Comparative Analysis of Support Vector Machine and EGARCH Modelling of Zenith Bank Plc. Stock Price on Economic Growth in Nigeria

In this 21st century, stock exchange has become a crucial and determining factor for the global economy, any variability in this market affects personal, corporate financial activities and the economic growth a country. A lot of analysis using different models were explored by several authors. However, this study set out to investigates the statistical behaviour of Zenith Bank PLC stock price using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and EGARCH Model on economic growth in Nigeria by adopting quantitative techniques using the causal-comparative research method. The findings from this research shows a coefficient of the Zenith bank Low stock price at (0.546945) and high stock price at (0.453562) which indicates that low stock price is insignificant because is less than α = 0.05, while high stock price of greater than α = 0.05 is significant to predict the Zenith bank stock price. Findings from the study has further revealed that SVM mode approach is more appropriate than EGARCH model and recommends that stockholders, financial analyst and researchers who are investing in stock market should adapt the SVM model approach to determine the volatility rate or level of stochastic in the financial time series data. Keywords: Stock Price, Support Vector Machine (SVM), EGARCH Model, Stock Exchange, Economic Growt

Working capital management and financial performance of listed conglomerate companies in Nigeria

This study examines the impact of working capital management on the financial performance of listed conglomerate companies in Nigeria for a period of ten (10) years (2005-2014). Data for the study were quantitatively retrieved from the annual reports and accounts of the studied companies. The study employed descriptive statistics to describe the variable while the relationships among the variables were established via correlation. Variable Inflation Factor (VIF) was used to determine the existence or otherwise of multi-collinearity while Ordinary Least Square (OLS) Regression was used to analyze the data. It was found that debtors collection period, creditors payment period and firm size were negatively related to return on investment while cash conversion cycle has positive but insignificant relationship with the financial performance of the studied companies. The study however, recommends among others that listed conglomerate companies should maintain the current debtors’ collection period or further reduce it in order to continue to enhance financial performance.peer-reviewe

Microbial metagenomic approach uncovers the first rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus genome in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease (RHD) causes high morbidity and mortality in rabbits and hares. Here, we report the first genomic characterization of lagovirus GI.2 virus in domestic rabbits from sub-Saharan Africa. We used an unbiased microbial metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing (mNGS) approach to diagnose the pathogen causing the suspected outbreak of RHD in Ibadan, Nigeria. The liver, spleen, and lung samples of five rabbits from an outbreak in 2 farms were analyzed. The mNGS revealed one full and two partial RHDV2 genomes on both farms. Phylogenetic analysis showed close clustering with RHDV2 lineages from Europe (98.6% similarity with RHDV2 in the Netherlands, and 99.1 to 100% identity with RHDV2 in Germany), suggesting potential importation. Subsequently, all the samples were confirmed by RHDV virus-specific RT-PCR targeting the VP60 gene with the expected band size of 398 bp for the five rabbits sampled. Our findings highlight the need for increased genomic surveillance of RHDV2 to track its origin, understand its diversity and to inform public health policy in Nigeria, and Sub-Saharan Africa

Island in the neoliberal stream: energy security and soft re-nationalisation in Hungary

Since 2010, the Hungarian Government has increased its stake in the country’s energy sector at the expense of foreign-owned energy companies. This ‘soft re-nationalisation’ is driven by both exogenous and endogenous factors, especially the country’s external dependence on gas imports, its previous commitment to a European model of energy liberalisation, public dissatisfaction with high energy prices and the emergence of an ‘illiberal state’. The case of Hungary’s ‘soft re-nationalisation’ yields two central findings. Firstly, conceptually, there is a need to move away from just focusing on the radical re-nationalisation of energy in the form of resource nationalism, and instead understand re-nationalisation as consisting of a broad spectrum of state interventions into the energy market. Secondly, Hungary’s recent ‘statist turn’ in the energy sector highlights inherent tensions within EU energy policy as it threatens attempts to establish a fully liberalised and marketised energy market across the continen

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

Economic impacts assessment of pleuropneumonia burden and control in pastoral cattle herds of north-central Nigeria

