Archives-J  

This study looked at the perceived effect of teenage pregnancy on agricultural productivity in Odeda local government area of Ogun state, Nigeria. About 120 respondents including pregnant teenagers, mothers who once had pregnancy in their teen ages, and other community members were purposively sampled through the snowball sampling method. Four objectives were pursued while a hypothesis was tested. The result indicated that poverty and parental styles are the two major causes of teenage pregnancy. Absence of male household heads is, however, not seen as a serious cause of teenage pregnancy. The study further showed that teenage pregnancy has a negative effect on agricultural production. The result of the tested hypothesis deduced that age, sex and religion has a positive relationship with their assessment of teenage pregnancy. Accessible, free and compulsory qualitative basic education and awareness campaigns on sex education are essentially needed in reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancy in rural areas.

The paper focused on assessment of perception on climate change associated disasters, adaptations and resources for future opportunities based on human perceptions. Stratified random sampling was used for selecting respondents between north and southern Gashua. Fifty (50) respondents from the south and thirty eight (38) from the North were selected. The data was collected via field observation and structured interviews at the onset of the rainy season of 2011. The result revealed that, drought, wind storm, heat wave, hamattan dust, tree biodiversity reduction, flood and out-break of some heat related meningitis are among the major disasters aggravating the social well-beings of the populace. Among the reasons perceived for the disasters were massive deforestation, overgrazing due to communal resource feeling, nearness to desert, poverty, and societal immorality .Field observation revealed that, the inhabitants have adapted to the environmental challenges by practicing irrigation, fishing, rearing livestock, seasonal regional and local migration to southern Nigeria, reverting to traditional architectures, planting exotic tree species, civil service and intensive prayers for Devine intervention in their various religious gatherings. The study recommends among others, Agro- forestry intensification practice using draught- resistant tree species and massive participatory rural- integrated projects towards improvement of social amenities, economic diversifications through collaboration of NGOS, CBOS and local authorities, for the ample dry land resources-based opportunities witnessed in the study area.

The key challenge faced by cellular and wireless communication is high data rate and high Quality of Service (QOS).To obtain these requirements communication channel needs to be shared in an efficient manner. The only hindrance that prevents the efficient utilisation of communication channels is multipath fading resulting from increased bit error rate of system (BER) at higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) resulting in overall system performance degradation. Various diversity techniques can be used to mitigate the fading effects. The implementation of MIMO technology makes use of multiple antennas both at transmitter as well as receiver thus allowing the transmission of signal through various independent paths, providing the receiver several replicas of the transmitted signal. This increases the probability that accurate information is detected at receiver. In this paper BER vs. SNR is being analyzed for various modulation techniques and the results obtained are compared with each other. The proposed technique makes use of minimum mean square error ratio (MMSE) to provide satisfactory bit error rate (BER) performance as compared to earlier results of Maximum Ratio combining (MRC)

Security systems are basically based on authentication process. It is being more secure using different approaches. Verity of security systems is available in market but, they uses conventional scheme for identification of a person for an authentication process. Authentication is based on identification process. Recently signals like EEG and ECG called physiological signal of a human is a famous subject for the researcher. Many systems are being developed using this unique human characteristic. It is very hard to copy and universal for every human kind. In experiment for person identification method uses EEG signal, Wavelet Packet Decomposition (WPD) for feature extraction and Self-organizing map (SOM) as a classifier.

Wearable computing has variety of applications in which Body Sensor Network (BSN), or Wireless Body Network (WBN) used for pervasive health monitoring and pervasive smart environment. Application of sensors is increasing in the modern environment. In this paper an attempt has been made for probable preventions of drunken and medically affected driving strategies. This leads the future generation vehicles which are invisible servant or pervasive in nature to use pervasive intelligence based inbuilt application such as automatic configuring of car accessories. This paper deals with various characteristic parameter based analysis and design of a smart vehicles that guides the said categories of drive systems. Our simulation results proved good enough for drunker (or) medically affected drunken strategies, with the selected set of the unique parameters under consideration for our experiment.

Fungal sinusitis (FS) is an important health care problem both in immunocompetent and immunocompromised individuals; but which is less understood. Clinically FS patient presents with Chronic Rhino Sinusitis (CRS) refractory to medical and surgical treatment and they should be properly evaluated with history, CT scan, histopathology, fungal culture and allergic markers. Total of 300 patients with documented CRS based on clinical and radiological findings in the ENT clinic were enrolled as study group. Sinus washings, biopsy samples from sinusoidal mucosa and polyposis were collected in 2 sterile containers, for microbiology and histopathology and blood for various allergic parameters (total IgE concentration, absolute eosinophil count and precipitation test using fungal antigens). Total prevalence of fungal sinusitis was 13% in CRS patients. Commonly affected age group was between 21-40 years (69.3%) and male preponderance was noted in our study (1.6:1). Aspergillus species (87.1%) were the predominant isolate in our study. Allergic fungal sinusitis was commonest clinical presentation (61.5%). This study revealed that the prevalence of fungal sinusitis in CRS patients was significantly high. To estimate the real magnitude of the problem, multicentric study as well as compulsory fungal screening for the all the CRS patients should be undertaken.

The study – Professionalism, Gender and Media Competences in Broadcast Organisations in Nigeria – was aimed at ascertaining if women, as a result of their gender, were deprived of some duties in the media; if the broadcast organisations engaged in gender balancing in assigning news beats and if women occupied decision-making positions in the news organisations. It was also meant to ascertain, from the women’s point of view, the attitude of men towards women in decision-making positions. The study covered female journalists and producers in four broadcast organisations in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria, namely Akwa Ibom Broadcasting Corporation, AKBC, both Television and Radio Services; Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Channel 12, Uyo and Atlantic FM, Uyo. Fifty three female media operatives constituted the population of the study, and all of them were polled. The measuring instrument was the questionnaire. The findings showed that women had, on merit, without any gender balancing act, risen to positions of trust in the media, and were no longer restricted to the soft beats hitherto reserved for women. It was concluded that the growing influence of women both in number and position in the peripheral media was a signpost to the revolution which was imminent in the media at the centre.

Forward contracting can help reduce the problem of inputs supply risk which is inherent in Nigeria’s agriculture. This research work concentrated on the prospect of the strategy among crop farmers and agricultural input marketers. ‘The results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents’ supported forward contracting of inputs and were willing to engage in the strategy. However, low capital base of enterprise, possible default by farmers and late payments are possible reasons why Agricultural input marketers may not be willing to go into a forward contract with crop farmers. The age of farmer, number of crop enterprises, years of experience, capital base of farmer and extension visits were significant factors influencing farmers’ willingness to engage in forward contracting of inputs. There is need to create more awareness about ‘forward contracts’ among agricultural input marketers and farmers in the country. Agricultural credit should be made affordable, available and accessible to input marketers by Micro Finance Banks and the Nigeria Agricultural Bank to improve their capital base. State and Local Government Authorities in collaboration with farmers’ cooperative societies should stand as guarantors for Farmers who are willing to engage in forward contracting.

This paper aims to study the effectiveness of the current education systems from the point of view of satisfying the industry demand for workforce. The current system is translated into the terminology of supply chain management (SCM), as it can be formulated as a ‘push system’ in SCM. As opposed to this education system which is highly centralized and lacks cooperation between the stakeholders, a new ‘pull system’ is proposed in this research. The proposed system incorporates high level of cooperation between the educational institutions and the stakeholders in the policy-making process. Shift from a push system to a pull system is considered along with a shift from the current paradigm of social sciences to the new paradigm, named as Quantum Paradigm. The concepts of SCM are evaluated through the window of quantum theory. The research also covers management issues for the educational leaders in practice.

Radioactivity concentrations of natural radionuclides, namely 226Ra, 232Th and 40K, in fertilized and non-fertilized soils and vegetables from some agricultural areas were investigated using gamma spectrometry in order to assess the radiological implications of the extended use of phosphate fertilizers in agriculture. The mean activity concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in the fertilized soils were 23.84 ± 2.52 Bqkg-1, 43.64 ± 2.19 Bqkg-1 and 199.69±3.67 Bqkg-1 respectively. For the non-fertilized soils, mean activity concentrations were found to be 14.01 ± 5.90 Bqkg-1 for 226Ra, 29.40 ± 2.03 Bqkg-1 for 232Th and 120.92 ± 4.67 Bqkg-1 for 40K. The study has shown that fertilized soils contain slightly higher concentrations of the three radionuclides than non-fertilized soils. The measured activity concentrations of the five most frequently utilized agricultural fertilizers showed that the highest levels of 226Ra (139.37±11.15kg-1) and 232Th (47.58±3.81 kg-1) were measured in NPK 151515 and the highest level of 40K (8383.47±6.70) was measured in Super master. It was also found that Sulphate of Ammonia recorded the lowest levels of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K. The average value of 226Raeq was 93.32 Bqkg-1for fertilized soils and 63.30 Bqkg-1 for non- fertilized soil. The calculated mean values of the internal hazard index (HIN) and external hazard index (HEX) for all samples were less than unity. The average absorbed dose rate (D?r) values were 38.79 nGyh-1for fertilized soil and 25.60 nGyh-1for non- fertilized soils. The calculated mean annual effective dose due to ingestion of vegetables by the general public was 0.11 mSv/y for 226Ra, 0.05 mSv/y for 232Th and 0.62 mSv/y for 40 K. The result from the study indicates that radiation exposure from consumption of vegetables from the selected farming communities does not pose significant radiological hazard.