CAES: A Model of an RBR-CBR Course Advisory Expert System

Academic student advising is a gargantuan task that places heavy demand on the time, emotions and mental resources of the academic advisor. It is also a mission critical and very delicate task that must be handled with impeccable expertise and precision else the future of the intended student beneficiary may be jeopardized due to poor advising. One integral aspect of student academic advising is course registration, where students make decisions on the choice of courses to take in specific semesters based on their current academic standing. In this paper, we give the description of the design, implementation and trial evaluation of the Course Advisory Expert System (CAES) which is a hybrid of a rule based reasoning (RBR) and case based reasoning (CBR). The RBR component was implemented using JESS. The result of the trial experiment revealed that the system has high performance/user satisfaction rating from the sample expert population conducted

Online Peer-to-Peer Lending: Challenging Consumer Protection Rationales, Orthodoxies and Models?

Online peer-to-peer lending presents challenges to consumer protection rationales and orthodoxies as it enables inter-consumer unsecured loan transactions brokered by platforms. This article therefore assesses relevant consumer protection justifications and the disclosure versus interventionist approaches debate in the light of the crowdfunding regulatory regime recently established by the Financial Conduct Authority

Dangers Associated with Commercial Motorcycle Transport Business: Implications for Adult Education in Nigeria

Commercial motorcycle transport business as a mode public transportation has been widely embraced by many in Nigeria due to its perceived benefits. Its perceived benefits include its flexibility in taking people to the last bit of their destinations, quick generation of money to meet basic life needs as well as its characteristic of cheap and easy maintenance. Despite these perceived benefits, the paper identifies dangers associated with it and sees it as unsustainable. The paper also identifies adult education programmes that are relevant for the correction of the anomaly of accepting its perceived benefits without due consideration of its dangers. The paper concludes that despite the perceived benefits of commercial motorcycle transport business, the dangers associated with it outweigh its benefits. It therefore recommends that serious attention and recognition from the government and the general public in all ramifications should be given to adult education in Nigeria. Keywords: commercial motorcycle, transportation, adult educatio

Analysis of critical imposed load of plate using variational calculus

This work studied the critical load analysis of rectangular plates, carrying uniformly distributed loads utilizing direct variational energy calculus. The aim of this study is to establish the techniques for calculating the critical lateral imposed loads of the plate before deflection attains the specified maximum threshold, qiw as well as its corresponding critical lateral imposed load before the plate reaches an elastic yield point. The formulated potential energy by the static elastic theory of the plate was minimized to get the shear deformation and coefficient of deflection. The plates under consideration are clamped at the first and second edges, free of support at the third edge and simply supported at the fourth edge (CCFS). From the numerical analysis obtained, it is found that the critical lateral imposed loads (qiw and qip) increase as the thickness (t) of plate increases, and decrease as the length to width ratio increases. This suggests that as the thickness increases, the allowable deflection improves the safety of the plate, whereas an increase in the span (length) of the plate increases the failure tendency of the plate structure

Analytical Study of Bending Characteristics of an Elastic Rectangular Plate using Direct Variational Energy Approach with Trigonometric Function

In this paper, an analytical three-dimensional (3D) bending characteristic of an isotropic rectangular thick plate with all edges simply supported (SSSS) and carrying uniformly distributed transverse load using the energy technique is presented. The three-dimensional constitutive relations which involves six stress components were used in the established, refined shear deformation theory to obtain a total potential energy functional. This theory obviates application of the shear correction factors for the solution to the problem. The governing equation of a thick plate was obtained by minimizing the total potential energy functional with respect to the out of plane displacement. The deflection functions which are in form of trigonometric were obtained as the solution of the governing equation. These deflection functions which are the product of the coefficient of deflection and shape function of the plate were substituted back into the energy functional, thereafter a realistic formula for calculating the deflection and stresses were obtained through minimizations with respect to the rotations and deflection coefficients. The values of the deflections and stresses obtained herein were tabulated and compared with those of previous 3D plate theory, refined plate theories and, classical plate theory (CPT) accordingly. It was observed that the result obtained herein varied more with those of CPT and RPT by 25.39% and 21.09% for all span-to-thickness ratios respectively. Meanwhile, the recorded percentage differences are as close as 7.17% for all span-to-thickness ratios, when compared with three dimensional plate analysis. This showed that exact 3D plate theory is more reliable than the shear deformation theory which are quite coarse for thick plate analysis. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01320 Full Text: PD

