Sustainable management of water bodies for small-scale fisheries resorces research and development

Abstract The rapid growth of both formal and informal high density urban settlements around major water resources has led to increased pollution of streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries, due to contaminated runoff from these developments. The paper identified major contaminants to be : organic waste (sewage), industrial effluent, pesticides and litter. Pollutant loads vary depending on the hydrology of the urban area, local topography and soil conditions. In some instances, severe pollution of neighbouring and downstream water courses has been observed. The management of catchment land uses, riparian zones, in stream habitat, as well as in stream water flow patterns and quality are necessary in order to sustain the integrity and "health" of water resources, for fisheries and other developments. As such, attempts to ensure a certain level of water quality without attention to other aspects will not automatically ensure a "healthy" ecosystem even as fish habitat. Proper management leads to better water quality and conducive environment for increased fish productio

Effect of exogenous melatonin administration on transient global cerebral ischemia and adult neurogenesis

Ph.D., Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011This study investigated the effect of exogenous melatonin administration on transient global cerebral ischemia and adult neurogenesis in adult male Sprague- Dawley rats. It also determined serum melatonin concentrations in all the experimental groups and established any effect of melatonin on estimated total granule cell numbers. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into eight groups with each group consisting of 6 rats (n = 6). Post-induction time durations of 72 hours and 7 days was used. Single dose of 5 mg/kg exogenous melatonin was administered at each phases of 30 minutes before and after a 10 minutes transient bilateral occlusion of the common carotid arteries in the different groups, followed by reperfusion. Rats were anesthetized with 20 mg/kg of ketamine and 2.5 mls of blood was collected via cardiac puncture for estimation of serum melatonin concentration using commercially prepared radioimmunoassay ELISA kit. Free floating brain sections cut at 50 μm were immunostained for Ki-67, marker for proliferating cells. The total granule cell number in the dentate gyrus was estimated using the optical fractionator method on plastic embedded brain sections. Mean melatonin concentration (pg/mol) was 268.54 ± 28.73 (72 hours) and 277.83 ± 28.73 (7 days) compared to the sham control; 266.94 ± 37.6 and non surgical 262.96 ± 23.85 respectively. Differences in the concentration were not statistically significant (P<0.05). Histological finding indicated neuropil disruption with potentiation of restoration as the post ischemia days progressed in the melatonin administered groups. The estimated total granule cell number in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus was not affected by exogenous melatonin administration. However, there was potentiation in proliferations of the neurogenic niche in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus demonstrating a very strong indications that melatonin enhanced the generations of proliferating cells in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats

Amphetamines analysis in wastewaters - method performance of solid phase extraction - higher performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry techniques (SPE-HPLC MS/MS)

Recently, many articles have reported different levels and distribution of amphetamine hitherto detected in biological fluids now appreciably found in aquatic environment at ng/L levels. Identification and measurement of amphetamine and its metabolites in surface and sewage waters using higher performance liquid chromatographic methodologies in the literatures now on current trend have provided information that are of scientific interest and effectively replaced immunological methods which only suggest the presence of these substances. Active research on both distribution and impacts of this important drug of abuse and related metabolites in the wastewaters are on-going

Effect of baits on the efficiency of Malian traps in Lake Kainji

Studies on the effects of two fishing baits on the catch composition of Malian Traps in Lake Kainji were monitored. The Traps were set at Monia fishing village in the southern basin of the Lake Baited with boiled yam (Dioscorea rotundata) and fresh palm fruit (Elaeis guineensis) and were inspected twice daily for seven weeks. The fishes caught comprised of nine (9) species belonging to four (4) families. The result of analysis of variance of the biomass as well as number and percentages of fishes caught in the traps by the baits showed there was no significant difference (P>0.05). However, both baits showed better efficiency for Tilapia zilli, Oreochromis niloticus and Hemichromis fasciatus than other species caught but trap baited with fresh palm fruit had better efficiency for Distichodus restratus and Alestes nurse. There was wide range between the minimum and the maximum size of species caught, which showed the efficiency of the traps capturing small size, juveniles and the adult of large fish species due to small mesh size (1'') net cover of the trap. Recommendations were made for better performance and profitable fishing of Malian traps

