Postmodernism and objectivity in the Social Sciences: Redressing Nweke’s understanding of Atabor

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SOLVABILITY OF A NORMAL SUBGROUP IN RELATION TO ITS CHARACTER DEGREES

In this work, how the structure of a normal subgroup of a group G is influenced by the degrees of an appropriate subset of irreducible character of a group G was verified. The characters that were used in controlling the structure of N Δ G are exactly those whose kernels do not contain N.Given that N Δ G,Irr (G/N) =  {Є Irr (G)/N  ker }andcd (G/N) = { (1) /   Irr (G/N)}Â

Histochemical assessment of Moringa – oleifera oil and walnut oil on cadmium induced lateral geniculate body damage in developing male Wistar rats (Rattus novergiccus)

The brain is vulnerable to oxidative damage due to its high oxygen consumption. This Study investigate the effects of cadmium on the lateral geniculate body of developing male wistar rats and ameliorative potential of Moringa oleifera seed oil and walnut oil extracts. Seven groups of five animals each were used in this experiment. Group A received 3ml of 0.9% normal saline; group B received 2.5mg/kg bw of 3CdSO4.8H2O, group C received 5mg/kg bw vitamin C & 6mg/kg bw vitamin E, group D received 5mg/kg bw vitamin C & 6mg/kg bw vitamin E + 2.5mg/kg bw Cd, group E received 2.5mg/kg bw Cd + 4mg/kg bw Moringa oleifera oil, group F received 2.5mg/kg bw Cd + 4mg/kg bw walnut oil, while group G received 2.5mg/kg bw Cd + 2mg/kg bw walnut + 2mg/kg bw Moringa oleifera oil concomitantly for 3weeks. Parameter tested includes LDH, G6PD in brain tissues, SOD and GPx enzymes in brain homogenates and serum and cresyl fast violet stain in the brain tissues. Cd administration significantly increased SOD, GPx, LDH and decreased G6PD level in brain tissue and decreased their activity in serum when compared with Group A control rats. There was marked reduction and lost in the distribution of nissl substances of the studied tissues of Cd administered animals. However, administration of vitamin C & E, walnut and Moringa oleifera oil restored damaged tissues. Walnut and Moringa oleifera seed oil therefore attenuated the oxidative damage and morphological changes induced by cadmium in the lateral geniculate body of the brain of the young male wistar rats.Key Words: Lateral geniculate body, Antioxidant, Histochemical, Cadmium, Oxidative Damag

Improving Cassava Quality for Poultry Feeding Through Application of Biotechnology

The continuous increase in cost of conventional energy sources caused by inadequate supply and stiff competition between human, animals and various industries for many decades has resulted to the need to source for suitable, readily available and cheap energy sources for poultry production globally. One such alternative is cassava. A native to South America, cassava is now found in abundance in most tropical countries. Due to lack of excellent post-harvest technologies, large quantities of cassava are wasted. An increased use of cassava in poultry feeding will go a long way to reduce this wastage and also reduce the high cost of poultry feed. However, the utilisation of cassava in poultry nutrition has been hindered by its lower nutritional value, especially protein and amino acids, presence of some ANF and dustiness when poultry feed is produced with cassava meal. Traditional processing methods have only succeeded in taking the inclusion level of cassava to 40% in some poultry diets. Researchers and poultry nutritionists have become interested in developing multi-pronged technologies and processing methods to increase cassava utilisation in poultry nutrition to reduce wastage, improve its nutritional value and maximise production. This chapter highlights the application of different technologies and the importance of biotechnology in improving the quality of cassava and increasing its utilisation for poultry feeding

Vertex-edge perfect Roman domination number

A vertex-edge perfect Roman dominating function on a graph $G = (V, E)$ (denoted by ve-PRDF) is a function $f:V\left(G\right)\longrightarrow\{0, 1, 2\}$ such that for every edge $uv\in E$, $\max\{f(u), f(v)\}\neq0$, or $u$ is adjacent to exactly one neighbor $w$ such that $f(w) = 2$, or $v$ is adjacent to exactly one neighbor $w$ such that $f(w) = 2$. The weight of a ve-PRDF on $G$ is the sum $w(f) = \sum_{v\in V}f(v)$. The vertex-edge perfect Roman domination number of $G$ (denoted by $\gamma_{veR}^{p}(G)$) is the minimum weight of a ve-PRDF on $G$. In this paper, we first show that vertex-edge perfect Roman dominating is NP-complete for bipartite graphs. Also, for a tree $T$, we give upper and lower bounds for $\gamma_{veR}^{p}(T)$ in terms of the order $n$, $l$ leaves and $s$ support vertices. Lastly, we determine $\gamma_{veR}^{p}(G)$ for Petersen, cycle and Flower snark graphs

Impacts of Government Interventions on Small Scale Enterprises in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State, Nigeria

