SIMULATED ANNEALING FOR SOLVING THE TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEM

In this paper we considered the use of Simulated Annealing for solving the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) which is NP-Complete. The algorithm searches solutions for the global minimum by perturbing existing solutions and replace if the new solution is better than the existing solution. The annealing process is controlled by some algorithmic parameters and thus the solution relies on the parameters set. Different parameters were used to know the best set of parameters. Generally the algorithm was tested and proved to be a good solver of TSP

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

HIERARCHICAL CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TILAPIA CABREA

This article proposes an effective data visualization of multidimensional data. These displays are useful to represent the existence or absence of relationships among objects corresponding to hierarchical classifications, bifurcation or evolutionary structure. The display in this article used some morphological features of Tilapia Cabrea, as represented in the dendrogram or cluster tree which illustrates the successive fusions of objects into groups or divisions made at each successive stage of the analysis. Effectively, this clustering reduces the dimensionality and makes interpretations easier.Â

A purified lectin with larvicidal activity from a woodland mushroom, Agaricus semotus Fr.

This study investigated the larvicidal activity on Culex quinquefasciatus of lectin purified from fresh fruiting bodies of woodland mushroom, Agaricus semotus. A. semotus lectin (ASL) was purified via ion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-cellulose A-25 and size exclusion chromatography on Sephadex G-100 matrix. Molecular weight (16.6 kDa) was estimated by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). The effects of temperature, pH, metal chelation- and larvicidal activity of ASL were also investigated. The ASL indifferently agglutinated the erythrocytes of the human ABO blood system and was stable at acidic pH and below 50 °C whereas 66% of its activity was lost at 60 °C with complete inactivation at 70 °C. ASL is a metalloprotein requiring barium ion as chelation of metals by 50 mM EDTA rendered the lectin inactive, while the addition of BaCl2, among other metal salts, restored the activity. ASL showed larvicidal activity against C. quinquefasciatus larvae after 24 h with a mortality of 5 and 95% at 5 and 25 mg/mL respectively, and LC50 of 13.80 mg/mL. This study concluded that purified A. semotus lectin showed impressive larvicidal activity, which could be exploited in its development as an insecticidal agent

Effective Service Delivery of Nigeria’s Public Primary Education: The Role of Non-State Actors

The study examines and analyses the role of Non-State Actors (NSAs) in public provision of primary education in Nigeria using descriptive and econometric techniques. The analysis demonstrates that the major source of funding of public primary education in Nigeria flows from the Federal Government to the State government and finally to the Local Government Education Authority (LGEA). The study shows that NSAs’ activities are mainly the provision of school inputs with little or no role monitoring and management of public primary schools. It was found that the presence of private school inspectors has significant positive effect on pupils’ performance. Parents occupation and household qualities especially type of building were found to have positive impact on the pupils’ performance. Based on these findings, the study recommends the need for adequate involvement of NSAs in the management of public primary schools and improved inspection of schools as ways of improving the quality of primary education in Nigeri

Student Web Self-Service Portal for a Tertiary Institution

The optimum condition for students to study is in an environment where they can access virtually all they need to know about courses, lecturers, locate places (for fresh and prospective students), validate staff identity, access past examination questions easily, identify vacant student hostels within and outside the school premises. Some of the reasons for students’ failure can be attributed to finding accommodation within or outside the school premises. Also, fresh students find it difficult to locate specific places in the university environment and some students find it very difficult to interact with staff. This paper presents a student self-service portal to address some of these challenges. Unified Modeling Language (UML) was used to model the system. The model was implemented using Microsoft C#, Microsoft ASP.net, Microsoft SQL Server, and Google Map. The proposed system was tested and the result obtained during the execution shows that the system is capable of addressing some of the challenges confronted by students.Keywords: Web Self-Service, Portal, Students, SQL, Unified Modeling Language (UML)

In vivo effects of four medicinal plants on nematodes of goat

Medicinal plants are very cheap and accessible to rural people for treating ruminant’s diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate in vivo effects of four medicinal plants (Vernonia amgydalina, Ocimum grattisimum, Nicotiana tabacum and Talinum triangulare) on nematodes of goat. The ethanolic extracts of these medicinal plants were made and the dose used for the goats include 1 and 2 g/kg for Vernonia amgydalina, 1 and 2g/kg for Ocimum grattisimum, 0.5 and 1 g/kg for Nicotiana tabacum and 0.5 and 1 g/kg for Talinum triangulare. The goats were infected with L3 stage larval of nematodes of Trichostrongyle sp, Haemonchus contortus, Bunostomum and Strongloides sp and after the build up of worm after some days, they were treated using in vivo assay through oral administration of the plants extracts. The faecal samples were collected 3, 7 and 11 days and examined quantitatively through McMaster Counting technique for the number of parasites. The results showed that only 2g/kg of Vernonia amgydalina and 1g/kg of Talinum triangulare showed decreased of 91.6% and and 69% in the mean egg per gram (epg) output of the faecal sample. But other medicinal plants did not show any decrease in epg. This indicates that Vernonia amgydalina and Talinum triangulare could be used as antihelmintic plants to treat goat diseases thus helping to improve the health status of the goat

