Effect of Expression Conditions on the Yield of Dika Nut (Irvingia Gabonesis) Oil under Uniaxial Compression

Efficient expression of Dika nut oil from the kernel is required for its subsequent use in producing comparatively cheap lubricant. Various factors responsible for proper oil expression include particle size, moisture content, heating temperature, heating time, pressing pressure and pressing time. Sundried Dika kernel ground to two particle sizes (fine: ≤ 1.4 mm and coarse: between 1.4 and 2.8 mm) were conditioned to moisture content of 3, 6 and 9 wt%. Considered in the study, are heating temperature ranging from 50 to 150oC in steps of 25 degrees Celsius and heating time of 5 to 25 minutes in steps of 5 minutes. Pressing pressure of 5 to 25 MPa in steps of 5 MPa and pressing time of 2 minutes interval were also considered. The maximum oil yield was then correlated with the processing conditions. Test results showed that coarse particle gave higher oil yield. Maximum oil yield of 72.2% of the available oil was obtained at 6% moisture content, heating temperature of 100oC and heating time of 10 minutes. Regression analyses of the oil yield with heating temperature, heating time, and pressing gave r2 values of 0.9678, 0.999 and 0.9128. The processing conditions therefore has significantly influence the quantity of oil obtained from Dika kerne

Evaluation of tiger nut (Cyperus Esculentus) waste as feed ingredient in broiler chicken diet

The poultry industry has been making valuable contributions to lessen the problem of malnutrition, particularly in the developing countries by providing consumers around the world with a cheap but high quality source of protein. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of tiger nut (Cyperus esculentus) waste (TNW) as feed ingredient on the growth performance and carcass characteristics of broiler chicken. One hundred and twenty day-old Arbor acre strains of broiler chicken were assigned to four treatments with thirty birds per treatment, each treatment had 3 replicates of 10 birds each in a Completely Randomized Design. Dietary treatment included: basal diet + 0.0% TNW (T1), basal diet + 5% TNW (T2) basal diet + 10% TNW (T3) and basal diet + 15% TNW (T4). The study lasted for 7 weeks. Data were collected on growth performance and carcass quality using standard method. Significant means were separated using Duncan multiple range test  at p ≤0.05 level of significance. The final weight, feed intake and feed conversion ratio varied significantly (P<0.05) among treatments. Highest feed intake was obtained in T1 (3913.87g) and lowest value in T4 (3720.94g). However, highest weight was obtained in T2 (1825.33g), while the lowest value was obtained in T4 (1600.00g). No Significant (p> 0.05) difference was observed in primal cut part. Highest drumstick value of 10.36% was obtained in T2 and lowest value of 9.00% was obtained in T3. Highest breast weight of 26.73% was obtained in T2 and lowest value of 23.88% in T4. However, there was no significant differences (p>0.05) in organ weight. In conclusion TNW at 5% inclusion level in the diets of broiler chicken had no detrimental effect on performance and carcass quality. Keywords: Broiler, tigernut waste, performance characteristics, carcass characteristics

Activities Of Women In Home Gardening In Ovia North-East Local Government Area Of Edo State, Nigeria

The study investigated the activities of women in home gardening in Ovia North-East L.G.A. of Edo state. A total of 80 respondents were sampled using the snowball sampling technique. Data were analysed using frequency counts, percentages, means and chi-square analysis. Results revealed that 36.0% of the women were mainly between 41 to 50 years of age. About 74.7% were married and 64.0% had passed through tertiary institutions. The major crops cultivated were pumpkin (93.3%), bitter leaf (90.7%), pepper (88.0%) and green vegetables (84.0%). Some of the activities carried out by the women themselves in the garden include planting (X=3.37) and weeding (X=2.91). The reasons adduced for establishing home garden were ready supply of food for the household (88.0%) and income generation (66.7%). A significant association exist between the respondents’ years of farming experience and the activities carried out in the garden (χ2 = 9.10; p < 0.05). It was recommended that more women should be encouraged to establish home gardens around their house and those that already do should be reached with extension services on how to tackle problems such as pest and disease infestations.     &nbsp

Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures by Environmentally Visible Corporations: A Study of Selected Firms in Nigeria

This study basically investigates the association between corporate environmental visibility and the level of corporate social responsibility disclosures among listed firms in Nigeria. The attribute or proxy used as a measure for environmental visibility in this study is size and it is measured by the total asset of the selected firms. To achieve the objective of this study, a total of 30 selected listed firms in the Nigerian stock exchange market were used. Also, the study critically developed and utilized a disclosure index to measure the extent of corporate social responsibility disclosure made by companies in their corporate annual reports for the period 2006-2010. The simple regression analysis was used to test the research propositions in this study. The study observed that there is a significant association between the corporate environmental visibility and the level of corporate social responsibility disclosures among listed firms in Nigeria. This finding further revealed that environmentally visible firms disclose more environmental information in their annual reports in order to legitimate their operations and to avoid political costs derived from public scrutiny

Women Empowerment Perspective of Tourism Development at Idanre Hills, Ondo State, Nigeria

