Organisational culture of construction companies in Lagos State, Nigeria

The study investigated the cultural features of construction companies in Lagos state and determined the organisational culture profile of the construction companies in the study area, with a view to providing information that could enhance the organisational performance of Nigeria construction firms. Primary data were sourced through the administration of 196 structured questionnaires to 98 construction companies (i.e., two questionnaires per company) represented by their construction professionals and administrative staff. The information elicited from the returned 140 questionnaires (71% return rate) included features of organisational culture and dominant characteristic element of organisational culture profile of the construction companies. Data collected for this study were analysed using percentages, factor analysis and mean score (MS). The result showed a dominant organisational cultural feature of strategic direction explaining 17.73% variance in respondent’s perception. However, communication (9.66%), adaptability (8.43%) and employee involvement (6.88%) were also relevant. The organisational culture profile showed a predominant market culture (MC) with focus on production and goal accomplishment (MS = 3.62), a hierarchy culture (HC) of a coordinator, organiser and efficiency expert (MS = 3.60) and an ad hoc culture with strategic emphasis on dynamics and readiness (MS = 3.56). The family type of culture is undermined within the companies (MS = 3.47). The study concluded that strategic direction being a MC feature corroborates a predominant MC revealed by assessing organisational culture of construction companies in Lagos state, Nigeria

Strategies for Effective Adoption of Electronic Banking In Nigeria

A major trend in modern industrial and commercial systems is the integration of electronic services into different levels ofbusiness operations. This has resulted into an explosion in the global exchange of monetary value of products and serviceselectronically. The continued upward trend in this electronic revolution is dependents on a number of factors. The aim of thisresearch is to investigate the factors which influence the adoption of e-banking in Nigeria. The research is particularly timelyand urgent considering the new cashless regime of the Nigeria Apex Bank. Key factors impacting e-banking adoptions areidentified from the literature review. The research is structured into research survey using questionnaire, online responsesfrom social websites and face-to-face interviews. The research results provide a foundation for the need for an enhancedadoption of e-banking strategy and for the practical development of e-banking products.Keywords: E-Commerce, Adoption factors, E-payment systems, E-banking, Driver

Dynamic eye misalignment retroversion system (DEMRS)

Strabismus is a medical term used to define the eye misalignment conditions that prevent both eyes from focusing on the same target simultaneously. This is a disability that prohibits the perception of depth. The purpose of going through treatment is to realign the bad (strabismic) eye, so that it fixates on the same target as the good (correct) eye. This paper presents a novel system that can dynamically adjust the light rays coming into each eye in order to stimulate both foveae, with the correct image, simultaneously. This system is to be used in diagnosis and treatment for children with strabismus under the age of eight and for patients of any age suffering from Convergence Insufficiency (CI) or Diplopia

IN-VIVO ANTI-PLASMODIAL ACTIVITY AND IN-VITRO ANTIOXIDANT PROPERTIES OF METHANOLIC LEAF EXTRACT OF AZADIRACHTA INDICA AND ITS POSITIVE EFFECT ON HEMATOLOGICAL AND LIPID PARAMETERS IN SWISS ALBINO MICE INFECTED WITH PLASMODIUM BERGHEI NK 65.

The study was conducted to determine the effect of in vivo anti-plasmodial and in vitro antioxidant properties of methanolic leaf extract of Azadirachta indica and its positive effect on hematological and lipid parameters in Swiss albino mice infected with Plasmodium berghei NK65. Swiss albino mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with Plasmodium berghei NK65. The mice were grouped into six groups, five per group. Group I were not infected with P.berghei, Group II and III served as both the negative and positive control while Group IV, V, and VI were treated with 200, 400, and 800 mg/kg body weight of methanolic leaf extract of A. indica. The secondary metabolites in the extract include tannin, flavonoids, glycosides and saponin etc. The extract does not have any toxic effect that can lead to the death of the animals. The median lethal dose LD50 was estimated to be >5000mg/Kg body weight. The extract caused 47.80%, 50.96% and 52.30% suppression in parasitaemia at 200, 400 and 800mg/kg body weight respectively while Chloroquine exerted 100% suppression at 5mg/kg body weight. The curative test shows that the different concentration of the extract exert a growth inhibition of 50.1%, 74.57% and 73.68% at 200, 400, 800mg/kg body weight respectively while Chloroquine cleared the parasites by 94.07% at 5mg/kg body weight. The Hematological parameters showed that the extract is not hematotoxic since it significantly increase (P<0.05) RBC, HGB, and HCT values while their WBC count reduced significantly when compared to the infected untreated mice. There is a significant decrease (P<0.05) in plasma TC, TG and LDL-C in the treated groups and their HDL-C significantly increase when compared to infected untreated group. This study shows that A.indica extract has hypolipidemic effect. In the in-vitro antioxidant assay, the extract significantly increase (P<0.05) the level of SOD, CAT and GSH in the liver homogenate induced with oxidative stress using H2O2 while the MDA values reduced significantly with the administration of the extract of A.indica

