Archives-December 

Indoor radon concentration measurements in some dwellings in four districts in Ghana have been monitored between 3months and 1 year using LR-115 type II Cellulose Nitrate films in the bare mode. The annual average indoor radon concentrations vary from 9.40 ±6.30 to 144±93.80 (Bqm?3) in the bedrooms. Annual effective doses were calculated, using ICRP-65 conversion values, and the average annual effective dose varied from 0.25 ± 0.08 to 4.33±0.47 mSv. Radon concentration levels and annual effective doses were found to be within recommended limits.

The study investigates the direction of volatility spillover between exchange rate and stock prices in Nigeria using quarterly data for the period of 1990-Q1 to 2009-Q4. Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic (EGARCH) framework due to Nelson (1991) was employed. Two different stock exchange indicators were used as proxy for stock prices to test the direction of volatility spillover between the variables. Thus we have two EGARCH models. The ADF and PP tests suggest that the series are random walk processes in their level form. The empirical findings suggest evidence of no long run equilibrium relationship between exchange rate and stock prices. It further shows that there is a robust unidirectional volatility spillover running from exchange rate to stock prices irrespective of the stock market indicator used. The result supports the findings of Beer and Hebeins (2008) for industrialized countries. The estimated mean equation showed that there is instantaneous positive response of stock market volatility to exchange rate fluctuation. Evidence from variance equation revealed that volatility persists longer when SMC was used as proxy for stock prices than ASI. The standard deviation statistic showed that stock market indicator is positively related to risk, validating the capital asset market hypothesis.

The study is examined how employee’s job performance is affected by job involvement and reward system. The main objective of this study is examined how job performance of the employees is affected through described independent variables that are job involvement and reward system in banking sectors. This study examined that Effective Reward system and job involvement of employees playing important role in every organization since from many years and organization itself pays more attention to these kinds of sensitive matters because organization knows these 2 matters can increase their overall profit or increase organizational productivity. This study shows Reward system refers to that program which is offered by any organization for the purpose to increase employee performance and employee productivity.

The paper examines the role of Oil Industry in the growth of urbanization in Rivers State. Concentration of oil industry in the Niger Delta with emphasis on Rivers State is as a result of its natural endowment in Oil and gas which leads to the influx of people into the area. Modernization theory as applied in the work explains the linkage between urbanization and oil industry. Despite the adverse effects of oil industry, the paper argues that its influence creates wealth through employment opportunities. Through urbanization, there is increase in crime rate, high cost of living, poor living condition, high unemployment rate and neglect of the traditional economy. To achieve the desired result in this work, primary and secondary sources were adopted. In view of the problems associated with oil industry and urbanization, the paper recommends that forty percent (40%) of the work force should come from the host communities. To decongest Port Harcourt city and its environs, the government and the management of oil industry operating in the state should endeavour to develop satellite towns in the local government areas. There should also be an enabling law to control high cost of living ravaging the state. 

While much research has been conducted in the United States on the use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) as a mechanism for managing earnings, managing capital, and as a tool for signaling future earnings strategies, there is a paucity of research in Europe. In this research, we replicate methodology used by Ahmed, Takeda and Thomas (1998) and examine the relative importance of key factors affecting the LLP decisions of Spanish depository institutions. Among others, we focus on the role of organizational structure. We speci?cally examine if and how LLPs are used prior to and after the implementation of capital adequacy regulations in the Spanish depository industry in 1992. Our results indicate that while LLPs were not used as a tool for managing capital after the new regulation came into effect, banks have now adopted a more aggressive earnings management strategy. This appears to be because the capital adequacy regulation of 1992 removed any capital constraint that hitherto acted as a disincentive to aggressive earnings management. Commercial banks appeared to adopt a more aggressive earnings management as well as capital management strategy than savings banks in the post regulatory era. Finally, we did not ?nd evidence that LLPs were used as a signaling tool by Spanish banks to portray their intentions about future earnings.

Elliptic curves are algebraic curves that have been studied by many mathematicians since the seventeenth century. In 1985, Neal Koblitz and Victor Miller independently proposed public key cryptosystems using the group of points on an elliptic curve. The elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) was thus created. Since then, numerous researchers and developers have spent years researching the strength of ECC and improving techniques for its implementation. Secure applications in smart cards present implementation challenges particular to the platform’s memory, bandwidth, and computation constraints. ECC’s unique properties make it especially well suited to smart card applications. This paper describes the Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithm and its security over RSA algorithm.

