Perception of college of education lecturers about technical education research and evaluation in Nigeria
The study was conducted to ascertain the perception of Federal College of Education Technical lecturers towards technical education research in South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria. In pursuance of this purpose, four research questions were formulated and one hypothesis tested. The population comprised of 70 lecturers of Federal Colleges of Education (Technical) in Asaba, Umunze and Omoku. The entire population was used for the study. No sampling was done because of the fewness of the population. The design used was a survey. The instrument used was the questionnaire. On the whole 57 items were drawn using the likert scale format. The instrument was considered valid by experts with the reliability coefficient of 0.89 using Cronbach alpha. Simple percentage and t-test were used to analyse the data. The study revealed that: Government’s inactive role in supporting and promoting research activities in colleges of education (technical) caused low morale of lecturers towards research; A lot of constraints such as poor attitude to research, falsification of research data, among others are the challenges of technical education research. The study recommends among others that: About 10 percent of the education tax fund should be voted to research; Government should improve its communication network.
How Nigerian teachers select instructional materials
Instructional systems designers and developers have assumed idealized models and theories about the selection and use of materials for instruction. Such models and theories are based on what teachers should do instead of recognizing what teachers are doing when they select materials for instructions. This study examined how teachers select instructional materials for instruction. When making decisions for selecting and using materials teachers were influenced by the content of lessons taught, and by their professional training, rather than by the stating of behavioural objectives. An integrated instructional design should include a consideration of the mental and intuitive efforts of teachers, and of the qualities of materials during not after the need assessment.
Negatively charged phospholipids trigger the interaction of a bacterial Tat substrate precursor protein with lipid monolayers.
Folded proteins can be translocated across biological membranes via the Tat machinery. It has been shown in vitro that these Tat substrates can interact with membranes prior to translocation. Here we report a monolayer and infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopic (IRRAS) study of the initial states of this membrane interaction, the binding to a lipid monolayer at the air/water interface serving as a model for half of a biological membrane. Using the model Tat substrate HiPIP (high potential iron-sulfur protein) from Allochromatium vinosum, we found that the precursor preferentially interacts with monolayers of negatively charged phospholipids. The signal peptide is essential for the interaction of the precursor protein with the monolayer because the mature HiPIP protein showed no interaction with the lipid monolayer. However, the individual signal peptide interacted differently with the monolayer compared to the complete precursor protein. IRRA spectroscopy indicated that the individual signal peptide forms mainly aggregated β-sheet structures. This β-sheet formation did not occur for the signal peptide when being part of the full length precursor. In this case it adopted an α-helical structure upon membrane insertion. The importance of the signal peptide and the mature domain for the membrane interaction is discussed in terms of current ideas of Tat substrate-membrane interactions.