Volume VIII Issue II

Source Lines of Code (SLOC) is a quantitative measurement in computer programming for files that contain codes from a computer programming language, in text form. SLOC is used to predict the amount of effort that will be required to develop a program. Different types of SLOC were considered for 40 different schema files acquired in Web Service Description Language (WSDL) and implemented in Relax-NG eXtensible Schema Language (XML) in order to estimate schemas productivity and maintainability.

This study presents a multi-algorithm approach for Facial Recognition System (FRS) feature extraction and classification technique, so as to eradicate insubstantial accuracy. The system frontend was implemented using C# while Microsoft SQL Server was used for the backend; also, IBM SPSS was used for the statistical analysis of the data. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) was combined for feature extraction while Artificial Neural Network (ANN) combined with Support Vector Machine (SVM) for classification. Five hundred registered and fifty unregistered facial images were evaluated on the standard biometric to verify the image. Statistically, there is no significant relationship between PCA and ANN, HOG and SVM for False Acceptance Rate (FAR) while there is significant relationship between PCA and ANN, HOG and SVM for False Rejected Rate (FRR). Moreover, correlations between PCA with ANN and HOG with SVM using Chi-Square and t-test indicate that PCA with ANN show a more reliable measure than HOG with SVM.

The mechanism cum kinetics in continuous catalyst cracking reactions in tubular reactors is presented in this research explicates. The process chemistry stoichiometric balance on the feed materials was taken from fundamental principles material balance of the feed to derive models for investigation analytically; to obtain progressive depletions of feed with no catalyst effects on the process conditions in reactors. The reactor energy-temperature effects were obtained from the principles of conservation of energy. The two models were integrated numerically to achieve profiles on the feed depletion mechanisms and kinetics in the reactors. The deviations of the model predictions stood as follows 0.25, 0.42, 3.44, nil & 0.0001 respectively for paraffin, naphthenes, aromatics, and gas and Temperature.

The production of propylene glycol chemical from the hydrolysis of propylene oxide in the presence of an acid catalyst in a non-isothermal continuous stirred tank reactor is presented using advanced process simulation software. The steady state design models used in obtaining the reactor parameters such as volume, length, diameter, space time, space velocity were developed by performing material balance over the reactor. The temperature effect was also accounted for using the principle of energy balance over the reactor. The accuracy of the design parameters were ascertained by comparing predicted results with literature data of CSTR for production of propylene glycol. The simulation of the design models were performed using MATLAB. The reactor operates optimally at fractional conversion of 0.9 to obtain optimum values of the most significant variables/parameters [volume of reactor 60.50m3, length of the reactor 6.75m, diameter of reactor 3.37m, space time 2542.02sec, space velocity 0.0004sec-1, quantity of heat generated per unit volume of reactor -1.338j/s/m3]. The result obtained from the steady state simulation shows that the feed flow rate, temperature and pressure influence the efficiency of the continuous stirred tank reactor.

Drought is a recurring and worldwide phenomenon having spatial and temporal characteristics that varies significantly from one region to another. This study examines the variability of drought perceptions and coping strategies among the resource poor farmers in the Sahelian ecological zone, Jigawa state, Nigeria. The result revealed that farmers are fully aware of drought they have heard several times about it as well as personal experience. On the other hand perception of drought varies among the resource poor farmers some considers extension of dry season as drought, while others drying of crops as well as persistent moisture deficit. The coping strategies includes planting drought resistant variety crop, cross ridging, adopting irrigation farming and delay-farm clearance until mid-of rainy season among others.

