Teaching Social Studies from multicultural perspective: a practical approach to re-fashion African Studies for transformation

Currently, global education and global citizenship for social transformation addresses the issues of cordial and harmonious existence of our time. Africa is a multilingual and multicultural continent with about 3.000 ethnic groups and 2000 languages spoken; therefore, introduction of multicultural approach in teaching will ensure effective socialization and transformative education in Africa.  The roots to challenge bias, prejudice and creating classroom environment that reflects the learner’s culture for national unity lies in multicultural education. Multicultural education is a system of instruction which attempts to foster cultural pluralism and acknowledges the difference between race and culture in order to promote societal change and orderliness. This work examined a multicultural educational strategy which could be used in helping students from diverse racial, cultural, ethnic and language groups to experience academic success. Multicultural Concepts Knowledge Test (r=0.82), Multicultural Concept Attitude Scale (r= 0.86) were administered on 251 junior secondary school students from five secondary schools in the south-west region of Nigeria using the simple random technique. Two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, analysis of covariance. Treatment had significant main effect on students’ posttest knowledge scores in multicultural concepts (F (2,340) = 5.835; p<.05).  and attitude to multicultural concepts (F (2,340) = 34.055; P<.05). The MCA shows that the cooperative learning group had higher adjusted posttest knowledge score (x =10.14; Dev. =.83) In summary, findings of this study revealed that the cooperative multicultural learning strategy is effective for teaching multicultural classrooms. Therefore, this calls for improved approaches towards teaching by educators in order to bring us closer to the goal of multicultural education    

Aquifer, Classification and Characterization

Aquifers in geological terms are referred to as bodies of saturated rocks or geological formations through which volumes of water find their way (permeability) into wells and springs. Classification of these is a function of water table location within the subsurface, its structure and hydraulic conductivities into two namely; Confined Aquifers and Unconfined Aquifers and then characterized these aquifers. The characterization of aquifers could be done using certain geophysical techniques like Electrical Resistivity, Electromagnetic Induction, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Seismic Techniques. Aquifer Characterization is dependent on the petro-physical properties (porosity, permeability, seismic velocities etc.) of the subsurface. Results of this Aquifer Characterization could be observed and analyzed using varying geophysical software (WinRESIST, RADpro etc.) to better image the subsurface

A FASHION COLOUR COMBINATION VISUALIZATION MODEL USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

Selecting appropriate colours poses great challenge for expert fashion designers and users. At times, different coloured fabrics and textiles have to be manually placed side by side to see how well they combine. In this paper, a model was developed for fashion colour combination visualization for ladies using concepts in genetic algorithm to achieve a display of colour variations. This research involved 26 users to suggest rules that guide choosing fashion colour combination for ladies in the initial stage. Analysis of the questionnaire was carried out in an online survey site. Two of the suggestions made by the users were considered. These are light colours on dark colours and stripped colours on plain colours. The system was implemented using C# programming language and XAML. It was found to be a useful tool to users and fashion designers for the visualization of fashion colour combination for ladies.

Penile fracture at Lautech Teaching Hospital, Osogbo

Background/Objective: We have seen three cases of penile fracture presenting in diverse ways in our teaching hospital.Wewant to highlight the difficulties of management when patients present late. Patients and Methods: Three case reports of young men whose ages range between 22-32 years and who presented at 1year 6months, fourweeks, and 3 hours respectively, following penile fracture. Results: The patient that presented within 3hours had immediate exploration and primary repair with good results while the one that presented after four weeks is still being followed up. The patient that presented very late has been lost to followup after hewas told that hewould require surgery. Conclusion: Early surgical intervention in penile trauma still gives the best result and is hereby advocated. Decision to operate or not should also be based on the empirical finding of size of tear if there is no associated urethra injury.KeyWords: Penile fracture, tunica albuginea, injury, surger

Analysis of Impact of Sectoral Government Expenditures on Economic Growth in Nigeria: Bound Test Co-integration Approach

This study empirically investigated the impact of government expenditures on adjudged critical sectors on economic growth in Nigeria (1984-2013). With the purpose of determining to what extent the government expenditures on these sectors are contributing to the achievement of growth objective. The study employs quantitative analysis by the use of Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag model (Bound Test Co-integration Approach) to determine both short-run and long run impact of Government expenditures on economic growth with the aid of Econometric package E-View 7. The necessary residual tests were conducted and the analysis was found to be reliable. The  specific ARDL estimates of the analysis reveals that government expenditure on defence retards the economic growth  and government expenditure on agriculture promote the economic growth while government expenditure on education and transport/communication have no impact on economic growth in the long-run. In the short run, none of the government expenditure on these sectors contributes to the growth objective. The study concludes that the reason for the failure of public expenditures to achieve the fiscal objectives is not unconnected to the fact that the level of fiscal indiscipline in these sectors is outrageous to the extent that it serves as drag to the economic growth. Consequently, the study decries policy prescription that the Government expenditures on these sectors should be increased except in the education sector to meet the UNDP recommendation.  And, further recommends that fiscal indiscipline in whatever manner among the political office holders and government officials must be mitigated to the barest minimum by ensuring that the fund budgeted are actually spent on the right course. The government should avoid the proliferation of anti-graft agencies but strengthen the available ones (EFCC and ICPC) by necessary legislations to carry out their functions diligently without unnecessary political interference. Keywords: Sectoral Government Expenditures, Economic growth, Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model.

Ground cover by three crops cultivated on marginal lands in southwestern Nigeria and implications for soil erosion

Resource-poor farmers in developing nations cultivate marginal lands, thereby exacerbating the problem of soil degradation through poor plant growth and ground coverage. An assessment of ground cover under such a practice will provide a guideline for soil conservation. Ground cover by leguminous cover crops (e.g., Mucuna pruriens, Pueraria phaseoloides and Vigna unguiculata), associated with yam, maize and rice was measured in three different experiments in southwestern Nigeria using beaded-string method while leaf area was measured using a flat-bed scanner. The leaf area was used in obtaining equivalent of ground cover fraction from the leaf area index. Ground cover by yam wa

Design and Development of Student Data Retrieval System via GSM

Remote data access and machine to machine communication are some of the value added services made possible by the GSM communication technology. With this service, automated access to records, information and updates can be achieved by the use of the GSM short message system (SMS) queries. This work presents the development of a remote access platform for remote access to a database. The system utilizes the GSM-SMS technology and an interactive voice recorder system to access data. The database contains students result, financial status and information on the number of exeats taken. This data is accessed by calling dedicated phone number and following the voice prompt voice prompt, the user is able to access the desired information from the database. Once the required data is accessed, the GSM module transmits this query result back to the caller in SMS format. The system provides a cost effective channel for accessing data from remote databases

Significant Bacteriuria Among Asymptomatic Antenatal Clinic Attendees In Ibadan, Nigeria

Untreated asymptomatic bacteriuria can lead to urinary tract infection (UTI) in pregnancy with devastating maternal and neonatal effects such as prematurity and low birth weight, higher fetal mortality rates and significant maternal morbidity. We carried out a two year (April 2007 to March 2009) cross-sectional epidemiological study to determine the prevalence of significant bacteriuria among asymptomatic antenatal clinic attendees at two antenatal clinics (ANCs) in University College Hospital and Adeoyo Maternity Hospital, both in Ibadan, Nigeria

REPRODUCTIVE RESPONSE TO INCLUSION OF GRADED LEVELS OF Ipomoea purpurea LEAF MEAL (MORNING GLORY) IN DIETS OF LAYING CHICKENS

Reproductive responses of laying birds fed Ipomea purpurea leaf meal (IPML) were investigated. Atotal of 40, 25-weeks old birds grouped into four treatments of 0, 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5% inclusion levels of IPML were used for this experiment in a completely randomized design layout. The birds were artificially inseminated with semen from cockerels on controlled diet thrice in a week. A total of 400 eggs were collected and set in an incubator. There were no significant differences (p>0.05) in Hen day production,feed/dozen eggs and the egg characteristics investigated. The blood glucose levels significantly decreased (p<0.05) while level of progesterone significantly increased (p<0.05) with increase inlevel of IPLM inclusion. The percentages of fertility and hatchability were high while the survivability was 100%. It can be concluded that IPLM inclusion level of up to 7.50% supports high fertility, hatchability and survivability and could be used in breeder diets for the production of fertile eggs

Knowledge-Attitudes-Practices About Malaria Among Communities in Southern Benin

Malaria still remains the main public health problem in Benin. We explored the determinants that influenced malaria treatment as well as protective behaviors, to generate a framework of useful ideas as alternative strategies against malaria. A cross-sectional survey of the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) was conducted at Hozin, Vakon and Agblangandan districts in southern region of Benin. Descriptive statistics were computed and mixed logistic regression helped evaluating the relationship between frequency of each category of severity of malaria and sex group, educational level, treatment, means of self-protection against mosquitoes and identification of the cause of malaria. A significant proportion 750 (81.3%) (p<0.001) of participants stated that malaria was caused by mosquitoes. The respondents who mentioned sun as the cause of malaria, have trivialized more malaria in a proportion of about 59.30% (OR=2.67 [95% CI 1.61-4.44]) followed by those who have reported the cause of body weakness (43.68%) (OR=2.97 [95% CI 1.68-5.28]). Poor knowledge justifies the trivialization of the disease and poor management of malaria control means. National Malaria Control Programs should improve access to education, especially for women and could help improving prevention and control behaviours against malaria in communities