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This study investigated the epistemic conventions of pedagogical practices in higher education (HE) from the viewpoints of lecturers. Phenomenological design, focusing on semi-structured interview guide, was considered for the study. Through the purposive sampling technique, 15 lecturers from three departments of institution of higher learning were considered for the study. The study utilised emerging themes as an analytic procedure. Analysis focused on two principal domains: Peripheral Academic Writing Practices with focus on Pedagogy (PAWP-P), and Actual Academic Writing Practices focusing on Pedagogy (AAWP-P). In terms of PAWP-P, lecturers considered students' ability to engage in self-regulated practices such as perusing course outline, concomitant with reading and making their own notes prior to lectures to be momentous pedagogical practices. Also, in tandem with AAWP-P, lecturers placed dialogue, argument, meaning making, and criticality (i.e. analysis, evaluation, and creation) as requisite pedagogic practices in HE. In addressing the pedagogical limitation in Lea and Street's (1998) academic literacies model, the finding of this study helps to build on the model; hence, in this study, Lea and Street's (1998) academic literacies model is reconceptualised as academic socialisation, with three developmental overlapping orbitals: electromagnetic wave, normative socialisation and academic literacies socialisation. Management in HE should prioritise the teaching of Information Literacy and Language Literacy courses such as Communicative Skills (variously expressed elsewhere as Use of English, Writing across the Curriculum, General Composition, and Academic Writing).

Purpose: This study assesses the available networks and linkages for effective information exchange and service delivery among actors in the banana value chain and develops a set of specific recommendations for policy, institutional and human resource development. Methodology: We used an exploratory case study design using Focus group discussions and Key informant interviews for data collection. Data were analysed using Social Network Analysis (SNA) to establish the actors who were influential in facilitating information exchange and service delivery in the banana value chain. Findings: We identified farmer groups and regulatory bodies as the most influential actors in facilitating information exchange and service delivery. However, they were more recipients than determinants of information and services. Network density results (0.256-0.283) show low cohesiveness among the actors, implying that less than 30% of the potential linkages are utilised for information exchange and service delivery. Practical implications: Extension and other practitioners should aim at network building taking advantage of existing knowledge and service linkages with the farmers as mechanisms to help expand and sustain their last-mile reach. Theoretical implications: SNA is relevant for assessing the contribution of various actors in the exchange of appropriate information and services. It recognises potential networks which hinder or contribute to information and service delivery among the actors. Originality: This paper contributes to literature on systems approaches and institutional development to address the challenges of information dissemination and service delivery among the actors in the banana value chain.

