Archives-July 2017

This research work investigated the relationship between awareness and usage patterns of electronic information resources among undergraduate students of Ekiti State University, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population was made up of undergraduate students in the faculties of the social sciences and engineering in Ekiti state university, Nigeria. Data were collected using questionnaire designed to elicit response from respondents and analysed using descriptive statistics method of frequency count and percentages. However, out of four hundred (400) copies of questionnaire administered to the students three hundred and fifty (350) were returned which represents 87.5% response rate for the study. Findings revealed that there is low awareness of some e-resources such as CD-ROM databases and OPAC among the respondents which could possibly influence their usage of e-resources. The study concluded that e-resources are widely used in the surveyed university, and that awareness about e-resources could possibly lead to increased usage. Good internet connectivity will go a long way to further encourage users to use the e-resources for which the university library has subscribed. However, it was recommended that subscriptions to e-resources should reflect the priorities and preferences of users as well as increasing the level of awareness of the availability of new e-resources and additions of new databases for users of the library among other recommendations.

Many previous studies have linked both DM, especially T2DM as well as altered liver function to CVD.Uncontrolled DM is said to affect cardiac function. This study was undertaken on non-hospitalised T2DM patients (both males and females) to find out if liver enzymes and HbA1c are associated to cardiac function by linking their associations to individual lipid profile tests.In all patients comprising of a total of 50, significant associations of both negative and positive were observed between each liver enzyme and HbA1c analyte studied to individual lipid profile tests at a p value ranging from <0.05 to < 0.001 justifying that both liver and DM are associated to cardiac function. While ?-GT and HbA1c showed associations to TC, TGs and VLDL-c in the case of males, females showed associations to all analytes compared to all lipid profile parameters at p ranging from <0.08 to <0.01.The outcome the results in this study strongly recommends that to assess cardiac functions in T2DM patients, along with lipid profile, the clinicians should occasionally recommend HbA1c as well as liver enzymes as additional package tests. More studies are needed in this filed to arrive at a consensus package tests related to both DM and liver function to do occasionally in all T2DM patients attending Cardiology clinics.

Insects are among the most diverse types of animals within the arthropod group that are usually collected for food and feed. The vitamin profile of ten insect samples: adult bee, bee brood, winged termite, termite soldier, mopane worm, scarab beetle, snoult beetle, maize weevil, silkworm larva and silkworm pupa were investigated using standard analytical methods. Among the water-soluble vitamins investigated, vitamin B3 (niacin) had the highest concentration in each of the samples with values 4.57-7.33mg/100g whilst vitamin C (9.27e-5-1.34e-4) recorded the lowest concentration. Other water-soluble vitamins (mg/100g) determined were B1: 0.050-0.096, B2: 0.261-0.387, B5: 1.48e-3-4.14e-3, B6: 0.124-0.156 and B9: 6.55e-3-8.58e-3. Vitamin E (1.50-2.48mg/100g) was most concentrated among the fat-soluble vitamins investigated followed by vitamin A (0.021-0.110mg/100g) whilst vitamin K (6.63e-4-1.04e-3mg/100g) had the least concentration. The statistical analysis using Chi-square at ? = 0.05 showed that no significant differences existed among the samples in the parameters determined. This research work has therefore provided more useful and reliable information on the vitamins composition of the analyzed ten insect samples that could enhance their usefulness and applications in Food industry.

In order to increase the strength of subgrade soil and to reduce the construction cost of road and airfield pavement by making best use of the locally available materials, mechanical stabilization technique is one of the vital solution. But, in the past few years, utilization of stone quarry dust has been the focus of few researches. Therefore, in this investigation an attempt is made to stabilize clayey soil using stone quarry dust to analyze the index properties and subgrade strength properties of soil, which includes Atterberg's limits, Compaction Characteristics, California Bearing Ratio and Consolidated Undrained Tri-Axial Compression tests. It was concluded that addition of 30% stone quarry dust had increased maximum dry density, California bearing ratio value, angle of internal friction and decreased the optimum moisture content which made the soil-quarry dust mixes durable.

A Steady State Mass Balance method (SSMB) in all different forms was used to calculate the critical load of sulphur and nitrogen for soil. The present load of sulphur (161.1 Eq ha-1 yr-1), nitrogen (49.9 Eq ha-1 yr-1) and ammonium (176.8 Eq ha-1 yr-1) were calculated from wet and dry deposition from Agra region. The values of critical load of sulphur and nitrogen for soil with respect to wheat (Triticum vulgaris), maize (Zea mays), rye (Triticale), potato (Solanum tuberosum), lemon (Citrus argentifolium), anjan grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) and bajra (Pennisetum typhoides) were calculated.The values of actual acidity calculated were lower than the values assessed by the RAINS-Asia model of this area. It has been concluded that chloride also plays an important role in the acid deposition which changes the value of critical load significantly.

