Stock Market Development, Foreign Direct Investment and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence from Nigeria

Stock market development is not only important in economic development of a nation, it is also an important indicator of future economic activity and a nation’s economic strength. This paper employs the Johensen co-integration and the error correction mechanism (ECM) techniques to examine the impact of foreign direct investment and macroeconomic stability (exchange rate and inflation rate) on the level of development of the Nigerian stock market over the peiod 1981-2010. The results reveal that a long run relationship exists between the variables and FDI was found to have a positive but insignificant impact on stock market development. The results also demonstrate that inflation rate has a negative insignificant effect but exchange rate has a significant and negative relationship with stock market development. The paper recommends that foreign firms operating in the Nigeria’s oil and gas and telecommunication sectors should be encouraged to be listed to promote the development of the market. This should be complemeted with policies that will promote macroeconomic stability to attract more foreign direct investment and making the contribution of the foreign direct investment meaningful to the economy. Keywords: Stock market development, FDI, macroeconomic stability, error correction model, Nigeria

Geospatial approach using socio-economic and projected climate change information formodelling urban growth

Urban growth and climate change are two interwoven phenomena that are becoming global environmental issues. Using Niger Delta of Nigeria as a case study, this research investigated the historical and future patterns of urban growth using geospatialbased modelling approach. Specific objectives were to: (i) examine the climate change pattern and predict its impact on urban growth modelling; (ii) investigate the historical pattern of urban growth; (iii) embrace some selected parameters from United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and examine their impacts on future urban growth prediction; (iv) verify whether planning has controlled urban land use sprawl in the study area; and (v) propose standard operating procedure for urban sprawl in the area. A MAGICC model, developed by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was used to predict future precipitation under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios, which was utilized to evaluate the impact of climate change on the study area from 2016 to 2100. Observed precipitation records from 1972 to 2015 were analysed, and 2012 was selected as a water year, based on depth and frequency of rainfall. A relationship model derived using logistic regression from the observed precipitation and river width from Landsat imageries of 2012 was used to project the monthly river width variations over the projected climate change, considering the two emission scenarios. The areas that are prone to flooding were determined based on the projected precipitation anomalies and a suitability map was developed to accommodate the impact of climate change in the projection of future urban growth. Urban landscape changes between 1985 and 2015 were also analysed, which revealed a rapid urban growth in the region. A Cellular Automata/Markov Chain (CA-Markov) model was used to project the year 2030 land cover of the region considering two scenarios; normal projection without any constraint, and using some designed constraints (forest reserves, population and economy) based on some selected UN SDGs criteria and climate change. On validation, overall simulation accuracies of 89.25% and 91.22% were achieved based on scenarios one and two, respectively. The projection using the first scenario resulted to net loss and gains of - 7.37%, 11.84% and 50.88%, while that of second scenario produced net loss and gains of -4.72%, 7.43% and 48.37% in forest, farmland and built-up area between 2015 and 2030, respectively. The difference between the two scenarios showed that the UN SDGs have great influence on the urban growth prediction and strict adherence to the selected UN SDGs criteria can reduce tropical deforestation, and at the same time serve as resilience to climate change in the region

Prevalence of Entamoeba histolytica among patients with gastroenteritis attending some selected hospitals in Zaria Metropolis, Kaduna State

Background: Amoebiasis is a cosmopolitan infection caused by Entamoeba histolytica and ranks third among parasitic infections that lead to death especially in children. Clinical features of amoebiasis range from asymptomatic colonization of amoebic colitis (dysentery or diarrhoea) and invasive extra intestinal amoebiasis, which is manifested most commonly in the form of liver abscesses. Aim: The prevalence of E. histolytica infection in patients having gastroenteritis attending three selected hospitals in Zaria, Kaduna state was studied using direct wet mount and formol-ether concentration method. The hospitals were Hajiya Gambo Sawaba General Hospital Kofan Gayan (Gambo Sawaba), Major Ibrahim B. Abdullahi Memorial Hospital Sabon Gari, Zaria (Limi hospital) and University Health Services ABU Zaria (Sick Bay). Methods: One hundred and forty stool samples from gastroenteritis patients of all ages attending the selected hospitals were examined for E. histolytica trophozoites/cysts via direct wet mount and formol-ether concentration method. Results: Eight samples were positive giving an overall prevalence of 5.71%. Highest prevalence (10.4%) was obtained from patients attending Gambo Sawaba Hospital. The prevalence of 2.4% and 4.0% were recorded among gastroenteritis patients attending Limi Hospital and University (A.B.U, Zaria) health service respectively. With respect to age, the prevalence (11.4%) was highest in the age group 11-15 (years) followed by 6-10 years with prevalence of 6.38%. However, none of the socio-demographic factors examined showed significant statistical association (P>0.05)

A proposed model on the determinants of tax non-compliance behavior among small corporate taxpayers in Nigeria: The indirect effects of public governance quality and compliance cost

