A comparative study of farmers’ use of Extension guide/bulletin and radio as Media of agricultural information and technology transfer in Ogun State, Nigeria

The study compared farmers’ use of extension guide and radio as media of agricultural information and technology transfer in Ogun State.  A multistage random sampling technique was used to select 320 farmers from 32 villages in the four agricultural zones in Ogun State.  Data were collected with an interview guide.  Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Chi-square were used to test the study hypotheses.  Findings showed that 59% used radio while 7% used extension guide as media of agricultural information.  Farmers were constrained by illiteracy, lack of fund, feedback problem, lack of electricity, bad eye sight and language  barrier.  There is a significant relationship between farmers age, sex, marital status and their use of radio and between farmers’ sex, education and their use of extension guide.  It was recommended that farmers should be encouraged to listen to farm broadcasts, read and adopt the content of extension guide and that, farm broadcasts and publications should be planed in conjunction with the extension agents to address the felt needs of the farmer

Effect of Surfactant and Hydrophobe Content on the Rheology of Poly(acrylamide-co-N-dodecylacrylamide) for Potential Enhanced Oil Recovery Application

Associating polyacrylamide polymers have found profound use in the oil industry for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) due to their improved rheological properties compared with ordinary non-associating polymers. Polymer rheology is important as it controls the mobility ratio of the displacing fluid to the displaced fluid and this can be severely affected by the high temperature and salinity present in most oil reservoirs resulting in loss of viscosity and viscous fingering of the displaced fluid. With associating polyacrylamide polymers, the presence of hydrophobic blocks on the polymer backbone allows for stronger intermolecular interaction between the polymer chains thereby improving its rheological behavior under harsh conditions obtainable in most oil reservoirs. In this project, polyacrylamide containing N-dodecylacrylamide was synthesized via micellar copolymerization in order to investigate the effect of hydrophobe variation and surfactant variation on the rheology of the prepared copolymers. Rheological measurements were carried out with the use of a Bohlin Rheometer. Improved viscous characteristics were observed with increasing hydrophobe content especially when polymer concentration exceeds the Critical Aggregation Concentration (CAC). This is due to larger hydrophobic blocks on the polymer backbone. Improved polymer viscosity was also observed when surfactant was added below its Critical Micelle Concentration (CMC.) This is as a result of the creation of mixed micelles of surfactant and hydrophobic blocks. This allows for an optimum polymer and surfactant concentration to be determined for poly (acrylamide-co-N-dodecylacrylamide) for potential application in Alkaline Surfactant Polymer (ASP) flooding involved in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) projects

Genetic variability for drought tolerance in early-maturing maize inbreds under contrasting environments

Drought severely constrains maize (Zea mays L) production in the savannas of West and Central Africa (WCA). Understanding the levels of drought tolerance in early-maturing maize inbreds is crucial for the development of drought-tolerant maize hybrids for the sub-region. A total of 156 inbred lines were evaluated under drought and well-watered conditions at Ikenne and Bagauda in Nigeria for 2 yr. The objectives were to (i) determine the levels of drought tolerance in early-maturing inbreds, (ii) assess the performance of the inbreds and relationship among traits under the contrasting environments, and (iii) identify the most stable inbreds across environments. Inbreds differed significantly (p < 0.01) in grain yield and other measured traits under drought and well-watered conditions. Grain yield of inbreds was significantly (p < 0.01) correlated with ears per plant (r = 0.50), anthesis-silking interval (r = -0.55), plant aspect (r = -0.57), ear aspect (r = -0.35) and stay-green characteristic (r = -0.28) under drought. Forty-eight percent of the lines were identified as drought tolerant with tolerance indices ranging from 0.17 to 15.31. Broad-sense heritability estimate was 43% for grain yield under drought and 47% under well-watered con- ditions. Drought reduced grain yield of the inbreds by 3-88%, averaging 52%. Biplot analysis identified inbreds TZEI 18, TZEI 56, TZEI 1, and TZEI 19 as the most stable across environments. The inbreds with high levels of drought tolerance could be utilised for the development of drought-tolerant hybrids and synthetic varieties as well as for introgression of tolerance genes into tropical maize breeding populations

The Empiricist Criteria of Meaning And The Problem of Translation

Generally speaking, the branches of philosophy have traditionally been listed to include Ethics, logic, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics. However, it has over the years embraced studies in socio political philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and so on. The study of language in philosophy is not in the same way as those who specialize in linguistics. However, its study creates proper understanding and removes forms of ambiguity that may be found in language in particular and communication in general. Philosophers of language have discussed many issues which includes ‘meaning’, ‘sense’, ‘reference’ and many others. In this paper we shall attempt a critical analysis of the Logical Empiricist’s criteria of ‘meaning’. The paper begins with the analysis of the concept of ‘meaning’ and why philosophers of language are so particular about ‘meaning’ either of words, sentences or expression. The paper also examines logical empiricist criteria of meaning and its relevance to communication and translation of words or statements. The paper argues that the empiricist criteria of meaning entails some absurdities and poses serious problem to communication and translation in human society. Thus, it should not be accepted in absolute term. Keywords: Logical empiricism, Language, Meaningfulness, Communication and Society

