Gender stereotypes, biases, and beliefs have kept women from rising to positions of high leadership, when men have historically held these positions. The aim of the study was to explore what motivates women leaders to seek senior leadership positions in the context of a Namibian higher education institution. The study utilised a phenomenological case-study methodology supported by a critical paradigm used together with a qualitative approach to capture the narratives and lived experiences of female leaders assuming high leadership roles. Semi-structured interview data were examined thematically by highlighting recurring themes, patterns, and significant issues. Feminist standpoint theory and role modelling motivation theory were used to theorise the study's findings. The study reveals that women leaders have developed critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills, improved communication, writing, and interpersonal relations through reading and writing, and leadership experiences from diverse backgrounds. Attending seminars, conferences, and workshops has also contributed to their positive experiences in leadership. Women leaders have shown positive experiences by positively impacting colleagues' lives, creating a positive work environment, and encouraging individuals to pursue their studies. Such a study holds significance as it contributes to addressing gender disparities and promotes diversity. It facilitates overcoming prejudices, work-life balance, mentoring, and organisational culture, aiming to create more inclusive leadership environments. Future research in Namibian higher education should gather data from aspiring women leaders in non-leadership roles, investigate mentoring's impact on career advancement and retention, and explore the experiences of men leaders in senior leadership positions, aiming to gain informed comparisons and understanding of women leaders.

Gender preconceptions, biases, and notions have prevented women from advancing into top leadership roles, with males traditionally holding these positions. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of women in senior leadership positions in the context of a Namibian higher education institution. The study adopted a qualitative design and phenomenological case study approach underpinned by a critical paradigm to capture the lived experiences and stories of women leaders in senior leadership positions. The data obtained via semi-structured interviews were analysed thematically by identifying patterns, themes and key issues that emerged. Women leaders faced biases and stereotypes that undermined their credibility and effectiveness as leaders. These biases led to discriminatory treatment and limited opportunities for advancement. The existing male-dominated networks and informal channels of influence exclude women, making it challenging for them to build relationships with key decision-makers and access professional development opportunities. The study recommends support such as induction, mentorship and training and designing deliberate strategies to attract more women to senior leadership. The institutions can use these findings to create better inclusion standards in their policies and to promote women’s leadership in higher education institution (HEIs). The study contributes to the body of literature in the field of leadership nationally and internationally. The narrative experiences of women leaders may be helpful to the body of knowledge on the topic and may motivate aspiring young women to seek senior leadership positions in HEIs.

The fourth industrial revolution's (4IR's) disruptive digital technologies and innovations are radically altering the educational environment. The aim and structure of schooling have become progressively digital and different from the norm. Understanding principals' digital leadership practices is particularly important in the transition to digital learning as it involves navigating the digital change process in schools. This study investigated teachers' perceptions of principals' digital leadership practices in their attempts to keep up with the digital shift. Drawing on the four core principles of transformational leadership theory, the study sought to identify leadership practices that could mobilise digital learning. A generic qualitative approach was used. The study looked at three public primary schools in the Gauteng West district in South Africa. Data were generated by means of three focus group interviews with teachers and individual interviews with three principals. The findings revealed that leadership in these schools was mainly confined to conventional leadership practices which did not promote the practice of digital leadership. The findings exposed the need for principals to improve their knowledge of digital leadership in their leadership practices. The findings further highlighted the need for system-wide change in the South African education sector to support principals in transforming schools into digital learning environments. These findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge of principals' digital leadership practices.

Effective leadership and management are at the centre of the strategic management of human capital in education. Principals in schools as organizations promote the effective execution of strategies by coordinating staff members toward accomplishing school goals and objectives to improve student outcomes. Principals are critical in implementing strategic plans and providing a conducive setting for teaching and learning that allows human capital to grow and perform better. Principals must be strategic and forward-thinking by aligning school systems, culture, and processes to achieve all goals. Principals in public secondary schools in Zimbabwe face challenges in strategically managing human capital. Evidence mainly points to the teachers’ low motivation levels and lack of training and coherence in support mechanisms that would enable principals to strategically manage human capital in Zimbabwean schools. Thus, this necessitates the need to rethink the role of the principal. The study aimed to explore ways to rethink and redefine the principal’s role in Zimbabwean schools where education is in crisis. Following an interpretivist paradigm, a qualitative approach using a case study design was employed to gather data. The study found a need for policy change to strengthen the principal’s management and instructional leadership role when managing human capital effectively in schools. Such a bold move would pave the way for an upgrade in principals’ leadership and management capacities so they can effectively manage teacher performance and thereby improve academic performance.

