Archives-December 2014

The aim of this paper was to study the impacts of a type of learning strategy, which was computer-assisted concept mapping, on EFL learners' reading comprehension. The research question was whether computer-assisted concept mapping technique had any notable effect on EFL students’ reading comprehension. To this end, students based on their scores in TOEFL proficiency test were divided into two experimental and control groups. A computer-assisted concept mapping learning strategy was presented to the experimental group learners. Through an independent sample t-test, it was proved that the computer-assisted concept mapping learning strategy improved the participants' reading comprehension in the experimental group.

Since the 1980s, African economies especially those from the least developed and developing countries were prostrate owing to dwindling fortunes in the international market, and in the process industries closed shop, prices of commodities in international market fell, with much impact on mono-export countries such as Nigeria. The effect was job cuts that led to increased poverty and worsening living conditions of the people. Children were withdrawn from schools, health conditions of people traumatized and the economies plunged into doldrums. African nations extended their ‘begging’ bags to the International Monetary Fund IMF and the World Bank not minding their harsh and stringent conditionalities. Life became unbearable and prompted many people to seek for an improved standard of living outside Africa. In the process these immigrants entered Europe and America etc legally and illegally and sought for asylum in the host nations. The trend is still on today. The paper discovered that people migrated because of worsening human development record as a result of unemployment, poor education, poor functional democracy, lack of access to functional medical facilities, insecurity of lives and property among others. The paper concludes that governments should muster the necessary political will and begin to address the problems –create job opportunities, improve and fund education; put a functional democracy where the rule of law prevails; and above all, provide adequate security for the people and property. The paper used historical analysis as its methodology.

The conceptualization and measurement of service quality have been the most debated and controversial topics in the services marketing literature to date. Perceived Service quality may be defined as the evaluation by the customers towards the overall excellence or uniqueness of the service rendered. The main objectives of the paper is to study the actual level of service quality in the nine selected commercial banks in Bhubaneswar by analyzing their scores as against the various service quality dimensions and to make a comparative analysis of the degree of service quality across Public, Private and Foreign banking sector operating in Bhubaneswar. The study has revealed that the foreign banks operating in Bhubaneswar provide better service quality, as compared to private and public sector banks. Citibank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India (SBI) were perceived to deliver better services in their respective banking sectors. The point to worry is that public sector banks which account for over three-fourth of banking business in the country have failed to adequately satisfy their customers. Their Cumulative Service Quality (SQ) Score of 49.94 was found to be much below the expected score of 54.0. On the other hand, there is a close competition between the private sector banks (SQ of 69.77) and foreign banks (SQ of 72.33) for gaining the largest market share by providing excellent service.

With increasing population river pollution is becoming very serious day by day. Developing countries do not have much facility for sewage treatment and hence most of the raw sewage falls into the rivers directly. This activity loads pathogens to the river and thus the public health is severely affected. However, rivers like Ganga have bacteriophages which naturally kept the water clean from time immemorial. This nature’s gift can be employed to bring out an eco friendly technique which can disinfect water without any adverse side effects as seen in the case of chemical disinfection. Also, there is a natural check of life and death cycle which controls the phage population and hence makes this biological technique an easily controllable process. Also such natural tools are cheaper comparatively and can be harnessed to keep rivers clean.

The germination study was made to understand the genetic variability in Zea mays (L.) variety JKMH-1001which was subjected to chemical mutagenic treatments for two generations. The chemical mutagens namely, EMS, DES and Sodium azide were used. The mutagen treated seeds were tested for lethal dose of 50 per cent for all mutagens, separately and the dose at which 50 per cent of the seed germination was considered as LD50 values were grown in the field. The spectrum of chlorophyll mutation consisted of albino, chlorina, viridis and xandha. The morphological mutations observed at tall, dwarf, early maturity, late maturity, triangular leaf, bold size seed, long ear, short ear and male sterility in all the concentration recorded. In EMS was found to be more effective and efficient than the other mutagens. The effectiveness was producing germination and chlorophyll mutants. Effectiveness means frequency of mutations induced by unit dose/concentration of a mutagen. The efficiency means undesirable biological effect like lethality and sterility caused by the mutagen. The effectiveness and efficiency generally decreased with increased in the higher doses of the mutagens in certain level.

