Lean thinking : removing waste and adding value in the public sector - a case study of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, UK

The idea of lean has provided enormous benefits since its emergence especially in manufacturing where it originated. Through adding value, removing waste and continuous improvement, private organisations have improved their process flow as well as quality of their services. This application has prevailed predominately in the private sector. There is a need to adopt this concept to other sectors in order to reap such benefits. In the public sector, were members of the public are demanding improved services as well as responsible government, it is highly important that processes and services are effective and efficient. Lean thinking in the public sector remains odd. However, the benefits it will bring are enormous when applied. As such, a number of questions arise; can lean really be applied to public sector? How can it be applied? What part of lean is applicable? What lessons can be benefited from others that have implemented lean? Answers to these questions require both theory and practice. Thus, this research project seeks to blend the two and use the police service as a case study of the public sector. It is in this light that this thesis aimed to assess the applicability of lean thinking in the public sector with the view of improving customer services and to draw comments on what part of lean is useful and what not. In doing so, lean tools; Value stream mapping and Muda analysis were used. An As-Is model for the current business area under review of the case study was developed and non-value adding activities were identified and eliminated. A new improved To-Be model was designed and acceptance reviewed. Based on the review acceptance of the new improved model, comments were drawn on if lean concept is applicable in the public sector

Development of a Software Package for Cattle Identification in Nigeria

Open grazing or free-range grazing is one of the methods employed by the Nigeria nomadic cattle herders to provide pasture for their cattle. This method of providing pasture for cattle comes with so many challenges among which are cow swapping, ownership disputes, rustling and cow intrusion to farmland. Some existing methods of guiding against these challenges are expensive, injurious, and unreliable to apply. The objective of this paper is to develop an enhanced and affordable software package for cow recognition and identification using a graphical user interface and information encoding method. Data analysis module with software application for the analysis of the generated code is proposed; the software application installed on a computer or smart-phone may be standalone or otherwise. Data about individual cow is digitally collected, coded and stored using necessary resources, tools, and methods. Moreover, by tagging individual cow with the generated code, and matching the code with the ones in the database using code reader, individual cow can be recognized and identified.Keywords: Open grazing; Free-range grazing; Nomadic herder; Cow identification; Pasture

India-Nigeria Collaboration: A South-South Perspectives

Nigeria and India stand as Afro-Asian regional powers those emerge with the potentials and economic boosting These make them play cardinal roles in the international political environment Over several decades these two nations have developed interesting ties concern economic political and diplomatic spheres Like many Afro-Asian nations India and Nigeria were once victims of the British colonialism lasted until 15th August 1947 and 1st October 1960 respectively This serves a lot in Afro-India capacity building India and Nigeria are seen in different trends of engagement and passive attempts to create a reliable economy and sociopolitical success That could be the point of reference to both Asian and African countries for many generations to come Nigeria remains one of India s most important countries region-wide For the last ten years or so India is deeply investing largely in Africa s energy sector Nigeria alone attracts a huge percentage of those investments This project seeks to examine the changing nature of African foreign policy towards India particularly the paradoxical diplomatic relations between India and other African nations including Nigeria and responses to the growing Afriphobia in India It will also consider the potential uncertain in the future person-to-person contacts and transparency between the two side

Taxonomy and evolutionary studies on the genus Psoralea L. (Psoraleeae, Fabaceae)

Psoraleeae is a tribe of the papilionoid legumes in Fabaceae comprising ca. 223 species in nine genera. Members of Psoraleeae are distributed worldwide, though they mainly occur in the temperate biomes. Of these, ca. 60% of the species (mostly in Otholobium and Psoralea) are endemic to southern Africa predominantly in the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR). The genus Psoralea, consisting of 75 species endemic to southern Africa, is the second most speciose legume in the GCFR after Aspalathus (280 species). This thesis, consisting of a literature review, three research chapters and synthesis, studies the taxonomy, evolutionary history and biogeography of Psoraleeae with an emphasis on Psoralea

Street Level Politics, local Governance and Local Power Structure in Northern Nigeria: A Social Network Analysis