IN-VIVO ANTI-PLASMODIAL ACTIVITY AND IN-VITRO ANTIOXIDANT PROPERTIES OF METHANOLIC LEAF EXTRACT OF AZADIRACHTA INDICA AND ITS POSITIVE EFFECT ON HEMATOLOGICAL AND LIPID PARAMETERS IN SWISS ALBINO MICE INFECTED WITH PLASMODIUM BERGHEI NK 65.

The study was conducted to determine the effect of in vivo anti-plasmodial and in vitro antioxidant properties of methanolic leaf extract of Azadirachta indica and its positive effect on hematological and lipid parameters in Swiss albino mice infected with Plasmodium berghei NK65. Swiss albino mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with Plasmodium berghei NK65. The mice were grouped into six groups, five per group. Group I were not infected with P.berghei, Group II and III served as both the negative and positive control while Group IV, V, and VI were treated with 200, 400, and 800 mg/kg body weight of methanolic leaf extract of A. indica. The secondary metabolites in the extract include tannin, flavonoids, glycosides and saponin etc. The extract does not have any toxic effect that can lead to the death of the animals. The median lethal dose LD50 was estimated to be >5000mg/Kg body weight. The extract caused 47.80%, 50.96% and 52.30% suppression in parasitaemia at 200, 400 and 800mg/kg body weight respectively while Chloroquine exerted 100% suppression at 5mg/kg body weight. The curative test shows that the different concentration of the extract exert a growth inhibition of 50.1%, 74.57% and 73.68% at 200, 400, 800mg/kg body weight respectively while Chloroquine cleared the parasites by 94.07% at 5mg/kg body weight. The Hematological parameters showed that the extract is not hematotoxic since it significantly increase (P<0.05) RBC, HGB, and HCT values while their WBC count reduced significantly when compared to the infected untreated mice. There is a significant decrease (P<0.05) in plasma TC, TG and LDL-C in the treated groups and their HDL-C significantly increase when compared to infected untreated group. This study shows that A.indica extract has hypolipidemic effect. In the in-vitro antioxidant assay, the extract significantly increase (P<0.05) the level of SOD, CAT and GSH in the liver homogenate induced with oxidative stress using H2O2 while the MDA values reduced significantly with the administration of the extract of A.indica

Prescribing practices in the management of childhood diarrhoea in primary health care centres in a sub-urban community in Nigeria

Background: Childhood diarrhoea remains the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children under the age of five. Oral rehydration therapy and zinc tablets are the cornerstone for its management both at home and in the health facilities. Primary health care is the first level of contact of individuals and communities with the health care system and appropriate prescription is crucial for sustainable health benefits. This study assessed the prescribing pattern for childhood diarrhoea management and determined the appropriateness of treatment for acute watery diarrhoea without comorbidities in Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities in a sub-urban community in Nigeria.Methods: This descriptive study was done in 19 PHC facilities in Ikorodu Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. A retrospective review of 1271 prescriptions for diarrhoeal cases of children between 6 to 59 months was done using the records from the Outpatient Department register for a period of one year. Descriptive analysis was done.Results: From the cases reviewed, 1239 (97.5%) had acute watery diarrhoea (AWD), either alone 819 (64.4%), or with malaria/fever 347 (27.3%), cough/URTI 59 (4.6%), and other conditions 14 (1.1%). For cases of AWD alone, there were 499 (60.9%) prescriptions for ORS/Zinc, 249 (30.4%) for antibiotics and 203 (28.4%) for antimalarials. Antibiotic and antimalarial injections were also included in the prescriptions.Conclusion: This study found the prescription pattern for childhood diarrhoea to be inadequate with suboptimal prescriptions of ORS/Zinc. The prescriptions of antibiotics and antimalarials for acute watery diarrhoea was high and unnecessary.Keywords: ORS/Zinc, Childhood diarrhoea, Prescription, Primary Health Car

