NIGERIA’S MONO-CULTURAL ECONOMY AND THE AFRICAN CATFISH AQUACULTURE INDUSTRY

Crude oil was discovered in Oloibiri, Bayelsa State, Nigeria in 1956. This paper provides that oil at the period of discovery was not lucrative until the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 otherwise known as the Yom Kippur war which was characterized by Arab states boycotting oil supplies to the western world who were allies of Israel. It was the period from 1973-1983 that witnessed a boom which was the most luring temptation Nigeria was faced with and which she gradually fell into. Since the oil-boom period, Nigeria’s economy tended towards a mono-cultural direction where other sectors of the economy were abandoned for just one single sector giving Nigeria’s economy another alias “mono- product” economy. This paper employed the key informant interview as the method for sourcing primary data from the African catfish aquaculture field and also engaged content analysis for data derived from secondary sources. Comparative Advantage theory is the theoretical framework used in explaining this research. The paper concludes by suggesting the African catfish aquaculture industry as a viable contribution to the diversification of the economy based on its lucrative potentials of earning foreign exchange and providing massive employment for the teeming unemployed population in Nigeria

Supply chain [Chapter 4]

The Supply Chain is critical to the establishment of a hydrogen fuel cell economy and indeed offers immense benefit to the economy. A range of Lifecycle Analysis studies conducted in EU FC Framework and EU FCH Joint Undertaking projects detailing HFC system inventories readily explains the widespread extent of potential interest showing that the physical bulk of any fuel cell system or application does not involve a great deal of new technology. Although the core fuel cell (or electrolysis) stack is fundamental to the technology – the physical bulk of any system or application is made up of regular engineering and fabricated components. And the greatest proportion of cost and value in such systems is entrained in their overall design and integration content (IP). For example in scoping out the prospects for a hydrogen ferry being built and operated in Scotland, around 200 local supply chain companies were identified which could have an interest in such a development

Awareness and adoption levels of improved smoking oven among fish processors in Lagos Lagoon, Nigeria

This paper investigated awareness and adoption levels of improved smoking oven among fish processors in four fishing communities along Lagos Lagoon, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 153 respondents who were engaged in fish smoking. Data collected using structured interview guides were subjected to descriptive and inferential analyses. Results revealed that majority of the respondents were young, married women with average fish smoking experience of 22.6 years. Majority (90.8%) of them were solely engaged in fish smoking while 9.2% combined fish smoking with other income-generating activities. All the processors used traditional smoking oven (drum, box and mud ovens). More than 66.0% of the fish processors were not aware of improved fish smoking equipment. Lack of awareness, inadequate access to the technologies, low relative advantage and lack of maintenance services and high cost of procurement were responsible for low adoption levels of improved smoking oven. Irregular visits of extension agents to the study area had negative impact on the adoption of improved traditional smoking ovens. Proper dissemination of innovations developed on improved fish processing equipment to the active fish processors in Lagos State using available communication channels is hereby advocated. &nbsp

Asphaltene detection using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS)

Peer reviewedPostprin

{UNIQORN}: {U}nified Question Answering over {RDF} Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language Text

Question answering over knowledge graphs and other RDF data has been greatly advanced, with a number of good systems providing crisp answers for natural language questions or telegraphic queries. Some of these systems incorporate textual sources as additional evidence for the answering process, but cannot compute answers that are present in text alone. Conversely, systems from the IR and NLP communities have addressed QA over text, but barely utilize semantic data and knowledge. This paper presents the first QA system that can seamlessly operate over RDF datasets and text corpora, or both together, in a unified framework. Our method, called UNIQORN, builds a context graph on the fly, by retrieving question-relevant triples from the RDF data and/or the text corpus, where the latter case is handled by automatic information extraction. The resulting graph is typically rich but highly noisy. UNIQORN copes with this input by advanced graph algorithms for Group Steiner Trees, that identify the best answer candidates in the context graph. Experimental results on several benchmarks of complex questions with multiple entities and relations, show that UNIQORN, an unsupervised method with only five parameters, produces results comparable to the state-of-the-art on KGs, text corpora, and heterogeneous sources. The graph-based methodology provides user-interpretable evidence for the complete answering process

Small Scale Enterprisesand the Economic Siamese of Nigeria: Growth-Barrier Chain Analysis

This study investigated the SME growth-barrier chain in Nigeria. A target population of 39,600 was sampled using Taro Yamane method to achieve the surveyed 396 respondents. A well structured questionnaire was administered to collect the data. Percentage, descriptive, Likert analysis and regression analysis were used to explain the nature of the SME growth-barrier chain in Nigeria. Results of the study reveal that barrier factors have been influencing SMEs growth in Nigeria, and that the most significant among the barrier factors are entrepreneurial skill, irregular power supply and lack of business strategy. This study is limited by sample size and selection of SMEs at their clustered areas, and therefore may not be generalized to other sectors and countries. The study concludes that these factors cause epileptic growth or sudden death of SMEs in Nigeria. The study recommends that the government should engage in intervention programmes, and also ensure regular power supply in Nigeria. In addition, SME owner-managers should adopt and implement business strategies in their business environment. Keywords: SMEs growth. Barrier factors, employment, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurial Skil

