Analysis of the causes and effects of recidivism in the Nigerian prison system

The Nigerian prison system is witnessing an enormous increase in people relapsing into crime and criminality, recidivists. This development has challenged the practicality and feasibility of rehabilitation programmes in Nigerian prisons. Thus, the paper sets out to achieve the following three (3) objectives: causes, consequences, and prevention and control of recidivism in the Nigerian prison system. Although the paper is basically a literature review, it supported and contributed to the body of existing knowledge on recidivism in Nigeria. From the review, it is established that criminal recidivism is caused by many factors: discrimination and stigmatization, lack of aftercare services or reintegration support programmes, familial, structural, substance abuse, peer influence, etc. Also, recidivism has negative effects on inmates, prison institution and the general public, especially the taxpayers, whose tax is used to run the Nigerian criminal justice system. The paper revealed that qualitative treatment of prisoners and provision of educational and vocational programmes are leading recidivism-control strategies. The paper made the following recommendations: establishment of the state-of-the-art correctional facilities (vocational, educational and religious programmes) for inmates to access; the Federal Government of Nigeria should extend the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) programme which is established in the Kirikiri, Port Harcourt and Enugu prisons to at least, one prison in each State in the Federation; and a responsive aftercare, rehabilitation and follow-up of inmates by either prison authorities or any other agencies that may be appointed by the government in this regard.Keywords: Analysis, Nigeria, Prison, Recidivism, System

Evolutionary distances in the twilight zone -- a rational kernel approach

Phylogenetic tree reconstruction is traditionally based on multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and heavily depends on the validity of this information bottleneck. With increasing sequence divergence, the quality of MSAs decays quickly. Alignment-free methods, on the other hand, are based on abstract string comparisons and avoid potential alignment problems. However, in general they are not biologically motivated and ignore our knowledge about the evolution of sequences. Thus, it is still a major open question how to define an evolutionary distance metric between divergent sequences that makes use of indel information and known substitution models without the need for a multiple alignment. Here we propose a new evolutionary distance metric to close this gap. It uses finite-state transducers to create a biologically motivated similarity score which models substitutions and indels, and does not depend on a multiple sequence alignment. The sequence similarity score is defined in analogy to pairwise alignments and additionally has the positive semi-definite property. We describe its derivation and show in simulation studies and real-world examples that it is more accurate in reconstructing phylogenies than competing methods. The result is a new and accurate way of determining evolutionary distances in and beyond the twilight zone of sequence alignments that is suitable for large datasets.Comment: to appear in PLoS ON

Numerical study of nonlinear heat transfer from a wavy surface to a high permeability medium with pseudo-spectral and smoothed particle methods

Motivated by petro-chemical geological systems, we consider the natural convection boundary layer flow from a vertical isothermal wavy surface adjacent to a saturated non-Darcian high permeability porous medium. High permeability is considered to represent geologically sparsely packed porous media. Both Darcian drag and Forchheimer inertial drag terms are included in the velocity boundary layer equation. A high permeability medium is considered. We employ a sinusoidal relation for the wavy surface. Using a set of transformations, the momentum and heat conservation equations are converted from an (x, y) coordinate system to an (x,η) dimensionless system. The two-point boundary value problem is then solved numerically with a pseudo-spectral method based on combining the Bellman–Kalaba quasi linearization method with the Chebyschev spectral collocation technique (SQLM). The SQLM computations are demonstrated to achieve excellent correlation with smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) Lagrangian solutions. We study the effect of Darcy number (Da), Forchheimer number (Fs), amplitude wavelength (A) and Prandtl number (Pr) on the velocity and temperature distributions in the regime. Local Nusselt number is also computed for selected cases. The study finds important applications in petroleum engineering and also energy systems exploiting porous media and undulating (wavy) surface geometry. The SQLM algorithm is shown to be exceptionally robust and achieves fast convergence and excellent accuracy in nonlinear heat transfer simulations

Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents, and adults

Background Underweight and obesity are associated with adverse health outcomes throughout the life course. We estimated the individual and combined prevalence of underweight or thinness and obesity, and their changes, from 1990 to 2022 for adults and school-aged children and adolescents in 200 countries and territories. Methods We used data from 3663 population-based studies with 222 million participants that measured height and weight in representative samples of the general population. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends in the prevalence of different BMI categories, separately for adults (age ≥20 years) and school-aged children and adolescents (age 5–19 years), from 1990 to 2022 for 200 countries and territories. For adults, we report the individual and combined prevalence of underweight (BMI 2 SD above the median). Findings From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity in adults decreased in 11 countries (6%) for women and 17 (9%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 that the observed changes were true decreases. The combined prevalence increased in 162 countries (81%) for women and 140 countries (70%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. In 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity was highest in island nations in the Caribbean and Polynesia and Micronesia, and countries in the Middle East and north Africa. Obesity prevalence was higher than underweight with posterior probability of at least 0·80 in 177 countries (89%) for women and 145 (73%) for men in 2022, whereas the converse was true in 16 countries (8%) for women, and 39 (20%) for men. From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of thinness and obesity decreased among girls in five countries (3%) and among boys in 15 countries (8%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80, and increased among girls in 140 countries (70%) and boys in 137 countries (69%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. The countries with highest combined prevalence of thinness and obesity in school-aged children and adolescents in 2022 were in Polynesia and Micronesia and the Caribbean for both sexes, and Chile and Qatar for boys. Combined prevalence was also high in some countries in south Asia, such as India and Pakistan, where thinness remained prevalent despite having declined. In 2022, obesity in school-aged children and adolescents was more prevalent than thinness with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 among girls in 133 countries (67%) and boys in 125 countries (63%), whereas the converse was true in 35 countries (18%) and 42 countries (21%), respectively. In almost all countries for both adults and school-aged children and adolescents, the increases in double burden were driven by increases in obesity, and decreases in double burden by declining https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/images/research_banner_face_lab_290.jpgunderweight or thinness. Interpretation The combined burden of underweight and obesity has increased in most countries, driven by an increase in obesity, while underweight and thinness remain prevalent in south Asia and parts of Africa. A healthy nutrition transition that enhances access to nutritious foods is needed to address the remaining burden of underweight while curbing and reversing the increase in obesity

Male Breast Cancer In Calabar Nigeria: A Twenty Year Experience (1983-2002)

Male breast cancer is rare worldwide. The highest incidence of 2.1 per 100,000 is recorded in Louisiana USA. The record for Africa varies from 0.2 per 100,000 in Gambia to 0.8 per 100,000 in Mali Breast cancer has been erroneously thought to be entirely a female disease in the tropics. This ignorance makes late presentation almost the rule in Nigeria as reported by authors in various part of the country. Breast cancer is the commonest malignancy in Calabar. From the Calabar cancer registry record, 105 cases of breast cancer were seen in 1995 through 1998. Of these 5 patients (4.7%) were male. A review of 30 cases of male breast cancer seen in UCTH between Jan 1983 to Dec 2002 is being studied to look at the clinical presentation, histological pattern and management. They were aged 19 to 85yrs with mean of 53.1yrs. We observed two peaks at 3rd and 6th decades of life. More than 80% (25 cases) presented with painless lump and palpable axillary lymph nodes. Over 50% were on the right. Three patients also had nipples changes. Gross weight loss was associated with very advanced cases. The interval before presentation ranged from 3 to 84 months. All had mastectomy and axillary nodes dissection. Adjuvant chemotherapy was also used. Diagnosis was confirmed by histopathological examination of removed specimen. The follow up was generally poor. However one patient survived beyond ten years. KEYWORDS: Male Breast Cancer, Calabar, Nigeri