Competition law and socio-economic advancement: Nigeria as a case study – giving a hungry man a silk tie?

This thesis follows the recognized position that a means of improving the Nigerian socio-economic environment is through a free market economy and a competitive economic environment that has strongly rooted equal and easy access to raw materials, workforce, and technology that would be available to all businesses. It backs the position that in free market economies, through protecting demand and supply, competition law more efficiently maximizes consumer welfare as opposed to government regulation or unregulated competition, and it enhances economic development. The thesis recognizes that competition law is relatively new in Nigeria, answers the question: to what extent can the proper implementation of competition law and policy be employed to promote economic advancement in Nigeria? The submitted views are somewhat based on an analysis of the objectives of competition law and policy, in order to determine whether Nigeria has unique problems, and if so, whether the common principles in competition policy are adequate to address them. Furthermore, this research examines existing regulatory regimes and the role it plays with regards to competition regulation.the question that arises is whether the regulations set out by these bodies are sufficient to promote and preserve competition. This thesis analyses the position and effectiveness of these regulatory organs in the promotion of competition. The thesis examines the historical antecedent and institutional structure, including developments in competition law in the United States of America (US) and the European Union (EU). Furthermore, it examines some of the standards in the competition policies of these jurisdictions such as those concerning agreements, abuse of dominant position and mergers, to determine which competition model could be best adopted by Nigeria. The thesis recognises that in 2019 the Nigerian President, General Muhammadu Buhari signed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA) 2019 which repealed the Consumer Protection Council Act. The introduction of a codified set of competition rules into Nigeria’s regulatory oversight framework came as a long anticipated change, to ensure that market distortions across all sectors are minimized and rules of fair play are respected in the market place. Before the enactment, the laws governing competition and consumer protection were separate, fragmented and industry-specific. The thesis recognises that while the enactment of the law was a good start, there will be certain challenges. It proposes Nigeria uses these laws and advancements which have been made over the years as a mechanism to determine whether the same rules could apply, which competition law model could be best adopted and for building a suitable competition law. Through examining these jurisdictions, the thesis provides a setting to compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems and identify best practices so as to make recommendations which may improve existing policy

STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE SENSITIVITY AND ENABLE TANDEM MASS ANALYSIS OF BIOMOLECULES USING DIGITAL WAVE TECHNOLOGY

Digital wave technology (DWT) is an emerging and promising technique in mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation, which has been alluded to as “the future of mass spectrometry.” The DWT discriminates charged ions for mass filtering using a rectangular waveform rather than a sine wave used in traditional mass filters. The unique advantages presented by the DWT, which include limitless mass range, low voltage requirement, and handling flexibility, have positioned it as a potential alternative to sinewave-driven systems. This work takes advantage of the flexibility of the digital waveform duty cycle variations of the DWT to improve the mass resolution of the digital waveform systems with a major goal of converting the so-called “low resolution” quadrupole instruments into a medium-high resolution mass filter. Hence, this work covers the development and application of a digital tandem quadrupole mass filter (DTMF) in analyzing biomolecules. A DTMF uses two low-resolution quadrupole mass filters aligned in series to create a new stability mass window whose width corresponds to the resolution of the isolated ion. This stability window can be narrowed by adjusting the duty cycle of the digital waveforms applied to the quadrupole rods to improve mass resolution. Chapter one of this work introduces the background of the quadrupole mass filters, the digital wave systems with attractive features and capabilities, and the digital tandem mass filters. A new technique that helps to improve ion transmission into the higher Mathieu stability zones – the digital pre-filter was also introduced.Chapter two focuses on developing the DTMF instrumentation and the initial testing of its applicability in analyzing low-mass molecules. This chapter covers the experimental evaluation of the DTMF principles and optimization of the operational parameters. Chapter three explored the application of the DTMF in analyzing peptides and proteins using a soft ionization technique. This chapter investigates the compatibilities of the DTMF with the native analysis of proteins and its potential in the analysis of large biomolecules. Chapter four covers the studies of the digital pre-filter (DPF), a new technique enabled by the DWT. This work presents the operational principles, performance optimization, and the experimental evaluation of the DPF. Overall, this project accomplished the use of digital wave technology to improve the mass resolution of a quadrupole mass filter through the development of a digital tandem quadrupole instrument, thereby increasing the boundary of the quadrupole instrument usage, examined a native quadrupole MS analysis of proteins with the digital wave system to enable biomolecule analysis, and developed a new method of sensitivity improvement for higher stability zones accessibility

