age. Our retinal aging clocking, 'eyeAge', predicted chronological age more accurately than other aging clocks (mean absolute error of 2.86 and 3.30 years on quality-filtered data from EyePACS and UK Biobank, respectively). Additionally, eyeAge was independent of blood marker-based measures of biological age, maintaining an all-cause mortality hazard ratio of 1.026 even when adjusted for phenotypic age. The individual-specific nature of eyeAge was reinforced via multiple GWAS hits in the UK Biobank cohort. The top GWAS locus was further validated via knockdown of the fly homolog, Alk, which slowed age-related decline in vision in flies. This study demonstrates the potential utility of a retinal aging clock for studying aging and age-related diseases and quantitatively measuring aging on very short time-scales, opening avenues for quick and actionable evaluation of gero-protective therapeutics.