Assessment of Metals Accumulation in Selected Dumpsites of Oyo Township, Southwestern Nigeria

Dumpsoil samples from nine refuse dumps and one control site in Oyo Township were analysed for Lead (Pb), Zinc (Zn), Cadmium (Cd), Iron (Fe) and Chromium (Cr). Samples were obtained at depths of 0-0.5m, 0.5-1m, 1-1.5m and 1.5-2.0m. The values of  concentration of  Pb, Zn, Cd, Fe and Cr in the dumpsite  soil samples in mg/l ranged from 0.01-3.20, 0.01-3.72, 0.01-3.37 and 0.001-3.16 respectively. The concentrated trend recorded in the analyses  is in the order of  Pb<Zn<Cd<Fe<Cr. The concentration of metals  at the dumpsoils  and control sampled site showed that there was remarkable  of increase in the  concentration of trace metals from sampled   dumpsoils compared to the sampled soil at the control site. It is observed that these  values of the observed in view of high concentration require an urgent attention. It is recommended that the  refuse dumps should be relocated outside Oyo township and appropriate remedial measures  soils should be initiated at the dumpsites locations to map up the leachates. Keywords: Dumpsites, Soils,  Heavy Metals, Oyo Township, Remediatio

Strategic Marketing Practices and Environmental Perception of Customer Oriented Service in Nigeria Deposit Money Banks in Lagos State

This paper examines the nature and influence of the relationship between the bank’s strategic marketing practices and its service and seeks to determine the importance of strategic marketing practices in explaining the environmental perception of customers oriented service delivery. The study location was at the five selected Deposit Money Banks in Lagos State, Nigeria. A descriptive research design employing a stratified and convenience sampling techniques selected 74% of the bank staff which were contacted using questionnaires. The data collected were analyzed using the SPSS software version 19.0. Correlation analysis was conducted to establish the nature of the relationship between the bank’s strategic marketing practices and it customers oriented service delivery while regression analysis used to explain its influence on customers oriented service delivery. The finding showed that positive relationship exists between strategic marketing practices and customers oriented service delivery (r=0.749; Fcal=123.859; p<0.000). The researchers recommended that commercial banks should embrace strategic marketing by being focused to adapt to changes, marketing of assets and capabilities and marketing of innovation for the growth and survival of the industry

OPTIMAL OPERATION OF OPA DAM – RESERVOIR WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM

Dynamic programming technique was used in the simulation of Obafemi Awolowo University Campus water supply system to generate the maximum cumulative returns from sales of water to the people around for a seasonal planning period of a year. Major parameters necessary in the optimization of the reservoir system viz: reservoir size: rates of evaporation, siltation and seepage; streamflow characteristics and scheduled release of water, were considered as constraints. The cost functions expressed in Monetary Unit (MU) were derived for the sales of water. The objective function was optimized taking into consideration the probabilistic inflow of water into the reservoir. The maximum cumulative returns for the various combinations of: the state of the reservoir at the beginning of the planning period (SI); the inflow into the reservoir during the rainy season (11) and the inflow into the reservoir during the dry season (12), were computed and analyzed, with the optimal policies for the various possible combinations obtained. The maximum cumulative return from sales of water from the computer simulation result was found to be 8,868,570MU. This occurred when there was peak seasonal inflow into the reservoir and a decision to release 3,878,935 m3 of water, made during the planning period

Gender discrimination and its impact on income, productivity, and technical efficiency: evidence from Benin

This paper examines the occurrence and impact of gender discrimination in access to production resources on the income, productivity, and technical efficiency of farmers. Through an empirical investigation of farmers from Koussin-Le´le´, a semi-collective irrigated rice scheme in central Benin, we find that female rice farmers are particularly discriminated against with regard to scheme membership and access to land and equipment, resulting in significant negative impacts on their productivity and income. Although women have lower productivity, they are as technically efficient as men. The findings suggest that there is considerable scope for improving the productivity of women through increasing their access to production resources

The Influence of Residual Linamarin in Dried Cassava Peel Meal on Carcass Yield and Gut Characteristics of Weaner Rabbits

A feeding trial was conducted to assess the effects of residual linamarin on carcass yield and gut characteristics of rabbits fed diets containing sun dried cassava peel meal (CPM). The experiment was conducted using a completely randomized design involving four diets of 16% crude protein. The CPM was included at 0, 30, 35 and 40% levels. Rabbits used for the studies were fed for 42 days and were all serially slaughtered fortnightly. During each slaughter, two rabbits were randomly selected, starved overnight and slaughtered. They were skinned, eviscerated and the carcasses cut up into parts and weighed. The guts were separated into; small intestine, large intestine, caecum and appendix. Each of the visceral parts were weighed and their length recorded. The results showed that chest and back were significantly (P<0.05) affected by dietary treatments. Also the carcass yield obtained over time of slaughter indicated a significant (P<0.05) effect on the weight of the back. The time of slaughter x diet interaction effect showed no significant difference on all parameters. The results of the guts showed that, dietary influence were only obtained on the weights of the caeca (P<0.001) and appendix (P<0.05). There were significant diferences on the  weights of large intestine (P<0.05), caeca (P<0.01) and appendix (P<0.001) over the period of slaughter. There is also a highly significant (P<0.001) difference in the length of the caeca. The results of the interaction effect on time of slaughter x diet for all the visceral parts (guts) measured showed a highly significant (P<0.001) interaction effect on the weight of the caeca and that of the small intestine (P<0.05). The studies indicated that despite sun drying, linamarin, a cyanogenic glucosides still has some potential toxic effects as manifested on the carcass yield, large intestine, caeca and appendix. It is thus, suggested that prolonged feeding of CPM must be investigated to safeguard against poisoning. It might also affect caecotrophy in the caeca and the absorption of nutrients in the appendix. Keywords: Linamarin, gut characteristics, dried cassava peels, rabbit

