Osanyin / Ossaim the Yoruba deity of healing in Nigeria and Brazil: a comparative study

In Nigeria Osanyin and in Brazil Ossaim is the Yoruba deity of healing credited with all knowledge of herbs, leaves and roots for medicinal purposes. The myths of origin, history and religious beliefs of the Yoruba of south west Nigeria were carried by the slaves across to the Americas and the Caribbean. It is said that in Bahia, Brazil the Yoruba religion is at its truest (Herskovits and Herskovits, 1943). The religion is passed down through generations to this day albeit with minor modifications due to the influence of the Catholic religion. This factor has maintained a continuity in space and time with the original cult. To the Yoruba, health is a state in which there is a blending of physical, mental, emotional social moral and spiritual well-being. To achieve this harmony they resort to divination to find out the cause of and remedy for their illness. The traditional healers fall into four groups and of these the diviner/herbalist meet the needs of anyone who is ill by providing both diagnosis and medication. Among this group are the Olpsanyin who diagnose and provide the remedy through dialogue with the deity and the Osanyin who acquire the knowledge of herbs and the associated incantations through a system of apprenticeship. In Bahia, diagnosis is made through divination using sixteen cowries. The herbs are collected by the Babaloxa under whose watchful eyes the medications are prepared. The Yoruba celebrate the festival of Osanym annually either individually or collectively in the town, led by the head of the cult and the Oba. In Bahia, the festival of Ossaim is held at the same time as that of the other orixa. Giddens' (1979) theory of structuration is applied to elucidate how the system is reproduced; how knowledge is transmitted and why the activities associated with the cult remain in demand in the modem age

Matricide and schizophrenia in the 21st century: a review and illustrative cases

Studies have shown an association between homicidal behaviour and psychiatric disorders although it remains difficult to conclude that definite causal relationships exist between specific mental illnesses and particular forms of homicide. However, matricide has been linked to schizophrenia for several decades with an assortment of explanations to explain the connection. To review the psychosocial, contextual and clinical issues involved in the perpetration of matricide by patients with schizophrenia. Two detailed case reports are presented alongside review of relevant literature. There are complex psychodynamic, phenomenological and contextual factors in the act of matricide by persons with schizophrenia. The observation that ambivalent relationships exist between schizophrenics and their mothers (or other carers) probably suggests the need for adequate clinical intervention with families of affected patients in resolving psychological tension which might be the provoking stimulus to murder.Keywords: Schizophrenia; Matricide; Ambivalence; Psychodynamic factor

Analysis of reinforced concrete pile caps

This report describes full scale tests of reinforced concrete pile caps. The testing program consisted of two pile caps with six steel H-piles embedded six inches into each cap. The purpose was to study a. the mode of failure at ultimate load, b. bond anchorage of high strength reinforcing bars, c. the effect of pile cap plates on the end condition of embedded piles, and d. load distribution among the piles at ultimate load

Lawyers’ antics and nonverbal impoliteness in Nigerian court documents: An example of Mosojo versus Oyetayo

Unlike the inquisitorial court system, the adversarial court requires that counsels willfully resort to face-aggravating impolite non/verbal acts through the instrumentation of relevant court papers as well as the use of professional privileges at the cross-examination phase to the detriment of the opposition, thereby elevating the quest for victory above fact-finding and the dispensation of justice. The study evaluates counsels’ impolite nonverbal communicative behaviour and professional antics which are complementary to verbal impoliteness. Anchored on Watts’ (2003) theory of relational works and Culpeper’s (1996) impoliteness super-strategies, the study drew fifteen (15) purposively selected examples, with preponderance of underlying nonverbal faceaggravating behaviour by professional  courtroom participants, from archived pretrial documents and transcripts of proceedings in Mosojo versus Oyetayo (2012). Against the existence of inquisitorial and fact-finding alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms, the disputants chose the adversarial Western-like court system, with a penchant for impolite non/verbal behaviour, for the resolution of the Obasinkin chieftaincy dispute in a Nigerian community. Findings revealed that counsels’ antics and nonverbal impolite behaviour are not only embedded in some legal documents, but also manifested in the form of time-wasting, willful absence from court and embedded presupposing boobytrap arguments that were meant to frustrate the opposition and influence the course of justice. Litigants are advised to explore the ADR alternative while judges should regulate the courtroom use of language to prevent the miscarriage of justice. Keywords: Lawyers antics, court documents, Nigeria, Mosojo vs Oyetayo, face-aggravation, impoliteness, nonverbal act

