ATTITUDE OF STUDENTS AND TEACHERS TOWARDS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN OTA, OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Vocational education is a vital tool for economic development. The Federal Government, in 2011,launched the Senior Secondary Education Curriculum (SSEC) which requires that all senior secondary school students be trained in one vocational subject. This study examines the attitudes of students and teachers towards vocational education in secondary schools in Ado-Odo Local Government,Ogun State, Nigeria. It aims to highlight the factors that affect and influence the attitudes of students and teachers towards vocational training as well as identify ways through which these attitudes can be improved. The study employs the use of questionnaires distributed to 200 students and 60 teachers in four secondary schools in Adodo-Ota LGA. The results show that students and teachers recognize the importance of vocational education. The study recommends that students be provided with modern day equipment to encourage students’ engagement in vocational subjects. The curriculum for the teaching of vocational subjects should be comprehensive, standardized and enforced in all secondary schools to ensure that students acquire all the skills they need to practice the vocation(s). These will improve vocational education and the attainment of its goals in secondary schools

Challenges in selection and maintenance of clothing among students with physical disabilities in south-west, Nigeria

Introduction:  Clothing refers to items used for protection, adornment, identification of any individual and other specific purposes while students with physical disabilities are specifically to select and maintain their clothing as their colleague who are not disabled. Purpose: The study examined the challenges in selection and maintenance of clothing among people with physical disabilities in South West Nigeria. Methodology: A descriptive survey research design was adopted. Structured questionnaire was used for data collection. This was based on each specific objective of the study. Data obtained were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, mean score, standard deviation while hypotheses were tested using t-test, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC), Kendall’s Tau and Spearman’s Rho to test the significant correlation in the effect of clothing selection and maintenance of people with physical disabilities in special schools and rehabilitation centre. Result: The findings of the study revealed that there were significant differences in the challenges facing by student with physical disabilities in selection of clothing by gender. Also, there exists a high positive correlation between effect of clothing selection and maintenance of people with physical disabilities in special schools and rehabilitation centres. Conclusion: Clothing selection and maintenance of people with physical disabilities should be attended to so as to meet the standard of their living and integrate with other colleagues both inside and outside home environment. Recommendation:  Institutions of learning at all levels, government and NGO should adequately focus on the welfare of people with special needs include people with physical disabilities

Amino acids profile, functional and sensory properties of infant complementary gruel produced from rice and defatted bambaranut flour meal

Background: The type of complementary food a child is fed should consider the energy and nutrient quality of the meal to meet the child’s growth requirement. Objective: To determine amino acid profile, functional and sensory properties of infant complementary gruel produced from rice and defatted bambaranut flour meal. Materials and methods: Rice and defatted bambaranut composite flour meal was made into blends of various proportions 90:10%, 80:20%, 70:30% and 60:40%. The amino acid profile, functional and sensory properties of the blends were analyzed. Results: Essential amino acids such as leucine(6.34g/100g-7.30g/100g), lysine (4.64g/100g-5.10g/100g),Isoleucine (3.48g/100g-3.70g/100g), phenylalanine (3.22g/100g-3.91g/100g), tryptophan (0.81g/100g-0.90g/100g), valine (3.31g/100g-4.10g/100g), methionine (2.10g/100g-2.36g/100g), histidine (2.10g/100g-2.26g/100g) and threonine (3.12g/100g-3.22g/100g) were detected; while non-essential acids such as Proline (3.10g/100g-3.30g/100g), arginine (5.02g/100g-6.38g/100g), tyrosine (2,12g/100g-3.30g/100g), cysteine (1.01g/100g-1.34g/100g), alanine (4.03g/100g-4.46g/100g), glutamic acid (11.12g/100g-13.20g/100g), glycine (3.19g/100g-4.20g/100g),serine(2.57g/100g-3.30g/100g), and aspartic acid (7.70g/100g-8.30g/100g) were also detected. The functional properties evaluated were bulk density which ranged from 0.54g/ml -0.58g/ml; water absorption capacity 141.40g/ml- 180.56g/ml; oil absorption capacity 166.32g/ml-128.21g/ml; swelling capacity 12.09g/ml-18.70g/ml; foam capacity 3.18g/ml-6.20g/ml; least gelation 3.80g/ml-7.62g/ml. Conclusion: The samples were acceptable to the panelists (nursing mothers); although sample rice based contained 10% defatted bambaranut infant complementary gruel with highest average mean score of 7.93 was most preferred

PERCEIVED IMPACT OF DIGITIZATION ON THE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY OF LIBRARIANS IN NIGERIA.

This work is focused on establishing how digitization of library information materials affects the research productivity of Librarians in Nigeria. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study and the purposive sampling technique was employed in selecting 20 libraries that have digitized their information resources. Ten librarians, each from the universities were randomly selected for the study, making the sample size 200. Self-constructed questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection.  Data collected was analyzed using SPSS software. The outcome revealed that the types of information resources digitized by the libraries include theses and dissertations, research works published in local journals, conference papers, and inaugural lectures. Opportunities presented by digitization that impact the research productivity include; enhanced access to existing local scholarly works, giving visibility to individual and institutional research output, making researchers discoverable, and exposing them to the knowledge of other researchers in their areas of interest for collaboration purposes, etc. The perceived impacts of digitization on the research productivity of librarians are; enhanced quality of research, enhanced research output, high citation impacts, created room for multi-disciplinary, national, and international collaborations, and made them visible to grantors and funding bodies. The major challenges hindering the effective utilization of these resources include; irregular Internet access, limited awareness of the availability of the resources, infrastructure limitations, and erratic power supply.&nbsp