In this work, the experimental and theoretical spectra of 2-(trifluoroacetyle)acetophenone (2TFAAP) are studied and FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra of title molecule have been recorded in the region 4000–400cm?1 and 3500–¬100cm?1, respectively. The structural and spectroscopic data of the molecule in the ground state have been calculated by using Hartree-Fock and density functional theory method with the B3LYP/6-31G basis sets. The vibrational frequencies are calculated and scaled values are compared with the experimental FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra. The DFT (B3LYP/6-31G) calculations are more reliable than the ab initio HF/6-31G calculations for the vibrational study of (2TFAAP). The optimized geometric parameters (bond lengths and bond angles) are compared with experimental values of the molecule. Stability of the molecule was analyzed using NBO analysis. Thermal properties of the molecule have been calculated for various range of temperature and HOMO-LUHO energies also calculated, it shows that the charge transfer occurs within the molecule.

Cholangiocarcinomas are rare tumors that develop in the bile duct. Their incidence worldwide is <1 out of 100,000 persons per year. Frequent metastatic sites of biliary cancer are the liver, peritoneum, intra-abdominal lymph nodes, and lungs , however , bladder metastasis was never described in the English literature. Here, we present an exceptional case of a 60 year-old male patient with a history of cholangiocarcionoma traited with surgeries and admitted after 2 years to the emergency with hematuria. The investigations with radiological tomography and cystoscopy with transurethral resection confirms a bladder metastasis of cholangiocarcinoma. Our patient was treated with a bladder hemostatic radiotherapy followed by chemotherapy with cisplatin and gemcitabine (cisplatin at a dose of 30 mg/m2 and gemcitabine at 1,000 mg/m2 on days 1 and 8, respectively, every 3 weeks). The prognosis for patients with cholangiocarcinoma is quite poor; the median survival for patients with unresectable cholangiocarcinoma is <1 year.

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular apicomplexan parasite that can infect a wide range of warm-blooded animals including humans. In humans and other intermediate hosts, toxoplasma develops into chronic infection that cannot be eliminated by host’s immune response or by currently used drugs. In most cases, chronic infections are largely asymptomatic unless the host becomes immune compromised. Thus, toxoplasma is a global health problem and the situation has become more precarious due to the advent of HIV infections and poor toleration of drugs used to treat toxoplasma infection, having severe side effects and also resistance have been developed to the current generation of drugs. The emergence of these drug resistant varieties of T. gondii has led to a search for novel drug target. Threonine synthase is one such protein. It is a member of Serine / Threonine protein family which is a very important metabolic enzyme especially in signal transduction mechanisms of a cell. It is an active part of Glycine, Serine, Threonine Metabolism, Vitamin B6 Metabolism pathways. The PDB and Modebase 3D structure of Threonine synthase was not available; therefore homology model of Threonine synthase was constructed using MODELLER and model was validated using PROCHECK and Verify3D programs and SAVS and PROSA server to obtain a stable structure. The model was further explored for the molecular dynamics simulation study with GROMACS. Binding site was characterized by CASTp and PASS. Virtual screening of Threonine synthase was performed, against the NCI diversity subset II molecules (retrieved from ZINC database), through molecular docking studies using Autodock- vina. The Python scripts in MGL tools package were used to analyze the docking results. The top ten ligands were selected based on AutoDock energy score. Further the Complexes were analyzed for their interaction through LIGPLOT. On the basis of Complex scoring and binding ability it is deciphered that these top ten NCI diversity set II compounds could be promising inhibitors for T. gondii using, Threonine synthase as drug target, yet pharmacological studies have to confirm it.

The algorithm of the JPEG image compression based on DCT and IDCT was developed and implemented . The proposed algorithm can cope with the problem of impairing dependency of noised digital image. The result indicates that the algorithm is an effective way for grayscale image compression and the image rebuilt is acceptable. The practical experiments were done with MATLAB7.0. The algorithm doing experiments with MATLAB is simple and with little error, and it can improve the efficiency and precision of the image compression greatly.