Last-mile delivery is a critical stage of logistics in which delays, unsuccessful delivery attempts and customer-related issues can affect service quality and operational cost. This paper presents a data-driven workflow for analyzing delivery failures using structured dataset and interactive analytics. Python and pandas are used for data preparation and analysis, SQL supports structured querying, and a Streamlit dashboard presents key performance indicators and failure patterns. The project dataset contains 5,000 delivery records, with attributes such as distance, vehicle type, weather, traffic, customer availability, address accuracy, delivery attempts and failure reason. The recorded overall delivery failure rate is 19.24%. Chi-square tests show that customer availability and address accuracy have the strongest association with failure, followed by traffic level and weather. The workflow provides descriptive operational insights and can be extended with real-time data and validated machine-learning models for failure prediction.
Choosing where to open new stores is often settled with spreadsheets, rules of thumb or proprietary models whose data preparation and evaluation are rarely documented. This paper documents a small, reproducible analytics workflow for store location optimization and applies it to a synthetic city of 400 one-square-kilometre zones, 40 candidate sites and 12 competitor stores. Python and pandas derive demand and rent indicators, the tables are stored in SQLite and queried with SQL, k-means segments the zones, and six selection methods (population rank, weighted score, k-means snapping, maximal covering by mixed-integer programming, greedy-plus-swap search on a Huff-model profit, and exhaustive search) each choose 5 sites. All six are scored under one Huff-model profit function and then re-scored under five distance-decay values and 500 Monte Carlo draws. In the demonstration data the Huff-based search reaches a net annual profit of INR 2.67 crore, against 1.83–2.31 crore for the four baselines and 1.18 crore for a random five-site choice. Greedy-plus-swap matches the exhaustive optimum among all 658,008 five-site combinations, the covering model attains the highest demand coverage (52.2%) without the highest profit, and baseline regret grows with distance decay. Because the data are synthetic and the Huff-based methods are judged under their own objective, the results show how the workflow behaves, not how a real retail market behaves.
3
RETAIL SALES AND CUSTOMER ANALYTICS USING PYTHON, SQL, POWER BI, AND WEB-BASED VISUALIZATION
Retail organizations generate large volumes of transactional data, but raw records are not directly useful for business decision-making without systematic cleaning, aggregation, and visualization. This paper presents an end-to-end retail sales and customer analytics workflow implemented using Python, SQL, Microsoft Power BI, and a lightweight web reporting layer. The study uses a synthetic practice dataset containing 1,000 retail orders recorded during 2025, 310 unique customers, 20 products, 5 categories, and 8 cities. Python with Pandas is used for duplicate removal, missing-value handling, derived time features, KPI calculation, aggregation, and exploratory visualization. SQL queries provide reusable business analysis for sales, profit, categories, cities, products, customers, payment methods, monthly performance, and profit margins. Power BI is specified as the interactive business-intelligence layer, while a Flask/HTML dashboard provides a lightweight web interface with filtering and runtime dataset support. The analysis reports total sales of ₹11,354,750.00, total profit of ₹3,659,302.06, 1,000 orders, 310 customers, 1,847 units, and an average order value of ₹11,354.75. Electronics contributes the largest category sales, and Laptop is the highest-selling product by sales value. The paper demonstrates how multiple analytics tools can be combined into a reproducible workflow for descriptive retail intelligence.
4
PREDICTING BANK CUSTOMER CHURN USING A RANDOM FOREST CLASSIFIER WITH ENGINEERED RISK FEATURES
Customer attrition is a direct threat to a retail bank's revenue and lifetime-value economics, since acquiring a replacement customer is markedly more expensive than retaining an existing one. This study builds a supervised machine-learning system to predict individual customer churn from a structured banking dataset (European_Bank.csv, 10,000 customer records) and deploys it as an interactive Streamlit decision-support dashboard. Ten raw attributes — credit score, geography, gender, age, tenure, account balance, number of products, credit-card ownership, active-membership status and estimated salary — are supplemented with four engineered risk features (Balance-to-Salary Ratio, Product Density, Engagement-Product interaction and Age × Tenure) and one-hot encoding of geography and gender, giving a 15-feature model matrix. Features are standardised with a persisted StandardScaler and a Random Forest classifier is trained on an 80/20 stratified split. On the held-out test set the model achieves Accuracy = 91.4%, Precision = 89.2%, Recall = 87.8%, F1-Score = 88.5% and ROC-AUC = 0.930, outperforming Logistic Regression and Decision Tree baselines and approaching a heavier XGBoost ensemble while remaining fast to train and easy to explain with SHAP. The trained model, encoder and scaler artefacts are served through a browser-based dashboard that reports churn probability, a colour-coded risk gauge, SHAP-based explanations and tailored retention recommendations, turning a notebook result into a tool that bank relationship managers can act on directly.
5
PREDICTING CUSTOMER CHURN IN TELECOM SERVICES USING MACHINE LEARNING
Customer attrition, or churn, is a critical revenue risk for subscription-based telecom operators, where the cost of acquiring a new customer substantially exceeds the cost of retaining an existing one. This study develops a supervised machine-learning system, ChurnGuard AI, for predicting customer churn risk and deploys it as an interactive Streamlit analytics dashboard. Using the IBM/Kaggle Telco Customer Churn dataset – 7,043 customer records with 21 demographic, account, and service attributes – multiple classifiers (Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting) are trained on the binary target Churn (0 = No, 1 = Yes) after categorical encoding, feature scaling, and an 80/20 stratified train-test split. Logistic Regression is selected as the deployed model based on hold-out evaluation. On the held-out test set (n = 1,409) the model achieves Accuracy = 73.81%, Precision = 50.43%, Recall = 78.34%, F1 Score
= 61.36%, and ROC-AUC = 0.8413, meaningfully outperforming a majority-class baseline in discrimination and recall despite a similar headline accuracy. The trained model and its preprocessing artefacts are served through a five-page Streamlit dashboard providing KPI reporting, individual churn prediction, customer risk segmentation, visual analytics, and batch prediction. The contribution of this paper is a compact, interpretable, and fully deployed churn-risk pipeline that links model outputs to concrete retention actions in contract migration, proactive support outreach, and targeted discounting.
6
ANOMALY DETECTION IN URBAN MOBILITY DATA FOR IDENTIFYING UNUSUAL PASSENGER DEMAND PATTERNS
Urban public transportation systems generate large volumes of mobility data covering passenger demand, routes, transport type, time, weather, and occupancy. This paper reports a data-driven anomaly detection framework, applied to a 10,000-record demonstration dataset spanning 20 bus and metro routes over six months, that identifies unusual passenger-demand observations without requiring labelled data. The pipeline covers preprocessing, exploratory analysis, feature engineering, Isolation Forest as the primary detector, and DBSCAN as a density-based comparison. On the demonstration dataset, Isolation Forest (contamination = 0.05) flags 500 of 10,000 observations (5.00%) as anomalous, while DBSCAN (eps = 0.5, min_samples = 10) labels 198 observations (1.98%) as noise, with 102 observations — 51.5% of DBSCAN's noise points — flagged by both methods. Anomalies concentrate on bus routes (7.26% anomaly rate versus 2.78% for metro), peak hours (8.60% versus 3.48% off-peak), and weekends (Sunday 8.55%, Saturday 6.16%), and align closely with the dataset's existing crowd classification (51.6% of “High” crowd-level records are flagged, against 3.05% of “Low” records). The framework gives transportation planners a reproducible, statistically grounded view of unexpected demand variation to support capacity planning and resource allocation.
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A RETROSPECTIVE CASE SERIES OF ALLERGIC RHINITIS TREATED WITH NUX VOMICA
Background: Allergic rhinitis is an IgE-mediated inflammatory disorder of the nasal mucosa that affects an estimated 10–30% of the population worldwide. It causes sneezing, watery discharge, nasal blockage and itching, and disturbs sleep and daily activity. Nux vomica is a commonly prescribed homoeopathic medicine for chilly, irritable, oversensitive patients with sneezing and nasal blockage.
AIM AND OBJECTIVES
Aim: To describe how Nux vomica was prescribed, and what was recorded at follow-up, in patients with allergic rhinitis attending an outpatient department. The study was not designed to test whether Nux vomica works.
Objectves
• To describe the age and sex distribution of the patients.
• To describe the potencies in which Nux vomica was prescribed.
• To describe the frequency with which the medicine was repeated.
• To report the outcome recorded during follow-up.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
A retrospective case series of fifteen outpatient records (study period October 2025 to October 2026) of clinically diagnosed allergic rhinitis treated with Nux vomica, with complete follow-up, at OPD. Data are presented as counts and percentages, and total nasal symptom scores (TNSS) as median (range).
RESULTS
Fifteen patients were included. The largest age group was 31–40 years (6 patients, 40%), and 11 patients (73.3%) were male. The commonest potency was 200C (7 patients, 46.7%). Twelve patients (80%) received the same schedule, four times a week. At follow-up,11 patients (73.3%) were recorded as improved and 4 (26.7%) as unchanged; none was recorded as worse.
CONCLUSION
Nux vomica was often prescribed as 200C (46.7%) and 12 of 15 patients (80%)had the same four times a week schedule, a routine rather than varied pattern; reasons for dosing were not recorded. Eleven of 15 patients improved and 4 did not change, but with no comparison group, selected records and a very small sample, this does not show that Nux vomica is effective. Controlled prospective studies are needed.
8
PRODUCTLENS AI: FORECASTING USER DISENGAGEMENT AND FEATURE SURVIVAL TO GROUND PRODUCT ROADMAP DECISIONS
Product teams tend to learn that a feature has failed, or that a cohort is drifting away, only after a weekly dashboard has already turned red. This paper describes ProductLens AI, a modular pipeline that tries to bring that moment forward. Working on a simulated clickstream of 4,000 users and ten feature launches, the system combines leading engagement indicators, a nested conversion funnel, a gradient-boosted classifier that forecasts 14-day inactivity, Kaplan–Meier survival curves for feature usage, and a Beta–Bernoulli bandit that ranks candidate features by expected adoption per engineering hour. A language model then turns the computed outputs into a written roadmap recommendation and is not allowed to introduce figures of its own. Under a time-based holdout the classifier reaches an AUC of 0.977 overall, but only 0.792 among users who were active in the preceding week, which we argue is the fairer measure of early-warning value; a plain recency rule, by comparison, reaches 0.964 overall and only 0.632 on that subset. Survival curves separated the ten launches into sustained, novelty-driven and failed groups (day-14 survival of 0.72–0.79, 0.45–0.58 and 0.14–0.26), even though early adoption rates alone did not. The paper also shows that the practical size of the alert list depends heavily on the score threshold chosen, so that choice belongs with the product team and not with the model. We describe the architecture, the methods, the limits that come from synthetic data and heuristic posteriors, and a validation plan that should be completed before the pipeline is trusted on production telemetry.
9
ELECTRIC VEHICLE SALES AND MARKET TREND ANALYSIS USING PYTHON AND POWER BI
Sales records for electric vehicles (EVs) are often examined in spreadsheets, or in forecasting studies that say little about how the data were prepared and queried. This paper documents a small, reproducible analytics workflow for EV sales and applies it to a demonstration dataset of 440 records covering ten Indian states, eleven models from five brands, and the years 2022 to 2025. The dataset is synthetic and ships with the project, so the findings describe how the workflow behaves and not how the real market behaves. Python and pandas clean the data and derive revenue, efficiency and value indicators. The cleaned table is stored in a SQLite database and explored with eight Structured Query Language (SQL) queries, a Streamlit dashboard and an Excel workbook present the results, and a Power BI dashboard is specified with Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) measures and visuals. In the demonstration data, yearly sales rise from 14,201 to 32,304 units between 2022 and 2025, while year-over-year growth eases from 36.6% to 25.3%. One brand holds 43.5% of units, sport utility vehicles (SUVs) account for 72.3%, and a least-squares line projects 38,090 units for 2026. The workflow gives students and analysts a transparent route from a raw sales table to interpretable market indicators, and it can be pointed at a real dataset that follows the same column layout.
10
LC–MS ANALYSIS OF MAJOR ALKALOIDS IN HOMOEOPATHIC MOTHER TINCTURE OF JUSTICIA ADHATODA
Background: Justicia adhatoda L. (syn. Adhatoda vasica Nees) is a respiratory remedy whose activity is attributed to quinazoline alkaloids. Its hydro-alcoholic mother tincture (Ø) is the starting material for homoeopathic dilutions, but LC–MS data on the tincture are scarce. Aim: To characterise the major alkaloids of the mother tincture by LC–MS. Methods: One tincture sample was analysed on 25 September 2026 (5 µL) on an LCMS-8045 RX triple-quadrupole system by full-scan acquisition (20 positive/negative events) and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) of eleven analytes with quantifier and qualifier transitions. Identification was assessed from retention-time (RT) agreement and ion ratio. Relative peak-area shares were used as signal proportions, not as estimates of compound amounts. Results: Full-scan base peaks at m/z 205, 189, 219 and 203 coincided with the RT windows of vasicinol, vasicine, vasicoline and vasicinone. MRM signals were observed for all nine targeted alkaloids, but two identifications were tentative. Vasicinone gave the strongest signal (43.5% of summed alkaloid peak area), followed by vasicine (28.7%), vasicoline (14.8%) and vasicinol (9.0%); together these accounted for 96.0% of the alkaloid signal. Orientin was not confirmed. Conclusion: The signal profile was dominated by vasicinone and vasicine. Because detector response can differ among compounds and no calibration standards were used, peak-area shares must not be interpreted as relative amounts. Validated analysis with reference standards is needed.
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SENTINELBI AI: AN AI-POWERED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM FOR REVENUE MONITORING AND ANOMALY DETECTION
This paper presents SentinelBI AI, an end-to-end business-intelligence platform that combines classical statistical monitoring with machine learning and deep learning to detect anomalous revenue behaviour in e-commerce operations. The system is built on the Online Retail II transactional dataset (1,067,371 line items, December 2009 – December 2011, 43 countries) aggregated into 731 daily business-performance records comprising revenue, quantity, transaction count, active-customer count and a 7-day rolling-average revenue deviation. Two complementary unsupervised detectors are trained: an Isolation Forest that flags unusual individual daily observations, and an LSTM Autoencoder that flags unusual sequential revenue patterns over a 30-day window after 20 training epochs. Their outputs are fused into a three-tier alert scheme — Normal, Warning, and Critical — surfaced through a five-page Streamlit dashboard (Executive Overview, Business Analytics, AI Anomaly Monitor, AI Investigation, and a natural-language "Ask SentinelBI" query interface backed by a SQLite analytical warehouse). Of 731 business days, the Isolation Forest flags 37 (5.06%), the LSTM Autoencoder flags 33 (4.51%), and 19 days are jointly flagged as Critical, giving 32 Warning-level days and 680 Normal days. Compared with a static ±2σ baseline, the learned detectors achieved higher cross-validated match rates, with the Isolation Forest and LSTM Autoencoder obtaining 51.4% and 57.6%, respectively, compared with 43.9% for the baseline. The contribution of this work is a deployable, dual-model anomaly-detection pipeline that converts unsupervised model outputs into an actionable, non-technical decision-support tool for e-commerce revenue monitoring.
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A SYNERGISTIC FRAMEWORK FOR INTERNAL FRAUD MITIGATION: INTEGRATING FORENSIC ACCOUNTING WITH ADVANCED DATA ANALYTICS
The pervasive threat of internal fraud, amplified by the digitalisation of financial services, poses a significant challenge to the banking industry, frequently overwhelming traditional auditing and investigative methods. This study addresses the urgent need for more adaptive and technologically advanced fraud mitigation strategies by proposing and validating a synergistic framework that integrates forensic accounting principles with advanced data analytics. Utilising a sophisticated, simulation-based methodology, we generated a realistic dataset of 1.5 million banking transactions, embedding subtle and complex internal fraud scenarios. This research evaluates the efficacy of four distinct machine learning models—Logistic Regression, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) Neural Network, XGBoost, and a Balanced Random Forest—in detecting these fraudulent activities. The findings reveal that the Balanced Random Forest model demonstrates superior performance, achieving an AUC-ROC of 0.975, an F1-Score of 0.915, and a Recall of 0.952, indicating its exceptional ability to identify over 95% of fraudulent transactions while maintaining a low rate of false positives. Feature importance analysis highlights that behavioural anomalies, such as deviations from an employee's average transaction patterns, are the most potent predictors of fraud, surpassing the significance of static transactional attributes like the amount. This study provides a practical, data-driven workflow that translates these analytical insights into an automated, real-time fraud detection and prevention system. The results confirm that the integration of forensic expertise with machine learning not only enhances detection accuracy and operational efficiency but also provides a proactive, resilient defence mechanism against the dynamic nature of internal financial crime.
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FACTORIAL VALIDATION OF A CIVIC DISPOSITION SCALE FOR SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN BENUE STATE: IMPLICATIONS FOR EFFECTIVE CIVIC EDUCATION ASSESSMENT
The study is on Factorial Validation of a Civic Disposition Scale (CDS) for Senior Secondary School Students in Benue State: Implications for Effective Civic Education Assessment. It was designed to validate using factor analysis method a Civic Disposition Scale for senior secondary school students. Two basic objectives guided the study. The study adopted an instrumentation research design. Benue State, Nigeria was the target study area and the population comprised 3,911 SS2 students from seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Zone B. A sample of 363 students (196 males, 167 females) was selected using multistage sampling with purposive and simple random techniques. Data were collected via a researcher-developed four-point rating CDS, validated by five experts and shown reliable with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87. The scale was administered directly with trained assistants, and data were analyzed using SPSS. Results revealed that the instrument has a clear internal structure as evidenced in the scree plot, showing it measures a limited number of main ideas (hidden traits), and 30 of the 95 items are meaningfully connected to these core areas. Five factors extracted as underlying structure of the scale, labelled Civic duty, Community involvement, Political attentiveness, Ethical and Moral disposition and Openness to diversity were grouped based on items loaded on them. This is according to strong factor loadings, with values above 0.50 indicating solid relationships between items and their factors. The study concludes therefore that the CDS instrument developed is a reliable and well-structured tool for assessing civic disposition. It was recommended among other things that educators and researchers focus on the key factors identified in the scale when using the Civic Disposition Scale to assess students and also that the full multidimensional nature of the scale be utilized in interpreting students’ responses.
14
SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE AND FOOD CONSUMPTION PATTERN OF THE ELDERLY IN NASARAWA STATE, NIGERIA
The study sought to assess the socio-demographic profile and food consumption pattern of the elderly in Nasarawa State. The study was guided by two specific objectives. Two research questions were raised for the study. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 114, 973 persons living within the study area. The sample size of the study was 300 participants. The study employed questionnaire as an instrument for data collection and the data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation. The findings shows that, majority of the elderly (70.3%) ate 2-3 meals per day however, these meals mostly devoid of diary, legumes/eggs, meat/fish/poultry, as well as fruits and vegetables. Analysis of average daily intake of nutrients by the elderly respondents revealed that the intake of nutrients (apart from vitamin B1(1.0mg), Fe(16.8mg), and Cu(8.4mg).) were lower than the recommended value/day. The study concluded that there is a need for specific intervention programmes for the elderly in Nasarawa State to improve their nutritional status through dietary diversification and good food preparation practices. It is recommended that there should be a need for Public health intervention programs and health care institutions should promote dietary plans at the community level and encourage consumption of cheap locally available nutritious foods.
15
RETROSPECTIVE STUDY OF CLINICAL OUTCOMES FOLLOWING HOMOEOPATHIC TREATMENT IN NEWBORNS AND CHILDREN WITH GENETIC DISORDERS
Background: Genetic disorders constitute an important group of conditions encountered in pediatric practice and may present with congenital anomalies, developmental delay, neurological manifestations, or multisystem involvement. The present study retrospectively reviewed pediatric case records to describe clinical outcomes and prescribing patterns among children with recorded genetic disorders who received homoeopathic treatment.
Methods: A retrospective, quantitative, descriptive observational study was undertaken using medical records from the outpatient and inpatient services of Sarada Krishna Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital. Thirty pediatric records were included from the study material described in the source synopsis. Variables included age, sex, recorded genetic disorder, consanguinity, maternal age at conception where available, homoeopathic medicine, potency, and recorded clinical outcome. Descriptive frequencies were used to summarize the dataset.
Results: The sample comprised 22 males and 8 females. Nineteen cases were aged 0–4 years, 7 were aged 5–9 years, and 4 were recorded in the 10–14-year group. Down syndrome was the most frequent diagnosis (5/30), followed by congenital talipes equinovarus, autism, and global developmental delay (4/30 each). Consanguinity was recorded in 12 of 30 cases. Maternal age at conception was available for 14 cases, with 7 each in the 25–29-year and 30–34-year groups. Sulphur was the most frequently recorded medicine (4/30), followed by Carcinosin (3/30). The most frequently recorded potency was 200 (12/30), followed by 1M (11/30). According to the detailed outcome table in the source record, 19 cases were classified as improved, 9 as moderately improved, 1 as showing mild improvement, and 1 as showing no improvement.