The successful implementation of e-Government is a main target for many countries but still faces difficulties and barriers resulting in a high failure ratio. As a result, researchers are motivated to investigate the different factors for success and failure of MIS/e-Government projects [12] [13][14]. Several methodologies and frameworks were developed to identify success and failure factors: various reasons were discussed, multitudes of factors were identified, and several factors lists were introduced, each of which doesn’t give the complete view of success and failure as they can be viewed from multiple dimensions [7], leading to confusion. In this paper, we will examine the success factors lists for projects in general as well as the success factors list for MIS/e-Government projects and try to standardize the concepts and the terms used to describe the factors and generate a unified, categorized and classified list of success and failure factors for MIS/e-Government projects that encompasses all possible dimensions as per Project Management Institute (PMI) in their Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) guide. ITPOSMO is a recognized model of Conception-Reality gaps. We integrate the obtained success factors list assigned to the PMI Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)with the ITPOSMO model to reach a unified framework for identifying the impact of success factors on MIS/e-Government projects implementations.

This research examined the relationship between social policies and the wellbeing of the society in Nasarawa State Public Service. Both primary and secondary source of data and information were used for the study and questionnaire was used to extract information from the purposively selected respondents. The population for this study is two hundred and ninety six (296) respondents from Nasarawa State Public Service. The statistical tools employed were the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficients (r) to examine all the hypotheses of the study. Also, descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentages was used to present descriptive attributes of the respondents to the study. The result of the study indicates that a positive or direct relationship between wellbeing of society (WELS) and policy on equal opportunity for all (PEQO) in the study area. A negative or an inverse relationship exists between wellbeing of society (WELS) and social policy on security (SPOS) in randomly selected Nasarawa State Public Servants. There is a direct relationship between wellbeing of society (WELS) and Social policies on poverty reduction (SPPR) in randomly selected Nasarawa State Public Servants. A negative or an inverse relationship exists between wellbeing of society (WELS) and policy on economic growth (POEG) in randomly selected Nasarawa State Public Servants. The result of the study indicates that the strength of the relationship is -0.208\*\* or -20.8% and the relationship is statistically significant (p<0.01). It was concluded that the central goal of the economic policies of welfare states has traditionally been to maintain economic growth in order to ensure the materialistic well-being of citizens. It was recommended among others that poverty reduction should be the paramount goal of the government of Nasarawa State. This can be done by the provision of jobs and skill acquisition centres in the state for the teaming army of unemployed people.

This research examined the impact of feedback on employee performance in Benue Brewery Makurdi, Benue State. Both primary and secondary source of data and information were used for the study and questionnaire was used to obtained information from the primary source while journals and internet constituted secondary source of information. The population for this study is one hundred and two (102) respondents from First Bank Nigeria Plc Makurdi Main Branch. The statistical tools employed were the Ordinary Least Square Regression Analysis (OLS) and all the hypotheses of the study were analyzed using the probability value of the estimate. The findings of the study indicates that a positive relationship exist between Transparency in the service delivery (TRSP) and Customers orientation (CUSO) in First Bank Nigeria Plc Makurdi Main Branch Benue State and the relationship is statistically significant (p<0.05) and in line with a priori expectation. Control process of the service delivery (CONT) has a negative effect on Customers orientation (CUSO) in First Bank Nigeria Plc Makurdi Main Branch Benue State and the relationship is not statistically significant (p>0.05). Quality in the service delivery positively affects Customers orientation (CUSO) in First Bank Nigeria Plc Makurdi Main Branch Benue State and the relationship is statistically significant (p<0.05) and in line with a priori expectation. It was concluded that for business to perform optimally, service design’s intention is needed business failures and customer satisfaction. It was recommended among others that competent and effective operators are needed to avoid complains from the customers and also to ensure that control process of the service delivery will have a positive effect on customer's orientation in the study area.

Slice Testing is a testing technique in which a program is divided into slices in order to identify the segments that will be affected by any change or to identify which set of statement (grouped as slices) will be executed at a particular instant. In this paper we have tried to mix the concept of slice testing with Neural Network using Object Oriented Programming. In this we will take execution time of each slice as the weight factor in the evaluation of net input. This allows us to identify the overall architecture of the program and helps in evaluating the overall performance and dependencies of the system. Here, each slice will act as a node of the network for which net input will be calculated. We are focused on implementing this technique in an Object Oriented Program as nowadays all of the software development is based on the concept of Object Oriented Programming.

