Work-Family Conflict and Coping Strategies among Women: Evidenc~ from Commercial Banks in Nigeria

The difficulties associated with attempts to strike balance between the interacting and permeable boundaries of work and family roles require understanding of the complexities of both spheres. The nature of family and work structures in Nigeria makes coping with work and family roles a challenging one especially for women. The study specifically examined the determinants .of work-family balance experience among women in the banking sector. It investigated the features of work schedules of women in the banking sector that enable them cope or unable to cope with multitask banking and home;front activities. A review of literature was carried out while the study was anchored on two theoretical theories of social exchange and role theory. The research employed both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Samples were drawn randomly among the women employees of purposively selected banks within Lagos metropolis and Ogun State, Nigeria. Only 730 respondents were successfully covered. In addition, 30 key informants who were principal official in selected banks and family heads were interviewed. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested for the study. The first hypothesis revealed that age of the respondents, children ever born (parity), marital status, staff category and religion are significant determinants of work-family balance. Women with children in parity ratio of 1-2,3-4 and 5 and above are 1.654, 1.455 and 1.235 times more likely to be unable to balance work-family roles compared to those with zero parity (i.e. the reference category). The third hypothesis estimated significant influence of work status on the work-family balance; this is statistically significant at p-values of 0.005, 0.003, and 0.01 for senior staff, supervisors and junior staff respectively. The study concludes that if work demands become heavy, marital roles cannot be shelved or neglected and tension between the two boundaries will req"uire a compromise. In this instance, women will prefer to stake the job rather than losing their families. The study suggests effective policy intervention from organisation and effective family support from the familybase to reduce the complexities of balancing work and family demand

Causes and Effects of High Cost of Democratic Governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Nigeria considering its forestry, aquatic and other natural resources in large deposits is a blessed country among other nations of the world. Since the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantity in the 1950s, the country has earned over $400 billion. The problem of Nigeria is how to manage her financial resources to improve the lot of the citizens through prudent and efficient utilization of available funds by a visionary leadership. Unfortunately this has not happen. Rather, those who are privileged to occupy positions use the same to loot public funds for their own benefit. Their corrupt practices have led to an increase in the cost of governance in the country. This study is set out to examine the various causes and effects of the high cost of democratic governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic 1999-2013. The study adopts secondary sources of data for the analysis of the findings. Findings of the study indicates that salaries and allowances of public sector workers, the maintenance of large size of executive cabinet, money spent on elections and election litigations, and corruption have been identified as some of the factors responsible for the cost of democratic governance in Nigeria. The cost on governance on the other hand has caused negative political and socio-economic effects on the country’s political economy. Keywords: Democracy, Governance, Cost, Economy, Corruption, Election and Development

Role of glucose and CcpA in capsule expression and virulence of Streptococcus suis

Streptococcus suis is one of the most important pathogens in pigs and is also an emerging zoonotic agent. After crossing the epithelial barrier, S. suis causes bacteraemia, resulting in meningitis, endocarditis and bronchopneumonia. Since the host environment seems to be an important regulatory component for virulence, we related expression of virulence determinants of S. suis to glucose availability during growth and to the sugar metabolism regulator catabolite control protein A (CcpA). We found that expression of the virulence-associated genes arcB, representing arcABC operon expression, cps2A, representing capsular locus expression, as well as sly, ofs, sao and epf, differed significantly between exponential and early stationary growth of a highly virulent serotype 2 strain. Deletion of ccpA altered the expression of the surface-associated virulence factors arcB, sao and eno, as well as the two currently proven virulence factors in pigs, ofs and cps2A, in early exponential growth. Global expression analysis using a cDNA expression array revealed 259 differentially expressed genes in early exponential growth, of which 141 were more highly expressed in the CcpA mutant strain 10¿ccpA and 118 were expressed to a lower extent. Interestingly, among the latter genes, 18 could be related to capsule and cell wall synthesis. Correspondingly, electron microscopy characterization of strain 10¿ccpA revealed a markedly reduced thickness of the capsule. This phenotype correlated with enhanced binding to porcine plasma proteins and a reduced resistance to killing by porcine neutrophils. Taken together, our data demonstrate that CcpA has a significant effect on the capsule synthesis and virulence properties of S. suis

Screening individual hybridomas by microengraving to discover monoclonal antibodies

The demand for monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in biomedical research is significant, but the current methodologies used to discover them are both lengthy and costly. Consequently, the diversity of antibodies available for any particular antigen remains limited. Microengraving is a soft lithographic technique that provides a rapid and efficient alternative for discovering new mAbs. This protocol describes how to use microengraving to screen mouse hybridomas to establish new cell lines producing unique mAbs. Single cells from a polyclonal population are isolated into an array of microscale wells (~105 cells per screen). The array is then used to print a protein microarray, where each element contains the antibodies captured from individual wells. The antibodies on the microarray are screened with antigens of interest, and mapped to the corresponding cells, which are then recovered from their microwells by micromanipulation. Screening and retrieval require approximately 1–3 d (9–12 d including the steps for preparing arrays of microwells).Broad Institute of MIT and Harvar

