Effect of genotype and 2,4-d concentration on callogenesis in sugarcane (saccharum spp. hybrids)

The effect of genotype and 2, 4-D on callogenesis was investigated in sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) hybrid cultivars; SP726180, B47419, M1176/77 and M2119/88. To evaluate the response of the genotypes to callus induction and embryogenic callus production, leaf base explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) basal medium supplemented with 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, or 4.0mg/L) 2,4-D for 8wks. While, the number of responding explants was found to generally increase with the increase in 2,4-D concentration from 2.5 to 4.0mg/L, embryogenic callus producation was highest on media supplemented with 3.0 and 2.5mg/L. There were no significant differences in the number of responding explants and embryogenic callus production among B47419, M1176/77 and M2119/88, these genotypes however exhibited a significantly higher response when compared to SP726180 indicating their high propensity to in vitro callogenesis

Synthesis, characterization and antibacterial studies of macrocyclic schiff base derived from malonic acid and o-phenylenediamine and its Cd (II), Co (II), Cu (II), Ni (II), and Zn (II) comlplexes

The condensation of Malonic acid with o-phenylenediamine have yielded the Schiff Base 7,16-dihydrodibenzo[1,4,8,11]tetraazacyclotetradecine-6,8,15,17-tetraol (89.39%). Its metal (II) complexes were prepared from the chloride salts of Cd2+, Co2+, Cu2+, Ni2+ and Zn2+. Solubility, melting/decomposition temperature, FT-IR, molar conductance and magnetic moments were used to determine the ligands and its complexes. The FT-IR result indicates a band at 1633cm-1 which corresponds to azomethine and confirms the formation of the ligand. There was a bathochromic shift in the peak to 1607cm-1, 1596cm-1, 1611cm-1, 1573cm-1 and 1566cm-1 in the spectra of Cd2+, Co2+, Cu2+, Ni2+ and Zn2+ complexes respectively which is attributed to the binding of the nitrogen of azomethine to the metal ions. The compounds were tested for their antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli using agar cup-plate method. The ligand and its complexes were found to be active against both Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The Ni (II) complex displayed an enhanced activity with the highest zone of inhibition (45mm).Keywords: Synthesis, Characterization, Ligand, Complexes, Antibacteria

An assessment of cost escalation in building construction project

Estimating of cost for building construction projects with minimum error at the conceptual stage of project development is quite  essential for planning. This study seeks to evaluate factors responsible for cost escalation of building construction projects.  Questionnaires were administered to examine and assess these factors. Subsequently, the mean score value of each factor was determined. In addition, Correlation and Linear regression analyses were used to establish the relationship between these factors. Factors responsible for cost escalation in projects were examined as well as the impact of those factors, and occurrence of those factors on project cost. The result of the analysis showed that, the most agreed factors responsible for project cost escalation were; inadequate supervision, irregular payment, and design error, having high mean values of 4.25, 4.20, and 4.15, respectively. Also, correlation analysis result established that the factors responsible for cost escalation and the impact of cost escalation had significant R and R2 of 0.81 and 0.70 respectively. Addressing these factors would go a long way in reducing the escalation of building project cost. Never the less, an effective cost management strategy is absolutely necessary to safeguard and sustain the construction  industry. Keywords: cost escalation, building project, construction, regression analysi

Synthesis and characterisation of some mixed ligands adducts of benzoylacetone and salicylaldehyde

A series of four mixed ligand complexes were synthesized by reacting benzoylacetone and salicylaldehyde with different metal chlorides in ethanolic medium. The complexes have been characterized by molar conductance measurements and spectral techniques such as IR and Uv-visible electronic spectra. Decomposition temperature was also determined. The results indicated that the compounds have bands at 400-500cm-1, with very sharp melting points. This proved the formation of metal-oxygen bond, purity and high thermal stability of the compounds that could lead to a high antimicrobial activity.Keywords: Adduct Synthesis, Ligands, and Complexe