In view of the declining oil prices and production challenges, Nigeria economy which is highly dependent on oil revenue must enhance its taxation to ensure stable flow of revenue for financing development.This study is a proposed model of small corporate taxpayers’ tax non-compliance behavior in Nigeria. This study reviews previous literature and developed its model based on deterrence and social exchange theories.This study extends the findings of previous studies by investigating the direct influence of the role of tax tribunal and the moderating and mediating effects of public governance quality and tax compliance costs respectively on non-compliance behavior of small corporate taxpayers in Nigeria. If the model is validated, this study would continue to collect data and analyze accordingly with the hope that the findings of the final study would help in formulating policy to curtailing tax non-compliance and hence increasing government revenue from taxatio

Sistem sapaan dalam bahasa Aceh

Buku Sistem Sapaan dalam Bahasa Aceh lni merupakan salah satu hasil Penelitian Bahasa dan Sastra lndonesia dan Daerah lstimewa Aceh tahun 1986 yang pelaksanaamya dlpercayakan kepada tim peneliti dari Unlversitas Syah Kuala. Topik yang digarap melalui penelitian ini adalah bentuk sapaan, baik yang telah lama ada maupun bentuk baru yang muncul, dan pemakaiannya dalam masyarakat Aceh. Yang dimaksud dengan bentuk sapaan disini adalah bentuk sapaan yang digunakan oleh mmyarakat berdasarkan kebiasaan yang berlaku. Masalah lain yang digarap juga melalui penelitian lnl adalah bentuk sapaan yang hilang dalam masyarakat Aceh dewasa ini

Geospatial modelling of land use/land cover dynamics in the Gongola basin for water resource applications through CA-Markov

The Gongola basin has witnessed tremendous environmental changes over the last three decades as a direct consequence of urban growth, deforestation (including encroachment of existing forest reserves), agricultural expansion, overgrazing, bush burning, drought and recurrent flooding episodes. The impact of these changes is influential on the basin’s hydrology, water resource and ecological process, yet, future land cover information to evaluate possible implications on its hydrology and the overall ecosystem is non-existence. Consequently, this study attempts to simulate future land cover demands of 2028 and 2038 for the basin, based on land cover images of 1988, 2003 and 2018 to develop land use/landcover (LU/LC) scenarios for possible hydrologic impact assessments. The method of the research therefore, premised on the use of cellular automata and Markov chain (CA-Markov) model, driven by a number of factors and constraints. Results indicate the land cover change to be mainly driven by rapid growth in urban and agricultural lands, contrary to the vegetation cover, which had been the dominant land cover type in the past. Besides, during the 30 years period, there were noticeable 37.05, 20.21 and 11.55 % increase in urban built-up, bare surface and agricultural land respectively, at the detriment of natural vegetation, which has itself decreased by 18.78 % over the period, with an estimated annual loss of approximately 330 km2of natural vegetation. The decrease in the coverage area of water body was significant (3.55 %) for the same period. Findings from future simulations of LU/LC trends in the basin, show that urban area would have increased by 39 % and agriculture by 34 % by2028 relative to the baseline period of 2003. Conversely, the natural vegetation trailed a declining trend (39 %) higher in magnitude than the preceding years. The developed LU/LC scenarios for the basin can provide an opportunity for water resource managers and experts to understand the trends in changing land use for effective planning and management

Achieving Reproducibility Incorporating Service Versioning into Provenance Model

Reproducibility has long been a cornerstone of science. Underpinning reproducibility is provenance, which has the potential to provide scientists with a complete understanding of data generated in e-experiments, including the services that were produced and consumed. This paper explores the issues of service versioning in provenance to achieve reproducibility. Current provenance model does not directly support service versioning. Therefore, this paper introduces an enhancement of a provenance model to incorporate service versioning mechanism that provides a way to access multiple versions of the same service so that researcher can compare one version to another, and understand their effects on processing data. The enhanced provenance model is able to track the changes of the same service (versions of the same service) over time and correlates versioned services with the results they generate

The Emergence of Anisotropic Superconductivity in the Nodal-line Semi-metal TlTaSe2

TlTaSe2 is a non-centrosymmetric quasi-2D crystal semi-metal hosting nodal-line topological features protected by mirror-reflection symmetry. Here, we investigated the superconducting properties of TlTaSe2 using the first-principles anisotropic Migdal-Eliashberg theory. The Fermi surface hosts well gapped multiband features contributed by the Ta 5d and Tl 6p orbitals. Moreso, anisotropic superconducting gaps were found to exist at 2.15 and 4.5 meV around the in-plane orbitals, coupling effectively with the in-plane phonons of the Ta and Tl atoms. Using the Allen-Dynes-modified McMillan formula, we found a superconducting transition temperature of 6.67 K, accompanied by a robust electron-phonon coupling constant {\lambda} of 0.970. This investigation provides valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying anisotropic superconductivity in TlTaSe2.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure