ABSTRACT Boko Haram has been evolving in north-eastern Nigeria for over a decade. An extremely violent Islamist movement, it has in 2014 entered a new transitional phase. The inability of Nigeria’s armed forces to obstruct its onslaught, combined with a higher international profile, have lent it a confidence and ambition that appear to have prompted increasingly strategic behaviour, alongside its ongoing indiscriminate and widespread attacks against civilian and stat...
ABSTRACT Effective strategic thinking requires a clear understanding of one’s external environment. Therefore, looking at the Nigerian environment of the 21st century, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Nights of some African Countries e.g. Ghana, is safer and more secure than the day in Nigeria (over 200 girls were kidnapped in Chibok in April 2014 in broad daylight). It is no news anymore that the state of security in Nigeria is in a deplorable condition...
OVERVIEW (UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF LEADERSHIP) “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” Nelson Mandela (1990) Gary Yukl (2006) defines leadership as “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and coll...
ABSTRACT We had tried to study the rates of infant mortality in Abia State. The aims of this study were to compare the mortality and birth rate of infants male and female in order to determine whether there is a significant yearly difference in their mortality and birth rate. Also, to determine whether infant mortality in Abia State in independent of sex. And furthermore to determine the future trend cases for birth and death and as well determine some preventive measu...
This short paper in the inaugural issue of the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering explains how professors at all of the world’s institutions can capitalize on an opportunity to assist students to learn engineering and science more effectively by offering them a chance to make concrete contributions to the optimization of appropriate technologies for sustainable development.
To effectively teach science in the elementary classroom, pre-service K-8 teachers need a basic understanding of the underlying concepts of physics, which demand a strong foundation in mathematics. Unfortunately, the depth of mathematics understanding of prospective elementary teachers has been a growing and serious concern for several decades. To overcome this challenge, a two-pronged attack was used in this study. First, students in mathematics courses were coupled with physical science cou...
The ultimate concern of a historian is the possibility of gaining the knowledge of events and actions (in the course of time) which are no longer available for direct inspection. These happening have been preserved in material (as archival, written, archaeological etch.) and immaterial (oral tradition) forms. A historian is therefore charged with the task of piecing this event and actions together for an understanding of the theme to which he/she is engaged. Through the descriptive and exposi...
STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields of study meant to improve U.S. competitiveness by guiding curriculum and influencing education policy. STEM education begins with K-12 educators, who are struggling with how to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that now place explicit emphasis on the relationship of engineering to science. The NGSS guidelines suggest that science curriculum should have activities with an iterative process invol...
Objective 3-D printing technologies have the potential to improve both Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and Career and Technical Education (CTE), as well as integrating these two educational emphases and providing opportunities for cross-curriculum engagement. The objective of this study is to investigate the potential of open-source (OS) technologies in an educational setting, given the combination of economic constraints affecting all educational environme...
Increasingly international competence is considered and important skill to be acquired from an undergraduate education. Because international exchange presents a challenge to many students, there is a need to develop and implement alternative means for incorporating international and cross-cultural experiences into the undergraduate classroom. We report on the implementation of a semester-long, virtually-shared course offering between a U.S. and a Bolivian university. Since STEM (science, tec...
As facilitators of 3D printer workshops, the authors developed a survey to gage how the printers are actually being used and whether they support the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) requirements, especially in regard to engineering design. The survey response rate was 52% of 68 total participants with the majority conveying that 3D printers do facilitate student understanding of the engineering design process and that the workshops empowered them and their students to tackle projects...
Those who live in isolated communities often lack reliable, skilled employment opportunities, which fundamentally undermines their human security. For individuals who wish to remain in their isolated communities for family, religious, philosophical or other reasons, their attachment to their communities creates a disincentive for higher education. This promotes low educational achievement, which in turn results in low socioeconomic status, lack of social mobility, and a generational cycle of ...
RepRap 3-D printers and their derivatives using conventional firmware are limited by: 1) requiring technical knowledge, 2) poor resilience with unreliable hardware, and 3) poor integration in complicated systems. In this paper, a new control system called Franklin, for CNC machines in general and 3-D printers specifically, is presented that enables web-based three dimensional control of additive, subtractive and analytical tools from any Internet connected device. Franklin can be set up and c...
Additive manufacturing with 3-D printers may be a key technology enabler for entrepreneurs seeking to use disruptive innovations, such as business models utilizing distributed manufacturing. Unlike centralized manufacturing, distributed manufacturing makes the parts and products (the prints) at (or closer to) the source of the demand, cutting out much of the traditional supply chain. Although many expect 3-D printing to take off at the household level and previous work has shown significant r...
The open-source release of self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRaps) has created a rich opportunity for low-cost distributed digital fabrication of complex 3-D objects such as scientific equipment. For example, 3-D printable reactionware devices offer the opportunity to combine open hardware microfluidic handling with lab-on-a-chip reactionware to radically reduce costs and increase the number and complexity of microfluidic applications. To further drive down the cost while improving the p...