Sexual Harassment in Nigeria: Lessons from the United Kingdom

This paper showed that laws in Nigeria are not adequate to protect workers from sexual harassment and are needed to curb the societal menace. International and regional provisions on sexual harassment at work were examined as well as the applicable laws in the UK with a view to recommending changes to the Nigerian laws. The author showed that perception of sexual harassment can vary from one society to another and with that in mind, suggested that any enactment of laws in Nigeria to eliminate sexual harassment should take account of the patriarchal nature of the Nigerian society

Non-linear bending and stress analysis of a transversely loaded isotropic plates material using 3-D plate theory

This paper presents the bending stress analysis of anisotropic plate material under transverse loading using a three-dimensional (3-D) plate theory. The static elastic theory was used to formulate the total energy expression of the plate thereafter, transformed into a compatibility equation through general variation to get the slope and deflection relationship. The solution of equations of the equilibrium gave rise to the exact polynomial deflection function while the coefficient of deflection and shear deformation of the plate was gotten from the governing equation through the direct variation method. These solutions were used to obtain the characteristic expression for analyzing the displacement and stresses of the rectangular plate. This formula was used for the solution of the bending problem of the rectangular plate that is clamped at the first-two edge and the other edges simply supported (CCSS). The result of the deflection and stresses decrease as the span-thickness ratio increases. More so, the aspect ratio effect of the shear stress of isotropic plates is investigated and discussed after a comparative analysis between the present work and previous studies. The result shows that the present study differs from that refined plate theory (RPT) of assumed deflection by 5.5% whereas exact 2-D RPT by 5.3%. This shows the efficacy of the exact 3-D plate theory for flexural characteristics of CCSS isotropic rectangular thick plate

Static Elastic Bending Analysis of a Three-Dimensional Clamped Thick Rectangular Plate using Energy Method

Analytical formulations and solutions for the thick rectangular plate static analysis with clamped support based on a three-dimensional (3-D) elasticity theory is developed using the energy method. The theoretical model, whose formulation is based on the static elastic principle as already reported in the literature, is presented herein to obviate the shear correction coefficients while considering shear deformation effect and transverse normal strain/stress in the analysis. The equilibrium equations are obtained using 3-D kinematic and constitutive relations. The deflection and rotation functions, which are the solutions of the equilibrium equation, are obtained in closed form using a general variational technique for solving the boundary value problem. The minimization energy equation yields the general equation which was used to obtain the theoretical model for the deflection and stresses of the plate. The results are compared with the available literature and the results-computed trigonometric displacement function shows that this 3-D predicts the vertical displacement and the stresses more accurately than previous studies considered in this paper. The result showed that the percentage difference between the present work and those of 2-D Mindlin FSDT, 2-D numeric analysis, and 2-D HSDT of polynomial shape functions was about 3.02%, 0.62%, and 0.33%, respectively. It is concluded that the 3-D trigonometric model gives an exact solution, unlike other 2-D theories, and can be used for clamped-supported thick plate analysis. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2022-03-03-03 Full Text: PD

Removal of Hg II and Cu II Ions from Aqueous Solution Using Activated Carbon Produced from Palm Fruit Fibre

Studies were carried out to evaluate the removal of Hg II and Cu II ions from aqueous solution using activated carbon produced from palm fruit fibre. Appropriate analytical procedure and instrumentation was applied in carrying out the batch adsorption experiment. Increase in adsorbents dosage and solution temperature was found to significantly increase the removal of the two metal ions from aqueous solution. Increase in the initial concentration of the adsorbate significantly reduced the adsorption efficiency of the adsorbent due to increase in the adsorbate concentration in the solution to the unchanging number of adsorption sides on the adsorbent. The solution pH and contact time of the adsorbate and adsorbent reached maximum removal efficiency at 6.0 and 45min respectively revealing the dependency of effective adsorption by activated carbon on these factors. The ∆S and ∆H of the adsorption were positive showing an endothermic adsorption process. The decrease in Gibbs free energy of adsorption with increase in adsorption efficiency of the activated carbon shows that effective adsorption of adsorbates favours high temperatures. Keywords: Activated carbon, Heavy metals, Cu II ions, Hg II ions Adsorption efficiency and Aqueous solution. DOI: 10.7176/CMR/11-6-05 Publication date: August 31st 201