Tourism has established new opportunities for the female gender through generating and propagating independence and income, particularly in developing countries and rural communities. This study identifies socio-demographic characteristics, employment status and women  empowerment initiatives at Idanre Hills, Ondo State, Nigeria. The study employed the use of structured questionnaire targeted randomly at 120 women residents of Idanre community. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS version 21 and results were presented descriptively; through charts, percentage tables and inferentially; through chi square. Results indicated that majority of the women are within age group of 36-45 years (36.7%) and have secondary education (50.8%). Also, highest percentage of the women are not employed by the ministry of tourism (89.2%) while majority of the women employed are cleaners (46.67%). The women are majorly basic food sellers (38.3%) at the tourism destination and this forms their role in tourism activities there. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between employment status and socio-demographic characteristics of the women (p<0.05). Women are presently under-utilized and underempowered and should be involved more in core tourism activities at Idanre Hills. Keywords: Employment, Empowerment, Gender, Tourism, Women

A synthetic player for Ayὸ board game using alpha-beta search and learning vector quantization

Game playing especially, Ayὸ game has been an important topic of research in artificial intelligence and several machine learning approaches have been used, but the need to optimize computing resources is important to encourage the significant interest of users. This study presents a synthetic player (Ayὸ) implemented using Alpha-beta search and Learning Vector Quantization network. The program for the board game was written in Java and MATLAB. Evaluation of the synthetic player was carried out in terms of the win percentage and game length. The synthetic player had a better efficiency compared to the traditional Alpha-beta search algorithm

Performance Evaluation of a Hybrid Fractional Carrier Frequency Offset Estimator in OFDM

The major drawback of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is high sensitivity to synchronization errors caused by carrier frequency offsets (CFOs), which result in degradation in the bit error rate (BER) performance. This paper investigates the performance of a hybrid fractional carrier frequency offset estimator (FCFOE) for frequency synchronization in the OFDM system. The hybrid FCFOE exploits the pilots inserted within the OFDM symbol for channel estimation together with the information inherent in the cyclic prefix (CP), with a view to improving the estimation of the CP-based FCFOE. The performance of the developed hybrid FCFOE was evaluated in terms of the mean squared error (MSE) and bit error rate (BER) using OFDM-QPSK and OFDM-16QAM schemes it turn. The simulation results show that the hybrid FCFOE only gives slightly better performance over the CP-based FCFOE; but the performance enhancement of the hybrid FCFOE is noticeable in OFDM-16QAM. Keywords: Carrier frequency offset estimation, Hybrid, Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, Synchronization, Maximum likelihood, Cross-correlation

Haematological changes of Clarias gariepinus juveniles fed different dietary lipid

Twelve weeks feeding trial was conducted to determine the effects of different dietary lipid sources on the hematological changes in Clarias gariepinus juveniles. Six (6) iso-nitroginous diets were formulated at 45% CP and fed to triplicate groups of 15 juveniles. The feed contained (Palm Seed Oil (PSO), Ugwu Seed (USO), Soya Bean Oil (SBO), Almond Seed Oil (ASO), Mixture Of All the vegetable oil + the fish oil (MOA) and Cod Liver Oil (CLO) which is the control. The oils were added at 5% inclusion level respectively. Fish of mean weight 22.83 ~c 0.30g were fed these experimental diets in triplicate groups. The hematological analyses of fish showed that red blood cell, white blood cell, Erythrocyte sedimentation rate ( ESR), Mean cell volume (MCV), Mean cell Haemoglobin (MCH) and packed cell volume were not significantly different (p0.05). The present study showed that PSO, USO, ASO, SBO and MOA can effectively replace cod liver oil without compromising the health of African catfish, Clarias gariepinus

Organisational Support, Knowledge Sharing and Utilisation as Correlates of Social Capital of Insurance Managers in Lagos Metropolis

Managers in insurance companies in Nigeria went through a difficult period after the recapitalization which was aimed at achieving a consolidation that will produce companies capable of meeting claims obligations, compete at the continental and global levels, increase the industry’s low retention capacity which had stunted its growth among others. This study therefore examined the organisational support, knowledge sharing and utilisation as correlates of social capital of insurance managers in Lagos metropolis. This research adopted the correlation type of descriptive survey design to determine the direction and degree of the relationship or association between variables. Total enumeration technique called census coupled with a self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data on a population size of 280 managers in 23 insurance companies in Lagos metropolis, out of which 211 responded giving a response rate of 75.4 percent.The study found out that organisational support, knowledge sharing and utilisation had significant multiple effect on social capital of the respondent (R = 0.656, p < 0.05). In addition, each of the independent variables, namely, organisational support, knowledge sharing and utilisation significantly predicts the social capital of the respondents respectively.The study recommends among others that knowledge utilisation and information literacy education should be inculcated in the training of managers since they are the critical decision makers in the firm. This may improve the managers’ ability to exploit the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the their network of relationships. This may also encourage the managers to freely exchange ideas, insight, information and knowledge.. Keywords: Organisational support, knowledge sharing, knowledge utilisation, Insurance companies, Nigeria