Canadian Women in Prison: A Racial and Gendered Discursive Analysis

Research shows that women are the fastest growing prison population worldwide, and this trend proves no different in Canada (Balfour, 2008; Pate, 2006; Pollack, 2003; Sudbury, 2005). According to the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Manitoba (n.d.) (CAEFS), this past decade has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of women who are federally incarcerated in comparison to the 15 percent increase for men. More specifically, Sudbury (2005) argued that poor, young, racialized women and girls are amid the fastest growing population in Canadian prisons. That said, the goal of this paper is to examine government documents in order to determine whether the overrepresentation of racialized Canadian women in prison are documented by the federal government

Feature regularization and learning for human activity recognition.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Feature extraction is an essential component in the design of human activity recognition model. However, relying on extracted features alone for learning often makes the model a suboptimal model. Therefore, this research work seeks to address such potential problem by investigating feature regularization. Feature regularization is used for encapsulating discriminative patterns that are needed for better and efficient model learning. Firstly, a within-class subspace regularization approach is proposed for eigenfeatures extraction and regularization in human activity recognition. In this ap- proach, the within-class subspace is modelled using more eigenvalues from the reliable subspace to obtain a four-parameter modelling scheme. This model enables a better and true estimation of the eigenvalues that are distorted by the small sample size effect. This regularization is done in one piece, thereby avoiding undue complexity of modelling eigenspectrum differently. The whole eigenspace is used for performance evaluation because feature extraction and dimensionality reduction are done at a later stage of the evaluation process. Results show that the proposed approach has better discriminative capacity than several other subspace approaches for human activity recognition. Secondly, with the use of likelihood prior probability, a new regularization scheme that improves the loss function of deep convolutional neural network is proposed. The results obtained from this work demonstrate that a well regularized feature yields better class discrimination in human activity recognition. The major contribution of the thesis is the development of feature extraction strategies for determining discriminative patterns needed for efficient model learning

The Need for Professionalism and Competencies in the Construction Industry

The quantity surveyors, in the present day construction industry, through his skills and ability analyze cost components of a construction project in a scientific way and apply the results of his analysis to a variety of financial and economic problems confronting the developer and the designer. The wide array of quantity surveyors’ responsibilities means that they have to be educated, trained, and highly skilled in diverse subjects. However, competence, in any sphere of work, can be a difficult concept to pin down especially when it relates to professional occupations where such roles can be complex, and the knowledge and skills involved many and varied professionals. This paper aims to investigate the competencies of quantity surveyors in the process of discharging its professional duties by evaluating the effects of professional competency on quantity surveying practices in Nigeria. The study population comprised the quantity surveyors who are professionals in the private organization in the Nigerian construction industry. Data were obtained to assess the professional views on the profession, examine the roles of quantity surveyors in the construction industry and assess the need for professionalism and competencies in the industry. Questionnaires were administered to the randomly selected 200 practicing quantity surveyors in Lagos state. Findings revealed that the major role of quantity surveyors in the construction industry is the preparation of the bill of quantity as it ranked 1st with RII value of 1.00; it was also discovered that the quantity surveyors were in agreement to client service delivery as the first ethical standard that construction professionals should consider when performing their professional obligations in order to avoid project failure and over-cost. It is therefore recommended that the professional bodies and the academia should organize proper and adequate service training, workshop and seminars which will enhance the possibility of acquiring more skills and experience so as to improve competence in the discharge of quantity surveyors professional duties. Keywords: Professionalism, competency, ethical standard, industr

Ecological strategies and disturbance response of tropical forest trees: insight from functional trait variation