Sentiment aware fake news detection on online social networks

Messages posted to online social networks (OSNs) causes a recent stir due to the intended spread of fake news or rumor. In this work, we aim to understand and analyse the characteristics of fake news especially in relation to sentiments, to determine the automatic detection of fake news and rumors. Based on empirical observation, we propose a hypothesis that there exists a relation between a fake message/rumour and the sentiment of the texts posted online. We verify our hypothesis by comparing with the state-of-the-art baseline text-only fake news detection methods that do not consider sentiments. We performed experiments on standard Twitter fake news dataset and show good improvements in detecting fake news/rumor

DETERMINING THE INDIVIDUAL SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR IN HOUSING DELIVERY IN NIGERIA

One of the greatest challenge confronting both rural and urban residents in Nigeria is the need to provide adequate shelter. This study examined the individual significant contribution of the public and private sector in public-private partnerships (PPP) in housing contracts in Ogun State, Nigeria. A field survey was conducted in government ministries (public sector) and some selected professionals (private sector) within the study area. Information gathered from both primary and secondary data was used to determine the significant contribution of the public and private sector in housing delivery. Questionnaires were distributed through systematic sampling method to 58 respondents in both private and public sector participating in PPP housing production in the study area. Result showed that the significant contribution of the public sector in PPP housing provision in Nigeria is the provision of land while the private sector contributes significantly high percentage of finance, manpower and technical support. The study recommended that for successful implementation of PPP housing projects, all tiers of government must strive to complement the weaknesses of the public sector with the strengths of the private sector. Furthermore, since the private sector provides bulk of the finance for PPP housing projects, government should provide a more conducive economic environment to attract more private sector investors

Caveolin expression changes in the neurovascular unit after juvenile traumatic brain injury: signs of blood-brain barrier healing?

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the major causes of death and disability in pediatrics, and results in a complex cascade of events including the disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). A controlled-cortical impact on post-natal 17-day-old rats induced BBB disruption by IgG extravasation from 1 to 3 days after injury and returned to normal at day 7. In parallel, we characterized the expression of three caveolin isoforms, caveolin 1 (cav-1), caveolin 2 (cav-2) and caveolin 3 (cav-3). While cav-1 and cav-2 are expressed on endothelial cells, both cav-1 and cav-3 were found to be present on reactive astrocytes, in vivo and in vitro. Following TBI, cav-1 expression was increased in blood vessels at 1 and 7 days in the perilesional cortex. An increase of vascular cav-2 expression was observed 7 days after TBI. In contrast, astrocytic cav-3 expression decreased 3 and 7 days after TBI. Activation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) (via its phosphorylation) was detected 1 day after TBI and phospho-eNOS was detected both in association with blood vessels and with astrocytes. The molecular changes involving caveolins occurring in endothelial cells following juvenile-TBI might participate, independently of eNOS activation, to a mechanism of BBB repair while, they might subserve other undefined roles in astrocytes

The impact of competition and internal corporate governance mechanism on bank performance: the case of North American and European countries

