Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge of conservationists on the effect of lead toxicity on the conservation status of African mourning dove (Streptopelia decipiens) in Ibadan, Nigeria

The role of humans in any conservation action is vital and plays a key role in the success of biodiversity and wildlife conservation. The awareness and related activities of people to the risk of lead contamination as a threat to the conservation status is evaluated, particularly with respect to the status of the mourning dove. Lead pollution and toxicity has been reported in mourning dove with associated health and mortality patterns, and is therefore a recognised threat to the conservation of the species. This study therefore aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and perception of conservationists, who are the custodian of knowledge, on the conservation status of African mourning dove (Streptopelia decipiens) as a species model, and lead toxicity as an associated threat. The result shows that all the correspondents had varying degree of knowledge about the conservation of African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and the associated threat of lead toxicity. 16.3% of the respondents showed very high level of attitude, while 27.6 and 46.9% showed an average and high level of attitude to the conservation of African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and the associated threat of lead toxicity. Based on perception scores, 41.8% showed average level, while 28.6 and 5.1% showed high and very high level of perception, respectively; but 13.3% of the respondents showed low level of perception. Higher educational status corresponds to a higher knowledge, but less significant relationship to attitude and perception. It is concluded that, knowledge about conservation would affect the attitude and perception, though there are no significant gender and age differences regarding the topic. Key words: African mourning dove (Streptopelia decipiens), biodiversity, wildlife conservation.
EFFECTS OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT ON SUPERIORS' USE OF CONFLICT STYLES AND SUBORDINATES' SATISFACTION WITH SUPERVISION

Data from 139 respondents from major industries showed that subordinates were more satisfied with their superiors' supervision through the exercise of integrating, compromising and obliging styles. On the contrary, subordinates who perceived their superiors as primarily using dominating and avoiding styles viewed them as incompetent in supervision and thus lowering their level of satisfaction with supervision. Among the conflict handling styles, integrating was most correlated with organic structure. The organic structure was found to be positively correlated with subordinates' satisfaction. These results implied that organic structure can be a potent force in maintaining organizational stability. The exercise of dominating style was found to be only marginally correlated with superior's age. Superior rank in lower hierarchy level was found to have a negative impact, albeit marginally on the exercise of dominating style. The present results also seemed to suggest that subordinates tend to be less satisfied with superiors with wider span of control.
Heterosis and Combining Ability of CIMMYT's Tropical × Subtropical Quality Protein Maize Germplasm

Combining ability and heterosis was studied in 7 × 7 diallel cross in quality protein maize for kernel yield plant , number of kernels ear , 1000-kernel weight, lysine and tryptophan. Variance due to GCA and SCA 1 1 were highly significant, indicating both additive and non-additive types of gene action are important for controlling the traits. Predominance of non-additive gene action was observed for all the quantitative and qualitative traits. Standard heterosis ranged from -14.26 to 6.35% for kernel yield and other two yield components from -26.77 to 7.21% and -16.71 to 1.53% for kernel number and weight, respectively. Fot quality traits, heterosis varied from -7.34 to 15.60% and -8.77 to 14.47% for lysine and tryptophan content. Average heterosis for yield and other two components were negative value, but it showed positive values for both the quality traits. In general kernel yield decreased when quality of the crosses increases and vice versa. Parent P was the best combiner for kernel yield coupled with both the yield component kernel number and weight. For 1 quality traits, P was the best combiner showing significant positive gca effect both for lysine and tryptophan. 5 The parent P was also a good combiner for kernel yield and quality trait lysine. Additive × additive, additive 2 × dominance and dominance × dominance gene interactions were involved in deriving good specific crosses for different traits. The cross combinations P × P and P × P simultaneously possessed significant desirable 2 4 3 5 sca effects and high heterosis both for kernel yield, yield components and quality traits might be used for obtaining high yielding quality hybrids.
Influence of age, marital status and environment on sexism in Nigeria

This study attempts to find out the demographic factors for the ingrained sex discrimination in Nigeria.779 research participants completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) developed by Glick and Fiske (1996). The independent t- test statistics was employed for data analysis and results showed that age, marital status and environment of living are significant factors influencing sex discrimination (sexism) in Nigeria. The findings were discussed in the light of available literature.
A Study Evaluating the Prevalence of Nephropathy among Type 2 Diabetes Patients Attending a Teaching Hospital in Malaysia

