Use Of Informatıon And Communıcatıon Technology (Ict) Devıces For Instructıonal Delıvery In Secondary Schools In Ebonyı State Of Nıgerıa

The study examined teachers perceptions on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) devices for instructional delivery in secondary schools in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Four research questions guided the study. The population of the study comprised of all the three thousand two hundred and eighty-five (3,285) teacher in the two hundred and twenty-one (221) public secondary schools in Ebonyi State. Simple random sampling technique was used to select (8) teachers each from ninety schools used for the study to give a sample of seven hundred and twenty (720) respondents. The instrument used for data collection was structured questionnaire. Pearson’s Moment Correlation Co-efficient was used to calculate the reliability co-efficient of the pilot tests to get established reliability value of 0.79. The data collected were analysed using mean scores. It was found among other things that ICT devices are not adequately available, most available ICT devices are not in good working condition in schools studied, hence they are not adequately used and above all trained personnel are not also adequately available to operate the functional ones. Government through her appropriate agencies should as a matter of urgency procure and distribute the necessary ICT devices to secondary schools, more trained personnel should be recruited but for the interim the available ones could be retrained through short term holiday programmes, workshops and conferences to ensure adequate use and maintenance of these ICT devices as this will go a long way in improving instructional delivery in Ebonyi State Secondary Schools

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: A Systematic Review of Occupational Therapy Interventions

Background: The purpose of this systematic review is to describe the current role of occupational therapy (OT) in the treatment of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). JIA is an umbrella term that encompasses six subtypes of the disease. JIA is one of the most common childhood chronic diseases and can be accompanied by symptoms such as pain, stiffness, and loss of function, as well as psychosocial impacts. JIA participants generally receive pharmacological treatment, but less commonly receive therapeutic interventions to help reduce symptoms. Individualized treatment plans are necessary for clients with JIA due to the diverse nature of the disease. Occupational therapists are uniquely suited to deliver interventions due to the holistic nature of the profession. Methods: The OTPF-3 helped guide the systematic review as it is the definitive document that identifies the scope of occupational therapy practice. This study followed the PRISMA guidelines and searched the PubMed and CINAHL databases. Fifteen studies were identified by three researchers, based on identified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: After analyzing the data, six main themes were identified as the most common interventions. These themes are: aquatic/pool therapy, active range of motion, passive range of motion/stretching, orthotics/splints/casting, aerobic exercise, and modalities. Of the fifteen studies, four studies reported statistically significant findings and one study reported a clinically significant finding. Conclusions: Due to most studies having multiple interventions, it was difficult to determine which individual interventions were effective in improving outcomes. Aerobic exercise and aquatic therapy showed clinically significant changes. Modalities are also effective in helping to reduce pain and increase range of motion. Although occupational therapists did not deliver all the interventions in these studies, the profession has used most of them in practice and would be able to apply them to JIA clients. This systematic review identified interventions within the scope of occupational therapy practice that have the potential to be effective in treatment for individuals with JIA

Automatic, fast and robust characterization of noise distributions for diffusion MRI

Knowledge of the noise distribution in magnitude diffusion MRI images is the centerpiece to quantify uncertainties arising from the acquisition process. The use of parallel imaging methods, the number of receiver coils and imaging filters applied by the scanner, amongst other factors, dictate the resulting signal distribution. Accurate estimation beyond textbook Rician or noncentral chi distributions often requires information about the acquisition process (e.g. coils sensitivity maps or reconstruction coefficients), which is not usually available. We introduce a new method where a change of variable naturally gives rise to a particular form of the gamma distribution for background signals. The first moments and maximum likelihood estimators of this gamma distribution explicitly depend on the number of coils, making it possible to estimate all unknown parameters using only the magnitude data. A rejection step is used to make the method automatic and robust to artifacts. Experiments on synthetic datasets show that the proposed method can reliably estimate both the degrees of freedom and the standard deviation. The worst case errors range from below 2% (spatially uniform noise) to approximately 10% (spatially variable noise). Repeated acquisitions of in vivo datasets show that the estimated parameters are stable and have lower variances than compared methods.Comment: v2: added publisher DOI statement, fixed text typo in appendix A

Are autistic traits measured equivalently in individuals with and without an Autism Spectrum Disorder?:An invariance analysis of the Autism Spectrum Quotient Short Form

It is common to administer measures of autistic traits to those without autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) with, for example, the aim of understanding autistic personality characteristics in non-autistic individuals. Little research has examined the extent to which measures of autistic traits actually measure the same traits in the same way across those with and without an ASD. We addressed this question using a multi-group confirmatory factor invariance analysis of the Autism Quotient Short Form (AQ-S: Hoekstra et al. in J Autism Dev Disord 41(5):589-596, 2011) across those with (n = 148) and without (n = 168) ASD. Metric variance (equality of factor loadings), but not scalar invariance (equality of thresholds), held suggesting that the AQ-S measures the same latent traits in both groups, but with a bias in the manner in which trait levels are estimated. We, therefore, argue that the AQ-S can be used to investigate possible causes and consequences of autistic traits in both groups separately, but caution is due when combining or comparing levels of autistic traits across the two group

