Gross alpha and beta surveys of Lake Kainji water

A gross alpha and beta survey of the water of Kainji Lake was conducted using multi-channel analyzer, a proportional counter detector. This was done to estimate the gross radioactivity concentrations due to natural radionuclides in the lake water. Radioactivity, a phenomenon that leads to production of radiations, and radiation is known to trigger or induce cancer. The gross alpha and beta activity concentration analyzed in the water shows that the alpha activity ranges from 1.0 x 105 Bq/cm3 to 0.7Bq/cm3 with an average value indication of 0.0702Bq/cm3, whereas the beta activity concentration indicated BDL for all the sites with exception of upstream 01 location (9~' 51' 485' and 4~'35' 473'E) which has 0.0022Bq/cm3. This could be attributed to the continued flow of the lake water. Although radioactivity measured in lakes is usual higher than that of flowing waters, because a significant part of the radioactive substance brought in by other tributary rivers accumulates in it (Szaho et al.1998). That of Kainji Lake is entirely different

Development of an improved dug canoe for artisanal fisheries

A dug canoe similar to the one commonly used by artisanal fisherfolks 4.82M (LOA) was designed and constructed using locally available materials, as an alternative to hardwood that is becoming very scarce. The canoe have least cost, easy construction, adequate stability, light weight and easy maneuverability, as its attributes. The light displacement (weight empty) was 37kg which is light enough in relation to craft of same size commonly used by fishermen. The capacity of the canoe was 210 kg (3 persons) and total production cost of N18,400 which is not beyond the reach of an average fisherfolk. The craft is small and fall among the category of crafts that account for the greater percentage of national fish landing. The canoe also closely resembles the local fishing crafts, hence easy acceptance by local fisherfolk

Analysis of activity concentrations due to natural radionuclides in the fish of Kainji Lake

A study was conducted for natural radioactivity of some fish samples from Kainji Lake, situated between latitudes 9~' 50' - 10~' 57' North and longitudes 4~'25'-4~'45' East, New Bussa, Niger state, Nigeria, using gamma spectroscopy method with Nal(TI) detector. Radioactivity a phenomenon that leads to production of radiations, and radiation is known to trigger or induce cancer. The fish are analyzed to estimate the radioactivity (activity) concentrations due to natural radionuclides (Radium 222(226Ra), Thorium 232(232Th) and Potassium 40 (40K). The obtained result shows that the activity concentration for (226Ra), in all the fish samples collected ranges from 16.06 ~c 0.44 Bqkg-1 to 67.39 ~c 12.34 Bqkg-1 with an average value of 37.22 ~c 4.31 Bqkg-1. That of 232Th, ranges from 42.66 ~c 0.81 Bqkg-1 to 200.6 ~c 10.66 Bqkg-1 and the average value stands at 94.82 ~c 3.82 Bqkg-1. The activity concentration for 40K, ranges between 243.3 ~c 1.56 Bqkg-1 to 384.98 ~c 11.97 Bqkg-1 and the average is 618.2 ~c 26.81 Bqkg-1. This indicated that average daily intake due to natural activity from the fish is valued at 0.999 Bq/day, 2.545Bq/day and 10.31 Bq/day for 226Ra, 232Th and 40K respectively. This shows a promising result, since the activity concentration values for most of the fish are within the acceptable limits. However location Upstream02 (9~'51'.285~AN, 4~'35'.533~AE) and Upstream07 (9~'51'.285~AN, 4~'35'.533~AE) fish, became outliers with significant values of 1 13.10~kSvy-1 and 121.68~kSvy-1 effective dose. This could be attributed to variation in geological formations in the lake as well as the feeding habits of these fish. The work shows that consumers of fish from Kainji Lake have no risk of radioactivity ingestion, even though no amount of radiation is assumed to be totally safe

Using natural gas to meet latent energy demand in Nigeria and deliver economic advantage

PhD ThesisNigeria was ranked second worst country in terms of gas flaring, its domestic energy demands keep increasing in the wake of inadequate alternative cleaner (compare to oil) energy sources like natural gas. This is why Nigerian gas master plan was proposed to develop the natural gas for domestic utilization. Consequently, this research studied the economics of different gas development projects that Nigeria can develop to meet latent energy demands and achieve the objectives of the gas plan. It also assessed the relationship between domestic gas consumption and real economic growth in the country. The research used gas pipeline models that already exist in literature to analyse the investment cost, gas deliveries as well as costs and benefits of six possible gas pipeline routes options in the country. The BSRO pipelines route option was found to be more viable and estimated to have an annual gas delivery of 37.25 bcm, investment cost of $1.15 billion, NPV of$2.43 billion, IRR of 50.38%, payback period of 2.60 years for forty years of operation. However, in terms of coverage and ability to supply more gas to more locations, the all gas pipeline route option is more recommendable. The pipelines are more sensitive to discount rate, cost of gas transportation and capacity. Other gas pipeline routes options are also viable except the NRO gas pipelines, and it is recommended not to consider this option alone, even in the future, the best recommendation is to combine it with the BRO pipelines option. Costs and benefits analysis of two other gas development projects (CCGT and GTL plants) were presented using net present value, internal rate of return and payback period accounting methods, and CCGT project was found to be viable and GTL project not viable in the country. Even though GTL project was found to be unviable at the market scenarios in the country, incentives are recommended to attract investment for this important gas development project. Both projects are more sensitive to their product prices. To analyse the effect of gas development on the country’s economy, an ARDL bound cointegration test, impulse response functions, variance decompositions and granger causality econometric methods were used in two different model specifications. The first model specification added real capital formation and real exports, and found no cointegration among the specified variables. However, it was found that among these variables, gas consumption has more influence to the movements in the real GDP than the other variables. Gas consumption is found to be highly and positively responsive to its own innovation, which means direct iii investment in the sector can result to significant improvement in the gas consumption in the country. However, in the second model specification, where oil production, gas consumption and real GDP were used, cointegration was found, and positive and significant long run relationship was found between gas consumption and real economic growth, where a persistent 1% increase in domestic gas consumption in the long run causes 2.89% increase in real economic growth in the country. It was also found that the country is likely to be facing the economic problem of resource curse due to the potential adverse effect of crude oil production on real GDP, even though this is not statistically significantly justified. The research also found that gas consumption cannot predict real economic growth in Nigeria and vice versa as both variables are independent of each other at the current trend. However, if gas flaring is stopped, and more investment as well as further infrastructures are provided in the gas sector in the country, the gas sector can then start to feed in more to the economic productivity, and thereby making the economy dependent on the gas sector eventually due to continues increase in gas consumption, and then the significant link between gas consumption and economic growth can be actualised. In addition, direct investment in gas development can lead to high positive impact on the gas consumption as discovered in this research. Natural gas should be supplied to residential and commercial sectors to stimulate more domestic gas demand through gas pipelines, CCGT and GTL. The country’s economy should be diversified to tackle the likely problem of resource curse. The findings of this research further justified the Nigeria gas master plan’s objective and serves as an academic guide toward actualizing and extending the objective of the plan in the country.Petroleum Technology Development Fun

Sensitivity Between Economic Growth and Gas Consumption in Nigeria

This paper build on the existing research (Adamu, A. and Darma M. (2016)) to further analyse the dynamic relationship between gas consumption and economic growth in the Nigeria. This helps to discover if sudden increase in the gas consumption can positively affect economic growth immediately. After administering VAR model, impulse response function and variance decomposition economic techniques were used to analyse the sensitivity between economic growth and gas consumption in the country. The research found that change in economic growth in the country cannot be explained by gas consumption in the period of shock, but change in gas consumption in the period of shock can be explained largely by changes in its own self and then by changes in economic growth. However, the change in gas consumption responded negatively to shock in the change in economic growth and vice versa in the period of the shock, but in subsequent period, change in gas consumption responded positively to change in economic growth. We concluded that among other variables, change in gas consumption has more influence to the movements of the economic growth, which further discovered the unique relationship between the gas consumption and real economic growth in the country in the event of shocks. Gas consumption is highly and positively responsive to its own innovation, which means direct investment in the sector can result to significant improvement in the gas consumption. The development of domestic gas consumption cannot significantly come as a result of shocks or intervention in the other sectors, it has to be a deliberate actions and interventions to enhance the gas development. Keywords: Gas Consumption, Economic Growth, Nigeria, Shock, Sensitivit

International Clinical Trial Day and clinical trials in Ethiopia and Africa

Low income countries like Ethiopia are underrepresented in clinical research. As a major public commitment to clinical research, Ethiopia celebrated the International Clinical Trial Day (ICTD) for the first time on 20 May 2014 under the auspices of Addis Ababa University. The motto for the day was ‘Clinical Trials for Excellence in Patient Care’. The celebration offered an opportunity to inform academic staff, researchers, students and the leadership about clinical trials being conducted and to discuss the future of clinical trials in the country. Although clear challenges to the conduct of trials abound, clinical trials registered from Ethiopia in trial registration databases is increasing. Cross-country collaborations, international funding support, motivation of academic staff to conduct clinical trials and the commitment and engagement of the leadership in research are all improving. The overall impact of clinical trials is also encouraging. For example, some of the trials conducted in Ethiopia have informed treatment guidelines. However, administrative capacity, research infrastructure as well as financial support remain weak. There is a need for enhanced university-industry linkage and translation of research findings into locally relevant evidence. Ethiopia, as well as the whole of Africa, has an unparalleled opportunity to lead the way in clinical trials, given its prospect of development and the need to have locally relevant evidence for its growing population. In this commentary we reflect on the celebration of ICTD, the status and opportunities for conducting clinical trials and the way forward for facilitating clinical trials in Ethiopia and Africa

Perceived Effects Of Leadership Styles On Workers’ Performance In Package Water Producing Industry In Adamawa State, Nigeria

This empirical paper examines the impact of transformational leadership, transactional leadership, laissez faire leadership and servant leadership styles on performance among employees of Package Water producing Industry in Adamawa State, Nigeria. SPSS v.20 Correlation and regression techniques were used to test the study hypotheses. The result provided support for three hypothesized relationships for the study. Specifically, transformational leadership style, transactional leadership style and servant leadership style have positive, strong and significant relationship with performance among the study sample. However, laissez faire leadership style was not found to be significantly related to performance among the employees. Therefore, it is recommended that, package Water enterprises managers/ owners should practice transformational leadership, servant leadership styles and transactional leadership for improved performance in the industry in Adamawa State, Nigeria

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) as an Instrument of Financial Prudence and Management: Prospects and Problems

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) was recently implemented fully in the Nigerian economy by the present government in order to ensure prudence and probity in the management of financial resources. With the TSA government expects to block all loopholes and leakages of financial resources of the government and also ensure a robust financial management system. The paper therefore provides the conceptual meaning of the TSA and also gives its expected benefits to the economy of Nigeria such as enhance system of financial management and control, unification of various Accounts of government, reduction of the costs of government borrowing and ensuring of optimum utilization of government financial resources. The paper also analyses the objectives of the TSA systems and its various Accounts such as TSA main account, Subsidiary Account, ZBAs, Transit and Imprest Account among others. The paper finally discusses the prospects of the TSA system and its challenges and concludes that the system requires political will, honesty and determination so as to overcome the various challenges identified in the paper in order to achieve the expected benefits of the system Keywords: Single treasury account, probity, financial prudence and accountabilit

Comparative effects of organic manure sources and rates on performance of groundnut varieties

An experiment was conducted at the Teaching and Research farm of the Institute for Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. The aim was to study effects of different organic manure sources on performance of groundnut varieties. Treatment consisted of three organic manure source, (Poultry manure, (PM) cow dung (CD) and household waste (HW) each at two levels (1 ton and 2 tons), two varieties of groundnut SAMNUT 21 (V1) and SAMNUT 23 (V2) and a control. The treatments were factorially combined and assigned in a randomized complete block design and replicated three times. Growth data such as plant height, canopy spread and biomass weight and; yield data including, pod yield per plant, seed yield per plant, 100 seed weight were collected

Analysis of the probability of channel satisfactory state in P2P live streaming systems

In this paper a model based on user behaviour of P2P live streaming systems was developed in order to analyse one of the key QoS parameter of such systems, i.e. the probability of channel-satisfactory state, the impact of upload bandwidths and channels’ popularity on the probability of channel-satisfactory state was also analysed. Results obtained have shown that channels with high number of patronising peers achieve satisfactory state easily while channels with low number of peers hardly attain satisfactory state. This called for the need to design a framework or incentive scheme for effective functionality of P2P live streaming systems which will favour all channels regardless of their popularities.Keywords: P2P Systems, QoS Parameters, Satisfactory State, Video Streaming, Fluid Mod