Universities gain a competitive advantage by deliberately improving overall service, student, faculty, and staff experience, leading to attractiveness, retention, and improved outcomes. Quality services are achieved partly by addressing employee satisfaction, specifically in the work environment. This paper presents a prototype study of a virtual university support agent, a system grounded in a Large Language Model (LLM) engineered to address inquiries from university students, faculty and staff related to the student handbook. The study investigates the integration of generative artificial intelligence and natural conversation properties inherent in LLMs to overcome customer service shortcomings identified in previous chatbot applications. The LLMs' susceptibility to 'hallucination' is mitigated through a combined approach of few-shot learning and chain of thought libraries in the training phase. The information core of this system comprises student handbook PDF files, from which an algorithm extracts and structures data to be utilized by the LLM. As a result, the university support agent facilitates a viable Q&A interface for students, faculty, and administrators to inquire about university guidelines and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In business intelligence for retail, it is critical to ensure consistent and unambiguous product dimension information. This is challenging, especially if an organization does not have full control over the source of either transaction or master data. Such lack of control is the case when brands rely on data provided directly by consumers through images of receipts. Product name strings obtained from the digitization of receipts often contain substitution, insertion, and deletion errors. These errors prevent product names from serving as a useful dimension for further analysis. This paper proposes a clustering-based approach to link error-laden product names to underlying SKUs to remove this noise. The problem can be modeled as an entity resolution problem: each digitized product name is a reference to an underlying entity SKU. The entity resolution problem can further be modeled as a clique-partitioning problem that can be solved in a reasonable time with an agglomerative clustering heuristic. The results of clustering a synthetic data set show that the approach can successfully resolve product references to reveal coarse-grained (i.e., category, generic product) groupings. Future work may be done on implementing blocking strategies, optimizing the model parameters, and understanding the limits of the model for fine-grained (i.e., size variation) groupings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Businesses deal with different types of documents containing unstructured documents. The data in these documents must be converted into digital forms other automated systems could only process. One generic use case is document classification, which usually involves manual transformation due to human understanding needed in the process. These documents go beyond those generated through regular business transactions and operations and also include web-based content such as online news, blogs, e-mails, and various digital libraries. Recent developments in robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) aim to automate the otherwise expensive, time-consuming, and repetitive manual steps. Through more powerful natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) capabilities, large language models (LLMs) may come as a big boost in applying AI to RPA initiatives. This study proposes a general approach to using LLMs as document classifier co-pilots for knowledge workers in charge of classifying documents to be useful. The manner of prompt engineering and refinement involving labeled health insurance documents to achieve better results is discussed and evaluated through early, iterative classification attempts. However, early tests with a complex sample use case show unsatisfactory results. The study ends with recommendations for future work to improve precision and recall performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, scholars in discourse studies and sociolinguistics have shown considerable interest in how identity is encoded in discourses across various facets of life such as academia, home, politics and workplace. By adopting an ethnographic-style approach, this study shows how students in a Ghanaian university construct their gendered identities through a key verbal behaviour, address form. A three-pronged framework comprising social constructionism, communities of practice and post-structuralism underpins the present study. Two key findings emerge from the analysis of data. First, three major categories of address forms, namely personal names, descriptive phrases and titles constitute the key lexicon of address terms used by Ghanaian students in their interactions. Second, students constantly use these three modes of address to express, negotiate or resist their gendered identities. These findings have implications for research on identity, language and gender as well as intercultural communication.

An important feature of the interface between language and society is the use of address terms. Following Brown and Gilman (1960), research studies of address terms have been extended to several cultural settings. This study contributes to this fertile area of sociolinguistic studies by describing the address terms used among undergraduates in an English-medium university in Ghana. Two sets of data collected from participant and nonparticipant observation and interviews constitute the primary source of data, supplemented by intuition. Analysis and discussion of this study point to three key findings. First, Ghanaian students use four major groups of address terms. The second finding relates to the use of the reported modes of address, namely, personal names, titles, descriptive terms and catch phrases to reflect and construct the individual and social identity of students. The final point is the use of modes of address to reflect a warm and vivacious culture. These findings have implication for theory and intercultural communication.

Following the study of Gilman and Ford on address terms, an increasing number of studies have been conducted in several sociocultural settings. In line with this trend, the present study attempts to describe and explain address terms among the Akans of postcolonial Ghana. Using observation as the main research tool corroborated by interview and introspection, the researcher noted nine principal terms of address, three (personal names, catch phrases and attention getters) of which are reported here. In particular, the influence of Westernism and modernism was reflected in the use of personal names and catch phrases. With differing levels of frequency and saliency, the use of these terms was dictated by sociocultural factors such as gender, status, age and relationship of interactants as well as pragmatic factors. These findings have implications for theory, intercultural communication and further research.

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Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were successfully generated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from two patients with a heterozygous mutation in the CDC42 gene. Both iPSC lines expressed pluripotency markers, differentiated into the three germ layers in vitro , showed normal karyotypes, and retained the disease-causing mutation. Created iPSC lines and their differentiated derivatives may be of interest in the study of the physiology of disease mechanisms and therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have successfully generated human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of a patient with COPA Syndrome. The patient, a 6 year old Caucasian male, has a spontaneous de novo missense mutation that replaced alanine with proline in the COPA gene. This paper confirms the differentiation potential of the hiPSC line, the presence of the p.Ala239Pro mutation, and the expression of typical pluripotency markers within the hiPSC line. The hiPSC line is ready for use as a cellular model of COPA Syndrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a study that employs a modified version of Swales' (1990) move analysis to investigates the generic structure of introductions in a total of 120 writing samples of Ghanaian undergraduates in English and Sociology. The study reveals differences between the two groups in their use of move-structures.