This thesis examined the effect of antitrust law and bank concentration on European and North American bank performance and managerial slack. This study empirically investigated the interrelated issues of antitrust policy, competition, and corporate governance and showed their significant roles in maximising shareholder wealth. Our analysis also examined the impact of concentration, antitrust law, internal corporate governance, and bank-specific and macro-economic factors on European and North American banking industry performance. With attention to E.U. commercial banks (1998-2014), European savings banks (2001-2014), European cooperative banks (2005-2014), United States commercial banks, Canada commercial banks, and European/North-American listed commercial banks (Part A – Data analysis with no governance variable [1995-2018]; Part B – Data with governance variables [2006-2018]). The higher level of property and agricultural loans, loan loss allowance, loan charges off, and non-performing loans to total asset ratio contributed to United States commercial bank failures (Alali and Romero, 2012). Also, in years leading to the 2007-09 financial crisis, banks failed to comply with the minimum capital requirements for risk-weighted capital ratio, and many banks held an excessive level of capital on the balance sheet above the minimum regulatory threshold (Lindquist, 2004; Jokipii and Milne, 2008; Ayuso et al., 2004). The holding of excessive capital buffer signified managerial risk aversion, under-investment, and reduced bank competitiveness. This study investigated how antitrust policy helped increase bank competitiveness and profitability in the European Union and North America. Our study found evidence that antitrust policies increased bank profitability and minimised managerial slack. In addition, many studies showed that the management ownership structure aligned the managers' interests with that of the shareholders (Saunders et al., 1990; Gorton and Rosen, 1995; Houston and James, 1995). Our study explored new empirical evidence for the nineteen European listed and unlisted banks with different bank specialisations. Bank profitability is proxied by return-on-average-equity, return-on-equity, and equity returns, which are the dependent variables in this study. The explanatory variables considered are bank-specific, macro-economic, internal corporate governance proxies, age, bank concentration, antitrust law, and financial crisis dummy variables. We utilised different panel data estimators (such as pooled ordinary least, between estimator, population average, fixed effects, first differences, and random effects estimators) and other estimation techniques (probit/logit regression, principal-component-analysis, difference-in-difference (DID) estimation, and instrumental variable regression) to examine the causal effect of bank longevity, antitrust policy, bank concentration, internal corporate governance, bank-specific factors, macro-economic factors and dummies of year, country and specialisation on bank profitability. The difference-in-difference estimation assists in exploring the effects of concentration (HHI) interaction with antitrust policy and governance measures on bank performance. We also examined the effects of other explanatory variables and interactions on managerial slack. Our fixed effect analysis showed that liquidity ratio, cost-income ratio, net-loan-to-total-asset, non-earning-assets-to-total-asset, asset utilisation, income diversification (BAAM), inflation, and credit risk had significant beneficial effects on cooperative bank performance. However, certain interactions (mHHIxAge, lHHIxAge), bank-specific (age, total-earning-asset-to-total-asset, capital-fund-liabilities, burden-total-asset) and macro-economic factors (GDP per capita) have significant and negative effects on EU co-operative banks performance. The bank-specific, exogenous factors (anti-trust-policy), and macro-economic factors that positively influence savings banks' performance are, for ROAE, Age-HHI-interactions, antitrust-policy, and total assets. On the other hand, the following explanatory factors negatively influenced E.U. saving bank performance, GDP per capita, credit risk, market share, net-loan-to-total-asset (NLTA), and cost-income ratio. The following bank-specific and exogenous factors improved European commercial bank performance. For ROAE, we confirmed antitrust-policy, capital-funding-liabilities (CFL), burden-total-asset, asset utilisation, income diversification (BAAM). The capital strength, cost-income ratio, and financial crisis adversely influenced European commercial bank performance. The United States commercial banks shared a similar beneficial influence of antitrust policy and CFL on profitability. Our random effect analysis showed that liquidity ratio, CFL, NEATA, and asset utilisation influenced Canada's commercial bank beneficially. On the other hand, average bank concentration, capital strength, cost-income ratio, and credit risk hampered Canadian commercial bank performance. According to the managerial slack (QLTTTA) findings, our random-effects modelling of European cooperative banks showed age, average concentration, high-concentration-age interaction, CFL, overheads, total assets, market share, GDP per capita, and financial crisis reduced managerial slack significantly. On the other hand, high-HHI, liquidity ratio, cost-income, NLTA, BURDENTA, TEATA, NEATA, asset utilisation (AU), BAAM, inflation, and credit risk significantly increased cooperative bank managerial slack. Our fixed effect analysis of United States commercial banks showed that antitrust policy, ETA, inflation, government debt significantly reduced managerial slack. The effect of age and total assets on QLTTTA is similar to our European cooperative bank findings. The adverse effects of our control variables on managerial slack follow the same pattern as European cooperative banks in some respect. For listed commercial banks, our fixed effect modelling showed that the loan-loss-reserve, capital expenditure, and the interaction of low HHI with structural changes in antitrust policy significantly minimised the likelihood of negative return-on-equity. The marginal effect analysis also confirmed that the structural change in antitrust policy at low bank concentration minimised the possibility of negative ROE empirically and graphically. The DID analysis also confirmed that the interaction of high HHI with the structural change in antitrust policy and dividend-per-share significantly increased listed bank ROE. The probit/logit analysis showed that earnings-per-share, board-specific skills, and the interaction of high-HHI with the independent board members significantly reduce the likelihood of negative returns. As the non-executive total compensation increased, the marginal effects of independent board members on the probability of negative returns increased. Our thesis implied that the non-executive board members must be optimally incentivised to ensure effective oversight. This thesis contributed to previous bodies of empirical studies on bank efficiency and profitability in four ways. Firstly, we measure bank concentration proxied by the Herfindahl-Hirschman-Index method on total assets [chapter 4 and 5], return-on-invested-capital [Chapter 6 Part A], and price [Chapter 6 Part B]. Secondly, we assumed the interaction of bank concentration with antitrust policy and the interaction of concentration with corporate governance proxies had not been explored at the time of this study. The first empirical chapter examined the impact of the HHI-Antitrust law on bank performance and managerial slack. The process of interacting governance proxies with competition measures contributed to policy efforts to improve corporate governance. Finally, this study contributes to the literature by examining the impact of income diversification as part of the control variables on bank performance. This study presents conclusive findings on changes in bank performance around the antitrust policy in European and North American banks. The coefficients of the antitrust policy dummy (AT2004) for European commercial banks, United States commercial banks, and European savings banks are positive and significant, which implies that the antitrust policy significantly increased return-on-average-equity. The findings provided a contrasting view to Giroud and Mueller (2010) that empirically showed that business combination laws significantly minimised return-on-asset in North American banks. As expected, the results are not homogeneous in the European Union. For instance, the antitrust policy was not significant for Cypriot commercial banks and significantly negative for the returns on assets of Swedish savings banks. The negative effects of antitrust policy on bank performance may explain the less competitive banking industry in Cypriot and the European savings banks are generally less competitive than commercial banks. In previous studies, the impact of HHI and business-law interaction on managerial quiet life had been explored in the United States (Giroud and Mueller, 2010). Their analysis indicated overhead, input, and real incomes surge due to business law introductions. There is a significant positive relationship between the HHI-BC-Law interaction and some quiet life proxies in non-competitive industries, i.e., the ratio of overhead costs to total assets; the cost of goods sold to sales; and the ratio of real wages to the number of employees, deflated by inflation. This type of research had not been conducted in Europe, and there are no comparative studies on North American Banks and Europe. In Table 19, 22-24, our findings are similar to Giroud and Mueller's (2010) study. Structural changes since the antitrust regulatory changes only significantly increased the negative ROE or the likelihood of poor bank performance. Contrary to Giroud and Mueller's findings, there is a significant negative relationship between the antitrust policy and QLTTTA (for European savings banks, U.S. commercial banks), while previous studies found no link. Our findings indicated that the overheads and employee wages decreased due to antitrust laws for less competitive and competitive banking industries. QLPEE (Ratio of personnel expenses to no of employees, deflated by CPI) – In support of previous literature (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 1999; 2003; Giroud and Muller, 2010), our REM model findings found a positive relationship between U.S. commercial banks QLPEE and antitrust policy

