Parametric modeling of probability of bank loan default in Kenya

Commercial banks in Kenya are the key players not only in the financial market but also in spurring the economic growth that has been witnessed in the country in the recent past. Besides Safaricom and East Africa Breweries, the other top ten most profitable companies in Kenya are the Commercial banks. The biggest part of these huge profits emanates from the interests charged on loans they advance to their customers. If these loans non-perform, these blue chip companies will come tumbling down and the entire economy will be threatened. This makes the study on probability of a customer defaulting very useful while analyzing the credit risk policies. In this paper, we use a raw data set that contains demographic information about the borrowers. The data sets have been used to identify which risk factors associated with the borrowers contribute towards default. These risk factors are gender, age, marital status, occupation and term of loan. Results show that male customers have high odds (1.91) of defaulting compared to their female counter parts, single customers have a higher likelihood (odds of 1.48) of defaulting compared to their married customers, younger customers have high odds of defaulting unlike elderly customers, financial sector customers have equallikelihood of default as support staff customers and long term loans have less likelihood of defaulting compared to short term loans.Key words: The logistic model, the logit transformation, parameter estimatio

Physiotherapy Management of Faecal Impaction: A case report*

This case report describes how a physiotherapy modality was used to resolve faecal impaction. A 38-year old man developed faecal impaction after 8 weeks of intensive medical care. A physiotherapist was invited to apply a suitable modality that could bring relief to the patient. The pre-treatment measurement of the distended abdomen was 102 cm. Modified passive mobilization of the lower limbs towards the abdominal surface was carried out. After 6 sessions, the faecal impaction was resolved. The post-treatment measurement of the abdomen was 86.5 cm. This case demonstrates the important role of a physiotherapy modality in the management of faecal impaction. It is hoped that this study will stimulate the interest of physiotherapists in the management of this condition. KEY WORDS: faecal impaction, megacolon, modified passive mobilization, abdominal distention *This case report was presented at the 46th Annual Scientific Conference of the Nigeria Society of Physiotherapy, November 2006

Normal Limits of Electrocardiogram and Cut-Off Values for Left Ventricular Hypertrophy in Young Adult Nigerians

This study assessed healthy young adults to determine the normal limits for electrocardiographic variables and cut-off values for left ventricular hypertrophy. It was a cross sectional descriptive study in which the participants were evaluated clinically by standard 12-lead resting electrocardiogram (ECG) at 25mm/s during quiet respiration. The heart rate, P wave duration, axis and amplitude, PR and QT intervals, QRS duration, axis and amplitude and T wave axis were assessed. Three hundred and twenty four (324) volunteers comprising of 175 males and 149 females aged 20 to 30 years (mean, 23.01±2.88years) participated in the study. The normal limits for heart rate, P wave duration, amplitude and axis in lead II, QRS duration and axis, T wave axis, PR interval, QT interval and QTc respectively were; 61-93beats per  minute,0.08-0.12s,1.00-2.00mm,22.00-79.000,78.00-106.00ms,15.50-81.000, 24.25-69.000,0.12-0.19s, 0.32-0.40s and 0.36-0.44s. The cut-off values for Sokolow-Lyon, Cornell and Araoye criteria for assessment of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) were higher than those previously in use in  medical practice. Gender difference exists in some cut-off values for LVH. This study defined the normal limits for electrocardiographic variables for young adult Nigerians. Racial factor should be taken into consideration in interpretation of ECG.Keywords: Normal limits, Electrocardiogram, Cut-off values, Left ventricular hypertrophy, Young Adult

Amyloid and tau in the brain in sporadic Alzheimer's disease: defining the chicken and the egg

In the October 2013 issue of Acta Neuropathologica there were three very interesting articles on: Amyloid or tau: the chicken or the egg? In the first article, David Mann and John Hardy argued that the deposition of aggregated amyloid β (Aβ) protein in the brain is a primary driving force behind the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease with tau pathology following as a consequential or at least a secondary event. In the communication that followed, Braak and Del Tredici presented the contrary argument with accumulation of tau protein as the primary event in sporadic Alzheimer’s disease. Attems and Jellinger questioned the concept of a chicken and egg and suggested that the majority of cases of age-associated dementia are not caused by one single primary pathological mechanism

Detection of viable Mycobacterium ulcerans in clinical samples by a novel combined 16S rRNA reverse transcriptase/IS2404 real-time qPCR assay.