Using devices with microfluidic channels can allow for precise control over liquids flowing through them. Merging flows of immiscible liquids can create emulsions with highly monodispersed microdroplets within a carrier liquid, which are ideal for miniaturised reaction vessels which can be generated with a high throughput of tens of thousands of droplets per second. Control of the size and composition of these droplets is generally performed by controlling the pumping system pushing the liquids into the device; however, this is an indirect manipulation and inadequate if absolute precision is required in the size or composition of the droplets. In this work, we extend the previous development of image-based closed-loop feedback control over microdroplet generation to allow for the control of not only the size of droplets but also the composition by merging two aqueous flows. The feedback allows direct control over the desired parameters of volume and ratio of the two components over a wide range of ratios and outperforms current techniques in terms of monodispersity in volume and composition. This technique is ideal for situations where precise control over droplets is critical, or where a library of droplets of different concentrations but the same volume is required.

The Nigerian primary school system has recently undergone a major change. School system change can be either piecemeal or systemic. Systemic change provides a framework for an all-inclusive model of change that relies on locally-driven, system-wide change guided by stakeholders through ongoing collaboration and joint ownership of the change process. Teachers are key roleplayers who can either positively or negatively affect the successful implementation of school system change. This research aimed to explore teachers' challenges in the introduction and implementation of systemic change in the Nigerian primary school system. We used system theory as the theoretical framework to inform the study. This qualitative study is located in a constructivist research paradigm. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers. Teachers' challenges included the non-involvement of stakeholders in the change planning process, incorrect statistical data, inadequate funding, teacher demotivation, poor channels of communication, political influence, misappropriation and embezzlement of funds, and poor monitoring and evaluation of the change. Effective school system change requires a systemic approach to change that encompasses all tiers of a school system. The findings provide insight into how future change in the Nigerian primary school system could be conducted more effectively than in the past.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global healthcare crisis, with an estimated 5.8 million new cases and 1.5 million deaths in 2020. TB is caused by infection with the major human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is difficult to rapidly diagnose and treat. There is an urgent need for new methods of diagnosis, sufficient in vitro models that capably mimic all physiological conditions of the infection, and high-throughput drug screening platforms. Microfluidic-based techniques provide single-cell analysis which reduces experimental time and the cost of reagents, and have been extremely useful for gaining insight into monitoring microorganisms. This review outlines the field of microfluidics and discusses the use of this novel technique so far in M. tuberculosis diagnostics, research methods, and drug discovery platforms. The practices of microfluidics have promising future applications for diagnosing and treating TB.

High and ultra-high-throughput label-free sample analysis is required by many applications, extending from environ-mental monitoring to drug discovery and industrial biotechnology. HTS methods predominantly are based on a targeted workflow, which can limit their scope. Mass spectrometry readily provides chemical identity and abundance for complex mixtures and here, we use microdroplet generation microfluidics to supply picolitre aliquots for analysis at rates up to and including 33 Hz. This is demon-strated for small molecules, peptides and proteins up to 66 kDa on three commercially available mass spectrometers from salty solutions to mimic cellular environments. Designs for chip-based interfaces that permit this coupling are presented and the merits and challenges of these interfaces are discussed. On an Orbitrap platform droplet infusion rates of 6 Hz are used for the analysis of cytochrome c, on a DTIMS Q-TOF similar rates were obtained and on a TWIMS Q-TOF utilizing IM-MS software rates up to 33 Hz are demonstrated. The potential of this approach is demonstrated with proof of concept experiments on crude mixtures including egg white, unpurified recombinant protein and a biotransformation supernatant.

The primary goal of bioprocess cell line development is to obtain high product yields from robustly growing and well-defined clonal cell lines in timelines measured in weeks rather than months. Likewise, high-throughput screening of B cells and hybridomas is required for most cell line engineering workflows. A substantial bottleneck in these processes is detecting and isolating rare clonal cells with the required characteristics. Traditionally, this was achieved by the resource-intensive method of limiting dilution cloning, and more recently aided by semiautomated technologies such as cell sorting (e.g., fluorescence-activated cell sorting) and colony picking. In this paper we report on our novel Cyto-Mine Single Cell Analysis and Monoclonality Assurance System, which overcomes the limitations of current technologies by screening hundreds of thousands of individual cells for secreted target proteins, and then isolating and dispensing the highest producers into microtiter plate wells (MTP). The Cyto-Mine system performs this workflow using a fully integrated, microfluidic Cyto-Cartridge. Critically, all reagents and Cyto-Cartridges used are animal component-free (ACF) and sterile, thus allowing fast, robust, and safe isolation of desired cells.

