Udder And Teat Traits As Possible Selection Markers For Milk Yield In Local Goats Of Nigeria

This study was carried out at the Research Farm of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria (October, 2003 – May, 2006) to investigate the effects of some factors (breed, stage of gestation, body condition score and stage of lactation) on udder and teat traits with their relationships with partial daily milk yield (PDM) in goats. The goat breeds studied were Red Sokoto, Sahel and West African Dwarf. The traits studied included udder circumference (UC), udder length (UL), teat length (TL), teat height to ground (THG) and teat circumference (TC). The results showed that during pregnancy these traits were significantly (

An efficient iris image thresholding based on binarization threshold in black hole search method

In iris recognition system, the segmentation stage is one of the most important stages where the iris is located and then further segmented into outer and lower boundary of iris region. Several algorithms have been proposed in order to segment the outer and lower boundary of the iris region. The aim of this research is to identify the suitable threshold value in order to locate the outer and lower boundaries using Black Hole Search Method. We chose these methods because of the ineffient features of the other methods in image indetification and verifications. The experiment was conducted using three data set; UBIRIS, CASIA and MMU because of their superiority over others. Given that different iris databases have different file formats and quality, the images used for this work are jpeg and bmp. Based on the experimentation, most suitable threshold values for identification of iris aboundaries for different iris databases have been identified. It is therefore compared with the other methods used by other researchers and found out that the values of 0.3, 0.4 and 0.1 for database UBIRIS, CASIA and MMU respectively are more accurate and comprehensive. The study concludes that threshold values vary depending on the database

Quality characteristics of wheat noodles fortified with spent Shika Brown hen meat powder

Meat from Shika Brown® spent hens was used to fortify wheat noodles. Spent hen has a problem of disposal in the fast-food industry due to its inherent tough meat while on the other hand wheat noodles lack quality proteins. Ten (10) spent hens (1.5 years old) were processed to powder in two forms; breast part and leg part and were added into wheat flour in noodles formulation for protein enrichment. The chicken meat powder levels were 10% for 60% wheat flour, 12.5% for 57.5% wheat flour and 15% for 55% wheat flour with 29% of water and 1% of salt. The proximate composition of spent hen chicken meat noodle was determined during the storage periods. Dry matter content in treatment without spent hen chicken meat powder (SHCMP) had the highest value of 94.78% as compared to treatments with 10%, 12.5%, 15% SHCMP (93.50%, 93.24%, 93.99%). Increase in protein content of noodle was observed with increased inclusion levels of SHCMP and declined along with storage period. The breast part had higher crude protein content (22.37%) than leg parts (19.47%). The ether extract content of noodle at 40 days of storage differed significantly (P<0.05) within the inclusion levels and chicken parts. There were significant differences (P<0.05) in the ash content of noodles at 20 days of storage within inclusion levels and chicken parts. It can be concluded that the addition of 10% spent hen chicken meat powder in wheat noodles enhances its nutritive value thereby facilitating growth especially of children in poor nations

Analysis of Heavy Metals Found in Vegetables From Some Irrigated Gardens in Katsina, Daura and Funtua Metropolis, Katsina State, Nigeria.

This study was conducted to determine the concentration of heavy metals cadmium (Cd)) chromium (Cr) (copper (Cu), iron (Fe) manganese (Mn) zinc (Zn), lead (Pb) and in five vegetables viz;  (Bitter-leaf),  Cabbage, Cucumber, Lettuce and Spinach and soil collected from selected farm and market sites in industrial, residential and commercial areas of Lagos state. The heavy metals present in the vegetables were analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS). The results reveal that all the heavy metals were detected in all the vegetables from the various sites. Most of the concentrations are below the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) safe limit of 0.1 mg/kg, 0.1 mg/kg, 40 mg/kg, 1.3 mg/kg, 1.5 mg/kg, 6.61 mg/kg, 3 mg/kg, 60 mg/kg for cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co)   (Cu), chromium (Cr), iron (Fe), lead (Pb) and  zinc (Zn), and respectively in the vegetables. However the concentration of cobalt in spinach and lead in cabbage from Katsina are above the WHO and FAO safe limits. There is a significant differences in the concentration of Cd in the vegetables from the sampling sites (P<0.05), while there is no significant difference in the concentration of Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Pb, Zn  in the vegetables from the sampling sites (P>0.05). If the practice of treating the soils in the irrigation gardens with contaminated waters is not controlled, it may lead to health hazard on the part of consumers of the vegetables on the long term. Therefore, there is the need to continually monitor, control and take necessary policy decisions so as to limit and ultimately prevent these avoidable problems. Keywords: Irrigation, Vegetables, Heavy metals, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (AAS), Garden

