Factors That Affect Tax Compliance among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in North Central Nigeria

Tax is an important stream of revenue for government’s development projects. However, tax compliance among SMEs is poor. Therefore, this study was conducted using SMEs in Zaria, North-Central Nigeria to evaluate and rank the factors that encourage non-compliance with tax obligation by SMEs. It was found that high tax rates and complex filing procedures are the most crucial factors causing non-compliance of SMEs. Other factors like multiple taxation and lack of proper enlightenment affect tax compliance among the SMEs surveyed only to a lesser extent. Therefore, it is recommended that SMEs should be levied lower percentage of taxes to allow enough funds for business development and better chances of survival in a competitive market. The government should also consider increasing tax incentives such as exemptions and tax holidays as these will not only encourage voluntary compliance but also attract investors who are potential viable tax payers in the future

Relationship between Tax Policy, Growth of SMEs and the Nigerian Economy

This research work tries to establish if any relationship exists between the growth of SMEs and the tax policy environment within which they operate. Using business sustenance and expansion as indices of growth, it analyzes responses obtained questionnaires distributed to SMEs in Zaria, North Central Nigeria. Sampling for the survey was done using the non-probability sampling method specifically by judgmental sampling. The hypothesis was tested using Spearman’s Rank Correlation. Although there is a general perception that that tax is an important source of fund for development of the economy and provision of social services, the study revealed a significant negative relationship between taxes and the business’ ability to sustain itself and to expand. In order to obtain a vibrant and flourishing SME sector, the tax policy needs to be appropriate such that it will not be an encumbrance to the growth of small and medium enterprises

Bacterial reduction of N-oxides of tobacco- specific nitrosamines (TSNA)

1 Contrary to established metabolic pattern, a recent investigation of NNK metabolism produced in rat urine higher levels of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1- butanone (NNK) and 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyri dyl)-1-butanol (NNAL) than their N-oxides, suggesting that reconversion of N-oxides could occur after urine formation. 2 To verify the possible role of bacteria in the reduction of NNK-N-oxide and NNAL-N-oxide to their respective parent compounds, NNK and NNAL, in smokers with urinary tract infection (UTI), the N-oxides were isolated from the urine of rats treated with 5-3HNNK and individually incubated at 37°C with ten bacterial species in sterile human urine under different pH regimens. After incubation with the bacteria, aliquots of culture media were analyzed by high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) with radiochemical detection. 3 Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Proteus mirabilis possessed varying capacity to regenerate NNK and NNAL from their N- oxides while others showed no detectable reductive capability within 24 h. 4 This result constitutes the first experimental evidence that in tobacco users with concomitant UTI, bacterial regeneration of the procarcinogenic NNK and NNAL from their N-oxides could occur in the bladder leading to increased carcinogen burden in these individuals

Pharmacokinetics of biliary excretion of N-nitrosodiphenylamine (NDPA) in animals of different species

Pharmacokinetic investigations into the biliary excretion of N-nitrosodiphenylarnine given as an i.p. dose of 50 mg/kg were conducted and results compared in three animal species; rat, guinea pig and rabbit following bile duct (Simulation and collection of bile in vitro. The guinea pig excreted NDPA into bile fastest while the rabbit, which excreted it slowest, eliminated it fastest Both appearance and disappearance of the nitrosamine were comparatively slow in the rat NDPA elimination half-life values in the animal species were 510, 240 and 95 min respectively, while cumulative excretions amounted to 12, 3 and 0.3 percent. The toxicological implications of these species differences are highlighte

Antioxidant potential of African medicinal plants

Cellular damage or oxidative injury arising from free radicals or reactive oxygen species (ROS) now appears the fundamental mechanism underlying a number of human neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes, inflammation, viral infections, autoimmune pathologies and digestive system disorders. Free radical are generated through normal metabolism of drugs, environmental chemicals and other xenobiotics as well as endogenous chemicals, especially stress hormones (adrenalin and noradrenalin). Accumulated evidence suggests that ROS can be scavenged through chemoprevention utilizing natural antioxidant compounds present in foods and medicinal plants. Africa is blessed with enormous biodiversity resources, but plagued with several diseases, including those with ROS as the etiological factor. In this review, research on the antioxidant potential of medicinal plants of African origin between 1965 and September, 2004 is considered.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (2), pp. 128-133, 200

A Machine Learning Approach to Network Intrusion Detection System Using K Nearest Neighbor and Random Forest

The evolving area of cybersecurity presents a dynamic battlefield for cyber criminals and security experts. Intrusions have now become a major concern in the cyberspace. Different methods are employed in tackling these threats, but there has been a need now more than ever to updating the traditional methods from rudimentary approaches such as manually updated blacklists and whitelists. Another method involves manually creating rules, this is usually one of the most common methods to date. A lot of similar research that involves incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence into both host and network-based intrusion systems recently. Doing this originally presented problems of low accuracy, but the growth in the area of machine learning over the last decade has led to vast improvements in machine learning algorithms and their requirements. This research applies k nearest neighbours with 10-fold cross validation and random forest machine learning algorithms to a network-based intrusion detection system in order to improve the accuracy of the intrusion detection system. This project focused on specific feature selection improve the increase the detection accuracy using the K-fold cross validation algorithm on the random forest algorithm on approximately 126,000 samples of the NSL-KDD dataset

