Rethinking the Obvious: Time for New Ideas on Medical Malpractice Tort Reform

States have engaged in medical malpractice litigation reforms over the past 30 years to reduce malpractice insurance premiums, increase the supply of physicians, reduce the cost of healthcare, and increase efficiency. These reforms have included caps on non-economic damages and legal procedural changes. Despite these reforms, healthcare costs in the U.S. remain among the highest in the world, provider shortages remain, and defensive medicine practices persist. The purpose of this study was to determine how successful traditional medical malpractice reforms have been at controlling medical costs, decreasing defensive medicine practices, lowering malpractice premiums, and reducing the frequency of medical malpractice litigation. Research has shown that direct reforms and aggressive damage caps has had the most significant impact on lowering malpractice premiums and increasing physician supply. Out of the metrics which were improved by malpractice reforms, similar improvements were shown because of quality reform measures. While traditional tort reforms have shown some targeted improvement, large scale, system-wide change has not been realized, and thus it is time to consider alternative reforms

Comparative Performance of Mechanically Induced Compaction on Maize Growth for Two Soils of Nigeria

Experimental trials were conducted on two soils (loam and clay (iwo series)) to study the effect of mechanically induced compaction on the growth of maize in a greenhouse. The compaction levels were at five levels: 1.2gcm-3, 1.3gcm-3, 1.4gcm-3, 1.6gcm-3 and 1.8gcm-3. 30 compressed buckets were arranged in three rows in a completely randomized block design and a bucket for each soil as control. Plant parameters such as percentage emergence, plant height, leaf number, stem girth, root weight and cone penetration were measured. The results showed a significant difference in crop emergence, leaf number, plant height, stem girth, root weight and come penetration for the two soils at different compaction levels. Crop yield decreased over 50% in performance as compaction increased. The maximum average plant height of 108.93cm and 74.33cm were observed for both loam and clay soil respectively at 1.2gcm-3 and 1.6gcm-3. Keywords: Comparative Performance, Maize Growth, Mechanically Induced Compaction, Soils of Nigeri

Comparative Assessment of Two Methods in the Production of Fermented Cassava Flour (Láfún) on Manual Energy Expended, Retting Time and the Product Quality

In this study, two methods (pre peeled and post pealed) of processing fermented cassava flour “Lafun” are compared on the bases of production cost (time and manual energy), and product quality. To establish the bases, some anthropometry parameters of the processor were measured, alongside with workstation parameters, which includes environmental factors. An experiment was set up and carried out using 66kg of cassava tubers; 33kg each for respective methods, black plastic drums of equal volumes (50liters) containing 30liters of water in each.  The results showed that pre peeled method has longer production time, which is associated with retting period (12 days), while post peeled took only 5 days to ret. Also, manual energy expended on dissimilar operations showed that more energy is consumed in pre peeled method of production compared to post peeled methods. The quality test of the fermented flour showed that, the pre peeled method gives better nutritional values, while the post peeled method presented high level of microorganisms when compared. It is concluded on the fact that, the end products seem to counterbalance the processing methods. Keywords: Comparative Assessment, Fermented Cassava Flour (Láfún), Manual Energy Expended, Production Methods, Product Quality, Retting Tim

Performance Evaluation of A Developed Dewatered Cassava Mash Sifter

A cassava pulp sifter for grated and dewatered cassava was developed and evaluated. The machine was evaluated at three operating speeds of 260rpm, 350rpm and 530rpm and masses of 1kg, 2kg and 3kg.  It was observed that increase in the speed of operation increased both sieving capacity and sieving efficiency of the machine. Increase in mass, increased sieving capacity and decreased sieving efficiency. The average maximum sifting efficiency and capacity were 95.32% and 613.16kg/hr respectively. All the materials used for the fabrication were obtained locally and the machine has low labour requirements which can be adopted in gari processing industries. Keywords: Cassava, Dewatered, Mash, Performance Evaluation, Shifter DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/99-04 Publication date:July 31st 202

Phytochemistry of methanol seed extract of Abrus precatorius and its effect on spermatogenesis in rats

The methanol seed extract of Abrus precatorius was studied for its acute toxicity and its effect on spermatogenesis in rats as well as its phytochemical constituents. The results of this investigation showed that the LD50 of the methanol seed extract following oral administration was above 5000 mg/kg showing low toxicity. Histological studies of the liver, kidneys and testes of the rats treated with the various oral doses (10 - 5000 mg/kg body weight) showed no remarkable changes in the hepatocytes, kidney cells and testes compared to the control. The effects on sperm cells did not show any significant increase in total sperm head counts. The Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of pharmacologically active compounds such as reducing sugars, tannins, cardiac glycosides, terpenoids, saponins and flavonoids. In conclusion, the methanol seed extract of Abrus precatorius contain important phytochemical constituents possessing pharmacological activities and it is relatively safe but has no effects on sperm cell production.Keywords: Abrus precatorius, acute toxicity, phytochemical constituents, spermatogenesi

Performance Evaluation of Kernel-Based Feature Extraction Techniques for Face Recognition System

