A Partitioning Algorithm for Detecting Eventuality Coincidence in Temporal Double recurrence

A logical theory of regular double or multiple recurrence of eventualities, which are regular patterns of occurrences that are repeated, in time, has been developed within the context of temporal reasoning that enabled reasoning about the problem of coincidence. i.e. if two complex eventualities, or eventuality sequences consisting respectively of component eventualities x0, x1,....,xr and y0, y1, ..,ys both recur over an interval k and all eventualities are of fixed durations, is there a subinterval of k over which the occurrence xp and yq for p between 1 and r and q between 1 and s coincide. We present the ideas behind a new algorithm for detecting the coincidence of eventualities xp and yq within a cycle of the double recurrence of x and y. The algorithm is based on the novel concept of gcd partitions that requires the partitioning of each of the incidences of both x and y into eventuality sequences each of which components have a duration that is equal to the greatest common divisor of the durations of x and y. The worst case running time of the partitioning algorithm is linear in the maximum of the duration of x and that of y, while the worst case running time of an algorithm exploring a complete cycle is quadratic in the durations of x and y. Hence the partitioning algorithm works faster than the cyclical exploration in the worst case

The Lack that Carries Lacks: The Paradox of Women Amidst the Boko Haram Insurgency

Book Haram insurgency in Adamawa, Yobe, and Borno states has affected the socio political and economic landscapes of the states. People have been displaced from their homes and now reside at different Internally Displaced People (IDP) Camps across Nigeria.  This humanitarian catastrophe has become an intractable social problem. While counting the losses from the activities of the insurgents, little has been done to assess the plight of the women who have been the victims of the insurgency challenge. Many were raped, kidnapped and forcefully married out to the sect members. Ironically, the women who have never been fully involved in the making of governmental decision of these states are the major carriers of insurgency burden. Arguing from this background the paper critically examines the plights of women amidst the Boko Haram insurgency using the secondary data sought from literatures. Hence, the paper concludes that women suffered in the hand of Boko Haram insurgents and also the various IDP camps Keywords: Insurgency; Boko Haram; Socio-political economic

Sentiment analysis applied to tourism: exploring the tourist generated content in the case of a wellness tourism destination