Background: Nephropathy is a major cause of illness and death of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), Diabetic nephropathy has become the leading cause of end-stage renal disease; kidney failure that requires a lifetime of dialysis. It develops in about 2040% of Type 2 Diabetes patients. Objectives: The main objectives of this study were to evaluate the prevalence of diabetic nephropathy and to determine risk factors for, diabetic nephropathy among type 2 diabetes patients attending endocrinology clinics at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia, Teaching Hospital. Subjects and methods: The study design was observational prospective longitudinal follow-up study, for a study period of one year (1st January 2008 till 31st December 2008), the study was conducted with sample of one thousand and seventy seven type 2 diabetes mellitus outpatient recruited via attended the diabetes clinics at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM) in Kelantan. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the independent variables that affect the development of nephropathy. Results: Mean age of type 2 diabetes outpatients in the present study was 58.3 years and duration of diabetes was 11 years. The prevalence of nephropathy was 90.7%. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that being female (OR = 9.15; 95% CI = 4.4318.89; p < 0.001), having a high creatinine clearance at first visit (OR = 1.18; 95% CI = 0.87-1.50; p < 0.001), and having a high triglyceride at fourth visit (OR = 2.6; 95% CI = 1.51-4.75; p = 0.001), were significantly associated with the development of diabetic nephropathy. Conclusion: The prevalence of nephropathy is very high. The three main variables affecting the development of diabetic nephropathy were gender, triglyceride and creatinine clearance. Triglyceride and creatinine clearance were two modifiable risk factors for development of diabetic nephropathy. It is important for all diabetic patients to be screened for the triglyceride and creatinine clearance and get appropriate medications.
Tail Risk Premia for Long-Term Equity Investors

We use the P&L on a particular class of swaps, representing variance and higher moments for log returns, as estimators in our empirical study on the S&P500 that investigates the factors determining variance and higher-moment risk premia. This class is the discretisation invariant sub-class of swaps with Neuberger's aggregating characteristics. Besides the market excess return, momentum is the dominant driver for both skewness and kurtosis risk premia, which exhibit a highly significant negative correlation. By contrast, the variance risk premium responds positively to size and negatively to growth, and the correlation between variance and tail risk premia is relatively low compared with previous research, particularly at high sampling frequencies. These findings extend prior research on determinants of these risk premia. Furthermore, our meticulous data-construction methodology avoids unwanted artefacts which distort results.
Vedic Krishi: Sustainable livelihood option for small and marginal farmers

The present investigation was carried out to evaluate the efficiency and efficacy of some of Vedic Krishi inputs, viz. Panchgavya, Vermiwash, Compost tea, Matka Khad, Beejamrit and Jiwamrit with the objectives to work out their applicability for ecofriendly nutrient and disease management in organic farming. Vedic Krishi techniques are low input costs, which comply well with the ecological and socioeconomic conditions of vast segment of farming community comprising of small and marginal farmers. The nutritional and microbial analysis of these liquid organic manures showed the presence of different macro and micro nutrients and large population of essential microbes including Azotobacter sp. , Actinomycetes sp. and phosphate solubilizers. All the Vedic Krishi inputs were found quite effective in enhancing the productivity of different crops and suppressing the growth of various plant pathogens by producing antibacterial and anti-fungal compounds, hormones and siderophores. Application of Vermiwash gave 65, 10, 26 and 27 % higher yields in knol-khol (153.25 q/ha), onion (184.1 q/ha), French bean (14.5 q/ ha seed yield) and paddy (18.4 q/ha), respectively over control. Panchgavya was found the most effective in controlling (88.9 %) stalk rot of cauliflower. Beejamrit was found to be the most effective for seed treament as it recorded 92% seed germination of pea against 56% in control. Compost tea, Matka Khad and Jeevamrit as foliar sprays were also prooved quite effective in enhacing the productivity of different crops and effective against various plant pathogens. All Vedic Krishi practices hold good promise for use in organic agriculture.
Assessing the effect of roads on impala (Aepyceros melampus) stress levels using faecal glucocorticoid metabolites