Post Consolidation Effects of Banking Sector Recapitalization on Nigeria Construction Industry (Lagos and Ogun State Case Study)

Abstract: Construction project involves huge capital flow (materials, machines, manpower, management, finance) from inception to completion and handover. Bank consolidation will enhance synergy; improve efficiency through cost reduction revenue in the long- run, reduction in the industry‟s risk by eliminating weak bank and acquiring of smaller ones by the bigger and stronger bankers as well as creating opportunities for greater diversification and financial intermediation. This paper aimed at assessing post consolidation effect of the banking sector recapitalization on construction industry and the major objectives of the study are: assessing the volume of credit facilities given to building contractors by commercial banks the trend in the interest rates charged by commercial banks on credit facilities allocated to building and civil engineering contractors and to evaluate whether building and civil engineering contractors now have better access to credit facilities. This research is purposive and 120 structured questionnaire were distributed to the construction professionals, developer, financial institution houses, and registered building and civil engineering contractors in some selected firm in Lagos State and Ogun state out of which 92 questionnaire were retrieved and analyzed. The result of the hypothesis showed that the level of construction activities financed by banks has not increased during post-consolidation. The paper found out the following as effects of banking sector recapitalization on construction industry which resulted into the inability of the contractors to meet up the outrageous demands for high value collateral to commemorate loan applied for, limited payback period on the loan applied for, because the longer the payback period; the higher the interest rate and finally high interest rate charged on the loan obtained by the contractors which are geometrically increased from 3-30 percentage. The research work thereby recommend Commercial banks need to pay more attention in financing medium and small size firm and their projects as they constitute larger percentage of the Nigeria construction industry, so as to increase their financial activities and expand their assets and recoupin