A Deep Learning-Based Automatic Object Detection Method for Autonomous Driving Ships

An important feature of an Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) is its capability of automatic object detection to avoid collisions, obstacles and navigate on their own. Deep learning has made some significant headway in solving fundamental challenges associated with object detection and computer vision. With tremendous demand and advancement in the technologies associated with ASVs, a growing interest in applying deep learning techniques in handling challenges pertaining to autonomous ship driving has substantially increased over the years. In this thesis, we study, design, and implement an object recognition framework that detects and recognizes objects found in the sea. We first curated a Sea-object Image Dataset (SID) specifically for this project. Then, by utilizing a pre-trained RetinaNet model on a large-scale object detection dataset named Microsoft COCO, we further fine-tune it on our SID dataset. We focused on sea objects that may potentially cause collisions or other types of maritime accidents. Our final model can effectively detect various types of floating or surrounding objects and classify them into one of the ten predefined significant classes, which are buoy, ship, island, pier, person, waves, rocks, buildings, lighthouse, and fish. Experimental results have demonstrated its good performance

Tobacco-specific nitrosamines, hemoglobin adducts and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke

Hemoglobin (Hb) adducts of 4-hydroxy-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (HPB), a metabolite of two tobacco-specific nitrosamines: 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) and N’- nitrosonornicotine (NNN), were measured in blood samples collected from 47 non-smokers, including 21 cases of lung cancer, enrolled in four centers. Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) during the previous year from the spouse and at the workplace was assessed through questionnaire. Non-smokers exposed to ETS had a lower and non-significant level of HPB-Hb adducts than unexposed non-smokers (medians 15.8 and 20.1fmol/g Hb, p-value of the difference 0.32). Adjustment for age, sex, center and lung cancer case-control status had no effect on the results. Our results appear not to support the use of HPB-Hb adduct level as a marker of exposure to ETS in non-smokers. The conclusion drawn is however based on a small number of subjects and might suffer from exposure misclassification.Key words: Environmental tobacco smoke, hemoglobin adducts, tobacco-specific nitrosamines, biomarker

Nigerian foodstuffs with prostate cancer chemopreventive polyphenols

Dietary polyphenols are antioxidants that can scavenge biological free radicals, and chemoprevent diseases with biological oxidation as their main etiological factor. In this paper, we review our laboratory data vis-ὰ-vis available literature on prostate cancer chemopreventive substances in Nigerian foodstuffs. Dacryodes edulis fruit, Moringa oleifera and Syzygium aromaticum contained prostate active polyphenols like ellagic acid, gallate, methylgallate, catechol, kaempferol quercetin and their derivatives. Also Canarium schweinfurthii Engl oil contained ten phenolic compounds and lignans, namely; catechol, p-hydroxybenzaldehyde, dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, tyrosol, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, dihydroxybenzoic acid, vanillic acid, phloretic acid, pinoresinol, secoisolariciresinol. In addition, tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) which contains the powerful antioxidant and anti-prostate cancer agent, lycopene; cabbage (Brassica oleracea) containing indole-3-carbinol; citrus fruits containing pectin; Soursop (Annona muricata) containing annonaceous acetogenins; soya beans (Glycine max) containing isoflavones; chilli pepper (Capsicum annuum) containing capsaicin, and green tea (Camellia sinensis) containing (-) epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), (-) epicatechin, (-) epicatechin-3-gallate and (-) epigallocatechin -3-gallate which are widely reported to posses prostate cancer chemopreventive compounds are also grown in Nigeria and other African countries. Thus, the high incidence of prostate cancer among males of African extraction can be dramatically reduced, and the age of onset drastically increased, if the population at risk consumes the right kinds of foods in the right proportion, beginning early in life, especially as prostate cancer has a latency period of about 50 years

Trypanocidal and leishmanicidal activity of six limonoids

Six limonoids [kotschyienone A and B (1, 2), 7-deacetylgedunin (3), 7-deacetyl-7-oxogedunin (4), andirobin (5) and methyl angolensate (6)] were investigated for their trypanocidal and leishmanicidal activities using bloodstream forms of Trypanosoma brucei and promastigotes of Leishmania major. Whereas all compounds showed anti-trypanosomal activity, only compounds 1–4 displayed anti-leishmanial activity. The 50% growth inhibition (GI 50) values for the trypanocidal and leishmanicidal activity of the compounds ranged between 2.5 and 14.9 μM. Kotschyienone A (1) was found to be the most active compound with a minimal inhibition concentration (MIC) value of 10 μM and GI 50 values between 2.5 and 2.9 μM. Only compounds 1 and 3 showed moderate cytotoxicity against HL-60 cells with MIC and GI 50 values of 100 μM and 31.5–46.2 μM, respectively. Compound 1 was also found to show activity against intracellular amastigotes of L. major with a GI 50 value of 1.5 μM. The results suggest that limonoids have potential as drug candidates for the development of new treatments against trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis