Archives-May 2012

Student violence has been a problem in the Kenyan educational system for a long time now. The first case of student unrest in Kenya was reported at Maseno School at the beginning of the 20th century (1908). To date, the situation is still unabated. The trend is rather alarming and the magnitude of violent acts by students is high and worrying. The paper therefore using a random sample of 251 students who were selected from five purposively chosen secondary schools in Njoro division were interviewed using a standardized research questionnaire. The students were selected using a combination of stratified random sampling and the systematic sampling techniques, which are probability sampling procedures. The data collected was analysed using both the descriptive and inferential statistics. It was found out that three factors related to the school social environment determined the students’ participation in violence in secondary schools as discussed in this paper. The paper recommends that there should be a better understanding of the school social environment factors as aggravators of student violence in secondary schools.

The study was carried out to establish The role of business ethics in the performance of small scale business, A case of small scale traders in Kisii town, This is because there have been shortcomings as far as service delivery to customers is concerned, The traders mishandle the customers, hike prices at any time, sell fake products to customers in guise that they are original and genuine, package and repackage some products and hood some essential products in anticipation of higher prices which has been a major problem. On the case of employees working in the small businesses there is lateness when reporting to work, leaves work earlier than the schedule time, The aim of this study is to find out the role of ethical issues in the operations of small scale Businesses in Kenya and their effects on customer and service delivery. The findings of the study will provide a more flexible and improved systems of management styles to meet the needs of the customers, promote customer loyalty to some products and specific traders, to create customer friendly environment to conduct business and provide high order services to customers. A cross-sectional survey was used, with the sampling frame comprising 200 small scale and 100 customers. Sets of both pre-tested structured and unstructured questionnaires were used to interview a random sample (300) derived using the formula of Israel (1992) of known target population, N. The data was analyzed with the aid of the SPSS (Version 11.5) computer software and presented in form of descriptive tabular summaries. Generally, ethics contribute positively to the business performance and general employee performance and increased customer loyalty to certain products and traders. Ethics should, therefore, be maintained and strengthened. The findings of this study would be useful as reference material for future research.

The water budget, constituent budget and flushing model of Oguta Lake were determined using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS), digital meters and standard equations. Results revealed that the total annual water inflow into the lake is about 29,461,800m3 while the total annual outflow is about 13,476,300m3 which implies a water storage of 16,185,500m3/year. The investigation further revealed that about 87.6% of the total water inflow into the lake comes from channel flow from Rivers Njaba, Utu and Awbana while about 70.2% of the water outflow is from channel outflow. Similarly, there seems to be continuous loading of constituents into the lake but at a very low rate; the low loading rate is actually attributed to the moderately high flushing rate of constituents in the lake. Total alkalinity has the highest loading rate (0.40 mgl-1/year) while phosphate has the lowest (0.003 mgl-1/year). The results also showed that the highest annual maximally flushed constituent in the lake is bicarbonate while the lowest is magnesium. The lake witnessed low influx of nutrients (phosphate, nitrate and dissolved silica) during the study period thus indicating low level of eutrophication. Excessive flushing rate can cause nutrient imbalance and this can alter the resource status and usefulness of the lake. In conclusion, the constituent budget and flushing model of the Oguta lake are therefore favorable for water supply , irrigation activities and fisheries development.

In this study, histological examination of the testicles and cellular tissue changes of sperm cells in the spermatogenesis phase of zebrafish are aimed. In this respect; the microscopic structure of the testicles, the position and form of the cells belonging to spermatogenic string, tissue-generating structural cells, and these organisms are examined with the light microscope. All the phases of spermatogenesis are classified as spermatocytogenesis, meiosis and spermiogenesis taking all the phases and histological development of the cells into consideration. All the cells belonging to these phases are seen in separate groups in seminiferous tubules. It is found out that there are somatic cells around spermagony. And spermatogenic cells return into spermatogenic string cells respectively (primer spermatocyte, secondary spermatocyte, spermatide and sperm organisms) by meiosis.

The study analyzed the socioeconomic determinants of farmers’ use of indigenous soil management practices of yam production in Nasarawa state, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique of six local government areas and three communities each was used to select 288 yam farmers for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. It was discovered that most of the farmers (33.7%) and (31.6 %) were within the age ranges of 31-40 and 41-50 years respectively. Men (92.0) and married (88.2%) farmers dominated yam production in the study area. The literacy level of farmers in the study area was found to be low and majority (41.7%) of them had less than 10 years farming experience. It was discovered that the most prevalent indigenous soil management practices were tillage, crop rotation, mulching, green manuring, shifting cultivation, intercropping, organic manuring, bush fallowing and burning of crop residues in decreasing order of prevalence. The study revealed that Cost effectiveness (99.7%), Conservation of biodiversity (96.9%), user friendliness (94.8%) and Compatibility with the culture of the people (75.7%) were the advantages of using indigenous soil management practices. Use of indigenous soil management practices is significantly and positively affected by marital status, farm size, age and farming experience. The F-value at 5% level of probability confirmed that the joint effects of farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics significantly affected the use of indigenous soil management practices of yam production. The study recommends that research and extension must work closely with the rural farmers to consolidate on the identified indigenous soil management practices in the area to improve on them for a sustainable agricultural development. They must also strengthen the confidence of farmers by expressing faith in such local knowledge found to be economically viable and ecologically Sound. This will boost yam production and create opportunity for sustaining a growing population and food security in rural communities of the area.

We consider a singular Sturm-Liouville differential expression with an indefinite weigh and present a sufficient condition for similarity of indefinite Sturm-Liouville operators to self- adjoint operators. Using this result, we construct a example of operator and prove that it is similar to a self-adjoint one.

Simulating is an effective method to identify and comprehend the abstract and complex phenomena. In order to find the point of penetration of memory in the human brain, we put forward an idea to simulate memory function using ant action by their similarities. By analysis of their structure and action, we discuss the brain functional memory complex network like the ant network, the results imply that it is feasible to make research on brain functional memory complex network with the theory of ant action and colony optimization.

Si-based resonant interband tunneling diodes (RITD) with spacer thicknesses varying from 2.5 to 25 nm was grown and fabricated at Baghdad University. The effect of spacer thickness on the peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR), peak current density (JP), and voltage swing (VS) was studied for determining the static or dynamic read access memory (SRAM, DRAM). By increasing the tunneling spacer thickness up to 12 nm, RITDs with VS are reduced below 0.3V; this is suitable for low-power tunnel diode SRAM applications. The JP increased as the spacer thickness increased from 2.5nm to 5nm. As the spacer thickness increased above 5nm, the Jp decreased. Using a low-current-density in this paper, a bread-boarded one-transistor tunneling-based SRAM (TSRAM) memory cell with low standby power consumption was demonstrated, where the standby power of this 1T TSRAM is estimated to be 65nW/cell using the 10-?m diameter RITDs. The result demonstrates the potential of Si-based tunnel diodes for low-power memory applications.

This study is to know the levels of temperature and electrical conductivity of Groundwater. Temperature increase was recently considered as a serious water pollutant. The known sources that modestly increase the temperature of groundwater are municipal wastes, industrial effluents and biochemical activities. Electrical conductivity which is the ability of water to conduct electricity is also related to the concentration of ionized substance in water. The ions that have major influence on the conductivity of groundwater are H⁺, Na⁺, Mg^2+. Ca^2+., Cl.^-. SO₄^2-.  Samples of borehole water were collected around Sapele L.G.A and were analytically assessed to ascertain the physicochemical characteristics. Results obtained shows that Temperature range between 14^oC – 30^oC and electrical conductivity range of 23.00 – 400.00 us/cm and were found to be within the world health organization (WHO) desirable and maximum levels.

This work assessed the enrichment of lettuce and cabbage on display for sale along some busy roads in Accra with some essential elements using instrumental neutron activation analysis and atomic absorption spectrometry. The background levels of Fe, Mn, Cu and Zn, in lettuce and cabbage harvested from a vegetable farm were determined. The amount of the metals deposited on the vegetables after deliberate exposure along a busy road for three days were also determined. Background levels of elements in the vegetables in mg/kg were, Fe (162.97) > Mn (58.28) > Zn (10.78) > Cu (4.61) for lettuce and Fe (44.91) > Mn (20.95) > Zn (6.69) > Cu (1.16) for cabbage. The levels of all the elements increased in both vegetables after deliberate exposure with the third day recording the highest levels. The total amount of elements deposited on the vegetables after exposure for three days in mg/kg were Fe (22.27), Mn (11.8), Cu (1.68) and Zn (3.17) for lettuce and Fe (18.76), Mn (12.83), Cu (1.59) and Zn (5.58) for cabbage. Rates of enrichment of the vegetables by elements in mg/kg/day were, Fe (9.09) > Mn (3.93) >Zn (1.06) > Cu (0.56) for lettuce and Fe (6.25) > Mn (4.28) > Zn (1.86) > Cu (0.53) for cabbage.