Sentiment analysis applied to tourist-generated content through social media is one of the many sources of information for travellers in the case of a wellness tourism destination. The objectives of exploring tourist-generated content are to analyse the sentiments expressed on social media, in this research about wellness tourism destinations, based on destination reviews, and to identify the motivations that lead tourists to look for this kind of services in the Algarve destination The analysis of the hotel reviews exposes the tourist's opinion of the wellness destination and the grading of the infrastructural facilities and the acclaimed services in the categories of the tourist wellness destination. In attaining the objectives, quantitative approach methods were used to review 1,294 comments manually extracted from TripAdvisor and apply text mining algorithms to assess the sentiment expressed in the comments. The result shows that the three key extracted words frequently used by all categories of the component in the Algarve wellness destination are “bird”, “day”, “experience”, “Faro”, “fish”, “great”, “horse”, “love”, “market”, “massage”, “nice”, “old”, “park”, “Pinetree”, “place”, “relax”, “ride”, “spa”, “time”, “town”, “visit” and “walk”, also revealed some categories of a hotel into the services of spas and massage in the tourist wellness destination mainly satisfy the desire of the tourist. Exploring generated content with sentiment analysis helped to stimulate opinion on destinations with wellness facilities, revealing how the wellness of individuals at tourism destinations are generally satisfied based on keywords that illustrated opinions, shows diverse opinion, which shows that expectations are being met from the comments in TripAdvisor. It also widens the destination management organisation's (DMO) knowledge of the sustainability of destination infrastructures due to tourist views and opinions on destinations. However, generated review content which may be changed due to implicit factors, sometimes gives a psychological time frame view of the individual reviewer.A análise de sentimentos efetuada aos conteúdos gerados pelo turista nas redes sociais é uma das muitas fontes de informação consultadas pelos viajantes, permite visualizar os testemunhos de outros turistas que já visitaram os mesmos destinos. Através de avaliações efetuadas nas plataformas de social mídia, sobre infraestruturas existentes nos destinos turísticos, como no caso de um destino de saúde e bem-estar, permite estudar os principais motivos pelos quais estas regiões suscitam um sentimento mais positivo que outros, associado à experiência turística, com ou sem valor acrescentado pelos gestores do destino. A diversidade de opiniões, que por vezes é em função das expectativas que estão a ser satisfeitas, ou não, expressas através dos comentários gerados no TripAdvisor, podem contribuir para a sustentabilidade de infraestruturas de apoio ao turismo, que inclui, entre outras, instalações culturais tangíveis e intangíveis. Face ao exposto, os objetivos da presente dissertação são: (i) analisar o sentimento expresso nos conteúdos turísticos gerados pelos viajantes nas redes sociais sobre o destino turístico de saúde e bem-estar, (ii) avaliar o sentimento do turista sobre as componentes que caracterizam este tipo de destino e (iii) identificar as motivações que levam os viajantes a optar pelo Algarve, como um destino de turismo de saúde e bem-estar, que compreende dezasseis municípios com atrações e especificidades únicas. Para analisar o sentimento expresso nos comentários, foi necessário recorrer a uma metodologia própria de mineração de texto, cujo processo envolveu a recolha de dados, pré-processamento, extração de características, aplicação do algoritmo de análise de sentimento e por fim avaliação dos resultados. As avaliações foram extraídas manualmente e categorizadas em Número da Entidade (ID), Nome (Nome), Cidade onde está localizada (Cidade), País (País), Categoria (Categoria) Número de estrelas (Estrela) e número de avaliações (Número de avaliações). No conjunto de entidades foram considerados hotéis e infraestruturas selecionados pelas suas características: classificação e serviços turísticos adicionais prestados na área. De acordo com a revisão da literatura, as componentes consideradas e analisadas no que se refere a um destino de saúde e bem-estar foram dez, nomeadamente: Termas, Spas, Cuidados de corpo e mente, Turismo Médico, Ambiente Natural, Espiritualidade, Cultura, Enogastronomia, Desporto e Eventos. Neste contexto, foram identificados os hotéis e infraestruturas considerados como representativos de cada tipo de instalação que caracteriza este tipo de turismo e em seguida foram extraídos comentários do TripAdvisor. A seleção recaiu sobre as seguintes instalações: Caldas de Monchique (Monchique), Zensation - Body & Soul (Albufeira), Mercado de Loulé (Loulé), Moinhos Velhos Juice Detox & Yoga Retreat (Lagos), Old Town Faro (Faro), Pinetrees Horse Riding (Almancil), Ria Formosa Natural Park (Olhão), Swan Day Spa (Alvor) e Zoomarine Algarve (Albufeira). O pré-processamento envolveu a limpeza de elementos indesejados, transformação, tokenização, normalização e filtragem de texto. Na avaliação do resultado, a análise de sentimento foi também aplicada a duas dimensões (palavras extraídas e associadas em cada categoria), que foram comparadas com o comentário correspondente para determinar qual o sentimento associado a cada entidade considerada na investigação. Para atingir os objetivos, foram utilizados métodos de abordagem quantitativa para rever 1,294 comentários extraídos manualmente do TripAdvisor e nos quais foram aplicados algoritmos de mineração de texto para avaliar o sentimento expresso nos mesmos. O resultado destacou como as palavras-chave de comentários positivos: “bird”, “day”, “experience”, “Faro”, “fish”, “great”, “horse”, “love”, “market”, “massage”, “nice”, “old”, “park”, “Pinetree”, “place”, “relax”, “ride”, “spa”, “time”, “town”, “visit” e “walk”, Também, evidenciou que o sentimento associado a “spas”, “luxo”, “massage” e “sauna” obtiveram os valores mais elevados, no que se refere ao sentimento positivo. Os resultados expressaram de forma clara a aceitabilidade e popularidade perante os turistas, do Algarve como destino de saúde e bem-estar, onde se destacaram os termos “spas” e “cuidados de corpo e mente”, “ambiente natural” e “desporto” com desvio padrão de 0.4 e 0.3, com média de 4.7 par cada termo. Mostra que destinos de saúde e bem-estar com desporto (golfe), natureza e paisagem são características positivas neste tipo de destino. Além disso, as avaliações geradas durante os meses de inverno: janeiro, fevereiro, março, novembro e dezembro apresentaram valores mais altos. O estudo revelou, ainda, que algumas das categorias associadas ao destino de bem-estar turístico satisfazem o desejo do turista, principalmente, no que refere aos serviços de spas e massagem oferecidos pelos hotéis. A extração de comentários manualmente, apesar de ser uma limitação, concedeu ao investigador a possibilidade de confirmar questões relacionadas com a inclusão de taxas escondidas, com o tempo gasto no acesso à área de destino e às instalações turísticas, as atitudes do staff, prestação seletiva de serviços sem regras padrão, sem correlação entre o serviço anunciado e o prestado. A exploração de conteúdos gerados pelos turistas, em conjunto com análise de sentimentos, permitiu adquirir conhecimento sobre a perceção dos turistas sobre o destino, assim como revelou que o bem-estar dos mesmos nos destinos turísticos é geralmente satisfatório e expresso através de comentários diversos nas redes sociais que manifestam sentimentos, o que mostra que as expectativas foram satisfeitas. Para além disso, também permitem à organização de gestão de destinos (DMO) conhecer as potencialidades e desafios identificados pelos turistas. As categorias de instalações associadas a um destino de saúde e bem-estar, podem ajudar a melhorar a sua viabilidade económica através da gestão do sector turístico, contribuindo para o PIB, bem como permite identificar áreas que necessitam de especial atenção por parte dos governantes, como os eventos e o turismo médico. Contudo, o conteúdo gerado pelos turistas pode ser alterado devido a fatores implícitos, como a visão psicológica do estado do revisor individual ou o tempo que caracteriza o destino no momento. Assim, para futuros estudos, o processo de mineração de texto deverá ser efetuado de forma automática e em diversas fontes de informação, de modo que inclua mais instalações e constituído por mais comentários, especialmente no turismo médico que não foram analisados, uma vez que não existiam

