A Preliminary Survey of Insect Fauna around the Lake Chad Basin Area of Borno State, Nigeria

A survey was conducted during dry season of 2011/2012 around the Lake Chad Basin area of Borno State, Nigeria to collect and identify insects inhabiting different habitats in the area. The survey was conducted during dry season between 8.00am to 1.00pm between November and April. Sweep net and aspirator were used to catch insects and 95% alcohol was used to kill the insect specimens. The insect specimens were identified at the Insect Museum, Department of Crop Protection / Institute for Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Thirty four (34) insect species were identified representing 24 families relating to 8 insect orders. Among the insects identified, were insect pests of agricultural crops and vectors of human diseases. Key words: Insect fauna, Lake Chad, Survey, Insect order, Insect species, dry season, habitats, economic importance

Writing Freedom: The Art of Contesting Incarceration

Human existence and interaction is essentially characterized by a contest between individuals who at times have diametrically opposed social, political, and economic ideals. Due to the forceful nature of our idiosyncrasies, we always perceive our ideals infallible and hence as fit of being enforced on others. This attempt makes human interaction teeter precariously on the axis of dominance and the desire to overwhelm on one hand, and resistance on the other. Moreover, resistance is not realized in similar degrees in all individuals; there are those who are easily intimidated, while others have amazing levels of resilience and they would go to any length to defend their convictions.   This fact is also explained by the observation that in all of us there is a paradoxical collocation of two natural and almost instinctual desires; desire to dominate others, and the desire for self-defense and self-preservation against domination by others. This preservation goes beyond protection of the body to include even the preservation of self dignity and personality. However, in the context of overwhelming subjugation, denial, and dominance, the oppressed lack effective avenues through which a conventional defense for the self would be enacted. This scenario is particularly witnessed in the context of imprisonment. In prison, the passage of time exposes the prisoner to vulnerability and a possible loss of self identity, which is made extremely painful by the severance of all meaningful human interactions.Key words: freedom, incarceration, domination, writin

Consumer Ethnocentrism, Demographic Characteristics and Willingness to Buy Commercial Banking Services in Kenya

International marketing empirical literature has indicated the existence and strength of relationships among the consumer ethnocentrism, demographic variables and product attitude vary in different market context. Subsequently consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intentions influence depends on the product categories and other market factors. It is on the basis of this premise that the current study embarked on assessing the moderating effect of demographic characteristics on the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and willingness to buy banking services. Descriptive and explanatory research design were used in the study. Primary data was collected among 374 commercial banks account holders in Kenya. Data was analyzed using step wise binary logit regression. Consumer national ethnocentrism was found to have a negative influence on the willingness to buy banking services from foreign owned commercial banks. The assessment of the effect of demographic characteristics on willingness to buy commercial banking services revealed that as the levels of respondents’ income per month increased, there was high preference of buying from foreign owned banks and vice versa. However age, gender and income do not moderate the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and willingness to buy banking services. This indicate the essence of intergroup differentiation in service or market offerings as well as market segmentation and targeting

Knee fusion using sign nail, an addition to the armamentarium: Technique and outcome

Background: Knee arthrodesis still has indications in this modern era of arthroplasty and ranges from failed total knee arthroplasty, advanced tuberculous infection to severe contractures. Of the implants that can be used for knee fusion, intramedullary devices have the lowest rates of major complications, shortest time to fusion and the highest fusion rates.Objective: To describe the results and technique of a case series of knee fusions performed using SIGN nails at AIC Kijabe Hospital, Kenya.Design: A retrospective case series.Methods: This case series describes a novel implant choice for knee fusion in eight patients. Of the eight patients, six were male and two were female. The average age was 40 years. They were followed up for an average of 13 months. All the surgeries were performed by a single surgeon and utilised the same technique. Outcome was based on assessment for clinical and radiologic union.Results: Four (50%) of the arthrodeses were secondary to advanced tuberculous infection, one was due to chronic knee dislocation and three were due to failed total knee replacement. Seven (87.5%) went on to primary union. One (12.5%) patient needed bone grafting and dynamization and 2(25%) sustained a peri-prosthetic fracture. All patients are ambulant with no weight-bearing restrictions.Conclusion: The SIGN intramedullary nail system allows an easy and reproducible knee fusion technique in resource and equipment limited settings. Our case series demonstrated that the knee fusion with the SIGN nail lead to successful union in majority of our patients. In addition, 25% of our patients developed a periprosthetic fracture at the nail insertion site which has not been reported in other similar studies. Key words: Knee, Arthrodesis, Fusion, SIGN nail, Infectio

A Model for Estimating Network Infrastructure Costs: A Case for All-Fibre Networks

The 21st century is an era that has been characterised by phenomenal growth in data rates at the local area network (intranet), extranet and the Internet, a trend pushed by deployment of “bandwidth hungry” applications such VoIP, security surveillance systems, video conferencing and streaming of online multimedia content. Due to demand placed on network resources by these applications physical layer cabling solutions have had to evolve to support faster, improved LAN technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet. Although new network architectures (such as Centralised Fibre networks) address current and long term demands of the modern networking environment, concerns have been raised about its cost viability. The key problem identified in this study was an inadequacy of suitable tools that aid decision making when estimating the cost of a network infrastructure project. Factors of importance in this regard were collected in a survey and used in development of a cost model. A network was designed based on two architectures – centralised fibre (all-fibre network) and hierarchical star (UTP for horizontal cabling and optical fibre for backbone cabling). Thereafter, cost of implementing these two architectures was calculated using the model. Based on the results computed from the cost model, the all-fibre network (centralised fibre architecture) was found to be more cost effective than the hierarchical star network. Keywords: centralised fibre architecture, hierarchical star architecture, structured cabling, multimode optical fibre, singlemode optical fibre, backbon

An Assessment of Generic Skills and Competencies of Architecture Graduates in Nigeria

Graduate unemployment has become a fundamental problem worldwide, necessitating studies that seek to identify generic transferable skills towards improving prospects for graduates in future. Several disciplines have received such research attention. There has been comparatively less attention paid to establishing generic skills/competencies that will boost the employability potentials of architecture graduates. A total of 102 survey questionnaires containing 19 generic skills/competencies were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests as well as the Wilcoxon signed ranked test in SPSS v.21. Results reveal that the most developed skills by architecture graduates, also considered important by respondents were basic knowledge of the field/discipline, creativity, knowledge of the profession, computing/ICT and the capacity to learn. Other important skills were decision making, ability to work as part of an interdisciplinary team, capacity to apply knowledge in practice, time management, responsibility for one's own work/self-criticism, interpersonal/communication, ethical commitment as well as leadership skills. The study recommends that stakeholders in architecture education re-iterate the acute need for architecture graduates to develop important generic skills to improve their versatility and employment potentials in future.Keywords: Architecture, Competencies, Generic skills, Graduates, Unemploymen

Intellectual capital disclosures by South African companies:a longitudinal investigation

Most of the previous studies on intellectual capital disclosures have been conducted from developed countries' context. There is very limited empirical evidence in this area from the context of emerging economies in general and Africa in particular. This paper is one of the early attempts in this regard. The main purpose of this study is to examine the extent and nature of intellectual capitaldisclosures in ‘Top 20’ South African companies over a 5 years period (2002–2006). The study uses content analysis method to scrutinise the patterns of intellectual capital disclosures during the study period. The results show that intellectual capital disclosures in South Africa have increased over the 5 years study period with certain firms reporting considerably more than others. Out of the three broad categories of intellectual capital disclosures human capital appears to be the most popular category. This finding stands in sharp contrast to the previous studies in this area where external capital was found to be most popular category