Conservation and Biodiversity Erosion in Ondo State, Nigeria: (2). Assessing Botanicals Used in the Storage of Farm Produce in Akure region

Semi-structured questionnaire matrix was used to identify plant species used for storage purposes in five communities situated within 5kilometre radius from Akure, the Ondo State capital, south-western Nigeria. A total of 32 botanical species were found to be commonly used in the preservation of farm produce in the study area. The leaves constituted the major part of the botanical that were widely utilised while the major farm produce common in the study area were kola nuts and bitter kola The descriptions of the indigenous knowledge of the various methods of application of the botanicals were identified and documented. Only nine of the botanicals were cultivated abundantly in the study area. The household farm, forest and common area constituted the major primary sources of the storage botanicals. Strategies that could ensure the continuous supply of the storage botanicals were proposed

The network structure of visited locations according to geotagged social media photos

Businesses, tourism attractions, public transportation hubs and other points of interest are not isolated but part of a collaborative system. Making such collaborative network surface is not always an easy task. The existence of data-rich environments can assist in the reconstruction of collaborative networks. They shed light into how their members operate and reveal a potential for value creation via collaborative approaches. Social media data are an example of a means to accomplish this task. In this paper, we reconstruct a network of tourist locations using fine-grained data from Flickr, an online community for photo sharing. We have used a publicly available set of Flickr data provided by Yahoo! Labs. To analyse the complex structure of tourism systems, we have reconstructed a network of visited locations in Europe, resulting in around 180,000 vertices and over 32 million edges. An analysis of the resulting network properties reveals its complex structure.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Influence of Personality Types and Socio-Demographic Characteristics of Work-Study Students at a Private University, Southwest Nigeria

This study examined the influence of personality types and socio-demographic characteristics on work-study of students at Covenant University, Ota. The study used questionnaires to collect information from 100 students who participated in the programme in 2014/2015 academic session. The chi-x2 result of 12.30 for the variable responses showed that the age and the sex of students influenced their participation in work study programme with chi-x2 (29.80), degree of freedom 4 and significance level of 1 % of the combined result respectively. The finding of investigation also show that birth order influenced students participation in work study initiative with chi-x2 distribution of 19.70, degree of freedom of 4 and asymptotic significance of 1 %. Also, the result of the T-statistics (28.23) with the degree of freedom 99 revealed significance among the Personality Type “A” and “B” compositions at 1% level of significance. The estimated correlation coefficient indicates a significant strong correlation (0.630) between the response variables “Personality Type” and influence on student participation in work study programme

Travel Behaviour Of University Enviroment: Inter-Relationship Between Trip Distance And Travel Mode Choice In South-Western Nigeria

Universities’ trip pattern is an important component of overall transportation demand of a province but it is often not well represented in travel demand models. This research assessed the spatial commuting patterns of the three categories of universities in Southwestern Nigeria. This was achieved with the uniform distribution of 3000 questionnaires with 80% return rate using face to face approach. Statistical software was employed in the analysis of the data. Distance was found to be a function of commuting pattern as it has a coefficient of determination (R2) value of o.64. Moreover, 81% and 65% of staff in private and government owned universities respectively adopted the use of private cars, while walking and the use of shuttle buses were predominantly used by students for both long and short trip distances. The study showed that the use of shuttle is not affected by trip distance as compared to the other modes. However, cycling and walking should be encouraged to minimize the overdependence on the use of shuttle for both short and long distance trips. In addition, emission of greenhouse gases in universities’ environments in Nigeria could be reduced if adopte

Supervision and Quality Assurance Strategies in Education: Implication for Educational Policy Making

This paper examines the need for quality assurance and quality control strategies in improving the effectiveness of educational provision and teacher performance in schools. Governments all over the word in an attempt to educate and develop their citizens spend huge amount of money on teachers and schools but in most cases especially in the developing counties the case has been that of continuous falling in the standard and quality of their education. In fact, in some, it is near collapse. This paper found that there is the need for introduction of strategies that would lead to re – engineering of schools and introduction of effective supervisory management of the educational sector. The Paper recommends that an important division of the ministry of education must be empowered and strengthened as a strong driving force to justify the lunge investment on education. African Research Review Vol. 1 (2) 2007: pp. 87-9

Competitive Strategy and Total Quality Management Culture in organizations

This paper discusses the elements of competitive strategy, total quality management culture and productivity improvement and their relationship in producing better outputs of goods and services and individual and organizational performance. Production remains fundamental to the sustenance of human existence. A productive activity is one that contributes (directly/ indirectly) to the satisfaction of people\'s wants. The wants are either material (requiring the use of resources provided by nature) or immaterial (requiring the services of other human beings). Production relations are organized around the three main agents of economic activity, including the household, the firm and the govt. given the natural tendency for population growth, outputs of various production processes have to grow for the levels of Socio-economic welfare to rise or at least be sustained at existing levels. In addition, development requires, among other things, output growth as well as access to increasingly wider ranges of goods and services in any economy. The realization of these presupposes a variety of stimuli. Prominent among the necessities are quality and productivity plus a clear and strong strategy to remain afloat in the industrial competitive market. This paper therefore, examines the concept of total qualitative management in a competitive environment within the contexts of globalizations, deregulation and liberalization. African Research Review Vol. 1 (1) 2007: pp. 55-6

Commandants' Managerial Capacity and Workers Productivity in Nigeria Police Force Schools

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the commandant's managerial capacity as if relates to workers productivity with a view to determining whether their calling to the education terrain has been justified and to correct certain areas in need of improvement in the Nigeria Police Education set up. In doing this, the study took in to cognizance the managerial process that could lead to high teacher productivity in relation to high academic performance of students The study found out that significant relationship exists between commandant Managerial capacity and teacher productivity with a Pearson correlation value of 0.284 and value of 0.001 level of significance. Other factors like experience and qualifications were found to be necessary pre-requisites for the appointment of heads of schools with chi-square value of 9.712 and p-level of 0.021 significance. Female teachers productivity was found to be lower than that of their male counterparts. In view of the findings, the study made some useful suggestions and recommendations. African Research Review Vol. 1 (3) 2007: pp. 36-5