The liver is an indispensable organ in people's body. It is an extra stomach related organ which helps the breakdown of fat. No choices are found to make up for the nonattendance of liver capacity, however, liver dialysis strategies can be utilized for momentary treatment. At an Early stage, It is hard to Diagnose and foresee liver sickness. A few research works have been completed in the past to analyze liver sickness and its expectation in beginning periods. In this paper, we displayed a point by point investigation of late research works in the region of liver ailment analysis and forecast utilizing different strategies. Besides, we featured the difficulties, open issues, and execution contemplations for future research in liver ailment analysis and forecast.

Welding is a fabrication or sculptural process to joining the two metals in various modern manufacturing industries. In design of Automation in Hydraulic piston rod welding machine, Metal Inert Gas Welding (MIG) is used. The need for automation welding especially to increase production rate, economic growth of the industry and also to reduce the unskilled labours. The present paper focuses on how to weld the piston rod and bush for the hydraulic cylinder. To weld these two components it is necessary to hold the rod in a chuck and bush is made tack welding to the rod.

In Wireless Sensor Networks, effective energy management is of great significance. This paper examines the impression of multi-sink based routing on stable region and network lifetime of heterogeneous WSNs. We mainly address ‘WSN’s stable region and lifetime optimization problem” which is to construct an energy effective routing algorithm such that energy depletion of sensors due to transmission is minimized which results in an improved stable region and elongated lifetime of WSNs. The idea of threshold aware transmission along with static clustering are also applied to accomplish these objectives. The outcomes of proposed technique are analyzed with the corresponding outcomes of two well known traditional clustering protocols namely SEP and LEACH using network lifetime, stable region, unstable region and throughput as evaluation metrics and proposed technique performs superior than other techniques under consideration.

Green Information and Communication Technology (ICT) governance is management capability to put in place environmental criteria and framework to guide ICT activities management. The lack of proper alignment and application of ICT uptake and governance challenges the reaping of the benefits often stated of ICT. Multiple case study design with case from different sectors of the economy selected based on information richness, accessibility, size as well as diversity in application of ICT was employed. Triangulation of data collection and findings interpretation was utilised. The study established that green ICT governance maturity was very low. There is therefore great need for institutionalizing well established responsibility structures on green ICT in organisations.

Interaction of variable fluid properties with thermal radiation on free convective flow is investigated using non-linear Rosseland heat diffusion. In particular; the variable fluid properties considered are that the fluid viscosity and thermal conductivity assumed variable status in order to capture more realistic situation. Appropriate similarity variables are defined and used to transform the governing equations from dimensional to dimensionless form and the resulting equations are highly nonlinear due to the presence of variable fluid properties and thermal radiation effects. Semi analytical method of solution; popularly known as Adomian decomposition method (ADM) and computer algebra package were deployed for the solution of the emerging equations capturing the present situation considering the effects of essential physical parameters involved. During the investigation, it was found that an increase in thermal radiation parameter results to corresponding increase in both the fluid’s velocity and temperature in the channel. Similarly; an increase in viscosity variation parameter was observed to results tothe increase in the fluid velocity while an increase in thermal conduction parameter was realized to descend both the fluid’s velocity and temperature. The results here in have been validated with the published work of Singh and Paul [1] where good agreement was found.

The rapid growth in solar cell techniques makes the feasibility in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) scheme which reduces the exhaust emission. To conditioning the output voltage of the solar panel we need MPPT. The conventional MPPT is less efficient to use in UAV because sun irradiance is changing rapidly with the speed of UAV. So in this project it has been designed and implemented a fuzzy logic based voltage controller which can speed up system response towards the load change. The fuzzy logic controller is considered to differ the duty cycle of the DC-DC converter automatically such that to maintain the load voltage constant. The whole system is modelled and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink atmosphere. Simulation results shows that the MPPT using fuzzy logic can reduce the power loss and improve the system stability.

