Forgotten, excluded or included? students with disabilities: a case study at the University of Mauritius

Background: Students with disabilities in the tertiary education sector are more than a just a phenomenon, they are a reality. In general, little attention is devoted to their needs despite the fact that they need more care and attention.Objectives: This paper, through a case study at the University of Mauritius, sought to answer some pertinent questions regarding students with disabilities. Does the University of Mauritius have sufficient facilities to support these students? Are students aware of existing facilities? What additional structures need to be put in place so that students with any form of disability are neither victimised, nor their education undermined? Are there any local laws about students with disabilities in higher education?Method: To answer these questions and others, an online questionnaire was sent to 500 students and the responses were then analysed and discussed. The response rate was 24.4% which showed that students were not reticent to participate in this study.Results: Our survey revealed that most students were not aware of existing facilities and were often neglected in terms of supporting structures and resources. ICT facilities were found to be the best support that is provided at the University of Mauritius. The right legal framework for tertiary education was also missing.Conclusion: Ideally, students with disabilities should have access to special facilities to facilitate their learning experiences at tertiary institutions. Awareness about existing facilities must also be raised in order to offer equal opportunities to them and to enable a seamless inclusion

Predictive Perspectives of Disease-Transformed Protein Biomarkers.

With advancement in instrumentation, computation and understanding of disease etiology, proteomics has been expanded to harness the knowledge of change in protein folding and misfolding, protein-protein interaction, protein modification, etc. during progression of disease which is a source of discovery for various biomarkers including predictive biomarkers. Various methodologies for disease prediction are reported using ‘omics’ technology; however, advancement in proteomics with discovery of protein biomarker allows for the estimation of disease risk from years to decades before any disease even manifests internally. Specific proteins as disease biomarkers that appear in the body fluid/diseased tissues are generally measured. Recently, new proteomics technologies are also being developed in order to facilitate both the highthroughput and high-sensitivity requirements of diseaserelated applications of proteomics and possibly providing the framework for prediction of diseases. Therefore, there is a growing interest in proteomics technologies to discover processes that are involved in various diseases, to discover new biomarkers that correlates with the prediction and early detection of diseases. Now there is change in research thinking where already known biomarkers alone or in combination of others are under investigation for advanced application like in prediction and early detection of chronic diseases. In this review, we have emphasized the prediction perspective of some of the protein biomarkers like CA-125, Lp-PLA2 and tau protein for diseases like cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and Alzheimer’s respectively.