Is inflation a growth killer? Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the impact of ination on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to provide an empirical evidence whether ination hinders or boost economic activities in the region. The paper found that ination exhibits a reducing-growth effect in both short-term and long-term periods using Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PARDL) model. Therefore, the study recommends that African government needs to address the issues of ination especially imported ination in order to stimulate sustainable economic growth in the region. In addition, strengthening political commitment to ensure conducive business environment has to be paramount rather than depending on the traditional model of bring your own infrastructure.Keywords: Ination, Sub-Sahara Africa, Panel Autoregressive Distributed La

Empirical Investigation of External Debt-Growth Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa

The long run debt-growth nexus in sub-Saharan Africa is the main focus of this study. Its analysis is conducted on the basis of theoretical discussions and data considerations. The study employs both panel autoregressive distributed lag (PARDL) model and panel non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (PNARDL) model to examine the relationship between external debt and economic growth using a panel dataset of 22 countries from 1985 to 2015. Its results find that the level of investment significantly influences the long-run economic growth in both linear and non-linear models. However, the long-run coefficient of external debt is only significant in the non-linear model. There is strong evidence of error correction as the lagged GDP per capita is highly significant and negative in the two models.Key Words: debt, debt and growth, public debt and growth, linear regression model

Exploring Patterns of Fiscal Policy Multiplier in Selected Countries

This study examines the evolution of fiscal spending multiplier in selected oil producing countries over the period of 1981-2015, using the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) approach. The study found that lag-year of government consumption spending significantly affects the level of output in the countries. In addition, the results of the SVAR model show that real GDP responds positively and significantly to fiscal shocks in the concerned countries. Keywords: Fiscal spending multiplier, Structural vector auto-regression (SVAR); Fiscal shocks JEL Classification: H50, H1

Comparative evaluation of hydrophilic bases for improved delivery of Benzoic acid and Salicylic acid in antimicrobial ointment

