American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Gbenemene Kpae, Eric

The negative impact of oil exploration on the Niger Delta environment cannot be overemphasized. Majority of the damage to the environment are due to oil spill and gas flares. Oil spills are due to corrosive and expired pipelines, while others are due to third party involvement. Apart from oil spills, gas flares has also been very destructive to the environment as toxic gas are released into the atmosphere daily. This gas flares causes breathing problems to inhabitants of local communities of the Niger Delta area. This research examines the patterns, trends, drivers and dynamics of conflict over environmental degradation in the Niger Delta. The study also determines existing mechanism for management of conflict over oil spills and gas flares in two selected communities: Bodo and K-Dere in Rivers State. We adopted a qualitative research design, and relied on primary and secondary sources of data. We found that oil spills and gas flares were the cause of conflict between the oil prospective companies especially Shell and oil bearing communities.

Asma Alqarni

Education has proved to be more critical than natural resources as seen in nations such as Singapore, which has minimal resources but an excellent economy (Sayed & Baker, 2014). Informational inventions have become a central part of the educational systems forvarious countries. Technology is used in teaching different subjects, including foreign languages; hence it is vital in the education sector. One of the communication innovations that have been integrated into the learning system is e-learning in which the student and the tutor do not see each other face-to-face as they do in traditional learning (Buran & Evseeva, 2015). Two methods, blended and flipped, have been said to be effective tools of education. 

Andrew Makori

The study set out to investigate the views of current female and male secondary school principals regarding barriers or hindrances to women teachers becoming secondary school principals in a County in Kenya. The study employed a quantitative survey approach and involved 18 female and 22 male principals who were purposively selected from forty secondary schools. Questionnaires were used to collect data. The resulting data was analysed using the SPSS (Software package for social science). The study findings indicate that while there was some degree of convergence among female and male principals, there also existed a wide range of divergence views among female and male principals in regarding factors that hinder women teachers from becoming secondary school principals, among the schools that took part in this study. The study concludes that barriers or hindrances to women advancement into educational leadership were differentially perceived between female and male secondary principals. One recommendation is that a large scale study was necessary in order to develop a full understanding of both male and female principals perceptions regarding factors that hindered women from advancing to leadership positions in secondary schools in Kenya.

Beichen Wang

Objective: This study aims to 1) examine the predictors of drug use at high school 2) build a predictive model for drug use using artificial neural network and compare its performance to logistic regression model.
 Methods: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) 2015 data were used for this study. The YRBSS was developed in 1990 to monitor priority health risk behaviors that contribute markedly to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. All the participants who were eligible were randomly assigned into 2 groups: training sample and testing sample. Two models were built using training sample: artificial neural network and logistic regression. We used these two models to predict the risk of Drug Usein the testing sample. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were calculated and compared for these two models for their discrimination capability and a curve using predicted probability versus observed probability were plotted to demonstrate the calibration measure for these two models.
Results: About 18.1% of 8711 students were drug users, about 19.1% among the female and 17.1% among the male. According to the logistic regression, students who had rides in a car driven by someone who is drinking were more likely to have drug use. Students who never tried cigarette smoking were less likely to use drug. Students who drank often were more likely to use drug. Student who used marijuana often were more likely to use drug. Heterosexual students were less likely to use drug. Students who slept 4 hours or less daily were more likely to use drug. Students who did not speak English well were less likely to be a drug user. According to this neural network, the top 5 most important predictors were ‘being black’, Q99 (How well do you speak English), ‘being Asian’, Q68 (sexual orientation), Q88 (On an average school night, how many hours of sleep do you get?). For training sample, the ROC was 0.84 for the Logistic regression and 0.88 for the artificial neural network. Artificial neural network performed better clearly. In testing sample, the ROC was 0.83 for the Logistic regression and 0.80 for the artificial neural network. Artificial neural network had worse performance. As to calibration measure, predictions made by the neural network are (in general) less concentrated around the 45-degree line (a perfect alignment with the line would indicate an ideal perfect calibration) than those made by the Logistic model. Conclusions: In this study, we identified several important predictors for drug use e.g., cigarette smoking,drinking, sexual orientation. This provided important information for educators as well as parents provide timely intervention. We built a predictive model using artificial neural network as well as logistic regression to provide a tool for early detection. As to performance of these two models, logistic regression and neural network had a similar discriminating capability. 

Corneille Luboya Tshiunza1,2

 The purpose of this quantitative study is to explain the possible impact of practices of leadership and management actors on student’s outcomes. The survey was carried through a questionnaire to ascertain the school leadership and management practices of 100 members of school management of 27 primary pilot schools were linked to 1620 students’ outcomes. The findings pointed out 39 significant practices in students outcomes among 82 selected practices. All these practices relate directly to the daily, monthly, trimestral and yearly duties of school leadership and management actors in DRC context. These practices are grouped into 3 components with 16 variables. The range from effective leadership and supervision of pedagogy; effective operational and strategic management of human, material and financial, information, and time resources available for school operations as well as an appropriate school environment. 

