Management Strategies Employed by Master Blaster Band in the 2014 Carnival Calabar

Carnival is a festive activity. It typically involves public celebrations combining some elements of circus with masks, public street party and displays of folklore. This study tends to investigate, identify and evaluate the different management strategies that were employed in the management of the Master Blaster Band in the Carnival Calabar 2014. Information about the band and details that are not in public domain was revealed through interviews with the band personnel, Carnival Commission and some members of the Band. It is pertinent for the Band to have in their employ, creative managers in the different categories. Keywords: Carnival Calabar; Management skills, Performance Arts; Band management; Master Blaster Ban

Problems and strategies for private sector development in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria

Akwa Ibom State – Nigeria’s leading oil bearing state – is populated with over four million people, 72 percent of whom live below the poverty line. The state which is the 7th poorest nationwide, and the poorest in the South-South region of the country is usually referred to as a civil service state due to the absence of industrial activities in the area. Most salary earners in the state are employed in the civil service. This study was carried out to determine the causes of the underdevelopment of entrepreneurship in the state, as well as strategies that can be employed to stimulate private sector activities. Two hundred indigenous entrepreneurs were included in the study which took a survey design. Data were collected with the use of a questionnaire. The findings of the study show that inadequate capital, lack of experience, noncooperation among entrepreneurs, and inadequate governmental support were the major causes of the underdevelopment of the private sector in the state. It was recommended that a special business enhancement agency to fast-track private sector development in the state should be established by the government. Keywords: Economic development strategies, Infrastructural development, Private sector, Development, Indigenous entrepreneur

Thoracic epidural anaesthesia for major abdominal surgeries: experience in private hospital setting in Uyo, South-South Nigeria

Background: Thoracic epidural anaesthesia (TEA) has many benefits over general anaesthesia in major abdominal surgeries including avoidance of endotracheal intubation.Aims: To evaluate the feasibility of TEA for major abdominal surgeries in the private hospital setting. Patients and methods: This was a retrospective study of all major abdominal surgeries performed under TEA in two private hospitals in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria over a two-year period. All thoracic epidural anaesthesia was performed under aseptic conditions at the T8/9, T9/10, or T10/11 interspinous space using a size 18G Tuohy epidural needle and catheter inserted as appropriate. A test dose of 3 ml of 1% lidocaine with adrenaline was used in all patients, after which a loading dose of 10–15 ml of 2% lidocaine with adrenaline was injected at 5 ml every 5 minutes till a block height of approximately T4–L1 was obtained. Anaesthesia was maintained with 5 ml of 2% lidocaine with adrenaline every 45 minutes till the end of surgery. The operative condition was assessed on the basis of sedation and analgesic requirement, as well as response to mesenteric traction. The pulse rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation were monitored throughout the procedure and recorded. Data were obtained from the patients’ folders and operation register. Information obtained included: age, gender, ASA status, diagnosis and type of surgery performed. Data analysis was performed using SPSS®, version 16.Results: Twelve patients underwent major abdominal surgeries under TEA. The mean age (range) was 49.58 (20–78) years, with a male to female ratio of 1:1.4. TEA was adequate in 10 (83.3%) patients, while two (16.7%) patients developed total spinal anaesthesia and were successfully resuscitated and their surgeries completed under general endotracheal anaesthesia.Conclusion: TEA for major abdominal surgeries is feasible. However, careful patient selection, a meticulous approach and preparation for resuscitation is required to prevent and manage complications.Keywords: major abdominal surgeries, private hospital, thoracic epidural anaesthesi

STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BATCH PROCESSED AGRO-WASTE FIBRES

The characterisation of agro-wastes fibres from Nigeria using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) has been done. Fibres extracted from groundnut shell, coconut husk, rice husk, palm fruit bunch and palm fruit stalk are processed using two novel cellulose fibre production methods developed by the authors. Cellulose apparent crystallinity calculated using the deconvolution of the diffractometer trace shows that the amorphous portion of cellulose was permeable to hydrolysis yielding high crystallinity after treatment. All diffratograms show typical cellulose structure with well-defined 110, 200 and 040 peaks. Palm fruit fibres had the highest 200 crystalline cellulose peaks compared to others and it is an indication of rich cellulose content. Surface examination of the resulting fibres using SEM indicates the presence of regular cellulose network structure with some agglomerated laminated layer of thin leaves of cellulose microfibrils. The surfaces were relatively smooth indicating the removal of hemicellulose, lignin and pectin