Tropical forests store 40% of terrestrial carbon, process six times as much carbon as is released through fossil fuel use, and are epicenters of biodiversity. Despite all that we know about tropical forests, there remains much to discover about variation in ecological strategies, differences in the way species acquire limited resources through dissimilarities in construction and allocation patterns. We also know little as to how this variation shapes the resilience of tropical tree communities to disturbance. These forests are increasingly threatened by global change stressors, such as anthropogenic land-use and climate change. Recent advances in ecological literature show that more insight into differences in ecological strategies among tropical forest species can be gained by going beyond species distributions to also examine functional trait variation. Functional traits are morphological and physiological traits that reflect allocation strategies thought to be important determinants of fitness. In the first two chapters of my dissertation, I quantified wood density and anatomical variation at multiple scales, and related this variation to ecological strategies of tropical forest tree species. The last two chapters examined effects of historical disturbance on the composition and temporal dynamics of tropical forest communities. In addition to wood density, other traits studied in these later chapters were maximum height and diameter. Across my dissertation, the scales spanned ranged from intra-individual, intra-specific, interspecific, community and temporal levels, across two tropical forests, the 50 ha CTFS plot in BCI, Panama, and the 5.2 ha long-term forest plots in Kibale National Park, Uganda. With the functional trait approach, my dissertation demonstrated several novel patterns, including 1) linear radial increases in wood density are typical of fast-growth high mortality tropical tree species, while slow-growth low mortality species show a range of radial changes in wood density including non-linear trends 2) greater variation in ecological strategies when wood density is decomposed into anatomical components, with functional consequences for species growth and mortality of saplings but not adult trees, 3) persistence of the effects of selective logging on the taxonomic and structural composition but not functional composition of a tropical forest 45 years after, and 4) inadequacy of classical successional models that assume recovery to pre-disturbance conditions for predicting the effects of selective logging on tropical forest dynamics

Association between Secretor status and Norovirus Infection among Children Under 5 years of Age in South-South, Nigeria

Norovirus has been identified to constitute a key biological cause of gastroenteritis worldwide. This study aimed to determine the association between secretor status and norovirus infection among children under 5 years of age with diarrhea in Edo, Bayelsa and Delta States, South-South, Nigeria. Ethical approval was received from participating health institutions before inclusion of patients in this study. A total of 505 participants, consisting of 405 children with diarrhea and 100 apparently healthy children, who served as controls were included in this study. Stool specimens were collected from all participants and analyzed for norovirus using a rapid lateral flow immunoassay kit. Secretor was determined using commercial test kits La and Lb antisera. The overall prevalence of norovirus antigen among children with diarrhea was 18.5%. Secretors were found to significantly have higher prevalence of norovirus in Delta State (OR=0.165; 95% C.I, 0.0048, 0.5609; P=0.0039) when compared to non-secretors, but there were no significant association between norovirus infection and secretor status among subjects in Bayelsa and Edo States. Routine screening for norovirus infection among secretors with diarrhea should be a priority among subjects from Delta State

The Social-Economic Impediments to Kidnapping Eradication in Southern Nigeria

Many families had gone through the trauma of being guests of Kidnappers. Apart from paying hefty ransom, many of the victims did not live to tell their stories. Since 2007, Nigeria has witness increased increasingly spate of kidnapping in the South, particularly South-South and South-East geo-political zones. In spite of the security agencies investment in intelligence gathering to get advance information to nip their activities in the bud and also the formation of the various special Task Force on kidnapping, the business still strives. This paper examined the Social-economic factors hindering the abolition of this illicit business in the southern Nigeria. The sources of data is secondary. It was discovered that the menace has been on the increase due to its lucrative nature of the business people pay ransom to get their relative released, and this encourages the crime to thrive, that unemployment, corruption, poverty, leadership failure and loss of societal value are the major obstacle to its eradication. The following recommendations were made: Any political or public office holder caught conniving with kidnappers should be relieved of their position. There should be effective governance that enhances improved standard of living for the people, by providing employment, and ensuring adequate security of lives and properties.Key Words: Kidnapping, values. Unemployment, poverty, victim

Use, Non-Use, and Appropriation of Large Non-Interactive Public Displays in Higher Education Contexts

