Archives-November 2014

Universities have always had three key roles to play: teaching, research and community service. However in recent times, they have been expected to excel in a fourth and pivotal new role, that of developers of the economy. In order to achieve this new and important role, they have had to become entrepreneurial in nature and become what has been termed “entrepreneurial universities”. This paper had as its objective the development of a roadmap for Nigerian universities to follow if they truly wanted to excel as developers of the Nigerian economy by becoming entrepreneurial universities. The roadmap covered six critical factors namely government policy, top-management buy-in, availability of finance, availability of infrastructure, quality of staff and entrepreneurship education which are considered vital for any university with aspirations of becoming entrepreneurial in nature. A critical analysis of these six factors as to their prevalence in the Nigerian context revealed that in all six critical factors, Nigerian universities had a lot of work to do to attain the minimum standard required by each of the six critical factors. Most importantly, the analysis revealed that the biggest problem among the six factors lay in the issue of sincere leadership. The authors were of the opinion that until and unless the top management of Nigerian universities put the betterment of these universities as the most important priority rather than their personal self-enrichment, none of the other five factors would be attainable, and the dream of Nigerian universities contributing positively to the development of the economy by become more entrepreneurial in nature would remain forever unfulfilled.

Vibration technique in a machine condition monitoring provides useful reliable information, bringing significant cost benefits to industry. By comparing the signals of a machine running in normal and faulty conditions, detection of faults like journal-bearing defects is possible. This paper presents an appropriate procedure for the fault detection of main engine journal-bearing based on vibration analysis. The frequency-domain vibration signals of an internal combustion engine (IC engine) with normal and defective main journal-bearings were obtained. The signal processing technique plays one of the important roles for recognizing the journal-bearing fault in the proposed system. In the present research, the data mining method based on feature extraction and selection is proposed. The database is established by the feature vectors of frequency domain signals which are used as input pattern in the training and identification process. The SVM and KNN is proposed to identify and classify the journal-bearing fault conditions in the condition monitoring system. The experimental results verified that the proposed diagnostic procedure has more possibilities and abilities in the fault diagnosis of the main journal-bearing of IC engine.

Corporate Social responsibility is not a new idea, the importance and needs for this ethical and social obligation is tremendously rising with its full swing. There are a number of its implications which are paying more to the institutions as well as to the communities. There is a debate that it is the core duty of firms and industrial institutions to pay their respective return to the common public and the society as a whole where they are operating. The objective of the study is threefold: i) to determine the root causes and basic needs of corporate social responsibilities; ii) to determine the effects on social and other civilizations beard without its existences, and iii) to examines the inputs and efforts which are being offered in the past. The equilibrium of demand and supply of different determinants of corporate social responsibility is discussed. Investment & expansion of Tangible/Intangible Assets, Factory Plant, Equipment, Building, Process of Manufacturing, Inventories and wastages, are also included. The main research questions is whether the contribution of industrial development having showed some positive impacts on the society? The results are not in the favour of the social society, and we have to see why firms are enhancing their activities, and who is obtaining undue benefit from these unethical business activities. This study elaborates the serious social aspects, where all participants are showing their agreement and willingness. At the end, some conclusions are provided for further development providing a spark of ideas for further studies and investigations.

The structural and tectonic analysis of Okposi and environs, Lower Benue Trough using Landsat-TM data was carried out with the aim of carrying out a detailed structural interpretation of the study area by identifying the lineaments associated with the study area and inferring their effect on the economic potentials of the study area. In addition, this study was aimed at determining whether the Okposi Brine Lake in the study area is structurally controlled. Several GIS softwares which include the ILWIS 3.1 Academic were used to analyze the data. Simple digital image processing techniques were applied on the data to enhance edges of linear features, followed by computer aided visual interpretation. Results revealed that high lineament frequencies/density were obtained in areas where basement rocks outcrop or are closer to the surface whereas low lineament frequencies are characteristics of areas with deeply buried basement rocks. Similarly, the absence of visible lineaments in parts of the area may not be indicative of complete absence of geological structures. Trend analysis of the lineaments computed by plotting the strikes and lengths of all the lineaments revealed on the image on a rose diagram revealed structural trends in the E-W, N-S, NW-SE and NE-SW directions with the NW-SE and NE-SW directions as the dominant trends. The NE-SW linear structures observed from the study are believed to be the continental extension of the known pre-Cretaceous trans-Oceanic Fracture Zones viz. Charcot and Chain Fracture Zones. The numerous lineaments in the study area make the region viable for mineral prospecting. Finally, the presence of a lineament zone around Okposi area may be responsible for the formation of the Okposi Brine Lake. It is believed that this linear feature must have cut through the basinal brine of the Asu River group of the Benue Trough.

