Profile of children with cerebral palsy attending outpatient physiotherapy clinics in southwest Nigeria

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a major cause of childhood disability. The objective of this study was to investigate the causes, types, severity, history of pregnancy, delivery, maternal care, demographic and clinical characteristics of children with CP and their parents as seen in outpatient physiotherapy clinics of the selected hospitals in Southwest Nigeria.A cross-sectional survey of children with CP and their parents was conducted in twelve hospitals in Southwest Nigeria. Information about the participants was obtained from hospital case records, physical examination and interviews. Data were summarized using descriptive and Chi-square tests with Alpha level put at 0. 05.Two hundred and thirteen children with CP were seen, aged 18 months to 12 years, and most of them were male (59.2%). The majority (41.0%) of the mothers were in the age range of 28 to 33 years. Jaundice (39.9%), asphyxia (26.8%) and infection (17.4%) were the leading causes of CP and spastic CP was the most common type (81.7%). Quadriplegic CP presentation was predominant (67.1%), and leading co-morbidities were mental retardation (31%) and speech impairment (26.3%). About 50% of the children severely affected by CP fell within Levels 4 and 5 of the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) of CP severity.It was concluded that cerebral palsy in Southwest Nigeria is mainly associated with jaundice, asphyxia and infections. Spastic cerebral palsy was most common and quadriplegic affectation was predominant. It is recommended that factors promoting perinatal problems should be curtailed.Keywords: cerebral palsy, jaundice, asphyxia, infections, childhood disabilitie

A SHETTLE’S METHOD MODEL FOR AUTOMATING PRECONCEPTION SEX SELECTION

The world over, and especially in Africa and Asia, couples show a preference for particular sex of children; eithermale or female. This preference may arise due to economic reasons, customs of the people, or simply for a “genderbalanced family”. Whatever the reasons, the fact still remains that couples would like to be able to choose the sex oftheir children. While there are various options to achieve sex selection, all of them are either too expensive or tooinvasive. This paper presents how Shettles’ method being the least expensive and the most reliable method ofpreconception sex selection was modeled to enable automation. The results show that it is a more consistent andreliable method for gender selection. In addition, the result also shows that the Shettles’ method lends itselffavourably to computer programming and would be very useful in the lives of couples that desire a particular genderof offspring.Keywords: Computer assisted, Preconception, Sex selection, Model, Programming

Assessing Issues in Constitutional and Institutional Principles for Managing Inter-Group Relations in Nigeria: The Federal Character Principle and Power Sharing Formula in Focus

The Nigerian state has been bedeviled with the challenge of managing its convoluted and discombobulated inter-group relationship. Governments in Nigeria have deployed certain principles to manage the nation’s heterogeneous ethnic composition. Therefore, the thrust of this paper is an appraisal of the institutional and public policy mechanisms put in place to integrate the convoluting federal system. The paper is divided into a number of sections. With an introductory overview, the paper proceeds to dwell on the contending paradigms in the extant literature on constitutional and institutional principles deployed to manage the plural and deeply divided Nigerian state. The study went on to analyse the provisions of quota system and federal character principle as enshrined in the constitution on management of inter-group relations in a Nigeria. The study further examined how this constitutional principle has helped since returning to democratic rule in 1999 how beleaguered the polity has been since then. The study also critique the problem associated with this principle and infers with the observation that federal character principles and other similar accommodative and integrative policies in our institutional designs have been directed mainly at the elite, ignoring the masses of the people simply because this approach is more hinged on Western bourgeoisie theory of social stability and elite stability, not institutional or state stability. Whereas, the masses of the people too; needs to be targeted for conflict resolution when crafting the principles of law to address the problem. This study’s ultimate conclusion and recommendation of this article therefore is that the federal character principle in our constitution needs to be rejigged to actually meet the need of the masses of the people for it to achieve communal stability which is badly required in the Nigerian state today. Keywords: Constitutional and Institutional Principles, Inter-group Relations, Federal Character Principle, Power Sharing Formul

The Institutional and Policy Environment and the Quest for Industrialization in Nigeria

The paper empirically investigates the impact of the institutional and policy environment on Nigeria’s industrialization, using annual data for the period 1981 to 2013. The institutional environment was proxied by quality of service delivery while government expenditure as a percentage of GDP and real exchange rate were used to reflect the policy environment. Foreign direct investment as percentage of GDP was employed to reflect technological transfer and diffusion. Using the technique of cointegration, a long run relationship was found between industrialization and associated variables. Government expenditure was found to be positively related to industrialization and statistically significant in the long and short run. In the short run, real exchange rate is positively related to industrialization and statistically significant, while a negative and statistically significant relationship was found in the long run. In the long and short run, technological transfer indicates a negative relationship with industrialization. Quality of service delivery was found to influence industrialization positively and significantly in the long and short run. A bilateral causality was found between industrialization and the associated variables. Based on the empirical findings, it is concluded that the institutional and policy environments are critical to industrialization in Nigeria and that pragmatic efforts should be made to initiate and implement policies that promote industrial growth, while enhancing the quality of institutions

Journalists’ Attitudes towards the Coverage of Agricultural and Rural Development News in Ogun State.

