Volume 8.
Issue 11.

This study investigated students-centered laboratory activities on students' academic performance in Practical Physics in Oruk Anam Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two corresponding hypotheses guided the study. A quasi-experimental research design involving pre-test and post-test non-equivalent experimental and control groups was adopted. The population of the study comprised 2,205 Senior Secondary School II (SS II) students from the 15 public secondary schools in the study area. A sample of 116 SS II students offering Physics was selected using the purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using a researcher-developed instrument titled Physics Performance Test (PPT). The instrument was validated by two experts in educational research, while its reliability was established using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 21 (KR-21), which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.72. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, whereas the hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that students taught Physics using student-centered laboratory activities performed significantly better than those taught using the discussion method. The study also found no significant difference between the mean performance scores of male and female students exposed to student-centered laboratory activities, indicating that the instructional approach was equally effective across gender. Based on these findings, it was recommended that educational stakeholders, including school administrators and education authorities, organize regular seminars, workshops, and professional development programmes to equip Physics teachers with the knowledge and skills required for the effective implementation of student-centered laboratory activities in secondary schools.

Enterprise database workloads change over time, making it difficult to maintain query performance while lowering computing costs. This study introduces an adaptive query optimization system that combines Jensen-Shannon Divergence (JSD)-based workload change detection, rule-based workload categorization, cost-aware decision-making, and safety-gated optimization. The system detects changes in workload distributions, assesses prospective optimization candidates, and determines if predicted execution-time reductions are worth the cost. Candidates undergo safety inspections and controlled evaluations before their potential advantages are evaluated for adoption. The proposed framework was evaluated using the Join Order Benchmark (JOB), which is based on IMDb relational data and was deployed in a local PostgreSQL environment. The experimental evaluation assessed workload-specific query execution performance under baseline, fixed-index, and adaptive optimization strategies, using 12 benchmark queries and 5 rounds of controlled policy assessment. A PostgreSQL 18.6 database with 1,029,842 entries was used to test the framework. The approach reduced execution times by an average of 5.97% and net costs by an average of 1.55% throughout five rounds of controlled policy assessment. However, optimization efficiency varies across workload profiles, suggesting that quicker query execution does not necessarily equate to reduced total costs. The existing configuration was maintained in the shadow-controller evaluation when the estimated benefits of transitioning were insufficient. These results highlight the significance of workload-aware judgments, configuration-cost analysis, and safety measures in adaptive database optimization. Future study will look at longer workload traces and larger database setups.

Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) extends the shelf life of perishable foods by altering the gas environment inside the package. Traditional MAP designs focus heavily on stripping oxygen to prevent lipid oxidation and suppress aerobic spoilage organisms. However, completely removing oxygen can create an anaerobic environment that favors dangerous pathogens and causes off-flavors in fresh produce. This review systematically examines the functional role of low-to-intermediate oxygen levels (typically 1–10%) across red meat, horticultural produce, seafood, and bakery products. While keeping oxygen within this range can help maintain oxymyoglobin bloom in fresh meats and keep plant tissues above their anaerobic compensation point, intermediate oxygen concentrations cannot be considered universally optimal or sufficient alone to prevent anaerobic pathogen proliferation. Rather, oxygen partial pressure operates as a context-dependent variable whose preservation efficacy is governed by the food matrix, storage temperature, substrate pH, water activity, and surrounding carbon dioxide concentrations. Tailored gas formulations integrated with rigorous cold-chain management and secondary preservation hurdles remain essential for safe packaging design.

The article establishes the theoretical and methodological foundations required for a comparative study of female psychology in nineteenth-century Russian and English drama, prior to any close analysis of individual plays. Three tasks are addressed. First, the historical-cultural development of Russian and English drama is traced, from the satirical comedy of Griboedov and Gogol and the sentimental melodrama of the early Victorian stage to the psychological realism of A.N.Ostrovsky and the New Drama associated with G.B.Shaw, showing how the interpretation of the female image shifted from a moral or comic type to an autonomous psychological subject. Second, the aesthetic, psychological and social features through which drama expresses female psychology are defined as a three-level analytical framework. Third, the principles and criteria of the comparative-typological method are established, distinguishing typological affinity from genetic influence. Together these foundations justify treating the two national traditions as a legitimate object of comparison.