Dynamic Health Care Decisions and Child Health in South Africa

A large number of child deaths in developing countries could be averted if ill children received care sooner rather than later. This paper analyses the healthcare treatment pathway that is followed for children under the age of six. The majority of these children receive treatment within 24 hours. However, we find that income affects the probability of any treatment, despite freely available public healthcare, while delayed treatment for severely ill children is more likely to occur in more expensive private facilities. Our results suggest that free public healthcare is not enough to mitigate health inequality amongst young children, and that delayed healthcare could lead to adverse household expenditure shocks.

Rhetoric in Selected Speeches of Ọbafemi Awolọwọ and Moshood Abiọla

A number of extant studies have examined political rhetoric and propaganda. None of them, however, has explicitly examined the deployment of rhetoric by notable Nigerian political figures as representatives of different epochs in Nigeria’s political history. This paper investigates the communicative intentions and persuasive techniques employed in selected political speeches of Obafemi Awolowo and Moshood Abiola, two past political figures in Nigeria political history. It examines the deployment of political rhetoric in communicating intentions in the selected speeches with the view to examine the persuasiveness of the speeches and the influence of the speakers’ intentions on rhetorical choices. The study is driven by Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric. Findings reveal that the selected speeches are not only highly persuasive but they also employed two types of rhetoric, combat and tact. While tact is achieved through the use of ethos, pathos, logos, and structural parallelism to boost the self-image of the speakers, combat rhetoric is achieved through metaphor and linguistic elements with negative semantic connotations, direct command, and intertextual references that register the speaker’s aversion to an idea or event. Tact rhetoric is prominent mostly in pre-election speeches such as acceptance and campaign speeches while combat rhetoric is exclusive to postelection speeches which are more of protests/complaints. The paper concludes that Awolowo and Abiola’s choice of rhetorical strategies is influenced by their communicative intentions, as the duo achieved the communicative import of persuasion in their speeches through effective deployment of rhetorical tools in their bid to inform, request, educate, commend, and condemn, as the case may be. &nbsp

Gender, Academic Qualification And Subject Discipline Differentials Of Nigerian Teachers’ Ict Literacy

The world is seemingly experiencing a third wave of social and technological transformation as the society is becoming more oriented to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT is one of the various factors that are drastically influencing occupational success especially in the educational sector. Adamu (2004) sees ICT as a set of technological tools and resources used to communicate and create, disseminate, to store and manage information. The information dissemination is easily possible through computer technologies. Markauskaite (2006) opines that the introduction of computer technology into teaching and learning is a giant stride towards improving the quality of education. Globally in the recent time, a new type of literacy that is more widely discussed is computer literacy. In fact, ICT (computer) literacy has been a subject of educational research ever since the integration of technology into education system either as tools for self-study or as a teaching device

Performance and behavioural characteristics of Pigs as affected by types and duration of evaporative cooling

