Patterns and outcome of respiratory disease among adult in-patients, in Abuja-Nigeria

Objectives: Respiratory disease is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Most of the deaths will occur in low resource countries like Nigeria. There is limited data on the burden of these respiratory diseases.Methods: A retrospective study of three hundred and seventy-seven (377) cases was carried out. Case selection was based on review by at least a specialist pulmonologist. Other data were retrieved with the help of questionnaire for analysis.Results: Respiratory diseases accounted for about 10.4% of hospital admissions at the medical emergency of the hospital. Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) (40.3%) and acute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRTI) (27.9%) were the major presentation. More deaths occurred from PTB (51.6%), with HIV and diabetes mellitus been the major comorbidities commonly associated with the disease presentation.Conclusion: The burden of respiratory diseases is substantial, with communicable diseases such as PTB and ALRTI are leading in terms of inpatient presentation. HIV disease is the main condition commonly associated with morbidity and mortality.Keywords: respiratory diseases, burden, outcom

Portfolio Optimization of Pension Fund Contribution in Nigeria

In this research work, we investigate the optimality of pension portfolio of 2004 pension reform guidelines in Nigeria using the Net Asset Values (NSA) from the First Alliance and Benefits Ltd as our scarce resources. The resources are distributed as different portfolios of asset classes for comparative analysis. Linear programming technique is used to carry out the analysis of the data using TORA Operations Research software to select the optimal mix of opportunities that would maximize the return while meeting the investment conditions set by each portfolio class and other constraints by Pen Com. We conclude that the Pen Com guided portfolio is not optimum as revealed by the hypothesis test. Keywords: Portfolio Optimization, Contributory Pension Scheme, Defined Benefit Scheme Linear Programming

Determination of The Major Challenges of Compliance to Set Standards for Establishment of Petroleum Filling Stations in Anambra State

Considering the high level of non-compliance of petroleum filling stations to the set standards by DPR, NESREA and the Anambra State Physical Planning Board/Local Authorities, this study emerged to determine the major challenges of compliance to set standards for establishment of petroleum filling stations by the petroleum filling stations in Anambra State.  This study adopted the survey research design. This involved the use of well-structured questionnaire(s) to generate data by ascertaining first-hand information from the general public (non-professionals) and professionals in town planning and development control. 60 professionals and 400 households were sampled. The mean cut-off of 3.0 was calculated from the adopted 5-point likert scale to ascertain the major challenges. After harmonizing the opinion of the Professionals with those of the general public (Non-Professionals), the main challenges to compliance with set standards in the study area were found to include the following: Scarcity of land, Fear of relocation from original business site, Construction or expansion of roads after the petrol station has been constructed, Competition for business sites/spaces, High cost of land, Difficult land acquisition processes, Corruption of law enforcement agents, Improper urban planning, Ignorance of the after effects of activities by the developers, Failure of the Government to properly monitor activities of the filling stations and Godfathering and inequity in enforcing the set standards. The study thus recommended that: there should be strict monitoring of the development control practices and agencies by the government; Scaling down the requirements to be met by developers before land is acquired to aid easy relocation in the case of business expansion will aid compliance; review of standards that are inconsistent with the present day need of urban development will make the present day developers more compliant to these standards. Also ensuring free and fair judgment on all concerned regardless of who owns the petroleum filling station or who is involved (primacy to the rule of law), will restore discipline and enhance compliance. KEYWORDS: Challenges of compliance, set standards for establishment of petroleum filling stations. DOI: 10.7176/JEES/10-2-10 Publication date: February 29th 202

Superconductivity and Stoichiometry in the BSCCO-family Materials

We report on magnetization, c-axis and ab-plane resistivity, critical current, electronic band structure and superconducting gap properties. Bulk measurements and photoemission data were taken on similar samples.Comment: 4 pages, latex, to be published in Journal of Superconductivity. two figures available from Jian Ma at [email protected]

Prevalence of Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase (G6PD) Deficiency among Neonates with Jaundice in a Tertiary Hospitalin Nigeria

G6PD deficiency is known to be associated with neonatal jaundice, kernicterus and even death. G6PD is the first enzyme of the pentose phosphate pathway and catalyzes the conversion of glucose-6-phosphate to 6-phosphogluconolactone, with the concomitant reduction of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP) to its reduced form (NADPH). Three hundred and twenty five neonatal blood samples were collected for the study between the ages of 1–10days of both sexes. About 4ml of blood sample was collected from newborn baby with jaundice, 2ml of blood sample was dispensed into di-potassium ethylenediaminetetracetic acid (K2EDTA) bottles for packed cell volume and haemoglobin estimation using haematology analyzer (sysmex model KX-21N) also K2EDTA blood sample was used for G6PD status determination, remaining 2ml of blood sample was dispensed into heparin bottles for bilirubin estimation. Out of 325 newborn babies with neonatal jaundice, 96(29.5%) were G6PD deficient; 57 were male and 39 were female. Mean± SD of total bilirubin (B1) andconjugated bilirubin(B2) were significantly (P<0.05) higher in G6PD- deficient participants compared with G6PD normal. Neonates should be screened for G6PD deficiency when family history, ethnic or geographic origin on the timing of the appearance of neonatal jaundice suggests the possibility of G6PD deficiency.

Study of air pollution using the leaves of some plant species from two cities in Delta State, Nigeria

The comparative study of air quality in two cities in the Niger Delta Region of Delta State, Nigeria was investigated. Eleven duplicates of fully matured leaves samples of Vernonia amygdalina, Magnifera indica, Citrius sinesis, Psidium guajava, Colocasia esculanta L., Anacadium occidentale, Carica papaya L., Elais guinensis, Bambosa Bambosa, Delonix regia and Musa paradisiacal L. cultivated in Agbarho metropolis in Ughelli North local government area and Osubi metropolis in Okpe local government area both of Delta State were randomly collected and analyzed for their ascorbic acid content, water retention capacity, chlorophyll and pH. Data from this study reveals higher relative water and chlorophyll content in experimental site as compared to the control site. This study further reveals that about 82% of plant species collected from the experimental sites showed higher ascorbic acid and pH content. While the air pollution tolerance index values were higher in experimental site as compared to those from the control site, the percentage increase in APTI values in the leaves of the plant species ranges from 5.42 to 26.49. The plant species under investigation shows increasing tolerance to air pollution in the order of Vernonia amygdalina (5.42) > Magnifera indica (6.54) > Citrius sinesis (6.69) > Psidium guajava (7.13) > Colocasia esculanta L. (7.61) > Anacadium occidentale (7.93) > Carica papaya L. (11.46) > Elais guinensis (16.20) > Bambosa bambosa (22.00) > Delonix regia (26.01) > Musa paradisiacal L. (26.49). Though, this study reveals conflicting results for the individual biochemical parameters to the tolerance of air pollution in both experimental and control sites, combining the various biochemical parameters for computing the APTI values gives more reliable results. Hence, a relationship is not only observed in the accumulation of chemical substance used in determining the extent of damage done by pollution in the leaves of all the plant species under investigation, but a gradient also exist for the individual parameters in the experimental sites as compared to those from the control sites and it is thus reflected in the APTI values recorded from both sites.Keywords: Air, APTI, Ascorbic Acid, Biochemical, Delta State, Pollution Water retention capacit

A note on the algebraic growth rate of Poincar\'e series for Kleinian groups

In this note we employ infinite ergodic theory to derive estimates for the algebraic growth rate of the Poincar\'e series for a Kleinian group at its critical exponent of convergence.Comment: 8 page

Relaxation times for Hamiltonian systems

Usually, the relaxation times of a gas are estimated in the frame of the Boltzmann equation. In this paper, instead, we deal with the relaxation problem in the frame of the dynamical theory of Hamiltonian systems, in which the definition itself of a relaxation time is an open question. We introduce a lower bound for the relaxation time, and give a general theorem for estimating it. Then we give an application to a concrete model of an interacting gas, in which the lower bound turns out to be of the order of magnitude of the relaxation times observed in dilute gases.Comment: 26 page

Protein-mediated dethreading of a biotin-functionalised pseudorotaxane

In this article, we describe the synthesis of new biotin-functionalised naphthalene derivatives 3 and 4 and their complexation behaviour with avidin and neutravidin using a range of analytical techniques. We have shown using 2-(4prime or minute-hydroxyazobenzene)benzoic acid displacement and ITC experiments{,} that compounds 3 and 4 have the propensity to form reasonably high-affinity bioconjugates with avidin and neutravidin. We have also demonstrated using 1H NMR{,} UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopy that the naphthalene moiety of 3 and 4 facilitates the formation of pseudorotaxane-like structures with 1 in water. We have then investigated the ability of avidin and neutravidin to modulate the complexation between 1 and 3 or 4. UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopy has shown that in both cases the addition of the protein disrupts complexation between the naphthalene moieties of 3 and 4 with 1

Universal neural field computation

Turing machines and G\"odel numbers are important pillars of the theory of computation. Thus, any computational architecture needs to show how it could relate to Turing machines and how stable implementations of Turing computation are possible. In this chapter, we implement universal Turing computation in a neural field environment. To this end, we employ the canonical symbologram representation of a Turing machine obtained from a G\"odel encoding of its symbolic repertoire and generalized shifts. The resulting nonlinear dynamical automaton (NDA) is a piecewise affine-linear map acting on the unit square that is partitioned into rectangular domains. Instead of looking at point dynamics in phase space, we then consider functional dynamics of probability distributions functions (p.d.f.s) over phase space. This is generally described by a Frobenius-Perron integral transformation that can be regarded as a neural field equation over the unit square as feature space of a dynamic field theory (DFT). Solving the Frobenius-Perron equation yields that uniform p.d.f.s with rectangular support are mapped onto uniform p.d.f.s with rectangular support, again. We call the resulting representation \emph{dynamic field automaton}.Comment: 21 pages; 6 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1204.546