Archives-December 

There exist a linkage between poverty- corruption – and insecurity in Nigeria and these vices affect the socio-economic and political development of Nigeria. The objective of this work therefore, is to underscore the vices of corruption and insecurity as banes to the socio- economic development of Nigeria, and consider the powers of the economic and financial crime commission in curbing these vices. Using questionnaires and in-depth interviews, data were drawn from 100 members of staff of the EFCC. he work adopted the Yaro Yameni formula in order to determine its sample size and a simple random sampling technique to give each element of the population an equal chance of being selected. Findings revealed that the EFCC is incapacitated in the performance of its duties especially when offenders are high profiled elites/members of the ruling party, leading to delays in court trials, unsubstantiated judgment, or outright dismissal of cases. The work recommends that considering the linkage between poverty, corruption and insecurity in Nigeria, public funds should be utilized to create more job opportunities and sincere or transparent empowerment programmes should be created to engage the youth thereby distracting them from being used to perpetrate violence. Again, a prerequisite for holding political or public office should be the prospective holder’s reputation in previous workplace, fear of God, corruption history, and love for humanity.

Ten years after ratifying the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Nigeria (Africa’s most populous country and largest tobacco market) in 2015 enacted a legislation to domesticate the Convention. This article examines the concordance of the new tobacco control legislation with the Convention and its implementation after two years of its enactment. It highlights the challenges the Nigerian government faces in implementing the new legislation. It advocates for synergy among all arms of the government in the country to ensure that the new tobacco control law will not remain a “toothless bulldog” like its predecessor.

The urachal cyst result of the persistence of the middle part of the urachus and obliteration of the cephalic and caudal ends. Its diagnosis is often difficult because of the variability of the clinical signs. Ultrasound and computed tomography scan can establish the diagnosis in the majority of the cases. The objective of our work is to develop this disease, rare in adults, focusing on its epidemiology, diagnostic and therapeutic.

The object of this communication is to call attention to the practical importance of knowledge of abnormalities of the midgut. Intestinal malrotation refers to the partial or complete failure of rotation of midgut around the superior mesenteric vessels in the embryonic life. Arrested midgut rotation results due to narrow based mesentry and increases the risk of twisting midgut and subsequent obstruction and necrosis.

Subglottic stenosis (SGS) is a partial or complete narrowing of the airway under the vocal cords and above trachea and it is third leading congenital abnormality of larynx. It is because of incomplete development of lumen of laryngotracheal tube in 3rd month of gestation. But it appears in first few months after birth. Larynx develops from 4th and 6th branchial arches. The incidences related to congenital SGS had a significant increment in the late 1960s. Patient with SGS may or may not have some significant respiratory distress. Subglottic stenosis can be membranous or cartilaginous.

The Truncus Arteriosus (TA) is a vast developmental structure which is present during fetal life and normally divides off to form two separate arteries, the Aorta and the Pulmonary artery. In Persistent Truncus Arteriosus (PTA), the Truncus Arteriosus doesn’t divide, giving rise to a single, large trunk, with a correlation between the Aorta and Pulmonary artery, thereby allowing the mixture of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in the Fetus. This article aims to discuss in the detail, the origin of this congenital heart anomaly and how it affects the population with focus on related clinical studies and possible remedies.

A Goodman-Ronning type class of multivalent harmonic functions involving Dziok-Srivastava operators with respect to k-symmetric points is studied. An equivalent convolution class condition and a sufficient coefficient condition for this class is obtained. It is proved that this coefficient condition is necessary for its subclass. As an application of coefficient condition, a necessary and sufficient hypergeometric inequality is also given. Further, results on bounds, extreme points, a convolution property and a result based on the integral operator are obtained.

The physicochemical and microbial characteristics of drinking water in Haret-Hreik city (Lebanon) have been studied by taking 45 samples from the three different sources of water distributed in the city. Physicochemical parameters include pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solid (TDS), total hardness, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride. Microbial characterization includes total coliform count, fecal streptococcus count, and identification of some fecal coliform species such as Escherichia coli. Physicochemical and bacterial analyses indicated clearly that municipal water is not safe for domestic use and to be drunk. It contains a high amount of dissolved inorganic substances, with EC, TDS, and chloride average concentrations equal to 2983 µs/cm, 1908 mg/L, and 1147 mg/L, respectively. These values exceed the limits described by the WHO. In addition all samples were contaminated by high amount of total coliform, with averages ranging between 216 and 4166 CFU/100 mL. All municipal water samples were contaminated by fecal Streptococcus, indicating the pollution of drinking water by fecal material from warm blooded animals. The analyses of water at the exit of commercial treatment companies showed that the treated municipal water satisfies the physicochemical guidelines of the WHO. However, all samples were contaminated by total coliform, and 60 % of samples contained fecal Streptococcus. Thus, the UV disinfection process in all the commercial companies is defective and replaced at time, in order to remove all coliforms. Moreover, the only safe water in Haret-Hreik city is that distributed by Abbas Water Project. Analyses revealed the absence of any bacterial contamination and the respect of the WHO physicochemical limits.

The present age of information explosion is envisaging incredible development in both communication medium and hardware escalation. This, in turn is engendering a huge volume of digital signals in the form of images, videos, audio, and texts, which proves to be challenging in terms of storage and broadcast. Even though several breakthroughs in the price and performance of digital hardware and firmware have been put into practice, the demand for high data storage capacity and data-transmission bandwidth continues to outstrip the capabilities of available technologies. This research work proposes a novel method of classifying Natural images into different categories. From the results, it is concluded that classification of Natural images on the basis of various parameters can provide a better reference for application developers and will prove as boon to Digital India project in terms of search engine application.

This study proposes a framework that focuses on Islamic banking efficiency with an application of Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis (FDEA), which is part of an on-going doctoral research programme associated with the determination of the efficiency of Islamic banking. This study will hopefully will assist researchers in studying the efficiency of Islamic banking to make the appropriate selection of inputs and outputs.