Improved distance metric technique for deriving soft reliability information over Rayleigh Fading Channel

This paper presents an improved Distance Metric (DM) technique for deriving soft reliability information over Rayleigh fading channel. We compared this proposed DM technique with the conventionally used DM technique in the literature. The conventional DM method derives the soft reliability information from the output received symbols while the proposed DM method derives the soft reliability information from the Channel State Information (CSI) which result due to variations in the channel gain. Performance analysis of these DM methods are verified over flat Rayleigh fading channels, and on time-varying frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels using rectangular M-QAM and OFDM systems respectively. Also, two channel estimation techniques are used to derived the CSI assuming different normalized Doppler frequency and frame length size. The performance of the conventional and proposed soft reliability derivation methods are documented through computer simulations assuming Koetter and Vardy, Reed-Solomon (KV-RS) soft decision decoding algorithm as the Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme. From the computer simulation results, the proposed DM method offers significant improvement in Codeword Error Rate (CER) performance in comparison with the conventional DM method with no significant increase in computational delay and time complexity.Keywords: CSI, cubic estimators, DM, fading channels, KV-RS decoder, LMMSE, OFDM, R-matrix, 16QA

Reproductive potential of male catfish treated with gel extract of Aloe vera plant

The reproductive potential of male catfish treated with gel extract of Aloe vera plant was studied using twelve male fish weighing 500-560g.The fish were divided into 3 groups; A, B and C with four fish in each group. Group A was treated with 2% Aloe vera gel while group B was treated with 3% and Group C the control was treated with distil water. Blood and semen samples were collected for analysis and histology of the testis was done. Spermiogram revealed that as the concentration of the gel increased, the motility and sperm count decreased. Although the decrease in sperm motility was significant (p<0.05), the decrease in the sperm count was not significant (p>0.05) across the groups. Percentage liveability of sperm cells was significantly lower (p<0.05) in treated groups than control. The control group had higher semen volume, this volume was however not significantly different (p>0.05) from other treatments. Morphological studies showed that group B (3% group) had a significantly higher value (p<0.05) of total sperm abnormalities than the other groups. The best histological integrity of the testes was observed in group C (control).This study concludes that exposure of male C. gariepinus to all treatment levels of Aloe vera gel is detrimental to the reproductive potential of the catfish and could be a cause of infertility in the catfish.Keywords: Clarias gariepinus, Aloe vera, spermiogram and histolog

Ameliorative effect of mimo2 (a novel compound from Moringa oleifera leaves) against vanadium-induced neurotoxicity

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The Effect of Alpha Tocopherol on Body Organs of Neonatal Rats Exposed to Vanadium

The objective of this work was to investigate the effects of \u3b1-Tocopherol (vitamin E) on the organs of neonatal rats exposed to Vanadium. Organ histology show that vanadium through lactation induced pathological changes including congestion and haemorrhages at the renal cortex, severe diffuse vacuolar degeneration of the hepatocytes, peribronchiolar hemorrhage, interstitial congestion and proliferation of pneumocytes. Also, the testes of the pups revealed slight reduction in germinal epithelium with the destruction of the spermatogenic cells although the interstitial connective tissue appeared relatively unaffected. The pups whose dams were treated with vanadium and \u3b1-Tocopherol displayed morphology similar to control in these organs. In this study however, no striking distinguishing difference was observed in the heart, thymus and spleen of lactating pups exposed to vanadium when compared to controls. We conclude that \u3b1-Tocopherol treatment of vanadium exposed mothers may also be beneficial at least in part in the protection of the organs of lactating offspring