The Nigerian Economic Transformation Agenda: Religious and Security Factors

The Transformation Agenda is based on and draws its inspiration from vision 20 2020 and the first National Implementation Plan (NIP). The objective is to deepen the effects and provide sense of direction for the current administration’s all inclusive development of Nigeria during its tenure. The agenda is a based on the set of priority policies and programmes which will transform the Nigerian economy to meet what current and future needs of our people. A country is classified as developed when she is able to provide qualitative life for her citizenry. Development or transformation is critical and essential to the sustenance of any nation. In spite of the huge human, material and natural resources in her possession, Nigeria in the last fifty two years have been battling with the problems of development. This paper has highlighted a perspective view of earlier similar efforts. A lot of factors have been involved. However, the paper dwells on religious tolerance and security as crucial vehicles in the current effort to transform the Nigerian economy. Religious value systems play very significant role in collective, self-awareness and identity, which draw together individuals, families and regions and pull them towards greater self-consciousness needed to build and animate a nation from within. In this context, security involves freedom from danger or threat to a nation’s ability to protect and develop itself, promote its cherished values and well-being of its people. National Security is therefore a sine-qua-non for political stability and socio economic development of any nation. The paper has in detail discussed how the virtually absence of these factors is marring the current transformation of the present administration. Suggestions or recommendations are offered on how to promote religious tolerance and national security in order to achieve the transformation agenda and ensure that Nigeria is counted among the top twenty developed countries by the year 2020. Key Words: Transformation, Religious Tolerance, Security

Consumer Preference for Sustainable Tourism Certifications: A Choice Modeling Approach

Certifying tourism businesses as sustainable has been proposed as a means to connect the academic goals of ecotourism to the industry. One obstacle that impedes the development of widely recognized sustainable tourism certifications is the lack of knowledge regarding consumer preferences for these certifications. A better understanding of consumer desires is needed in order to create sustainable tourism certifications that will generate price premiums for certified businesses and thus accelerate the growth of certified businesses. This study uses a stated-preference choice modeling approach to examine consumer preference for sustainable tourism certifications amongst international tourists in Tanzania. Results suggest that certifications that emphasize environmental sustainability are more important to tourists than certifications that emphasize cultural or economic sustainability. Additionally, the more stringent certifications provide relatively little increase in consumer utility. The implications of the findings on the development of sustainable tourism certifications are discussed

Path integral formulation of Hodge duality on the brane

In the warped compactification with a single Randall-Sundrum brane, a puzzling claim has been made that scalar fields can be bound to the brane but their Hodge dual higher-rank anti-symmetric tensors cannot. By explicitly requiring the Hodge duality, a prescription to resolve this puzzle was recently proposed by Duff and Liu. In this note, we implement the Hodge duality via path integral formulation in the presence of the background gravity fields of warped compactifications. It is shown that the prescription of Duff and Liu can be naturally understood within this framework.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe

20 K superconductivity in heavily electron doped surface layer of FeSe bulk crystal

A superconducting transition temperature Tc as high as 100 K was recently discovered in 1 monolayer (1ML) FeSe grown on SrTiO3 (STO). The discovery immediately ignited efforts to identify the mechanism for the dramatically enhanced Tc from its bulk value of 7 K. Currently, there are two main views on the origin of the enhanced Tc; in the first view, the enhancement comes from an interfacial effect while in the other it is from excess electrons with strong correlation strength. The issue is controversial and there are evidences that support each view. Finding the origin of the Tc enhancement could be the key to achieving even higher Tc and to identifying the microscopic mechanism for the superconductivity in iron-based materials. Here, we report the observation of 20 K superconductivity in the electron doped surface layer of FeSe. The electronic state of the surface layer possesses all the key spectroscopic aspects of the 1ML FeSe on STO. Without any interface effect, the surface layer state is found to have a moderate Tc of 20 K with a smaller gap opening of 4 meV. Our results clearly show that excess electrons with strong correlation strength alone cannot induce the maximum Tc, which in turn strongly suggests need for an interfacial effect to reach the enhanced Tc found in 1ML FeSe/STO.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Tourism and Local Character in South Carolina: A Stated Preference Based Demand Analysis

This study attempts to quantify tourists’ demand for regional character on vacations to the South Carolina (SC) coast. Preferences for authentic elements such as the destination’s local flair and the local ownership of restaurants were measured using stated-preference choice modeling. This technique forces individuals to make tradeoffs between hypothetical trips based on attributes such as number of activities, amount of locally owned restaurants, degree of local flair, and price. The results of the survey (n=240) indicate a statistically significant demand for local flair and local restaurant ownership, although the demand plateaus after reaching a moderate level

Analysis of Lung Metastases in Patients with Primary Extremity Sarcoma

Purpose: To investigate the incidence, radiographic findings, and the time course for the appearence of lung metastases from primary extremity sarcoma

Synaptotagmin-12, a synaptic vesicle phosphoprotein that modulates spontaneous neurotransmitter release

Central synapses exhibit spontaneous neurotransmitter release that is selectively regulated by cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA). We now show that synaptic vesicles contain synaptotagmin-12, a synaptotagmin isoform that differs from classical synaptotagmins in that it does not bind Ca2+. In synaptic vesicles, synaptotagmin-12 forms a complex with synaptotagmin-1 that prevents synaptotagmin-1 from interacting with SNARE complexes. We demonstrate that synaptotagmin-12 is phosphorylated by cAMP-dependent PKA on serine97, and show that expression of synaptotagmin-12 in neurons increases spontaneous neurotransmitter release by approximately threefold, but has no effect on evoked release. Replacing serine97 by alanine abolishes synaptotagmin-12 phosphorylation and blocks its effect on spontaneous release. Our data suggest that spontaneous synaptic-vesicle exocytosis is selectively modulated by a Ca2+-independent synaptotagmin isoform, synaptotagmin-12, which is controlled by cAMP-dependent phosphorylation