3D multiple description coding for error resilience over wireless networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Mobile communications has gained a growing interest from both customers and service providers alike in the last 1-2 decades. Visual information is used in many application domains such as remote health care, video –on demand, broadcasting, video surveillance etc. In order to enhance the visual effects of digital video content, the depth perception needs to be provided with the actual visual content. 3D video has earned a significant interest from the research community in recent years, due to the tremendous impact it leaves on viewers and its enhancement of the user’s quality of experience (QoE). In the near future, 3D video is likely to be used in most video applications, as it offers a greater sense of immersion and perceptual experience. When 3D video is compressed and transmitted over error prone channels, the associated packet loss leads to visual quality degradation. When a picture is lost or corrupted so severely that the concealment result is not acceptable, the receiver typically pauses video playback and waits for the next INTRA picture to resume decoding. Error propagation caused by employing predictive coding may degrade the video quality severely. There are several ways used to mitigate the effects of such transmission errors. One widely used technique in International Video Coding Standards is error resilience. The motivation behind this research work is that, existing schemes for 2D colour video compression such as MPEG, JPEG and H.263 cannot be applied to 3D video content. 3D video signals contain depth as well as colour information and are bandwidth demanding, as they require the transmission of multiple high-bandwidth 3D video streams. On the other hand, the capacity of wireless channels is limited and wireless links are prone to various types of errors caused by noise, interference, fading, handoff, error burst and network congestion. Given the maximum bit rate budget to represent the 3D scene, optimal bit-rate allocation between texture and depth information rendering distortion/losses should be minimised. To mitigate the effect of these errors on the perceptual 3D video quality, error resilience video coding needs to be investigated further to offer better quality of experience (QoE) to end users. This research work aims at enhancing the error resilience capability of compressed 3D video, when transmitted over mobile channels, using Multiple Description Coding (MDC) in order to improve better user’s quality of experience (QoE). Furthermore, this thesis examines the sensitivity of the human visual system (HVS) when employed to view 3D video scenes. The approach used in this study is to use subjective testing in order to rate people’s perception of 3D video under error free and error prone conditions through the use of a carefully designed bespoke questionnaire.Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF

Use of Maternal Health Services and Pregnancy Outcomes in Nigeria

Maternal health services (MHS) provide primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of prevention to achieve better pregnancy outcomes. However, use of prenatal and natal services among Nigerian women has been ranked among the lowest in the world and, consequently, the country is among the 10 countries with the highest maternal mortality ratio. Moreover, nationwide community-based studies on the use of maternal health services in Nigeria are limited. To address this gap, this quantitative, cross-sectional study analyzed the 2008 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) data to identify whether Nigerian women\u27s biological, cultural, and socioeconomic characteristics are associated with their use of MHS and pregnancy outcome as measured by number of antenatal visits, place of delivery, and fetal outcome. The Anderson\u27s health behavior model was used as the theoretical framework for this study. Respondents were women aged 15 - 49 years (N= 31,985), who had given birth between January 2003 and December 2008. Bivariate and multiple logistic regressions were conducted. The results indicated that religion, education, income, and availability of skilled health workers showed consistent significant statistical association with both the number of ante natal care (ANC) visits and place of delivery even after controlling for covariates. Overall, these findings have potential for social change on the choice of public health interventions with collaboration with social services such as education, community, and labor sectors. Further, a systematic involvement of local communities is needed to drive specific culturally-sensitive interventions

Procedural Issues in Mergers and Acquisitions of Companies: A Comparison between Nigeria and India

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A’s) are, nowadays, frequent events in the lifecycles of companies, on the basis that M&As are one of the most successful means of enabling companies and economic entities achieve profits, whether through entry to new markets, taking advantage of economies of scale or reducing the costs associated with producing a greater number of products or services. India is now one of the leading nations in the world in terms of mergers and acquisitions while, Nigeria has also enjoyed an unprecedented high volume of mergers and acquisitions since 1999.  In both jurisdictions, the laws have laid down procedures for mergers and acquisitions. In India, sanction of the High Court is an essential prerequisite for the effectiveness of mergers; whereas In Nigeria judicial involvement in sanctioning mergers has been significantly reduced. This paper examines the procedural issues involved in mergers in these two populous developing countries of the Commonwealth with a view to learning a lesson from the situation of each other and recommending reforms to the laws of both countries. This article begins with a highlight of the regulatory framework and meaning of merger and acquisition in Nigeria and India; gives an overview of the types of merger and examines the procedural issues in mergers in both Nigeria and India. The paper makes a comparative analysis between the two jurisdictions. The paper acknowledges the comprehensiveness of the laws in both jurisdictions however call for plugging some of the identified gaps in the law

Statistical Evaluation of Compressive Strength in High Performance Concrete (HPC) with Steel Fiber Addition

In this study, statistical analysis of High performance concrete (HPC) with steel fiber addition at 0.50, 0.75, 1.00, 1.25, & 1.50 % was evaluated each with a sample size (N) of 50 using 100 mm side cubes. Normality test and screening was done on the data set, frequency histogram with superimposed normal distribution curve plotted, as well as P-value compared with the significance level. Other parameters investigated were confidence interval and probability plot. It was seen that the data does not follow the normal distribution because the data float around the ideal normal curve, P-value is less than the significance level and Anderson-darling is high. An attempt was made to transform the data set for Goodness of fit using Johnson Transformation, and it was seen that the P-value significantly improved. Overall, an improvement in the mean compressive strength is observed with increase in fiber addition by utilizing large sample size