PRIMITIVITY OF PERFECT RESIDUUM OF PERMUTATION GROUPS

In this paper, the construction of permutation groups which include symmetric groups, alternating groups, dihedral groups and the groups generated by the semidirect product (wreath products) of two permutation groups. The perfect residuum of the constructed groups has been obtained and their primitivity status has been investigated which enable us to formulate some results on such properties concerning the groups. A standard computer program, Groups algorithm and programming (GAP) has been employed in enhancing and validating the result obtained. Keywords: Primitive groups, Perfect Residuum, permutation groups

REGIME SWITCHING MODEL AMONG SELECTED AFRICAN STOCK MARKET

Over the past few decades, the world stock markets have surged, and emerging markets have accounted for a large amount of this boom. This has resulted into emergence of new market stock in Africa; hence the study examines the stock market’s volatility in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt using the Markov regime switching Model. The study utilizes monthly observations over the period from January 1997 to September 2019. The study utilizes two state Markov Switching Autoregressive (MS-AR) models in order to capture regime shifts behaviour in both the mean and the variance of the three countries All Share Index (ASI). The MS-AR results of the three countries ASI suggested evidence of a regime-switching behaviour. It shows that only extreme events can switch the series from regime 1 (appreciation) to regime 2 (depreciation), or vice versa. The results also identify that during all major global economic crises in the US sub-prime (2008) there was negative impact in all the three countries under study and European debt crisis (2010) did not really have any impact on the three countries under studies. The results further revealed that Nigeria ASI recorded the lowest appreciation regime of 10 months and the highest depreciation regime of 82 months against South-Africa ASI and Egypt ASI. Egypt recorded the highest appreciation regime of 69 months and the lowest depreciation regime of 18 months. Hence, the  results shows that the Nigeria stock market is more sensitive to external shocks implying that there is ample scope of policy intervention. Keywords: Africa Stock Markets, Markov Switching Autoregressive, All Share Index, Appreciating regime, Depreciation regim

An Evaluation of Staff Training Needs Assessment in Ramat Polytechnic Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria

This study is on an evaluation of staff training needs assessment in Ramat polytechnic, Maiduguri, Borno State. Staff training and development means the provision of facilities and opportunities for people to perform the jobs for which they are employed and to develop their own personal potentials to meet their present and future needs in line with organizational objectives. Several studies have been conducted on training activities in Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri. These range from staff study leave arrangement, staff conference/workshop attendance to the Education Trust Fund staff development system. However, these studies are silent on training needs assessment. The general objective of the research was to evaluate staff training needs assessment in Ramat Polytechnic. The specific objectives were to identify the types of training needs of the Ramat Polytechnic staff, evaluate whether and how the training is assessed and to assess staff satisfaction with the training they have received. The study utilized both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data were derived from the questionnaire and Indepth Interview, while the secondary data was obtained from review of relevant literatures such as documents from Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri. Four hundred questionnaires were administered to the study population; 250 questionnaires to academic and 150 questionnaires to non-academic staff. Stratified sampling technique was used in selecting the academic and non-academic staff. Of the 400 questionnaires administered, 361 were retrieved and used in the analysis. Indepth interview was also conducted on 8 key respondents of the target population.  The Chi – Square Test of Independence was used in testing the hypothesis. The major findings indicates that there is no training needs assessment in Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri and that training need is not prioritized among the staff. The result of the test of the hypothesis testing revealed that there is a significant relationship between training needs of staff and approval for training. It is recommended that the management of the institution should henceforth consider staff training based only on the needs of the department and the individual so as to bridge the gap between requirement and the current capacity of the incumbent