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) is a trans-boundary infectious and contagious respiratory disease of cattle caused by Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides. It is a disease of high economic importance because of its ability to compromise food security. Information on its economic burden in pastoral cattle herds of Niger State, North-central Nigeria is not readily available. This study was aimed at investigating the economic impacts of CBPP to pastoralists in Niger State, North-central Nigeria, by determining its burden, returns to investments in its control, and cost-effectiveness of the control interventions ex-post evaluation, to provide baseline estimates that will assist animal health authorities and international donors in making investment decisions on its control in Nigeria. A questionnaire-based cross sectional study was conducted in 125 pastoral cattle herds. Economic analyses were conducted using total economic cost, benefit-cost analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis models. The values of mortality and morbidity losses to the herders were 219,038.5 USD and 35,598.8 USD, respectively. The total economic cost of CBPP to pastoralists was estimated to be 294,800.3 USD. Return on investment in CBPP control by vaccination and treatment was positive, with a benefit-cost ratio of 6.4. The Average cost-effectiveness ratio value for treatment intervention was 13.7 USD per life cattle saved and for vaccination option was 0.6 USD per death/cull averted. The estimated economic costs due to CBPP have shown that the disease was of high economic importance and must be controlled.Keywords: Benefit-cost analysis, CBPP, cost-effectiveness analysis, economic impact, pastoralist, Nigeria

Dynamics of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and Entrepreneurship Development: Evidence from Africa

AbstractThis paper examines the dynamics of the entrepreneurship ecosystem and entrepreneurship development in Africa. This study is conceived on the premise that although enterprise-induced growth is documented to be the panacea for containing the rising unemployment, poverty rate, and worsening economic conditions, African enterprise-led policies have not generated the desired results with entrepreneurship development still slow. It is believed that the nature of entrepreneurial ecosystem might have contributed to poor entrepreneurship development, however, there is a paucity of evidence about this possible link. This paper is one of the foundational studies in the entrepreneurship literature that has applied quantitative analytical procedures to investigate how the dynamics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem influence entrepreneurship development in Africa. The paper operationalises the entrepreneurial ecosystem within the African context and investigates the short-run and long-run relationships between these proxies and entrepreneurship development in Africa. The paper employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to estimate the relationships and the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) to validate the estimates. Annual data from 2000 to 2021 in 54 African countries were used for the study. This translated into 1184 observations in a 22-year data span. The paper revealed a positive consequence of the entrepreneurial ecosystem on entrepreneurship development in Africa in both the short-run and the long-run, however, the short-run estimates were not significant. It is concluded that the entrepreneurial ecosystem proxies: people (human capital), venture capital, infrastructure, system, and support are catalysts that drive entrepreneurship development in Africa in the long run. It is recommended that African enterprise-led policy should emphasise the entrepreneurial ecosystem that revolves around these constructs in order to develop an entrepreneurship culture and sustain the existing enterprises

Kinetics and mechanism of (salen)Mnˡˡˡ–catalysed hydrogen peroxide oxidation of diphenyl sulphides

346-351The kinetics of (salen)Mnˡˡˡ complexes-catalysed oxidation of a few diphenyl sulphides by hydrogen peroxide have been investigated at 25oC in acetonitrile (80%) – water (20%) spectrophotometrically. The reaction follows first-order kinetics in (salen)Mnˡˡˡ complex and zero-order kinetics in hydrogen peroxide. The order of the reaction with respect to sulphide is fractional. The effects of nitrogenous bases, free radical inhibitor and changes in solvent composition have also been studied. A suitable mechanism involving a manganese(III)-hydroperoxide complex as reactive species has been proposed

Kinetics and mechanism of oxidation of diphenyl sulphides by oxo(salen) manganese(V) complexes and a study of reactivity-selectivity principle

888-894The kinetics of oxidation of a few 4-substituted diphenyl sulphides with six  oxo(salen)manganese(V) complexes has been studied in acetonitrile spectrophotometrically at 25°C. The reaction is secondorder overall, first order each in the  complex and the  substrate. Based on effect of substrate and oxidant on the rate, a single electron transfer mechanism has been proposed. Correlation analyses and mathematical treatment of the rate constants establish that there is an inverse relationship between reactivity and selectivity in both the sulphide and complex series.</span