A Three Area Interconnected Power System Network Load Frequency Controller Simulator

This paper presents a MATLAB simulator of a three area interconnected power system of Thermal-Gas-Hydro. Nonlinearities intrinsic in the interconnected power system of communication delay, Generation Rate Constraint and Generation Dead Band were measured. Bat Inspired Algorithm was exploited to select the favourable parameters of the Model Predictive Controller and the Super Conducting Magnetic Energy Storage. Model Predictive Controller was the subordinate controller employed to minimalize the Area Control Error, Super Conducting Magnetic Energy Storage was the energy buffer to balance the load demand and the power generated. Integral Time Absolute Error was the performance metrics employed to minimize the Area Control Error. Parametric dissimilarity was tested on the inter-connected power system to observe the efficacy of the controller. Step load perturbation of  was concurrently applied to the three-area inter-connected network,  was introduced to the thermal generating unit,  was introduced to the gas and hydro generating unit.  Value of the tie-line was introduced to examine its effect on the frequency deviation. The results performed better when compared with Model Predictive Controller joined with Super Conducting Magnetic Energy Storage against the Model Predictive Controller without Super Conducting Magnetic Energy Storage in relations to settling time, overshoot and undershoot

Building the capacity to solve complex health challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa : CARTA’s multidisciplinary PhD training

Objectives: To develop a curriculum (Joint Advanced Seminars- JAS) that produced PhD fellows who understood that health is an outcome of multiple determinants within complex environments and that approaches from a range of disciplines is required to address health and development within the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa. We sought to attract PhD fellows, supervisors and teaching faculty from a range of disciplines into the program. Methods: Multidisciplinary teams developed the JAS curriculum. CARTA PhD fellowships were open to academics in consortium member institutions, irrespective of primary discipline, interested in doing a PhD in public and population health. Supervisors and JAS faculty were recruited from CARTA institutions. We use routine JAS evaluation data (closed and open ended questions) collected from PhD fellows at every JAS, a survey of one CARTA cohort and an external evaluation of CARTA to assess the impact of the JAS curriculum on learning. Results: We describe our pedagogic approach arguing its centrality to an appreciation of multiple disciplines and illustrate how it promotes working in multidisciplinary ways. CARTA has attracted PhD fellows, supervisors and JAS teaching faculty from across a range of disciplines. Evaluations indicate PhD fellows have a greater appreciation of how disciplines other than their own are important to understand health and its determinants and an appreciation and capacity to employ mixed methods research. Conclusions: In the short-term, we have been effective in promoting an understanding of multidisciplinarity resulting in fellows using methods from beyond their discipline of origin. This curriculum has international application

Sociodemography and Distribution of Students Attending Schools for the Blind in Oyo State, Nigeria

Aim: To determine the distribution and sociodemographic classification of students attending schools for the blind in Oyo State, Nigeria.Method: This is a descriptive and interventional crosssectional study. A total sampling of all students in the four schools for the blind in Oyo State was carried out.Results: A total of 86 students from the four schools for the blind in Oyo State were included in the study. This comprised 2(2.3%) students from School for the Deaf and Blind, Eruwa; 22 (25.6%) from School for the Blind,Aperin Oniyere, Ibadan; 11 (12.8%) from School for the Blind, Doba, Oyo Town; and 51 (59.1%) from Ogbomosho Training Centre for the Blind, Ogbomosho. The mean age of the students was 19.4 years (SD=8.19).Thirty percent of the students were less than 16 years, 33.7% were between 17 and 19 years, 16.3% were between 20 and 24 years, 8.1% between 25 and 29 years, and 11.6% were above 30 years. There were more males (73.3%) than females (26.7%), with a male to female ratioof 3:1. Christians constituted 73.3% of the students while Muslims made up the remainder. Majority were from the Yoruba ethnic group (98.9%).Conclusion: More attention needs to be focussed on the sociodemography and distribution of students in schools for the blind in Nigeria as this will assist government and non governmental agencies in the planning and implementation of policies which will help to improve the lot of the students in the schools.Keywords: Distribution, sociodemography, students, schools for the blind, Oyo Stat

An Extensive Survey of Digital Image Steganography: State of the Art

The need to protect sensitive information privacy duringinformation exchange over the internet/intranet has led towider adoption of cryptography and steganography. The cryptography approaches convert the information into an unreadable format however draws the attention of cryptanalyst owing to the uncommon random nature flow of the bytes when viewing the flowing structured bytes on a computer. While steganography, in contrast, conceals the very existence of covert communication using digital media. Although any digital media (text, image, video, audio) can covey the sensitive information, the media with higher redundant bits are more favorable for embedding the sensitive information without distorting the media. Digital images are majorly used in conveying sensitive information compared to others owing to their higher rate of tolerating distortions, highly available, smaller sizes with high redundant bits. However, the need for maximizing the redundancy bits for the optimum embedding of secret information has been a paramount issue due to the imperceptibility prerequisite which deteriorates with an increase in payload thus, resulting in a tradeoff. This has limited steganography to only applications with lower payload requirements, thus limiting the adoption for wider deployment. This paper critically analyzes the current steganographic techniques, recent trends, and challenges