Facial Image Verification and Quality Assessment System -FaceIVQA

Although several techniques have been proposed for predicting biometric system performance using quality values, many of the research works were based on no-reference assessment technique using a single quality attribute measured directly from the data. These techniques have proved to be inappropriate for facial verification scenarios and inefficient because no single quality attribute can sufficient measure the quality of a facial image. In this research work, a facial image verification and quality assessment framework (FaceIVQA) was developed. Different algorithms and methods were implemented in FaceIVQA to extract the faceness, pose, illumination, contrast and similarity quality attributes using an objective full-reference image quality assessment approach. Structured image verification experiments were conducted on the surveillance camera (SCface) database to collect individual quality scores and algorithm matching scores from FaceIVQA using three recognition algorithms namely principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and a commercial recognition SDK. FaceIVQA produced accurate and consistent facial image assessment data. The Result shows that it accurately assigns quality scores to probe image samples. The resulting quality score can be assigned to images captured for enrolment or recognition and can be used as an input to quality-driven biometric fusion systems.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v3i6.503

AN AUTOMATED ENERGY BILL METERING SYSTEM BASED ON GSM TECHNOLOGY

The measurement of the energy consumed by residential and commercial buildings by utility provider is important in billing, control, and monitoring of the usage of energy. Traditional metering techniques used for the measurement of energy are not convenient and is prone to different forms of irregularities. These irregularities include meter failure, meter tampering, inaccuracies in billing due to human error, energy theft, and loss of revenue due to corruption, etc. This research study proposed the design and construction of a microcontroller-based electric energy metering system using the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) network. This system provides a solution to the irregularities posed by the traditional metering technique by allowing the utility provider have access to remote monitoring capabilities, full control over consumer load, and remote power disconnection in the case of energy theft. Proteus simulation software was used to model the system hardware and the software was obtained by using embedded C programming and visual basic. It was observed that the system could remotely take accurate energy readings, provided full control over consumer loads and execute remote disconnection in case of energy theft. The system provides high performance and high accuracy in power monitoring and power management.   &nbsp

Best distribution and plotting positions of daily maximum flood estimation at Ona River in Ogun-Oshun river basin, Nigeria

The paper discusses how Normal, Lognormal, and log-Pearson type 3 distributions were investigated as distributions for modelling at-site annual maximum flood flows using the Hazen, Weibull, and California plotting positions at Ogun-Oshun river basin in Nigeria.  All the probability distributions when matched with Weibull plotting position gave similar values near the center of the distribution but varied considerably in the tails.  The Weibull plotting position when matched with Normal, Log-normal and Log Pearson Type III probability distributions gave the highest coefficient of determinations of 0.967, 0.987, and 0.986 respectively.  Hazen plotting position gave minimal errors with the RMSE of 6.988, 6.390, and 6.011 for Normal, Log-normal, and Log-Pearson Type III probability distributions respectively.  This implies that, predicting statistically using Hazen plotting position, the central tendency of predicted values to deviate from observed flows will be minimal for the period under consideration.  Minimum absolute differences of 2.3516 and 0.5763 at 25- and 50-year return periods were obtained under the Log-Pearson Type III distribution when matched with Weibull plotting position, while an absolute difference of 0.2338 at 100-year return period was obtained under the Log-Pearson Type III distribution when matched with California plotting position.  Comparing the probability distributions, Log-Pearson Type III distribution with the least absolute differences for all the plotting positions is the best distribution among the three for Ona River under Ogun-osun river basin study location

Comparative analysis of bright band data from TRMM and ground radar data in Malaysia

Good knowledge of the formation and recognition of the bright band is necessary to determine the location of the melting layer. This is partly because the melting layer is one of the major hydrometeors (others include as rain, hail, and cloud) responsible for signal degradations along the slant-path, in the tropical regions of the world. These may result in signal fading, amongst others, which may lead to errors in slant-path attenuation predictions. This paper involves the comparative analysis of radar data sourced from both ground 3D RAPIC bistatic radar and space-borne precipitation radar above the Malaysian air space. For this research work, the terrestrial meteorological radar data were sourced from the Meteorological Department of Malaysia, while the satellite radar data were obtained from the near-real-time TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA-RT) version 7 products. Frozen hydrometeors are observed to exhibit peculiar characteristics in terms of increased radar reflectivity as they fall from the sky, transiting from solid to liquid, and manifesting in the popular bright band signature. The melting layer is the region where melting occur, just below the 0? isotherm height. It is a major factor responsible for the problems being encountered in characterization and modelling of microwave signal propagation along the earth-space link. , Nor Hisham Khami