Loss of habitat is the main cause of species extinction, which today is 100 - 1000 times faster than the background extinction rate before the presence of mankind. One cause is that natural areas are being increasingly perturbed by roads, which degrades and fragments the habitat. In Tanzania, a proposed road through the Serengeti National Park (SNP) has caused international debate on whether it will cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem. I have assessed the current effect of roads and traffic on wildlife in the Serengeti, by using the impala (Aepyceros melampus) as a model species. I measured how faecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM), an indicator of stress levels, were affected by different road categories with different levels of traffic. Other stress related variables such as distance to the road, vegetation type and group size were accounted for. 196 faecal samples from 165 groups were collected over a 2 month-period from June  August 2012. FGM were measured using an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) validated for ruminants. I found that FGM levels were significantly increased near major roads with elevated levels of traffic compared to minor roads and side roads with less traffic in the Serengeti ecosystem. Predators, illegal hunting and social stress might also affect FGM levels in the impala, but these variables could not explain the variation observed. These results show for the first time that a large African mammal exhibit significant physiological stress in relation to roads. I argue that roads and traffic have the potential to cause major physiological stress in mammals, which in turn can affect the fitness of the organism. Care must be taken before implementing roads in protected areas, as increased disturbance can have severe consequences for the ecosystem if keystone species are affected. Future studies should assess the levels of stress wildlife can tolerate without it affecting fitness. Management plans for natural areas should include the possibility for increased physiological stress in animals living near major infrastructures and be proactive to ensure population and ecosystem viability.
Surface-consistent deconvolution using reciprocity and waveform inversion

Source and receiver responses must be equalized when their behavior or coupling changes with location within a given survey. Existing surface-consistent deconvolution techniques that account for these effects assume that common-midpoint (CMP) gathering is valid — the seismic trace is decomposed into a source function, a receiver response, a normal-incidence reflectivity term, and an offsetrelated component that is laterally shift invariant. As a result, the performance of existing surface-consistent deconvolution techniques is best when applied to primary reflection data only, since the offset dependency of ground roll and multiples varies laterally in media with lateral variations. We have developed an alternative method for surfaceconsistent deconvolution that is applicable to the entire seismic trace and is therefore essentially a raw-data preprocessing step. The method is based on reciprocity of the medium response. Assuming that conditions for applicability of reciprocity are met, we can attribute differences between normal and reciprocal recordings to the source and receiver perturbations. Contrary to existing surfaceconsistent deconvolution methods, this approach uses the full description of the wavefield and is therefore ideally suited for prestack processing. We have applied this technique to single-sensor data acquired in Manistee County, Michigan. At this site, nearsurface conditions vary, and this significantly affects data quality. The application of the new deconvolution procedure substantially improves S/N ratio on both prestack and poststack data, and these results compare favorably to those obtained using existing surface-consistent deconvolution techniques, since they require subjective data scaling to obtain acceptable results. The obtained source corrections are correlated to changes in near-surface conditions — in this case, to changes in water-saturation levels. We do not observe such a correlation for the receiver corrections, which vary rapidly along the spread. Finally, the receiver response does not agree with the generally accepted damped harmonic oscillator model. For frequencies below 100 Hz, the retrieved receiver variations are larger than predicted by this model, and we cannot explain the receiver response using a single resonant frequency for the geophone-ground coupling.
Network Structure for Testability Improvement in Exclusive-OR Sum of Products Reed-Muller Canonical Circuits

In this paper, a testable design structure with improved fault identification and detection capability is proposed and compared with a reference structure for the analysis and diagnosis of stuck-at and bridging faults in Exclusive-OR Sum of Products Reed-Muller canonical circuits. Further, a compact method of representing the circuit outputs has been adopted for ease of tabulation and comparison. Simulations of Single stuck-at, Double stuck-at, AND-bridging and OR-bridging faults for a few random functions have been carried out through MATLAB coding. From the test results, it was found that the proposed structure yields fault detection of more than 95% for most of the functions considered, with just n+5 test vectors compared to the Reference Structure. The distinguishability factor has also improved for the proposed structure. The location of the fault can also be diagnosed through the output sets. Keywords—Reed-Muller Canonical Form, Exclusive-OR Sum of Products, Testable Realization, Single Stuck-at, Double stuck-at, AND-bridging fault, OR-bridging fault
AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PROPENSITY TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY DIVIDENDS: A TEST OF THE LIFE CYCLE THEORY WITH NIGERIAN DATA

