Abstract/Overview The purpose of this study was to investigate selected goal-setting as a predictor of mathematics performance among students in public secondary schools in Kisii Central Sub-County, Kenya. The study was guided by the Social Development Theory (1978) by Levi Vygotsky and the Theory of Education Productivity by Walberg (1981). The study employed the Solomon Four pretest-posttest two group design with post-test only control design. The study population included 1665 form 3 s...
Abstract/Overview Volatility is the measure of how we are uncertain about the future of stock or asset prices. Black-Scholes model formed the foundation of stock or asset pricing. However, some of its assumptions like constant volatility and interest among others are practically impossible to implement hence other option pricing models have been explored to help come up with a much reliable way of predicting the price trends of options. The measure of volatility and good forecasts of futu...
Abstract/Overview Contamination of aquatic reservoirs with metal ions is a slow gradual process that is not easy to detect. Consequences of the metal ions, especially the ones with high atomic numbers (heavy metals) at high concentrations, are severe and irreversible in aquatic reservoirs. As such, early detection mechanisms, especially at trace concentration, are essential for mitigation measures. In this work, a new, robust, and effective tool for trace metal detection and monitoring in...
Abstract/Overview This paper presents study on the application of multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) to distinguish between languages with a focus on five languages of the Coastal region of Kenya. Chapter one gives an introduction of the paper, chapter two explains the methodology used, chapter three presents the results, chapter four gives a brief discussion of the findings, and lastly chapter five presents the conclusions and recommendations.
Abstract Climate change will lead to extreme droughts, but it is difficult to predict how this will affect crop pests. In particular, it is unclear how interactions between natural en- emies and pests will be influenced. In the field, bird cherry- oat aphids (Rhopalosiphum padi (L.)) have been observed to reside close to, or below the ground surface during dry conditions. We hypothesized that this will increase the niche overlap between R. padi and ground- dwelling predators such as carabid ...
Abstract/Overview A probability distribution can be constructed by mixing two distributions. Binomial distribution when compounded with beta distribution as prior forms a binomial mixture that is a continuous distribution. Skellam 1948, mixed a binomial distribution with its parameter being the probability of success considered as a random variable taking beta distribution. Probability distributions with binomial outcome tend to fail to fit empirical data due to over-dispersion. To addres...
Abstract rotalaria brevidens: and C. ochroleuca commonly grown as vegetables have been extensively studied. However, information on breeding techniques is scanty. This study aimed to develop an artificial interspecific pollination protocol for two genotypes of Crotalaria with contrasting leaf and pod morphological features. The two are landraces that were previously collected from two counties in Kenya. The experimental design was a completely randomized design (CRD) in a greenhouse with C. ...
Abstract The emergence and persistence of antibiotic resistance remain formidable health challenges. This study aimed at detecting and profiling antibiotic resistance of bacterial contaminants in vended food and the environment. Seventy antibiotic-resistant bacterial isolates were isolated from fried fish, African sausages, roasted meat, smokies, samosa, chips (potato fries), vegetable salads, and soil samples collected from Embu Town and Kangaru Market in Embu County, Kenya. The antibiotic ...
Abstract Management practices such as tillage, crop rotation, irrigation, organic and inorganic inputs application are known to influence diversity and function of soil microbial populations. In this study, we investigated the effect of conventional versus organic farming systems at low and high input levels on structure and diversity of prokaryotic microbial communities. Soil samples were collected from the ongoing long-term farming system comparison trials established in 2007 at Chuka and ...
Abstract Background: Fungus-cultivating termites make use of an obligate mutualism with fungi from the genus Termitomyces, which are acquired through either vertical transmission via reproductive alates or horizontally transmitted during the formation of new mounds. Termitomyces taxonomy, and thus estimating diversity and host specificity of these fungi, is challenging because fruiting bodies are rarely found. Molecular techniques can be applied but need not necessarily yield the same outcom...
Abstract Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of coronavirus (CoV) disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study compared the genome, mutations, and infectivity/ transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 with selected betacoronaviruses (beta-CoVs). This study further examined the origin, risk factors, and outbreaks caused by beta-CoVs. We searched the following databases for relevant studies: PubMed, Google Scholar, and the World Health Organization COVID-19 databas...
Abstract/Overview In this paper, we characterize the centre of dense irreducible subalgebras of compact elementary operators that are spectrally bounded. We show that the centre is a unital, irreducible and commutative Cā -subalgebra. Furthermore, the supports from the centre are orthogonal and the intersection of a nonzero ideal with the centre is non-zero.
Abstract/Overview Spectrally bounded compact elementary operators on dense irreducible subalgebras of C ā -algebras are characterized. Also, it is shown that left multiplications, right multiplications, generalized derivations and basic elementary operators are spec trally bounded compact elementary operators. Furthermore, several properties of spectrally bounded compact elementary operators such as completeness, convergence, continuity and total boundedness in a general Banach setting ...
Abstract/Overview Various aspects of elementary operators have been characterized by many mathematicians. In this paper, we consider norm-attainability and orthogonality of these operators in Banach spaces. Characterizations and generalizations of norm-attainability and orthogonality are given in details. We first give necessary and sufficient conditions for norm-attainability of Hilbert space operators then we give results on orthogonality of the range and the kernel of elementary operat...
Abstract/Overview In this paper, a nonlinear fourth order evolution equation is investigated by the Lie symmetry analysis approach. All the geometric vector fields and the Lie groups of the evolution equation are obtained. Finally, the symmetry reduction and the exact solutions of the equation are obtained by means of power series method.