Background: Benzoic acid (BA) and salicylic acid (SA) combined are used as choice topical treatment for fungal and bacterial infections but their delivery is affected by ointment vehicle, among other factors. With aim to achieve improved release and antimicrobial activity in ointment formulation of these medicaments through selection of more efficient vehicle(s), this study comparatively evaluated prospective alternatives to thecompendium-specified base for delivery potential and relevant physical properties.Methodology: Water-sorption capacity, rheological characteristics and heat-tolerance limits of six hydrophilic bases [hydrous ointment (HO), hydrous sheabutter (HS), neat sheabutter (NS), lanolin anhydrous (LA), lanolin hydrous (LH), and emulsifying ointment (EO)] and their ointment products containing 1, 2, 3, or 6% w/w of BA or SA were determined. Drug delivery propensity of the products was evaluated by agar diffusion colorimetric assay, while their antimicrobial activities were determined by hole-in-plate agar diffusion assay against selected type organisms (Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans and Candida pseudotropicalis).Results: BA was released in relatively larger quantity and demonstrated greater antimicrobial activity than SA in most bases. The released quantities of each medicament correlated directly with concentration and antimicrobial activities. The rates and extents of drug release followed a similar trend in different vehicles namely, HO > HS > NS ≥ EO > LA ≈ LH. Water number of base, ointment preparation method, viscosity, or heat-tolerance showed no influence on drug release or antimicrobial activity.Conclusion: HO and HS are better vehicles for delivery of BA and SA in ointment than EO which is the prototypical base. Keywords: Benzoic acid, Salicylic acid, Antimicrobial activity, Ointment base, Delivery factors French Title: Évaluation comparative des bases hydrophiles pour une meilleure administration d'acide benzoïque et d'acide salicylique dans une pommade antimicrobienne Contexte: L'acide benzoïque (BA) et l'acide salicylique (SA) combinés sont utilisés comme traitement topique de choix pour les infections fongiques et bactériennes, mais leur administration est affectée par le véhicule de la pommade, entre autres facteurs. Dans le but d'améliorer la libération et l'activité antimicrobienne dans la  formulation de pommade de ces médicaments grâce à la sélection de véhicules plus efficaces, cette étude a évalué comparativement des alternatives potentielles à la base spécifiée dans le compendium pour le potentiel d'administration et les propriétés physiques pertinentes.Méthodologie: Capacité de sorption de l'eau, caractéristiques rhéologiques et limites de tolérance à la chaleur de six bases hydrophiles [pommade hydratée (HO), beurre de karité hydraté (HS), beurre de karité pur (NS), lanoline anhydre (LA), lanoline hydratée (LH), et onguent émulsifiant (EO)] et leurs produits de pommade contenant 1, 2, 3 ou 6% p/p de BA ou SA ont été déterminés. La propension à l'administration de médicaments des produits a été évaluée par un essai colorimétrique de diffusion sur gélose, tandis que leurs activités antimicrobiennes ont été déterminées par un essai de diffusion sur gélose en plaque contre des organismes de type sélectionné (Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans et Candida pseudotropicalis).Résultats: BA a été libéré en quantité relativement plus grande et a démontré une plus grande activité antimicrobienne que SA dans la plupart des bases. Les quantités libérées de chaque médicament étaient directement liées à la concentration et aux activités antimicrobiennes. Les taux et l'étendue de la libération de médicaments ont suivi une tendance similaire dans différents véhicules, à savoir HO> HS> NS ≥ EO> LA ≈ LH. Le nombre d'eau de base, la méthode de préparation de la pommade, la viscosité ou la tolérance à la chaleur n'ont montré aucune influence sur la libération du médicament ou l'activité antimicrobienne.Conclusion: HO et HS sont de meilleurs véhicules pour la livraison de BA et SA en onguent que EO qui est la base prototypique. Mots-clés: acide benzoïque, acide salicylique, activité antimicrobienne, base de pommade, facteurs de délivrance &nbsp

Graphene and Nano-Scale Fiber Bio-Sensing Platform for Early Cancer Detection

On this poster, we present results from our ongoing research toward creating a proto-type of a bio-sensor that can detect cancer antigens in human saliva. A simple comb printed circuit board was designed and manufactured(Fig 1). The bare comb circuit is normally open and requires a conductive substance to fill in between the teeth of the comb to complete the circuit. We used graphene as the conductive material. The graphene acted as a soft electrical conductor completing the current path across the comb printed circuit board and created an electrical circuit with a unique current, voltage and resistance. We applied various concentrations of graphene to the comb circuit surface and explored graphene’s properties as a soft conductor. Next, a solution containing Poly-Vinyl Alcohol and Sericin Bombyx mori silk solution was electro-spun onto the circuit board creating a sticky cob-web-like covering over the comb circuit. This fabric acted as a resistor on the comb circuit and creates a sticky surface to which target cancer antibodies can be attached. Once the target cancer antibodies are attached to the circuit surface, a bio-sensing platform will be created to detect cancer antigens in fluid. When exposed to a fluid sample such as saliva that contains the complimentary cancer antigen to the antibody, the antibodies and antigens will spontaneously bind. This bound antibody/antigen structure will change the impedance of the electrical circuit. This change in impedance can then be detected, quantified and correlated to antigen concentrations in the saliva sample. Further research can then be done to correlate the impedance readings to dangerous cancer antigen concentrations in the human body

Predictors and Moderators of ICT Use by Registry Staff of University of Ibadan, Nigeria

The study was designed to investigate the relationship between social influence and facilitating conditions and the behavioural intention to use, and actual use of ICT tools among registry staff of University of Ibadan, Oyo State. Five hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Survey design was adopted. Two hundred and sixty registry staff participated in the study. Data were obtained with a validated structured questionnaire. Collected data were analysed using frequency distribution, Pearson’s correlation, multiple regression and moderated multiple regression. Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between social influence, facilitating conditions and the intention to use ICT among the registry staff. Significant moderating effects of gender, age, experience and voluntariness on the relationships were not all confirmed. The relationship between social influence and behavioural intention to use ICT is not moderated by gender and age, but by experience and voluntariness of use. Also, the relationship between facilitating conditions and use behaviour is not moderated by age, but by experience. The University of Ibadan Management should create an enabling environment that will facilitate and support constant use of ICT tools for official work by the registry staff and also fund staff training and retraining in relevant ICT skills