Revisiting the Effects of Workers’ Remittances on Economic Development in Nigeria

Poverty in Nigeria continues unabated despite huge inflow of remittances. Our result supports the argument that remittances can improve economic growth but can also worsen overall wellbeing. Reasons for this are, first, remittances beneficiaries in Nigeria are concentrated in the middle income class with high propensity to consume. Second, due to high propensity to consume, consumption triggers good prices in such a way as to worsen the purchasing power of the poor. Third, institutions are weak and the poor do not benefit from weak institution. Thus good quality institutions should be encouraged while ostentatious spending should be discouraged

Social Responsibility Of Private Higher Educational Sector Towards The Teaching Faculties

Sensitization of staff is one of the fundamental agenda behindhand of social responsibility when focused from any view. Recent years we could find emerging of many universities and colleges in and around globally. According to the UGC (University Grants Commission) Feb 2020 list, India has 935 universities includes 409 state universities, 349 private universities, 50 central universities and 127 deemed to be universities. In India, colleges and universities play a vital role in societies. Also from the Educational Statistics at A Glance (ESAG) survey published by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education & Literacy Statistics Division, the study discovers that the number of private universities increases every year. Due to the decrease in the government financial support and lack of initiating the steps to make our higher education globalization, education has now been commercialized as required to house themselves in this capitalized market. This change has not only impacted the curricular edition but has also decreased the concept of social responsibility. This paper aims to bring out the challenges and discuss how universities can attain charity, sustainability and provide financial support at time of need. The study used both the primary and secondary data survey to find out the percentage of satisfactory level among the employers who are directly involved to the university

Review on Optic Disc Localization Techniques

The optic disc (OD) is one of the important part of the eye for detecting various diseases such as Diabetic Retinopathy and Glaucoma. The localization of optic disc is extremely important for determining hard exudates and lesions. Diagnosis of the disease can prevent people from vision loss. This paper analyzes various techniques which are proposed by different authors for the exact localization of optic disc to prevent vision loss

PREVALENCE OF METABOLIC SYNDROME AND ITS COMPONENTS IN WOMEN WITH SUBCLINICAL HYPOTHYROIDISM

Objective: Thyroid dysfunction was found to be more common among women with metabolic syndrome. A cross-sectional analysis showed that subjects with subclinical hypothyroidism (SH) had high prevalence of cardiovascular disease than euthyroid subjects. The objective of the current study is to evaluate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular risk factors among subclinical  hypothyroid subjects. Methods:  Thirty untreated subclinical hypothyroid women and thirty normal healthy subjects were recruited for the study. Fasting blood samples were collected for lipid profile, glucose and insulin level estimation. Results: Fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL-cholesterol were found to be significantly increased in SH patients Both systolic and diastolic blood pressures were higher in the patient group. 43.3 percent of the SH patients were found to satisfy the criteria for metabolic syndrome. Conclusion: In our study, subclinical hypothyroidism is significantly associated with metabolic syndrome and its components. Whether this association might be translated into a compounded cardiovascular risk needs to be evaluated by further studies.Key Words: Subclinical hypothyroidism, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular risk

Impact of malaria related messages on insecticide-treated net (ITN) use for malaria prevention in Ghana

Background: Media messages have been used in Ghana to promote insecticide-treated net (ITN)/bed net usage in an effort to impact on malaria prevention. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of such malaria-related messages delivered through electronic/print media and by volunteers/health workers on the use of ITNs by children living in a household. Methods: Data was collected from September to November of 2008 using a structured, interviewer-administered questionnaire by the Ghana Statistical Service as part of a national demographic and health survey (DHS). Secondary data analysis was performed on the collected data using multivariate logistic regression for both individual messages and a composite (any of) message variable. Results: From the 11,788 households surveyed, 45% had at least one net. Households with male heads were more likely to have a child sleeping under a bed net the previous night (p = 0.0001). Individual Messages delivered by a health worker or a dedicated radio programme, had the highest effect for one or more children sleeping under a net the night before (OR adjusted = 1.65; 95% CI = 1.44 to 1.88 and OR adjusted = 1.26; 95% CI =1.12 to 1.42 respectively) while hearing any of the eight messages (composite score) resulted in the highest odds for one or more children (OR adjusted = 3.06; 95% CI = 2.27 to 4.12) sleeping under a bed net. Conclusion: Efforts to relate ITN messages to the public are very useful in increasing use of bed nets and having multiple ways of reaching the public increases their effect, with the biggest effect seen when health workers and volunteers were used to deliver malaria-related messages to the public

