Infrastructure and Poverty Reduction: Implications for Urban Development in Nigeria

The paper investigates the impact of infrastructural development on poverty reduction in Nigeria. Specifically, the relative effects of physical and social infrastructure on living standards or poverty indicators are examined, with a view to providing empAfrican urbanism, everyday practices, social infrastructures, urban violence

The presentation of political actors on the stage of human life : framing complex Australian decisions about Ottoman-Armenian deaths

The debate about whether to label the mass killing of Ottoman-Armenians in the early twentieth century as “genocide” has emerged in geographically distant Australian parliamentary discussions and decisions. The struggle to use and refuse such terms is deeply felt by the Australian-Armenian and Australian-Turkish ethnic-migrant communities, for each of which the reframing is a question of cultural identity and a source of tension. This thesis explores how and why contentious international debates on the histories affecting the Armenians and Turks make their way into Australian State Parliaments, and how the debates and political decisions impact and play out on the lives of the two communities so far removed from the realities of the past. The thesis considers the impacts of these on Australia’s ‘normative’ concepts of multiculturalism. This thesis also provides an overview of the historical background to the mass killing of Ottoman-Armenians in the early twentieth century, and highlights the areas of contention and scholarly disagreement. The purpose of this thesis is not to determine a label for the mass killing of Ottoman-Armenians. The roles of political actors, lobby groups, and the Australian media (both ethnic and mainstream) in framing debates, setting agendas and labels, and promoting activism are considered. Key media and political narratives are examined, to understand the ramifications of the New South Wales and South Australian Parliamentary decisions to recognise the mass killing of Ottoman-Armenians between 1915-1916 as an act of “genocide”. This thesis captures how culture, religious background, education and historical experiences impact unity and distances within and between the two diasporic communities, and presents an understanding of the decreased sense of belonging experienced by members of the Australian-Armenian and Australian-Turkish communities through qualitative and quantitative research findings. This thesis also examines the challenges facing Australia, a geographically distant nation in relation to ongoing struggles between the Armenians and Turks, and argues that the country is no longer “immune” to international warfare affecting ethnic-migrant communities living in Australia. It argues that multiculturalism cannot truly be embraced until the frames and labels, which oversimplify complex discourses and conflicted narratives, are understood

Applications of Evolutionary Bioinformatics in Basic and Biomedical Research

With the revolutionary progress in sequencing technologies, computational biology emerged as a game-changing field which is applied in understanding molecular events of life for not only complementary but also exploratory purposes. Bioinformatics resources and tools significantly help in data generation, organization and analysis. However, there is still a need for developing new approaches built based on a biologist’s point of view. In protein bioinformatics, there are several fundamental problems such as (i) determining protein function; (ii) identifying protein-protein interactions; (iii) predicting the effect of amino acid variants. Here, I present three chapters addressing these problems from an evolutionary perspective. Firstly, I describe a novel search pipeline for protein domain identification. The algorithm chain provides sensitive domain assignments with the highest possible specificity. Secondly, I present a tool enabling large-scale visualization of presences and absences of proteins in hierarchically clustered genomes. This tool visualizes multi-layer information of any kind of genome-linked data with a special focus on domain architectures, enabling identification of coevolving domains/proteins, which can eventually help in identifying functionally interacting proteins. And finally, I propose an approach for distinguishing between benign and damaging missense mutations in a human disease by establishing the precise evolutionary history of the associated gene. This part introduces new criteria on how to determine functional orthologs via phylogenetic analysis. All three parts use comparative genomics and/or sequence analyses. Taken together, this study addresses important problems in protein bioinformatics and as a whole it can be utilized to describe proteins by their domains, coevolving partners and functionally important residues

Squamous papillomas of the conjunctiva: A retrospective clinicopathological study