The key elements of successful local Governance have been identified as participation, sustainability, social inclusion and enabling policy environment. A successful policy framework must therefore involve initiators, Legitimizers, planners and executors, which in practical parlance are not guaranteed by mere decentralization. This is because it does not ensure inclusiveness in decision making. This paper therefore attempt to investigate the local power structure in northern Nigeria with the view to understand how decisions are made at the street level in order to ascertain how “open”  or “close” is the prevailing local power structure in an average local Government. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology in which an in-depth face-to-face, semi-structure interview was conducted with six participants, two from each of the three geo-political zones of Northern Nigeria. The paper specifically tries to achieve four objectives which include: the identification of the local power structure of an average local Government in Northern Nigeria, determining the personal characteristics of the identified stakeholders, ascertaining their level of influence, lobbying capacity and bargaining power and developing a collaborative Governance framework that can ensure inclusiveness and greater citizen participation using the social network analysis. Keywords: Street level politics, local power structure, local Governance, Leadership, Northern Nigeri

Effective predicate identification algorithm for XML retrieval

Query structuring systems are keyword search systems recently used for effective retrieval of XML documents. Existing systems fail to put keyword query ambiguity problems into consideration during query preprocessing. Thus, the systems return irrelevant user search intentions. A search intention consists of entity nodes and predicate nodes of XML data. In this paper, an entity based query segmentation (EBQS) method which interprets a user query as a list of keywords and/or named entities to resolve ambiguity. Then, segment terms proximity scorer (STPS) that assigns relevance scores to XML fragments that contains query keywords is proposed. Fragments containing the keywords as interpreted by EBQS are assigned higher scores. Finally, an effective predicate identification algorithm (EPIA) which uses EBQS and STPS to return relevant predicates is introduced. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated through experimental performance study on some real world XML documents

Numerical prediction of laminar nanofluid flow in rectangular microchannel

Numerical simulation of laminar nanofluid flow in Three-dimensional (3D) straight rectangular microchannel heat sink is carried out. In this study the behavior and effect of using pure water and Fe3O4-H2O as working fluids in the microchannel are examined. Fe3O4-H2O with volume fraction range of 0.4% - 0.8% are used in this simulation to evaluate the cooling performance of microchannel heat sink. Fluent, a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) is used as the solver of simulation. A rectangular microchannel with hydraulic diameter of 86 µm and length of 10mm under the boundary condition of constant heat flux and uniform inlet velocity is set on this analysis. The Results of present work show that using Fe3O4-H2O as coolant resulted in to higher efficiency of heat transfer in microchannel heat sink in comparison to Pure water. However, using Fe3O4-H2O with 0.8% volume fraction provide a high heat transfer enhancement of 30% as compared to 0.4% and 0.6% volume fractions of the same Fe3O4-H2O. Numerical results show that increasing the thermal conductivity of working fluid can enhanced heat transfer. Therefore, it is equally important to note that the presence of nanoparticles could enhance the cooling of MCHS. Meanwhile, higher Nusselt number is found as fluid enters the channel inlet. This could be anticipated as a result of the development of thermal entry region at the channel and the values of Nusselt number tend to stabilize after fully develop region has been achieved

Effects of tualang honey supplementation on haematological parameters and oxidants/antioxidants level in erythrocytes of rats exposed to petrol vapours

Petrol is used as fuel for internal combustion engines. Different health risks including weight loss, haematotoxicity, and oxidative stress have been reported for gasoline. Supplementation with antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, and E has been shown to ameliorate the toxicity effects of gasoline vapours exposure. Honey is a natural product which contains vitamins and polyphenols that possess good antioxidant properties. The present study was carried out to determine the potential protective role of honey against the adverse effects of exposure to gasoline on weight gain, haematological parameters, bone marrow cytology, and oxidants/antioxidants status in erythrocytes of rat. A total of 56 male Sprague-Dawley rats (aged 6-7 weeks, 170-230g) were used in the study. Six rats were used for phase 1 and were randomized and treated as control (exposed to ambient air daily, n=3) and gasoline exposed (exposed to gasoline vapours 11.13±1.1cm3/h, 6h daily, 6 days/week, n=3) groups. Body weight was monitored weekly and blood sample for full blood count (FBC) and differential counts (DC) was collected at 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 11th week duration. At the end of this phase, the rats were sacrificed and bone marrow was extracted, smeared and stained for cytology. Fifty rats were used for phase II and randomized into five groups (10 per group) and treated for 11 weeks as follows: Normal control group (NCG) - treated with 0.5ml distilled water and exposed to ambient air daily, experimental petrol control group (EPG) - exposed to gasoline + distilled water as above, honey control group (HCG) - treated with honey 1.2g/kg body weight daily, experimental honey test group (ETG-1)- exposed to gasoline and concurrently treated with honey as above, and experimental honey test group-2 (ETG-2) - exposed to gasoline as above and treated with honey during the last two weeks of the experiment. Weight gain was monitored weekly and at the end of experimental period, blood sample for FBC + DC and oxidative markers was collected via cardiac puncture; and bone marrow was extracted for cytology. The result of phase I established that significant alterations in weight gain and haematological parameters appeared in the gasoline exposed group on the 10th week. The results of phase II showed that exposure to gasoline was associated with significant (p<0.05) impairment of weight gain and reduction in mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (MCHC) as well as higher percentage of abnormal megakaryocytes. Honey supplementation significantly improved the percentage of abnormal megakaryocytes but did not improve the weight gain and MCHC values. In addition, exposure to gasoline did not cause significant changes in oxidative markers. In conclusion, this study indicates that exposure to gasoline caused adverse effects on weight gain, blood cell indices and bone marrow megakaryocytes; and that supplementation with honey has the potential to protect against some of the adverse effects

