Experiences of Violence among Pregnant Women Attending Ante-Natal Clinics in Selected Hospitals in Abuja, Nigeria

Anecdotal records have shown that there is increasing prevalence of gender based violence in Nigeria. Little is known about the extent and magnitude of this phenomenon as it affects pregnant women. This study described the experiences of violence among pregnant women attending ante-natal clinics in Abuja, Nigeria using a cross-sectional design. A three-stage sampling technique was used to select 300 participants from six hospitals in the three out of the six Local Government Areas in the region. Data was collected using a pretested semi-structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. Forty three percent of the respondents had experienced at least one form of violence and 15.0% were experiencing violence in their current relationships. Main forms of violence ever experienced were psychological (38.0%) and physical (36.4%). Partners/husbands (70.2%) and partner/husband relatives (29.8) were the perpetrators. Of the partner/husband’s relatives, sisters-in-law (57.1%) and partners’ cousins (21.5%) were the main perpetrators of the forms of violence experienced. Strategies employed to resolve violence conflict included dialogue with spouse (46.7%), ignoring the experience (30.3%), making up with sex (16.7%), providing gifts and special dishes (5.0%) and mediation by family members (1.3%). Health promotion and education intervention strategies such as counselling, male involvement in sexual and reproductive health programs, advocacy for the promotion of women’s health and right as well as use of appropriate culturally sensitive conflict resolution strategies are needed to ameliorate the situation. Keywords: Coping strategies, Gender-based violence, Pregnant women, Prevalenc

Corporate Governance and External Mechanism on Organizational Performance. (Evidence From Quoted Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria)

Corporate governance is regarded as the key foundation for effective organizational performance and for organizations to be more productive, governed and controlled. The level of collapse of institutions and failure of firms across the world has also emphasized the need to study the ways by which organizations are governed and controlled. Despite these advancements, organizations are still faced with challenges such as the separation of ownership and control. Formal legal and regulatory obligations are part of the external incentive structure designed to ensure that competing companies abide by common standards of fairness, transparency, accountability, and responsibility to protect shareholders, consumers, workers, the environment, and even competitors from abusive practices. The general objective of the study was to examine the impact of corporate governance and external mechanism on organizational performance. The specific objectives of the study were to examine if separation of ownership and control affects the performance of listed manufacturing company in Nigeria and to determine the significant effect of laws/regulators on the performance of listed manufacturing company in Nigeria. The population of this study comprised all quoted manufacturing companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange as at 2019. The study adopted secondary data. The secondary data was extracted from the Annual Reports of the sampled companies for a period of ten (10) years (2010-2019). The descriptive method which includes frequency tables, percentage, mean and standard deviation was used in describing and explaining information obtained from audited annual report of quoted manufacturing company while the quantitative method includes regression analysis. The main findings from the empirical analysis are that there is a significant relationship and effect between separation of ownership and control on the performance of listed manufacturing company given a P-value of 0.0005, R-Squared of 0.9712, adjusted R2 of 0.9481 and F-value of 42.14. Also, the analysis revealed that laws/regulators on the performance of listed manufacturing company in Nigeria (LR) is significant given a P-Value of 0.0017 and F-Value of 51.10, R2 of 0.8031 and adjusted R2 of 0.6456. The empirical results of this study revealed that external mechanism of corporate governance has impact on the performance of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Based on the findings and conclusion, the study therefore recommended that regulatory bodies should ensure that the Manufacturing Companies comply with the statutory rules and regulations of corporate governance act. Keywords: Corporate governance, external mechanism, organizations and performance DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-24-02 Publication date:August 31st 202

Snoring among Postgraduate Students in a Tertiary Institution, Southwest Nigeria

Snoring, a symptom of disordered breathing during sleep, is increasingly becoming a major public health concern. A significant correlation has been found between snoring and cardiovascular diseases; unfortunately, it remains under-diagnosed in general population. This study sought to determine the prevalence of snoring, knowledge and perception of health risks associated with it among postgraduate students of a tertiary institution in Southwestern Nigeria. Using multi stage sampling technique, 300 postgraduate students of the University of Ibadan were selected. A self-administered questionnaire, was used to collected data on their socio-demographic characteristics, knowledge and perception of snoring, its health risks and snoring patterns. A 21-point, 12-point, 15-point and 12-point scales was used to measure knowledge of snoring, knowledge of its health risks, perception related to snoring and perception of its health risks respectively. Scores ≥15, ≥9, ≥9 and >6 were cut-offs for good knowledge of snoring, knowledge of its health risks, perception related to snoring and perception of its health risks, respectively. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data at α0.05. Respondents age was 27.2±4.3 years and 53.3% were males. Knowledge of snoring was good among 53.3% of respondents, 13.3% had a good knowledge of health risks associated with snoring, 71% had good perception of snoring while 43% had good perception of health risks associated with snoring. Prevalence of snoring was 31.3% and was significantly higher among males (36.9%) than females (25.2%). The level of knowledge of health risks associated with snoring is inadequate indicating a need for increased awareness on health risks associated with snoring among adults in Nigeria