Conclusion: This retrospective series describes the characteristics, prescribing patterns, and recorded clinical outcomes of 30 pediatric cases with genetic disorders treated in a homoeopathic hospital. Because the study was uncontrolled, retrospective, based on a small heterogeneous sample, and used outcome categories derived from clinical records rather than a standardized validated scale, the findings should be considered descriptive and hypothesis-generating rather than evidence that homoeopathic treatment caused the observed changes.
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DIGITAL ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS AND RETAIL SME PERFORMANCE IN ZAMBIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR CHIPATA
This article examines how digital accounting systems may support retail small and medium-sized enterprise performance in Zambia, with implications for Chipata. A narrative review combines scholarly accounting and information-systems research with official Zambian policy, establishment, financial-inclusion, connectivity and electronic-invoicing materials. The Technology-Organization-Environment framework explains adoption conditions, while the DeLone and McLean information-systems success model supports an account of effective use and business value. The synthesis identifies potential mechanisms involving record quality, reporting timeliness, inventory visibility, cash-flow monitoring, internal control and management decisions. These mechanisms may contribute to efficiency, resilience and finance readiness, but purchasing software alone does not establish improved performance. System suitability, user skills, management commitment, data quality, affordability, infrastructure and security shape the outcomes. The article develops six propositions and a staged implementation pathway for retail SMEs. It provides a context-sensitive framework rather than new survey findings or a measured effect for Chipata. Future local research should distinguish adoption, effective use, information quality and business performance, and should combine respondent perceptions with verifiable operational and financial measures.
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SEPARATION OF POWERS AND EXECUTIVE DOMINANCE A DEEP INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE OF PRESIDENTIAL, PARLIAMENTARY, AND HYBRID GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS COMPREHENSI VE ACADEMI C RESEARCH PAPER MODULE 3: THEORI ES AND FORMS OF GOVERNANCE
Governance represents the foundational framework through which human societies organize political power, distribute public authority, formulate collective rules, and allocate resources. In political science and constitutional theory, the structural architecture of a state determines not merely the efficiency of administration, but the preservation of individual liberty against state overreach. Classical political philosophers—from Aristotle and Polybius to John Locke, Montesquieu, and James Madison—recognized that unchecked power inevitably corrupts. Consequently, the study of governance is fundamentally an inquiry into institutional design: how power is acquired, exercised, checked, and restrained.
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COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE ON CHILD ABUSE IN MTWIVILA WARD, IRINGA MUNICIPALITY, IRINGA REGION, TANZANIA
This study assessed community knowledge regarding child abuse in Mtwivila Ward, Iringa Municipality, Iringa Region, Tanzania. A cross-sectional mixed-methods research design was employed among 85 respondents selected through purposive and simple random sampling. Quantitative data were collected using structured questionnaires, while qualitative data were obtained through Key Informant Interviews and one Focus Group Discussion. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics in SPSS Version 26, while qualitative data were analysed thematically. The findings showed a high level of general awareness of child abuse, with 100% of respondents reporting that they were aware of child abuse and able to identify common indicators, including injuries, fear and discomfort. However, knowledge was less comprehensive regarding less visible forms of abuse, particularly emotional abuse and neglect. Regarding child protection structures, 68.2% of respondents reported being aware of the existence of child protection committees, while 31.8% were unaware of them. Respondents identified poverty, drunkenness, family conflicts and lack of education as major perceived causes of child abuse. Physical injury was the most frequently recognized consequence, followed by death, drug abuse, school dropout, transmission of diseases, early pregnancy and emotional trauma. Qualitative findings further indicated that alcohol misuse, economic difficulties, inadequate knowledge of children's rights and inappropriate disciplinary practices may increase children's vulnerability to abuse. The study concludes that although community members in Mtwivila Ward have a high general awareness of child abuse, important knowledge gaps remain regarding emotional abuse, neglect, child protection structures and reporting mechanisms. The study recommends strengthening community education on all forms of child abuse, increasing awareness of child protection committees and reporting procedures, promoting positive and non-violent parenting practices and strengthening collaboration among families, schools, community leaders, social welfare officers, health workers, police, religious leaders and child protection committees to improve the prevention, identification, reporting and response to child abuse.
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HORMONAL FLUCTUATIONS AND PULSATILLA VARIABILITY: AN INTEGRATIVE HYPOTHESIS
Hormonal fluctuations represent an essential component of female reproductive physiology and are particularly prominent during the menstrual cycle and reproductive transitions such as puberty, pregnancy, postpartum period, perimenopause and menopause. Ovarian steroid hormones, principally estradiol and progesterone, exert effects beyond reproductive tissues and interact with neural circuits involved in mood, cognition, sleep, appetite, stress responsiveness and emotional processing. Increasing evidence indicates that clinically relevant symptoms in susceptible individuals may depend not simply upon absolute hormone concentrations but upon individual sensitivity to physiological hormonal fluctuations. [1,2]
Pulsatilla occupies a distinctive position in classical homoeopathic Materia medica because of its characteristic variability and its prominent association with female reproductive symptoms. Classical sources describe changeable mental states, easy weeping, mildness and yielding behaviour, desire for consolation, shifting physical symptoms, delayed or scanty menstruation, intermittent menstrual flow, leukorrheal symptoms and manifestations associated with pregnancy and lactation [5,7]
Modern pharmacognostic investigations of Pulsatilla species have identified several bioactive constituents, particularly triterpenoid saponins. Research involving Pulsatilla nigricans has characterized compounds including anemoside B4, anemoside A3 and other saponins, with experimental evidence for anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, antioxidant and other pharmacological activities [9,11]
This article proposes an integrative hypothesis in which the classical concept of Pulsatilla variability is examined alongside the modern concept of neuroendocrine sensitivity to hormonal fluctuations. The hypothesis does not assert that hormonal fluctuations cause the Pulsatilla symptom complex, nor that Pulsatilla regulates reproductive hormones. Instead, it proposes that the temporal variability, reproductive associations and affective characteristics described in Pulsatilla may constitute a clinically observable phenotype worthy of prospective investigation using menstrual cycle tracking, validated symptom instruments and endocrine biomarkers.
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PARLIAMENTARY AND PRESIDENTIAL FORMS OF GOVERNMENT: A COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL STUDY OF INDIA AND THE UNITED STATES
This article examines whether parliamentary or presidential government provides a more effective constitutional framework for democratic accountability, executive stability and institutional restraint. It compares India’s parliamentary system with the presidential system of the United States, focusing on executive selection, tenure, responsibility, legislative relations and checks and balances. The research adopts doctrinal and comparative methods, using constitutional provisions, judicial decisions and official constitutional materials. It argues that the difference between the models is not simply that one combines powers and the other separates them: each distributes political responsibility differently. India’s model makes the Council of Ministers answerable to the Lok Sabha and permits a government to be replaced when it loses confidence, while the US model gives the President an independent electoral mandate and fixed tenure, subject to constitutional removal. The analysis finds that parliamentary government may promote policy coordination but can enable executive dominance when party discipline is strong; presidential government may provide continuity but can produce institutional deadlock. Neither design guarantees democratic performance without effective oversight, constitutional conventions and respect for legal limits. Rather than recommending wholesale transplantation of the American model, the article proposes strengthening parliamentary scrutiny, committee review, transparency and constitutional accountability in India.
21
CONTRIBUTION OF COMMUNITY SAVINGS GROUPS TO THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF BENEFICIARY HOUSEHOLDS IN IRINGA MUNICIPALITY, TANZANIA
The study assessed the contribution of community savings groups to the economic well-being of beneficiary households in Iringa Municipality, Tanzania.. A quantitative research approach was employed using a cross-sectional research design. A sample of 100 beneficiary households was selected using simple random sampling, while five key informants were purposively selected. Primary data were collected using questionnaires and interview guides. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 26, while qualitative data were analysed thematically. The findings showed that community savings groups contributed to the economic well-being of beneficiary households through income generation and asset accumulation. Beneficiaries reported improvements in household income and acquisition of assets through savings and access to group loans. However, limited capital, small loan amounts, inadequate markets and limited business management skills constrained the extent to which the groups contributed to household economic well-being. The study concludes that community savings groups make a positive contribution to the economic well-being of beneficiary households by supporting income generation and asset accumulation, although their contribution is constrained by financial and business-related challenges. The study recommends strengthening productive lending, business management training, market linkages and household financial planning to enhance the economic benefits of community savings groups among beneficiary households.
22
PARENTS’ AND CAREGIVERS’ PERCEPTION OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF COMMUNITY NUTRITION PROGRAMS ON CHILD FEEDING PRACTICES AMONG CHILDREN UNDER-FIVE YEARS AT IRINGA MUNICIPALITY
The study aimed to assess parents’ and caregivers’ perception of the contribution of community nutrition programs to child feeding practices among children under-five years in Iringa Municipality, Tanzania. The study focused on parents’ and caregivers’ perceptions of the contribution of community nutrition programs to meal frequency, dietary diversity, breastfeeding practices and recommended feeding routines. A mixed research approach was used with a cross-sectional research design. Questionnaires were used to collect quantitative data from parents and caregivers, while semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants to obtain detailed information on community nutrition programs and child feeding practices. Quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Product for the Social Solution (SPSS), Version 26, using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were analysed through thematic analysis. The findings showed that parents and caregivers perceived community nutrition programs as contributing to improved child feeding practices through increased meal frequency, improved dietary diversity, continued breastfeeding and better adherence to recommended feeding routines. The findings also showed that nutrition education, practical guidance and follow-up provided through community nutrition programs supported parents and caregivers in applying appropriate feeding practices at household level. The study concludes that community nutrition programs contribute positively to child feeding practices among children under-five years in Iringa Municipality. The study recommends strengthening practical nutrition education, household follow-up and community-based demonstrations to support parents and caregivers in applying appropriate feeding practices for children under-five years.
23
THE HIDDEN COST OF GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT: HOW JOB SEARCH DURATION AFFECTS HOUSEHOLD WELFARE AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE IN KENYA
Kenya’s economy continues to add jobs, yet most of them are informal, and university graduates increasingly wait long periods before their first stable employment. This paper examines how the duration of job search affects household welfare and the economic independence of young Kenyans. It adopts a descriptive desktop design that combines official labour-force statistics from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), a 2026 graduate-employability study by the Commission for University Education (CUE), a KIPPRA graduate survey and KNBS poverty lines, and it applies simple, transparent formulas to these sources. The calculations show that 52.9 per cent of unemployed Kenyans had been searching for more than twelve months in the first quarter of 2019, rising to 62.8 per cent among those aged 25–29, which implies mean spells of about 19–26 months under steady-state assumptions. Graduates take an average of 11.6 months to find a first job; at the graduate pay levels reported by KIPPRA this represents KSh 0.62–0.91 million in foregone earnings, equal to 63–92 per cent of average annual formal-sector earnings (KSh 988,200 in 2025). Within a household, supporting one jobless adult reduces consumption per adult equivalent by 17–33 per cent and can push households that sit up to 20–50 per cent above the poverty line into poverty. The paper concludes that prolonged search is a household-level shock and a delay in economic independence, not merely a labour-market statistic, and recommends longitudinal graduate tracking, work-integrated learning and targeted transition support.
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CONTRIBUTION OF OFF-FARM INCOME-GENERATING ACTIVITIES TO HOUSEHOLD INCOME AMONG SMALLHOLDER FARMERS IN IRINGA DISTRICT COUNCIL, TANZANIA
This study examined the contribution of off-farm income-generating activities (IGAs) to household income among smallholder farmers in Iringa District Council, Tanzania. The manuscript focuses specifically on the first objective of the broader dissertation, which examined the contribution of off-farm IGAs to household income. The study was guided by the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and employed a mixed-methods approach with a cross-sectional design. Data were collected from 128 smallholder farmers engaged in off-farm IGAs in Wasa and Lumuli Wards using structured questionnaires, while qualitative information was obtained from key informants. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, including frequencies and percentages, while qualitative evidence was analysed thematically. The findings showed that off-farm IGAs constituted the main source of income for 52.8% of respondents, compared with 40.9% who identified on-farm activities as their main source and 6.3% who reported other sources. In terms of the contribution to total household income, 40.6% of respondents reported obtaining 50–74% of household income from off-farm activities, 39.8% obtained 25–49% and 4.7% obtained 75% or more. Overall, 85.1% obtained at least one-quarter of their household income from off-farm activities. Furthermore, 71.9% received income from off-farm activities daily, 22.7% weekly and 5.5% monthly. The findings suggest that off-farm IGAs provide an important and relatively regular source of household income, complementing seasonal agricultural earnings and strengthening household livelihood security. The study concludes that off-farm IGAs make an important contribution to household income among smallholder farmers in Iringa District Council. Strengthening access to finance, markets, entrepreneurship skills and supportive local institutions is recommended to enhance the sustainability and income-generating potential of off-farm enterprises.
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REGULATING SURROGACY ACROSS LEGAL CULTURES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDIA, THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
Surrogacy combines a variety of legal, reproductive, contractual and medical concerns into one. But the ways in which jurisdictions regulate that relationship are quite different. This article does a functional comparative analysis of the Indian law and US and UK laws. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 has transformed the Indian transnational market into a statutory one allowing only carefully delineated altruistic surrogacy transactions, while completely banning commercial surrogacy. There is no uniform federal surrogacy law; state law varies from very facilitative (as in California and New York) to restrictive (influenced by older public-policy concerns). The United Kingdom allows non-commercial surrogacy but usually considers the surrogate to be the legal mother at birth, and the parent(s) is/are transferred to the child through a post-birth parental order. A comparison, it can be seen that the three systems of law assign risk in different ways: in India, the control is on entry; in the United States, often the control is on enforceable agreement; and in the United Kingdom, the control is on the consent after birth and transfer of parenthood by the courts. The authors contend that a robust model should include India's anti-exploitation protections, the surrogate-centred autonomy protections in contemporary U.S. laws, and a welfare and independent-review framework in the United Kingdom, without any "eligible" criteria and legal uncertainty at birth.
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CONTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURAL MARKETING COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES TO COCOA FARMERS’ HOUSEHOLD INCOME IN KYELA DISTRICT COUNCIL
This study examined the contribution of AMCOS to cocoa farmers' household income in Kyela District Council, Tanzania. Data were collected from 122 cocoa farmers and eight key informants from four AMCOS in Kyela District Council. Data were collected using questionnaires, key informant interviews and documentary reviews. Quantitative data were analysed using frequencies, percentages, means and paired t-test in SPSS version 26, and qualitative data were by thematic analysis. The findings show that most of farmers reported higher household income after joining AMCOS, received better cocoa prices, reported reduced problems with middlemen, and received credit through AMCOS. Mean annual household income increased, comparing before joining AMCOS. However, payment delays and differences in cocoa production affected the benefits received by some farmers. The study concludes that AMCOS contributes to household income through collective marketing, better cocoa prices, reduced reliance on middlemen and access to credit and agricultural services.
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EXPLAIN THE IMPORTANCE, SIGNIFICANCE, SCOPE AND DISADVANTAGES OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS (IFRS) IN VARIOUS JURISDICTIONS AND WHY REVISION OF THEM IS IMPORTANT (ZAMBIA IS THE COUNTRY OF REFERENCE)
This technical seminar report examines the importance, significance, scope and disadvantages of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS Accounting Standards) in different jurisdictions, with Zambia as the principal country of reference. It also explains why periodic revision of the Standards is important. The report adopts a desk-based qualitative review of authoritative standard-setting, regulatory and professional literature.
The report finds that IFRS contributes to comparability, transparency, accountability, investor confidence and cross-border interpretation of financial statements. Its scope is particularly significant for publicly accountable entities and capital-market reporting, while the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard provides a simplified framework for eligible entities. Zambia adopted IFRS Standards through the Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants, with compliance effective from 1 January 2005. Despite these benefits, IFRS may create implementation costs, technical complexity, reliance on professional judgement, valuation difficulties and challenges where local institutional capacity is limited.
The report further finds that periodic revision of IFRS is necessary because financial markets, business models, technology, transactions and users’ information needs continue to evolve. Post-implementation reviews and amendments enable the International Accounting Standards Board to assess whether Standards continue to operate as intended and to address unintended consequences or emerging financial reporting issues. The report concludes that IFRS remains important to Zambia’s financial reporting environment; however, effective application requires continuous professional development, effective enforcement, proportionate reporting frameworks and active participation in international standard-setting processes.
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THE EFFECT OF EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION ON SERVICE DELIVERY AT ASAS DAIRIES LIMITED IN TANZANIA
Employee motivation is an important human resource management issue because employees' willingness to perform their duties can influence the quality and timeliness of services provided by an organisation. This study evaluated the effect of employee motivation on service delivery at ASAS Dairies Limited in Iringa, Tanzania. The study focused on three main motivation practices: financial incentives, employee recognition and career development opportunities. A mixed-methods approach and an explanatory research design were used. Quantitative data were collected from 80 employees through structured questionnaires, while qualitative data were obtained from five key informants through semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data were analysed using frequencies and percentages in SPSS Version 26, while interview data were analysed thematically. The findings showed that employee motivation was associated with several aspects of service delivery. Specifically, 76.3% of respondents reported that financial incentives often encouraged timely completion of assigned duties. Similarly, 76.3% reported that employee recognition improved service quality six to ten times during the previous twelve months, while 73.8% indicated that career development opportunities often helped employees meet customers' expectations. However, the findings also showed limitations. About 47.5% of respondents reported that motivation improved daily work performance by less than 20%, while 67.5% indicated that motivation rarely reduced delays in completing assigned duties. Interview findings indicated that financial incentives, recognition and career development strengthened employee commitment, confidence and service quality, but their effectiveness was affected by organisational resources, supervision and working conditions. The study concludes that employee motivation contributes to service delivery at ASAS Dairies Limited, although motivation alone is insufficient to eliminate operational delays. The study recommends a fair motivation system that combines financial incentives, employee recognition and career development with effective supervision and adequate working resources.
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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PEG AND ETHANOL FOR OPTIMIZED MICROEMULSION
Ocular drug delivery is associated with several challenges, including tear dilution, nasolacrimal drainage, blinking, and limited corneal drug absorption. The present study aimed to formulate and evaluate a gentamicin sulphate ophthalmic microemulsion to improve ocular drug delivery[1]. Gentamicin sulphate was incorporated using oleic acid as the oil phase, Tween 80 as surfactant, and ethanol or PEG 400 as co-surfactant. Pseudo-ternary phase diagrams were constructed at different surfactant-to-co-surfactant ratios to identify the suitable microemulsion region. Fourteen formulations were prepared by spontaneous emulsification and evaluated for physical appearance, pH, viscosity, globule size, zeta potential, drug content, and in vitro drug diffusion. Formulation optimization was performed using Design-Expert software, considering globule size and diffusion rate as responses[4]. The PEG-containing formulations showed comparatively better performance, and F9 was identified as the optimized formulation. F9 exhibited a globule size of 10.34 nm, pH 7.0, zeta potential of −26.8 mV, and drug content of 88.23%. The optimized formulation demonstrated a maximum diffusion rate of 88.8%. Drug-release data followed zero-order kinetics, while Korsmeyer–Peppas analysis indicated non-Fickian case-II transport. The optimized formulation showed antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, with a zone of inhibition of approximately 25.21 mm. Thus, the developed microemulsion demonstrated desirable physicochemical properties, enhanced drug diffusion, and antimicrobial activity, indicating its potential as an ophthalmic drug-delivery system[8].
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SCHOOL ATTENDANCE POLICIES AND LEARNERS’ ABSENTEEISM: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
By , Regina B. Galutan, John Paul C. Sabatin, Cherry Rose D. Ticag, Febhay W. Sumbad, Jessa L. Manglaas, Edigail B. Marvil, Annalyn B. Bahol, Hanley P. Calado, Lloyda P. Ciano, Ferdinand T. Carantes
https://doi-doi.org/101555/ijrpa.6446
Education is a foundation of national development, and regular learner attendance is a significant predictor of academic engagement and achievement. This study comparatively examined attendance policies and practices in elementary schools, focusing on their implementation, challenges, and perceived effects on learner absenteeism. Using a qualitative research design, structured interviews were conducted with seven elementary school teachers who had direct experience implementing attendance interventions. Findings revealed that consistent policy enforcement, parental involvement, incentive programs, systematic attendance monitoring, and positive reinforcement helped reduce absenteeism. However, overly punitive disciplinary practices could increase learner anxiety and disengagement and potentially lead to prolonged absences, underscoring the need for developmentally appropriate and supportive interventions. Socioeconomic conditions also influenced attendance patterns, as learners from low-income households encountered additional barriers to regular school participation. The study highlights the importance of balancing policy enforcement with responsive support that addresses learners’ developmental needs and socioeconomic circumstances. Strengthened school–family communication, early identification of attendance concerns, and context-sensitive interventions are therefore recommended. The findings may guide improvements in elementary school attendance policies and practices toward creating a more inclusive learning environment that promotes consistent learner participation and improved academic outcomes.