Cypriot membership and The EU Domestic Disquiets: An ancillary obstacle for Turkey’s candidacy

As dusk fell on 30th April 2004, the people of Greek Cypriot administration or Republic of Cyprus (RoC) began beatific chortle waiting for the day ahead, the day that has been wished many years back. The island become a new member of the EU on 1st May 2004, likewise Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The Turkey Cypriot administration or Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) remained out of the engagement until today. The EU enlargement in terms of admitting RoC to the bloc adds more complexity to the already Cypriot longstanding vendetta; it therefore invites much tension on Turkey’s side. Turkey has applied for the Union’s membership long time ago. The decision of the Union on whether or not to consider the Turkey’s bidding delays. Many experts adduce that the entrance of predominant Muslim country, but regional power and strategic nation like Turkey into the organization seldom win popularity among EU-group of nations. The Cyprus is an island comprises of two communities those independently epitomize the two countries surround them. Greek Cypriots who identify themselves as Orthodox Christians and adopt Greek language as Lingua Franca on one side, and Turkish Cypriots claim Islam as their religion, and use Turkish as main language of communication within their boundaries on the other

The impact of CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 polymorphisms on anastrozole's pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in post-menopausal breast cancer patients

Breast cancer is the second most frequent cancer among all cancer types and is by far the commonest cancer in women. Anastrozole is one of the first line drugs of choice in the treatment of breast cancer and is believed to be superior to tamoxifen. However, a significant proportion of patients treated with anastrozole experienced recurrences of breast cancer or developed severe adverse drug reactions. This interpatient variability is attributed to a number of factors such as genetic variations. Anastrozole is predominantly metabolized by CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 enzymes. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 genetic polymorphisms on anastrozole’s pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in postmenopausal breast cancer women. A total of 94 postmenopausal breast cancer women were recruited for this study. Patients’ socio-demographic data and clinical variables were recorded and blood samples were collected for DNA acquisition, hormonal and anastrozole serum levels. Genotyping of CYP3A4*18A and CYP3A5*3 was performed using the conventional polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP), while that of CYP3A4*4, CYP3A4*18B and CYP3A4*22 was carried out by a novel multiplex PCR-RFLP method. Serum anastrozole concentration was determined by an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) method using a simple solid-phase extraction procedure. Our study reported that CYP3A4*18B G>A has a high frequency (0.48) among Malaysians and that CYP3A4*18A T>C and CYP3A5*3A>G occur in low (0.03) and high (0.64) frequencies respectively among Malaysians. No variant alleles of CYP3A4*4 and CYP3A4*22 were detected among all the subjects. Patients homozygous for CYP3A4*18B G>A and CYP3A5*3 A>G had lower and higher anastrozole serum levels respectively compared to those having the respective wild types or heterozygous variants. The multiplex PCR-RFLP method for the simultaneous detection of CYP3A4*4 A>G, CYP3A4*18B G>A and CYP3A4*22 C>T, was applied in genotyping of all the subjects. The newly developed UHPLC method demonstrated a good linearity over concentration ranges of 20 – 1600 ng/mL. The mean recovery for anastrozole was 88.17% with a limit of quantitation of 20 ng/ml. Variables such as patients’ age and time since commencement of anastrozole therapy were associated with higher risk of developing vasomotor symptoms and mood disturbances and/or vaginal dryness/dyspareunia respectively. No significant association was established between CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 genetic polymorphisms and anastrozole’s pharmacodynamics. The detected CYP3A4*18B G>A and CYP3A5*3 A>G alleles may serve as an important biomarkers of altered anastrozole metabolism in breast cancer patients receiving anastrozole in future