Does female education explain the disparity in the use of antenatal and natal services in Nigeria? Evidence from demographic and health survey data

Background: Nigeria is among the countries with a high number of annual maternal deaths partly due to low utilization of maternal health services (MHS).Objective: This study aimed to explore whether there is an association between women’s level of education and the appropriate use of antenatal and delivery services.Method: A quantitative cross-sectional study was used to analyze the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) data. Information from 33,385 women aged 15 – 49 years was analyzed using Bivariate Pearson Chi square test and multiple logistic regressions.Results: Education is statistically associated with the number of antenatal clinic visits made (AOR = 3.208; CI 2.875 – 3.578; p < .0001) and the place of delivery (AOR = 2.009; CI 1.449 – 2.785; p < .0001) even after controlling for availability of skilled health workers, parity, income, religion, age and distance.Conclusion: A long term investment in girls’ education will improve income, interaction with health care providers, level of autonomy to seek and pay for appropriate MHS and ultimately use of MHS and positive pregnancy outcomes.Keywords: Education, antenatal, delivery, Nigeri

Compressive Strength Variability in High Performance Concrete with Steel Fiber Addition

In this study, an evaluation was conducted on the influence of specimen geometry on high performance concrete (HPC) with steel fiber addition with a view of monitoring the variability that exists. Strict mix design protocols were carried out in the production of the HPC based on the relevant standard, and strict procedures were ensured in the casting, consolidation, and curing of the specimens to produce viable specimens for testing. Standard 150 x 300 mm cylinder and 150 mm side cubes were utilized. There is an observed strength increase for both type of specimens and aspect ratios, as well as a noticeable wall effect especially in the cylindrical specimens at higher aspect ratio of fiber. Variability of the results is more prominent in lower aspect ratio of the fiber irrespective of the specimen type due to data range. At the end, due to strict quality control, the range of the data has been successfully reduced to about 2-3 MPa in most cases

HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY (CASE STUDY OF E-HEALTH SYSTEM IN A NIGERIAN HOSPITAL)

Health Information Systems (HIS) are one of the six essential and interrelated building blocks of a health system. A well-functioning HIS no doubt enhances accurate, timely and reliable information on health status and health care determinants required for and efficient and effective clinical and managerial decision making. In developing countries Application of HIS and e-health is in the increase. The analysis of Health Information systems in developing countries highlights areas of Challenges and areas needing Improvement

Same Sex Marriage, Human Rights and Death Penalty: Common and Islamic Law Perspectives

There has been a growing movement in a number of countries to regard marriage as a right which should be extended to gay and lesbian couples. The agitations for legal recognition of same-sex marriage cut across race, ethnicity, age, religion, political affiliation, and socio-economic status. This is a serious challenge to marriage as a sacrosanct institution. However, the response to these agitations varies from one country to the other with religion and culture as determinant factor. Islam prescribed capital punishment for same sex marriage and treats the couples as miscreant, while the Common Law sees same sex marriage as fundamental human rights and abrogated capital punishment. But freedom of religion is in itself a fundamental right. In contradistinction with law as the will of the people, religion is a complete way of life to the Muslims. Keywords: Human Rights, Same Sex Marriage, Death Penalty, Legal, Islami

Optimization of Adaptive Method for Data Reduction in Wireless Sensor Networks

The term ‘Wireless’ is a cordless technology where the nodes interact or exchange information with the sink node without wired intervention to exchange or transmit any information successfully. Characteristics of the present wireless sensor networks are applied to diverse technological furtherance in minimum power communications and very large-scale integration to sustained functionalities of sensing. Tremendous number of incentive observation and algometry of data are amassed from sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as environmental monitoring. However, continuous dissemination of the sensed data postulates eminent energy imbibing. Data reduction duress the sensor nodes to surcease transmitting the data when it is diffident about freshen up. One way to reduce this kind of energy imbibing is to minimize the amount of data exchanged across the sensors, therefore the research work aims to increase the communication and spatial prediction between the sensor nodes and the sink nodes. In this research work, an Optimization of Adaptive Method for Data Reduction in Wireless Sensor Networks was proposed and implemented. The work adopted a bulging haplotype of two decoupled Least-Mean-Square (LMS) windowed filters with varying length for approximating the immediate metrics values both at the sink and source node such that sensor nodes have to send only their next sensed values that diverse substantially (when a pre-determine threshold) from the anticipated values. The experiment conducted on a real- world dataset of about 2,313,682, which were collected from 54 Mica2dot sensors thus, MATLAB was used as a tool for the implementation. The research work aims to increase the communication model and spatial prediction, which is the limitation of the base paper. The results show that our approach (OAM-DR) has achieved up to 98% communication reduction while retaining or carrying a high accuracy, (i.e. the anticipated values have a digression of ±0.5 from actual data values)