Statistical analysis, ciphertext only attack, improvement of generic quasigroup string transformation and dynamic string transformation

Algebraic functions are the primitives that strengthen the cryptographic algorithms to ensure confidentiality of data and information. There is need for continues development of new and improvement of existing primitives. Quasigroup String transformation is one of those primitives that have many applications in cryptographic algorithms, Hash functions, and Pseudo-Random Number Generators. It is obvious that randomness and unpredictability is the requirement of every Cryptographic primitive. Most of those string transformations have not been implemented properly neither do they have security analysis. Cryptanalysis of existing scheme is as important as building new ones. In this paper, generic Quasigroup sting transformation is analyzed and found vulnerable to Ciphertext-Only-Attack. An adversary can compute the ciphertext to get the plaintext without prior knowledge of the plaintext. Pseudorandom numbers produced with generic string transformation can be reversed back to the original input with little effort. Therefore the generic quasigroup string transformation is compared with recently introduced string transformation and it is expected to provide better randomness and resistant to ciphertext-only-Attack. The proposed string transformation is suitable to one-way functions such as Hash functions, and pseudorandom number generators to mitigate the vulnerability of quasigroup string transformation to Ciphertext-Only-Attack. While the dynamic string transformation increase the difficulty level of predicting the substitution table used. The algorithms will be compared in terms of randomness using NIST statistical test suit, correlation Assessment and frequency Distribution

Influence of sensory attributes and storage media on quality of meat floss ‘‘dambun nama’’ processed from white meat

This study investigated the effects of storage period (≤ 5 weeks) and packaging media (glassware and stainless steel containers) on the quality of dambun nama processed from white meat (mature local chicken, duck, guinea fowl, turkey and fish). The results showed that there were significant (P<0.05) differences among the white meat type with respect to taste, appearance, tenderness, colour and acceptability. The results also revealed that flavour and aroma did not differ significantly across the meat types. There were many significant and positive correlations among the attributes studied. For instance, correlations between appearance vs colour (r = 0.66) (P<0.05) while the least correlation was between tenderness vs acceptability (r = 0.24) (P<0.05). However, the results also revealed significant (P<0.05) differences in the storage of dambun nama from the white meat studied. The quality of the product deteriorated with the increase in storage period. Dambun nama stored at lower weeks (1st and 2nd weeks) were better than those kept at 4th and 5 th week. However, dambun nama processed from guinea fowl and turkey meat deteriorated faster than the other types of white meat (fish, local chicken and duck) in terms of the total fungal and bacterial counts. However, at 5th week of storage dambun nama from duck meat had the lowest total microbes of 16.5 x 104cfu/g and followed by local chicken with 18.0 x 104cfu/g. There were also significant (P<0.05) differences in the storability of the two media; with stainless steel container having the lowest counts in terms of both the fungal and bacterial counts than glassware medium. The study suggests that variation existed in the shelf-life of dambun nama processed using the different white meat. Storage of dambum nama in stainless steel containers prolonged the shelf-life longer than glassware containers. It is also suggested that most panellists showed preference towards dambun nama from turkey and local chicken meat. However, the less preferred white meat can be greatly improved through artificial manipulation of the sensory attributes that have strong relationships. Key words: White meat, Dambun nama, Sensory attributes, Storage medi

Facial Landmark Detection and Estimation under Various Expressions and Occlusions

Landmark localization is one of the fundamental approaches to facial expressions recognition, occlusions detection and face alignments. It plays a vital role in many applications in image processing and computer vision. The acquisition conditions such as expression, occlusion and background complexity affect the landmark localization performance, which subsequently lead to system failure. In this paper, the writers bestowed the challenges of various landmark detection techniques, number of landmark points and dataset types been employed from the existing literatures. However, advance technique for facial landmark detection under various expressions and occlusions was presented. This was carried out using Point Distribution Model (PDM) to estimate the occluded part of the facial regions and detect the face. The proposed method was evaluated using University Milano Bicocca Database (UMB). This approach gave more promising result when compared to several previous works. In conclusion, the technique detected images despite varieties of occlusions and expressions. It can further be applied on images with different poses and illumination variations

