ANALYSIS OF WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION IN MANGU LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

This study examined women participation in livestock Production in Mangu local government area of Plateau State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling was used to select 90 women livestock farmers. Descriptive statistics and Participation Index were used to analyze the data. The grand participation index (2.0) implies that women rarely participated in livestock production. Women always participated in the watering (2.97) feeding of animals (2.88) and cleaning of pen (2.72). Poultry, Swine and Goat were the major types of Livestock kept by Women. The result also revealed that there was positive and significant relationship between women involvement in livestock production and extension contact and age. Extension contact was significant (p<0.01) and positive which means that the more the women have access to extension contact the more tendency for them to participate in livestock production. The major constraints faced by women in livestock production were high cost of feed and medication, inadequate capital, pest and diseases. The study recommends that the women should be linked with micro finance banks so as to have access to capital which can be used to boost their level of participation in livestock production. Also various capacity building activities in-terms of training need of women in livestock production should be identified and periodically provided. Also subsidy should place on vaccine and drugs so as to reduce the high cost of medication this will encourage women participate in livestock production&nbsp

Chiari I Malformation: A Missed Diagnosis

Chiari I malformation is a complex congenital malformation of the hindbrain, characterized by herniation of the cerebellar tonsils through the foramen magnum into the cervical spinal canal. There may be mild caudal displacement and flattening or kinking of the medulla with an associated small posterior fossa. We present a case of a 30 year old man who presented with a 2 year history of worsening nystagmus and ataxia with associated occipital headache and diplopia. Examination showed a young man with horizontal and vertical nystagmus, he had truncal ataxia and Rhomberg's sign was positive. Diagnosis was missed by several clinicians during the 2 year period. Repeated brain CT scans were normal. Brain MRI confirmed the diagnosis of Chiari I malformation and cervical syringomyelia. He had decompressive occipital craniectomy durotomy and duroplasty. The patient recovered fully from ataxia headache and diplopia but still has residual nystagmus.La malformation Chiari I est une malformation congenitale complexe du cerveau posterior, characteris\ue9e par l'hernie de l'amygdale du cervelet dans le trou occipital et le canal spinal cervical. Il peut y'avoir le deplacement caudal, applatissement ou tortillement de la moelle allong\ue9e associ\ue9 \ue3 une petite fosse posterieur. Nous presentons un adult de 30 ans qui s'est present\ue9 avec un nystagme progressive, l'ataxie associ\ue9s \ue0 des. cephall\ue9es occipitales et la diplopie pour deux ans. L'examen de ce jeune homme rev\ue8le du nystagme horizontale et verticale, l'ataxie troncale avec le signe de Rhomberg present. Le diagnostique etait manqu\ue9 durant ces deux ann\ue9es par plusieurs cliniciens. Des scanner repet\ue9s du cerveau etaient normaux. Le M.R.I. du cerveau a confirm\ue9 le diagnostique de la malformation Chiari I, ainsi que la syringomyelie cervicale. Il a eu une craniotomy decompressive occipitale (fosse cerebelleuse) durotomy ainsi que duroplastie. Le patient a eu une convallescence parfaite avec l'abolition de l'ataxie, les cephall\ue9es et la diplopie mais a encore du nystagme residuel

Financial Modeling and Prediction as a Service

© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media DordrechtThis paper describes our proposal for Quality of Service (QoS) for Financial Modeling and Prediction as a Service (FMPaaS), since a majority of papers does not focus on SaaS level. We focus on two factors for delivering successful QoS, which are performance and accuracy for FMPaaS. The design process, theories and models behind the FMPaaS service have been explained. To support our FMPaaS service, two APIs have been developed to improve on performance and accuracy. Two major experiments have been illustrated and results show that each API processing can be completed in 2.12 seconds and 100,000 simulations can be completed in an acceptable period of time. Accuracy tests have been performed while using Facebook as an example. Three points of comparisons between actual and predicted prices have been undertaken. Results support accuracy since results are between 93.72 % and 99.63 % for Facebook. Three case studies have been used and results can support the accuracy and validity of the high level of accuracy offered by FMPaaS

Control of a coupled tank system using PI controller with advanced control methods