A Review of Energy Conservation in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency plays a major role to determine the lifetime of the network. The network is usually powered by a battery which is hard to recharge. Hence, one major challenge in wireless sensor networks is the issue of how to extend the lifetime of sensors to improve the efficiency. In order to reduce the rate at which the network consumes energy, researchers have come up with energy conservation techniques, schemes and protocols to solve the problem. This paper presents a brief overview of wireless sensor networks, outlines some causes of its energy loss and some energy conservation schemes based on existing techniques used in solving the problem of power management. Keywords: Wireless sensor network, Energy conservation, Duty cycling and Energy efficiency

Development of Text to Speech System for Yoruba Language

Text-to-speech (TTS) applications have been applied to different languages in diverse areas of human endeavour all over the world, but for Yoruba language which is being spoken by over 30 million people out of 150 million Nigerian populace and in other countries like Benin, Togo, United Kingdom and part of South American, much has not been achieved therefore, there is need to develop TTS system for Yoruba language. This paper gives an account of Yoruba TTS system development using concatenation method. The paper describes the design, evaluation and the analysis of the result shows that 70% Respondents accepted its usability. Keywords: TTS, evaluation, concatenation, usability and design

Perception and utilization of cervical cancer screening services among female nurses in University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria

Background: Cervical Cancer (CC) is the second most common cancer among women with early detection and prompt treatment as best management options. Female nurses have crucial roles to play in promoting the utilization of Cervical Cancer Screening Services (CCSS), yet little information exist regarding their perception and utilization of these services. The CCSS related knowledge, perception and utilization among female nurses at the University College Hospital, (UCH) Ibadan, Nigeria were therefore determined. Methods: A survey of 503 consenting nurses was done using a pretested self-administered questionnaire which included a 40-point knowledge scale and questions on perception of CC. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, ANOVA and logistic regression. Results: Respondents’ mean age was 38.0 ± 8.6 years, mean year of experience was 12.5 ± 8.9 years and overall mean knowledge score was 22.8±4.1. Mean knowledge scores by cadre were Assistant Directors (26.7 ± 1.5), Chief Nursing Officers (23.4 ± 2.3) and Staff Nurses (21.7 ± 5.3) (p<0.05). Eighty-eight percent correctly perceived CC to be preventable and 82.0% believed that screening should be carried out as soon as sexual intercourse starts irrespective of age. Only 32.6% had ever used CCSS facility and main reasons for non-use included lack of time (50.8%), fear of result (13.9%) and not being sexually active (6.3%). Staff Nurses were four times less likely to utilize cervical screening services than the Assistant Directors of Nursing (OR 0.23, CI 0.117-0.442).Conclusion: Utilization of cervical cancer screening services among the female nurses was poor. Strategies that encourage utilization are hereby advocated

Polynomial approximation approach to transient heat conduction with internal heat generation

This work reports polynomial approximation approach to transient heat conduction in a long slab, long cylinder and sphere with linear internal heat generation. It has been shown that the polynomial approximation method is able to calculate average temperature as a function of time for higher value of Biot numbers. This agrees with Keshavarz and Taheri [19] and also shows that their work becomes a special case of ours. The simplified relations obtained in this study can be used for engineering calculations in many condition