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BRIDGING THE DYNAMIC AND THE OBJECTIVE: A CONCEPTUAL CORRELATION OF MIASMATIC PATTERNS WITH MODERN DIAGNOSTIC FINDINGS
Homoeopathy interprets disease through individualised symptomatology and the theory of chronic miasms, whereas modern medicine relies on objective diagnostic investigations that demonstrate functional, structural, and pathological change. This conceptual article explores a theoretical correlation between the Hahnemannian miasms — Psora, Sycosis, and Syphilis — and the later-described Tubercular miasm, with findings obtained from basic haematological, biochemical, radiological, and other standard diagnostic investigations. Such correlation is proposed as a complementary theoretical layer that may aid clinical evaluation, holistic case assessment, and appropriate referral, without replacing individualised homoeopathic case-taking or established biomedical diagnosis. Diagnostic findings should not be regarded as direct biological markers of miasms, since miasmatic theory and modern diagnostic parameters belong to distinct frameworks of clinical interpretation. Further research employing standardised miasmatic criteria and objective diagnostic parameters is required to establish the validity, reproducibility, and clinical relevance of the proposed correlations.
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DIGITAL RUPEE (E₹) IN INDIA: OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) represents a digital form of central bank money and has emerged as an important area of monetary and financial research. Unlike commercial-bank deposits and privately issued electronic money, a CBDC is a direct liability of the central bank. India’s Digital Rupee (e₹), issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), provides an important case for examining how sovereign digital money can coexist with cash, bank deposits and existing digital payment systems. This paper examines the concept, characteristics, forms, objectives, potential benefits, risks and economic implications of CBDCs, with particular emphasis on India. It discusses retail and wholesale CBDC, the role of intermediaries, programmability, offline functionality, privacy, cybersecurity, interoperability, financial inclusion, monetary policy, banking-sector effects and cross-border payments. The paper adopts a descriptive and analytical research approach based on secondary sources, including publications of the Reserve Bank of India and the Bank for International Settlements. The analysis suggests that CBDC should be understood not simply as another digital payment application, but as a new form of central bank money whose economic impact depends substantially on design, adoption, interoperability, privacy safeguards and its relationship with commercial banks.
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CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE OF EXPATRIATE LEADERS AND ALIGNMENT WITH LOCAL VALUES FOR SUBSIDIARY PERFORMANCE
This study examined the effect of expatriate leaders' cultural intelligence on subsidiary performance, with particular focus on the mediating role of alignment with local values in multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in Ghana. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected from 185 expatriate leaders and 370 local employees across 12 MNC subsidiaries in the financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing sectors. Cultural intelligence was measured using the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS), alignment with local values was assessed using a Local Value Alignment Scale, and subsidiary performance was measured using both objective and subjective performance indicators. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation, hierarchical regression, and mediation analyses were conducted. Results revealed significant positive correlations between expatriate cultural intelligence and alignment with local values (r = 0.61, p <.001), alignment with local values and subsidiary performance (r = 0.58, p <.001), and cultural intelligence and subsidiary performance (r = 0.53, p <.001). Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that cultural intelligence significantly predicted alignment with local values (β = 0.59, p <.001) and subsidiary performance (β = 0.48, p <.001), and alignment with local values mediated the relationship between cultural intelligence and subsidiary performance (indirect effect = 0.24, 95% CI [0.17, 0.32]). The findings underscore that expatriate leaders with higher cultural intelligence are better equipped to align with local values, which in turn enhances subsidiary performance. Implications for expatriate selection, cultural training, and leadership development in African MNCs are discussed.
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THE DRIVERS OF HOUSING SECTOR PERFORMANCE IN NIGERIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF MORTGAGE FINANCE AND POLICY THRUSTS
Nigeria faces a critical and growing housing deficit, which has escalated from 7 million units in 1991 to an estimated 28 million by 2024, driven by rapid population growth and urban migration. Hence, this paper examines the drivers of housing sector performance in Nigeria between 1992 and 2025, focusing on the "triple pillars" of mortgage bank operations: mobilizing deposits, providing loans, and building equities. Rooted in investment-based theory, this research utilized the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound test approach to analyze the relationships between mortgage finance variables and housing supply, proxied by construction GDP. Secondary data were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and the World Bank, among others. Findings revealed that mortgage equities and the monetary policy rate have a statistically significant influence on housing sector supply in the short run. However, no explanatory variables demonstrated a statistically significant impact in the long run. The study identifies a critical paradox where construction GDP is rising while the actual availability of housing units for the populace continues to decline. To address these challenges, this paper recommended that the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) transition from volatile short-term deposits to sustained long-term savings schemes. Additionally, the government should shift policy focus toward mass social housing using locally produced materials. Also, the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) should further integrate mortgage-backed securities into the capital market to mitigate short-run volatility and incentivize private sector participation.
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MACROECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT GROWTH IN NIGERIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
Nigeria’s agricultural sector remains chronically underperforming relative to its immense potential, largely due to macroeconomic volatility that systematically undermines productivity. Hence, this study investigated the macroeconomic drivers of agricultural output growth in Nigeria, specifically assessing the impacts of the GDP growth rate, monetary policy rate (MPR), exchange rate, and inflation rate. Utilizing an ex-post facto research design, the study analyzed annual time-series data spanning from 1986 to 2025 sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics, and the World Bank. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach was employed the to examine both short-run and long-run dynamics. Findings indicated the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between the selected macroeconomic variables and agricultural output. In the short run, the GDP growth rate significantly stimulates agricultural output, with a 1% increase leading to a 0.302% rise in output. Conversely, the MPR exerts a negative short-run impact (-0.139%) due to high borrowing costs for capital, though it shows a positive relationship in the long run. The exchange rate demonstrated a positive influence on output in both the short and long run, suggesting that currency movements may enhance domestic competitiveness. Inflation was found to consistently erode profit margins and decrease output across both time horizons, with a 1% increase resulting in a -0.008% decrease in output. Thus, this paper recommended that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) establishing single-digit interest rate windows for the agricultural sector to insulate farmers from broad monetary tightening. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS) should prioritize the digital distribution of high-quality inputs via the Agro-Pocket platform to eliminate middlemen. Additionally, the government should implement input price buffers to mitigate inflationary pressures and design policies to integrate local farmers into the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), amongst others.
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A NARRATIVE REVIEW OF HOMOEOPATHIC MANAGEMENT OF UTERINE FIBROIDS
Background: Uterine fibroids, also known as leiomyomas, are common benign tumours of the uterus and may be associated with heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain, pressure symptoms and reproductive difficulties. Homoeopathic treatment has been described in individual case reports, observational studies and a randomized comparative trial, but the strength of evidence remains uncertain.
Objective: To narratively review published clinical studies and reports describing homoeopathic management of uterine fibroids, with particular attention to patient characteristics, medicines prescribed, clinical outcomes and limitations of the available evidence.
Materials and Methods: Published reports identified through Google Scholar and online journal platforms from February to September 2026 were reviewed. Relevant reports describing homoeopathic management of uterine fibroids in human participants were selected. Information regarding study design, participants, medicines, outcome measures and reported outcomes was extracted and synthesized narratively.
Results: The identified literature included one randomized comparative trial (LM versus centesimal potencies), a prospective observational study, an observational study, and multiple case reports. Medicines reported included Calcarea carbonica, Phosphorus, Pulsatilla, Sulfur, Lycopodium, Sepia, Natrum muriaticum and Thuja occidentalis. Reported outcomes included reduction in symptoms and menstrual bleeding and, in individual reports, reduction or disappearance of fibroids on ultrasonography. However, most reports were uncontrolled and had small sample sizes, and the single randomized trial compared two potency systems without a placebo group, making causal interpretation difficult.
Conclusion: Published reports describe potentially favourable clinical outcomes following homoeopathic treatment of uterine fibroids. However, the available evidence is predominantly observational or based on individual case reports, and the only randomized trial identified compared two potency systems without a placebo arm; the evidence therefore cannot establish treatment efficacy. Well-designed placebo-controlled studies with objective imaging, standardized symptom measures, adequate follow-up and systematic safety reporting are required.
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THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN ENHANCING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN RURAL PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS: EVIDENCE FROM TUNDURU DISTRICT COUNCIL, TANZANIA
Community engagement is increasingly recognised as an important component of improving students’ academic performance. The engagement creates opportunities for parents, teachers, school leaders and other community stakeholders to collaborate in supporting teaching and learning. However, effective community engagement remains difficult in many rural public secondary schools in Tanzania. This study examined the challenges of community engagement in enhancing academic performance in rural public secondary schools. It employed a mixed-methods approach involving 195 respondents drawn from four public secondary schools: (Frank Weston, Mataka, Matemanga and Mgomba). Data were collected using questionnaires survey, interviews and documentary review. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. The findings indicated generally low levels of parental participation in key educational activities. Only 6.7% of respondents indicated that parents supervised students’ learning at home, while 6.0% reported regular communication between parents and teachers. Attendance at school meetings was comparatively higher at 31.3%, although substantial differences existed among schools: 47.1% at Frank Weston, 25.0% at Mataka, 44.4% at Matemanga and 12.5% at Mgomba. Homework checking was also limited, with Mataka recording the highest participation at 15.0%. These patterns demonstrate key engagement challenges, particularly weak parent-teacher communication, limited home-based supervision, low homework monitoring and uneven participation in school meetings. The study concludes that strengthening school-community partnerships is necessary for improving academic support in rural secondary schools. It recommends strengthening parent-teacher communication, increasing community awareness, establishing regular and flexible school-community engagement mechanisms and equipping parents with practical knowledge for supporting students’ learning at home.
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EFFECTIVENESS OF CENTER BASED MANAGEMENT COMMITTEES IN ADULT LITERACY CENTERS IN YOBE STATE, NIGERIA
Centre-Based Management Committees (CBMCs) are an essential link between adult learning/literacy centres and the communities they serve. CBMCs are made up of a range of local people involved with their learning/literacy centres. CBMCs work to increase communities’ involvement with education, and to help improve the quality and effectiveness of learning/literacy centres. The objectives of this study were to determine the effectiveness of Centre Based Management Committees in: Resource mobilization, Centre supervision, and Community mobilization for adult literacy centres in Yobe State, Nigeria. Survey was used as a research design for the study. The population of the study covers the Government owned adult literacy centres in Yobe State. Records from the Yobe State Agency for Mass Education put the number of Adult Literacy Centres as 102. A sample of 68 literacy centres were sampled using purposive sampling technique. The research instruments used were questionnaire, records from the adult literacy centres and Focus Group Discussion (FGD). The questionnaire was given to experts for face and content validation. Pretest was used to determine the reliability of the instrument. This was done using split half and a reliability coefficient of .78 was obtained indicating the instrument was highly reliable. A checklist was developed by the researcher to conduct physical observation of what the CBMCs have put in place at their various adult literacy centres. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentages and mean. The findings of the study showed that Community Based Management Committees are not highly effective in resource mobilization for adult literacy centres in Yobe State; their effectiveness in centre supervision of adult literacy centres is very high and their effectiveness in community mobilization for adult literacy centres is high. The study concluded that Community Based Management Committees are highly effective in all areas investigated except resource mobilization for adult literacy centres in Yobe State. Amongst the recommendations made was that the State Agency for Mass Education in collaboration with NGOS operating in Yobe State should organize periodic capacity building workshops for CBMCS on resource mobilization.
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UNNAB (ZIZIPHUS SATIVA GAERTN.): BRIDGING TRADITIONAL UNANI KNOWLEDGE WITH MODERN PHARMACOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
Unnāb (Ziziphus sativa Gaertn.), belonging to the family Rhamnaceae, is an important medicinal and fruit-bearing plant traditionally used in the Unani system of medicine. Its fruits are valued for their nutritional and therapeutic properties and are traditionally used particularly in respiratory, inflammatory and digestive conditions. The present review summarizes the available information on the botanical characteristics, traditional uses, Mizaj, phytochemical constituents and pharmacological activities of Unnāb. Reported pharmacological studies demonstrate a broad spectrum of activities, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, immunomodulatory, hepatoprotective, gastroprotective, anxiolytic, anticancer, antidiabetic, anti-allergic, anthelmintic and wound-healing effects. These findings provide experimental support for several traditional therapeutic applications of Unnāb. However, much of the available evidence is derived from in-vitro and experimental studies, while clinical evidence remains limited. Further standardized pharmacological, toxicological and clinical investigations are therefore warranted to establish its therapeutic efficacy, safety and scientific relevance in Unani medicine.
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EXISTING SHIP INSPECTION AND SURVEY PROCEDURES IN SEAPORTS IN PORT HARCOURT
This article examined the existing ship inspection and survey procedures adopted in seaports in Port Harcourt, drawing directly from Objective One of the M.Sc. dissertation by Asangansi, Okwong Eyo. The study assessed defined procedures, inspection intervals, documentation and statutory certificates, physical examination of vessel structures and safety equipment, safety and pollution-prevention requirements, risk-based considerations, communication of findings, follow-up of deficiencies, consistency and institutional coordination. A descriptive survey design was adopted. The population comprised 600 maritime professionals and personnel within the Port Harcourt and Onne maritime environment. A sample size of 240 was used; 228 questionnaires were valid, representing a 95.0% response rate. Data were collected with a structured five-point Likert questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation and multiple regression. The objective-specific result produced a composite mean of 3.80 (SD = 1.02), above the 3.00 decision benchmark, indicating general agreement that existing procedures were present and operational. Item means ranged from 3.70 to 3.89. Institutional coordination recorded the lowest mean (3.70), while appropriate inspection intervals recorded the highest (3.89). The finding indicates that the principal procedural components were established, but coordination and process integration remained comparatively weaker dimensions.
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ENERGY COST CHANGES AND TRANSPORTATION COSTS IN ABUJA, FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY, NIGERIA
This article examined the relationship between energy cost changes and transportation costs in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. The article was derived from the first objective of a study that investigated energy cost changes and transportation and logistics operations in Abuja. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was adopted. The accessible population comprised transportation operators, logistics firms, courier and dispatch operators, haulage firms, warehouse and distribution operators, and e-hailing and delivery-platform operators. A reported sample of approximately 303 respondents was determined using the Taro Yamane formula, while the empirical correlation reported for the first hypothesis was based on 300 observations. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The descriptive findings showed agreement that energy-cost increases raised vehicle operating costs (M = 4.26), passenger and goods transportation costs (M = 4.23), transportation fares and charges (M = 4.20), maintenance and operating expenses (M = 4.23), and overall transportation costs (M = 4.27). The Pearson correlation result showed a positive and statistically significant relationship between energy cost changes and transportation costs (r = 0.642, p = 0.000). The null hypothesis was therefore rejected. The finding supports the Cost-Push Inflation Theory by indicating that higher energy input costs are associated with higher transportation costs. The article recommends stronger fuel and energy-cost management, route optimisation, preventive maintenance, realistic budgeting and flexible pricing strategies among transportation operators in Abuja.
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FREIGHT FORWARDING OPERATIONS AND PORT PERFORMANCE AT APAPA SEAPORT, LAGOS
This article examined the nature of freight forwarding operations and the level of port performance at Apapa Seaport, Lagos. It was derived from Objectives One and Two of the dissertation, which examined the characteristics of freight forwarding activities and assessed Apapa Port’s performance. Data were obtained from 187 respondents drawn from port stakeholders, and descriptive analysis was conducted using weighted mean scores with a criterion mean of 3.0. The findings showed that respondents disagreed that freight forwarding operations involved extensive cargo documentation and customs-clearance activities (M = 2.4) and disagreed that transportation and cargo delivery were efficiently coordinated (M = 2.5). Conversely, warehousing and cargo consolidation (M = 3.3), international trade facilitation (M = 3.3), and digital technology adoption (M = 3.4) were positively assessed. Port performance was mixed: cargo-handling efficiency (M = 2.4) and vessel turnaround time (M = 2.5) were assessed below the criterion mean, while cargo clearance (M = 3.2), infrastructure support (M = 3.4), and handling of large cargo volumes (M = 3.3) were assessed positively. The article argues that freight forwarding at Apapa is multidimensional and that port capacity does not automatically translate into efficient cargo handling or vessel turnaround. The findings highlight the need for coordinated documentation, multimodal transport, digitalisation, modern handling equipment, and integrated port management.
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VESSEL WAITING TIME AND MARITIME TRANSPORT EFFICIENCY IN LAGOS SEAPORTS
This article examined the relationship between vessel waiting time and maritime transport efficiency in Lagos seaports, with particular attention to the operational experience of stakeholders at Apapa Port, Tin Can Island Port and Lekki Deep Seaport. The article was developed from the first objective of the parent M.Sc. study on port congestion and maritime transport in Lagos seaports. The study adopted a descriptive and explanatory research design and used a structured four-point Likert-scale questionnaire. A sample of 286 stakeholders was obtained using the Taro Yamane formula from an accessible population of 1,000, followed by stratified allocation across the three selected ports and stakeholder categories. All 286 questionnaires administered were retrieved and validated for analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize respondents' views, while Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was applied at the 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive results showed mixed perceptions: respondents agreed that vessel waiting time contributes to cargo-delivery delays and that reducing waiting time would improve overall maritime transport efficiency, while some respondents did not agree that waiting before berthing sufficiently reduced efficiency or increased the time required to complete port operations. The inferential analysis produced a weak negative relationship, r = −0.150, p = 0.011, N = 286. Since p < 0.05, the null hypothesis was rejected. The article concludes that vessel waiting time has a statistically significant but weak relationship with maritime transport efficiency in Lagos seaports. The result supports targeted attention to berth allocation, vessel scheduling, marine traffic coordination and information sharing rather than treating vessel waiting time as the sole explanation for port performance.
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ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES AND SUSTAINABILITY AWARENESS IN NIGERIA’S MARITIME INDUSTRY
This article examined the relationship between environmental sustainability practices and sustainability awareness among maritime operators in Nigeria’s maritime industry, with emphasis on Port Harcourt and Lagos. The study used the dissertation’s original descriptive survey evidence. A structured questionnaire was administered to maritime stakeholders and 303 valid responses were analysed. Descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) were applied using SPSS 27 at a 5% significance level. Respondents disagreed that maritime organizations adequately complied with environmental sustainability policies and that environmental protection measures were effectively implemented, but agreed that waste management systems were adequately maintained, shipping activities were monitored to prevent marine pollution, and sustainability awareness was high. The reported PPMC result was r = 0.189, p = 0.000, N = 303, indicating a statistically significant positive relationship between organizational compliance with environmental sustainability policies and sustainability awareness. The article concludes that environmental awareness is associated with organizational sustainability practice, while implementation and compliance remain important areas for improvement.
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HUMAN CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT AMONG THE WORKFORCE AT ONNE SEAPORT, RIVERS STATE
This article develops Objective One of the uploaded study on human capacity development and workforce challenges at Onne Seaport, Rivers State. The objective was to assess the level of human capacity development among the workforce. The study treats human capacity as a combination of training, retraining, professional certification, technical competence and continuous development. The Chapter Four analysis reports 303 valid observations. Descriptive results show a mean of 2.6 for regular training and retraining, 3.0 for improvement in operational efficiency from human-capacity programmes, 3.3 for availability of professional certification opportunities, 3.9 for training enhancement of technical competence, and 3.0 for workforce development's contribution to faster cargo handling and service delivery. The first hypothesis test reports a Pearson correlation of r = 0.151, p = 0.008, N = 303 between regular training/retraining and workforce-development outcomes. The relationship is weak but statistically significant. The article interprets the result through Human Capital Theory and Systems Theory and relates it to the study's cited Nigerian and international literature. It concludes that workforce development is relevant to port performance, while the regularity and institutionalisation of training require improvement.
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ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE AND URBAN MOBILITY IN PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE
This article examined the effect of road infrastructure on urban mobility in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, based on Objective One of Joan's M.Sc. study on public transportation and mobility challenges. The study used quantitative survey data collected from 400 respondents comprising commuters, commercial drivers, transport operators, residents, traffic-management officials and transport-regulatory personnel. Data were analysed with descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation at the 5% significance level. The descriptive analysis showed that respondents agreed that potholes and damaged roads reduce transportation efficiency (M = 3.0), flooded roads negatively affect commuter movement (M = 3.2), inadequate road maintenance contributes to traffic congestion (M = 3.4), and good road infrastructure improves urban mobility and accessibility (M = 3.3). The only item below the 3.00 criterion mean was the statement that poor road conditions contribute to transportation delays (M = 2.4). The inferential result produced a positive correlation of r = 0.189 with p = 0.000 and N = 400, leading to rejection of H01. The result indicates a statistically significant positive association between the road-infrastructure measure used in the study and urban mobility/accessibility. The finding reinforces the importance of road condition, drainage, maintenance and infrastructure quality in the mobility system of Port Harcourt.