Oxadiazinones As Chiral Auxiliaries: Chiral Templates For Asymmetric Conjugate Addition In The Synthesis Of (R)-(+)-Tolterodine

The stereoselective formation of carbon-carbon bonds through the process of conjugate addition has proven to be a very important methodology in synthetic organic chemistry. In this context, oxadiazinones are chiral auxiliaries that have been applied in the asymmetric aldol addition reaction to synthesize valuable synthetic fragments such as the aldol side chain of the multi-drug resistance medicinal agent, hapalosin. This thesis describes efforts that were directed towards employing oxadiazinones as chiral scaffolds for the process of asymmetric conjugate addition with the ultimate objective of using this methodology in the preparation of medicinal agents such as Tolterodine. Preliminary efforts focused on using an N4-p-methoxybenzyl substituted oxadiazinone to achieve these goals. This oxadiazinone was acylated with trans-cinnamic acid via the Steglich reaction with 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) and catalytic N,N-dimethylamino pyridine (DMAP). This substrate was then reacted with a Normant reagent, a mixture of the Grignard reagent, methylmagnesium bromide and copper (I) bromide-dimethylsulfide complex. The diastereoselectivity of the conjugate addition product was determined by analysis of the 500 MHz 1H NMR spectrum to be no greater than 3:1, a value unsuitable for meaningful asymmetric synthesis. This observation was in contrast to higher stereoselectivities observed in the asymmetric aldol reaction with Ephedra based oxadiazinones where ratios of 95:5 are commonly observed. To resolve this issue, a new series of oxadiazinones were designed, namely N4-isopropyloxadiazinone and N4-p-diphenylmethyloxadiazinone. The observed diastereoselectivity of the asymmetric conjugate addition for the N4-isopropyloxadiazinone was lower. This reinforced the idea that the diastereoselectivity was being influenced by the conformational dynamics of the ring system and not just the N4-substituent. This thesis will describe the chemistry that has been accomplished to this point and make projections for future efforts in the synthesis of the medicinally valuable target compound, tolterodine (Detrol)

The measurement of the specific inductive capacities of various liquid dielectrics.

The name inductivity, or dielectric capacity, or specific inductive capacity is given to the ratio between the capacities of two condensers of the same size and shape, one of them filled with the specified dielectric, and the other an air condenser. The inductive capacity of dry air at standard conditions is usually taken as the standard. Therefore, the measurement of the specific inductive capacity of any given dielectric resolves itself into the measurement of the capacity of a condenser with the given material as dielectric

Micro-volunteering at scale can help health systems respond to emergencies, such as the Covid-19 pandemic

One of the unprecedented challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic has been to support millions of clinically high-risk individuals who were advised to self-isolate for long periods to reduce the likelihood of infection. The NHS in England issued a mass call for volunteers in March 2020 to help support people who were shielding or vulnerable for other reasons during the lockdown. Three quarters of a million people came forward to aid the health at home experience for these vulnerable individuals by providing friendly telephone calls, help with shopping or collection of medicines or transport to essential hospital appointments. Hospitals also used to scheme to replace older volunteers who had been stood down after Covid-19 risk assessments and to help patients avoid unnecessary trips into their services. As we gained experience of running the scheme, additional tasks were added, such as support for Covid-19 research trials. The approach to ‘micro-volunteering’ at scale has been hugely beneficial and has significantly increased the number and diversity of volunteers supporting the health system. This article describes the scheme and provides an account of achievements over the first wave of Covid-19 in England. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Patient, Family & Community Engagement lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens

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Performance of Synchronous Reluctance Generators with Series and Shunt Stator Connections

This paper reports the performance of series- and shunt-connected self-excited reluctance generators (SERG). In addition to the two stator connections, an analysis was carried out on rotor configurations (with and without a cage) a combination resulting in four different generator topologies. The loss of load and transient characteristics of each generator configuration were studied for a combination of pure resistive and R-L loads. It is shown that for the same machine size, speed and exciting capacitor value, the generator with a cage preserves a better wave shape following a transient disturbance than the cageless machine. At unity power factor, shunt generator with cage can deliver 0.691pu output power, at 1.97% regulation; its series counterpart only delivers 0.589 pu at 2.05%. The study demonstrates that while shunt generators have better regulation and supports higher loads at different power factors, series generators show a superior performance in terms of damping out transients