The liquid level control in tanks and flow control between cascaded or coupled tanks are the basic control problems exist in process industries nowadays. Liquids are to be pumped, stored or mixed in tanks for various types of chemical processes and all these require essential control and regulation of flow and liquid level. In this paper, different types of tuning methods are proposed for Proportional-Integral (PI) controller and are further improved with integration of Advanced Process Control (APC) method such as feedforward and gain scheduling to essentially control the liquid level in Tank 2 of a coupled tank system. The MATLAB/Simulink tools are used to design PI controller using pole-placement, Ciancone, Cohen Coon and modified Ziegler-Nichols tuning method with Cohen Coon tuning method found to have a better performance. Advanced process control such as feedforward-plus-PI, Gain Scheduling (GS) based PI, Internal Model Control (IMC) based PI, feedforward-plus-GS-based PI and feedforward-plus-IMC-based PI controllers are further tested as improvement version to further compare the significance of the advanced process control outcomes hence GS-PI, improved GI-base PI-plus FF found to have better performance. The GS method is built over five operating points to approximate the system’s nonlinearity and is eventually combined with feedforward control to yield a much better performance

Low spin spectroscopy of neutron-rich 43,44,45Cl via {\beta} and (\beta}n decay

{\beta} decay of neutron-rich isotopes 43,45 S,studied at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory is reported here. {\beta} delayed {\gamma} transitions were detected by an array of 16 clover detectors surrounding the Beta Counting Station which consists of a 40x40 Double Sided Silicon Strip Detector followed by a Single Sided Silicon Strip Detector. {\beta} decay half-lives have been extracted for 43,45 S by correlating implants and decays in the pixelated implant detector with further coincidence with {\gamma} transitions in the daughter nucleus. The level structure of 43,45 Cl is expanded by the addition of 20 new {\gamma} transitions in 43Cl and 8 in 45 Cl with the observation of core excited negative-parity states for the first time. For 45 S decay, a large fraction of the {\beta} decay strength goes to delayed neutron emission populating states in 44 Cl which are also presented. Comparison of experimental observations is made to detailed shell-model calculations using the SDPFSDG-MU interaction to highlight the role of the diminished N = 28 neutron shell gap and the near degeneracy of the proton s 1/2 and d 3/2 orbitals on the structure of the neutron-rich Cl isotopes. The current work also provides further support to a ground state spin-parity assignment of 3/2 + in 45 Cl

Probing the Flexibility of Large Conformational Changes in Protein Structures through Local Perturbations

Protein conformational changes and dynamic behavior are fundamental for such processes as catalysis, regulation, and substrate recognition. Although protein dynamics have been successfully explored in computer simulation, there is an intermediate-scale of motions that has proven difficult to simulate—the motion of individual segments or domains that move independently of the body the protein. Here, we introduce a molecular-dynamics perturbation method, the Rotamerically Induced Perturbation (RIP), which can generate large, coherent motions of structural elements in picoseconds by applying large torsional perturbations to individual sidechains. Despite the large-scale motions, secondary structure elements remain intact without the need for applying backbone positional restraints. Owing to its computational efficiency, RIP can be applied to every residue in a protein, producing a global map of deformability. This map is remarkably sparse, with the dominant sites of deformation generally found on the protein surface. The global map can be used to identify loops and helices that are less tightly bound to the protein and thus are likely sites of dynamic modulation that may have important functional consequences. Additionally, they identify individual residues that have the potential to drive large-scale coherent conformational change. Applying RIP to two well-studied proteins, Dihdydrofolate Reductase and Triosephosphate Isomerase, which possess functionally-relevant mobile loops that fluctuate on the microsecond/millisecond timescale, the RIP deformation map identifies and recapitulates the flexibility of these elements. In contrast, the RIP deformation map of α-lytic protease, a kinetically stable protein, results in a map with no significant deformations. In the N-terminal domain of HSP90, the RIP deformation map clearly identifies the ligand-binding lid as a highly flexible region capable of large conformational changes. In the Estrogen Receptor ligand-binding domain, the RIP deformation map is quite sparse except for one large conformational change involving Helix-12, which is the structural element that allosterically links ligand binding to receptor activation. RIP analysis has the potential to discover sites of functional conformational changes and the linchpin residues critical in determining these conformational states

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30