The abnormal right coronary artery originating from the left coronary system is an extremely rare variation of isolated single coronary artery. It is often a benign entity and the patients remain asymptomatic. Nevertheless, it can lead to sudden death during exertion. The treatment of this coronary anomaly may be medical, percutaneous and/or surgical. We present here a right coronary artery originating from the proximal left anterior descending artery in the first case and from the left main coronary artery in the second case. Both patients were seen to have an acute coronary syndrome with multi-vessel coronary artery disease.

In recent days most of the automotive parts are manufactured with different materials which will increase the weight of the vehicle and the materials also cannot be recycled. But with the European union and Asian countries stringent norms on automotive end life i.e the parts should be recycled. This made the researchers to use natural fibers in composite materials. With their low cost, low density, stiffness, high specific strength and biodegradable characteristics, they are considered as perfect replacement for conventional fibers. This has resulted in creation of more awareness about the use of natural fibers based materials mainly composites. The properties of the composites mainly depend on the interfacial adhesion between the matrix and the fibers. The present study aims at the mechanical properties namely tensile strength, flexural strength and impact strength of the composites. In the present work the composite is produced with good compressive strength (Egg shell) and tensile strength (coconut coir) materials and is further tested for various mechanical properties. The results indicated that these composites are very good for automotive applications.

Fifty-two ditch cutting samples between 6138m and 7717m in Kuri-1 Well, western Niger Delta were collected and processed for sedimentological and palynological analyses. Basically two lithologic units were identified which are sandstones and shaly sandstone. A total of Twenty seven species of palynomorphs were recovered, photographed and identified. The diagnostic palynomorphs recovered were used in the zonation and dating of the analyzed section. Two major palynological zones were established: P700 and P800 zones. The P700 zone contains only P780 subzone with the top placed at 6806m and its base at 7717m; this is marked by the top regular occurrence of Racemonocolpites hians. The P800 zone contains two subzones of P820 and P830, the top of P820 is placed at 6400m defined by the quantitative base occurrence of Stereiosporites spp. and its base is placed at 6806m marked by the top regular occurrence of Racemonocolpites hians. The top of P830 is placed at 6138m and its base at 6400m defined by the quantitative base occurrence of Stereiosporites spp. Based on the index taxa recorded, these zones correlate with the broad Pan-tropical zone of Echitricolporites spinosus. The flora recovered suggests Middle to Late Miocene age and a littoral to inner neritic environment of deposition.

A total of 60 composited ditch cutting samples from Koda-1 and Mar-1 wells from onshore and offshore areas of the western Niger Delta Basin were processed and analysed for the lithological, microfauna and microflora contents. Based on the microfaunal analysis, one informal planktonic foraminiferal namely Orbulina universa zone which corresponds to the N9 zone (Middle Miocene) and one informal benthonic biozone Amphistegina radiata zone with Bolivina striatula, Spiroloculina antilarum, Quinqueloculina stelligera and Bulimina elongata sub zones were established for Koda–1 well. An informal planktonic foraminiferal named Globorotalia margaritae zone which corresponds to N17-N19 (Late Miocene–Early Pliocene) was established for Mar-1 well while one informal benthonic biozone Cibicides refulgens zone with Lagena cantenulata, Quinqueloculina costata, Nonionina orbicularis and Planulina wuellerstorfi sub zones were established. The recovered benthonic foraminiferal assemblages and other microfauna accessories indicated that the sediments of the two wells were deposited in marginal to coastal marine (inner neritic, inner to middle neritic and middle neritic) environments. The paleotemperature of the sea was warm with normal salinity, based on the presence of tropical marine indicator species of Orbulina universa.

Utility mining is to discover the itemsets in a transaction database with utility values over a given threshold. Utility of itemsets are based upon user’s perception such as cost, profit or revenue and are of significant importance. Utility-based data mining intends discovering the itemsets with high total utility is called High Utility Itemset mining. High Utility itemsets may contain frequent as well as rare itemsets. Classical utility mining considers items alone as discrete values. In real world applications, such utilities can be described by fuzzy sets. In this paper, proposed an algorithm, FHUI (Fuzzy High Utility Itemset) Mining is presented to mine high utility itemsets effectively from large databases, by fuzzification of utility values. FHUI extracts fuzzy high utility itemsets by integrating fuzzy logic with high utility itemset mining. This algorithm finds all utility-frequent itemsets within given threshold value. The experimental result shows that, it performs efficiently in terms of speed and memory on large databases.