In vitro anthelmintic activity of three medicinal plants

In vitro anthelmintic assay of three medicinal plants was conducted to investigate which plants were anthelmintic. In vitro anthelmintic activity of all the three medicinal plants were carried out using earthworm at 50, 100, 200mg/ml of plant extracts from Vernonia amygdalina, Ocimum grattisimum and Talinum triangulare. Results showed that 200mg/ml was effective concentration for all the medicinal plants. Vernonia amygdalina showed faster anthelmintic than Ocimum grattisimum and Talinum triangulare. The plants can be used /employed in pharmaceutical industry to be used as anthelmintic drugs for treating livestocks affected with helminths

BIOCHEMICAL CHANGES IN STREPTOZOTOCIN-INDUCED DIABETIC RATS AFTER TREATMENT WITH ETHANOLIC LEAF EXTRACT OF Croton Zambesicus (Müll. Arg.)

Objective: This study was designed to evaluate the effect of ethanolic leaf extract of C. zambesicus on total protein (TP), albumin (ALB), globulin (GLO), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) in streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic rats. Methods: Seventy adult male wistar rats were divided into seven groups (n=10). Group A, control rats; Group B, untreated diabetic rats; Group C, diabetic rats in which C. zambesicus therapy started 2 weeks prior to induction of diabetes; Group D, diabetic rats administered orally with C. zambesicus leafextract for 2 weeks after the initial four weeks of diabetic induction; Group E, diabetic rats administered orally with C. zambesicus leaf extract for 4 weeks after the initial four weeks of diabetic induction; Group F, normal rats administered orally with C. zambesicus leaf extract for four weeks; Group G, diabetic rats administered with glimepiride (2 mg/kg/day) for four weeks after the initial four weeks of diabetic induction. At the end of the experimental period, the animals were weighed and sacrificed. Serum was obtained for TP, ALB, LDH and G6PDH analysis using respective diagnostic kits. Results: The results showed an improvement in protein metaboloites (TP, ALB, GLO) whiles the LDH and G6PDH in the extract and glimepiride treated groups were restored near normal level when compared with normal control (group A). Conclusion: In conclusion, this study showed that C. zambesicus leaf extract exerts positive effects on serum levels of TP, ALB, GLO, LDH and G6PDH in diabetic rats. Thus, ethanolic leaf extract of Croton zambesicus can be adopted in the management of diabetes mellitus

Demographic and epidemiological characteristics of HIV opportunistic infections among older adults in Nigeria

Background: In view of the maturing HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, better understanding of its epidemiology among older adults is necessary in order to design appropriate care and treatment programmes for them.Objectives: To describe the demographic and epidemiological characteristics of HIV opportunistic infections among newly enrolled patients aged 50 years and above in Ibadan, South-West Nigeria.Methods: Analysis of data extracted from electronic records of 17, 312 subjects enrolled for HIV/AIDS care and treatment between January 2006 and December 2014 at the ART clinic, University College Hospital, Ibadan.Results: Age of the patients ranged from 18 to 90 years with a mean of 36.4 years (SD= 10.3) with older adults constituting 12.0% (2075). Among older adults, about half (52.9%) were females. Majority (59.1%) were currently married while 25.9% were widowed. Prevalence of opportunistic infections was 46.6%. The commonest opportunistic infections (OIs) were: oral candidiasis (27.6%), chronic diarrhoea (23.5% and peripheral neuropathy (14.8%). Significant factors associated with opportunistic infections in older adults were: CD4 count less than 350 (OR=3.12, CI: 2.29-4.25) and hepatitis C virus co-infection (OR=2.17, CI: 1.14-4.13).Conclusion: There is need for prompt response to the peculiar challenges associated with the emerging shift in the epidemiology of HIV and associated infections in sub-Saharan Africa.Keywords: HIV/AIDS, older adults, epidemiological characteristics, opportunistic infections, Nigeri