Islam and Inmate Rehabilitation in Nigerian Correctional Service

The role of religious activities in the social reformation and rehabilitation of prison inmates cannot be over-emphasized Religious groups have been long recognized as important force in the process that led to the preeminence of corrections in offender management Punishment in human societies was replete with all form of wickedness until the birth of the modern prison system between 18 and 19th century According to Foucault 1995 before the birth of the modern prison system punishment was a public spectacle in which the body of the felon was the object of punishment offenders were tortured dismembered amputated symbolically branded on face or shoulder exposed alive or dead to public view Although modern prison system started essentially as a punitive institution influence of intellectuals such as Beccaria 1819 Bentham 1843 Foucault 1995 etc and numerous non-governmental organizations faith and non-faith based constitute the critical mass that drove the idea of rehabilitation into the prison system Consequently prisons now have to function essentially as a normalizing and persuasive institution of the state albeit it s coercive natur

Postpriapism erectile dysfunction and shunt-related urethral stricture: long-term morbidity after proximal shunt for ischaemic priapism

Recent guidelines have advocated for step-wise treatment of increasing invasiveness in the management of ischaemic priapism though with lowlevel evidences. In the past, proximal shunts were favoured as first-line treatment. We present an African man who had proximal shunt (cavernoso-spongiosal) three decades ago for ischaemic priapism and subsequently had long-term morbidity over the three decades with adverse effect on his quality of life. Recent guidelines appear to be sound despite their limitations and more invasive cavernoso-spongiosal shunts may be associated with significant long-term morbidities and poor quality of life.Key words: Ischaemic priapism, cavernoso-spongiosal shunt, Postpriapism erectile dysfunction, shunt-related urethral strictur

Modeling performance differentials in large construction organisations in South Africa

Includes bibliographical references.The research investigates the relationship between the constructs: organisational characteristics, resources, capabilities, competitive strategies, business environment and performance of large construction organisations in South Africa. It examines whether the synthesis of different theoretical views - industrial organisation, contingency approach, resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory situated in the strategic management paradigm can be used in explaining the differentials in construction company performance. The rationale for the study stems from the dearth of literature within construction management and in the context of South Africa on the factors causing differentials in the performance of construction companies

Custodial Rehabilitation and Public Security in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

The study examines the functionality of custodial rehabilitation as a means of improving public security in Nigeria s Fourth Republic A qualitative exploratory approach was employed during the research and data was collected from seven correctional facilities six selected from each of the six geopolitical zones in the country In contrast the seventh facility Agodi Correctional Center was purposely selected to complement information from the other selected facilities The study population included correctional officers inmates exinmates and non-governmental organizations Data collected were descriptively analyzed using thematic and content analysis The study identified incongruence between rehabilitation programmes and services on the one hand and offenses committed by the inmates and other risk factors on the other as the main cause of the poor performance of the rehabilitation mandate of the Nigerian Correctional Service NCS and by extension the raging crisis of insecurity in the country Lack of attention on behavior modifying services and poor socio-economic conditions in the country are also identified as factors militating against effective inmate rehabilitation and re-integration For the possible improvement of rehabilitation programmes of the NCS and public security in Nigeria the study advocates assignment of rehabilitation programmes and services to inmates based on the offenses committed recruitment of more professionals better focus on behavior modifying programmes for the inmates and enhancement of the participation of non-governmental organizations in the provision of support services in the correctional center

An enhanced feature selection technique for classification of group-based holy quran verses

This thesis is about proposing an enhanced feature selection technique for text classification applications. Text classification problem is primarily applied in document labeling. However, the major setbacks with the existing feature selection techniques are high computational runtime associated with wrapper-based FS techniques and low classification accuracy performance associated with filter-based FS techniques. Therefore, in this study, a hybrid feature selection technique is proposed. The proposed FS technique is a combination of JUter-based information gain (JG) and wrapper-based CFS algorithms. The purpose of combining these two FS algorithms is to achieve both high classification accuracy perfonnance (wrapper) at lower computational runtime (filter). The study also developed a group-based Quran dataset to improve on the understanding and analysis of the textual data (Quranic verses). The group-based dataset is a combination of Holy Quran translation and commentary (tafsir). The Quranic verses were selected from two chapters, Surah Al­Baqarah and Surah Al-Anaam. The verses are classified into three categories: Faith, Worship, and Etiquette. In the experiment, six feature selection algorithms were applied: In.formation Gain (JG), Chi-square (CH), Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC), RelieJF, Correlation-based (CFS), and the proposed JG-CFS algorithms. The textual data (Quranic verses) were preprocessed using StringtoWordVector with weighted Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (IF-IDF). Meanwhile, the classification phase has involved four algorithms: Nai've Bayes (NB), k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Support Vector Machine (LibSVM), and Decision Trees (148). The experiment results were evaluated based on two established perfonnance metrics in text classification: Accuracy and Area under Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve (A UC). The proposed hybrid feature selection technique has shown promising results in tenns of Accuracy and Area under Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve (A UC) by achieving at a lower computational runtime (3.89secs) Accuracy of94.5% and AUC of0.944 with the group-based Quran dataset

Appraisal of Nigeria’s Obligation on Adolescents’ Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Care

The positive obligations on states parties to ensure covenant rights will only be fully discharged if individuals are protected by the state, not just against violations of covenant rights by its agents, but also against acts committed by private persons or entities that would impair the enjoyment of covenant rights…. (Paragraph 8 General Comment 31 Human Rights Committee) This article explores the responsibility of the Nigerian state towards ensuring female adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care information and services especially contraceptive information and services. It thereafter, considers the stance of the treaty monitoring bodies to state parties’ obligations on the right to access SRH care information and services. The article concludes by declaring the need for judicial activism and stricter monitoring of the government’s activities in other to ensure that adolescents enjoy actual access to SRH care information and services