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BASELINE IN-VITRO EVALUATION OF CINCHONA OFFICINALIS Q IN THE EGG ALBUMIN DENATURATION ASSAY: A FOUNDATION STUDY WITH A MATCHED ETHANOL CONTROL
Background: Inhibition of heat-induced albumin denaturation is a simple, widely used in-vitro screen for anti-inflammatory potential. Cinchona officinalis mother tincture (Q) is used in homoeopathy as China officinalis, yet its behaviour in this assay has not been documented. This basic study provides baseline data and a reproducible, solvent-controlled protocol for further research on mother tinctures.
Objective: To measure the percentage inhibition of albumin denaturation produced by Cinchona officinalis Q at 6.25, 12.5, 25, 50 and 100 µL/mL and to compare it with 80% v/v ethanol at the same concentrations.
Methods: Egg albumin, phosphate-buffered saline (PBS, pH 6.4) and test solution were incubated at 37 °C for 20 min and heated at 70 °C for 10 min. Turbidity was read at 660 nm. Q (Dr. Willmar Schwabe; 80% v/v ethanol) and an ethanol control of the same strength were tested in triplicate. Final ethanol content (0.2% to 3.2% v/v) was identical in matched Q and ethanol tubes.
Results: Control absorbance was 0.030. Q produced 0.00% to 0.22% inhibition across the five concentrations, with a small, measurable response from 12.5 µL/mL upwards (maximum 0.22% at 100 µL/mL), whereas the ethanol control produced no inhibition (0.00%) at any concentration.
Conclusion: This foundation study establishes a reproducible protocol with a matched ethanol control and documents the response of Q under defined conditions. Q showed a small but measurable inhibition of albumin denaturation relative to the ethanol control, which showed none, giving an encouraging early signal; the parameters (albumin concentration, concentration range, positive control) can now be optimised to characterise this response in the next phase of research.
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RELATIONSHIP OF SELECTED MOTOR FITNESS COMPONENTS WITH PLAYING ABILITY AMONG MALE KHO-KHO PLAYERS
Kho-Kho is a traditional Indian team game, which involves movement, acceleration, deceleration, frequent changes of speed, direction and intensity of movement along with performance of sport specific skills. The present study focused on the correlation between the selected components of motor fitness and the playing ability in male college players of Kho-Kho game. The participants for the study for the academic year 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 involved 50 male Kho-Kho players aged 18-23 years from Guru Kashi University Talwandi Sabo Punjab. A battery of physical fitness tests was used to assess the selected motor fitness components, such as the 50-m sprint for speed, shuttle run for agility, standing broad jump for explosive leg power, push ups for muscular endurance and 12-minute run/walk test for cardiovascular endurance. Game play was evaluated using an observation and rating system that observed and rated both defending and chasing skills. Descriptive statistics and Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient were used to assess the association between the motor fitness components and playing ability. The motor fitness components that were evaluated were significantly related to playing ability for all of the six components. The 50-m sprint's time was strongly correlated with playing ability (r = −0.68, p < .001), and the shuttle run's time was also strongly correlated with playing ability (r = −0.72, p < .001). The standing broad jump and the push-up performance correlated well with each other (r = 0.78 and 0.73, respectively, p < 0.001 for both). There was also a strong positive correlation between the cardiovascular endurance and playing ability (r = 0.61, p < 0.001). The negative correlations with the sprint and shuttle run times suggest that a decrease in run times correlated with higher playing ability scores. The combined results suggest that certain motor fitness attributes were significantly correlated to playing ability in the male college level Kho-Kho players. The study however, was a correlational study and the results were used to establish causality.
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DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND PERCEIVED BUSINESS SUPPORT AMONG RURAL ENTREPRENEURS
This study examines rural entrepreneurs' reported use of digital platforms, perceived business support and barriers to effective use. A descriptive quantitative survey used a structured questionnaire with 50 purposively selected entrepreneurs. Frequencies and percentages summarised the responses. Forty-eight respondents (96.0%) reported using digital platforms. The frequency-of-use item contained 48 recorded responses, including 40 reporting daily use (83.3%). Facebook received 35 selections, equivalent to 70.0% of the full sample. For four market-access and customer-engagement items, 48 respondents (96.0%) strongly agreed that platforms supported advertising, wider customer reach, communication and customer attraction or sales. All 50 agreed that platforms supported business payments, and all strongly agreed that they assisted financial management. Responses on learning business skills were weaker: 25 (50.0%) disagreed, 20 (40.0%) were neutral and five (10.0%) agreed. Data costs and security concerns were each identified by all respondents; 40 (80.0%) identified network limitations and 30 (60.0%) reported limited digital skills. These findings describe perceptions within a purposive sample and do not establish changes in measured business performance. The study suggests that connectivity, affordability, practical training and digital security deserve attention alongside platform access.
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF SCHOOL SPORTS PROGRAMMES TO FEMALE ATHLETES’ SUCCESS IN DODOMA CITY, TANZANIA
Background: School sports programs play a critical role in promoting female participation and achievement in athletics, yet gender-specific barriers often limit their full potential. Grounded in Sandra Bem's Gender Schema Theory, this study examines how school sports programs in Dodoma City facilitate success for female athletes.
Objectives: To analyze participation patterns, assess athletic and personal development outcomes, and identify major institutional and socio-cultural barriers facing female student-athletes in Dodoma City secondary schools.
Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional study design was employed. Simple random sampling was used to select 414 female athletes across four secondary schools in Dodoma City. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaires and analyzed via SPSS version 26 using descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations.
Results: Football (44.7%) and netball (31.9%) emerged as the most popular sports among participants. While 77.1% of athletes received formal instruction, the vast majority (81.0%) participated primarily at the school level, as higher levels of competition were associated with significantly reduced participation rates. Participation in school sports yielded significant positive outcomes, including school championships, individual awards, enhanced physical fitness, elevated self-confidence, improved teamwork, and developed leadership skills. However, key barriers persist, including inadequate sports infrastructure, a lack of dedicated changing facilities, limited training opportunities, prevailing gender stereotypes, and restricted access to higher-level competitive platforms.
Conclusion: School sports programs in Dodoma City substantially enhance female athletes' achievements, self-efficacy, and career aspirations. To sustain and expand these gains, targeted interventions are needed, including investments in gender-responsive facility infrastructure, robust coaching development systems, expanded competitive pathways, and policies advocating for equal participation and long-term athletic development.
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EMBEDDED EDGE-AI SPEAKER VERIFICATION FOR SMART DOOR ACCESS CONTROL USING ECAPA-TDNN: A RASPBERRY PI PROTOTYPE
Voice-based smart door locking systems offer a keyless, hands-free access control solution for smart home environments. However, existing deployments remain vulnerable to replay attacks, wherein pre-recorded voice clips are used to impersonate enrolled users. This paper presents a proto-type smart door locking system that combines Emphasized Channel Attention, Propagation and Aggregation Time Delay Neural Network (ECAPA-TDNN) speaker verification with a two-stage authentication pipeline designed for deployment on the Raspberry Pi 4 embedded platform. The system extracts 192-dimensional speaker embeddings and performs cosine similarity scoring against enrolled templates with a decision threshold of
0.30. Experimental evaluation across 400 trials comprising 100 genuine speaker utterances and 300 impostor attempts including male, female, and replay attack scenarios achieved a False Rejection Rate (FRR) of 0.0%, False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 1.0%, Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.5%, and overall accuracy of 99.2%. Notably, the replay attack impostor was completely rejected (0% FAR), demonstrating inherent resistance to basic spoofing without dedicated countermeasures. A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) baseline achieved only 78% accuracy on the trained phrase, confirming the superiority of deep speaker embeddings for text-independent verification. The proposed system targets sub-second end-to-end latency on Raspberry Pi with TensorFlow Lite int8 quantization for the anti-spoofing countermeasure stage.
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AN INTEGRATED HEALTHCARE SECURITY RISK PREDICTION MODEL USING BIG DATA ANALYTICS AND MACHINE LEARNING
Healthcare applications increasingly depend on cloud platforms, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices, electronic health records (EHRs), wearable sensors, and distributed clinical decision support systems. This digital transformation improves monitoring and care delivery, but it also expands the attack surface of hospital information systems. Conventional security mechanisms are usually deployed in isolated layers, such as network firewalls, authentication systems, or device monitoring tools. Such isolated controls are insufficient for predicting integrated security risk because healthcare attacks may simultaneously affect network behavior, device telemetry, user access patterns, and patient safety indicators. This paper proposes an Integrated Healthcare Security Risk Prediction Model (IHSRPM) that applies big data analytics and machine learning to combine EHR attributes, IoMT sensor streams, network flow records, and access audit logs into a unified risk prediction pipeline. The proposed model performs ingestion, preprocessing, feature engineering, risk labeling, model training, and decision support for secure healthcare operation. A prototype experiment was conducted on a synthetic de-identified healthcare-security dataset consisting of patient records, sensor streams, network traffic logs, audit logs, and an integrated machine-learning view. Five classifiers, namely Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Gradient Boosting, were evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, AUC, and confusion matrix analysis. The results indicate that tree-based classifiers are highly effective for rule-structured healthcare-security risk detection, while Logistic Regression and SVM provide useful baselines for interpretable and margin-based detection. The paper also discusses how the proposed model can be extended using public datasets such as WUSTL-EHMS-2020, CICIDS2017, and MIMIC-IV under ethical and access-compliant conditions. The proposed framework contributes a practical architecture for predictive security analytics in healthcare applications by integrating cyber, clinical, device, and privacy dimensions into one risk-aware analytical model.
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A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF SURROGACY LAW COMPARATIVE PUBLIC LAW
Commercial surrogacy raises complex questions at the intersection of reproductive autonomy, economic rights, social justice, and state regulation. The research problem addressed in this study is the extent to which public-law frameworks governing surrogacy can regulate economic transactions while protecting the rights and interests of surrogate mothers, intending parents, and children. The purpose of this study is to comparatively examine the legal approaches to commercial surrogacy in India and developed countries with particular emphasis on the economic and social consequences of state regulation. The study adopts a doctrinal and comparative legal methodology, analysing legislation, judicial decisions, constitutional principles, and relevant legal scholarship in both jurisdictions. The research finds significant differences in the two regulatory models concerning the permissibility of commercial arrangements, protection of surrogate mothers, allocation of economic risks, and the role of the state in addressing exploitation and inequality. The study further identifies tensions between restricting commercial surrogacy and ensuring reproductive autonomy and economic agency. It concludes that effective surrogacy regulation requires a rights-based public-law framework that addresses both the potential economic vulnerabilities of surrogate mothers and the broader social interests involved in assisted reproduction.
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PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING AND IN VITRO EVALUATION OF ANTI-UROLITHIATIC AND ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ACTIVITIES OF CROTON SPARSIFLORUS EXTRACT
The present study was undertaken to investigate the phytochemical profile and in vitro antiurolithiatic and anti-inflammatory activities of the ethanolic extract of Croton sparsiflorus (EECS). The dried and powdered plant material was extracted with ethanol using the Soxhlet extraction method, yielding 22.5% w/w of extract. Preliminary phytochemical screening revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, phenolic compounds, tannins, saponins, terpenoids, steroids, glycosides, and carbohydrates, whereas proteins and anthraquinones were absent. The antiurolithiatic potential of EECS was evaluated using calcium oxalate nucleation, crystal-growth, and aggregation assays at concentrations ranging from 100 to 1,000 µg/mL. The extract exhibited a concentration-dependent inhibitory effect in all three assays. At 1,000 µg/mL, EECS produced 78.91 ± 2.04% inhibition of nucleation, 75.62 ± 1.96% inhibition of crystal growth, and 73.84 ± 1.88% inhibition of crystal aggregation, compared with 91.48 ± 1.27%, 89.76 ± 1.34%, and 88.92 ± 1.29%, respectively, for the standard drug. One-way ANOVA demonstrated highly significant differences among the tested concentrations for nucleation (F = 1463.89; p = 1.15 × 10⁻¹⁴), crystal growth (F = 1407.31; p = 1.43 × 10⁻¹⁴), and aggregation (F = 1374.23; p = 1.60 × 10⁻¹⁴). Anti-inflammatory activity was assessed using the egg albumin protein-denaturation assay. EECS showed an optical density of 0.129 and 71.26% inhibition of protein denaturation, whereas the standard drug produced an optical density of 0.146 and 67.48% inhibition. These findings indicate that the ethanolic extract of Croton sparsiflorus possesses promising in vitro antiurolithiatic and anti-inflammatory activities, which may be attributed to the synergistic effects of its phytochemical constituents. Further isolation of active compounds, toxicity assessment, mechanistic studies, and in vivo investigations are warranted to establish its therapeutic potential.
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EVALUATION OF DETARIUM MICROCARPUM METHANOL EXTRACT FOR ANTICANCER ACTIVITY ON CELL PROLIFERATION AND ANGIOGENESIS
Cancer remains a major global health challenge, and natural products continue to be investigated as potential sources of anticancer agents. This study evaluated the methanol extract of Detarium microcarpum root bark for effects on cancer-cell viability and angiogenesis using a cell-viability model and the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. Preliminary phytochemical screening detected alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, saponins, phenolics, terpenoids, steroids and glycosides. The illustrative dataset showed concentration-dependent reductions in cell viability and CAM vascular development, with an estimated IC50 of 232.1 µg/mL and 54.2% inhibition of angiogenesis at 400 µg/mL. These findings suggest potential antiproliferative and antiangiogenic activity of the extract. However, the numerical results are hypothetical and are included for manuscript development and statistical illustration. Experimental validation using the actual laboratory dataset is required before biological conclusions can be established.
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CHALLENGES HINDERING THE EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF COMPUTER SCIENCE IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN BORNO STATE
This study examined factors hindering effective teaching and learning of Computer Science in tertiary institutions in Borno State, focusing on students’ mathematics background, ICT infrastructure, and classroom space. A quantitative descriptive survey was conducted among 168 respondents comprising 160 students and 8 lecturers from five tertiary institutions in three Local Government Areas. Data were collected using a validated structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson chi-square tests at the 0.05 significance level. The findings showed a significant relationship between mathematics background and academic performance (χ² = 14.28, p = .006). ICT facilities were generally inadequate, particularly alternative power supply (M = 1.89). Classroom overcrowding was also significantly associated with lecturers’ adoption of technology-driven pedagogy (χ² = 11.45, p = .003). The study recommends targeted infrastructure investment, mathematics bridging programmes, improved laboratory capacity, and better management of classroom and laboratory capacity.
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EVALUATION OF THE ANTIDIABETIC EFFECT OF METHANOL LEAF EXTRACT OF ADANSONIA DIGITATA IN STREPTOZOTOCIN-INDUCED DIABETIC WISTAR RATS.
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder associated with persistent hyperglycaemia, impaired metabolic regulation, oxidative stress, and progressive tissue damage. This study evaluated the antidiabetic effect of methanolic leaf extract of Adansonia digitata in streptozotocin-induced diabetic Wistar rats. A laboratory-based experimental design was employed using 40 Wistar rats randomly divided into five groups of eight animals each: normal control, diabetic control, A. digitata extract-treated groups receiving 200 and 400 mg/kg, and a standard-drug group. Diabetes was induced using streptozotocin, while the extract was administered during the treatment period. Body weight and fasting blood glucose were monitored, while HbA1c, insulin, lipid profile, liver and renal function indices, oxidative-stress and antioxidant parameters, and pancreatic histopathology were evaluated at the end of treatment. The study found that diabetic control rats exhibited significant hyperglycaemia, increased HbA1c, lower insulin levels, dyslipidaemia, and signs of organ stress and injury. Treatment with A. digitata extract showed improvement in these conditions in a dose-dependent manner. At 400 mg/kg, fasting blood glucose levels dropped significantly from 329.00 mg/dL to 149.63 mg/dL, HbA1c decreased from 13.33% to 6.85%, and insulin levels rose from 4.15 to 9.19 µIU/mL. Additionally, the extract enhanced lipid profiles, liver and renal functions, antioxidant levels, and reduced pancreatic injury, indicating its potential as an antidiabetic agent in STZ-induced diabetic rats.
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MARKET FIRE DISASTERS AND EFFECTIVENESS OF ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES OF NIGERIAN GOVERNMENTS: A STUDY OF SELECTED STATES OF NORTH-WESTERN NIGERIA
Frequent fire disasters that affects markets across Nigeria has devastating economic and social consequences on businesses, households and authorities. Regularities of markets fire disasters in every part of this country, has made the need to evolve adaptive strategies very imperative. This study investigated the problems related to markets fire disasters in Nigeria generally and specifically in North-western Nigeria. The problem of recurring fire disasters in Sokoto Central market and Sabon-gari market in Kano, Nigeria was interrogated. An elaborate methodology has been developed which facilitates inquiry. The data generated both primary and secondary was analyzed using appropriate statistical tools that usher in empirical findings that help draw a logical conclusion about the effectiveness or otherwise of the adaptive strategies of government on markets fire disasters in the selected states of North-western Nigeria. The research work also develop an empirical postulations for resilience and rehabilitation for disaster-prone communities and businesses. The study also made workable recommendations aimed at enhancing the adaptive strategies of managing markets fire disasters in Nigeria with a view to make them more effective so as to mitigates these recurring disasters.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN SOCIAL SCIENCE EDUCATION: OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES AND INNOVATIVE TEACHING METHODS
The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bringing significant changes to education, including the teaching and learning of Social Sciences. Social Science education plays an important role in developing critical thinking, analytical abilities, social awareness, and an understanding of contemporary society. In this context, AI offers new possibilities for making teaching and learning more interactive, personalised, accessible, and learner-centred (Holmes et al., 2019; Luckin et al., 2016). AI-based tools can assist educators in designing instructional materials, generating learning resources, creating classroom activities, and supporting students in exploring complex historical, political, social, economic, and geographical issues.
This paper examines the opportunities, challenges, and innovative pedagogical methods associated with the integration of Artificial Intelligence into Social Science education. It discusses the potential of AI across History, Political Science, Sociology, Economics, and Geography through adaptive learning, AI-assisted research, simulations, data analysis, and inquiry-based learning. At the same time, it examines critical challenges such as misinformation, algorithmic bias, academic integrity, privacy concerns, digital inequality, and over-reliance on automated tools (UNESCO, 2021, 2023). In the Indian context, the discussion is also related to the objectives of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, particularly its emphasis on technology-enabled education, multidisciplinary learning, and the development of higher-order thinking skills (Ministry of Education, 2020). The paper argues that AI should function as a pedagogical aid rather than a replacement for human educators. Effective integration requires AI literacy, ethical awareness, critical evaluation, teacher preparedness, and appropriate institutional support (Miao & Cukurova, 2024). The paper concludes that a balanced teacher–AI partnership can strengthen Social Science education while preserving critical inquiry, human judgement, and meaningful teacher–student interaction.
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HOMOEOPATHIC PRESCRIBING PATTERNS IN ATOPIC DERMATITIS: A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY
Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic, relapsing inflammatory skin disease that affects all age groups. Information on how homoeopathic physicians prescribe for atopic dermatitis in routine hospital practice is limited.
Objective: To describe the demographic profile and first-visit homoeopathic prescribing patterns of patients with atopic dermatitis attending a homoeopathic hospital.
Methods: Retrospective review of outpatient records of patients with atopic dermatitis seen between April and September 2026. Repeat visits were removed so that each patient was counted once, and the first recorded prescription was analysed using descriptive statistics.
Results: Thirty patients were included (16 female, 14 male; age 2–79 years; mean 31.3 years); 10 (33.3%) were under 18 years. A first-visit medicine was recorded for 30 patients, all percentages for medicines are of these 30. Calcarea carbonica was prescribed to 7 (30.4%), Sulphur to 5 (21.7%) and Natrum muriaticum to 5 (21.7%); 13 other medicines were each prescribed once. LM potencies were recorded for 13 of the 30 patients.
Conclusion: Nine medicines were prescribed at the first visit, and no single medicine predominated. The study describes prescribing practice only; it cannot show whether any medicine is effective. Prospective studies with standardised outcome measures are needed.
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MARITIME SAFETY REGULATORY COMPLIANCE AMONG SHIPPING OPERATORS IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA
This article examines the extent of maritime safety regulatory compliance among shipping operators in Rivers State, Nigeria, within the wider study of maritime safety compliance and sustainable shipping development. The study covers the 2020–2026 period and focuses on Port Harcourt, Onne and Bonny. Maritime safety compliance is treated as a multidimensional practice involving adherence to applicable national laws and international standards, vessel inspection and certification, seafarer competence, safety management, emergency preparedness, environmental protection and regulatory enforcement. A quantitative cross-sectional survey framework was designed for an estimated population of 1,200 maritime professionals, with a proposed sample of 300 selected through proportionate stratified sampling. The dissertation's Chapter Four numerical results are explicitly identified in the source as simulated and illustrative, not verified field observations. Within that simulated dataset, mean scores for the major compliance constructs were above the midpoint of the five-point scale: inspection/certification (3.549), seafarer training (3.632), safety management/enforcement (3.464), and environmental compliance (3.446). The article therefore presents these values as illustrative perceptions rather than evidence of actual sector-wide compliance. The study's literature indicates that effective compliance depends on implementation, monitoring, corrective action and organisational commitment, not merely the existence of regulations (IMO, 2026e, 2026g; NIMASA, 2026a–f). The article concludes with a framework for validating compliance using verified field and administrative data.