Detection of Viable <em>Mycobacterium ulcerans</em> in Clinical Samples by a Novel Combined 16S rRNA Reverse Transcriptase/IS<em>2404</em> Real-Time qPCR Assa

Collaborative Layer-wise Discriminative Learning in Deep Neural Networks

Intermediate features at different layers of a deep neural network are known to be discriminative for visual patterns of different complexities. However, most existing works ignore such cross-layer heterogeneities when classifying samples of different complexities. For example, if a training sample has already been correctly classified at a specific layer with high confidence, we argue that it is unnecessary to enforce rest layers to classify this sample correctly and a better strategy is to encourage those layers to focus on other samples. In this paper, we propose a layer-wise discriminative learning method to enhance the discriminative capability of a deep network by allowing its layers to work collaboratively for classification. Towards this target, we introduce multiple classifiers on top of multiple layers. Each classifier not only tries to correctly classify the features from its input layer, but also coordinates with other classifiers to jointly maximize the final classification performance. Guided by the other companion classifiers, each classifier learns to concentrate on certain training examples and boosts the overall performance. Allowing for end-to-end training, our method can be conveniently embedded into state-of-the-art deep networks. Experiments with multiple popular deep networks, including Network in Network, GoogLeNet and VGGNet, on scale-various object classification benchmarks, including CIFAR100, MNIST and ImageNet, and scene classification benchmarks, including MIT67, SUN397 and Places205, demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. In addition, we also analyze the relationship between the proposed method and classical conditional random fields models.Comment: To appear in ECCV 2016. Maybe subject to minor changes before camera-ready versio

Environmental shocks and agricultural revenue: Secondary data analysis of 2018/19 Nigerian general household survey

The study was designed to investigate the link between environmental shocks and agricultural revenue using secondary data obtained from the 2018/2019 Nigerian general household survey. Variables were subjected to correlational analysis using Spearman correlation coefficient. Results indicate that 0.8% and 6.6% of Nigerian households experienced harvest destruction by fire and flooding respectively. The average amount of money accrued from the sale of unprocessed and processed crops in Nigeria were &lt;strike&gt;N&lt;/strike&gt;112,774 and &lt;strike&gt;N&lt;/strike&gt;44,593 respectively. Destruction of harvest by fire is negatively but insignificantly related to mean total sales of&nbsp; unprocessed crops (r = -.268, p &gt; 0.05) while it is negatively, strongly and significantly related to mean total sales of processed crops (r = -.996, p &lt; 0.05). Flooding that caused harvest failure is negatively but insignificantly related to mean total sales of unprocessed crops (r = -.217, p &gt; 0.05) and processed crops (r = -.300, p &gt; 0.05). Destruction of harvest by fire is the single most vital determinant of reduced earnings from sales of processed crops. Empirical credence afforded the idea that environmental shocks and agricultural revenue are conflicting social realities in Nigeria. Keywords: Environmental shocks, agricultural revenue, fire outbreaks, flooding

Socio-demographic associates of perceived social support among crop farmers in Ido local government area, Ibadan, Nigeria

This study was designed to assess perceived social support (PSS) and the socio-demographic characteristics associated with same among crop farmers in Ido LGA of Oyo State, Nigeria. The design is a farmer-targeted cross-sectional survey. Primary data were collected among 215 randomly selected respondents using structured questionnaire, which were administered via structured interview. Cross-tabulation and chi-square were used to show distributions and significance of associations between pairs of socio-demographic characteristics and levels of perceived social support. Contingency co-efficient was used to assess the extent of significant associations. Results indicated that high, moderate and marginal levels of social support were enjoyed by 40.9%, 30.7% and 28.4% of respondents, respectively. Sex and age were significantly associated with levels of social support (p &lt; 0.05) but marital status and education were not (p &gt; 0.05). Being female and being of decreased age are significantly associated with benefiting higher level of social support. Marital status and education are inconsequential factors in accruing social support among farmers in the study area. Social support is fairly palpable among farmers, but deliberate efforts to instigate its manifestation will open farmers to reaping the enormous advantages that social support offers. Keywords: Social support, farmers, resilience, welfare, well-being