4-Oxothiazolidines(1a-o) have been synthesized by cyclisation of various Schiff bases with thiolactic acid. The schiff bases are obtained by the condensation reaction of 4-methyl cinnamoyl hydrazine with different benzaldehydes. The synthesized compounds are identified on the basis of spectral and elemental analysis. All the products have been evaluated for their in vitro antimicrobial activity against various strains of bacteria.

This article analyses the market reaction to stock splits announcements, using a unique Indian sample over the period 2001 to 2010. Our event study finds a significantly positive Cumulative Average Abnormal Return (CAAR) around the announcement date. Liquidity increases lead to higher stock price changes, which supports the liquidity improvement hypothesis. Further, firm size and abnormal returns are inversely related, which is in line with the attention hypothesis.

The purpose of this study is to identify the level, the type, and the factors of bullying amongst religious secondary school’s students. This study also attempts to identify bullying intervention programs at religious secondary school. 400 students in four states, Kelantan, Terengganu, Malacca and Johore have been chosen as the respondents. The instrument of this study is questionnaire form. Method used in this study is surveying method. The sampling has been done using the cluster on cluster random sampling method. The reliability of the instrument is 0.8234. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science. (SPSS) for Windows. Descriptive statistic, mean and frequency is used to analyze the level of bullying. The inference statistic, t-test and Pearson correlation are used to test the hypothesis. Results showed that the level of bullying among religious secondary school’s students were in medium level. The results also showed that there were significant relation between the bullying behavior and gender there was no significant relation between the type of bullying and gender. Furthermore, there were no significant relation between intervention programs and bullying behavior. The most dominant bullying factor was family factor.

The papaya seed oil was extracted by solvent extraction method. The characteristic of seed oil was studied. Percent seed oil was recorded 30.1 and chemical composition of papaya seed was found to be protein (28.1%), Ash (8.2%), Crude fiber (19.1%) and total carbohydrate (25.6%).The papaya seed oil consists of iodine value (65.5), saponification value (155.5), unsaponifiable matter (1.37%) and free fatty acid (0.32%).The major fatty acid of papaya seed oil were oleic acid(72.5%) followed by palmitic acid (13.5%) and stearic acid (4.5%). Thus it can be concluded that the seed can be utilized for extraction of oil which has various health benefits with respect to essential fatty acids.

The significance of temperature and geothermal gradient in relation to hydrocarbon occurrence in the BARA Field, western Niger Delta was studied using bottom hole temperature logs. The average depth to the floor of the oil generative window (7182.3m) shows that commercial hydrocarbon accumulation still lies below the final drilled depth in the field. The average geothermal gradient of 1.74 oC /100m shows that the field is thermally mature for commercial accumulation of hydrocarbon. This is evidenced in the occurrence of hydrocarbon in the wells drilled within the field. The geothermal gradient decreases radially from the centre of the field to the edges based on the position of the five wells in the field, this is confirmed by the average thermal conductivity which tends to increase radially from the centre to the edges. Areas with high shale percentage show high geothermal gradient values while areas with high sand percentage show low geothermal gradient values. Significant hydrocarbon occurrence lies below the top of the calculated depth of oil ceiling (3508.89m) and within the oil generative window of the worldwide catagenesis range (50oC to 200oC). Rapid change in geothermal gradient occurs in intervals where there are hydrocarbon accumulation showing that, changes in geothermal gradient can be used to enhance exploration activities. The occurrence of hydrocarbon within the oil generative window in terms of temperature and depth, suggests that adjacent shales of the Agbada Formation are possible source rock.