Measuring information security breach impact and uncertainties under various information sharing scenarios

This study draws on information theory and aims to provide simulated evidence using real historical and statistical data to demonstrate how various levels of integration moderate the impact and uncertainties of information security breach on supply chain performance. We find that the supply chain behaves differently under various levels of integration when a security breach occurs. The entropy analysis revealed that the wholesaler experience the most uncertainty under system failure and data corruption. This sort of impact-uncertainty information will aid in designing and managing a resilient supply chain poised for minimal breach impact

Synthesis of chalcones for analysis as anti-microbial agents

Chalcones are diphenyl α-β-unsaturated compounds that are present in a wide variety of plants. Naturally occurring chalcones as well as synthetic chalcones have demonstrated an assortment of biological activity, including anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antimicrobial activity. The need for new antimicrobially active agents is becoming more imperative as antimicrobial resistance continues to present a large threat. In this project, a series of chalcones were synthesised via a Claisen-Schmidt condensation reaction. The compounds were analysed using NMR spectroscopy and Gas-Chromatography Mass Spectrometry. An attempt was made to convert four of the chalcones to thiochalcones using Lawesson’s Reagent. The compounds were tested against E. coli, P. aeruginosa and S. epidermidis. None of the synthesised chalcones displayed any antimicrobial activity but the thiochalcones showed activity against all bacterial strains. Upon further analysis, the thiochalcones appeared to have decomposed in situ, with the major product being the oxa-thiophosphorane compound. This compound could have been the cause behind the activity seen in compound 11 against S. epidermidis and compound 14 against all bacterial strains studied. Compound 11 produced a zone of inhibition of 10mm against S. epidermidis whilst compound 14 produced zones of inhibition against S. epidermidis, P. aeruginosa and E. coli of 16mm, 10.3mm and 15.3mm respectively. The MICs and MBCs of the compounds were not greater than Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic used in this project as the positive control, as shown by the results

Horizontal variation in trace elements and soil characteristics at Siloam and Tshipise geothermal springs, Limpopo Province, South Africa

The Limpopo Province is the location of 31% of South Africa’s geothermal springs. The springs at Siloam and Tshipise are among those springs which fall into the ‘scalding category’ with average temperatures of 67.7°C and 54.6°C, respectively. The aim of this study was to determine the horizontal variation in trace element concentrations and soil indicators in surface soil associated with the geothermal springs at Siloam and Tshipise. Results show that, in general, the trace element concentrations present in the soil decrease with horizontal distance from the springs. Water and soil samples were collected from May to July 2014, with the soil sampled at 0–15 cm depth at 5 m intervals in the horizontal distance from the geothermal spring. The physicochemical parameters of the water were determined as well as the trace elements. The soil samples were digested using microwave digestion and trace elements were determined using an inductively coupled plasmamass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Soil indicators – pH, soil organic matter (SOM) and soil water retention (SWR) – were also determined. The resulting data were subjected to both descriptive and factor analyses. Results showed only one factor determining the variation in geothermal water, attributed to the rock–water interaction in the deep aquifer (geology); two factors were obtained for variation in soil indicators and trace element concentrations, attributed to spring geology and the soil pedogenesis. There was a strong correlation between the trace elements and soil indicators at the 95% confidence level. There is generally a positive correlation between the trace elements and soil indicators if the soil pH, SOM and SWR are high; in these instances most of the trace elements in the soil will also be relatively high. A two-factors-without-replication ANOVA (p ˂ 0.05) showed that there is a significant difference in trace element concentrations at different distances.Keywords: geothermal springs, trace metals, soil indicators, rock-water interactions, soil pedogenesi

Teacher Self-Efficacy Enhancement and School Location: Implication for Students’ Achievement in Economics in Senior Secondary School in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria

The paper investigated the effect of teacher self-efficacy enhancement and school location on students’ achievement in Economics in Senior Secondary School in Ibadan Metropolis of Oyo State, Nigeria. Three hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted in the study. Four Local Government Areas (two urban and two rural) out of the eleven Local Government Area Councils in Ibadan were randomly selected. Sixty schools (30 in urban and 30 in rural) were randomly chosen from the Local Govts selected, subsequently 60 SS Economics teachers (30 in urban and 30 in rural) whose classes were used as intact class were involved in the study. Two instruments namely: Teachers Self-Efficacy Enhancement Scale (TSES) and Economics Achievement Test (EAT) were used to generate data for the study.  The Reliability coefficients of the instruments were 0.79 and 0.74 respectively. One treatment package (Teacher Self-efficacy Enhancement Package) was developed and used to enhance the self-efficacy of the teachers. Some of the findings were:  teacher self-efficacy enhancement had significant main effect on students’ achievement in Economics, school location also had significant main effect on students’ achievement in Economics, while teacher self-efficacy enhancement and school location had no significant interaction effects on students’ achievement in Economics.  It was recommended that teachers should be exposed to self-efficacy enhancement program to enable them imbibe the spirit of self-efficacy in carrying out their assignments. Furthermore, teachers should be made to understand and accept the fact that their students can perform excellently in their academic work regardless of their school location if they develop in themselves a high level of self-efficacy. Keywords: Teacher, Teacher self-efficacy, Self-efficacy enhancement, School location, Academic achievement