Face recognition is considered to be one of the most reliable biometrics where security issues are of concerned. Feature extraction which is a functional block of a face recognition system becomes a critical problem when there is need to obtain the best feature with minimum classification error and low running time. Most existing face recognition systems have adopted different non-linear feature extraction techniques for face recognition but identification of the most suitable non-linear kernel variants for these systems remain an open problem. Hence, this research work analyzed the performance of three kernel feature extraction technique (Kernel Principal Component Analysis, Kernel Linear Discriminant Analysis and Kernel Independent Component Analysis) for face recognition system. A database of 360 face images was created by obtaining facial images from LAUTECH Biometric Research Group consisting of six facial expressions of 60 persons. Images were preprocessed (gray scaling, cropping and histogram equalization) and the kernel variants were used to extract distinctive features and reduce the dimensionality of each of the images from 600x800 pixels to four smaller dimensions: 50x50, 100x100, 150x150 and 200x200 pixels. Euclidean Distance similarity measure was used for classification. The performance of the three kernel variants was evaluated for face recognition system using 180 images for training and 180 images for testing using the following metrics: Recognition Accuracy (RA) and Recognition Time (RT). Empirical result indicate that KLDA performs best for face recognition system with an average accuracy of 94.52%.  The larger image dimension also results in better recognition performance. We intend to experiment on other classifiers for face recognition system in our future work. Keywords— Biometrics, Face, Feature extraction, Kernel, KICA, KPCA, KLDA, Linear, Non-linear

A new model for curbing filtrate loss in dynamic application of nano-treated aqueous mud systems

Filter cake formation during rotary drilling operation is an unavoidable scenario, hence there is need for constant improvement in the approaches used in monitoring the cake thickness growth in order to prevent drill-string sticking. This study proposes an improved model that predicts the growth of mud cake thickness overtime with the consideration of the addition of nanoparticles in the formulated drilling fluid system. Ferric oxide, titanium dioxide and copper oxide nanoparticles were used in varying amounts (2 g, 4 g and 6 g), and filtration data were obtained from the HPHT filtration test. The filter cakes formed were further analyzed with scanning electron microscope to obtain the morphological characteristics. The data obtained was used to validate the new filtrate loss model. This model specifically presents the concept of time variation in filter cake formation as against the previous works of constant and definite time. Regression coefficient which is a statistical measure was used to validate the new model and the predicted results were compared with the API model. The new model showed R2 values of 99.9%, and the predictions from the proposed filtration model can be said to be more closely related to the experimental data than that predicted from the API model from the SSE and RMSE result

Insight into the photodegradation mechanism of bisphenol-A by oxygen doped mesoporous carbon nitride under visible light irradiation and DFT calculations

Oxygen doped mesoporous carbon nitride (O-MCN) was successfully synthesized through one-step thermal polymerization of urea and glucose utilizing nanodisc silica (NDS) from rice husk ash as a hard template. The CO2 gas, NH 3 and water vapor produced during the thermal process reshaped the morphology and textural properties of the of O-MCN compared to pristine mesoporous carbon nitride (MCN). Highest bisphenol A (BPA) removal achieved under visible light irradiation was 97%, with 60% mineralization ([BPA] ¼ 10 mg L�1 : catalyst dosage ¼ 40 mg L-1 ; pH ¼ 10; 180 min). In addition to mesoporosity, the sub-gap impurity states created from the oxygen doping reduced recombination rate of photogenerated carriers. Holes (h+ ) and superoxide (O2c�) were identified as the predominant active species responsible for the photodegradation process. The photodegradation route was proposed based on the intermediates detected by LC-time-of-flight/mass spectrometry (LC/TOF-MS). The Density of States (DOS) showed that oxygen doping resulted in a higher photoactivity due to the stronger localization and delocalization of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO). The adsorption pathway of the BPA on the O-MCN and MCN was successfully predicted using the DFT calculations, namely molecular electrostatic potential (MEP), global and local descriptors

Photoreactive carbon dots modified g-C3N4 for effective photooxidation of bisphenol-A under visible light irradiation

A series of carbon dots (CDs) modified g-C3N4 (xCDs/g-C3N4; x = 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 mL CDs solution) was synthesized via the microwave-assisted hydrothermal synthesis method for the photooxidation of bisphenol-A (BPA) under visible light irradiation. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis indicates that the CDs may have a turbostratic structure and the resulting photocatalysts have distorted crystal structure, as compared with pure g-C3N4. The high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) analysis revealed amorphous, mono-disperse, spherical CDs with an average particle size of 3.75 nm. The distribution of CDs within the matrix of g-C3N4 appear as small dark dot-like domains. The N2 adsorption-desorption analysis indicates that the nanocomposites are mesoporous with a density functional theory (DFT) estimate of the pore size distribution between 2–13 nm. The CDs quantum yield (QY) was determined to be 12% using the UV-vis spectral analysis, where the CDs/g-C3N4 has improved absorption in the visible region than g-C3N4. The higher BET surface area of CDs/g-C3N4 provided more adsorption sites and the ability to yield photogenerated e−/h+ pairs, which caused the 1.5 CDs/g-C3N4 to have better photocatalytic efficiency compared to the rest of the systems. The highest removal, 90%, was achieved at the following optimum conditions: BPA initial concentration = 20 mg L−1, catalyst dosage = 30 mg L−1, and pH = 10. The photooxidation process is mainly driven by photogenerated holes (h+) followed by •OH and O2•−. The synthesis of the 1.5 CDs/g-C3N4 system is simple and cost-effective, where this photocatalyst is highly stable and reusable versus other systems reported in the literature