Hamid Sarmadi1*, Morteza Badri2, Sirous saadati2, Jafar Ghanei3

Religious intellectual in Iran is dynamic process that has been began within one hundred years ego and those intellectuals that don’t enough traditional reads reasons to resolve theoretical issues and try to rely on modern science adapt religion presence in modern world.
As far as effect to this process has been three elements: theoretical questions of term, scientific problems, and knowledge and people age cognizance. Words like that revival, reform, pluralism, hermeneutic and… is western received concepts that Iranian intellectuals sue adaptation with doctrines of traditional religion.
Generally religious intellectual in Iran pass from three period: 1.before constitutional age 2.age 1941-1960 that strong point is coup 3.divide in two period: number one is Islamic revolution intellectuals and secondary after revolution intellectuals this periods including are sequence of three general readings: ideologically- scientifically-epistemologically.
Before Islamic revolution religious intellectuals have outlook of external about religion and regarding concepts of absolutism, idealism, religion presence in public and privacy domain and sue consistency of religion and politics and putative this agent in eradicate of oppression. Whereas post-revolution religion intellectuals sue ponder in modernism concepts and express self imagination in concepts of justice and freedom compatible this base and have outlook of impressionistic between religion, age and position and those subjects. Abdolkarim Soroush believe rely to intra-religion resources is not enough, instead regarding to discuss and rationality and endeavors indicates religious sensitive in adaptation of pluralistic and democratic properties.

Kadhim Hatem Kaibr, Guo Jingjing

 In most of his plays, Albee focused on the themes of loneliness, alienation, lack of social communication, family disintegration, loss, anxiety about the future, and absence of human ideals. Some of these plays also reflected the troubled life of Albee, particularly during his childhood and adolescence. The repeated inclusion of anxiety and loss in most of Albee’s plays illustrates the suffering faced by individuals in the American capitalist society after the Second World War and reflects some parts of Albee’s personal life.This paper will attempt to identify the reasons that encourage Albee to include anxious characters with a sense of loss in most of his literary plays by studying the state of American society in Albee’s period and by examining how his previous experiences affect the themes presented in his works.

Evalsam Samuel Ecoma, M.Sc.1, Chinyere Samuel Ecoma, Ph.D.2

Fiscal federalism deals with the division of resources and tax raising powers among federating units to enable them fulfill their constitutional obligations. This can only be true if there is no other financial subordination on the part of any of the levels of government. It means that neither the federal nor the State nor Local Government in a Federation should be dependent on each other in performing the statutory duties and functions devolved upon them in a federal constitution. Since it is fundamentally true that the challenges of fiscal federalism are enormous in Nigeria, the paper attempts to look into the importance of fiscal federalism for good governance in Nigeria. The paper noticed that the principle of fiscal autonomy and fiscal integrity are paramount aspects of the survival and continued existence of a truly federating system of government. The paper reveals that the contending issues and challenges of fiscal federalism could be in form of a mismatch between revenue sources and functions of the various tiers of government. The paper concludes by arguing that there is the prospect of a stable federation if anchored on arrangements rooted in equity, fairness and justice. The paper asserts further that the distribution of revenue should encourage each State and Local Government to improve internal revenue generation, as well as the devolution of fiscal power and responsibilities to component units.

Iyad Harafesheh

 Women in Islam have always been an issue of contention especially in the modern society. As opposed to the modern society, Islam has maintained strict rules and roles in regards to women. Muslim women have to live the way they used to ages ago. In addition, the rights of women are restricted in women as opposed to men. The dramatic changes in the modern society are pushing the Muslim conservative rules and regulations to the corner. It is uncertain whether Muslims will be able to hold up on the strict rules and regulations. After all, it is becoming necessary for women to work to maintain their families better.   

A H M Shahidul Islam

The informal sector or informal economy is the part of an economy that are not taxed, regulated, monitored or included in the gross national product (GNP) by any form of government. This paper attempts to expresses the current situation of the informal economy of Dhaka City (South) as well as marginal propensity to consume (MPC) and marginal propensity to save (MPS) of the vendors by using Keynes consumption function. In addition, this paper also tries to illustrate the overall scenario of these vendors. To exemplify the result this study used primary data of 50 vendors of the areas of five different locations of Dhaka City (South) in the month of April, 2016. Moreover, this study finds that MPS of most of the vendors of the informal sector of Dhaka city (South) is small due to their higher MPC. As a result, it leads to low investment, which might have a significant impact in the economy. In light of the general poverty, low technology and development, informal activities are often considered as an economic, political and social value for public discontent. Nevertheless, transformation in the long run is a necessity for these countries as well.