A Framework for Bioacoustic Vocalization Analysis Using Hidden Markov Models

Using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) as a recognition framework for automatic classification of animal vocalizations has a number of benefits, including the ability to handle duration variability through nonlinear time alignment, the ability to incorporate complex language or recognition constraints, and easy extendibility to continuous recognition and detection domains. In this work, we apply HMMs to several different species and bioacoustic tasks using generalized spectral features that can be easily adjusted across species and HMM network topologies suited to each task. This experimental work includes a simple call type classification task using one HMM per vocalization for repertoire analysis of Asian elephants, a language-constrained song recognition task using syllable models as base units for ortolan bunting vocalizations, and a stress stimulus differentiation task in poultry vocalizations using a non-sequential model via a one-state HMM with Gaussian mixtures. Results show strong performance across all tasks and illustrate the flexibility of the HMM framework for a variety of species, vocalization types, and analysis tasks

A Framework for Bioacoustic Vocalization Analysis Using Hidden Markov Models

Using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) as a recognition framework for automatic classification of animal vocalizations has a number of benefits, including the ability to handle duration variability through nonlinear time alignment, the ability to incorporate complex language or recognition constraints, and easy extendibility to continuous recognition and detection domains. In this work, we apply HMMs to several different species and bioacoustic tasks using generalized spectral features that can be easily adjusted across species and HMM network topologies suited to each task. This experimental work includes a simple call type classification task using one HMM per vocalization for repertoire analysis of Asian elephants, a language-constrained song recognition task using syllable models as base units for ortolan bunting vocalizations, and a stress stimulus differentiation task in poultry vocalizations using a non-sequential model via a one-state HMM with Gaussian mixtures. Results show strong performance across all tasks and illustrate the flexibility of the HMM framework for a variety of species, vocalization types, and analysis tasks

CORRELATION BETWEEN GLYCEMIC CONTROL AND LIPID PROFILE IN TYPE 2 DIABETIC PATIENTS: HbA1c AS AN INDIRECT INDICATOR OF DYSLIPIDEMIA

Objectives: Dyslipidemia is one of the major risk factor for cardiovascular disease in Type 2 Diabetes mellitus, characterized by elevated Total cholesterol (TC), Triglycerides (TG), Low density lipoprotein (LDL) and decreased High density lipoprotein (HDL). Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) is widely used as an index of mean glycaemia, a measure of risk for the development of diabetes complications and a measure of the quality of diabetes care. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of glycemic control on lipid profile and to know utility of HbA1c as an indirect indicator of dyslipidemia.Methods: A total of 490 Type 2 Diabetes mellitus patients (males 258, females 232) mean age 53.17 years standard deviation (S.D) 10.50 were included in this study.Results: The age of type 2 diabetic patients were not significantly correlated with fasting blood glucose and HbA1c. The level of HbA1c was highly direct significant correlation with fasting blood glucose. The Age of Type 2 Diabetic patients were highly significant and inversely correlated with Total cholesterol, Triglycerides, Low-density Lipoprotein, where it was not significantly correlated with High-density Lipoprotein. The level of HbA1c was highly direct significant correlation with TC, TG, LDL, where it was not correlated with HDL.Conclusion: The findings of this study clearly showed that HbA1c is not only a reliable glycemic index but also as an indirect indicator of dyslipidemia.Keywords: Type 2 diabetes mellitus, HbA1c, Lipid profile, Dyslipidemia