Assessment of Orange (Citrus Sinensis) Supply Chain Activities in Kano State

The study focused on the handling system of orange in Yanlemo Market of Kano State. A field study was conducted with structural questionnaires that targeted the orange supplies, traders and agricultural equipment suppliers/fabricators. Result obtained reveals that the orange handling activity is dominated by male traders. Average of 2 to 5 bags of oranges are usually handled by about 53.3% of the respondents, while 8.3% handle more than 10 bags of the oranges daily. Dan Tivi was found to be the commonest orange variety in the study area. Some other varieties established in the study area are; Dan Nassarawa, Dan Ondo and Dan Delta representing about 8.3, 1.7 and 1.7% of the varieties handled in the study area respectively. The mode of transportation, sorting, and washing was found to be manual with a lot of challenges. The predominant manual handling of the orange established in the study area could be amongst the major reasons for the high losses usually recorded by the traders on a daily basis. Thus, useful suggestions that could be employed by researchers and policymakers to provide improvements in the supply chain activities to prevent such losses are presented.  Keywords— Orange, Assessment, Supply Chain, Handlin

Responsed to Genetic Improvement and Heritability of Egg Production and Egg Quality Traits in Japanese Quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica)

A study was conducted to determine the egg production, egg quality traits, response to genetic improvement of the egg traits and heritability of the traits in the Japanese quail. The birds used were about 470 chicks purchased at day 14 to serve as foundation stock. They were sexed at day 21 and the females were caged in 28 cages each contain 15 quails constructed in dimension of 60cm x 45cm x 45cm (length x breath x weight). Three birds from each caged were randomly picked at day 35, 42, 49 and 56 in each generation base (Gs), first (G1) and second (G2) and the data obtained were subjected to analyses of variance and realized heritability were obtained as appropriate from the following traits: live body changes in female sexual maturity, body weight gain, egg production, egg quality traits, reproductive traits, realized h2 for the egg traits and egg production in the Japanese quail.The result shows that selection base on high body weight led to the traits to differed significantly (P  by generations, age and sex of quails and significantly affects egg production for base, first and second generations. There were more egg production in first generation than base and second generations. The advances in age for a set of generation led to increase in weekly egg production, selection for body weight for the first generation base on average weekly egg production which was lower than the base and second generation and also as the bird’s advances in age there was improvement in egg traits at day 35, 42, 49 and 56. The percentage death in shell, percentage death in egg and percentage infertility responded positively to selection base on high body weight. The realized h2 of egg number and age at sexual maturity in female quail was very low 0.05 in egg number and 0.23 in age at sexual maturity. There was also low realized h2 values observed in egg width, yolk width, albumen length, shell weight and shell thickness and egg production (0.01 - 0.07). Apart from the age at sexual maturity which h2 is moderate and implies that response to selection for high body weight may be rapid while the low realized heritability obtained for egg number and egg quality traits implies that response to selection for the traits could be slow

A Key Scheduling Algorithm Based on Dynamic Quasigroup String Transformation and All-Or-Nothing Key Derivation Function

Cryptographic ciphers depend on how quickly the key affects the output of the ciphers (ciphertext). Keys are traditionally generated from small size input (Seed) to a bigger size random key. Key scheduling algorithm (KSA) is the mechanism that generates and schedules all sub-keys for each round of encryption. Researches have suggested that sub-keys should be generated separately to avoid related-key attack. Similarly, the key space should be disproportionately large to resist any attack meant for secret keys. To archive that, some algorithms adopt the use of matrixes such as quasigroup, Hybrid cubes and substitution box (S-box) to generate the encryption keys. Quasigroup has other algebraic property called “Isotopism”, which literally means Different quasigroups that has the same order of elements but different arrangements. This paper proposed a Dynamic Key Scheduling Algorithm (KSA) using Isotope of a quasigroup as the dynamic substitution table. The proposed algorithm is a modification and upgrade to Allor-nothing Key Derivation Function (AKDF). To minimize the complexity of the algorithm, a method of generating Isotope from a non-associative quasigroup using one permutation is achieved. To validate the findings, non-associativity of the generated isotopes has been tested and the generated isotopes appeared to be non-associative. Furthermore, the proposed KSA algorithm will be validated using the Randomness test proposed and recommended by NIST, Avalanche and Correlation Assessment test