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PORT CONGESTION AND CARGO DELIVERY TIME AT APAPA SEAPORT, LAGOS
This article examined the effect of port congestion on cargo delivery time at Apapa Seaport, Lagos, drawing specifically from the first objective of Oyakhamoh Ibrahim’s dissertation on the determinants of port congestion and supply chain efficiency in Apapa Seaport. The article focused on congestion as an operational condition arising from the interaction of vessel waiting time, truck queues, cargo evacuation constraints, terminal capacity, cargo dwell time and related coordination challenges. The source study adopted a descriptive and correlational survey design and collected questionnaire responses from port and logistics personnel. Chapter Four reported 306 valid responses and applied descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The univariate results showed agreement that congestion increases the time required to deliver cargo, creates long truck queues, reduces cargo-delivery efficiency, produces unpredictable delivery schedules and that congestion reduction would improve delivery speed and reliability. The PPMC result reported a statistically significant relationship between the two measures used for the first hypothesis, with r = -0.159 and p = 0.005. Accordingly, the first null hypothesis was rejected. The article interprets the result within the conceptual and theoretical arguments presented in the dissertation, particularly Queuing Theory, Systems Theory and Supply Chain Management Theory. The evidence indicates that cargo delivery performance at Apapa cannot be separated from the capacity, coordination and reliability of the wider port and inland logistics system. The article concludes that congestion management should combine improved berth and truck scheduling, cargo evacuation coordination, digital information exchange and multimodal transport capacity rather than rely on a single intervention.
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GREEN PORT INFRASTRUCTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE AT SEAPORT, RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA.
This article examines the relationship between green port infrastructure and environmental performance at Port Harcourt Port, Rivers State, Nigeria. The article is derived from the first objective of a broader study on sustainable port operations and environmental performance. A survey research design was adopted. Data were obtained from 267 respondents involved in port operations and environmental management, and all 267 questionnaires administered were retrieved and found valid. Descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) were used at the 5% level of significance. Descriptively, respondents agreed that green infrastructure investments enhanced environmental sustainability (mean = 3.3), that renewable-energy facilities reduced environmental degradation (mean = 3.1), and that eco-friendly port infrastructure improved overall environmental quality (mean = 3.0). However, respondents did not agree that the existing availability of environmentally friendly infrastructure had sufficiently reduced pollution (mean = 2.6) or that modern cargo-handling equipment had adequately improved environmental performance (mean = 2.6). The inferential result showed a positive and statistically significant relationship between green port infrastructure and environmental performance (r = 0.153, p = 0.012, N = 267). The null hypothesis was therefore rejected. The article concludes that green port infrastructure is associated with environmental performance at Port Harcourt Port, while the descriptive results also indicate areas where infrastructure adequacy and modern equipment require further attention. The article recommends sustained investment in environmentally friendly facilities, cleaner cargo-handling equipment, renewable energy and environmental monitoring technologies.
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AIRPORT TERMINAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE IN LAGOS AND PORT HARCOURT
This article examined the relationship between airport terminal infrastructure and operational performance in Lagos and Port Harcourt using Objective One of Wilcox Belema's dissertation. The study adopted a correlational research design and analyzed 300 valid questionnaire responses. The first objective examined whether adequate terminal facilities improve airport operating efficiency and whether modern terminal infrastructure contributes to overall operational performance. The reported Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient was r = 0.153, with p = 0.008 and N = 300. Since p < 0.05, the first null hypothesis was rejected. The result therefore indicates a positive and statistically significant relationship between airport terminal infrastructure and operational performance. The finding is discussed through Modernization Theory and Infrastructure-Led Development Theory and related to the dissertation's literature on terminal modernization, passenger processing, service efficiency and airport infrastructure.
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AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF INDIAN STOCK MARKET(NSE) PERFORMANCE AND INVESTOR BEHAVIOUR ACROSS PRE, DURING, AND POST-COVID PHASES (2020–2026)
Between the years 2019 and 2026, the Indian stock market witnessed various structural transformations owing to factors such as economic shocks due to the outbreak of COVID-19, tariff wars, and other forms of political tensions. The current research aims to examine the performance of the Nifty 50 within the above-mentioned time period. Using secondary data, this paper adopts a simplistic approach in analyzing the Indian stock market, in addition to assessing the performance of major sectors within the economy and making relevant recommendations concerning future investments. In this regard, the use of basic metrics such as average returns, standard deviations, and annualization, among others, has enabled the researcher to focus on the trend in performance of the most profitable sectors, namely pharmaceuticals, banking, consumer goods, automobiles, and others. This paper asserts that one of the significant drivers of Indian stock market performance has been diversity in terms of performance of various sectors, as well as increasing involvement of retail traders in stock trading. Indeed, an increase in the participation of retail traders has been made possible by the rise of online investment platform. Overall, this paper discusses some of the factors affecting performance of the Indian stock market, particularly the most lucrative sectors.
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A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RULE OF LAW IN INDIA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM: CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES AND JUDICIAL APPROACHES
The rule of law is the foundation of constitutional government, ensuring that state power is exercised under legal restraint rather than arbitrary will. This article examines how the rule of law is conceived, structured and enforced in the United Kingdom, whose constitution is uncodified and built on parliamentary sovereignty, and in India, whose written Constitution places the rule of law within its basic structure. The study asks whether the British reliance on parliamentary sovereignty adequately protects liberty in the absence of review of primary legislation, and whether India’s expansive substantive jurisprudence risks judicial overreach. Using a doctrinal and comparative methodology, it analyses constitutional and statutory texts, landmark decisions and secondary scholarship. The major findings are that the United Kingdom relies on interpretive and political checks, notably the Human Rights Act 1998, while Indian courts exercise plenary review and invalidate legislation, thereby giving the rule of law substantive content. The article argues that neither model is complete: British restraint depends on political willingness to respond to judicial signals, while Indian activism suffers from unpredictability and institutional delay. It concludes with reform proposals for both systems and lessons for India.
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A STUDY OF VALUE ORIENTATION AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ANJAR TALUKA.
The 21st century is defined by modern technology, specifically the world of AI. Transformations are taking place across every sector, impacting both personal and social lives. Consequently, there have been shifts in individuals' lifestyles and ways of living, leading to changes in their values. The purpose of education should not be limited merely to the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual development; the educational system must also incorporate the shaping of children's moral character, social development, and personality. Ultimately, the goal is to mold exemplary citizens through education.
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राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति (NEP) 2020 के अंतर्गत माध्यमिक शिक्षा (कक्षा 9-10) में सुपर इंटेलिजेंस (SI) का एकीकरण: एक विश्लेषणात्मक अध्ययन
इक्कीसवीं सदी के इस वर्तमान तकनीकी युग में कृत्रिम बुद्धिमत्ता (Artificial Intelligence) से आगे बढ़कर सुपर इंटेलिजेंस (Super Intelligence - SI) का अभ्युदय हो चुका है, जो शिक्षा के क्षेत्र में एक अभूतपूर्व क्रांति लाने की क्षमता रखता है। प्रस्तुत शोध पत्र राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति (NEP) 2020 के परिप्रेक्ष्य में माध्यमिक शिक्षा (विशेषकर कक्षा 9 और 10) के संवेदनशील स्तर पर सुपर इंटेलिजेंस (SI) के एकीकरण और उसकी संभावनाओं का एक गहन विश्लेषणात्मक अध्ययन प्रस्तुत करता है। माध्यमिक स्तर किसी भी विद्यार्थी के अकादमिक और भविष्य के करियर की सुदृढ़ नींव का चरण होता है, जहाँ पारंपरिक शिक्षण प्रणालियों की अपनी सीमाएं होती हैं। यह शोध यह रेखांकित करता है कि कैसे गणित और विज्ञान जैसे जटिल एवं तार्किक विषयों में पारंपरिक शिक्षण विधियों के स्थान पर SI-आधारित अनुकूली शिक्षण मंच (Adaptive Learning Platforms) और वर्चुअल लैब्स का उपयोग करके विद्यार्थियों की वैयक्तिकृत अधिगम गति (Personalized Learning Pace) और अधिगम प्रतिफल (Learning Outcomes) में गुणात्मक सुधार किया जा सकता है।
अध्ययन की यह रूपरेखा पूरी तरह से सैद्धांतिक, वैचारिक एवं द्वितीयक साहित्यिक स्रोतों पर आधारित है, शोध के मुख्य उद्देश्यों के अंतर्गत NEP 2020 के प्रावधानों का विश्लेषण, गणित व विज्ञान विषयों में SI के शैक्षणिक अनुप्रयोगों की प्रभावशीलता का सूक्ष्म परीक्षण, तथा अल्पवयस्क विद्यार्थियों की डिजिटल सुरक्षा एवं डेटा गोपनीयता से जुड़े विधिक पहलुओं का मूल्यांकन शामिल है। अध्ययन में इस बात पर विशेष बल दिया गया है कि तकनीकी एकीकरण के दौरान डिजिटल व्यक्तिगत डेटा संरक्षण (DPDP) अधिनियम के प्रावधानों का पूर्ण अनुपालन किया जाना चाहिए, ताकि छात्रों की गोपनीयता सुरक्षित रहे। साथ ही, यह सुनिश्चित किया जाना आवश्यक है कि तकनीक विद्यार्थियों की मौलिक सोच और अकादमिक ईमानदारी को कुंठित न करे, बल्कि उनकी वैयक्तिकृत बौद्धिक क्षमता को बढ़ाने वाले एक 'सहायक' (Enabler) के रूप में कार्य करे। इस शोध से निष्कर्ष निकालता है कि एक अनुशासित, सुरक्षित और नैतिक दायरे के भीतर SI का यह नियंत्रित क्रियान्वयन माध्यमिक शिक्षा को अधिक गतिशील, समावेशी और इक्कीसवीं सदी की चुनौतियों के अनुकूल बना सकता है।
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MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT AND THE GREEN INNOVATION STRATEGY AS A SOURCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITY IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE INDUSTRY
This study examines management commitment as a boundary condition of the green innovation–organizational performance relationship in Shell's Nigerian operations in Delta State. While prior research has established that green innovation can contribute to organizational performance, the conditions under which this relationship strengthens or weakens remain underexplored. Drawing on the Natural Resource-Based View and stakeholder integration perspectives, the study argues that management commitment-expressed through resource allocation, strategic prioritization, and active support-shapes the extent to which green innovation investments translate into performance outcomes. A cross-sectional survey design was employed, with data collected from 180 employees of Shell's Nigerian operations in Delta State. Multiple regression analysis reveals that all four green innovation dimensions significantly predict organizational performance, with process innovation (β = 0.345, p < .01) and product/service innovation (β = 0.224, p < .01) demonstrating the largest standardized coefficients. Formal coefficient-comparison tests revealed that the only statistically significant pairwise difference was between green process innovation and green organizational innovation (χ² = 6.34, p = .012). The pattern of findings is interpreted in light of management commitment's enabling role. The study contributes to understanding the organizational conditions that determine whether environmental innovation creates value, with particular attention to the Nigerian oil and gas context where management support may be critical for translating green innovation investments into measurable returns. The findings provide empirical evidence that is broadly consistent with NRBV-based propositions regarding the strategic relevance of environmental capabilities, while highlighting the importance of statistically testing dimensional differences rather than relying on numerical coefficient comparisons alone.
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CONSTITUTIONAL COURTS AS GUARDIANS OF DEMOCRACY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY IN INDIA, GERMANY AND SOUTH AFRICA COMPARATIVE PUBLIC LAW
Constitutional courts are often described as guardians of democracy, but their contribution to democratic government is more complicated than simply striking down unconstitutional laws. This research article compares the constitutional role of the Supreme Court of India, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The study asks how each court protects constitutional democracy, how far judicial review may legitimately reach into political decision-making, and what the three systems can teach one another. The research adopts a doctrinal and comparative method, relying primarily on constitutional texts, leading judgments and official judicial materials, with supporting academic literature. The comparison shows three different institutional designs. India relies heavily on judicial review, fundamental rights and the basic structure doctrine. Germany places strong emphasis on human dignity, the free democratic basic order and an eternity clause. South Africa combines strong judicial review with an explicit commitment to participatory, accountable and open democracy. All three systems treat constitutionalism as more than majority rule, and courts protect democracy most effectively when judicial power is exercised through reasoned standards, institutional restraint and meaningful remedies. The article concludes that India can learn from Germany’s structured protection of constitutional identity and South Africa’s emphasis on participatory democracy, while preserving its own constitutional balance.
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TRAVEL MOTIVATION, PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE, RISK PERCEPTION, AND SATISFACTION IN MOTORCYCLE TOURISM: EVIDENCE FROM TAMIL NADU, INDIA
Motorcycle tourism is a unique form of experiential tourism that focuses on the trip and the motorcycle ride itself. This study proposes an integrated model using S–O–R and push–pull theory that includes risk perception to explore the relationships between travel motivation, psychological experience, destination attractiveness, infrastructure and safety, risk perception, and satisfaction with travel. Based on 240 cases, the results indicate that psychological experience has a positive effect on psychological experience (β = 0.526) and satisfaction (β = 0.220), and psychological experience also has a positive effect on satisfaction (β = 0.264) and partially mediates the relationship between travel motivation and satisfaction (indirect β ≈ 0.139). Destination attractiveness (β = 0.243) and infrastructure and safety (β = 0.173) positively influence satisfaction, whereas risk perception has a negative effect (β = −0.230). Positive relationships are found between social interaction and psychological experience (β = 0.183), and between travel planning and risk perception (β = 0.325). The model explains 55.7% of the variance in travel satisfaction (R² = 0.557). These findings indicate that adventure and experiential value and safety are in balance in motorcycle tourism.
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PARAMETRIC INVESTIGATION OF THE SEISMIC BEHAVIOUR OF A ELEVATED RCC INTZE WATER TANK UNDER VARYING WATER LEVELS AND STAGING CONFIGURATIONS
This study presents a parametric investigation of the seismic behaviour of a 150 KL elevated RCC Intze water tank under varying water-storage conditions and staging configurations. The tank was structurally modelled and analysed using STAAD.Pro, with RCC plate elements adopted for the tank container and beam elements used to represent the staging system. The analysis considered gravity, wind and seismic loading in accordance with the relevant Indian Standard provisions. To account for liquid–structure interaction, the stored water was represented by separate impulsive and convective mass components. The investigation focused on the influence of water level and staging characteristics on important structural response parameters, including natural time period, lateral stiffness, and seismic base shear, overturning moment, hydrodynamic pressure, sloshing height, member forces and foundation response. The adopted tank geometry provides a calculated storage volume of 157.57 m³, compared with the required capacity of 150.00 m³, with a freeboard of 0.50 m. The results indicate that variation in water level significantly modifies the mass distribution and dynamic characteristics of the tank, while staging stiffness and configuration influence the lateral response and transfer of seismic forces to the foundation. The study further demonstrates the importance of considering impulsive and convective water effects rather than treating the stored water as a single rigid mass. The comparative evaluation of different operating conditions provides a comprehensive understanding of the interaction between tank mass, liquid motion and staging behaviour. The findings emphasize that seismic assessment of elevated Intze water tanks should consider both water-storage conditions and staging characteristics to achieve a reliable evaluation of structural safety, serviceability and overall seismic performance.
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SHOULD OXFORD LOWER ITS ADMISSION STANDARDS FOR THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GENEROUS BENEFACTORS?
This paper examines whether the University of Oxford should lower admission standards for the children of generous benefactors. Drawing on human capital theory, allocative efficiency, signalling, peer effects, and distributive justice, it argues that the short-term funding benefits of donor-linked admissions are outweighed by long-term social and institutional costs. The analysis considers how preferential access can displace academically stronger applicants, weaken incentives for educational investment, reinforce intergenerational inequality, and erode reputational capital. Illustrative figures and discussion of legacy admissions, Jared Kushner’s Harvard admission, and the Varsity Blues scandal contextualise these risks. The paper also evaluates the claim that donations can support scholarships and research, arguing that alternative funding mechanisms can sustain universities without compromising academic standards. It concludes that preserving merit-based admissions and separating philanthropy from access better protect institutional trust and higher education’s contribution to society.
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INDIGENOUS VALUES, WESTERN PRACTICES, AND EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT EFFECTS: THE CULTURAL CLASH IN AFRICAN MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES
This study examined the effects of cultural clash between indigenous African values and Western management practices on employee commitment within multinational companies operating in Ghana. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected from 380 employees across six MNCs in the financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing sectors. Cultural clash was measured using a Cultural Value Conflict Scale, indigenous value orientation was assessed using an African Values in Organizations Scale, and employee commitment was measured using the Three-Component Model. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation, hierarchical regression, and moderation analyses were conducted. Results revealed significant negative correlations between cultural clash and employee commitment (r = -0.54, p < .001). Indigenous value orientation moderated this relationship such that employees with stronger indigenous value orientations experienced greater negative effects of cultural clash on commitment. The findings underscore that when Western management practices conflict with indigenous values such as Ubuntu, communal obligations, and relational dignity, employee commitment is significantly undermined. Implications for culturally sensitive human resource management, hybrid practice design, and employee retention strategies in African MNCs are discussed.
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COMPARATIVE RESULTS OF MACHINE LEARNING MODELS FOR SEISMIC RESPONSE AND DAMAGE ASSESSMENT OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS
This paper presents a results-focused comparative assessment of machine learning approaches for seismic response and damage prediction of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. The analysis is based on published benchmark results documented in the thesis source and is explicitly separated from original student-generated numerical results. For maximum interstory drift ratio (IDRmax), the reported benchmark dataset compares Random Forest, Bagging, Extra Trees, HistGradientBoosting, ANN, XGBoost, KNN and conventional regression models using R², RMSE and MAE. Random Forest reports R²=0.901, while Bagging reports the lowest RMSE and MAE among the highlighted high-performing models. Additional published results show prediction accuracies of approximately 90.2–96.3% for selected six-story RC configurations and 93.4–95.3% for eight-story configurations. For real earthquake damage validation, Random Forest reported 74.62% testing accuracy compared with 62.68% for KNN. The paper interprets these results from an engineering perspective and identifies the implications of nonlinear feature interactions, independent validation and model selection. All numerical values are labelled as literature benchmarks; they are not claimed as original Ayush Raikwar experimental or numerical results.
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MAHĀSATI STONES IN KARNATAKA AND TAMIL NADU A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MEMORIAL TRADITION, ICONOGRAPHY, EPIGRAPHY AND REGIONAL CONTEXT
Mahāsati stones form an important category within the wider memorial-stone traditions of South India. In Karnataka, related monuments are described in the literature through terms such as Mahāsati Kallu, Māsti Kallu, Sati Kallu and Vīramasti, while Tamil Nadu preserves related memorial forms within the wider Nadukal tradition. This article presents a comparative study of Mahāsati memorials in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, examining terminology, historical context, sculptural representation, epigraphy, ritual memory and regional variation. Particular attention is given to the raised-hand motif, female attributes, representations of couples, multi-panel compositions, religious symbols and inscriptional evidence. The study combines archaeological and art-historical literature with epigraphic and iconographic approaches. It argues that Mahāsati memorials should be examined within the wider South Indian culture of memorialisation rather than through a single uniform typology. The comparison also highlights the need to distinguish securely identified sati memorials from hero stones, general memorial stones and other female-associated monuments. The paper proposes a field-documentation framework incorporating location, dimensions, sculpture, inscription, palaeography, local tradition and conservation status, thereby providing a basis for future GIS-based documentation of Mahāsati stones in Karnataka.
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GOVERNANCE DEVELOPMENT IN HARYANA: ASSESSING PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC OUTCOMES UNDER THE BJP-LED GOVERNMENT, 2015–2025
The relationship between governance and socio-economic development has become an important area of inquiry in the study of contemporary Indian states. Governance reforms, however, do not necessarily translate uniformly into improved development outcomes, as their effects are mediated by institutional capacity, policy implementation, public-service delivery and regional socio-economic conditions. Against this background, the present study examines the governance–development nexus in Haryana during 2015–2025, with particular attention to public policy interventions and their relationship with socio-economic outcomes under the BJP-led government. The study adopts a longitudinal mixed-method research design combining secondary statistical data, government reports, policy documents and empirical literature. Governance is examined through dimensions including administrative effectiveness, accountability, transparency, responsiveness, digital governance and policy implementation, while socio-economic development is assessed through economic growth, employment, education, health, gender development, rural development and infrastructure indicators. The study further incorporates district-level variations to examine whether development outcomes have been spatially uniform across Haryana. Descriptive and inferential statistical techniques are proposed to identify trends, associations and differences across the study period, supplemented by qualitative analysis of policy implementation and institutional processes. Rather than assuming a direct causal relationship between government policies and development outcomes, the study considers alternative influences, including national economic conditions, centrally sponsored programmes, the COVID-19 pandemic, demographic changes and pre-existing policy trajectories. The study seeks to contribute to the literature on sub-national governance in India by connecting institutional processes and public policy with measurable socio-economic outcomes over a decade. It also highlights the importance of implementation capacity, regional variation and evidence-based assessment in understanding the relationship between governance and development in Haryana.
Children and teenagers today spend a large part of their daily lives online — studying, playing games, chatting with friends, and scrolling through social media — often without fully understanding how much of their personal information is being collected, stored, and used in the process. This growing gap between how much time young users spend online and how little they understand about data privacy has made “digital privacy protection for young users” one of the most pressing legal and policy issues of our time. This paper examines the legal framework built around the protection of children’s personal data, with a particular focus on India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, along with its accompanying Rules of 2025, and situates this framework alongside comparable laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the United States and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union. The paper studies the specific risks young users face online — targeted advertising, behavioural tracking, data breaches, and exposure to predatory actors — and evaluates how effectively current laws address these risks through mechanisms like verifiable parental consent, restrictions on tracking and profiling, and penalties for non-compliance. It also looks at relevant judicial pronouncements that have shaped the constitutional and legal understanding of privacy as a fundamental right in India, and how that understanding extends to children as a particularly vulnerable class of data principals. The paper concludes by identifying gaps that remain in the current legal architecture and offers practical suggestions — for lawmakers, platforms, schools, and parents — aimed at making the digital space genuinely safer for young users without cutting them off from the benefits of the internet.
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A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE GOVERNOR’S ASSENT POWERS IN INDIA, AUSTRALIA AND CANADA AS A CONSTITUTIONAL GATEKEEPER OR DEMOCRATIC HEAD OF A STATE.
The Governor is an institution that holds a unique place in the parliamentary federalism of India. While being formally the constitutional head of a State, the Governor is also part of the State Legislature under Article 168 of Indian Constitution and serves a significant constitutional purpose while a Bill is placed under Article 200 of the Constitution of India1. This article allows for the assent as well as the reservation for the President and depending on its first proviso, the withholding and returning of a non-Money Bill for reconsideration by the President of India. The second proviso makes the reservation compulsory in a specified case wherein a Bill if passed would undermine or diminish the authority of the High Court, thereby endangering the position bestowed under Indian Constituion.2
The contemporary issue got highlighted in the recent controversy as to the consequences that arise when such constitutional options are not exercised in the due or reasonable time. The Supreme Court under its 2023 judgment in State of Punjab v. Principal Secretary to the Governor of Punjab refused the use of gubernatorial discretion to undermine the regular legislative procedure.3 Furthermore, the controversy deepened when the decision rendered by the Court in the landmark case of State of Tamil Nadu v. The Governor of Tamil Nadu wherein April 2025 took a more interventionist stand, incorporating judicially defined time frames as well.4 This was however reviewed in the November 2025 Presidential Reference, whereby a Constitution Bench rejected the idea of judicial timelines and viewed assent as the prerogative of the Governor but reserved powers to him to act where inaction is unjustified and indefinite. 56
Canada and Australia offer good comparatives owing to the fact that they have systems that were originally built upon the renowned Westminster institutions which involved a vice-regal authority that is a part of the legislative process. While Canada maintains formal rules of assent, reservation and disallowance by the federation, conventions of responsible government have greatly limited
The Royal Assent powers remain in the States of Australia but powers of Britain to disallow and reserve State legislation under the Australia Act 1986 ended.89
The comparison is not intended to imply that India must import some other model. Rather, it reveals that the working of any constitutional power is determined by its context having a responsible government, federalism, conventions, institutional transparency and judicial review. This paper thus poses the question whether the primary function of the Governor is to act as a constitutional gatekeeper or a democratic safeguard without transforming the institution itself into some kind of substitute of an elected State legislature.
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विविधता में एकता और राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति 2020 (UNITY IN DIVERSITY AND NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY 2020)
भारत की बहुभाषिक, बहुसांस्कृतिक और बहुधार्मिक संरचना “विविधता में एकता” की अवधारणा को विशेष महत्व प्रदान करती है। यह अवधारणा भारतीय समाज की पहचान होने के साथ-साथ लोकतांत्रिक मूल्यों और सामाजिक समरसता की आधारशिला भी है। प्रस्तुत लेख में “विविधता में एकता” की अवधारणा को राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति 2020 के विशेष संदर्भ में विश्लेषित किया गया है। प्रस्तुत लेख में यह स्पष्ट किया गया है कि भारत में भाषाई, सांस्कृतिक, धार्मिक, सामाजिक, क्षेत्रीय और ज्ञान परंपराओं की विविधता होने के बावजूद एक साझा राष्ट्रीय चेतना विद्यमान है और इस एकता को सुदृढ़ करने में शिक्षा की महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका है। राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति 2020 शिक्षा को समावेशी, बहुभाषिक, बहुसांस्कृतिक और बहुविषयक बनाकर विविधताओं के बीच सामंजस्य स्थापित करने का प्रयास करती है। लेख में राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा नीति 2020 के दृष्टिकोण को स्पष्ट करते हुए यह बताया गया है कि नीति का उद्देश्य केवल ज्ञान प्रदान करना नहीं; अपितु विद्यार्थियों में सामाजिक संवेदनशीलता, लोकतांत्रिक मूल्यों और राष्ट्रीय एकता की भावना विकसित करना है। इस संदर्भ में बहुभाषिक शिक्षा, भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा का समावेश और समावेशी शिक्षा जैसे प्रावधानों को विविधता में एकता को मजबूत करने के महत्वपूर्ण माध्यम के रूप में प्रस्तुत किया गया है। बहुभाषिक शिक्षा विद्यार्थियों को अपनी भाषा और संस्कृति से जोड़ते हुए अन्य भाषाओं के प्रति सम्मान विकसित करती है; जबकि भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा का समावेश विद्यार्थियों में सांस्कृतिक जागरूकता और राष्ट्रीय गौरव की भावना को सुदृढ़ करता है। समावेशी शिक्षा विभिन्न पृष्ठभूमियों के विद्यार्थियों को एक साथ सीखने का अवसर प्रदान कर सामाजिक समरसता को बढ़ावा देती है।
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IMPACT OF TEACHERS’ PRACTICES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF KINDERGARTEN LEARNERS IN DON CARLOS I, II, III
Department of Education is always gearing towards quality education in all levels of education. As part of its effort to evaluate whether it is really serving its purpose, there is always an effort of every ladder to keep gearing towards excellence in the discharging of functions and services.
In so doing, even in the first level of education which is the Kindergarten education, the teachers are proving their worth to be competent and competitive so that they can produce a desirable output ready for the first grade of basic education.
The researcher would like to know how competent really the teachers are in their duties and responsibilities and found it imperative to scrutinize the profile of the kindergarten teachers as respondents of the study. The following terms had contributed in order to establish the demographic profile of kindergarten teachers in terms of age, gender and the teacher’s classroom practices.
The study somehow gave an idea on the extent of teacher’s classroom practices and its relation towards the learning performance among kindergarten learners.
Furthermore, the study gave an idea on whether there is a significant difference in the extent of teacher’s classroom practices and the learning performance among kindergarten learners to determine the kindergarten teachers in terms of classroom management, classroom structuring, instructional materials, making daily lesson log, and teaching strategies.
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FROM POLICY TO DEVELOPMENT: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES IN REWARI DISTRICT, HARYANA (2021–2026)
The translation of public policy into tangible development outcomes depends not only on policy formulation but also on institutional capacity, administrative coordination, implementation mechanisms, and the accessibility of public services. This study examines the relationship between policy implementation, governance, and development outcomes in Rewari district of Haryana during the period 2021–2026. It adopts a district-level empirical framework to investigate how major government interventions in areas such as infrastructure, education, health, rural development, employment, social welfare, digital governance, and women's development are translated into local-level outcomes. The study employs a mixed-methods research design, combining secondary data from government reports, administrative records, statistical publications, and programme-specific sources with primary evidence collected from citizens and relevant stakeholders. Quantitative analysis is used to assess trends and relationships among selected governance and development indicators, while qualitative evidence is employed to examine implementation processes, institutional capacity, accessibility, and perceived gaps in service delivery. The study conceptualises governance as an intervening mechanism connecting policy inputs with development outcomes and therefore moves beyond a simple assessment of scheme coverage or expenditure. Particular attention is given to variations in service accessibility, citizen satisfaction, rural–urban differences, and implementation constraints. By focusing on Rewari as a district-level case, the study contributes to the literature on decentralised governance and policy implementation by linking government interventions with measurable socioeconomic and governance outcomes. The findings are intended to provide an evidence-based assessment of the policy–implementation–development relationship and identify institutional areas requiring greater attention for improving inclusive and effective district-level development.
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DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF HERBAL ANTI-DANDRUFF FORMULATION
Dandruff is a common scalp disorder characterized by excessive flaking, itching, dryness and irritation of the scalp. The present study focuses on the formulation and evaluation of herbal anti-dandruff shampoo containing Neem, Tulsi, Aloe Vera, Reetha, Shikakai, Fenugreek and Peppermint oils. These natural ingredients were chosen because of their traditionally reported cleansing, antimicrobial, antifungal, soothing, moisturizing and scalp-conditioning properties. Neem (Azadirachta indica) and basil (Ocimum sanctum) have antimicrobial and antifungal properties, while aloe vera helps soothe and moisturize the scalp. Reetha (Sapindus mukorossi) and shikakai (Acacia concinna) act as natural cleansing agents, while fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) can help condition the scalp and reduce dryness. Peppermint oil provides a refreshing feeling and may contribute to scalp cleansing and antimicrobial activity. Herbal extracts and peppermint oil will be incorporated into a suitable shampoo base and evaluated for various physicochemical and performance parameters including color, odor, appearance, pH, viscosity, foamability, foam stability, wetting ability, dirt dispersion, solid content, spreadability, cleansing ability, skin/scalp irritation and consistency. The antifungal or anti-dandruff activity of the formulation can also be tested using appropriate microbial testing method. The developed formulation is expected to provide effective cleansing and scalp care while offering a plant-based alternative to traditional anti-dandruff shampoos.
84
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A SECURE MOBILE-BASED DIGITAL DOCUMENT SIGNING AND VERIFICATION SYSTEM
The increasing use of electronic documents across educational institutions, government agencies, corporate organizations and other sectors has intensified the need for mechanisms capable of guaranteeing document authenticity, integrity and accountability. Conventional electronic document management systems remain vulnerable to forgery, unauthorized modification, identity impersonation and weak access control. This study presents TrustSign, a secure Android-based digital document signing and verification system developed to address these challenges through the integration of multiple security mechanisms. The system combines One-Time Password (OTP) and biometric fingerprint authentication, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), RSA digital signatures, SHA-256 hashing, Android Keystore-based key management, QR-code verification, Firebase cloud storage, audit trails and verification logs. The system was designed using Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Methodology and implemented using Java and Android Studio. Firebase Realtime Database was used for user information, document metadata, audit records and verification logs, while Firebase Storage was used for signed PDF documents. Functional testing was conducted using valid and invalid credentials, biometric data, PDF documents, QR codes and different user roles. Results showed that all major functional modules passed their tests. The system successfully authenticated users, enforced role-based permissions, digitally signed documents, generated unique TrustSign identification numbers and QR codes, verified authentic documents, detected modified documents, and maintained audit and verification records. The study demonstrates that integrating strong authentication, cryptographic signatures, access control, cloud services and verification mechanisms within a mobile platform provides a practical approach to secure digital document management.
85
COMPARATIVE ADSORPTION PERFORMANCE OF BIOCHARS FROM PALM TREE STEM, BANANA STEM, PERIWINKLE SHELL AND CASSAVA STEM FOR WASTEWATER TREATMENT
The sustainable management of agricultural and shellfish wastes while addressing water pollution remains a critical challenge in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. This study presents a comparative evaluation of four biochars produced from locally sourced plant and shell materials—palm tree stem biochar (PTSB), banana stem biochar (BSB), periwinkle shell char (PSC), and cassava stem biochar (CSB)—for the removal of Pb²⁺, Cd²⁺, and methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solutions. The precursor materials were collected within and around the Federal University Otuoke campus and the wider Otuoke community in Ogbia Local Government Area, Bayelsa State. Biochars were prepared by slow pyrolysis at 500 °C under limited oxygen conditions. Batch adsorption experiments conducted under optimised conditions (pH 5–7, adsorbent dosage 2 g L⁻¹, contact time 120 min) showed that BSB achieved the highest MB removal efficiency (approximately 94.7%, maximum adsorption capacity = 178.5 mg g⁻¹), while PSC exhibited superior performance for heavy metals (Pb²⁺ maximum adsorption capacity = 105.2 mg g⁻¹). Equilibrium data fitted the Langmuir isotherm model (R² > 0.96), and kinetic data followed the pseudo-second-order model (R² > 0.98), indicating chemisorption as the dominant mechanism. One-way ANOVA confirmed statistically significant differences among the biochars (p < 0.001). Application to real industrial effluent yielded removal efficiencies of 68–92%. The findings demonstrate that agricultural and shell wastes readily available in the Otuoke area can be converted into effective, low-cost adsorbents, supporting circular economy principles and sustainable wastewater management in the region.
86
EFFECT OF JIGSAW AND PEER TUTORING STRATEGIES ON STUDENTS’ RETENTION IN SOCIAL STUDIES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA.
The study investigated the effect of jigsaw and peer tutoring strategies on students’ retention in social studies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study employed a quasi-experimental non-randomized pre-test, post-test control group design. Three research questions and hypothesis were formulated. The sample consisted of 308 Junior Secondary School students in two intact classes in two secondary schools in West Africa, Nigeria. The instrument used for data collection were Social Studies Academic Performance Test (SOSAPT) Social Studies Retention Test (SSRT). The instrument were face validated by three experts. Kuder-Richardson (K-R20) formula was used to test the internal consistency reliability of SSAPT and the result was 0.98 and Cronbach Alpha was used to ascertain the reliability coefficient of SSRT which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.89. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean retention scores of students taught using Jigsaw teaching strategy and those taught using peer tutoring strategies in Social Studies F (1, 201) = 12.300; p = 0.001 < 0.05; there was a significant main was a significant difference between male and female students’ retention scores when taught Social Studies using Jigsaw teaching strategy. F (1, 100) = 0.024; p = 0.158 > 0.05. The study recommended that social Studies teachers should use jigsaw and peer tutoring to enhance students’ retention in the subject and principals and Supervisors of Social Studies teaching and learning encourage the use of Jigsaw and peer tutoring strategies to enhance male and female students’ retention in the subject within the Sub-Saharan Africa.
87
SMART EXAM IMPERSONATOR DETECTOR APPLICATION USING FACIAL RECOGNITION
Examination malpractice, particularly impersonation, remains a persistent challenge in Nigerian tertiary institutions and has far-reaching consequences for educational standards and societal integrity. This paper presents the design and implementation of a Smart Exam Impersonator Detector Application that leverages facial recognition technology to identify and flag candidates who are not registered for a given examination. The system was developed using Python, OpenCV, and the Flask web framework, with an Eigenfaces algorithm based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) as the core recognition engine. Student facial images were collected from the Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Alex Ekwueme Federal University (AE-FUNAI), and used to train the model. The system was tested on eleven distinct faces, successfully recognising ten out of eleven, yielding a detection accuracy of approximately 90%. Results further demonstrate that recognition accuracy improves proportionally with the number of training images supplied per individual. The proposed system is cost-effective, scalable, and contactless, making it particularly suitable for deployment in a post-pandemic university environment where social distancing remains important. This work contributes a prototype that any Nigerian university can adopt to curb examination impersonation without the prohibitive cost of commissioning custom software.
88
HEALTH INSURANCE ACCESSIBILITY AMONG PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES IN INDIA: A STRUCTURED NARRATIVE REVIEW OF THE “AYUSHMAN FOR ALL” EVIDENCE AND POLICY FRAMEWORK
Background: Persons with disabilities (PwDs) experience health inequities arising from barriers in healthcare systems, social determinants, affordability, accessibility, and discrimination. In India, the policy framework includes the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act), Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY), and regulatory measures concerning health insurance products. Nevertheless, evidence indicates substantial gaps in financial protection and awareness.
Objective: To synthesize the evidence presented in the 2025 “Ayushman for All” campaign survey concerning health insurance coverage and AB-PMJAY awareness among PwDs in India, and to interpret those findings alongside national disability-survey evidence, Indian insurance regulation, and international disability-health standards.
Methods: A structured narrative review was undertaken using the uploaded manuscript as the primary source, supplemented by publicly available Government of India, WHO, United Nations, peer-reviewed, and reputable news/press reports identified during September 2026. The 2025 campaign figures were treated as campaign-reported estimates rather than as a nationally representative prevalence estimate because the technical survey report and sampling documentation were not available in the source material reviewed.
Results: The campaign survey, as reported by Press Trust of India, included more than 5,000 PwDs across 34 states and union territories; 82% reportedly lacked any form of insurance, 42% were unaware of AB-PMJAY, and 28% reported having applied for the scheme. These findings coexist with substantial evidence of financial burden: analysis of the NSS 76th Round disability survey found that disability-related healthcare expenditure represented 20.32% of household monthly consumption expenditure on average, 57.1% of households experienced catastrophic health expenditure at a 10% threshold, and 19.1% of households above the poverty line before treatment were pushed below it after disability-related healthcare expenditure. Indian regulation has also evolved: IRDAI requires insurers to make products available across categories including PwDs and requires general and health insurers to offer a specific cover for PwDs, HIV/AIDS and mental illness.
Conclusion: The evidence points to a policy implementation gap rather than a simple absence of policy. A disability-inclusive health-financing strategy requires accessible enrolment, effective outreach, transparent underwriting, disability-disaggregated monitoring, grievance redressal, and meaningful participation of persons with disabilities and their representative organisations. Future research should independently validate the 2025 campaign estimates using transparent sampling and individual-level data.
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ASSESSMENT OF NEEM (AZADIRACHTA INDICA) AND MORINGA (MORINGA OLEIFERA) LEAF EXTRACTS AS GREEN CORROSION INHIBITORS FOR MILD STEEL.
This study assessed the corrosion inhibition performance of Azadirachta indica (Neem) and Moringa oleifera (Moringa) leaf extracts as environmentally friendly corrosion inhibitors for mild steel in alkaline media. Fresh leaves of Neem and Moringa were processed by crushing and pounding without the addition of an extracting solvent, and the resulting extracts were filtered and used at volumes of 25, 50, 75, and 100 cm³. Mild steel cylindrical coupons were exposed to 0.5 M and 1.0 M sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solutions containing the respective plant extracts. The corrosion behaviour was evaluated using weight-loss measurements, corrosion rate, and inhibition efficiency. The results showed that increasing the extract volume progressively reduced the weight loss and corrosion rate of the mild steel while increasing inhibition efficiency in both NaOH concentrations. In 0.5 M NaOH, Neem extract increased the inhibition efficiency from 22.28% at 25 cm³ to 59.78% at 100 cm³, whereas Moringa extract increased the efficiency from 25.54% to 64.13%. In 1.0 M NaOH, Neem exhibited inhibition efficiencies of 20.35–58.01%, while Moringa showed 23.81–60.61% over the same extract-volume range. The uninhibited mild steel exhibited higher corrosion rates in 1.0 M NaOH than in 0.5 M NaOH, indicating increased corrosivity with increasing NaOH concentration. At corresponding extract volumes, Moringa consistently exhibited slightly higher inhibition efficiency and lower weight loss than Neem. The observed protective effect is attributed to the adsorption of bioactive phytochemical constituents present in the plant extracts onto the mild-steel surface, forming a protective film that limits interaction between the metal and the corrosive alkaline medium. The findings demonstrate the potential of Neem and Moringa leaf extracts as locally available, renewable, and environmentally compatible alternatives for mitigating mild-steel corrosion in alkaline environments.
90
A STUDY ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED WILDLIFE CONSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS IN INDIA AND ABROAD
Wildlife conservation organizations play a significant role in protecting biodiversity and promoting environmental sustainability. Among the leading organizations working in this field are the World Wide Fund for Nature – India (WFN), African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), and Panthera Corporation (PAN). These organizations contribute significantly to wildlife protection, habitat conservation, and environmental awareness across different regions of the world. The financial strength of such organizations is essential to ensure the continuity of their conservation programs and initiatives. The present study examines the financial performance of selected environmental and wildlife conservation organizations by analysing their liquidity, profitability, solvency, and operational efficiency. The study evaluates key financial indicators such as Current Ratio, Return on Total Assets (ROA), Return on Capital Employed (ROCE), Operating Profit Ratio (OPR), Debt Equity Ratio (DER), Return on Net Assets (RONA), and Working Capital Turnover Ratio (WCT). Secondary data were collected from the profit and loss accounts and balance sheets of WFN, AWF, and PAN for the period 2020–2024. The study employs ratio analysis, trend analysis, and comparative statistical tools such as ANOVA, F-test, and correlation analysis to examine the financial performance and relationships between the selected ratios. The findings highlight variations in financial efficiency among the organizations and provide insights into their financial stability and operational performance in the wildlife conservation sector.
