Information Accessibility and Utilization as Correlate of Quality Of Life of Rural Women in Nigeria

The quality of life of people in developing countries, including Nigeria, is often adjudged to be lower than the expected standard. This is worse with women living in the rural areas whose lives are characterised by inadequate access and use of basic amenities of life. The situation is compounded by the women’s lack of access to valuable information and nonutilisation of available information which could help them meet the challenges of daily living. In addition, the rural environment and the attendant socio-economic factors pose additional limitation to the women’s quality of life. This study, therefore, investigated the extent to which information accessibility and utilization correlates with quality of life of rural women in Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design of the expost-facto type. Three research questions were raised and two hypotheses were formulated. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data from 5000 rural women purposively selected from 10 Local Government Areas in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Ten indicators namely: housing, occupation, income, health, education, neighbourhood/ community, family life, government, social status and spiritual life was developed as a scale for measuring Quality of Life of rural women. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Results show that Information accessibility and utilization have great roles to play independently and collectively towards improving the quality of life of rural women. Therefore, Nigerian government should provide special information centres in the various Local Government Areas government to provide timely information that could improve the quality of life of rural women in Ekiti State

Marketing System of Non-Timber Forest Products:-The Case of Palmyra Palm in North-Eastern Nigeria

This study investigated the marketing system of Palmyra Palm products in North-eastern Nigeria to; identify its marketable products, channels of distribution and roles of market participants, and also assess its marketing facilities in North-eastern Nigeria. Data were generated through market surveys and interviews on 203 respondents selected randomly from Adamawa, Bauchi and Yobe markets. The generated data were analysed using descriptive statistics where appropriate. Marketing system focusing market organization was analyzed qualitatively by observing the marketing channels, roles of market participants and marketing facilities. The results revealed that exchange and ownership of title to products occurred at the local markets (54.0%), farmers' homes (37.7%), and farmers' farms (6.2%), and inter-states' markets (2.1%). The marketing channel of Palmyra palm was highly decentralised and thus the marketing system was expected to be operationally efficient. However, because of poor road network, high transportation cost and poor marketing facilities, the marketing system was adjudged operationally inefficient. Market participants introduced flaws in the marketing system; farm-gate middlemen dominated marketing operations, commissioned buying agents over-depended on wholesalers for capital, and there was collusion in price determination. Marketing facilities namely market places, storage, processing, transportation and packaging were crude and inadequate, while credit facilities were virtually absent. To address these inadequacies, the study recommended provision of improved marketing facilities and communication gadgets, formation of consumer co-operative organizations to check the excesses of the middlemen in the market and more research into the marketing of Non-timber forest resources.&#160

Effects of teak canopy cover and npk fertilizer application on growth of ginger in agroforestry trial, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Non-timber forest products issues are of global interest due to their importance among rural and urban dwellers for income, healthcare and food security. This study investigates the effects of Tectona grandis canopy cover and NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) fertilizer (15:15:15) application on growth parameters of Ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Zingiberaceae) in Ile-Ife, south-western Nigeria. Twelve replicates of ginger plots (6m²each) were laid in a completely randomised block design within and outside Teak plantations. Six replicates were treated with NPK (15:15:15) in a split dose at two and 6 weeks old, while others serve as control. Growth indices such as foliage, tiller numbers, and plant height per plot were obtained for two cropping seasons. Data obtained were analysed using ANOVA and descriptive statistics. Tiller formation in ginger was significantly inhibited by Teak canopy with or without NPK fertilizer (0.000 and 0.033, ρ ≤ 0.05). Ginger heights were not significantly different within Teak plantation with or without NPK (0.647); however, there were significant differences between heights of ginger grown within and outside Teak plantations, (0.000 and 0.011, ρ ≤ 0.05). Foliage production in ginger was higher outside teak plantation, (0.000 and 0.007, ρ ≤ 0.05), while NPK also enhanced foliage production in ginger significantly, (0.000, ρ ≤ 0.05). The study concluded that incorporation of Ginger in plantations such as Teak and other fast growing indigenous species can enhance plantation benefits in terms of biomass yield. Further research in this area is recommended in agroforestry systems.Keywords: Ginger, Teak canopy, tiller formation, leaf production, agroforestry