Growth Performance of Broiler Chickens Fed Diets Containing Partially Cooked Sweet Potato Meal

A feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effect of partially cooked sweet potato meal on the performance of broiler chikens. A total of two hundred 8 day-old Anak 2000 strain broiler chicks were used. Partially cooked sweet potato meal (PCSPM) was included at 0, 20, 40, 60 and 80% levels designated as diets; I, II, III, IV and V respectively. The broiler chicks after brooding were randomly allotted to the five dietary tratments, each replicated four times with ten chicks per replicate in a completely ramdomised design. The feeding trial lasted for a period of eight weeks. Feed and water were provided at ad libitum. The results showed that daily weight gain was highly significantly (P<0.01) affected by dietary treatments. Such that any increase in the proportion of PCSPM in the starter diet negatively influenced weight gain. Feed conversion ratio was also highly significantly (P<0.01) affected, however, FCR increases with increase in the proportion of PCSPM. In the finisher phase, there is significant (P<0.0) difference in daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio. In the pooled performance, daily feed intake was significantly (P<0.05) influenced by dietary treatments. There is however no difference in feed consumption between the birds fed diet V (80% PCSPM) and those on control diet (0% PCSPM). It can be concluded that, PCSPM can be fed to broiler chickens at up to 80% level with a promising groth performance Keyword: Growth, Partially cooked, Performance, sweet potat

A principal component analysis-based feature dimensionality reduction scheme for content-based image retrieval system

In Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system, one approach of image representation is to employ combination of low-level visual features cascaded together into a flat vector. While this presents more descriptive information, it however poses serious challenges in terms of high dimensionality and high computational cost of feature extraction algorithms to deployment of CBIR on platforms (devices) with limited computational and storage resources. Hence, in this work a feature dimensionality reduction technique based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is implemented. Each image in a database is indexed using 174 dimensional feature vector comprising of 54-dimensional Colour Moments (CM54), 32-bin HSV-histogram (HIST32), 48-dimensional Gabor Wavelet (GW48) and 40-dimensional Wavelet Moments (MW40). The PCA scheme was incorporated into a CBIR system that utilized the entire feature vector space. The k-largest Eigenvalues that yielded a not more than 5% degradation in mean precision were retained for dimensionality reduction. Three image databases (DB10, DB20 and DB100) were used for testing. The result obtained showed that with 80% reduction in feature dimensions, tolerable loss of 3.45, 4.39 and 7.40% in mean precision value were achieved on DB10, DB20 and DB100

Simultaneous Quantification of Ciprofloxacin, Quinine and 3-hyrdoxyquinine in Human Plasma using a HPLC Method

Malaria has been shown to strongly predispose patients in areas of malaria endemicity to bacteremia with severe outcomes, thus justifying the use of antibiotics in combination with antimalarial therapy in patients with severe malaria. This study describes a High-Performance Liquid Chromatographic (HPLC) method for simultaneous determinations of Ciprofloxacin (CPN), Quinine (QN), and its major metabolite, 3-Hydroxyquinine (3-HQN), in human plasma. Following a simple precipitation with acetonitrile, chromatographic separation was achieved on a reversed-phase Agilent Zorbax (CN) column (5 µm, 150 X 4.6 mm i.d) using a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile: potassium dihydrogen phosphate (pH = 2.8; 0.02 M) (42:58, v/v). Retention times for CPN, 3-HQN, IS and QN were 2.7, 3.3, 3.6 and 4.9 minutes respectively. The limits of detection and validated lower limits of quantitation were 30 and 70 ng/ml for both QN and 3-HQN while the corresponding values were 50 and 100 ng/ml for CPN, respectively. The new HPLC method here developed, when compared with previous methods for the analysis of either or both drugs is simple, rapid, selective, reproducible and costeffective. It is also suitable for conducting a simultaneous therapeutic monitoring of quinine and ciprofloxacin in patients when concomittantly administered as demonstrated in five healthy volunteers

Heat Transfer Analysis in Internal Combustion Engine Piston Using Comsol Multiphysics: A Case Study of Tri-Cycle

This present study is aimed at analyzing the heat transfer rate of an internal combustion engines piston using finite element methods (FEM).The transient nature of heat flowing involving more than single variable, complicated method of measuring temperature across the length of the liner and ambiguous boundary conditions pose serious problems for the analysis of heat transfer rate on the piston of an internal combustion engine using FEM (Finite Element Method). This present study analyzed the heat transfer rate on the piston of a Tri-cycle engine. The studied piston was selected based on its applications in automobile and other engineering applications. The analysis was basically on the transient state forced-convection and conduction heat transfer. As initial condition, the temperature distributions were considered along the piston at a range of 523K – 673K. The parameter used for the simulation were liquid (Gasoline), Gases (Air) and Aluminium silicon UNSA96061 (Piston). The modeling and simulation were performed by using COMSOL-Multiphysics 4.3a software. The mesh optimization was undertaken by using FEM techniques to predict the maximum and mimimum temperature on the piston at every stages of simulation with time dependent. It was discovered that the temperature along the piston of the try-cycle varies with respect to time. The transient analysis revealed that the temperature of the piston at the TDC (Top Dead Center) in the first power stroke is higher compare to the subsequent power strokes, which is an indication that more heat is transfer at subsequent power strokes. Probable recommendations were later made.Self-sponsore