After the national transition in 1994, South Africa was welcomed back into the international political and economic arena. Becoming part of the global community, including emerging economies, has had major implications for the country, including its school system. The previously relatively stable and predictable, if unjust, school system needed radical change. In this paper, we report on how Organisation Development (OD) as an action research school change strategy was introduced to a school staff. The outcome has been a gradual change in the organisation culture of the school. This includes more collaborative decision-making, open communication, teacher leadership, increased enthusiasm among teachers, and an on-going process of incremental school change. We suggest that OD is a feasible change strategy for schools and school systems in emerging contexts of rapid and ongoing change in which schools are expected to take increasing responsibility for themselves.

High throughput screening (HTS) of molecular analytes is in high demand from and implemented in many areas of chemistry, medicine and industrial biotechnology including the discovery of biomarkers and the development of new chemical entities. Despite its prevalence, technical challenges remain in many of the new application areas of HTS which require rapid results from complex mixtures, for example in: screening biotransformations; targeted metabolomics; and in locating drugs and/or metabolites in biological matrices. Common to all of these are lengthy and costly sample preparation stages, involving recovery from cell cultures, extractions followed by low throughput LC-MS/MS methods or specific fluorescence measurements. In the latter the target molecules need to be inherently fluorescent or to include a fluorescent label or tag which can adversely influence a cellular system. Direct infusion mass spectrometry coupled with robotic sample infusion is a viable contender for information rich HTS with sub-second analysis times, and recent developments in ambient ionisation have heralded a new era where screening can be performed on crude cell lysates or even from live cells. Besides commercially available technologies such as RapidFire, Acoustic Mist Ionisation, and the TriVersa ChipMate there are promising new developments from academic groups. Novel applications using desorption electrospray ionisation, microfluidics, rapid LC-separation and 'one cell' direct infusion methods offer much potential for increasing throughput from 'messy' complex samples and for significantly reducing the amount of material that needs to be analysed. Here we review recent advances in HTS coupled with MS with an emphasis on methods that reduce or remove all sample preparation and will facilitate single cell screening approaches.

Micron-scale droplets isolated by an immiscible liquid can provide miniaturised reaction vessels which can be manipulated in microfluidic networks, and has seen a rapid growth in development. In many experiments, the precise volume of these microdroplets is a critical parameter which can be influenced by many external factors. In this work, we demonstrate the combination of imaging-based feedback and pressure driven pumping to accurately control the size of microdroplets produced in a microfluidic device. The use of fast-response, pressure-driving pumps allows the microfluidic flow to be quickly and accurately changed, while directly measuring the droplet size allows the user to define the more meaningful parameters of droplet size and generation frequency rather than flow rates or pressures. The feedback loop enables the drift correction of pressure based pumps, and leads to a large increase in the mono-dispersity of the droplets produced over long periods. We also show how this can be extended to control multiple liquid flows, allowing the frequency of droplet formation or the average concentration of living cells per droplet to be controlled and kept constant.

The prevalence of clinically-relevant bacterial strains resistant to current antibiotic therapies is increasing and has been recognized as a major health threat. For example, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are of global concern. Novel methodologies are needed to identify new targets or novel compounds unaffected by pre-existing resistance mechanisms. Recently, water-in-oil picodroplets have been used as an alternative to conventional high-throughput methods, especially for phenotypic screening. Here we demonstrate a novel microfluidic-based picodroplet platform which enables high-throughput assessment and isolation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a label-free manner. As a proof-of-concept, the system was used to isolate fusidic acid-resistant mutants and estimate the frequency of resistance among a population of Escherichia coli (strain HS151). This approach can be used for rapid screening of rare antibiotic-resistant mutants to help identify novel compound/target pairs.