Large Display Technologies (LDTs) are becoming common in public spaces, changing the way we engage and share media content. The end use of LDTs can range from broadcasting information feeds (e.g., news programming) to supporting users in manipulating on-screen content (e.g., an interactive building map). One use residing as a mid-point of this range are non-interactive LDTs with content and interaction driven by users’ own personal devices. LDTs of this type are associated with supportive furniture, connection ports, and the presence of network protocols. Potentially, users can carve out personalized activity spaces in public, allowing them to engage their digital content just as they would at home or at the office. We identify this specific use of LDTs as Publicly Appropriable LDTs (PALs). Stakeholders of PALs might understand what users need in regards to technology support and furniture, but may lack the means of evaluating the outcomes of said installation. Existing literature on LDTs do not provide frameworks on how PALs can support users’ activities. To solve these issues, we need to better understand how PALs are situated in context with respect to users and its surrounding environment. In this study, we conducted an evaluative study of a PAL installation at the College of Architecture (CoA) at Texas A&M University. The CoA’s installation of PALs consists of a set of 8 individual units dispersed across the three floors of its main academic building. Users varying from students to faculty members were interviewed and observed as they utilized these PALs in their daily practice. From this study we found three categories of findings. First, we saw how users appropriated PALs specifically to their activities. Our second finding centered on how the PALs’ displays transition in and out of active use during occupation and what this signifies as its role during use. Finally, we found that the surroundings of a PAL had space and place-based attributes that impacted users’ experience of PALs

The use of F-K filter in the elimination of artefacts from a shallow seismic reflection data in Zaria, Nigeria

Near surface high resolution 2-D seismic reflection survey was carried out along the Zaria batholith. Zaria area forms part of the Precambrian basement complex of north central Nigeria which comprises Precambrian rocks made up of granite, gneiss and Low-grade metasediments. The granitic Zaria batholith intruded the gneiss and metasediments which forms the country rock. Reflection signals from shallow seismic survey in this area are often marred by surface waves, refraction and multiple reflections. The processing of the seismic data if not well handled often leads to migration artefacts which could be misconstrued as a seismic event. The field procedure employed for the geophysical survey was the split spread mode. The geophones were fixed at an interval of 1m, and a constant offset of 0.5 m. The common depth point method (CDP) with 12 fold coverage was adopted for the survey.Several artefacts were noticed on the result of the seismic migrated section, when the fk filter was initially applied only on the pre-stacked seismic data. The filtering and the common midpoint stacking could not completely eliminate the seismic noise on the pre-stacked seismic data. However, when an fk filter was applied on the post-stacked seismic section, the remaining seismic noise that survives the initial processing flow was eliminated. When migration was carried out on the filtered post-stack seismic section, the resulting seismic section was free from artefacts, andshowed clear seismic events.KEYWORDS: f-k filter, artefacts, shallow seismic, reflection, migration. Zari

Studies of heavy metal contents and microbial composition of rhizosphere of Panicum maximum within and around auto mechanic workshop in Benin City

This study investigated the heavy metal content and microbial composition of rhizosphere of Panicum maximum obtained from some auto mechanic workshops in Benin City, Nigeria. The grass was uprooted and soil sample was taken from its rhizosphere. The sample were labeled appropriately and immediately  transported into a polythene bag covered with aluminium foil papers. It was then taken to the laboratory for heavy metals and microbial assay. The results showed that average plant density of Panicum maximum per 100m2 of sampled subplots in the mechanic workshops was 8.50 in Ikpoba-Okha and 9.00 in Oredo, compared to 27.50 in the control. Fe content of rhizospheric soil in Ikpoba-Okha was 1527.6 mg/kg and 1653.1 mg/kg in Egor, compared to 1002.2 mg/kg in the control. Mean heavy  metal content of rhizospheric soils was 11.71 mg/kg of Mn, 0.031 mg/kg of Pb, and 9.98 mg/kg of Cr. Total hydrocarbon content ranged from 1445.0 – 2314.2 mg/kg in the oil-polluted soils, compared to 851.5 mg/kg in the control soil. Total bacterial count of the rhizospheric soils collected from Ikpoba-Okha sampling site was 5.40 x 106 cfu/g; 5.30 x 106 cfu/g in Ovia NE, and 4.90 x 106 cfu/g in Egor, compared to 0.39 x 106 cfu/g in the control. Comparatively, bacterial counts  outnumbered fungal counts. Percentage hydrocarbon degrading fungi was 133.3% in samples collected from Oredo, compared to 31.82 in the control. The most prevalent fungal species was Aspergillus niger, whereas Micrococcus varians was the most prevalent bacterial species

Non-enteric adenovirus among children with gastroenteritis in Warri, Southern Nigeria

No Abstract