The Contribution of Dysphagia to Acute Stroke Morbidity and Mortality in Nigeria: A Prospective Study

Background: The assessment of time-trend morbidity and mortality in acute stroke is critical to clinical policy decisions and resource allocation. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of dysphagia in acute stroke and the impact of dysphagia on short term stroke outcome (30 days post-stroke). Methods: This was a prospective longitudinal study. Bedside screening for dysphagia modified Rankin score (MRS) and Barthel Index (BI) were performed on acute stroke patients on day 1, day 7, day 14 and day 30 after stroke to determine the frequency of dysphagia. Patients with dysphagia were then compared with age- and gender-matched controls (stroke patients without dysphagia) in terms of stroke characteristics and 30-day outcome. Results:Of the recruited 200 patients, 99 (49.5%) had dysphagia. Patients with intracerebral haemorrhagic stroke had a significantly higher prevalence of dysphagia (64% vs 36%; p Conclusion: Severe stroke, subcortical stroke and haemorrhagic stroke types were significantly associated with dysphagia at baseline. Dysphagia adversely influenced 30-days morbidity and case fatality in this cohort of acute stroke patients

Assessment of measures of adiposity that correlate with blood pressure among hypertensive Africans

Background: Studies differ on which anthropometric measure of adiposity shows good correlation with cardiovascular diseases. In this study, we evaluated the effects of common epidemiological measures of adiposity as a correlate of elevated blood pressure in an African population.Methodology: The study was carried out between June 2009 and December 2011 at the medical out-patient department of a tertiary healthcare center in Nigeria. Correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between blood pressure and body mass index (BMI), waist to height ratio (WHtR), and waist circumference (WC).Results: A total of 1,416 Hypertensives comprising 1090 (77%) adult females recruited over two and half years. Women were significantly older (49.2±8.1 vs. 48.0±10.0 years, p=0.039) and shorter (1.6±6.3 vs 1.7±6.8 meters, p<0.0001) when compared with men. Blood pressure parameters were comparable between women and men. Approximately 1 out of 5 participants had good blood pressure control with no gender difference. Anthropometric measurements showed that 446(32%) were overweight, 404(29%) obese and 40(3%) were morbidly obese. Compared with their male counterparts, females were significantly more likely to be obese (P<0.0001). Similarly, 51.6% of the subjects had abdominal obesity, with female preponderance (P<0.0001). Likewise, a greater proportion of women had substantially higher measured waist circumference risk. Compared with other measures of adiposity, body mass index correlated best with diastolic blood pressure in both gender (P< 0.05).Conclusion: This study adds to the evidence that obesity is a major cardiovascular risk factor. BMI, as a measure of adiposity, was found to correlate best with blood pressure. These findings support other observations in other populations that BMI rather than waist to height ratio (WHtR), and waist circumference (WC) is a better correlate of hypertension

Decontamination of aerosolised bacteria from a pig farm environment using a pH neutral electrochemically activated solution (Ecas4 anolyte)

An electrochemically activated solution (ECAS), generated by electrolysis of a dilute sodium chloride solution in a four-chamber electrolytic cell (Ecas4), was tested as a sanitising aerosol in eliminating bacteria from the environment of a weaning room vacated 24-48h earlier, at a continuous flow pig farm. An ultrasonic humidifier was used to fill the environment with a fog (droplets with diameters of 1–5 μm) containing 0.25 ppm of hypochlorous acid. The weaning room was fogged for 3 min at 30 min intervals during five hours of aerosol disinfection. An innovative sample treatment with propidium monoazide dye in conjunction with cyclonic air sampling was optimised and adapted for discerning live/dead bacteria in subsequent molecular quantification steps. Without fogging, total bacterial load ranged from 5.06 ± 0.04 to 5.75 ± 0.04 Log10 CFU/m3. After the first hour of fogging, a 78% total bacterial reduction was observed, which further increased to > 97% after the second hour, > 99.4% after the third and 99.8% after the fourth hour, finally resulting in a 99.99% reduction from the farm environment over five hours. Unlike the current formaldehyde spray disinfection protocol, which requires a long empty period because of its hazardous properties, this economically viable and environmentally friendly disinfection protocol may significantly lower downtime. Moreover, ECAS fogging can be easily adapted to a variety of applications, including the elimination of pathogens from livestock farm air environment for disease prevention, as well as decontamination after disease outbreaks