Teachers' Perception on Influence of Social Adjustment on Academic Performance of Students with Mild Mental Retardation in Gombe State Special School

This study focused on determining the perception of teachers on influence of social adjustment on academic performance in West African Examinations Council/National Examinations Council (WAEC/NECO) of students with mild mental retardation in Gombe state, with emphasis on special secondary school. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A total population of 37 teachers were used as respondents. Using drop and pick method, data was collected using adapted social adjustment (questionnaire) from Mei- Yin, Huei – Shyong & Cheng-Jung (2000) in Taiwan with 22 items. The instrument was reduced to 18 items. The instrument was validated by 2 experts and reliability was of 0.82 was obtained through Chronbach’s Alfa coefficient determination formula and the original reported reliability is 0.85. Data was analysed using descriptive (frequency, percentage, mean and SD) statistics. The study found that level of academic performance WAEC/NECO of mentally retarded students is moderate in Gombe state special school, while the level of social adjustment on academic performance WAEC/NECO of mentally retarded students was found to be high as perceived by the teachers. The study concludes that the teachers in Gombe state special school are heterogeneous and social adjustment has great influence on academic performance of mentally retarded students. The study recommends that government should make it a policy that, all mentally retarded persons between the ages of 5-7 are subjected to social adjustment programmes which will transit them into formal school system and parents of mentally retarded children should improve their closeness with their children and also build in hope of their rehabilitation

Rapid Diagnostic Algorithms as a Screening Tool for Tuberculosis: An Assessor Blinded Cross-Sectional Study

Background: A major obstacle to effectively treat and control tuberculosis is the absence of an accurate, rapid, and low-cost diagnostic tool. A new approach for the screening of patients for tuberculosis is the use of rapid diagnostic classification algorithms. Methods: We tested a previously published diagnostic algorithm based on four biomarkers as a screening tool for tuberculosis in a Central European patient population using an assessor-blinded cross-sectional study design. In addition, we developed an improved diagnostic classification algorithm based on a study population at a tertiary hospital in Vienna, Austria, by supervised computational statistics. Results: The diagnostic accuracy of the previously published diagnostic algorithm for our patient population consisting of 206 patients was 54% (CI: 47%–61%). An improved model was constructed using inflammation parameters and clinical information. A diagnostic accuracy of 86% (CI: 80%–90%) was demonstrated by 10-fold cross validation. An alternative model relying solely on clinical parameters exhibited a diagnostic accuracy of 85% (CI: 79%–89%). Conclusion: Here we show that a rapid diagnostic algorithm based on clinical parameters is only slightly improved by inclusion of inflammation markers in our cohort. Our results also emphasize the need for validation of new diagnostic algorithms in different settings and patient populations

Symbols in engineering drawings (SiED): an imbalanced dataset benchmarked by convolutional neural networks.

Engineering drawings are common across different domains such as Oil & Gas, construction, mechanical and other domains. Automatic processing and analysis of these drawings is a challenging task. This is partly due to the complexity of these documents and also due to the lack of dataset availability in the public domain that can help push the research in this area. In this paper, we present a multiclass imbalanced dataset for the research community made of 2432 instances of engineering symbols. These symbols were extracted from a collection of complex engineering drawings known as Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID). By providing such dataset to the research community, we anticipate that this will help attract more attention to an important, yet overlooked industrial problem, and will also advance the research in such important and timely topics. We discuss the datasets characteristics in details, and we also show how Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) perform on such extremely imbalanced datasets. Finally, conclusions and future directions are discussed

The influence of cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency as a " stressor " affecting adrenal cortex and ovarian activities in goats

International audienc

Teachers' Perception on Influence of Social Adjustment on Academic Performance of Students with Mild Mental Retardation in Gombe State Special School

This study focused on determining the perception of teachers on influence of social adjustment on academic performance in West African Examinations Council/National Examinations Council (WAEC/NECO) of students with mild mental retardation in Gombe state, with emphasis on special secondary school. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A total population of 37 teachers were used as respondents. Using drop and pick method, data was collected using adapted social adjustment (questionnaire) from Mei- Yin, Huei – Shyong &amp; Cheng-Jung (2000) in Taiwan with 22 items. The instrument was reduced to 18 items. The instrument was validated by 2 experts and reliability was of 0.82 was obtained through Chronbach’s Alfa coefficient determination formula and the original reported reliability is 0.85. Data was analysed using descriptive (frequency, percentage, mean and SD) statistics. The study found that level of academic performance WAEC/NECO of mentally retarded students is moderate in Gombe state special school, while the level of social adjustment on academic performance WAEC/NECO of mentally retarded students was found to be high as perceived by the teachers. The study concludes that the teachers in Gombe state special school are heterogeneous and social adjustment has great influence on academic performance of mentally retarded students. The study recommends that government should make it a policy that, all mentally retarded persons between the ages of 5-7 are subjected to social adjustment programmes which will transit them into formal school system and parents of mentally retarded children should improve their closeness with their children and also build in hope of their rehabilitation.</jats:p

Comparative trypanotolerance of the Small East African breed of goats from different localities to Trypanosoma congolense infection

Differences in susceptibility of the Small East African breed of goats to an experimental Trypanosoma congolense infection were investigated. The goats were obtained from different areas of East Africa, Morogoro and Arusha (Tanzania), Imbo and Lambwe Valley (Kenya). Morogoro goats were found to be more tolerant, followed by Arusha, Lambwe Valley and Imbo goats, in that order. The Imbo goats had highest parasitaemia, more severe anaemia, marked weight losses and highest mortality rate. The Morogoro goats showed a milder infection with lower parasitaemia, less severe anaemia, weight losses and lowest mortality rate. The Lambwe Valley and Arusha goats were intermediate to the Morogoro (resistant) and Imbo (susceptible) goats. The significance of these findings in relation to existence of heterogeneity in the Small East African goats is discussed