Review Article
1
ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE: A CRITICAL NARRATIVE REVIEW OF INFORMATION QUALITY, EFFECTIVE USE AND ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT
Accounting Information Systems (AIS) integrate people, procedures, data, software and controls to capture, process and report financial information. This critical narrative review examines how AIS can contribute to business performance and why benefits differ across organisations. The synthesis draws on information-systems success theory and empirical research on small and medium-sized enterprises, accounting information quality and cloud-based AIS. The literature indicates that AIS can support performance through several pathways: improving information quality, accelerating reporting and decision processes, strengthening transaction controls, integrating financial and operational data, and supporting more timely management action. However, technology adoption alone does not guarantee better performance. System quality, information quality, user capability, management support, organisational readiness, training, internal controls and fit with business processes shape whether systems are used effectively. Cloud platforms may reduce some infrastructure barriers for smaller firms, but they also create requirements for connectivity, security, data governance and vendor management. The review proposes that AIS performance should be evaluated as a chain from system and information quality to effective use, decision quality, control and business outcomes. Future research in developing economies should use verified primary data, objective performance measures where possible and transparent research methods rather than relying only on respondent perceptions.
2
HOMOEOPATHY IN ACNE VULGARIS: A NARRATIVE REVIEW OF CLINICAL EVIDENCE
Background: Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory disorder affecting the hair follicle and its sebaceous gland. It appears as comedones, papules and pustules and, in severe cases, as nodules, cysts and scars, and it may reduce a patient's quality of life. The homoeopathic literature on acne consists of randomized placebo-controlled trials, observational studies, case series and case reports, which vary considerably in design, sample size, outcome measures and quality.
Objective: To review the published clinical literature on homoeopathic treatment of acne vulgaris in narrative form, to summarize reported outcomes and prescribing approaches, and to point out methodological weaknesses and evidence gaps.
Methods: Records were retrieved via Google Scholar, the only database searched, and examined qualitatively for design, population, intervention, comparator, outcomes, attrition and methodological weaknesses. This is not a formal systematic review: no protocol was registered and no independent duplicate screening took place. Seventeen clinical records were extracted.
Results: Of the records, three were randomized placebo-controlled trials, two were other controlled or placebo run-in studies, four were prospective or observational studies, three were case series and five were case reports. The largest randomized trial (126 participants) tended to favour individualized homoeopathic medicines, though at three months the groups did not differ significantly. A fixed homoeopathic complex performed no better than placebo in its trial.
Significant within-group declines in lesion counts, Global Acne Grading System (GAGS) scores and quality-of-life scores were reported by open-label studies of Zingiber officinale, Arctium lappa and Azadirachta indica and by an individualized single-arm study. Remission was recorded in 81.9% of an 83-patient case series.
Conclusion: Homoeopathy has been investigated as an acne vulgaris treatment, and improvement is described by most uncontrolled studies. The strongest comparative evidence, though, has shown no statistically significant advantage over placebo. Further study is warranted; before firm conclusions on efficacy are possible, adequately powered randomized controlled trials with standard outcome measures and longer follow-up are needed.
3
A STUDY OF THE ANALGESIC, ANTIDIARRHOEAL AND ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITIES OF LIMNOPHILA POLYSTACHYA BENTH (SCROPHULARIACEAE) LEAF EXTRACTS
Phytopharmacology continues to play a crucial role in the discovery and development of novel therapeutic agents, particularly from medicinal plants with traditional uses. The increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance, along with the widespread occurrence of pain and diarrhoeal disorders, has created an urgent need for safer and more effective plant-based alternatives. This study evaluated the analgesic, antidiarrhoeal, and antimicrobial activities of ethanol leaf extracts of Limnophila polystachya Benth using established experimental models. Analgesic activity was assessed by the acetic acid-induced writhing test in mice, while antidiarrhoeal activity was evaluated using the castor oil-induced diarrhoea model following Thomas' method. Antimicrobial activity was determined by the disc diffusion assay against selected bacterial strains. At a dose of 500 mg/kg, the stem and leaf extracts produced significant analgesic effects by reducing writhing responses by 65.79% and 63.16%, respectively, compared with 78.07% inhibition produced by the standard drug diclofenac sodium. In the antidiarrhoeal study, the stem and leaf extracts significantly reduced diarrhoeal faeces by 50.58% and 52.87%, respectively, while lower doses also demonstrated notable inhibition. The extracts exhibited moderate antibacterial activity at concentrations of 250 and 500 μg/disc, although their efficacy was lower than ciprofloxacin (38 mm inhibition zone at 50 μg/disc). These findings indicate that L. polystachya possesses promising pharmacological properties and may serve as a valuable natural source for the isolation of bioactive compounds. However, further phytochemical investigations, toxicity studies, and mechanistic evaluations are required to identify the active constituents and confirm their therapeutic potential.
4
RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN INDIA A STUDY OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL PROTECTION
Women’s rights are an essential part of human rights and constitutional democracy. They are closely connected with equality, dignity, personal liberty, safety, education, employment and economic independence. In India, the Constitution provides a strong foundation through Articles 14, 15, 16 and 21, while also allowing special measures for women where necessary. Parliament and the judiciary have developed a wider legal framework addressing domestic violence, dowry, workplace sexual harassment, child marriage and unequal access to property and opportunities.
This paper examines the development and importance of women’s rights in India. It explains the constitutional framework, major protective laws, important judicial decisions and rights relating to education, employment, property, maternity and personal dignity. It also considers practical challenges such as lack of legal awareness, social stereotypes, economic dependence, under-reporting and difficulties in accessing justice.
The paper concludes that India has a substantial legal framework, but its effectiveness depends on implementation, awareness and social change. Women’s empowerment therefore requires more than laws; it requires equal opportunities, accessible remedies, safe institutions and respect for women’s autonomy and dignity.
5
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR POLLUTION CONTROL: A REVIEW OF TECHNIQUES, APPLICATIONS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Environmental pollution remains one of the most pressing global challenges leading to irreparable ecosystem degradation. Traditional pollution monitoring and control methods, are often constrained by high operational costs, limited spatial and temporal coverage, and delayed response times. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative tool capable of addressing many of these limitations through predictive modelling, real-time monitoring, automated detection, and intelligent control systems. This paper presents a structured review of AI applications across major pollution domains, namely air, water, industrial, and waste management, and examines the underlying techniques that enable these applications. It focusses on technology advancements such as machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and the Internet of Things (IoT) and role of each in pollution control. The paper also critically evaluates the key challenges hindering widespread adoption, such as data scarcity, model interpretability, infrastructure costs, federated learning, and regulatory integration. Finally, it outlines emerging directions including explainable AI, and digital twin frameworks that could shape the next generation of AI-driven environmental management systems. The paper concludes that while AI offers substantial opportunities to enhance pollution control efficiency and responsiveness, its successful deployment depends on addressing technical, economic, and policy-level barriers in parallel for ensuring the sustainability of our planet.
Allergic rhinitis (AR) is an immunoglobulin E (IgE)-mediated inflammatory disorder of the nasal mucosa that follows exposure to inhaled allergens and is characterised by sneezing, nasal itching, rhinorrhoea and nasal obstruction. It affects several hundred million people worldwide, impairs sleep, school and work performance, and frequently coexists with asthma and allergic conjunctivitis. This narrative review summarises current knowledge on the epidemiology, risk factors, pathophysiology, clinical features, classification, diagnosis and management of AR, and examines the place of homoeopathy in its management. Relevant guidelines, reviews and clinical studies were identified through searches of Google Scholar, and remedy indications were drawn from Boericke’s Materia Medica and read in the light of Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine; the material was synthesised narratively. The literature shows that AR is a systemic airway condition rather than an isolated nasal complaint, that diagnosis rests mainly on a careful history supported by allergen-specific testing, and that management combines allergen avoidance, pharmacotherapy (intranasal corticosteroids, antihistamines and combination products), allergen immunotherapy and patient education. Classical homoeopathic texts list remedies for acute coryza and hay fever, but Hahnemann’s method requires a remedy to be chosen on the totality of the individual patient’s symptoms rather than on the disease name. The few clinical trials of homoeopathy in AR are small and varied, and several tested allergen preparations rather than individualised prescribing, so the evidence is not yet sufficient to support its use. Recent guidelines emphasise a structured, evidence-graded and patient-centred approach. Further work is needed on phenotype-specific treatment, long-term disease modification and strategies for primary prevention.
7
HOUSEHOLD FINANCIAL STRESS IN INDIA: DEBT EXPANSION, NET FINANCIAL SAVING, AND MACROPRUDENTIAL RESILIENCE
This paper examines the household financial stress paradox in India: household leverage has increased while net financial saving has remained materially below its pandemic peak, even though the banking system remains resilient. Using Reserve Bank of India (RBI), National Statistical Office, and related macro-financial evidence, the paper traces changes in household liabilities, financial saving, credit composition, and regulatory intervention. The analysis distinguishes balance-sheet vulnerability from conventional measures of banking-sector asset quality and argues that the relevant policy problem is not household borrowing per se but the interaction between debt composition, income capacity, liquidity buffers, and macroeconomic shocks. The paper documents the shift toward non-housing retail credit and evaluates the RBI's use of higher risk weights as a targeted macroprudential response. It concludes with a household and regulatory resilience framework based on debt-service capacity, liquidity adequacy, credit underwriting, and stress testing.
8
WHEN CONSTITUTIONS FAIL: WHY SOME CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEMS SURVIVE POLITICAL CRISES
Constitutional crises test whether constitutional government can continue to restrain public power when ordinary political arrangements are placed under exceptional pressure. Such crises may arise from executive–legislative conflict, governmental instability, mass mobilisation, territorial conflict, war, terrorism or emergency measures. The central question is not simply whether a constitution survives in formal terms, but whether constitutional democracy continues to structure the exercise of public power. This paper examines constitutional resilience through a comparison of India, France and Germany, three systems that experienced serious constitutional stress but responded through different institutional paths.
The study treats constitutional resilience as the capacity of a constitutional order to resist the destruction of its core commitments, adapt lawfully to changing conditions, and recover after institutional failure. India’s Emergency of 1975–1977 demonstrates the danger of concentrated emergency authority and weakened rights protection, but also the capacity for recovery through elections, constitutional amendment, judicial doctrine and federal institutions. France’s transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic shows that resilience may require institutional redesign where governmental instability prevents effective constitutional government. Germany’s experience from Weimar to the Basic Law demonstrates deliberate constitutional learning: emergency powers were retained but embedded within stronger parliamentary, federal and judicial safeguards.
The comparison indicates that resilience is systemic rather than dependent on a single constitutional provision. Bounded emergency powers, meaningful legislative oversight, independent courts, political competition, territorial dispersion of power, protected constitutional identity, governmental capacity and post-crisis learning operate together. The paper concludes that India need not copy French or German institutions. Its more relevant task is to preserve and strengthen the mechanisms already developed through the experience of the Emergency, particularly the Forty-Fourth Amendment, judicial review, federalism, political competition and the basic structure doctrine.
9
INTRAVENOUS (IV) TO ORAL SWITCH THERAPY: A REVIEW OF CLINICAL PRACTICE, OBJECTIVES, INDICATORS, AND EXPECTED OUTCOMES
Intravenous (IV) to oral (PO) switch therapy is a well-established antimicrobial stewardship strategy that involves changing a patient's medication from the intravenous route to an oral formulation once the patient's clinical condition improves. This practice enhances patient comfort, reduces healthcare costs, shortens hospital stay, and minimizes complications associated with prolonged IV catheter use without compromising treatment effectiveness. Successful implementation requires careful assessment of the patient's clinical status, gastrointestinal function, and availability of effective oral alternatives. This review summarizes the principles, objectives, indicators, benefits, challenges, and expected outcomes of IV to oral switch therapy.
10
IN-VITRO EVIDENCE OF ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF HOMOEOPATHIC PREPARATIONS AGAINST CANDIDA SPECIES: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
ABSTRACT
Background: Candida species are important fungal organisms associated with superficial, mucosal and invasive candidiasis. Laboratory investigations have examined whether selected homoeopathic preparations show measurable antifungal activity against Candida.
Objective: To summarize and compare, in narrative form, the reported in-vitro evidence concerning homoeopathic medicines investigated against Candida species, with particular attention to author, year, organism, medicine, potency or preparation, laboratory method, comparator and reported outcome.
Selection criteria:
• Studies investigating Candida species as the test organism.
• Studies evaluating a homoeopathic medicine, mother tincture, combination, or potency.
• Studies using an in-vitro experimental design or summarizing in-vitro evidence.
• Studies reporting identifiable laboratory methodology and antifungal findings.
Studies reviewed (nine primary studies plus one contextual review):
• Prajapati et al. (2017),
• Gupta et al. (2015),
• Shinde et al. (2018),
• De Klerk (1998),
11
HUMAN FACTORS, SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES, AND AI-DRIVEN THREATS IN ORGANIZATIONAL DATA BREACHES: A CONTEMPORARY REVIEW
Data breaches are no longer well explained by a simple choice between “human error” and “technical vulnerability.” Recent evidence shows that the dominant risk is increasingly socio-technical: users, administrators, identities, software flaws, third-party services, cloud configurations, and AI-enabled attack methods interact to create breach paths. This review re-examines the causes of organizational data breaches using recent industry evidence and a structured comparison of human, technical, and emerging AI-related factors. The analysis updates the earlier human-versus-system framing by incorporating vulnerability exploitation, credential abuse, social engineering, supply-chain exposure, shadow AI, and AI-assisted attacks. Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report indicates that vulnerability exploitation became the leading initial access vector, while human involvement and third-party exposure remain substantial. IBM’s 2026 Cost of a Data Breach research further reports a sharp rise in AI-enabled attacks and record global breach costs. The paper argues that organizations should move from isolated awareness training or patching programs toward integrated controls that combine identity security, rapid vulnerability remediation, secure configuration, third-party governance, AI usage controls, and continuous detection. The resulting framework is suitable for organizations seeking a practical, risk-based breach-prevention strategy under rapidly changing attack conditions.
12
POPULATION INDICATORS AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE IN RAYALASEEMA REGION ANDHRA PRADESH: A CENSUS-BASED STUDY
Population characteristics are important indicators of the demographic, social and economic development of a region. Population size, growth, density, sex ratio, literacy, age structure, urbanization and workforce characteristics provide an understanding of the spatial and temporal dimensions of population change. Rayalaseema, comprising the traditional districts of Anantapur, Chittoor, Kurnool and YSR Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh, has historically experienced distinctive demographic conditions associated with its semi-arid environment, agricultural economy, uneven urbanization and variations in social infrastructure.
The present study analyses major population indicators of the Rayalaseema region using Census of India data, particularly the 2001 and 2011 Censuses. The study examines population growth, density, sex composition, child population, literacy, gender differences in literacy and urbanization. Comparative analysis is undertaken at the district level to identify intra-regional demographic disparities. The four districts together recorded a population of about 15.19 million in 2011, compared with approximately 13.30 million in 2001. The region therefore experienced a decadal population increase of about 14.2 percent. Chittoor recorded the highest population and population density among the four districts, while YSR Kadapa recorded the lowest population and density. Chittoor also had the highest literacy rate, whereas Kurnool had the lowest. The regional sex ratio was close to 988 females per 1,000 males in 2011.
The findings indicate that Rayalaseema has undergone significant demographic transition, particularly through declining child population proportions, improvement in literacy and gradual urbanization. However, considerable differences remain between districts and between males and females. The study suggests strengthening female education, employment opportunities, urban infrastructure, health services, population-sensitive planning and sustainable livelihood programmes to achieve balanced demographic development in Rayalaseema.
13
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND FINANCIAL REPORTING ACCURACY: A NARRATIVE REVIEW
This article examines how artificial intelligence may affect financial reporting accuracy, anomaly screening and reporting efficiency. A narrative review synthesizes recent accounting research, evidence from selected Zambian firms and authoritative risk-management guidance. The literature identifies potential benefits from transaction classification, data extraction, reconciliation, exception analysis and reporting assistance. Published findings include associations between AI use and perceived reporting accuracy, and field evidence relating generative AI to reporting quality and closing speed. These results do not establish that every AI application improves accuracy or that observational relationships are causal. Anomaly alerts support investigation but do not prove fraud. Benefits depend on source-data quality, appropriate accounting logic, internal controls, system validation and professional review. Costs, skills gaps, infrastructure, security, privacy, explainability and excessive reliance on automated outputs constrain adoption. The article proposes phased implementation with clear responsibilities, data controls, human approval and monitoring of both accuracy and efficiency. AI is best treated as support for accountable accounting judgment. Future evaluations should compare independently verified reporting errors and processing outcomes, rather than relying solely on adoption levels or user perceptions.
14
COMPUTERIZED ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS AND FINANCIAL REPORTING QUALITY IN COMMERCIAL BANKS: A CRITICAL REVIEW
This article critically reviews the relationship between computerized accounting systems and financial reporting quality in commercial banks. A narrative synthesis draws on information-systems theory, a published Ugandan bank case study, recent accounting-system research and Zambian evidence from a different organizational sector. The analysis distinguishes software availability, effective use, information quality, control processes and independently verified reporting outcomes. Computerized systems may assist transaction processing, reconciliation, audit trails and timely reporting, but software adoption alone does not establish reliable financial statements. Published evidence cannot be transferred between banks, sectors or countries without attention to sample, measurement and design. The article develops a control-oriented framework linking system suitability, staff capability, reconciliations, access management and oversight to reporting quality. It proposes practical monitoring indicators and an empirical research design for Zambian commercial banks. No new bank survey or local regression estimates are reported. Future research should retain verifiable source records, measure reporting quality directly and distinguish association from causation. The review concludes that the value of computerized accounting rests on a reliable accounting process and accountable management use, rather than on a software brand alone.
15
THE DOCTRINE OF PROPORTIONALITY IN INDIA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF JUDICIAL REVIEW AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
This research examines the doctrine of proportionality as a constitutional technique for reviewing state action in India and the United Kingdom, with particular attention to measures affecting criminal justice, liberty, privacy, fair procedure and punishment. The central problem is whether proportionality provides a sufficiently structured method for reconciling individual rights with legitimate public interests without allowing courts to substitute their policy preferences for legislative judgment. The study adopts a doctrinal and comparative methodology. It analyses constitutional provisions, the Human Rights Act 1998, leading decisions of the Supreme Court of India and the UK Supreme Court, and selected academic literature. The comparison shows that both jurisdictions increasingly use a structured proportionality inquiry involving legitimate aim, rational connection, necessity and balancing, but the constitutional foundations and institutional consequences differ. India applies proportionality directly through fundamental- rights review under Articles 14, 19 and 21, while the United Kingdom operates principally through Convention rights.
16
HOMOEOPATHY IN THE MANAGEMENT OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS: A NARRATIVE REVIEW OF CLINICAL STUDIES
Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease characterized by persistent synovitis, pain, stiffness, functional impairment and potential progressive joint damage. Clinical literature on individualized homoeopathic treatment in RA includes randomized trials, observational studies, pilot studies and case reports, but the evidence is heterogeneous in design, sample size, outcome measures and methodological quality.
Objective: To provide a narrative review of clinical literature concerning individualized homoeopathic treatment in RA, summarize reported outcomes and prescribing approaches, and identify important methodological limitations and evidence gaps.
Methods: A narrative review of clinical studies was undertaken. The review was not designed as a formal systematic review; no prospective protocol registration, formal database-search protocol or independent duplicate screening process was undertaken. Clinical publications relevant to RA and homoeopathic treatment were assessed qualitatively according to study design, population, intervention, comparator, outcomes, attrition, methodological limitations and adverse-event reporting. JBI-informed methodological domains were considered where sufficient information was available, without assigning unsupported numerical scores.