Relationship between extreme daily rainfall and maximum daily river discharge within Lagos metropolis

Many research works emphasized on rainfall pattern and urban flooding while others examined the relationship between extreme rainfall and its implication for flood frequency with little attempt to establish relationship between extreme rainfall and maximum river discharge. This study therefore, draws interconnection between extreme daily rainfall and maximum daily river discharge within Lagos metropolis. Data on rainfall were collected from Ikeja and Lagos Roof weather stations within the Yewa Basin in Lagos. Also, data on river discharge for Yewa River were obtained from Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority, Abeokuta. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) was employed to assess the relationship between extreme daily rainfall and maximum daily river discharge at 95% confidence level. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) employed was used to test for the variability in the means of extreme daily rainfall events across the two weather stations. The result showed that there is a significant relationship between extreme daily rainfall events and maximum daily river discharge for Ikeja station (tvalue = 2.60, Cv= 2.18, P≤0.05) while no significant relationship was shown in Lagos Roof (tvalue = 1.60, Cv= 2.18, P≥0.05). It was also revealed that that there are no significant differences in the mean values of extreme daily rainfall across the stations (F130=2.086, P≥0.05).Therefore, this work has been able to show that the relationship between extreme rainfall and maximum river discharge is not always significant due to several factors such as distance from the sea (continentally) and variation in rainfall across the weather stations.Keywords: Extreme Rainfall, Maximum River Discharge, Ogun-Osun, Flood Frequenc

Groundwater: Quality Levels and Human Exposure, SW Nigeria

Groundwater serves as a source of freshwater for agricultural, industrial and domestic purposes and it accounts for about 42%, 27% and 36% respectively. As it remains the only source of all-year-round supply of freshwater globally, it is of vital importance as regards water security, human survival and sustainable agriculture. The main goal of this study is to identify the main cause-effect relationship between human activities and the state of groundwater quality using a communication tool (the DPSIR Model; Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact and Response). A total of twenty-one samples were collected from ten peri-urban communities scattered across three conterminous Local Government Areas in Southwestern Nigeria. Each of the groundwater samples was tested for twelve parameters - total dissolved solids, pH, bicarbonate, chloride, lead, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, sulphate, magnesium and total suspended solids. The study revealed that the concentrations of DO and Pb were above threshold limits, while pH and N were just below the threshold and others elements were within acceptable limits based on Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality and Nigeria Standard for Drinking Water Quality. The study revealed that groundwater quality levels from the sampled wells are under pressure leading to reduction in the amount of freshwater availability. This is a first-order setback in achieving access to freshwater as a sustainable development goal across Less Developed Communities (LDCs) globally. To combat this threat, there is the need for an integrated approach in response towards groundwater conservation and sustainability by all stakeholders

Investigation of the Effect of e-Platform Information Security Breaches: A Small and Medium Enterprise Supply Chain Perspective

Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) engage in dyadic information integration partnerships or partial integration with their direct suppliers and customers. They often utilise e-commerce or cloud computing technology platforms hosted by third-party providers to leverage such partnerships. However, information security breaches and disruptions caused by cyber-attacks are commonplace in the IT industry. The effects of said disruptions and breaches on e-commerce businesses under varied disruption conditions are still uncertain. Furthermore, the effect of security breaches on non-participating members of the supply chain is poorly understood, especially under various disruption profiles. Using discrete event modelling, this study explores the impact of disruption caused by information security breaches on supply chain performance and the externality effect of partial integration on non-participants. We also examine the impact of breach disruption frequency and remediation length on supply chain performance with varying levels of information sharing. These impacts were studied under two typical inventory replenishment policies for SMEs. It was determined that remediation length should be a prioritised factor in impact management and that flexibility in the inventory replenishment policy can help mitigate the impact of information disruption on the inventory performance of businesses, especially that of non-participants, in information-sharing partnerships

Application of artificial neural network for the structural integrity assessment of dent in pipelines