Background: There is very limited literature on squamous papillomas of the conjunctiva from Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. In an attempt to contribute to the literature on the subject, we studied the clinicopathological characteristics of patients histologically diagnosed with squamous papilloma of the conjunctiva in Ibadan, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: Clinical and pathological records of patients with histological diagnosis of squamous papilloma of the conjunctiva made in the Department of Pathology, University College Hospital, Ibadan, between January 1985 and December 2004, were reviewed. Results: There were totally 26 cases. Patients’ ages ranged from 2 to 58 years with a mean age of 32 years. Male to female ratio was 1.4:1. Size of tumors ranged from 2 to 10 mm. Duration of presenting complaints was from 2 months to 10 years. The lesions in 10 cases were located in the medial canthus, at or close to the limbus in another 10 cases, and in the tarsal conjunctiva in a single case. Five cases had no documentation of location. Sixteen cases (61.5%) had multiple papillomas. Four cases had a history of chemical injury (alkaline based – hair relaxer in a single case, acid based – wet cell car battery fluid in two cases, and unknown chemical in a single case) preceding the lesion by at least 6 weeks. Fourteen cases had koilocytosis on histology suggestive of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) etiology. HIV screening test was negative in the three patients who had the screening done. Preoperative clinical diagnosis was squamous papilloma in 16 cases, pterygium in 6 cases and squamous cell carcinoma in 2 cases. Conclusion: In the environment where we practice, conjunctival squamous papilloma occurs most commonly in the fourth decade of life. Only very few cases are submitted for histological diagnosis. HPV infection and chemical injury are the main etiology. We strongly advocate that all excisions of the conjunctiva, irrespective of the clinical impression, should be submitted routinely for histological assessment.Keywords: Squamous, papillomas, conjunctivaNigerian Journal of Clinical Practice • Jan-Mar 2012 • Vol 15 • Issue

Fine needle Aspiration Biopsy (FNAB) in the initial evaluation and diagnosis of palpable soft tissue lesions and with histologic correlation

Introduction: Fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) as a means of  evaluation of palpable soft tissue lesions is poorly utilized in our  environment despite the fact that it safe, cheap, quick and easy to  perform. Methods: All cases of cases of palpable soft tissue lesions of the trunk andextremities where FNAB was used as the initial evaluation tool were  reviewed. Furthermore, the records for corresponding cases that had openexcision biopsy and ultimately had histologic diagnosis out of these cases were also retrieved and correlated with the final diagnosis from FNAB.Results: Out of 142 aspirates, only 107(75.3% of cases) fulfilled the  inclusion criteria for the study. The age range was from 0-85 years (mean = 41.2 yrs.) with a roughly equal male:female ratio. The lesions were  located in the trunk -56 cases, upper arm -7, forearm -1, hand -1, thigh -28, leg -7 and the foot-7. The FNAB was diagnosed as benign in 56 (52.3%) cases, malignant in 48 (44.8 %) cases and suspicious of  malignancy in 3(2.8%) cases. The cases were cytomorphologically classified into the following categories: Lipomatous (32 cases), epithelia (18),  spindle cell (14), inflammatory (13) pleomorphic (11), small round (6), myxoid (5), epitheloid/ polygonal (1) and others (7). The sensitivity and specificity of diagnosed cases with FNAB as either benign or malignant when correlated with histology were 95% and 100% respectively.Conclusion: FNAB is a valuable tool in the initial evaluation of palpable soft tissue lesions especially in primary soft tissue neoplasms and clinically suspected metastatic carcinomas

Characterization of Tensile Deformation in AZ91 Mg Alloy Castings

Tensile deformation characteristics of cast aluminum alloys have been investigated extensively. Cast Mg alloys have remained mostly neglected by researchers, despite their potential for weight savings. This present study is motivated by this gap in the literature and consists of two stages; in Stage 1, analysis of tensile data gathered from literature were reanalyzed, and in Stage 2, data generated from tensile testing of 60 specimens of AZ91 Mg alloy castings in both T4 and T6 conditions were analyzed to characterize work hardening behavior. In Stage 1, more than 1600 data were collected from the literature for various Mg alloy families. After plotting these data in yield strength-elongation charts, highest points were identified and interpreted as the maximum ductility, i.e., ductility potential (eFmax). The trend in maximum points indicated a linear relationship with yield strength (σY), expressed as; eF(max) = 41.8 - 0.106σY (1) This ductility potential equation can be used as a metric to compare elongation obtained from tensile specimens to measure the structural quality of Mg alloy castings. Moreover, results indicated that ductility potential was not affected by heat treatment, grain size (within 30-120 μm), casting geometry, size, the type of casting process nor chemical composition. In Phase 2, AZ91 cast Mg alloy specimens in T4 and T6 conditions were tested in tension to obtain stress-strain data for each specimen. Fits of four constitutive equations, namely, the Hollomon, Voce, Ludwik and Swift, to true stress-true plastic strain data in the elastoplastic region were characterized for the specimens with highest elongation values for T4 and T6 specimens. The coefficient of determination, R2, values for all equations were in excess of 0.99, suggesting that all four equations provide excellent fits to tensile data in both conditions. The change in work hardening rate with true stress was investigated for all specimens by using Kocks-Mecking (KM) plots. It was determined that work hardening behavior of Mg alloy castings in T4 and T6 is distinctly different. In T4 specimens, there is a plateau in work hardening rate at approximately E/25 which was observed in all specimens. The presence of this plateau is consistent with results given in the literature for pure Mg. However, this plateau was not observed in any of the T6 specimens. The reasons for the absence of the plateau in T6 specimens are unknown at this time. In both T4 and T6 specimens, the KM work hardening model in which work hardening rate changes linearly with true stress was found to be applicable. This is the first time that KM model was found to be valid for Mg alloys. Moreover in all specimens, there was a sudden drop in work hardening rate just prior to final fracture. This drop was first hypothesized to be due to structural defects in specimens, which was subsequently validated via fractography. Structural defects were found in all specimens whose fracture surfaces were investigated, indicating low to medium levels of quality. The quality index method, originally developed for cast aluminum alloys as the ratio of elongation to ductility potential, was found not to be applicable to Mg alloys, at least in its original form. This is due to the fact that work hardening behavior of cast aluminum alloys follows the KM model and there is no plateau where work hardening rate is constant. Hence the work hardening behavior of cast aluminum alloys and AZ91 specimens in T6 condition was similar. However the plateau of constant work hardening rate had a strong effect on elongation in T4 specimens. Therefore quality index analysis, which is supposed to be independent of alloy condition, did show that T4 and T6 specimens had different quality index levels. This finding contradicted the result from Stage 1 that aging has no effect on ductility potential. However because of the presence of structural defects in all specimens, quality index levels were low (0.30-0.45). Therefore it is unclear at this point whether the work hardening behavior of T4 and T6 specimens would still be different if elongation values were in the proximity of the ductility potential line. More research is needed to characterize work hardening behavior of cast Mg alloys in the absence of major structural defects and also address other questions raised in this study

A Theory of Corruption and Productivity Growth

This chapter was a theoretical construct on corruption within the context of long-run growth. It stressed and expounded the quality implications of corrupt practices for full capacity output. Rational behavior of economic agents was assumed and the typical capitalist economy was the setting. The ultimate channel of the effect of corruption on long-run growth was a declining total factor productivity growth that in turn caused the full information natural rate level of output to fall below full capacity output. Both the investment and human capital transmission mechanisms of corruptive practices were focused with trappings of institutional corruption discernible in the two cases. Different permutations and likely results were indicated and analyzed. The overall conclusion was that corruption was undesirable from the perspective of long-run growth