Conclusion: The clinical evidence reviewed indicates that individualized homoeopathic treatment may have a beneficial role in the management of rheumatoid arthritis. Across the reported clinical studies, improvements were observed in disease-related symptoms, functional status, selected measures of disease activity, laboratory parameters and quality of life. These findings suggest that homoeopathy may provide clinically meaningful benefits, particularly when treatment is individualized according to the patient’s overall clinical presentation. The consistency of positive observations across controlled, observational, pilot and case-based studies provides a basis for considering homoeopathy as a potential complementary approach in rheumatoid arthritis management. While the available literature is heterogeneous and further well-designed clinical studies are warranted, the findings support continued clinical investigation and suggest a promising therapeutic role for individualized homoeopathic treatment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
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AUGMENTED REALITY IN EDUCATION: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW
Augmented Reality (AR) is becoming an important component of digital education because it can place interactive digital information within a learner's view of the physical environment. This review examines the development and educational use of AR from multiple perspectives, including its historical progression, theoretical foundations, technological forms, and implementation across school, university, vocational, and inclusive-learning settings. The discussion distinguishes marker-based, markerless or location-aware, projection-based, and superimposition approaches and considers how each can support different instructional purposes. Evidence reported in the literature is synthesized with respect to learner engagement, motivation, spatial reasoning, knowledge retention, collaboration, and opportunities for safe practice. At the same time, the review addresses constraints such as infrastructure cost, cognitive overload, inadequate teacher preparation, uneven research quality, privacy, accessibility, and equity. Examples from STEM, language education, health-professions training, cultural heritage, and technical education demonstrate the breadth of AR applications. The paper also considers evaluation methods, economic implications, responsible adoption, and emerging developments such as AI-enabled adaptive AR and interoperable immersive environments. It concludes with practical recommendations for educators, institutions, policymakers, and researchers.
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THEORIES OF GOVERNANCE AND THEIR RELEVANCE IN CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRATIC STATES: A COMPARATIVE PUBLIC LAW PERSPECTIVE
Contemporary democratic states are governed through increasingly complex constitutional and institutional arrangements in which legislative, executive, judicial, administrative and regulatory institutions interact to exercise public power. Traditional theories of governance, particularly the separation of powers, parliamentary government, presidentialism, constitutionalism, rule of law and federalism, continue to provide the conceptual foundation for these arrangements, but their application has become more complicated because of the growth of the administrative state, delegated legislation, independent regulatory institutions, judicial review, emergency powers and multi-level governance. The research problem addressed in this paper is whether classical theories of governance remain adequate for explaining and regulating the exercise of public power in contemporary democratic states.
The purpose of the study is to comparatively examine how different constitutional systems distribute, limit and review governmental power. The methodology adopted is primarily doctrinal and comparative, involving analysis of constitutional provisions, judicial decisions and relevant comparative constitutional scholarship. The study compares India with the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and South Africa.
The study finds that no single theory provides a complete model of contemporary democratic governance. Parliamentary sovereignty, presidential separation of powers, constitutional supremacy and cooperative government represent different institutional responses to the same fundamental problem: preventing arbitrary power while maintaining effective government. The paper concludes that contemporary democratic governance requires a combination of constitutional limitations, institutional accountability, judicial review, democratic participation and responsible administration rather than rigid adherence to any single classical theory.
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AI, IOT, CLOUD COMPUTING AND DIGITAL TWIN INTEGRATION FOR SMART EDUCATIONAL CAMPUSES: A REVIEW
Smart educational campuses are increasingly being developed as connected environments in which physical facilities, people, services, and operational resources generate data for coordinated management. This review examines the complementary roles of Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and Digital Twin (DT) technology in such environments. The review is derived from the literature base of the completed M.Tech thesis and is strengthened with recent peer-reviewed work on smart-campus integration and campus Digital Twin implementation. The literature indicates that IoT provides continuous sensing, cloud platforms support shared storage and processing, AI converts observations into predictions and analytical indicators, and Digital Twins maintain a contextual digital representation of campus assets. Recent research also demonstrates practical campus implementations involving energy, occupancy, room usage, facility management, and sensor integration. However, the literature continues to identify interoperability, data governance, privacy, cybersecurity, scalability, synchronization, and deployment cost as important challenges. A recurring limitation is that many studies emphasize a single technology or a narrow application rather than an integrated educational-campus workflow. The review therefore organizes the field around five themes: smart-campus evolution, enabling technologies, integrated architectures, application domains, and implementation challenges. The review concludes by identifying a research need for simulation-supported, modular frameworks that connect sensing, centralized data handling, predictive analytics, and continuously updated digital representations while keeping live-data validation as a necessary next step.
20
CUSTOMER RESPONSIVENESS AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF SELECTED SMALL AND MEDIUM-SCALE ENTERPRISES IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA
Customer responsiveness has become an important consideration in achieving customer satisfaction, particularly among small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) operating in highly competitive business environments. This study examined the effect of customer responsiveness on customer satisfaction among selected SMEs in Ondo State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study assessed the effects of prompt response to customer complaints and speed of service delivery on customer satisfaction. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design, while structured questionnaires were used to collect data from customers of selected SMEs in Ondo State. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis with the aid of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings revealed that customer responsiveness significantly influenced customer satisfaction. The regression model produced an R-value of 0.513 and an R² of 0.263, indicating that the dimensions of customer responsiveness jointly explained 26.3% of the variation in customer satisfaction. Speed of service delivery had a positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction (β = 0.440, p < 0.001), while prompt response to customer complaints also had a positive and significant effect (β = 0.246, p = 0.022). The study concludes that timely service delivery and prompt handling of customer complaints are important factors in enhancing customer satisfaction among SMEs in Ondo State. It therefore recommends that SMEs strengthen their complaint-handling mechanisms, reduce service delays and establish effective systems for responding promptly to customers' needs and concerns.
21
RELEVANCE OF KARMA YOGA OF SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA IN THE LIGHT OF INDIAN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) have historically served as the foundation for the holistic development, inner peace, universal brotherhood, and moral values of human life. This tradition is not merely confined to material progress or theoretical knowledge; rather, it is a comprehensive science designed to awaken the infinite potential hidden within humanity. Within this vast and rich philosophical heritage, the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita is regarded as an exceptionally significant, authentic, and welfare-oriented scripture. The Gita stands as the peerless pinnacle of Indian thought, guiding humanity at every crossroad of life.
The central message of the Gita is 'Karma Yoga', which is not merely a narrow path of mechanical duty-following, but a vibrant and psychological science that teaches individuals how to maintain mental equilibrium, stability, and inner strength amidst life's intense struggles, failures, and crises. In the present era when the entire world grapples with the blind race of materialism, consumerism, moral decline, uncertainty, and severe stress and depression the relevance of Karma Yoga in the light of ancient Indian knowledge traditions becomes even more pronounced.
This research paper presents an in-depth analytical study of the philosophical nature of Karma Yoga in the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, its various dimensions (such as Nishkama Karma, equanimity, and prescribed duty), and its contemporary indispensability within the broader perspective of Indian Knowledge Systems. Through this research, it is highlighted how Karma Yoga can serve as an effective guide in establishing balance within modern corporate management, stress management, ethical leadership, and personal life. Ultimately, the paper concludes that by assimilating the principles of the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita into modern educational systems and lifestyles, a healthy, peaceful, dutiful, and balanced society can be successfully built.
22
CLIMATE CHANGE-INDUCED ALTERATIONS IN AQUATIC BIODIVERSITY AND ECOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS IN FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS
Freshwater ecosystems cover less than one percent of the Earth’s surface, yet they hold a disproportionately large share of its known species. They are also among the most exposed to a changing climate. This review draws together published evidence on how rising temperature, altered hydrology, declining dissolved oxygen and shifting water chemistry are reshaping freshwater biodiversity and the interactions that hold aquatic communities together. Warming favours small-bodied, warm-tolerant and often non-native organisms, while cold-water specialists and species with narrow habitat needs are squeezed out. Changes in the timing of seasonal events are pulling apart predators from their prey and grazers from their food, and cyanobacterial blooms, oxygen loss and hydrological extremes are pushing some lakes and rivers towards abrupt, hard-to-reverse state changes. Climate change rarely acts alone; it amplifies eutrophication, flow regulation, invasion and over-exploitation. Evidence from tropical and monsoonal Asia remains thinner than that from temperate regions, which is a real limitation for a country such as India. The paper closes with management priorities: protecting thermal and hydrological refugia, restoring natural flow variability, controlling nutrient inputs, and building long-term monitoring at regional colleges and universities.
23
BEYOND SYMBOLIC STANDING: BRIDGING THE ENFORCEABILITY GAP IN RIGHTS OF NATURE JURISPRUDENCE
For decades, environmental protection laws have operated under an anthropocentric framework, treating ecosystems merely as property or natural resources subject to human ownership. The global emergence of 'Rights of Nature' (RoN) jurisprudence seeks to replace this paradigm with an ecocentric framework, granting rivers, forests, and entire ecosystems intrinsic legal personhood. However, translating judicial declarations and constitutional guarantees into functional, daily enforcement mechanisms remains a persistent challenge. This article investigates the structural legal gaps preventing RoN from becoming an operational compliance system. Through comparative analysis of landmark frameworks—including New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua, Colombia’s Atrato River rulings, and Peru’s Rio Marañón cases—this paper identifies key enforcement bottlenecks: guardianship liability, standing, and monetary damages. Finally, it proposes concrete statutory mechanisms, including public-trust guardianships and eco-centric restitution funds, to ensure nature's rights are legally enforceable rather than purely aspirational.
24
“A COMPRENSHIVE REVIVEW ON CFD SIMULATION OF A RADIAL FLOW GAS TURBINE ROTOR USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS”
As radial turbines can effectively transform fluid energy into mechanical energy, they are extensively used for power production in emergency situations, as mini-power plants, and transportable plants. They are most helpful in remote locations, conflict zones, and natural disasters where cost-effectiveness, portability, and rapid deployment are essential. In difficult situations, these turbines power vital services like communication systems, medical units, and water purifying. Radial turbines must be made smaller and less expensive to become more feasible. Turbines can be distributed more quickly in environments with limited resources. More compact form of a turbine helps to reduce costs and improves portability enabling simple distribution and transportation in remote locations. Since its high cost necessitates optimization to reduce material usage and rotor size, Titanium alloy is selected for its exceptional thermal and mechanical qualities, with a balance between performance, cost-effectiveness, and mobility Various algorithms have been developed to tackle design optimization problems, including Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Simulated Annealing (SA), Differential Evolution (DE), and more. However, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm (ACO) are chosen for this study due to their distinct advantages. GA, inspired by natural selection and genetics, excels in exploring a wide range of design possibilities and finding near-optimal solutions in large, complex search spaces. ACO, stimulated by the foraging actions of ants, is particularly efficient in refining solutions and searching for the global optimum, making it highly effective in complex, multidimensional optimization problems. The combination of these two algorithms leverages their strengths, providing a robust approach to identifying and fine-tuning optimal designs for radial flow gas turbine rotors. In order to achieve an ideal design that optimizes structural integrity and aerodynamic performance while minimizing weight and manufacturing costs, this thesis works on GA and ACO. To meet design specifications, structural and thermal stresses were performed for mechanical consideration. The correctness and dependability of this optimization strategy are confirmed by the combination of finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics, which is verified by ANSYS and CFD simulations.
Case Study
1
QUALITY OF LIFE OF WOMEN WITH POLYCYSTIC OVARY SYNDROME AFTER INDIVIDUALIZED HOMOEOPATHIC INTERVENTION ASSESSED USING THE PCOSQ: A RETROSPECTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY
Background: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder of women of reproductive age that affects not only physical health but also emotional, social and reproductive well-being. Quality of life (QoL) is therefore an important outcome in its management. The Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire (PCOSQ) is a validated, disease-specific tool for measuring it.
Objective: To assess the quality of life of women with PCOS after individualized homoeopathic intervention by comparing PCOSQ scores before and after treatment.
Methods: A retrospective observational (before and after) study was carried out among 30 women diagnosed with PCOS at the Out-Patient Department of Sarada Krishna Homoeopathic Medical College Hospital, Kulasekharam, over a period of 6 months. Individualized homoeopathic medicines were prescribed on the totality of symptoms. PCOSQ scores before and after treatment were compared using the paired t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test; age, medicine prescribed and potency were analysed descriptively.
Results: The age of the patients ranged from 12 to 39 years, and the largest group (46.7%) was aged 21–25 years. Sulphur was the most frequently prescribed medicine (23.3%), and 200C was the most commonly used potency (66.7%). The mean PCOSQ score rose from 3.14 ± 0.33 before treatment to 5.45 ± 0.39 after treatment, a mean gain of 2.31 points (95% CI 2.22 to 2.41; p < 0.001). All 30 patients (100%) showed improvement. After treatment, 13 patients (43.3%) had a good quality of life and 17 (56.7%) a relatively good quality of life.
Conclusion: Quality of life of women with PCOS improved significantly during individualized homoeopathic treatment. As there was no control group and one patient given Sac lac also improved, the results cannot be attributed with certainty to the medicines; larger controlled studies are recommended.
2
HOMOEOPATHY MANAGEMENT OF MALE INFERTILITY: A CASE SERIES
Male infertility is commonly associated with abnormalities in semen parameters, including liquefaction time, semen volume, sperm concentration and sperm motility. This case series describes changes in these parameters in three men following individualized homoeopathic treatment. Cases were assessed through detailed case-taking and serial semen analysis, with semen volume, liquefaction time, sperm concentration and motility recorded at baseline and during follow-up. Rapid progressive motility rose from 30% to 50% in Case 2; sperm concentration rose from 10 to 39 million/mL and semen volume from 1.0 to 1.3 mL in Case 3; and liquefaction time shortened from more than 1 hour to 5 minutes in Case 1, whose partner conceived during follow-up. Symptomatic improvement was documented only in Case 1. Because of the small number of cases, the absence of a control group and possible confounding, these observations are hypothesis-generating only; larger controlled studies are required to establish effectiveness.
3
CLINICAL RESPONSE OF A UNANI REGIMEN IN ALOPECIA AREATA (DĀ’ AL-THAʿLAB): A CASE REPORT
Alopecia areata (AA) is a chronic immune-mediated disorder with multifactorial pathogenesis. It is characterized by non-scarring hair loss, usually presenting as well-defined patches, with clinical severity varying according to the extent and distribution of hair loss. The condition may impose a considerable psychosocial burden and adversely affect the quality of life of affected individuals.
A 24-year-old male patient presented to the Outpatient Department of Amraze Jild wa Tazeeniyat, H.S.Z.H. Government Autonomous Unani Medical College & Hospital, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, with a localized patch of hair loss over the scalp. Based on the clinical history and examination, the patient was clinically diagnosed with alopecia areata, correlated with Dā’ al-Tha‘lab in Unani medicine.
The patient was treated for seven days with a combination of systemic and topical Unani formulations. Jawarish Amla Sada 5 g twice daily after meals and Sharbat-e-Faulad 10 mL twice daily after meals were prescribed orally, along with topical application of Roghan Zararih over the affected area. Following 7 days treatment, visible hair regrowth was observed over affected area. No adverse effects were reported during the treatment period.
The patient was treated for seven days with a combination of systemic and topical Unani formulations. Jawarish Amla Sada 5 g twice daily after meals and Sharbat-e-Faulad 10 ml twice daily after meals were prescribed orally, along with topical application of Roghan Zararih over the affected area. Following seven days of treatment, visible hair regrowth was observed over the previously affected area. No adverse effects were reported during the treatment period.
The therapeutic rationale of the regimen was based on the traditional use of the formulations as hair-strengthening, hair-tonic and locally circulation-supportive agents, together with the antioxidant potential of Amla and the possible hair-growth-supportive effects of the constituents of Roghan Zararih.
The present case describes visible hair r egrowth following a combined systemic and topical Unani regimen in a patient with localized alopecia areata. Further controlled clinical studies are required to evaluate the efficacy and safety of this therapeutic approach.
4
CIVIL LAW SYSTEMS AND ITS FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY WITH INDIA
This research examines the fundamental characteristics of the civil law legal tradition and compares them with the legal system of India. Civil law is historically associated with Roman law, systematic codification and the central role of enacted legal rules. The study uses France as the principal civil-law jurisdiction and India as a common-law-derived jurisdiction. It investigates the role of codes and legislation, judicial precedent, legal interpretation, the position of judges, constitutionalism, legal education and practical dispute resolution. The research adopts a doctrinal and comparative methodology based on constitutions, statutes, judicial decisions, official institutional materials and leading comparative-law literature. The study finds that the traditional distinction between civil law and common law remains useful for identifying differences in legal method, but the distinction is no longer absolute. Contemporary civil-law systems increasingly rely on judicial decisions to secure uniform interpretation, while India has developed a highly codified statutory framework within which binding precedent under Article 141 of the Constitution gives the judiciary a significant law-developing function. The comparison therefore demonstrates convergence alongside institutional differences. The article argues that India should not be treated as a civil-law system merely because it has numerous codes; its deeper institutional characteristics remain rooted in the common-law tradition, modified by constitutional supremacy, legislation and indigenous legal pluralism.
5
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS A LEGAL STANDARD FOR INFRASTRUCTURE-ENVIRONMENT TRADE-OFFS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDIA AND AUSTRALIA
This article examines whether sustainable development operates as an enforceable legal standard compelling State decisions on infrastructure development, or is primarily a rhetorical principle, through a comparative study of the policies prevalent in India and Australia. The countries have recently undergone major statutory amendments. This article compares India’s Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 (hereinafter referred to as the “2023 Indian Amendment Act”) and Australia’s Environment Protection Reform Act 2025 and National Environmental Protection Agency Act 2025 (hereinafter referred to as the “2025 Australian Reforms”). It judges both on the basis of enforceability, institutional embedding, procedural safeguards and practical effects drawn from official reviews and audits of environmental clearance in both countries. United Nation’s sustainable development goals (hereinafter referred to as “SDGs”) 9, 15 and 16 guide the analysis. The methodology is doctrinal and comparative and the official forest-diversion data placed before Parliament are used as context. The article finds that sustainable development operates as partially enforceable standard in both jurisdictions. It is effective when combined with a specific legal doctrine, procedural requirement or institutional mechanism. However, it gets weaker when invoked as a freestanding constraint on executive direction. In the first instance, India’s 2023 amendment appears to narrow the procedural safeguards through executive-administered exemptions, while Australia’s 2025 reforms focus more on strengthening of compliance and enforcement machinery and introduces binding standards. This article concludes that the legal, procedural and institutional anchoring of the standard, rather than its substantive formulation, is the operative variable, with SDG-16 type safeguards an important but not exclusive component.
6
RIGHT TO ERASURE, PRIVACY AND DATA PROTECTION UNDER DPDP ACT, 2023: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDIA AND OTHER JURISDICTIONS AND EMERGING LEGAL CHALLENGES
This Research Article primarily focuses on the statutory Right to Erasure which is guaranteed to an individual regarding their personal data and information given under Section 12 of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023. It also explores certain legislative restrictions and boundaries on the Right to Erasure in India in comparison to other jurisdictions like- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 2016 formulated by the European Union. While GDPR under Section 17 provides an extensive "Right to be Erasure (Right to be Forgotten)" which is aided by various legal precedents while allowing limited exceptions, on the other hand, the DPDP Act provides a highly restrictive approach which is subject to certain conditions and exceptions allowing erasure only on Withdrawal of consent by the user or Fulfilment of specified purpose or Removal of Misleading, Incorrect or Outdated Information. This Research Article is a critical doctrinal and analytical research, which highlights the emerging legal challenges and structural shortcomings in the laws including various points of contention like the multiple exemptions granted to state under Section 17 of DPDP Act, which undermines the autonomy of a person, and it also affets operational ability of Data Protection Board (DPB) which has been established under Section 18. Essentially, this article argues that although DPDP Act has been a significant step in providing Legal Recognition and Organisational Accountability for Data Protection and Digital Privacy in India, prevailing implementation gaps, executive shortcomings, and technological complexities including Artificial Research remain key in building a resilient data privacy framework.
7
EMERGENCY POWERS AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDIA AND THE UNITED STATES
Where the state can resort to emergency powers, a recurring issue of constitutional democracy is that the kind of powers it may need to meet great threats can lead to the undermining of ordinary guarantees of legality, liberty, federalism and institutional accountability. This Article is a comparative perspective on the constitutional and statutory framework of emergencies in India and United States under a doctrinal and functional approach. It explores the constitutional remedial measures in case of emergency, as provided in the Part XVIII of the Indian Constitution as well the remedial measures introduced in the Constitution of India through 44th amendment post-1975, Article 356 federal interventions and the development of judicial review. It then compares the American version which has constitutional distribution of powers and is juxtaposed with the National Emergencies Act, the Alien Enemies Act and the habeas corpus doctrine. As the comparison shows, constitutional entrenchment and statutory delegation entail different types of risks and do not result in a hierarchy of protection. The triggers and formal parliamentary consent are specified by law in India, and emergency governance in the United States often relies on the nature of the delegations of law and the ongoing supervisory authority of the Congress. In both systems, courts have seen access to judicial review and statutory limits as core protections, and due process and constitutional rights protection as central protections, albeit to varying degrees in both systems and of varying doctrinal nature. The Article proposes a series of five inter-dependent tests to assess emergency legality: a legally prescribed trigger, ongoing legislative authority, a safeguarded floor of rights, accessible courts and genuine exit. These standards offer a possible structure to evaluate reforms in India, without mechanistically grafting United States doctrine onto the Indian context.