The study examined the journalists’ attitudes towards the coverage of Agricultural and Rural Development News in Ogun State. Multistage technique was used to select 40 journalists from Print and Electronic media organizations in Ogun State. Primary data were collected with structured questionnaire. Chi-square and Spearman correlation were used to analyze the data collected. Result showed that most (57.5%) of the journalists were male and 72.5% married. Their mean age was 30.6years. About 70.0% were with a minimum of a Higher National Diploma (HND) qualification. Majority (55.0%) were Christians while 45.0% were Muslims. Most (85.0%) of the journalists live in urban areas while few (15.0%) live in semi-urban areas. Result showed that 85.0% of the journalists were operating on a permanent basis while 15.0% were on part time/freelance appointments. Half (50.0%) of the journalists had 6-10 years work experience. Result further showed that 40.0% of the journalists were constrained by organizational problems,75.0% by lack of transportation to rural areas for news coverage, 92.5% by bad roads to rural areas, 55.0% by inadequate equipment and 90.0% were constrained by lack of interest in agricultural news by most of the members of the audience. Chi square analysis showed a significant association between age (c2=82.15, p<0.05), work experience (c2=80.21, p<0.05) and the perception of journalists toward the coverage of agricultural and rural development news. Result further showed an inverse relationship between the constraints experienced by the journalists and their reportage of agricultural and rural development news (r =-0.24, p=0.00). It was concluded that most of the journalists were not favorably disposed to the coverage of agricultural and rural development news owing to the identified constraints and challenges. Keywords: Journalist, Attitude, Agricultural News, Rural developmen

Stability Study of Some Selected Nigerian Crude Oil Emulsions and the Effectiveness of Locally Produced Demulsifier

Crude oil emulsion stability causes high viscosity of crude oil which leads to problems in pipeline transportation and processing. In this research, four samples of crude oil emulsions were collected from Ughelli East Wellhead and labeled A, B, C and D. These samples were characterized to determine their specific gravity, 0API gravity, structural composition, density, temperature, amount of water, amount of gas and the gross crude oil production. The 0API at 60 0F showed that all the samples had values below 30 0API which was an indication that the crude oil produced from these wells were heavy crude oil. The FTIR spectra showed bands at 3444.55 cm-1 for Sample A, 3418.23 cm-1 and 3175.94 cm-1for Sample B, 3444.61 cm-1 for Sample C and  3444.49 cm-1 for Sample D attributing to strong and broad O-H stretch, H-bonded and an indication of Asphaltenes presence; the alkanes signal, C-H stretch at 2961.14 cm-1 for Sample A, 2926.00 cm-1 for Sample B, 2924.15 cm-1 for Sample C and 2922.88 cm-1 for Sample D are indications of the presence of wax; C=O stretch at 1737.74 cm-1 only present in sample C is an indication of the presence of resins. The well test details showed that sample A and B had smaller water percentage in the gross crude oil production than Sample C and D with high water percentage. Therefore crude oil produced from these four wells represented by samples A, B, C and D contains natural emulsion stabilizers and stable. However, the stability of Samples A and B are more than that of Samples C and D. The performance of locally produced demulsifier increased with increase in residence time of contacting it with the emulsion samples at their operating temperatures, while equal dosage of patent Separol N46 demulsifier showed no performance within thesame residence time. However, treatments AWHT, BRT, CWHT and DWHT all at well head temperatures of 35.6 0C, 27 0C, 48.2 0C and 48.8 0C respectively showed that most water was expelled in 480 minutes. Key words: Stability, Selected, Crude oil, Emulsion, Demulsifiers, Treatmen

Agent-Based Faults Monitoring in Automatic Teller Machines

Automated Teller Machine (ATM) has gained widespread acceptance as a convenient medium to facilitate financialtransaction without need for human agent. However, ATM deployers are facing challenges in maximizing the uptime of theirATMs as a result of wide gap in fault detection, notification and correction of the ATMs. One way to ameliorate thissituation is through intelligent monitoring of ATM by resident software agents that monitor the device real time and reportfaulty components real time to facilitate quick response. We proposed an architecture for rule-based, intelligent agent basedmonitoring and management of ATMs. Agents are used to perform remote monitoring on the ATMs and control functionsuch software maintenance. Such agents can detect basic events or correlate existing events that are stored in a database todetect faults. A system administrator can securely modify the monitoring policies and control functions of agents. Theframework presented here includes software fault monitor, hardware fault monitor and transaction monitor. A set of utilitysupport agents: caller agent and log agent are used to alert network operator and log error and transaction information in adatabase respectively. at-1, stuck-at-0 faults in digital circuits validate the point that faulty circuits dissipates more andhence draw more power.Key words: Automated Teller Machine (ATM), Intelligent Agents, Mobile Agents, Event Monitoring