Analysis of upland farm households’ vulnerability to climate variability in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Analysis of upland farm households’ vulnerability - Gabriel, Edet, *Valerie, Glory, Godwin, Clement, Nkoyo, E. Bassey and Obot Analysis of upland farm households’ vulnerability to climate variability in the Niger Delta, Nigeria The study analysed the vulnerability of upland farm households to climate variability in the Niger Delta. Three states - Akwa Ibom, Ondo and Rivers were selected from the nine states that make up the Niger Delta region. A total of 120 respondents from upland communities of the Niger delta were used for analysis. Household questionnaire and vulnerability questionnaire using Cost Route method were the instruments used for data collection and analysed using Vulnerability Profile and Vulner-ability / Risk Framework. The results of the analysis show that both male and female headed house-holds in all the upland communities were vulnerable to flooding, windstorm, erosion and drying up of streams. Important factors that made households vulnerable to climate hazards were low agricultural output and income, non-availability of irrigation facilities, insufficient farm labour and lack of storage facilities. Technical capacities of household members were assessed using both science-based knowledge as well as indigenous knowledge of climate change as indicators to adaptation to climate variability. It was assumed that the adaptive capacity of households could be enhanced by the number of persons with either science-based knowledge or indigenous knowledge across the re-gion. Expenditure on carbohydrate was higher across the region during disaster time, followed by expenditure in protein, vitamin/minerals and fat and oil and other classes of food, implying that more carbohydrate food is consumed during disaster period than any other class of food. Certain geo-graphical factors such as distance to coastline and population have direct impact on climate variability in the Niger Delta Region. Recommendations include establishment of emergency evacuation systems, income opportunities and support programmes as well as capacity building on climate change knowledge, enterprise development and management. Key words: Farm households, Nigeria, poverty, rural areas, smallholder farmer

Endoparasites of Bucks Raised under Intensive and Semi-Intensive System

An investigation was carried out on bucks in intensive and semi-intensive systems of management. A total of sixteen (16) bucks (male goats) were randomly purchased for the study. The animals were divided into four groups of four animals per treatment and fed Panicum maximum, Gliricidia sepium for Treatment 1 while Treatment 2 were fed Panicum maximum, Gliricidia sepium plus concentrates. Those in T3 were fed concentrate and allowed to graze and T4 were fed Panicum maximum and were also allowed to forage. The result showed significant difference (P<0.05) in infestations of strongyles amongst the treatments

Travel, tourism, climate change and behavioral change: travelers’ perspectives from a developing country, Nigeria

While studies have examined people's understanding of climate change and its relationship to tourism, these focus largely on developed country populations. Much future tourism growth will come from developing countries following economic development; often countries where climate change will be strongly felt. Do tourists from developing countries have the same knowledge gaps about travel, tourism, and climate change as in the developed world? Will behavioral change policies be successful in encouraging more environmentally friendly approaches to climate change and tourism in developing countries? This paper presents findings from 20 in-depth interviews with active Nigerian tourists, analyzing their understanding of climate change, the links known, or not, between their travel and climate change, and their willingness to change their tourism patterns. Understanding of climate change was limited and there was conceptual confusion. Participants did not view their own travel as a cause of climate change and many were embedded in air travel practice. Participants were unwilling to change their tourism patterns to reduce their contribution to climate change. Significant structural barriers limit low carbon tourism travel in Nigeria (and other developing countries), including reliability, availability safety, and speed. Behavioral change will be difficult to achieve

Additional degrees of parallelism within the Adomian decomposition method

4th International Conference on Computational Engineering (ICCE 2017), 28-29 September 2017, DarmstadtThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record.The trend of future massively parallel computer architectures challenges the exploration of additional degrees of parallelism also in the time dimension when solving continuum mechanical partial differential equations. The Adomian decomposition method (ADM) is investigated to this respects in the present work. This is accomplished by comparison with the Runge-Kutta (RK) time integration and put in the context of the viscous Burgers equation. Our studies show that both methods have similar restrictions regarding their maximal time step size. Increasing the order of the schemes leads to larger errors for the ADM compared to RK. However, we also discuss a parallelization within the ADM, reducing its runtime complexity from O(n^2) to O(n). This indicates the possibility to make it a viable competitor to RK, as fewer function evaluations have to be done in serial, if a high order method is desired. Additionally, creating ADM schemes of high-order is less complex as it is with RK.The work of Andreas Schmitt is supported by the ’Excellence Initiative’ of the German Federal and State Governments and the Graduate School of Computational Engineering at Technische Universit¨at Darmstadt

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon-degrading Bacteria from Aviation Fuel Spill Site at Ibeno, Nigeria

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)–degrading bacteria were isolated from aviation fuel contaminated soil at Inua Eyet Ikot in Ibeno, Nigeria. PAH-degrading bacteria in the contaminated soil were isolated by enrichment culture technique. Isolates with high PAH degrading potential characterized by their extensive growth on PAH-supplemented minimal salt medium were screened for their naphthalene, phenanthrene and chrysene degradability. The screening medium which contained selected PAHs as the sole source of carbon and energy showed that Micrococcus varians AFS-2, Pseudomonas putida AFS-3 and Alcaligenes faecalis AFS-5 exhibited a concentration–dependent growth in all the PAH–compounds tested. There were visible changes in the color of growth medium suggesting the production of different metabolites. Their acclimation to different PAH substrates was also evident as A. faecalis AFS-5 isolated from chrysene grew well on other less complex aromatic compounds. The isolate exhibited best growth (0.44 OD600) when exposed to 10 ppm of chrysene for 5 days and could utilize up to 90 ppm of chrysene. This isolate and others with strong PAH-degrading potentials are recommended for bioremediation of PAHs in aviation fuel-contaminated sites in the tropics