Organic agriculture, as an adaptation strategy to climate change, is a concrete and promising option for rural communities and has additional potential as a mitigation strategy. The management of soil organic matter is critical to maintain a sustainable productive organic farming system. They possess many desirable soil properties and exert beneficial effect on the soil physical, chemical and biological characteristics as well as a sink for carbon dioxide sequestration to mitigate the negative impacts of climate changes. In this regard, a field experiment was carried out in a private sandy soil farm in Manshyet El Gammal, Tamiah, Fayum. Egypt to evaluate the effect of mineral and organic fertilizer treatments on growth and some chemical constituent of Jatropha curcas L. The results revealed that there were significantly differences between the fertilization treatment with superiority to the treatment T11 (50% Mineral fertilizer dose + 50% Chicken manures dose + Inoculation with cerialene) which produced the highest values for all the studied vegetative growth parameters as well as photosynthetic pigments content (chlorophyll a, b and carotenoids) and macronutrients contents (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium).

A dusty plasma system containing non-thermal ion distributions, Boltzmann-distributed electrons and mobile charge fluctuating positive dust has been considered. The nonlinear propagation of the dust-acoustic (DA) waves in such dusty plasma has been investigated by employing the reductive perturbation method to derive the Burgers equation. The effect of non-thermal ions on the height and thickness of DA shock waves are also studied.

Retirement is of the categories, which contains widely range in studies and involves scientific and legislative societies of each country to itself. In numerous discussions with pension matters; discussion about mandatory retirement age, because of its closeness with employment; more than other retirement issues is important and it more worthy to pay attention. Also, the mandatory retirement age increase or decrease due to its different effects on different domains (such as job or income and social security organization losses) is quite a challenging and reviewable matter. Accordingly, we have tried to engage to the subject of compulsory retirement age and factors affecting its determination and to provide a good model for legislation in this field.

The activity concentrations of natural occurring radionuclides, uranium (²³⁸U), thorium (²³²Th), radium (²²⁶Ra) and potassium (⁴⁰K) were measured in geological samples collected from the Accra Plains using a high resolution hyper pure germanium (HPGe) detector. Their radiological parameters were also calculated. ²³⁸U concentration was found to vary from below detection limit to 363.5 Bq/kg. Activity concentration of ²³²Th varied from below detection limit to 370.41 Bq/kg. The activity concentration of ²²⁶Ra ranged from 4.04 Bq/kg to 295.01Bq/kg, whereas, the ⁴⁰K activity concentration varied from 145 Bq/kg to 2274.3 Bq/kg. The absorbed dose rates varied from 18.27 to 479.26 nGy/h. The annual external effective dose rates ranged from 0.02 to 0.51 mSv/y. The radium equivalent activity (Raeq) varied from 29.15 to 986.42 Bq/kg. Value of external hazard index (Hex) varied from 0.11 to 2.66. Good correlations existed between ²³²Th and ²²⁶Ra activity concentrations and the total activity concentration. The Th/U ratios obtained indicated metasomatic activity of the analyzed radionuclides. The gamma ray radiation hazards due to the radionuclides increased with depth. 

The correct theoretical analysis of the generally accepted foundations of theory of photon (quantum) gas are proposed. The principle of the unity of formal logic and of rational dialectics is the correct methodological basis of the analysis. The new results – the correct quantum-statistical foundations – obtained within the framework of the formulated master equation taking into consideration both the quantum states of the radiating molecule and the quantum states of the photon gas in the isolated macroscopic systems “molecule + molecular gas + monochromatic photon gas” are as follows: (a) Planck’s, Einstein’s, and Bose’s works on the theory of photon (quantum) gas contain logical errors; (b) photon (quantum) gas being born by radiating molecule obeys “Gibbs statistics”: equilibrium photon (quantum) gas is described by Gibbs quantum canonical distribution; (c) Planck function (“Bose’s distribution”) is an consequence of Gibbs quantum canonical distribution; (d) Einstein coefficients (i.e. the coefficients of spontaneous emission, induced emission and absorption) are equal to each other.

In today’s globalised and competitive economic environment, insurance companies are continually faced with situation of risk where decisions are taken in the face of uncertainty. The variability of claim costs and the challenge of estimating the cost of insurance at inception of the policy make it necessary for companies to frequently assess the credibility upon which pricing, valuation and other product management decisions are made. The accuracy of estimated future claim costs plays a fundamental role in determining the underwriting profit of these insurers. This study proposed an industry-wide information based experience rating in a regulated and competitive Nigeria business environment for credible underwriting and profitability. The proposed structure incorporates various initiatives for having in place reliable, up-to-date, efficient and effective statistical system such as the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics (MAPS), General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), Partnerships in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21), the Reference Regional Strategic Framework for Statistical Capacity Building in Africa (RRSF), National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) and AFRISAT. It also integrates variation in expected claim costs from insurer to insurer in the industry, variation between expected claim costs from group to group for a given insurer, and variation from insured to insured within a group. Inferences can be made about the industry’s average, companies’ average and group-specific average.