PARTICIPATION OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

People with disabilities (PLWDs) are generally believed to be incapacitated in all spheres of life endeavours. This study assessed their participation in agricultural activities as well the determinants     affecting their participation. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 268 respondents from persons who are: physically challenged (PC), with visually impairment (VI), speech impaired (SI) and lepers (L) from a list of registered members of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities list in Ogun State. Data collected through interview guide were analysed using descriptive statistics, Chi-square, Pearson's Product Moment Correlation and Binary Logistic Regression. Few (30.6%) of the respondents participated in agricultural activities. The agricultural activities mostly participated by PC were egg production (41.4%), cassava production (31.0%) and free range chicken production(27.6%). Also, persons with PVI engaged in free range chicken (44.0%), cassava (32.0%) and maize (28.0%) productions while lepers were engaged in millet (78.6%), cassava (46.4%) and free range chicken (35.7%) production. Few PC (6.9%) and PVI (16.0%) were engaged in broiler production, while 48.0% percent (PC), 32.0% (VI) and 10.7% (lepers) of the PWDs who participated in agricultural activities had access to extension agents. The binary logistic regression results showed that the determinantswhichsignificantly(p<0.01) influenced PWDs’ likelihood of participation in agricultural activities were access to agricultural training (β = 4.14), access to agricultural inputs (β=3.46), access to agricultural credit or loan (β =2.59),access to assistive technologies (β =3.28)and access to land (β=2.11). The constraints encountered by PWDs participating in agriculture were lack of funds (x̅ = 4.02), inaccessibility to land (x̅ = 3.72), inadequate infrastructure (x̅ = 3.16), inadequate assistive technology (x̅ = 3.05) and negative attitude of people towards PWDs (x̅ = 2.81) as well as negative attitude of people to PWDs (x̅ = 2.81). The study recommended that provision of lands, agricultural trainings, inclusive agricultural extension service delivery, assistive technology and change of negative mindset towards PWDs, may enhance their participation in agricultural activities.   &nbsp

Development of Fingerprint Biometric Attendance System for Non-Academic Staff in a Tertiary Institution

Institutions, companies and organisations where security and net productivity is vital, access to certain areas must be controlled and monitored through an automated system of attendance. Managing people is a difficult task for most of the organizations and maintaining the attendance record is an important factor in people management. When considering the academic institute, taking the attendance of non-academic staff on daily basis and maintaining the records is a major task. Manually taking attendance and maintaining it for a long time adds to the difficulty of this task as well as wastes a lot of time. For this reason, an efficient system is proposed in this paper to solve the problem of manual attendance. This system takes attendance electronically with the help of a fingerprint recognition system, and all the records are saved for subsequent operations. Staff biometric attendance system employs an automated system to calculate attendance of staff in an organization and do further calculations of monthly attendance summary in order to reduce human errors during calculations. In essence, the proposed system can be employed in curbing the problems of lateness, buddy punching and truancy in any institution, organization or establishment. The proposed system will also improve the productivity of any organization if properly implemented. Keywords: Institution, Attendance, Biometric, Fingerprin

Inclusive Recreational Sport for Visually Impaired and Sighted School Children Using Floormatics

Background: Globally, no sport provides a competitive setting for both the sighted and visually impaired, with either having an equal chance of winning. Floormatics is an innovative game designed to give a fair and inclusive play situation for the sighted and visually impaired with the aid of the blindfold. Objective: This study focused on utilising floormatics (play de blind) to promote inclusive recreational sports among visually impaired and sighted school children in Northern Nigeria on acceptability, inclusiveness, recreation behaviour, level of satisfaction, willingness to participate, and ability to compete in the game. Method: The cohort study design was used adopting a posttest-only experimental research method and a multistage sampling technique in selecting 180 volunteered participants comprising 90 visually impaired and 90 sighted from six schools in four states at the three geo-political zones that are part of the 19 states that comprised northern Nigeria. After 10-12 weeks of training and competition, data were collected with a modified theory of planned behaviour questionnaire (TBQ). Data were analysed using simple regression at.05 alpha levels. Result: The findings showed that 98% of the participants were delighted and willing to sustain participation [P.05], and engaged in competition with their counterparts irrespective of their visual status [P.05]. Also, there was no significant difference in the level of satisfaction [P.05] or competition involvement [P.05] among the sighted and visually impaired. Conclusion: The study has shown that floormatics as a game is capable of changing the inclusive recreational behaviour of the visually impaired with the sighted. Consequently, it was recommended that floormatics should be introduced to all-inclusive schools as an extracurricular sport, and adopt floormatics as a National Sport to promote healthy competition among the sighted and visually impaired