Heat stress is one of the main constraints to pig production. Pigs rely on  evaporative cooling by wallowing which is unsanitary while most advanced cooling methods are capital intensive. Cheaper evaporative cooling facilities could be installed to mitigate the negative consequences of heat stress on pigs. However, effects of hourly exposure to evaporative cooling on gilts have not been adequately documented. Hence, behavioral attributes and performance of pigs given access to evaporative cooling were studied. In a completely randomized design, cross bred gilts (n=40) (Landrace x Large White) weighing 25.00±2.5kg were allotted to five treatments each replicated four times consisting eight gilts per replicate. Treatment 1 (Negative control, T1) no shower/no wallow, Treatment 2 (Positive control, T2) had only wallow, Treatment 3 (T3) had shower activated 5 minutes hourly for six hours, Treatment 4 (T4) had shower activated 5minutes every 2 hours and  Treatment 5 (T5) had shower activated 5 minutes every 3hours. Gilts were  evaluated at growing phase (10weeks). At average weight of 40.50±2.50kg, gilts were mated. Data on feed intake (AFI, Kg), weight gain (WG, Kg), Final weight (FW, Kg) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were determined using standard methods. Behavioural attributes (%) observed include Lateral Lying (LL), Huddling (HD), Frequency of Defecating in Resting Area (FDRA), Frequency of Visiting Water Trough (FVWT) and Frequency of Using Wallow or Shower (FUWS). Also, Respiratory Rate (RR, breath per minute bpm), Rectal Temperature (RT, °C) and Skin Temperature (ST, °C) were monitored, while pens Temperature Humidity Index (THI) were monitored. Indices of reproductive performance (%) include oestrus, anaestrus and conception rate (CR) was determined. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA at á0.05. In the study, THI ranged between 81.12 and 86.39. Pigs that were subjected to 5 minutes shower activation every 3 hours (T5) had significantly highest FW (52.50±0.04) and relatively low AFI of 10.71±0.04 with a FCR of 3.32±0.02 which is not significantly different from pigs that were subjected to 5 minutes shower activation every hour (T3) (4.09±0.02) and pigs that were subjected to 5 minutes shower activation every 2 hours (T4) (4.05±0.01). Pigs exposed to continuous wallowing (T2) had significantly the highest AFI  (14.13±0.04) and there was no significant difference in the WG for all treatments. The ST, RT and RR were highest in pigs under no shower/wallow (T1) (37.4, 39.4 and 53.0, respectively). Lateral lying (LL) was highest in T5 (65%) while T2 had the highest HD (40%). FVWT and FDRA were highest in T1 (50 and 55%, respectively) while CR was 75% for T1, T3 and T5 and T2 had 25%.Keywords: Pig, Performance, evaporative cooling, Reproductio

Hydrologic modeling and uncertainty analysis of an ungauged watershed using mapwindow-swat

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesModeling of an ungauged watershed with the associated uncertainties of the input data is presented. The MapWindow versions of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) have been applied to a complex and ungauged watershed of about 248,000ha in an area close to the Niger River, Nigeria. The Kwara State Government of Nigeria in collaboration with the newly relocated former Zimbabwean farmers now occupied the largest portion of this watershed for an “Agricultural Estate Initiative ”. The government and these farmers are decision makers who need to take appropriate actions despite little or no data availability. SWAT being a physically based model, allow the use of Geographical Information System (GIS) inputs like the Digital Elevation Model(DEM), landuse and soil maps. The MapWindow-SWAT(MSWAT) involves processes like the Watershed Delineation, Hydrological Response Units (HRUs) Process and the SWAT run. The watershed was delineated into 11 subbasins and 28 HRUs. There were 8 landuse classes and 5 soil types. The model was able to simulate and forecast for several years(1990-2016). The results look 'reasonable' since there is no observed data from the watershed for statistical validation. However, using the Water Balance equation as a validation criteria, the correlation coefficient between the simulated rainfall and runoff was 0.84 for the subbasin 11 (outlet). Thereafter, the uncertainties in the continuous numerical input (i.e. rainfall) was examined using the Data Uncertainty Engine (DUE). One parameter exponential probability model was used for the daily rainfall amount based on the histogram. 700 realizations were generated from this uncertain input. Randomly selected numbers of the realizations were prepared and used as inputs into the MWSWAT model. It was surprising that there were no changes in the results when compared to the initial 'real' value (outflows from outlet) although other parameters of the model were kept constant

Ensuring Effective and Efficient Teaching and Learning Religious Studies in Nigerian Schools Using Photographic Series

The purpose of this study was to find out the extent to which the use of photographic series with sound in teaching religious studies could enhance the performance of students in selected junior secondary school in Remo Educational zone. It also investigated the extent to which talking photographic series could enhance the retention and the attitude of the students. Two hundred students in JSSIII were selected from five secondary schools through simple random sampling technique. They were also randomly divided into 2 groups, the experimental and control groups. The study adopted the pre-test, posttest group design. The instruments used were a series of photographs with sound prepared by the researcher and the students containing “churches and its relevance to the society”, Religious studies Achievement Test (RSAT) and Attitude towards Religious Studies Questionnaire (ATRSQ). These instruments were validated using construct validity, difficulty and discriminating index. The reliability coefficient for the RSAT was found to be 0.75. The results showed that the use of photographic series in instruction significantly improved the performance of students in the subject. Secondly if effectively used, it can improve the retentive ability of students and finally, photographic series do not seen to have any statistical effect on the attitude of students towards the subject.African Research Review Vol. 2 (2) 2008 pp. 69-8