Training Needs and Management of National and Institutional Archives and Records for National Development

This study critically examined the role and impact of training on records and archives managers for effective management of national and institutional records and archives for national development. It highlighted and defined some basic concepts such as training, records, archives, national archives, institutional archives. The needs for training of managers of national and institutional records and archives were examined and their relevance for national development x-rayed. Sources of archival records and the context in which there are organized were indicated. The paper further appraised the processing of organizing archival materials to include packing, labeling, shelvings which are considered crucial in the management of archives and records. It is observed that management of archival materials differ from that of library materials because their organization followed some basic principles such as provenance, sanctity of original order, arrangement determines description and description moves from general to specific. Some challenges relating to institutional and national archives identified. The paper concluded by recommending that: adequate funds, training, opportunities, creation of an ideal classification schemes and provisions of conducive working condition for Archives and records managers to operate successfully have become essential. Keywords: Training, records, archives, national archives, institutional archives

PERCEIVED EFFECT OF COACHING AND MENTORING ON EMPLOYEE JOB PERFORMANCE AMONG ACADEMIC STAFF IN UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN, OYO STATE, NIGERIA

The study assessed the effect of coaching and monitoring on employees’ job performance among academic staff in University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used in obtaining data from ninety academic employees of Faculty of Agriculture University of Ibadan for the study. The data was analysed using Chi square and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The mean age of the respondents was 51years while 66.3% were between ages 51-70 years, 52.3% were female and 50.2% were married. The average year of experience of the respondents was 18.1 years while majority (79.1%) of the respondents has obtained their PhD degree. On challenges facing coaching and mentoring, respondents identified mentee unwillingness to be mentored (x̅=2.84), and non conducive environment for coaching and mentoring (x̅=2.67) as the major constraints, while the least constraint was time and workload pressure (x̅=2.03). Many (62.1%) of the respondents have high job performance level. There was significant relationship between respondents’ marital status and job performance (P≤0.05). The study concluded that coaching and mentoring influence employees’ job performance positively among academic staff in academic institutions and recommended that provision of good work-environment for coaching and mentoring of academic staff should be provided by university management.   &nbsp

Does Tribolium brevicornis Cuticular Chemistry Deter Cannibalism and Predation of Pupae?

The cuticular hydrocarbons of insects are species-specific and often function as semiochemicals. The activity of Tribolium brevicornis cuticular hydrocarbons as feeding deterrents that ostensibly function to prevent pupal cannibalism and predation was evaluated. The cuticular hydrocarbons of T. brevicornis pupae were characterized and flour disk bioassays conducted with individual and combined extract components incorporated into artificial diets on which Tribolium adults fed for six days. Feeding by T. brevicornis and T. castaneum on flour disks containing cuticular extracts of T. brevicornis pupae resulted in reduced consumption and weight loss relative to feeding on control flour disks. In both cases, feeding deterrence indices exceeded 80% suggesting that T. brevicornis cuticular hydrocarbons could function to deter cannibalism and predation of pupae by larvae and adult beetles. Sixteen different cuticular hydrocarbons were identified in T. brevicornis pupal extracts. Eight of the commercially available linear alkanes were tested individually in feeding trials with eight Tribolium species. One compound (C28) significantly reduced the amount of food consumed by three species compared to control disks, whereas the compounds C25, C26, and C27 elicited increased feeding in some species. Four other compounds had no effect on consumption for any species. When four hydrocarbon mixtures were tested for synergistic deterrence on T. brevicornis and T. castaneum, none significantly influenced consumption. Our results indicate that the cuticular chemistry of T. brevicornis pupae could serve to deter predation by conspecific and congeneric beetles

Globular clusters in the stellar stream surrounding the Milky Way analog NGC 5907

We study the globular clusters (GCs) in the spiral galaxy NGC~5907 well-known for its spectacular stellar stream -- to better understand its origin. Using wide-field Subaru/Suprime-Cam $gri$ images and deep Keck/DEIMOS multi-object spectroscopy, we identify and obtain the kinematics of several GCs superimposed on the stellar stream and the galaxy disk. We estimate the total number of globular clusters in NGC 5907 to be $154\pm44$, with a specific frequency of $0.73\pm0.21$. Our analysis also reveals a significant, new population of young star cluster candidates found mostly along the outskirts of the stellar disk. Using the properties of the stream GCs, we estimate that the disrupted galaxy has a stellar mass similar to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy accreted by the Milky Way, i.e. $\sim10^8~M_\odot$.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, catalog of GCs is available in online versio