This paper focuses on student’s attitude towards Biology and how it influences their performance in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations in selected secondary schools in Nyakach. The study was significant as performance in Biology in KCSE examination has been poor over the years; hence need to find out the causes. The study was guided by the systems theory advocated by Gagne and Briggs. The research was conducted through descriptive survey design by quantitative and qualitative approach. The target population was seven hundred and thirty Form four students, eighteen Biology teachers, and fourteen Principals. Stratified random sampling was used to select schools, purposive sampling for selecting teachers and Principals, form four students were first stratified then selected through simple random sampling. Data was collected using questionnaires for students, teachers and interview schedule for principals. Descriptive Statistics such as frequencies, percentages, correlation analysis, regression coefficient and coefficient of determination were used to analyze data using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Programme (SPSS). The finding showed that there is positive relationship between student’s attitude towards Biology and their performance in KCSE Biology. The study recommended that Biology teachers should use teaching methodologies that will promote positive attitude towards Biology among students.

This paper focuses on factors that influence the performance in KCSE Biology in selected secondary schools in Nyakach District, Kisumu County. This study was guided by the following objectives to find out the relationship between teacher characteristics and performance in Biology, to find out the relationship between teaching/learning resources and performance in KCSE Biology, to establish the relationship between motivation and performance in KCSE Biology and to find out the relationship between students attitudes towards KCSE Biology and performance in KCSE Biology. The study was significant as performance in K.C.S.E Biology has been poor over the years, hence need to find out causes.The study was guided by the systems theory advocated by Gagne and Briggs (1979). The research was conducted through descriptive survey design by quantitative and qualitative approach. The target population was seven hundred and thirty Form four students, eighteen Biology teachers, and fourteen Principals. Stratified random sampling was used to select schools, purposive sampling for selecting teachers and Principals, form four students were first stratified then selected through simple random sampling. Data was collected using questionnaires for students, teachers and interview schedules for principals. Descriptive Statistics such as frequencies, percentages, correlation analysis, regression coefficient and coefficient of determination were used to analyze data using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Programme (SPSS). The findings were, there was positive relationship between: teacher characteristics and performance, teaching / learning resources and performance, motivation and performance, student’s attitude towards Biology and performance in KCSE Biology. The study recommended that, teachers should ensure that their students perform practicals frequently on their own; head teachers should ensure that sufficient instructional materials are availed in school, teachers should always introduce motivational variables in their teachings and Biology teachers should use teaching methodologies that will promote positive attitude towards Biology.

Dengue fever is one of the most severe insect-borne viral infections; it is potentially fatal and is currently endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, with Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific being the most seriously affected (WHO, 1997). It is a flu-like illness but may develop into the more serious dengue haemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome, which can result in death. In the Caribbean, virological evidence of dengue fever was first obtained in the 1950s, although the disease is believed to have existed there for the past 200 years (Ehrenkranz et al, 1971). The outbreak of dengue haemorrhagic fever in Cuba in 1981, which affected almost half the population, is considered to be one of the most important events in the history of dengue in the Americas (CAREC, 1997). Since this event there have been confirmed or suspected cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever almost every year in the American region. The last large epidemic in Jamaica occurred about ten years ago.

Interbasin and intrabasin gradients play an important role as a part of a regional system of Caribbean climate drivers, which include the Atlantic warm pool (AWP) and the Caribbean low-level jet (CLLJ). When the Caribbean is conditioned to be wet between May and November, near-surface geopotentials in the Caribbean are lower than in the nearby eastern tropical Pacific and east tropical Atlantic. As a result, there is vertical ascent in the Caribbean through to the middle troposphere which connects to zonal circulations with both the eastern tropical Pacific and the eastern tropical Atlantic. The Caribbean Sea is also warm, and there is a moderate easterly flow regime, indicating a weakening of the trade winds. Deviations from this state caused by changes in one or both sides of the Pacific-Caribbean and Caribbean-Atlantic circulations (and diagnosed by changes in their geopotential gradients) reasonably track the transition of the Caribbean from wet to dry and vice versa on intraseasonal and interannual time scales. The study also uses changes to the gradients to offer insight into why the Caribbean region is projected to be drier during its traditional rainy season in the face of warmer surface temperatures under global warming. The Caribbean seemingly enters into a "July" mode, which persists for the duration of the boreal summer. The mode is characterized by higher (lower) geopotentials in the Caribbean (Pacific and Atlantic), a stronger CLLJ, and anomalous descent in the Caribbean in spite of the warmer surface temperatures.

A design of a calorimeter based on the principle of an integrating sphere for the determination of thermal absorptance, a, and emittance, epsilon, of opaque bulk materials is presented. A transient technique based on the sample heating and cooling histories is employed in this work. Arrays of four thermocouples used as temperature sensors on the sample within the integrating sphere are interfaced to a thermal card on a Fluke-2286/5 data logger. Two of the thermocouples measure the average ambient temperature inside the sphere, whereas the other two thermocouples are used to obtain an average value of the temperature of the sample. The use of an 'integrating sphere calorimeter' configuration results in much simpler heat balance equations within the enclosure as opposed to other methods which take into consideration convective and radiative heat coefficients (Kola et al 1995 Meas. Sci. Technol. 6 888-92, Otieno et al 1997 Meas. Sci. Technol. 8 239-44). When solved analytically, the equations return thermophysical values which are in good agreement with values obtained using other methods and calorimeter configurations. The experimental results obtained from our 'integrating sphere' calorimeter show that the absorptance for aluminium is alpha = 0.100 and its emittance is epsilon = 0.176. For copper alpha = 0.325, epsilon = 0.240. These values compare well with other known experimental values of alpha = 0.099 and epsilon = 0.174 for aluminium and alpha = 0.349 and epsilon = 0.246 for copper respectively (Kola et al 1995 Meas. Sci. Technol. 6 888-92, Otieno et al 1997 Meas. Sci. Technol. 8 239-44). Our values are much closer to values obtained using standard techniques (Jaworske 1994 Thin Solud Films 253 233-7, http://www.sheldahl.com).