The Gamma-Rayleigh Distribution and Applications to Survival Data

Studies on probability distribution functions and their properties are needful as they are very important in modeling random phenomena. However, research has shown that some real life data can be modeled more adequately by distributions obtained as combination of two random variables with known probability distributions. This paper introduces the Gamma-Rayleigh distribution (GRD) as a new member of the Gamma-X family of generalized distributions. The Transformed-Transformer method is used to combine the Gamma and Rayleigh distributions. Various properties of the resulting twoparameter Gamma-Rayleigh distribution, including moments, moment generating function, survival function and hazard function are derived. Results of simulation study reveals that the distribution is unimodal, skewed and normal-type for some values of the shape parameter. The distribution is also found to relate with the Gamma, Rayleigh and Generalized-Gamma distributions. The method of maximum likelihood has been used to estimate the shape and scale parameters of the distribution. To illustrate its adequacy in modelling real life data the distribution is fitted to two survival data sets. The results show that the distribution produced fits that are competitive and compared better, in some cases, to the Gamma, Rayleigh, Weibull and Lognormal distributions.Keywords: Gamma-X family, Gamma-Rayleigh distribution, Maximum Likelihood estimators, Survival data

A BINOMIAL MODEL APPROXIMATION FOR MULTIPLE TESTING

Multiple testing is associated with simultaneous testing of many hypotheses, and frequently calls for adjusting level of significance in some way that the probability of observing at least one significant result due to chance remains below the desired significance levels. This study developed a Binomial Model Approximations (BMA) method as an alternative to addressing the multiplicity problem associated with testing more than one hypothesis at a time. The proposed method has demonstrated capacity for controlling Type I Error Rate as sample size increases when compared with the existing Bonferroni and False Discovery Rate (FDR).     &nbsp

Chemical and Sensory Characteristics of Fufu Made From Mixtures of Cassava and African Breadfruit Flours

Cassava (Manihot esculenta, Crantz) tubers and  African breadfruit (Treculia africana) were processed separately into instant flours and mixed at different proportions. Five samples were developed using ratios of; 50:50, 60:40, 70:30, 80:20 and 90:10% of cassava flour to African breadfruit flour respectively. These  were made into fufu and subjected to sensory and chemical evaluation. The results of proximate analysis showed that the protein contents of all samples were statistically different from each other (p<0.05) with the highest content coming from 50:50 cassava-breadfruit fufu (3.28g/100g). Cassava-breadfruit fufu 90:10% ratio had the highest  energy value of 367.64Kcal/100g and was also significantly different from all the other samples. The highest content of all the minerals examined (iron, zinc, calcium, copper) were in 50:50% cassava-breadfruit fufu. While cassava breadfruit fufu 90:10 recorded the lowest mineral content. Sensory evaluation showed the taste of cassava breadfruit fufu 50:50 to be preferred to that of others (p<0.05) but the colour of cassava breadfruit fufu 90:10 had  the highest acceptance. The addition of breadfruit increased energy, protein and iron contents of cassava fufu. &nbsp

The Effect of Nucleotide Transfer from Some Microbes to Improve Plants for Biotechnological Advancement

The advance in plant biotechnology has some challenges with the evolutionary trend and methods adopted to resolve some of these problems: to improve the host morphological and genotypic features by nucleotide alteration leading to changes in mitochondrial molecular structure in the eukaryotic and prokaryotic plants. However, some biotechnological designs used in this research are DGGE, Phoretix 1D, and the Shannon-wiener index (H). While the microbial DNA concentration,  virulent qualities coupled with the adaptative features of both the microbes and host plant and bioactive compounds reduction effects on the transformed host plant were the findings from this research

Deregulation: the Effect of Market-led Approach to Nigerian Universities Management