This study examined the factors that affect the dividend payout policy of firms within the Life cycle theory framework. It sought to discover the propensity to pay or not to pay dividends by firms in Nigeria. The study was based on a sample of 62 firms with a total of 558 observations over a nine-year period covering 2000- 2008. Maximum Likelihood (ML) Binary Logit (Quadratic hill climbing) models were used to undertake the analysis. The estimated results revealed that the tendency of a firm to pay or not to pay dividends is most affected by Return on Equity (ROE), Life cycle stage (LCS) and Size. The Test of Model Accuracy show that overall, the estimated model correctly predicts 74.55% (49.12% of the Dep=0 and 91.87% of the Dep=1) observations. The results of the Logit model Goodness-of-Fit test χ² to test The Validity of the Model report Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic of 13.12 (p-value = 0.175), and Andrews Statistic 11.72(p-value = 0.375) respectively. These statistics indicate that the Logit model provides a good fit to the data and that the estimates of the variables' parameters in the model are meaningful The above findings show that ROE and Size has positive relationships with the propensity to pay dividends while the relationship between life cycle stage and the propensity to pay dividends is negative. This is against the positive relationship expected by the study. Finally, one practical utility of the study is the fact that it can guide investors in Nigeria and elsewhere decide between capital gain and cash dividend firms in building their portfolios of investments.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING TRAINING ON REDUCING ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION: A CASE STUDY OF ILAM HIGH SCHOOLS

The current study aims to investigate the effectiveness of consciousness training on reducing anxiety and depression of first and second female graders in high school. It used a quasi-experimental research method. Moreover, it utilized cluster randomized sampling; hence, the high schools were randomly selected from the city of Ilam. Beck and Zong anxiety questionnaires were administered among 148 first and second female graders in high school. The students who obtained the scores from 4 to 7 with reference to Beck Depression Inventory were divided into both an experimental (i.e., Depression) group and a control group. Furthermore, the students obtaining the scores of 45 and above on Anxiety Zung Inventory were randomly assigned to both an experimental (i.e., Anxiety) group and a control group. Totally, 43 students were chosen for the two groups. Also, consciousness raising training was applied to 23 students in both experimental groups of Anxiety and Depression. The results of the study show that consciousness raising training can significantly reduce anxiety and depression in high school students. The results, also, entail important implications in promoting students’ mental health treatment. Besides, the treatment of consciousness raising is considered as one of the new therapeutic approaches to modify and control the cognitive processes of students.
Tensile and fatigue failure of 3D printed parts with continuous fibre reinforcement

This paper introduces a design methodology used to integrate continuous fibre reinforcement into AM polymer parts with the aim of improving their mechanical properties. Tensile and low-cycle fatigue (LCF) testing of reinforced parts is carried out for a range of load conditions and strain rates. Physical testing showed that it was possible to improve the strength of parts by 400% and cycles to failure by 42,800% with the addition of 5% carbon by weight. Logarithmic load/cycle relationships were found also samples showed significant variability in the number of cycles to failure. No correlation between the density of the polylactic acid (PLA) infill and the tensile strength or LCF life. Access holes used to thread the fibre into the reinforcement channels were identified as stress concentrators initiating cracks in the PLA and separation of the reinforcement from the PLA part.
Helping young children to develop adaptive coping strategies

The aim of this study was to determine whether a socio-emotional programme (Zippy’s Friends) had significant short-term effects on the children who participated in it, when compared with children in a control group who did not participate in the programme. Ten kindergartens were invited to participate in the study. There were totally 139 kindergarten children (5–6.25 years old) in the experimental group. The control group consisted of 128 kindergarten children (4.5–7 years old). Results show that the Zippy’s Friends Programme has significant short-term effects on helping kindergarten children to use more coping strategies to cope with everyday adversities. Teachers also found that the programme had changed their perceptions of children and improved classroom communication and has helped them to have a better understanding of children’s emotional needs.
Evaluation of chickpea genotypes for resistance to Ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei) disease in the dry highlands of Kenya

Chickpea ( Cicer arietinum ) is an edible legume grown widely for its nutritious seed, which is rich in protein, minerals, vitamins and dietary fibre. It’s a new crop in Kenya whose potential has not been utilized fully due to abiotic and biotic stresses that limit its productivity. The crop is affected mainly by Ascochyta blight (AB) which is widespread in cool dry highlands causing up to 100% yield loss. The objective of this study was to evalu- ate the resistance of selected chickpea genotypes to AB in dry highlands of Kenya. The study was done in 2 sites (Egerton University-Njoro) and Agricultural Training centre-ATC-Koibatek) for one season during long rains of 2010/2011 growing season. Thirty six genotypes from reference sets and mini-core samples introduced from ICR- SAT were evaluated. There were significant (P 1200 Kg ha-1. The findings of the study showed that chickpea should be sown during the short rains (summer) in the dry highlands of Kenya when conditions are drier and warmer and less favorable for AB infection. However yield could be increased by shifting the sowing date from dry season to long rain (winter) thus avoiding terminal drought if AB resistant cultivars with acceptable agronomic traits could be identified.