Comparative Evaluation of the Functional and Sensory Characteristics of Three Traditional Fermented Cassava Products

This study provides scientific evidence to test the hypothesis that the flours and cooked forms of fufu, lafun and pupuru can suitably serve as substitutes for each other in the food markets and eateries, respectively. Sixteen functional properties of flours were compared statistically. Similarly, discrimination and preference tests were also conducted on the cooked dough.  About 88% of the functional properties of the products were significantly different (p<0.05). Cooked dough samples were significantly different in terms of the appearance, odour and texture. Pupuru had the highest preference scores for all the sensory attributes. Dough appearance was the most important factor determining the overall acceptability of the products. Conclusively, the flours and cooked dough from traditionally processed fufu, lafun and pupuru cannot suitably substitute for each other in food markets and consumers end. &nbsp

Public Participation in Local Government Planning and Development: Evidence from Lagos State, Nigeria

When members of the public are given the opportunity to participate in local governance, the benefits are immeasurable. Unfortunately, the structure and mechanisms for promoting public participation, especially in the context of a developing country, is underexplored. In this paper, we examine the structure and mechanisms for public participation in two randomly selected communities within Lagos Mainland Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. Specifically, we measure public participation in terms of the quality of interaction among the members of the community, as well as the interaction between the community and the Local Government Council. Selected Heads of Traditional Councils in these communities were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The findings show that “face-toface” relationship is a dominant strategy for promoting public participation within t he Makoko/Iwaya communities. Consequently, we established that the potential of ICT in the promoting of public participation is far from being explored in these communities. The corresponding policy implications are discussed and recommendations to enhancethe use of ICT for promoting public participation are suggested

Occurrence and molecular detection of avian coronavirus in selected live bird markets, northwestern, Nigeria

Infectious bronchitis (IB) is one of the most common highly infectious viral respiratory diseases of poultry having wide geographical  distribution. Yet, little is known about the infection in the northwestern states of Nigeria. In this study, a total of 263 pooled cloacal and tracheal swab samples were collected from apparently healthy avian species (duck, dove, geese, guinea fowl, local chicken, ostrich, parrot, pigeon, peacock, and turkey). The samples were from nine live bird markets in three states (Kaduna, Kano and Jigawa) of northwestern,  Nigeria collected from September through November 2017. Total RNAs were extracted directly from the swab samples and screened for infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) using real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. An overall prevalence of 38.0% (100/263)was recorded. IB was detected in 70 % (7/10) of the avian species with prevalence of 100 % in dove, local chicken 45.9 %, duck 42.3 %, geese 26.6 %, pigeon 23.5 %, turkey 20.0 % and guinea fowl 6.2 %. Conversely, no detection was made from ostrich, parrot, and peacock.  Widespread distribution of IBV was observed and evidence of subclinical infection in seven out of ten (70 %) of the avian species sampled. These avian species harbouring IBV may act as reservoirs with an influence on the ecology and epidemiology of the disease. Continuous surveillance and characterization of the different serotypes in avian species are recommended to inform the adoption of suitable  vaccination strategy and control measures for the disease in Nigeria. Keywords: Infectious bronchitis virus, Live bird markets (LBMs), Molecular detection, Nigeria, Poultr

Ethnobotanical assessment of plants used for the treatment of endocrine disorder in Daura Emirate, Katsina, Nigeria

Medicinal plants are integral components of traditional medical system in Nigeria as in other cultures and societies in Africa. This study examines local knowledge of woody vegetation use for the treatment of endocrine disorders in Daura Emirate with a view to providing information that can assist in management of medicinal plants in the area. This study employed open ended questionnaire and unstructured interview to collect information from local people and traditional healers in the study area respectively. Simple Random Sampling Techniques was used for the selection of 66 respondents and 24 interview participants. Data was collected using questionnaires which were administered in 5 communities of Daura Emirate while 18 traditional healers and 6 herbalists were engaged in an unstructured interview with a view to collecting their opinions on the treatment of endocrine disorders in the area. Result from this study found that endocrine disorders (diabetes, goitre and sexual dysfunction) were treated with 14 plants in combination with other products such as oil obtained from animals and red potash. This study further revealed that leaf (52.17%) was utilised most for the preparation of herbal remedies for endocrine disorders in the study area, while root and pod (04.35%) are the less utilised. It has been found that the remedies were administered orally and nasally. Respondents mentioned two methods employed for management of medicinal plants in the study area. These are: Assisted Natural regeneration (ANR) and seed bank. However, ANR was used by 79% of the respondents. This study recommended that pharmacopoeia of the area should be development in order to avoid knowledge losses. This can be done through collaboration among stakeholders in ethnobotany, medicine, pharmaceutical sciences.Keywords: Ethnobotanical assessment, plants, endocrine disorder

Specifying Asymmetric STAR models with Linear and Nonlinear GARCH Innovations: Monte Carlo Approach

Economic and finance time series are typically asymmetric and are expected to be modeled using asymmetrical nonlinear time series models. Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) models: Logistic (LSTAR) and Exponential (ESTAR) are known to be asymmetric and symmetric respectively. Under non-normal and heteroscedastic innovations, the residuals of these models are estimated using Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (GARCH) models with variants which include linear and nonlinear forms. The small sample properties of STAR-GARCH variants are yet to be established but these properties are investigated using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. An MC investigation was conducted to investigate the performance of selections of STAR-GARCH models by classical nonlinear selection approaches. The ARCH(1) and GARCH(1,1) models were the linear GARCH specifications while the Logistic Smooth Transition-ARCH (LST-ARCH(1,1)), Logistic Smooth Transition- GARCH (LST-GARCH(1,1)) and Asymmetric Nonlinear Smooth Transition-GARCH (ANST-GARCH(1,1)) models were the nonlinear GARCH specifications. The nonlinearity parameter in the variance equations and Autoregressive (AR) parameters were varied along with different sample sizes. With the assumption of normality, the results showed that the selection of LSTAR models were actually affected by the structure of the innovations and this improved as sample size increased. Misspecification tests showed that these models cannot be misrepresented in the real sense

Symmetric Variants of Logistic Smooth Transition Autoregressive Models: Monte Carlo Evidences

The Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) models are becoming popular in modeling economic and financial time series. The asymmetric type of the model is the Logistic STAR (LSTAR) model, which is limited in its applications as a result of its asymmetric property, which makes it suitable for modelling specific macroeconomic time series. This study was designed to develop the Absolute Error LSTAR (AELSTAR) and Quadratic LSTAR (QLSTAR) models for improving symmetry and performance in terms of model fitness. Modified Teräsvirta’s Procedure (TP) and Escribano and Jordá\u27s Procedure (EJP) were used to test for nonlinearity in the series. The performance of the AELSTAR and QLSTAR models showed that TP and EJP realized time series with improved symmetry as indicated by the lower relative frequencies than that realized with the existing LSTAR model. The AELSTAR model performed better than QLSTAR model at higher nonlinearity, and the selection of both models showed evidence of asymptotic property. The AELSTAR and QLSTAR models showed improved symmetry over the existing asymmetric LSTAR model

On the Exponentiated Weibull Distribution for Modeling Wind Speed in South Western Nigeria

One of the bases for assessment of wind energy potential for a specified region is the probability distribution of wind speed. Thus, appropriate and adequate specification of the probability distribution of wind speed becomes increasingly important. Several distributions have been proposed for describing wind distribution. Among the most popular distributions is the Weibull whose choice is due to its flexibility. An exponentiated Weibull distribution is proposed as an alternative to model wind speed data with a view to comparing it with the existing Weibull distribution. Results indicate that the proposed distribution outperforms the existing Weibull distribution for modeling wind speed data in terms of minimum Akaike information criterion (AIC) and likelihood function. Thus, the exponentiated Weibull can be used as an alternative distribution that adequately describe the wind speed and thereby provide better representation of the potentials of wind energy

Family Background and Entrepreneurial Intention of Fresh Graduates in Nigeria

This study seeks to assess, empirically, the impact of family background on the entrepreneurial intention among fresh graduates in Nigeria. The family as a social institution remains resilient in its psychological functions in Nigeria. It is a source of finance and human resources, social and cultural values, and role modeling.  While studies have shown that family background is one of the numerous determinants of entrepreneurial intention, we know little about the role which family background plays in the promotion of entrepreneurial intentions in Nigeria, especially among the fresh graduates.  This study, therefore, seeks to test the hypothesis that family background has significant influence on the entrepreneurial intention among fresh graduates in Nigeria. We draw a sample of 250 corps’ members, currently serving with the Nigerian Youth Service Corp (NYSC) in Bayelsa state, using a simple random sampling technique. With the aid of the primary data collected, our findings are quite revealing. Following the preliminary conclusions drawn from this study, we offer suggestions for further studies. Keywords; Entrepreneurial intention, perception of feasibility, perception of desirability, family background, and Problem-Based Learning

On the Beta-Nakagami Distribution

This study is focused on combining Nakagami distribution and beta distribution with a view to obtaining a distribution that is better than each of them individually in terms of the estimate of their characteristics and parsimonious in their parameters using the logit of beta (the link function of the Beta generalized distribution by Jones (2004)). The resulting model, beta Nakagami distribution is better in terms of its flexibility and shape. The statistical properties of the proposed distribution such as moments, moment generating function, the asymptotic behavior among others were investigated. Our findings showed that beta Nakagami apart from being flexible, has better representation of data than Nakagami distribution.  It therefore describes situations better than the Nakagami distribution

Semantic Connotation of Hadith and the Emergence of Arabic Schools of Grammar

Scholars focused the contributions of the Qur’ān to the evolution of Arabic Grammar, but few of them focused on the effect of prophetic tradition on the area. This paper, therefore, focuses on semantic connotation of prophetic traditions: “Guide your brother, he has gone astray” and “Divergent opinion of my followers is a blessing” These sayings of the prophet led to the evolution of Arabic grammatical studies and the establishment of its schools that enriched Arabic grammar. It opens with the grammarians’ contribution to the development of Arabic grammar such as Abul-Aswad Addu’alī (d.69 A.H), Seyyid ‘Ali b. Abī Talib, al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad al-Farāhidī and so on. Although, There were five major schools of Arabic grammar namely: al-Madhhab al-Basra, al-Madhhab al- Kūfa, alMadhhab al-Bagdād, al-Madhhab al- Andalusī and al-Madhhab al- Misrī but this paper, mainly focuses on the two prominent schools - Basran and Kūfan. It analyses the conflict of theory in Arabic grammar on some topics and other terms, grammatical debates between notable scholars of the two schools with their divergent opinions. The discussion ends with the justification of analogical deduction employed by the two schools in their analysis as a commendable exercise