Evolution of corporate lobbying activities in the European Union

Mestrado APNORLobbying is itself not a very new topic. However, the current practices of the lobbying in the European Union (EU) and the relationship between lobbying firms’ expenditures and their main performance indicators, like firms’ annual turnover, their annual productivity growth, annual value-added, annual patents, annual profit margins and firms’ annual regulation intensity are still a new topic and has not been drown enough attention in the literature. The literature mostly focuses on the lobbying tactics, successfailure of the lobbyists and generally provides theoretical and qualitative analyses. This research aims to shed light on the current practices of lobbying in the EU and the correlation between lobbying expenditures and firms’ key performance indicators by using qualitative and quantitative analysis. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the evolution and current practices of lobbying in the EU, examine the particular case of Portuguese Businesses and determine if there is any relationship between lobbying firms’ expenditures and their annual turnover, annual productivity growth, annual value-added, annual patents, annual profit margins and annual regulation intensity. The study undergoes exploratory research in which both qualitative and quantitative data is gathered and analysed. The research used the online quantitative data set available regarding the lobbying activities of European countries and their firms between 2016-2020. One of the main data sources used provides information about the last five years. The other source of information used provides information since 2008. The study findings show that lobbying activities and registration in the transparency register increased in the last ten years, and the volume of lobbying expenditures also increased significantly. The digital, banking, energy, technology, and car manufacturing sectors were found to be spending the most. It is also found that there is a positive relationship between a firm's expenditures and the firm's annual turnover, its value-added yearly, and its yearly regulation intensity in the EU.O lobbying em si não é um tópico muito novo. No entanto, as práticas atuais de lobby na União Europeia (UE) e a relação entre os gastos das empresas de lobbying e seus principais indicadores de desempenho, como a faturação anual das empresas, o crescimento anual de produtividade, valor anual acrescentado, as patentes, as margens de lucro anuais e a intensidade da regulamentação anual das empresas ainda são um tópico novo e não têm atraído atenção suficiente na literatura. A literatura concentra-se principalmente nas estratégis de lobbying ou no sucesso/fracasso dos lobista e, geralmente, fornece apenas análises teóricos e qualitativas. Assim, este trabalho de investigação visa lançar uma luz sobre as práticas atuais de lobby na UE e a correlação entre as despesas de lobbying e os principais indicadores de desempenho das empresas, usando uma análise qualitativa e quantitativa. O presente estudo teve como objetivo investigar a evolução e as práticas atuais de lobbying na União Europeia, examinar o caso particular das empresas portuguesas e determinar se existe alguma relação entre as despesas das empresas em lobbying e o seu volume de negócios anual, produtividade anual crescimento, valor acrescentado anual, patentes anuais, margens de lucro anuais e intensidade de regulamentação anual. O estudo constitui-se como um trabalho de investigação exploratório em que dados qualitativos e quantitativos são recolhidos e analisados. A investigação utilizou um conjunto de dados quantitativos disponíveis online sobre as atividades de lobbying dos países europeus e suas empresas entre 2016-2020. Uma das fontes de dados utilizadas fornece informações sobre os últimos cinco anos. A outra fonte de informação utilizada fornece informações desde 2008. Os resultados do estudo mostram que as atividades de lobbying e o seu registro aumentaram nos últimos dez anos assim como o volume das despesas. Os setores digital, bancário, de energia, tecnologia e produção de automóveis foram os que mais gastaram. Também se constatou que há uma relação positiva entre os gastos de uma empresa e a sua faturação anual, o seu valor acrescentado anual e sua intensidade de regulamentação anual na UE

Entrepreneurial intention amongst postgraduate students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Whilst the rate of growth of unemployed graduates is gradually increasing, entrepreneurship is considered to be one of the factors that can increase employment and be a significant factor for economic growth in developing countries. Students’ entrepreneurial intentions may be affected by different factors. A students’ entrepreneurial intention is found to determine the students’ willingness to engage into entrepreneurial behaviour in future. The main objective for this study is to investigate how attitude towards behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, entrepreneurship education and personality traits affect the entrepreneurial intentions of postgraduate students. A quantitative survey design was utilised in this study and the primary data was collected by distributing 129 survey questionnaires to respondents at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville campus. The Cronbach’s Alpha Reliability test which ensures high reliability result was conducted on every variable. Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Linear Regression Analysis were conducted in this study to test relationships of the independent variables (i.e. attitude towards behaviour, entrepreneurship education, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and personality traits) and the dependent variable (Entrepreneurial Intention). The findings show a positive relationship to exist between the independent variable and the dependent variable. The study focused on two postgraduate degrees (MBA and Masters) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville campus; therefore, the results may neither be generalised for the entire university nor for the entire South African population. However, they could be used to form the basis for further studies. Lecturers, Practitioners, and students can use the findings of this work to come up with interventions that promote the development of an entrepreneurial culture within the South African context