Developing government policies for distance education: lessons learnt from two Sri Lankan case studies

Education, especially higher education, is considered vital for maintaining national and individual competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. Following the introduction of its “Free Education Policy” as early as 1947, Sri Lanka is now the best performer in basic education in the South Asian region, with a remarkable record in terms of high literacy rates and the achievement of universal primary education. However, access to tertiary education is a bottleneck, due to an acute shortage of university places. In an attempt to address this problem, the government of Sri Lanka has invested heavily in information and communications technologies (ICTs) for distance education. Although this has resulted in some improvement, the authors of this article identify several barriers which are still impeding successful participation for the majority of Sri Lankans wanting to study at tertiary level. These impediments include the lack of infrastructure/resources, low English language proficiency, weak digital literacy, poor quality of materials and insufficient provision of student support. In the hope that future implementations of ICT-enabled education programmes can avoid repeating the mistakes identified by their research in this Sri Lankan case, the authors conclude their paper with a list of suggested policy options.

Phosphorescence quantum yield enhanced by intermolecular hydrogen bonds in Cu4I4 clusters in the solid state

Organo-copper(I) halide complexes with a Cu4I4 cubane core and cyclic amines as ligands have been synthesized and their crystal structures have been defined. Their solid state photophysical properties have been measured and correlated with the crystal structure and packing. A unique and remarkably high luminescence quantum yield (76%) has been measured for one of the complexes having the cubane clusters arranged in a columnar structure and held together by N–HI hydrogen bonds. This high luminescence quantum yield is correlated with a slow radiationless deactivation rate of the excited state and suggests a rather strong enhancement of the cubane core rigidity bestowed by the hydrogen bond pattern. Some preliminary thin film deposition experiments show that these compounds could be considered to be good candidates for applications in electroluminescent devices because of their bright luminescence, low cost and relatively easy synthesis processes

Government intervention or entrepreneurial profit? Explaining innovation in the Korean online gaming industry

The paper examines how and why the Korean online gaming industry gained dominance in the global market despite US and Japanese competition in related gaming sectors.

OX133, a monoclonal antibody recognizing protein-bound N-ethylmaleimide for the identification of reduced disulfide bonds in proteins

In vivo, enzymatic reduction of some protein disulfide bonds, allosteric disulfide bonds, provides an important level of structural and functional regulation. The free cysteine residues generated can be labeled by maleimide reagents, including biotin derivatives, allowing the reduced protein to be detected or purified. During the screening of monoclonal antibodies for those specific for the reduced forms of proteins, we isolated OX133, a unique antibody that recognizes polypeptide resident, N-ethylmaleimide (NEM)-modified cysteine residues in a sequence-independent manner. OX133 offers an alternative to biotin-maleimide reagents for labeling reduced/alkylated antigens and capturing reduced/alkylated proteins with the advantage that NEM-modified proteins are more easily detected in mass spectrometry, and may be more easily recovered than is the case following capture with biotin based reagents.