Poverty and its Alleviation Lessons for Nigeria

The study focused on the persistent poverty status in Nigeria in spite of all the actions and activities directly and indirectly put in place to reduce it. Nigerian poverty statistics and government actions in tackling poverty were examined. Few countries that have succeeded in reducing poverty position were briefly examined. Specifically, we highlighted how Malaysia, China and South Korea aspired and attained high level poverty alleviation. The lessons of their success stories were the basis for recommendations for Nigeria as a panacea for poverty reduction which has persevere in spite of every efforts over the years. Among the recommendations made include designing of poverty line for the entire geopolitical zone, stating target of poverty reduction within a time frame, and sincerely implementing and monitoring of strategies, programmes and policies. Kalu E. Uma | Paul C.Obidike | Frank O. Ozoh "Poverty and it's Alleviation: Lessons for Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-1 | Issue-4 , June 201

Multimedia-based Medicinal Plants Sustainability Management System

Medicinal plants are increasingly recognized worldwide as an alternative source of efficacious and inexpensive medications to synthetic chemo-therapeutic compound. Rapid declining wild stocks of medicinal plants accompanied by adulteration and species substitutions reduce their efficacy, quality and safety. Consequently, the low accessibility to and non-affordability of orthodox medicine costs by rural dwellers to be healthy and economically productive further threaten their life expectancy. Finding comprehensive information on medicinal plants of conservation concern at a global level has been difficult. This has created a gap between computing technologies’ promises and expectations in the healing process under complementary and alternative medicine. This paper presents the design and implementation of a Multimedia-based Medicinal Plants Sustainability Management System addressing these concerns. Medicinal plants’ details for designing the system were collected through semi-structured interviews and databases. Unified Modelling Language, Microsoft-Visual-Studio.Net, C#3.0, Microsoft-Jet-Engine4.0, MySQL, Loquendo Multilingual Text-to-Speech Software, YouTube, and VLC Media Player were used. Keywords: Complementary and Alternative Medicine, conservation, extinction, medicinal plant, multimedia, phytoconstituents, rural dweller

Human-wildlife conflict, benefit sharing and the survival of lions in pastoralist community-based conservancies

No abstract available

Experiences of living with chronic back pain: The physical disabilities

Purpose. Back-related functional limitations are largely assessed using lists of activities, each scored on a yes/no basis and the scores then summed. This provides little information about how chronic back pain (CBP) patients live with their condition. This study describes the consequences of living day-to-day with CBP and documents the 'insider' accounts of its impact on daily life. Method. Unstructured interviews, using the 'Framework' approach with topic guide, were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Subjects were sampled for age, sex, ethnicity and occupation from new referrals with back pain to a rheumatology outpatient clinic. Eleven subjects (5 male, 6 female) were interviewed either in English (n = 9) or their preferred language (n = 2). Interviews were read in-depth twice to identify the topics. Data were extracted in phrases and sentences using thematic content analysis. Results. Four themes emerged: sleep/rest, mobility, independence and leisure. All subjects reported issues about sleep and rest, nine about mobility, seven about independence and six on leisure. Most descriptions concerned loss and limitation in daily life. Strategies for coping with sleep disruption and physical limitations were described. Conclusions. Subjects provided graphic 'in-depth' descriptions of experiences living with CBP every day; expressed regret at the loss of capabilities and distress at the functional consequences of those losses. Facilitating 'adjustment' to 'loss' may be more helpful than inferring the potential for a life free of pain as a result of therapeutic endeavours

Dual Band Electrodes in Generator-Collector Mode: Simultaneous Measurement of Two Species

A computational model for the simulation of a double band collector-generator experiment is applied to the situation where two electrochemical reactions occur concurrently. It is shown that chronoamperometric measurements can be used to take advantage of differences in diffusion coefficients to measure the concentrations of both electroactive species simultaneously, by measuring the time at which the collection efficiency reaches a specific value. The separation of the electrodes is shown to not affect the sensitivity of the method (in terms of percentage changes in the measured time to reach the specified collection efficiency), but wider gaps can provide a greater range of (larger) absolute values of this characteristic time. It is also shown that measuring the time taken to reach smaller collection efficiencies can allow for the detection of smaller amounts of whichever species diffuses faster. The case of a system containing both ascorbic acid and opamine in water is used to exemplify the method, and it is shown that mole fractions of ascorbic acid between 0.055 and 0.96 can, in principle, be accurately measured.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figure

An all-Ireland epidemiological study of MND, 2004-2005

Background and methods: We conducted an all-Ireland population-based prospective epidemiological survey of motor neurone disease (MND) using the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland MND registers to examine the incidence and prevalence of the disease over the period 2004–2005.Results and conclusions: Incidence of MND was 1.9 per 100 000 person-years and rates were comparable in both the north and south of Ireland. Prevalence of MND was 5.0 per 100 000 population. When compared with previous published surveys of MND performed in the Republic of Ireland over the last 10 years, rates of disease have remained relatively constant. When standardized to the 1990 US population, the incidence of MND in Ireland was found to be consistent with other European prospective surveys of MND

Energy-Efficient Algorithms

We initiate the systematic study of the energy complexity of algorithms (in addition to time and space complexity) based on Landauer's Principle in physics, which gives a lower bound on the amount of energy a system must dissipate if it destroys information. We propose energy-aware variations of three standard models of computation: circuit RAM, word RAM, and transdichotomous RAM. On top of these models, we build familiar high-level primitives such as control logic, memory allocation, and garbage collection with zero energy complexity and only constant-factor overheads in space and time complexity, enabling simple expression of energy-efficient algorithms. We analyze several classic algorithms in our models and develop low-energy variations: comparison sort, insertion sort, counting sort, breadth-first search, Bellman-Ford, Floyd-Warshall, matrix all-pairs shortest paths, AVL trees, binary heaps, and dynamic arrays. We explore the time/space/energy trade-off and develop several general techniques for analyzing algorithms and reducing their energy complexity. These results lay a theoretical foundation for a new field of semi-reversible computing and provide a new framework for the investigation of algorithms.Comment: 40 pages, 8 pdf figures, full version of work published in ITCS 201

A Heterosynaptic Learning Rule for Neural Networks

In this article we intoduce a novel stochastic Hebb-like learning rule for neural networks that is neurobiologically motivated. This learning rule combines features of unsupervised (Hebbian) and supervised (reinforcement) learning and is stochastic with respect to the selection of the time points when a synapse is modified. Moreover, the learning rule does not only affect the synapse between pre- and postsynaptic neuron, which is called homosynaptic plasticity, but effects also further remote synapses of the pre- and postsynaptic neuron. This more complex form of synaptic plasticity has recently come under investigations in neurobiology and is called heterosynaptic plasticity. We demonstrate that this learning rule is useful in training neural networks by learning parity functions including the exclusive-or (XOR) mapping in a multilayer feed-forward network. We find, that our stochastic learning rule works well, even in the presence of noise. Importantly, the mean learning time increases with the number of patterns to be learned polynomially, indicating efficient learning.Comment: 19 page