Private Investment and Political Instability: Evidence from Nigeria

It is a widely held opinion that the resumption of growth in Africa will require, among other things, an increase in investment, which will have to come primarily from the private sector if growth is to be efficient and sustained. Using a simple neoclassical investment model, we examined the impact of political instability on private investment. The OLS estimates indicate that political instability does not have any significant direct impact on private investment. We recommend that a political framework that does not negatively affect aggregate spending will be favourable to private investment boom.

RADAR: A Lightweight Tool for Requirements and Architecture Decision Analysis

Uncertainty and conflicting stakeholders' objectives make many requirements and architecture decisions particularly hard. Quantitative probabilistic models allow software architects to analyse such decisions using stochastic simulation and multi-objective optimisation, but the difficulty of elaborating the models is an obstacle to the wider adoption of such techniques. To reduce this obstacle, this paper presents a novel modelling language and analysis tool, called RADAR, intended to facilitate requirements and architecture decision analysis. The language has relations to quantitative AND/OR goal models used in requirements engineering and to feature models used in software product lines. However, it simplifies such models to a minimum set of language constructs essential for decision analysis. The paper presents RADAR's modelling language, automated support for decision analysis, and evaluates its application to four real-world examples

Post-Independence Evaluation of Air Transport Safety in Nigeria

This research evaluates air transportation safety in Nigeria. Records of aircraft crashes in Nigeria were extracted from different archives to create a database of air traffic incidences within the air space of Nigeria since Independence. Statistical overview of air transportation accidents in Nigeria using accident data to examine a national trend in air transportation disasters was carried out. Results of the analysis showed that air traffic accidents in Nigeria have increased per decade with 2 incidences between 1960 and 1969, 27 incidences between 2000 and 2009 with an increasing trend in the preceding decades. Impacts of season on aircraft accident in Nigeria were less significant. Airplanes constitute larger proportion of aircraft involved in accident with 86% incidences, and 14% for helicopter. Passenger plane constitute the largest proportion with 46 incidences occurring in the commercial plane category while 8 and 2 crashes occur in Military and Cargo operation. Majority of the accidents in Nigeria occurred in Lagos with 14 crashes involving plane majorly, followed by Abuja (FCT) and, Kano and Rivers with 4 each. Year 2005 however has the highest number of plane incidences in Nigeria with 11 crashe

Searching for configurations in clone evaluation - A replication study

Clone detection is the process of finding duplicated code within a software code base in an automated manner. It is useful in several areas of software development such as code quality analysis, bug detection, and program understanding.We replicate a study of a geneticalgorithm based framework that optimises parameters for clone agreement (EvaClone). We apply the framework to 14 releases of Mockito, a Java mocking framework. We observe that the optimised parameters outperform the tools’ default parameters in term of clone agreement by 19.91% to 66.43 %. However, the framework gives undesirable results in term of clone quality. EvaClone either maximises or minimises a number of clones in order to achieve the highest agreement resulting in more false positives or false negatives introduced consequently

Review of Sustainability in Self Compacting Concrete: the use of waste and mineral additives as supplementary cementitious material and aggregate.

Concrete is one of the commonly used construction materials, but there is a need to develop a new and sustainable technology to make concrete more affordable. With the advancement in technology, concrete was no longer seen as a three entity (binder, aggregate, and water). The unique workability properties of SCC make it unique in the concrete industry. This review assessed the materials, strength, rheological properties of agricultural waste, industrial waste and mineral additives in SCC production. The effect of the utilization of these additives and replacements on structural, mechanical and rheological properties of SCC was espoused. The review revealed that the use of both industrial and agricultural waste enhances the strength properties of SCC. Additionally, the use of agricultural waste improves the rheological properties of fresh concrete. The utilization of expansive material should be discouraged in SCC production. The review revealed that SCC developments ensure a good balance between deformability and stability. It was therefore recommended that SCC should be utilized in pavement construction, particularly when high axle load is expected

Modelling the Effect of Income and Car Ownership on Recreational Trip in Akure ,Nigeria

The effect of income and car ownership on recreational trip pattern in the study area was analysed, focusing on the frequency of trips, modal choice and the land use pattern. It is an attempts to extend research on travel characteristics and behaviour to cities of the developing world with focus on Akure metropoli