Prevalence of end-digit preference in recorded blood pressure by nurses: a comparison of measurements taken by mercury and electronic blood pressure-measuring devices

Objectives: When compared with the use of a mercury  sphygmomanometer, the use of a validated digital blood pressure (BP) measuring device eliminates the risk of exposure to mercury. Digital devices are also associated with a lesser degree of end-digit preference (EDP). EDP refers to the occurrence of a particular end digit more frequently than would be expected through chance alone. There have been only a few reports from Africa on the occurrence of EDP in BP measurement. This study examined EDP in BP taken by nurses before and after the introduction of a digital BP-measuring device. Design: The design was a retrospective study. Settings and subjects: We reviewed the BP readings of 58 patients who presented at the dedicated clinic for people living with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Teaching Hospital, Osogbo, Nigeria, before and after the introduction of the digital BP-measuring device. Outcome measures: The prevalence of end-digit zero of systolic and diastolic BP readings before and after the introduction of the digital device was compared using McNemar’s test. Results: There was a large and significant fall in end-digit zero when BP readings that were taken using the mercury and digital devices were compared (systolic 98.1% vs. 10.9%, p-value < 0.001; diastolic 97.1% vs. 14.9%, p-value < 0.001 (McNemar’s test). Conclusion: There was a significant reduction in the frequency of end-digit zero when BP was taken with the digital devicerather than the mercury device. Regular training and certification of healthcare workers in BP measurement is recommended to ensure a high quality BP measurement standard.Keywords: blood pressure measurement, mercury sphygmomanometer, digital blood pressure-measuring devices, end-digit preferenc

Osteogenesis Imperfecta – A Case Series and Review of Recent Advances in Management

Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) is an uncommon congenital abnormality of the connective tissues in which diagnosis and management pose significant challenges especially in Low and Middle-Income Countries. The objective of this report is to draw attention to this uncommon congenital anomaly. Two cases of OI were seen at birth and managed in Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. One of the babies died shortly after birth while the other baby was managed and discharged home. The discharged baby was on follow-up care in the clinic until the parents defaulted from further care. She eventually died at home after series of hospitalisations for recurrent respiratory tract infections. In conclusion, a high index of suspicion is required during prenatal care visit. When detected at birth, parents are to be educated on the multidisciplinary approach to management, challenges and possible outcome as there is yet no cure for this condition

An Estimate of the Incidence of Prostate Cancer in Africa: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Prostate cancer (PCa) is rated the second most common cancer and sixth leading cause of cancer deaths among men globally. Reports show that African men suffer disproportionately from PCa compared to men from other parts of the world. It is still quite difficult to accurately describe the burden of PCa in Africa due to poor cancer registration systems.We systematically reviewed the literature on prostate cancer in Africa and provided a continentwide incidence rate of PCa based on available data in the regio

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Management of Records in Public Secondary Schools of Lagos State, Nigeria.

This article investigated management of records in public secondary schools of Lagos State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique with questionnaire, observation and interview methods were usedfor data collection through ten research assistants. 257 school managers (principals) were randomly sampledfrom a total of 355 out of which 240 responded and their copies of questionnnaire were found valid for analysis given a response rate of 93.4 per cent. The study found that the studied schools had no functional records management system. The estimated total volume of records generated and managed was (X = 2.555,070; S. E. = 1 180.33). There were no records policy, record centre management operations were not performed. Vital records were protected from possible disasters by boxing, lock-up the store, fumigation, dusting, lock-up file cabinets and unauthorized access. The non-records were disposed throughoutsale to food vendors, burning, burying and dumping into the sea. It was therefore recommended that functional records management programme be implemented in the public secondary schools. of Lagos State

The use of information products and services in social science research in Nigerian Universities

No Abstract Available African Journal for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Vol.5(2) 2000: 296-30