PhD ThesisDent in a pipelines have been of major concern to pipeline operators for years because its severity cannot be easily determined. For many years dent severity was based on dent depth alone. This has led to unnecessary repairs and removal from service incurring considerable loss in revenue. Studies by researchers have indicated that other factors like pipe geometry, pipe material, dent geometry and pressure cycling could influence the severity of the dent in terms of the fatigue life reduction. Dent severity has been studied using dent depth based assessment, strain based assessment and fatigue assessment . The dent depth over the years has been the major determinant of dent severity. Recent studies have shown that the strain in the pipeline could be a better indicator of dent severity using the static approach. The most common fatigue approach is the stress life S-N approach. This involves extracting stress data either through experimental procedure or finite element analysis and using it with an appropriate S-N curve to determine the fatigue life One of the major challenges faced in S-N fatigue approach today is determining the stress concentration factors (SCF) associated with the dents. These SCFs are used with an appropriate SN curve to calculate the fatigue life. This, over the years and currently is calculated empirically or using finite element (FE) analysis. The cost of running experimental program can be very expensive and numerical analysis can be time-consuming. It is not sustainable to keep using finite element analysis to calculate the SCF associated with every dent. An algorithm is needed to be able to predict strain and SCF without running an expensive experimental program or running an extensive finite element study This Research presents an alternative and a sustainable method for calculating the SCF, the maximum strain and the rerounding depth in pipelines with dent. The method involves gathering a large database of SCFs, strains and rerounding depths through a finite element study on a parametric range of industry standard pipes . These parametric datasets focuses on the effects of pipe geometry, dent geometry, material properties and pressure range on the prediction of the strain and stresses which were not systematically considered by other researchers. These parametric datasets are then used to train an artificial neural network (ANN) that predicts the rerounding depth,maximum strain and the SCF. The ANN presents an accurate and sustainable alternative to the current method used for dent assessment. It’s application would reduce the cost and time taken in assessing dent severity. The accuracy of the ANN is dependent on the amount of training data. In order to create the large database of results, a parametric design language (APDL) was created for easy creation and recreation of models. This parametric design language helped in the creation of 256 FE models which was sufficient enough to create the large database of SCF and other data needed to train the ANN Two types of indenters (Dome and Bar) are used to simulate circumferentially and longitudinally aligned dents. Four different dent depths ranging from 2% d/D to 10% d/D are also simulated to investigate the effect of dent geometry. Four different pipe grades (X46, X65, X80, and X100) are analysed to investigate the effect of pipe materials. Similarly, eight pipes with a different diameter to thickness ratio (D/t) ranging from 18-96 are analysed to investigate the effect of pipe geometry. The pipe is pressured up to 50% and 72% SMYS to investigate the effect of pressure range. The results from this study show that all the investigated parameters influence the results in various ways. Results show that longitudinally aligned dents have higher stress concentrations factors compared to circumferential dents of similar dent depth. Similarly, pipes with higher diameter to thickness ratios D/t have higher stress concentration factor compared to pipes with lower D/t .The FE result was validated with experimental and analytical results and a good correlation was seen with minimal percentage error. The FE results from the parametric study was fed into an ANN model to train the network. The network was trained with different numbers of the processing element and activation function to find the model with the best performance. The ANN prediction gave a good correlation with the FE result

Implication of information disruption to supply chain improvement strategy decision - an entropy perspective

Impact studies relating to information security breach are few and somewhat understudied. This study was carried out with a view to create a better understanding of how information security breaches affect the performance of the supply chain and the role certain strategic factors (also called complexity drivers) play in either mitigating the level of impact or exacerbating it. Three categories of strategic factors are considered: ordering policy; supply chain structure; and information sharing/integration, and each category has 3 or more alternatives used for comparison. Using discrete event simulation (DES), the study found that these strategic factors help improve supply chain performance in the face of supply chain disruption as long as the right combination of alternatives are used. At another level, this thesis exposes the counter-intuitiveness of combining certain strategic factors. Beyond estimating the cost impact of information security breach, this study found that impact uncertainty has been overlooked in previous studies and this could be misleading and ultimately become the bane of existence for organisations that do not factor in the consequence of uncertainty in their impact cost estimation. This may result in treating a serious security threat as benign. Using the concept of entropy theory the study developed a methodology that helps measure the uncertainty associated with impact cost estimation. In addition a decision framework was developed, which includes an uncertainty cost implication component that helps make better strategic decisions. This study advances the field of impact assessment in that it proposes a more inclusive approach to impact assessment and helps in understanding where supply chain priorities lay both under normal and disruption circumstances. This understanding is key to making sustainable improvements to the supply chain either with a short term view or from a long term perspective

Impact of Wastewater on Surface Water Quality in Developing Countries: A Case Study of South Africa

Wastewater effluents are major contributors to a variety of water pollution problems. Most cities of developing countries generate on the average 30–70 mm3 of wastewater per person per year. Owing to lack of or improper wastewater treatment facilities, wastewater and its effluents are often discharged into surface water sources, which are receptacles for domestic and industrial wastes, resulting to pollution. The poor quality of wastewater effluents is responsible for the degradation of the receiving surface water body. Wastewater effluent should be treated efficiently to avert adverse health risk of the user of surface water resources and the aquatic ecosystem. The release of raw and improperly treated wastewater onto water courses has both short‐ and long‐term effects on the environment and human health. Hence, there should be proper enforcement of water and environmental laws to protect the health of inhabitants of both rural and urban communities. This study reports major factors responsible for the failing state of wastewater treatment facilities in developing countries, which includes poor operational state of wastewater infrastructure, design weaknesses, lack of expertise, corruption, insufficient funds allocated for wastewater treatment, overloaded capacities of existing facilities, and inefficient monitoring for compliance, among others