Students pick up the perception that mathematics is abstract and therefore, the learning of mathematics would yield to them no benefit. With their attitude towards mathematics modelled and their interest for mathematics impacted by this automatic generated perception, they may never again appreciate the beauty of mathematics. In this paper, the researchers used structural equation modeling (SEM), to investigate the variables that affect students’ interest, among the variables, students’ confidence and motivation. The foregoing variables were conceptualized to have a direct effect on students’ interest in mathematics, whilst mathematics anxiety and students’ knowledge of the usefulness of mathematics were conceptualized to have indirect effects on their interest in mathematics moderated by students’ confidence and motivation. The result showed that significantly students’ confidence directly affects students’ interest in the learning of mathematics and there is a direct relationship between confidence and motivation. A student’s knowledge about the usefulness of mathematics indirectly increases the student’s interest in mathematics.

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Assignment of jobs to workers, contract to contractors undergoing a bidding process, assigning nurses to duty post, or time tabling for teachers in school and many more have become a growing concern to both management and sector leaders alike. Hungarian algorithm has been the most successful tool for solving such problems. The authors have proposed a heuristic method for solving assignment problems with less computing time in comparison with Hungarian algorithm that gives comparable results with an added advantage of easy implementation. The proposed heuristic method is used to compute some bench mark problems.

Listeriosis is an illness caused by the germ Listeria monocytogenes. Generally, humans are infected with listeriosis after eating contaminated food. Listeriosis mostly affects people with weakened immune systems, pregnant women and newborns. In this paper, a model describing the dynamics of Listeriosis is developed and analysed using ordinary differential equations. The model was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively for its local and global stability, basic reproductive number and parameter contributions to the basic reproductive number to understand the impact of each parameter on the disease spread. The Listeriosis model has been extended to include time dependent control variables such as treatment of both humans and animals, vaccination and education of humans. Pontryagin's Maximum Principle was introduced to obtain the best optimal control strategies required for curbing Listeriosis infections. Numerical simulation was performed and the results displayed graphically and discussed. Cost effectiveness analysis was conducted using the intervention averted ratio (IAR) concepts and it was revealed that the most effective intervention strategy is the treatment of infected humans and animals.