Archives-December  

In Nigeria credit has been recognized as an essential tool for promoting Small and Medium Enterprises since over 70 percent of the population are engaged in the informal sector. Thus, the government have recognized that for sustainable growth and development, the financial empowerment of the rural areas is vital being repository of SMEs. It is against this background that this paper seeks to examine the impact of commercial banks activities on SMEs in Nigeria Consistent with the objective, hypothesis was formulated. The population and the sample of the study were all the Commercial banks in Nigeria. The study utilized data from secondary source. Data were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Statistical bulletin. The time frame for the study is eighteen (18) years, covering the period of 1993 to 2010. The technique of analysis used in testing the data was Linear Regression Analysis. We concluded that even though commercial banks activities such as giving out loans and receiving deposits have positive impact on SMEs, there is room for the Commercial banks to gear more of its activities towards SMEs development in Nigeria. The study calls on appropriate authority such as the government to ensure the consistency of policies that will enhance SMEs development. Similarly, the Regulatory Authority and the Bankers Committee should encourage activities by Commercial banks to provide adequate funding to SMEs through SMEEIS.

Since the 1980s, African economies especially those from the least developed and developing countries were prostrate owing to dwindling fortunes in the international market, and in the process industries closed shop, prices of commodities in international market fell, with much impact on mono-export countries such as Nigeria. The effect was job cuts that led to increased poverty and worsening living conditions of the people. Children were withdrawn from schools, health conditions of people traumatized and the economies plunged into doldrums. African nations extended their ‘begging’ bags to the International Monetary Fund IMF and the World Bank not minding their harsh and stringent conditionalities. Life became unbearable and prompted many people to seek for an improved standard of living outside Africa. In the process these immigrants entered Europe and America etc legally and illegally and sought for asylum in the host nations. The trend is still on today. The paper discovered that people migrated because of worsening human development record as a result of unemployment, poor education, poor functional democracy, lack of access to functional medical facilities, insecurity of lives and property among others. The paper concludes that governments should muster the necessary political will and begin to address the problems –create job opportunities, improve and fund education; put a functional democracy where the rule of law prevails; and above all, provide adequate security for the people and property. The paper used historical analysis as its methodology.

Thiamine hydrochloride (VB1) has been used as an environmentally benign catalyst for one pot synthesis of 14-aryl-4H-dibenzo[a, j]xanthenes derivatives by the three-component reaction of two equivalants of ?-naphthol and aldehydes at 1100C under solvent-free conditions. Various type of aldehyde bearing electron donating as well as electron withdrawing substituents underwent smooth reaction under the optimized reaction conditions and products were obtained in good to excellent yield.

Water quality issues are a major challenge that humanity is facing in the twenty-first century. Here, we review the main groups of aquatic contaminants, their effects on human health, and approaches to mitigate pollution of freshwater resources. Emphasis is placed on chemical pollution, particularly on inorganic and organic micro pollutants including toxic metals and metalloids as well as a large variety of synthetic organic chemicals. Some aspects of waterborne diseases and the urgent need for improved sanitation in developing countries are also discussed. The review addresses current scientific advances to cope with the great diversity of pollutants. It is organized along the different temporal and spatial scales of global water pollution. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have affected water systems on a global scale for more than five decades, during that time geogenic pollutants, mining operations, and hazardous waste sites have been the most relevant sources of long-term regional and local water pollution. Agricultural chemicals and wastewater sources exert shorter-term effects on regional to local levels. Pollution control is a term used in environmental management. It means the control of emissions and effluents into air, water or soil. Without pollution control, the waste products from consumption, heating, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation and other human activities, whether they accumulate or disperse, will degrade the environment. In the hierarchy of controls, pollution prevention and waste minimization are more desirable than pollution control.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of the university tuition fees on the education market in the UK. The aim is to identify university tuition fees and whether they are important in the decision making when choosing a university and the extent of this importance in different students. 100 students from the north campus of the London Metropolitan University were chosen as the sample for this research. Because of the significant differences between the respondents of this research and previous studies (which are mentioned in this paper’s literature review), a structured interview was conducted to find out the importance of the factors for choosing a university. A multi answer survey is conducted to collect data about the extent of each factor plus. This study uses the mix method approach; Qualitative and Quantitative method. The result of this study shows increasing university fees is more important for young students than mature students and there is a relation between increasing fees and the students expectation of university facilities.

Graph theory is a branch of Mathematics deals with the study how networks can be encoded and their properties can be measured. Graph theory is becoming most significant as it is most frequently used too many other areas of Mathematics, science and Engineering etc. It is being actively used in varies fields such as biochemistry, Communication networks and Coding theory), Algorithms and Computation and operations research etc. The powerful combinatorial methods found in graph theory have also been used to prove fundamental results in other areas of pure mathematics. This paper, besides giving a general outlook of these facts, includes new graph theoretical proofs of Fermat’s Little Theorem. In this paper we also discussed the timetabling problem and the assignment of frequencies in GSM mobile phone networks.

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the population variance when some information on two auxiliary variables is available. It is shown that the proposed estimator is more efficient than the usual mean estimator and other existing estimators. The study is also extended to two-phase sampling. Theoretical results are supported by an empirical study.

An evaluation of 238U, 235U, 137Cs and 133Xe in soils from two campuses in university of Douala-Cameroon using gamma spectroscopy based Broad Energy Germanium Detector (BEGe6530) has been performed. The mean activities in soils from Campuse 1 were 40.16±8.98 Bq/kg for 238U, 3.39±0.33 Bq/kg for 235U, 0.46±0.33 Bq/kg for 137Cs and 0.14±0.16 Bq/kg for 133Xe. In Campus 2, the mean activities in soils were 31.45±12.24 Bq/kg, 3.02±1.00 Bq/kg, 0.30±0.26 Bq/kg and 0.35±0.24 Bq/kg for 238U, 235U, 137Cs and 133Xe respectively. Using the In situ survey meter, the mean values of the absorbed dose rate measured was 71.43 nGy/hr for Campus 1 and 62.72 nGy/hr for Campus 2. The evaluated average outdoor effective dose for Campus 1 and 2 were 87.60 µSv/yr and 76.93 µSv/yr respectively. The overall results obtained in this work were generally low compared to that of UNSCEAR.

This essay has attempted to investigate the basic concerns and requirements of blind and visually impaired translators. Following such necessities, the major instruments and technologies designed to fulfil them have also been examined. The researcher has interviewed with two individuals poor in vision, one being a translator and the other having studied translation in the university. Each individual was asked six questions. Their responses to the researcher’s questions were examined to draw conclusions in order to answer the research questions. The most important concern of these translators is the Persian dimension of translation process. Their major requirements include such instruments as accessible computers, high-quality scanners, specific software capable of verbalizing such visual elements as tables, diagrams, figures, etc., accessible dictionaries and databases, and such issues as appropriate financial and occupational status.

Concordancing in the classroom is fairly a new approach that has emerged with the use of corpora in language learning. In a concordance, language is presented in an authentic context; learners are able to examine a key word in the context of a string of sentences which can exemplify the use of that particular word. This study examined whether the use of an online concordance program together with an online dictionary by 30 intermediate EFL learners aided in the transfer of word knowledge to an academic writing task. The learners were selected from Islamic Azad University, Tonekabon branch, and randomly assigned into 2 groups of control group and experimental group. The subjects in the experimental group were asked to use the concordance and online dictionary in their writing, but the control group used only the online dictionary. The results indicated that there was statistically significant transfer of vocabulary knowledge to the writing task.