This study focuses on the impacts of government interventions on small scale enterprises in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State. The specific objectives of the study included an investigation of the challenges affecting Small Scale Enterprises in Dekina Local Government Area, the nature of government intervention programmes and its relevance to small scale enterprises in Dekina Local Government Area, the accessibility of the intervention programmes to Small Scale Enterprise operators in Dekina Local Government Area and the strategies that can be used to overcome the challenges of accessibility to the interventions. Using dependency theoretical framework, the study adopted cross sectional survey research design. The population of the study was about 2000 while the sample size of 322 was determined using Krejcie and Morgan statistical table. Multi-Stage and purposive sampling technique were utilized to study the entire sample of the respondents. Two hypotheses formulated were tested using Chi-square and Multiple Linear Regression. The findings of the study revealed that there is a positive relationship between government interventions and the growth of small scale business enterprises in Dekina Local Government Area, Kogi State. It was also established that corruption, political interference and administrative obstacles such as high interest rates, heavy collateral etc. were the major factors affecting the accessibility of SSE operators to the government interventions, including inadequate awareness of SSE operators about government interventions. Arising from the findings, it was recommended among others that there should be sensitization on the existence of the interventions and the criteria for accessing the intervention be made easily accessible and available to all categories of small scale enterprises operators irrespective of their socio-cultural backgrounds and political affiliations as the case may be

Water footprint in algaculture for advanced biofuels and high value products

Other aspects of life and science as we know it have progressed over the past 50 years and no other sector of human existence has been as dependent on the breakthroughs of the past as with fossil fuels. Construction, medicine,agriculture, engineering technology have moved on immensely ever since the advent of petroleoum. Fossil fuels have thrived in mankind’s past, present and still plays a major role in the future, unlike any other technological trend in the 21st century in spite of revolutionary changes seen across all other spheres of human existence; their usefulness ought to have been limited in this era. Global carbon emmission and climate change originating from burning fossil fuels places a demand on the research community to discover newer and cleaner fuels like miroalgal biodiesel. Alternative energy sourcing has enjoyed some success in the forms of solar, wind, tidal energy and bioenergy however, a lot more needs to be done to improve the productivity efficiency of microalgae farming and limit mankind’s dependency and use of fossil fuels. Current techniques employed in large scale microalgae cultivation to serve as a feedstock for biofuels and other high value products have proven to be unsustainable, this has been due to the high water and energy footprints required for their cultivation, harvesting and processing. This work is aimed at understanding the “flawed” conventional microalgae cultivation with growth experiments within the laboratory and subsequently experimenting on non-conventional methods capable of growth with significantly less water to establish profitable, sustainable and commercially viable alternative growth methods. The persistent use of unsustainable techniques in microalgae farming has proven that microalgae based fuels cannot successfully compete with fossil fuels until these challenges are mitigated, or at best alleviated. The major bottlenecks associated with the future of biofuels from microalgae are associated with the enormous volumes of water used in their cultivation as well as the amount of time and energy required to dewater the algal culture during harvest. In excess of 27,000 litres of water is required to produce 5 litres of algal bio-oil32, that represents a colossal water footprint and needs to be lessened considerably to stand a chance of sustainability and commercialization. Certain microalgae species are known to be capable of growing wildly and thriving on walls, fences and other external surfaces without human intervention, supervision or nourishment. This wild growth phenomenon can be exploited scientifically and influences the research into microalgae cultivation and the possibility of achieving attached growth with considerably lower water footprint within the laboratory. The materials and methods used in the experiments were of a conventional nature in most cases with asceptic cultivation of homogenous cultures a major focus. In the cases of preliminary non-conventional experiments, new experimental setups are designed and fabricated to achieve the desired goals. During laboratory cultivation of microalgae, the initial salt water culture (Nannochloropsis oculata) experienced severe water losses during growth leading to salt crystallization. This challenge led to the search for alternative fresh water strains, capable of quick growth as well as high in biomass productivity with Euglena gracilis the prefered choice. E. gracilis scores lower than N. oculata in lipid content with up to 20% and 29% dry weight biomass respectively, however E. gracilis compensates for this deficiency with a superior volumetric productivity of biomass with 7g/L/day compared to N. oculata’s meagre 0.5 g/L/day returns. At the end of the experiments, the growth setups recorded up to 400% growth in some cases over a week’s growth based on conventional growth techniques and with additional CO2 .The carbon supplied sample recorded a higher initial concentration on day one and recorded a similar growth trend as the non-carbon sample which recorded a growth of 144% at the end of experiment. The carbon cultivated sample on the other hand logged a 247% growth over the same period. This proves that the carbon supplied sample was more productive in terms of biomass generation over the same time. The impact of nutrient water produced 46.7% higher cell density in a sample with more dilution than that lower nutrient water dilutions thus suggesting that this strain of microalgae, grown under these laboratory conditions prefer more nutrient-water for their growth. When water dilutions were compared between four samples A,B,C,D having dilution percentages of 1000%, 750%, 500% and 100% and the same nutrient volume a 15 day period. Over the 15 day experiment period, sample D (lowest dilution) recorded the highest growth and at the end of the experiment, sample B showed the least biomass accumulation . All the samples recorded their highest average densities in the following decreasing order D,A,C,B