Mixed-Model Noise Removal in 3D MRI via Rotation-and-Scale Invariant Non-Local Means

Mixed noise is a major issue influencing quantitative analysis in different forms of magnetic resonance image (MRI), such as T1 and diffusion image like DWI and DTI. Using different filters sequentially to remove mixed noise will severely deteriorate such medical images. We present a novel algorithm called rotation-and-scale invariant nonlocal means filter (RSNLM) to simultaneously remove mixed noise from different kinds of three-dimensional (3D) MRI images. First, we design a new similarity weights, including rank-ordered absolute difference (ROAD), coming from a trilateral filter (TriF) that is obtained to detect the mixed and high-level noise. Then, we present a shape view to consider the MRI data as a 3D operator, with which the similarity between the patches is calculated with the rigid transformation. The translation, rotation and scale have no influence on the similarity. Finally, the adaptive parameter estimation method of ROAD is illustrated, and the effective proof that validates the proposed algorithm is presented. Experiments using synthetic data with impulse noise, Rician noise, and the real MRI data confirm that the proposed method yields superior performance compared with current state-of-the-art methods

Understory 2014

“Art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.” —Iris Murdoch Indeed, when we embark on any creative adventure it is with the purpose of conveying a certain truth; an emotion, an idea that brings us together and reminds us of the innate consciousness that dwells within. Understory is emblematic of this; where individuals intent on honing their craft can join others to become a part of something greater, their work immortalized to become a time capsule. Decades from now a volume of Understory may be discovered on a dusty bookshelf in some forgotten corner and the lucky explorer who finds it shall be enlightened by pages of gold. We, as editors of Understory 2014, have worked very hard this year to put together a journal that showcases the very best of the University of Alaska Anchorage undergraduate student work. We hope you enjoy your journey through this issue as much as we have enjoyed ours. Thank you to the English and Art Departments, for the staff and faculty’s unerring support of our club; to Provost Baker, for seeing and believing in the vision of Understory; and to our club’s faculty advisor, Douglass Bourne, for his guidance and tireless assistance. Finally, thank you to the wonderful students who submit such excellent work each year. Without your passion for the arts, we would not be here.Staff / Letter from the Editors / Glass Blower / Writing / Obsolete Evolution / Permafrost / Phoenix / Untitled / Ratio / Tripping / Abiogenesis / My Heart Beats for You / Meeting of the Fingerprint Lines / You Are No Stranger / Nightmare Fuel / Cane-Sugar / Gossamer Strands / Panthera Gold / Butterfly / A Mantis Too Far / Long and Winding Road / Chasing Shadows / Merisunas / Chequer Grove / Modzilla / Beans / Little Red and Mr. Wolf / In Memoriam, Joel Fletcher Armstrong / Glance / Courage / Uranium Waltz / Danger / Journey to the West / Antumbra / Roaring Like a Lion / Pre-boarding / Untitled / How Do You Say a Word / Fishing for Doom/ Contributor

Occurrence of canine transmissible venereal tumour

Canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) is the most common neoplasm of the genital sites transmitted through allogenic transplantation of tumour cells during coitus or at extragenital sites like oral or nasal mucosa by licking, scratching or sniffing affected area. In this study the overall occurrence of CTVT and its occurrence was analysed based on breed, age, gender, parity, season, reproductive status and breeding history, collected from retrospective data of clinical records maintained at University Veterinary Hospitals. The overall occurrence of CTVT was 0.15 per cent among total presented cases, 0.88 per cent among total reproductive disorders, 21.42 per cent among total canine tumour cases and 4.74 per cent among cases with vaginal bleeding. Higher occurrence was recorded in female dogs (88.59%), dogs aged 2-5 years (73.91%), intact females (88.04%), pluriparous dogs (41.10%) and during south-west monsoon season (32.07%). Breed wise occurrence was higher in Labrador Retriever dogs (41.30%) followed by non-descript dogs (22.28%). Occurrence was higher in dogs with history of mating with stud dogs (81.60%) when compared to stray dogs (18.40%)

Restoration of DWI Data Using a Rician LMMSE Estimator

This paper introduces and analyzes a linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimator using a Rician noise model and its recursive version (RLMMSE) for the restoration of diffusion weighted images. A method to estimate the noise level based on local estimations of mean or variance is used to automatically parametrize the estimator. The restoration performance is evaluated using quality indexes and compared to alternative estimation schemes. The overall scheme is simple, robust, fast, and improves estimations. Filtering diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) with the proposed methodology leads to more accurate tensor estimations. Real and synthetic datasets are analyzed