Studies of a structural form for underwater structures

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E-VOTING IMPLEMENTATION IN NIGERIA: The Success Factors

The proposed adoption of e-Voting in Nigeria by the electoral body. the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), was resisted by the law makers and a sizeable portion of the populace. The reasons may not be unconnected with the previous unsuccessful attempts by government to implement such magnificent projects, particularly, the National ID card scheme; and lack of basic infrastructures to implement the system. This paper reviews thee-Registration exercise by INEC with a view to using it as a springboard fore-Voting implementation in Nigeria; and the experiences of some developed countries to serve as lessons. Similarly, the paper proposes solutions to some of the problems encountered in countries where e-Voting had been adopted. Finally, arising from the perceived apathy between the elect and the electorate, which has resulted to low turnout of voters during elections, an integrated voting system that incorporates an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), Internet Voting (i-Voting) and mobile Voting (m-Voting) is proposed for enhanced participatory democracy

Knowledge Discovery in Online Repositories: A Text Mining Approach

Before the advent of the Internet, the newspapers were the prominent instrument of mobilization for independence and political struggles. Since independence in Nigeria, the political class has adopted newspapers as a medium of Political Competition and Communication. Consequently, most political information exists in unstructured form and hence the need to tap into it using text mining algorithm. This paper implements a text mining algorithm on some unstructured data format in some newspapers. The algorithm involves the following natural language processing techniques: tokenization, text filtering and refinement. As a follow-up to the natural language techniques, association rule mining technique of data mining is used to extract knowledge using the Modified Generating Association Rules based on Weighting scheme (GARW). The main contributions of the technique are that it integrates information retrieval scheme (Term Frequency Inverse Document Frequency) (for keyword/feature selection that automatically selects the most discriminative keywords for use in association rules generation) with Data Mining technique for association rules discovery. The program is applied to Pre-Election information gotten from the website of the Nigerian Guardian newspaper. The extracted association rules contained important features and described the informative news included in the documents collection when related to the concluded 2007 presidential election. The system presented useful information that could help sanitize the polity as well as protect the nascent democracy

Online Recharge Card Loading: A Test Case for M-banking Implementation

This paper attempts to move mobile service from information-based to transaction-hasetl This procedure solves a number of problems associated with cell plume recharge such as: network failure, recharge card fraud, and elimination of foreign exchange cost. The system involves toll-free calls to an online hank. The bank checks the status of the account and sends notification to the mobile telecom operator who immediately credits the callers account and notification sent to both the user and the bank for account reconciliation with outright elimination of the Secret PIN card(Locally produced or imported). This system requires 110 special account but the usual current or savings account in any bank mul works on the platform of the existing telephone/Mobile banking technology. This gives more ease and convenience, reduced cost of calls tmd better management of the network as well as encouraging trusted banking culture

3-Point Block Methods for Direct Integration of General Second-Order Ordinary Differential Equations

A Multistep collocation techniques is used in this paper to develop a 3-point explicit and implicit block methods, which are suitable for generating solutions of the general second-order ordinary differential equations of the form =(,,),(0)=,(0)=. The derivation of both explicit and implicit block schemes is given for the purpose of comparison of results. The Stability and Convergence of the individual methods of the block schemes are investigated, and the methods are found to be 0-stable with good region of absolute stability. The 3-point block schemes derived are tested on standard mechanical problems, and it is shown that the implicit block methods are superior to the explicit ones in terms of accuracy

An End-to-End e-Eiection System Based on Multimodal Identification and Authentication

The spate and intensity of controversies and irregularities that usually trail the conduct of elections in most developing nations of the world are national albatrosses that must be removed, as they clog the wheel of true development in any nation. Concerted efforts were made through the introduction of e-Voting as a panacea for eliminating these development-inhibiting influences and achieving reliable democratic governance, but without much success. In any case, e-voting is just one of the components of an electoral system, and adopting a holistic approach to the development of an e-election system, appears imperative for an endearing solution to the debilitating pre-, contemporaneous and post- election events. In the particular case of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the challenges of the electoral system were observed at four {4) major phases: registration of voters, political parties and candidates, and the security of election data; voting (voter identification and authentication, and ballot casting); ballot tallying; and the transmission of votes from the polling booth to the various collation centres. This paper presents an end-to-end e-Eiection system, covering the afo rementioned areas with adequate security measures based on a multimodal identification and authentication system, and cryptography

Animal and model systems for studying cystic fibrosis

The cystic fibrosis (CF) field is the beneficiary of five species of animal models that lack functional cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) channel. These models are rapidly informing mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and CFTR function regardless of how faithfully a given organ reproduces the human CF phenotype. New approaches of genetic engineering with RNA-guided nucleases are rapidly expanding both the potential types of models available and the approaches to correct the CFTR defect. The application of new CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing techniques are similarly increasing capabilities for in vitro modeling of CFTR functions in cell lines and primary cells using air-liquid interface cultures and organoids. Gene editing of CFTR mutations in somatic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells is also transforming gene therapy approaches for CF. This short review evaluates several areas that are key to building animal and cell systems capable of modeling CF disease and testing potential treatments

Pattern of breast cancer risk factors among pre and post-menopausal women at a Primary Care Clinic in Nigeria

Context: The incidence of breast cancer is increasing worldwide. In black women, breast cancer is associated with aggressive features and poor survival. Objective: Identification of risk factors such as early age of menarche, obesity and family history of breast cancer may permit preventive strategies. Study Design: A cross-sectional comparative study design was used and questionnaires were administered to 400 adult women at a tertiary health centre in Nigeria. The data was analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 17; the level of significance set at alpha = 0.05. Results: There was significant association between pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women with positive family history of breast cancer with P = 0.010. Majority of the respondents with a positive family history of breast cancer were menopausal (P = 0.010). There was a statistically significant association between menopausal status and ever consuming alcohol-based herbal concoctions (P = 0.010) and in those whose partners smoked cigarettes (P = 0.001). Majority of respondents were not currently on any form of contraceptives. Parity, breastfeeding and use of hormonal contraceptives were all statistically significant (P < 0.001, P < 0.001 and P = 0.004, respectively). Almost all the women in our study, 97%, had never had a mammogram. There was a significant association between pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women with positive family history of breast cancer (P = 0.010). Conclusion: With increasing incidence of breast cancer worldwide and late presentation in developing countries with high morbidity and mortality, effective screening for risk factors will go a long way in reducing the incidence of breast cancer