In this paper, we successfully demonstrated our proposed workflow for high throughput MS analysis of metabolism product molecules from synthetic biology libraries in single cell level. Throughout the whole workflow, we developed novel microfluidics, hardware to interface with commercial mass spectrometer and control software with proprietary picodroplet coding and decoding algorithm.

Top performing companies have long used intelligence tests in their selection procedures to predict who the best leaders are. However, no longer are the brightest favoured, or guaranteed success. A post-modern world demands a fresh outlook on leadership. How can school leaders judge their effectiveness? How can school leaders lead intelligently? This article explores a theoretical approach to effective school leadership in an emerging context, which embraces a holistic understanding of intelligence. While individual rational (IQ), emotional (EQ) and spiritual (SQ) intelligences are necessary for a leader, their true power lies in maintaining a balance among all three. This is known as leadership intelligence (LQ).

Microfluidic microdroplets have increasingly found application in biomolecular sensing as well as nanomaterials growth. More recently the synthesis of plasmonic nanostructures in microdroplets has led to surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based sensing applications. However, the study of nanoassembly in microdroplets has previously been hindered by the lack of on-chip characterization tools, particularly at early timescales. Enabled by a refractive index matching microdroplet formulation, dark-field spectroscopy is exploited to directly track the formation of nanometer-spaced gold nanoparticle assemblies in microdroplets. Measurements in flow provide millisecond time resolution through the assembly process, allowing identification of a regime where dimer formation dominates the dark-field scattering and SERS. Furthermore, it is shown that small numbers of nanoparticles can be isolated in microdroplets, paving the way for simple high-yield assembly, isolation, and sorting of few nanoparticle structures.

Supporting data for the article titled Electrostatically-directed self-assembly of ultra-thin supramolecular polymer microcapsules. The article was accepted for publication on 28th April 2015 in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. Electronic supporting Information is available from the publisher (Wiley). This data provides the original confocal fluorescence micrographs and the corresponding spreadsheets used to generate the line-graphs included in Figures 2 and 4 in the manuscript, and S5 in the Electronic supporting Information. The processed spreadsheet, hyperspectral cube dataset and optical micrographs used in 2-dimensional thickness mapping of the microcapsule, as reported in Figure 3 of the manuscript, is also included. NMR and IR spectra are in the synthesis and characterisation folder.

Since the last decades of the 20th century, school accountability has dominated the policy discourse internationally. School districts, through an inspectorate, typically became the hub around which accountability mechanisms were implemented. In the Gauteng province of South Africa, school inspectors are known as Institutional Development and Support Officials (IDSOs).The research aim was to explore how school principals in a Gauteng school district experience the role of their IDSOs. This is an interpretive case study. The data is derived from in-depth interviews with purposefully selected school principals.Most of the principals experience their IDSOs as being almost exclusively concerned with ticking boxes on checklists for policy compliance rather than with school development support. They experienced the IDSOs as intrusions rather than as resources. The principals' expressed a desire for meaningful engagement about education issues with visionary leaders. This study makes a modest contribution to the little literature that exists on school districts in South Africa.

Tolerance is one of the most important values that needs to be nurtured in South Africa's contemporary multicultural and diverse society. Schools are at the epicentre of teaching tolerance. School's established by the Hizmet Movement (Hizmet means "Service" in Turkish), inspired by the teachings of Fethullah Gulen - a Turkish Islamic scholar and educational activist - are internationally acclaimed for their propagation of tolerance, peace, dialogue and social cohesion.School leadership has a significant role to play in tolerance education, by providing a vision, leading by example and through active participation. For this reason, it is crucial for principals to understand the notion of tolerance. The aim of this research, therefore, was to explore Hizmet school principals' perceptions of tolerance in their tolerance education practices in South African Hizmet schools.A qualitative research approach was employed. The eight Hizmet Movement affiliated schools in South Africa, known as Star Colleges, were selected to participate in the study. Focus group interviews and semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with the principals of the eight schools. Qualitative content analysis procedures were used to analyse the data.The findings of this study reveal that the Hizmet school principals' perceptions of tolerance are shaped by the thoughts, teachings and practices of Fethullah Gulen. These perceptions can be summarised in two complementary sentences. Firstly, they view tolerance as the essence of loving creation, based on the notion that everything comes from the Creator. The second is based on the principle of having a place for everyone in one's heart.This study contributes to the limited research on tolerance education in South African schools. It also provides the first known scholarly study on Hizmet Movement schools in South Africa.