Archives-November 2014

The level of poverty in the developing countries of the world is becoming increasingly alarming given the figures consistently reported for the area. This study examined the effect of agricultural cooperatives as a means of alleviating poverty among farmers in Iwo Local Government Area of Osun state. A total of 100 questionnaires were administered out of which 90 were retrieved. 57 of the respondents were participants of cooperatives while 33 of them were non participants. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) and probit regression models. It was discovered that poverty exists among all categories of farmers (participants and non-participants of cooperatives). Though, non participants of cooperatives had the highest poverty incidence, depth and severity of 0.47, 0.17 and 0.56 respectively. The analysis of socio-economic characteristics showed that age, educational status, household size, farm size and land acquisition have relationship with incidence of poverty among participants of cooperatives and non-participants. Income and farm size significantly and positively influence the effectiveness of cooperatives on household poverty status at 0.05 and 0.01 level of significance respectively. The study therefore recommends that the farmers should engage themselves in other income generating activities to have a higher purchasing power in order for them to break out of poverty.

Entrepreneurship has played an important role in economic growth, innovation, competitiveness and in poverty alleviation. This study investigated the entrepreneurial culture and its influence on performance of enterprises in retail and services enterprises in Eldoret Town –Kenya. Entrepreneurial Culture (EC) on performance of fifteen Micro Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) in manufacturing, transport, pharmaceutical, hotel, communication and education sectors in Eldoret Town, Uasin Gishu County –Kenya were interrogated. The influence of entrepreneurial culture was assessed on performance dimensions such as profits, revenue, and the number of employees, customer growth & opening up of new branches. Interviews were used as the main instrument for data collection. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were applied for data analysis. Findings showed that over 95% of performance of MSMEs in the selected sectors was influenced by entrepreneurial culture. Profitability, sales revenue, employment vacancies, number of new businesses and customer growth were significantly correlated with entrepreneurial culture. Results indicated that there were correlations among independent variable which was entrepreneurial culture and dependent variable - in this case the performance of the enterprises. This study could be useful to among others, entrepreneurs, educationists and policy makers to plan their activities towards entrepreneurship development of MSMEs in the country.

Delay is considered as a main problem in civil projects of Iran. Ending the construction of dam in determined time is of high importance in terms of huge capitals invested in dam building projects. The present study has attempted to manage crisis of embankment dams in terms of construction delay reduction. To this end, a questionnaire has been distributed among 50 employers, consultants and contractors of embankment dams’ construction projects. The obtain data has been processed in SPSS software. As the research findings reveals, accelerating the trend of privatizing embankment dams’ construction projects, prioritizing technical and financial capabilities compared to the prices suggested by contractors and supplying required credit to pay lands losses lead to the decrease of construction delay of embankment dams.

Maximum velocity of particles and specifying pattern for energy radiation and nature of frequency as a result of explosions is regarded as most important criterion for evaluating dangers as a result of trembling earth. Based on researches it is indicated that these parameters may indicate possible damage. Until now different relations are offered for calculating these parameters by researchers but none of them has application in all of the fields and each of them in accordance with regional conditions including geology, tectonic and rock mechanics may have application at that special region. In these studies by registering and processing seismographs related to seismic data as a result of 20 explosion at Jamishan reservoir dam located at Sangher the status of vulnerability of diversion tunnel and cutoff wall of dam and also adjacent village was studied and the results are analyzed based on received data and comparing with available standards and the best method of boring and level of explosive materials for preventing from possible damages are offered.

As an important part, Construction Industry provides important compositions for promotion of economy. Meanwhile most of projects have experienced various delays in a special form which are mostly for primary time and estimation of costs. Delay in construction is one of the specific problems with a converse effect on projects success from viewpoints of time, costs, quality and safety. This paper is about time function in dam making projects in Iran and defining any reasons for delay and also their severity according to the ideas of contractors and consultants through a questionnaire research. Its field research includes 34 contractors and 30 consultants. About 52 factors of delay were defined through this research. The conclusion of research was defining five serious reasons of delay including: Political conditions, Economic conditions, Limited imports, Granting of project with least tender prices, Delay in payment by employer and lack of equipment.

This study aims at analysing and determining the relationship between the efectivnes of Intellectual Capital and beneficial investment opportunity set in 81 Companies of listed in Tehran stock exchange during 85-90 years. In the analysis of the relationship between the variables and proving the hypothesis of the study, correlation method (simple regression and multiple regression) was used. The result show that ther was significant reletionship between the human capital, structural capital and employed capital efficiency with beneficial investment opportunity set, also ther wasnt any relationship between the effectiveness of Capital Intellectual and ratios of EPS-to-P. so that ther was significant relationship between effectiveness of Capital Intellectual and beneficial investment opportunity set. This means that the efficiency of human capital, structural capital and employed capital can be utilized as a valuable resource for profitable investment opportunities for companies to take account. It can be concluded that the effectiveness of intellectual capital, is a potentially benchmark for measuring and reporting of beneficial investment opportunity set.

In facial scar correction, there is a shortage of soft tissue. Hence, reconstruction using tissue from surrounding areas needs to be performed. However, the tissue from distant area does not guarantee similarity in color, function and texture. Further, additional scars in the donor site are also inevitable. Replacement using tissue with similar colour and texture is one of the major challenges in facial reconstruction. In order to overcome this hurdle, tissue expanders are used. This has become a more practical and easy way of facial reconstruction surgeries.

Corporate Governance is the key to the global integrity of corporate institutions especially financial institutions and other sectors. In Nigeria, especially in the financial institutions, there is quest for good relevance of corporate governance and this is strengthened by the desire to draw investments and support economic growth, which constitute a good reward to both local and international investors. Incidentally, Nigerian financial institutions have suffered a lot of deterioration in their asset portfolios, largely due to distorted credit management and this has led to crisis in the institution and ultimately to the merging of Banks. This study sought to: (i) examine the impact of corporate governance on return on assets of some selected commercial banks in Nigeria. (ii) determine the impact of corporate governance on return on equity of some selected commercial banks in Nigeria. The study made use of cross sectional data for 10-years which were collated from Central Bank of Nigeria – Statistical bulletin for the period, 2003-2012. Two major objectives were formed and tested and results revealed that in the first objective the adjusted R-squared estimate is 86% and statistically significant at 5% significant level, which implies that the estimated model has high goodness of fit. For the second objective, the adjusted R-squared estimate is 58% and statistically significant at 5% significant level, which implies that the estimated model has high goodness of fit The study recommends, among others that central Bank should issue efficient monetary policies that would intensify transparency, integrity and curtail insider abuses on customers account in the Banking institutions. Above all, this study has contributed to knowledge by providing vital information on corporate governance on five of the commercial Banks in Nigeria.

In this study, an extension of the class of state-dependent model (SDM) for which optimal forecasts may be computed using a recursive examination procedure referred to as the Kalman filter is developed for the analysis of Inflationary rates in Nigeria. The SDM formulation yields a practical means of estimation for the complex time varying dynamical process and provided a generic flexible framework for inflationary rate modelling and inference. A straight forward implementation was achieved in the study by the use of R software package.

Rapid development of wind energy as an alternative source of power is providing rich environment for wind energy related research. Several mathematical models have been used to study wind data and the models are mainly physical and statistical models. In this study, a signal Modeling approach is developed to predict wind speed data in Nigeria. The signal modeling approach is based on the Markov property, which implies that given the present wind speed state, the future of the system is independent of its past. A Markov process is in a sense the probabilistic analog of causality and can be specified by defining the conditional distribution of the random process.