This paper examines the effects of market-led approach Nigeria universities management concept deregulation from a market-led point of view to evaluate its effect on the management of university education in Nigeria. From many debates and argument put forward on the discussion of deregulation, it is very clear that deregulation policy was introduced for the purpose of enhancing productivities of public sectors or government-owned establishment. The establishment of deregulation policy has created opportunities for different individuals and groups to participate or take ownership of some public sectors in the quest for providing better services and making profits.  However, widens the gap in knowledge about whether or not taking ownership of public sector business has generated profit or not. This paper is desk research and intends to review issues unturned in the past literature on how deregulation has now suddenly become a market-led approach to the Nigerian Universities Management. The paper revealed that Nigerians are keen on getting the best quality education irrespective of how the education systems are put up to be achieved. Likewise, the government has not been able to deregulate any of the public universities they owned rather university provisions have been commercialized and extended to private individuals

Influence of fixed-oils in the dispersion of some water-insoluble antimicrobial compounds

Ampicillin trihydrate, salicylic acid and griseofulvin were subjected to interphasal partitioning between an organic and aqueous phases formed from mixtures of sterile fixed-oils and distilled water. The fixed-oils used were groundnut oil, cotton-seed oil, vegetable oil and cod-liver oil. At each of the varying concentrations of the respective antimicrobial compounds, more molecules of each compound were found to have partitioned into organic (oily) phase than the aqueous phase. Based on physico-chemical and susceptibility studies report with Staphylococcus aureus, groundnut oil and cod-liver oil ranked better than cotton-seed oil and vegetable oil oils in their dispersion ability of the drugs. The results support the use of the local fixed-oils as suitable dispersion media in pharmaceutical oil-based preparations and susceptibility testing.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (6), pp. 502-505, 200

N-Nitrosation of dimethylamine hydrochloride and its toxicology in the wistar rats fed different levels of dietary protein

The present study investigated the in vivo and in vitro effects of orally administered sodium nitrite (NaNO2) and dimethylamine hydrochloride (DMA–HCL) on liver of rats fed ad libitum with high protein diet (64%), normal protein diet (27%) and low protein diet (3.5%). Thirty Male Wistar rats were divided into three groups and kept for four weeks. Group one was given high protein diet, group two was given a normal protein diet, group three was given low protein diet, all the groups were administered with 3mg NaNO2 and 20mg DMA-HCL/kg, using the application of spectrophotometric analysis, centrifugation, histolopathology, enzymatic as well as colorimetric methods. Liver function test, showed significant elevations (P < 0.05) in the AST, ALT, ALP and GGT activities in all the groups compared with the control animals. The histopathology examination exhibited periportal necrosis. Following UV exposure after in vitro incubation of rat liver microsomal plus soluble fraction with NaNO2 plus DMA-HCL, nitrite concentration in the rats fed high protein was highest 4.033 and 0.470 μg/ml, compared to the control rats which was 0.052 and 0.00192 μg/ml before and after UV irradiation. Nitrite loss was significant (p<0.05) before and after UV exposure in all the groups, indicating that the UV-light has degraded the nitrosamine precursors, thereby inhibiting possible nitrosation. The study has revealed that in rats, a high protein diet enhances N-Nitrosation of dimethylamine hydrochloride, liver derangement and the metabolisms in vivo and in vitro of the resultant compound

On the Application of the Open Jackson Queuing Network

In real life, waiting for service is a common phenomenon. As a system gets congested, service delay is inevitable; as the service delay increases, waiting time in the queue gets longer. In a typical hospital, the network is made up of various departments (nodes). In this study we considered the inflow and outflow of an hospital network; this is depicted in the schematic diagram. For an efficient hospital planning, a good patient flow means that patient queuing time is minimized, while poor patient flow means the patient suffer considerable queuing delays. This paper presents the results of a study carried out in a University Hospital Centre; the queuing model adopted used the Open Jackson Queuing Network to minimize the waiting times in the queues. The data collection was done for a period of two weeks, with a week interval in order to observe the system for any anomaly. For each node, the number of arrivals and departures together with the service times were recorded at an interval of five minutes. The study showed that for a good hospital planning, the more the personnel (servers) are made to focus on their assignments, the lesser the time the patients will spend on the queue and this leads to more efficient patient flo