Peer-to-peer Approach for Distributed Privacy-preserving Deep Learning

The revolutionary advances in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence have enables people to rethink how we integrate information, analyze data, and use the resulting insights to improve decision making. Deep learning is the most effective, supervised, time and cost efficient machine learning approach which is becoming popular in building today’s applications such as self-driving cars, medical diagnosis systems, automatic speech recognition, machine translation, text-to-speech conversion and many others. On the other hand the success of deep learning among others depends on large volume of data available for training the model. Depending on the domain of application, the data needed for training the model may contain sensitive and private information whose privacy needs to be preserved. One of the challenges that need to be address in deep learning is how to ensure that the privacy of training data is preserved without sacrificing the accuracy of the model. In this work, we propose, design and implement a decentralized deep learning system using peer-to-peer architecture that enables multiple data owners to jointly train deep learning models without disclosing their training data to one another and at the same time benefit from each other’s dataset through exchanging model parameters during the training. We implemented our approach using two popular deep learning frameworks namely Keras and TensorFlow. We evaluated our approach on two popular datasets in deep learning community namely MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets. Using our approach, we were able to train models whose accuracy is relatively close to models trained under privacy-violating setting, while at the same time preserving the privacy of the training data

Over-Dependence On Oil Revenue In Nigeria: Consequences Of Covid-19 On Budgetary Allocation Of Federal Government Of Nigeria

This study examines the consequences of Covid-19 pandemic on budgetary allocation of Federal Government of Nigeria in view of over-dependence on crude oil and natural gas as the major source of revenue for public service delivery. Despite the emergence of the disease in December, 2019 in China and its spread globally gradually; Nigeria recorded the first case of the disease on the 27th February, 2020. Efforts to contain the spread of Coronavirus necessitated implementing some measures that led to disruption of economic activities within and across national boundaries. Consequently, global oil prices declined and that has severely affected Nigeria as one of the producers. Nigeria’s budget with price of crude oil as the major indicator for projection becomes unrealistic for achieving the recurrent and capital expenditure components of the 2020 budget. Due to that, 2020 Appropriation Act was amended and 2021 Appropriation Bill was presented based on this economic reality. This study employed Documentary Research Method (DRM) and applied document analysis as a technique of analyzing qualitative research data. The study found that Covid-19 pandemic led to global economic meltdown which by extension responsible for Nigeria’s economic downturn characterized by declined in oil production and oil price resulting to drop in oil revenue and increasing budget deficit. Out of the 2021 federal budget of N13.08 trillion; N5.20 trillion will be financed mainly by borrowing and that can widen the budget deficit and by extension accumulation of debt. The study also established positive correlation between declined in oil price/revenue and the increasing budget deficit of the FGN. Based on this, government should sustain the economic diversification drive and implement Post Covid-19 Recovery measures such as the Economic Sustainability Plan

The Mediating Effect of Work Engagement in the Link between Affective Commitment and Employee Competence in Nigeria Universal Basic Education system

Competency is seen as the fundamental feature of individuals which described their job skill, attitude and knowledge. The main aim of this paper is to explore the mediating effect of work engagement (WE) in the link between affective commitment and employee competence (EC) in Nigerian Universal Basic Education system Administration (UBESA). In spite of the importance of affective commitment as an essential practice impelling EC in organisations, prior studies mainly consider other internal factors such as leadership, management practices, and job satisfaction among others. Studies that attempt to examine the influence of affective commitment on EC as well as the mechanism through which it influences EC seem to be scarce in the literature. The current study used WE as a mediating variable in explaining the relationship between affective commitment and EC as well as establishing the link between the given variables. The paper employed the Ability Motivation Opportunity (AMO) theory and Social Exchange theory (SET) in emphasizing the impact of practices that are capable of enhancing EC, as well as understanding employee’s behaviour and their relationship with their organisation in the quest for achieving success. A quantitative survey method was used, while data were collected within six states UBESA (Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara states) in North Western region of Nigeria. Data was analysed with a total number of 387 questionnaires using SPSS-AMOS software-24. The findings indicated that WE mediate the relationship between affective commitment and EC. In conclusion, the study made some vital suggestions for future studies.