Enhanced Stegano-Cryptographic Model for Secure Electronic Voting

The issue of security in Information and Communication Technology has been identified as the most critical barrier in the widespread adoption of electronic voting (e-voting). Earlier cryptographic models for secure e-voting are vulnerable to attacks and existing stegano-cryptographic models can be manipulated by an eavesdropper. These shortcomings of existing models of secure e-voting are threats to confidentiality, integrity and verifiability of electronic ballot which are critical to overall success of e-democratic decision making through e-voting.This paper develops an enhanced stegano-cryptographic model for secure electronic voting system in poll-site, web and mobile voting scenarios for better citizens’ participation and credible e-democratic election. The electronic ballot was encrypted using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Rivest-Sharma-Adleman cryptographic algorithm. The encrypted voter’s ballot was scattered and hidden in the Least Significant Bit (LSB) of the cover media using information hiding attribute of modified LSB-Wavelet steganographic algorithm. The image quality of the model, stego object was quantitatively assessed using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Structural Similarity Index Metrics (SSIM).The results after quantitative performance evaluation shows that the developed stegano-cryptographic model has generic attribute of secured e-voting relevant for the delivery of credible e-democratic decision making. The large scale implementation of the model would be useful to deliver e-voting of high electoral integrity and political trustworthiness, where genuine e-elections are conducted for the populace by government authority. Keywords: Electronic Voting, Cryptography, Steganography, Video, Image, Wavelet, Securit

Experiences of Girls with Hearing Impairment in Accessing Reproductive Health Care Services in Ibadan, Nigeria

Delivery of health services to people with hearing impairment is poorly understood in Nigeria and limited research has been done to throw more light on the process involved. This study described experiences of 167 girls with hearing impairment in accessing reproductive health services in Ibadan using a validated questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were used to analyze the data. Almost 95.0% of respondents had ever visited health facility for reproductive health issues. Of these 6.2% and 4.6% went for treatment of STIs and pregnancy termination respectively; 36.7% were embarrassed to ask questions in the presence of an interpreter, communication (40.5%) and cost (10.8%) were key barriers to access and 85.6% would use facility if hearing impairment-friendly services are provided. Respondents who were currently working were 20 times more likely to receive services they wanted (OR=20.29, CI=1.05-392.16). Availability of certified interpreters and ensuring confidentiality are key to effective service delivery for the hearing impaired.RésuméLa prestation des services de santé aux personnes atteintes de déficience auditive est mal comprise au Nigéria et il n’y a pas eu assez de recherche faite pour jeter plus de lumière sur le processus impliqué. A l’aide d’un questionnaire validé, cette étude décrit les expériences de 167 filles atteintes de déficience auditive, face à l'accès aux services de santé de la reproduction, à Ibadan. Les statistiques descriptives et de régression logistique binaire ont été utilisées pour analyser les données. Près de 95,0% des interviewées avaient déjà visité un établissement de santé pour les questions de santé de la reproduction. Parmi elles, 6,2% et 4,6% sont allées pour le traitement des ISTs et l'interruption de grossesse, respectivement; 36,7% étaient gênées de poser des questions à la présence d'un interprète ; la communication (40,5%) et le coût (10,8%) étaient les principaux obstacles à l'accès et 85,6% se serviront des établissements de santé si les services adaptés à la déficience auditive sont assurés. Les interviewées qui travaillent actuellement étaient 20 fois plus susceptibles de recevoir des services qu'ils voulaient (OR = 20,29, IC = 1,05 à 392,16). La disponibilité des interprètes certifiés et l’assurance de la confidentialité sont essentielles à la prestation efficace des services pour les personnes atteintes de déficience auditive.Keywords: disability, reproductive health, health care access, hearing impaired girl

Further Results on the Effects of Variable Viscosity and Magnetic Field on Flow and Heat Transfer to a Continuous Flat Plate in the Presence of Heat Generation and Radiation with a Convective Boundary Condition

The steady, laminar boundary layer flow with a convective boundary condition, to a continuously moving flat plate is studied taking into account the variation of viscosity with temperature in the presence of a magnetic field, heat gen-eration and thermal radiation. The fluid viscosity is assumed to vary as a linear function of temperature. The resulting, gov-erning equations are non-dimensionalized and transformed using a similarity transformation and then solved numerically by sixth order Runge-Kutta method alongside with shooting method. Comparison with previously published work is performed and there was a perfect agreement at large value of the Biot number. A parametric study of all the embedded flow parameters involved is conducted, and a representative set of numerical results for the velocity and temperature profiles as well as the skin-friction parameter and the Nusselt number is illustrated graphically to show typical trend of the solutions. It is worth pointing out that, when the variation of viscosity with temperature is strong in the presence of the effect of a magnetic field, radiation, heat generation, the results of the present work are completely different from those that studied the same problem in the absence of magnetic field, thermal radiation and the heat generation. It is interesting to note that higher the values of Prandtl number lesser the effects of Biot number and the magnetic field intensit