Relationship between Stress Management Skills and Undergraduate Students’ Academic Achievement in Two Nigerian Universities

This study investigated the relationship between stress management skills and academic achievement of undergraduate students in two Nigerian universities. A total of 800 undergraduate students randomly selected from two universities participated in the study. Three null hypotheses were tested using data generated from research instruments. The instruments included a modified stress management scale adopted from its original form found in Blonna (2005). It has reliability co-efficient of 0.81. Data generated from this instrument were correlated with current students’ grade point average scores(G.P.A) using Pearson product moment correlation method. Results showed strong positive relationship between stress management skills and academic achievement. The relationship still exists when the data for each of the two genders were processed separately. It was recommended that stress management skills training should be given prominence in universities’ guidance and counselling programmes while concerned authorities should endeavour to provide facilities that may help to reduce academic stress

Towards Bridging IS and Sustainability Transitions Research Communities? – Bibliometric Mapping of IS Beyond GreenIT

This paper explores how to bridge the field of IS on sustainability with Sustainability Transitions Research (STR). Using a bibliometric analysis of 5 IS conference proceedings, We map possibilities for such bridging, moving beyond the current approaches of GreenIT. Semantic content analysis of IS abstracts and keywords indicates themes characterizing GreenIT, focusing mostly on sustainability practice on the organizational level. In contrast, sustainability research (systems-level) is still uncharted territory for the IS community. Social network analysis of the authors and journals shows that collaboration and co-citation within the IS community are as low as the connection without . We propose that more diffusion of IS theory and methods through Design Science may enrich current STR to be truly data-driven and theory-guided. First, the mapping suggests that IS theorizing can augment STR to be more generalizable for the digital era. Second, the thematic patterns suggest that Design Science methods and artifacts can augment the design of large-size STR studies bringing a more robust and data-driven theory-guided analysis of systemic innovation and transitions actor networks

Socio-economic Background And The Relative Efficacy Of Self Drills On Factual Recall And Students’ Achievement In English Language In Senior Secondary Schools In Nigeria

Factual recall is an aspect of memory which deals with the lower order cognitive functioning comprising of knowledge and comprehension. It is the aspect of memory which serves as the foundation for the higher order cognitive functioning which includes application, synthesis and evaluation of knowledge. Definitely, good factual recall ability is needed to enable man acquire knowledge and comprehension which form the basis for ability to apply, evaluate and synthesize knowledge at the higher levels of learning. Interestingly, factual recall skill is not present equally in all human beings. Some people have the capacity to keep things for long in their memory, while some forget every bit of information within a twinkle of an eye (Green, 2005)

DeepHive: A multi-agent reinforcement learning approach for automated discovery of swarm-based optimization policies

We present an approach for designing swarm-based optimizers for the global optimization of expensive black-box functions. In the proposed approach, the problem of finding efficient optimizers is framed as a reinforcement learning problem, where the goal is to find optimization policies that require a few function evaluations to converge to the global optimum. The state of each agent within the swarm is defined as its current position and function value within a design space and the agents learn to take favorable actions that maximize reward, which is based on the final value of the objective function. The proposed approach is tested on various benchmark optimization functions and compared to the performance of other global optimization strategies. Furthermore, the effect of changing the number of agents, as well as the generalization capabilities of the trained agents are investigated. The results show superior performance compared to the other optimizers, desired scaling when the number of agents is varied, and acceptable performance even when applied to unseen functions. On a broader scale, the results show promise for the rapid development of domain-specific optimizers

A Competitive Learning Approach for Specialized Models: A Solution for Complex Physical Systems with Distinct Functional Regimes

Complex systems in science and engineering sometimes exhibit behavior that changes across different regimes. Traditional global models struggle to capture the full range of this complex behavior, limiting their ability to accurately represent the system. In response to this challenge, we propose a novel competitive learning approach for obtaining data-driven models of physical systems. The primary idea behind the proposed approach is to employ dynamic loss functions for a set of models that are trained concurrently on the data. Each model competes for each observation during training, allowing for the identification of distinct functional regimes within the dataset. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the learning approach, we coupled it with various regression methods that employ gradient-based optimizers for training. The proposed approach was tested on various problems involving model discovery and function approximation, demonstrating its ability to successfully identify functional regimes, discover true governing equations, and reduce test errors

Anti-nociceptive effects of taurine and caffeine in sciatic nerve ligated wistar rats: involvement of autonomic receptors

In this study, we investigated the effects of co-administration of taurine and caffeine on thermally induced pain in sciatic nerve ligated rats as well as the roles of autonomic receptors. Rats were rendered neuropathic by unilateral sciatic nerve ligation. The anti-hyperalgesic effect of combined systemic (i.p.) administration of taurine and caffeine were assessed using tail flick tests and hot plate test for two weeks. To determine the involvement of autonomic nervous system, the study examined how administration of cholinergic (atropine and hexamethonium) and adrenergic (prazosin and propranolol) receptor blockers altered the combined effect of taurine and caffeine. Likewise, the serum level of oxidative stress marker malondialdehyde (MDA) was evaluated. The results showed that co-administration of taurine and caffeine attenuated thermal hyperalgesia in sciatic nerve ligated rats as shown by significant (p<0.05) increase in tail and paw withdrawal latencies in the treated groups compared to the ligated control group after two weeks of administration. The anti nociceptive effects were reversed by pre-treatment with cholinergic blockers especially atropine while the adrenergic blockers spared the effects of taurine and caffeine. Also, the increase in tissue level of MDA induced by sciatic nerve ligation was significantly attenuated by combined administration of high dose of taurine and caffeine. It can be concluded that co-administration of taurine and caffeine attenuates thermal hyperalgesia in sciatic nerve-ligated rats (a model of neuropathic pain) and this effect involves cholinergic system. The findings suggest that coadministration of taurine and caffeine might be useful for the treatment of neuropathic pain.Keywords: Caffeine, taurine hyperalgesia, neuropathic pain

CAREER ASPIRATIONS: AN INVESTIGATION OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS AWARENESS OF CONTEMPORARY HIGH PROFILE CAREERS

Many students are fond of naming the seemingly common and popular careers such as medicine, engineering and law as their future ambitions. The aim of this study is to determine the level of awareness of the relatively new and contemporary careers which offer bounteous prospects in the modern globalised world by Nigerian adolescents. It is a descriptive study in form of a survey in which questionnaires were used to collect data from a randomly selected sample of senior secondary school students in Ogun State. Appropriate research questions and null hypotheses were raised and tested at 0.05 level. Findings revealed that participants have low level of awareness of contemporary careers. This trend was the same among male and female, rural and urban students. Therefore, it was recommended that career education focusing on contemporary careers should be organized for students from time to time in order to raise their level of career awareness and create ample career opportunities for them in the modern globalised world