Ergonomic Evaluation and Establishment of Suitable Classroom Furniture Design Specifications for Secondary School Children in South-Western Nigeria

This research work compared the anthropometric dimensions of some secondary school students to the design dimensions of their chairs and desks to assess the furniture’s appropriateness. A total of 840 students, with their chairs and desks, from fourteen secondary schools in seven states in south-western Nigeria, were measured.  Popliteal height(PH), Buttock-Popliteal length (BPL), Hip breadth (HB), Shoulder Height (ShH), Elbow height (EH) and Knee height (KH)) of the children were measured using vernier callipers and an anthropometric chair. While Seat Height (SH), Seat Depth (SD), Seat Width (SW), Backrest Height (BH), Desk Height (DH) and Underneath Desk Height (UDH) were measured using a measuring tape. The SD and BH were suitable for the students, while major mismatches were noted in SH, DH and UDH. Using existing models, three types of chairs and tables were then proposed for the students. Keywords: School furniture, Anthropometric Chair, Popliteal height, Desk Heigh

Methyl orange, an organic dye: its health impact and sorptive removal from waste water

AbstractMethyl Orange (MO) a member of Azo dyes are commonly used as synthetic dyes in textile, food, paper and cosmetics. Their use is easy and cost-effective, compared with natural dyes. However, azo bonds are hardly removed because of their high water solubility as well as low exhaustion with the potential for persistence and accumulation in the environment, therefore aqueous solution of MO is toxic and irritating. Thus, the removal of them from industrial wastewaters is capital with regard to protect public health, environment, and aquatic life

Towards Development of an Indigenous African Language-based Programming Language

Programming languages based on the lexicons of indigenous African languages are rare to come by unlike those based on Asian and / or European languages. It is opined that an African native language-based programming language would enhance comprehension of computer-based problem solving processes by indigenous students and teachers. This study intends to attempt a design and implementation of an African native language-based programming language using Yoruba as case study. Yoruba is the first language of over 30 million people in the south-west of Nigeria, Africa; and is spoken by over one hundred million people world-wide. In preparation towards actual implementation of a prototype of the intended programming language, a mini token recognizer has been developed in QBasic. Keywords— Native language-based programming languages, Yoruba language, Digital divide, Information and communication technology, prototype implementation.

Improving mechanical and thermal properties of graphite–aluminium composite using Si, SiC and eggshell particles

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Cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis identifies six breast cancer loci in African and European ancestry women.

Our study describes breast cancer risk loci using a cross-ancestry GWAS approach. We first identify variants that are associated with breast cancer at P < 0.05 from African ancestry GWAS meta-analysis (9241 cases and 10193 controls), then meta-analyze with European ancestry GWAS data (122977 cases and 105974 controls) from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. The approach identifies four loci for overall breast cancer risk [1p13.3, 5q31.1, 15q24 (two independent signals), and 15q26.3] and two loci for estrogen receptor-negative disease (1q41 and 7q11.23) at genome-wide significance. Four of the index single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) lie within introns of genes (KCNK2, C5orf56, SCAMP2, and SIN3A) and the other index SNPs are located close to GSTM4, AMPD2, CASTOR2, and RP11-168G16.2. Here we present risk loci with consistent direction of associations in African and European descendants. The study suggests that replication across multiple ancestry populations can help improve the understanding of breast cancer genetics and identify causal variants

Equity and justice in global warming policy

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol, post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e.., within a generation. We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits, and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions

Thermal Analysis of Extrusion Process in Plastic Making

Plastic extrusion has been an important process of plastic production since 19th century. Meanwhile, in plastic extrusion process, wide variation in temperature along the extrudate usually leads to scraps formation on the side of finished products. To avoid this situation, there is a need to deeply understand temperature distribution along the extrudate in plastic extrusion process. This work developed an analytical model that predicts the temperature distribution over the billet (the polymers melt) along the extrudate during extrusion process with the limitation that the polymer in question does not cover biopolymer such as DNA. The model was solved and simulated. Results for two different plastic materials (polyvinylchloride and polycarbonate) using self-developed MATLAB code and a commercially developed software (ANSYS) were generated and ultimately compared. It was observed that there is a thermodynamic heat transfer from the entry level of the billet into the die down to the end of it. The graph plots indicate a natural exponential decay of temperature with time and along the die length, with the temperature being 413 K and 474 K for polyvinylchloride and polycarbonate respectively at the entry level and 299.3 K and 328.8 K at the exit when the temperature of the surrounding was 298 K. The extrusion model was validated by comparison of MATLAB code simulation with a commercially available ANSYS simulation and the results favourably agree. This work concludes that the developed mathematical model and the self-generated MATLAB code are reliable tools in predicting temperature distribution along the extrudate in plastic extrusion process