The elimination of software development constraints through software testing and integration is very significant in order to completely differentiate the constraints that we experience during the testing and integration of software development, because the procedures are inter-woven. However, it is advisable to separate the procedure of testing and integration method into different modules or sub-routines before combining it together as to ensure error-free software application that will be easier to work with and attest to its meeting the client specifications.

Pico Solar homes systems use have greatly grown in Africa with Kenya taking the lead. Most rural areas do not have to electricity. Due to poverty most households cannot afford electricity either way, hence settling for kerosene or candle as their source of lighting. This can lead to health problems and is expensive in the long run.This study discusses power situation in Kenya. It explains why we need to embrace solar in the rural areas as compared to national grid rural electrification. Majority of Kenyans still use kerosene for lighting even though the Pico PV is very affordable. The government, donors and solar companies have a big role to play in promoting the use of green energy in the rural areas. This can be done by creation of awareness of the product and ensuring that the standards on the solar systems are met.

Cloud provides offer for several storage services for their users in efficient manner. Cloud users are allowed to store data in cloud server using cloud storage and reduce the risk in storing and retrieving in local machine. The data can be shared by a user in a group and the facility shakes the integrity of the shared data due to access by many users in the field. It is necessary to ensure the integrity of shared data before using that data for some process and the correctness of the cloud storage. Public auditing mechanism is employed to ensure the correctness of the shared data. Both data owner and the Third Party Auditor (TPA) can examine shared data integrity without downloading the data from cloud server. The cloud computing, strengthen the capabilities of the hardware resources by optimal and shared utilization. Even the critical infrastructure, for example, power generation and distribution plants are being migrated by the cloud computing paradigm. However, the services deployed by third-party cloud service providers entail additional security threats. The migration of user’s assets outside the administrative control in a shared environment where numerous users are collocated escalates the security concerns. Moreover, the survey presents the solutions presented in the literature to counter the security issues. Furthermore, a brief view of security vulnerabilities measures in the mobile cloud computing are also highlighted. In the end, the discussion of the open issues and future research directions is also presented. This research paper attempts to point out various techniques to solve the privacy and security issues of the data in public auditing method in cloud environment.

The blockchain is an emerging technology that serves as an immutable ledger, which allows transactions to take place in a decentralized manner. It has become a publicly available infrastructure for building decentralized applications and achieving interoperability. Blockchain-based applications ensure transparency and trust between all parties involved in the interaction. The blockchain also makes blockchain technology-based services interest to the education sector. Nowadays, educational organizations focus on online education and propose to create a system based on educational smart contracts in a public ledger. This public ledger will be shared between major offline educational institutes around the world. From a software architecture perspective, blockchain enables new forms of distributed software architectures across a large network of untrusted participants. The objective of this article is to apply blockchain technology in learning solutions and to propose a blockchain architecture to e-Learning solutions in Higher Education Systems. The proposed architecture exploits the benefits of the blockchain and offering security, anonymity, longevity, integrity, transparency, immutability and global ecosystem simplification, in order to create a globally trusted higher education credit system.

Electrical fault is the deviation of currents and voltages from nominal values or states. Under steady state operating conditions, power system lines or equipments carry normal voltages and currents which results in a safer operation of the system network. However when fault occurs, it causes excessively high currents to flow which causes the damage to equipments and devices. In this paper, Power World Simulator tool is employed to determine fault current distribution and bus voltage levels during three phase balanced fault conditions of 6-bus power system model in order to give information for the selection and coordination of suitable switchgear equipments, electromechanical relays, circuit breakers and other protection devices.

Inverter-based welding machines are getting popular and favored by users due to their smaller size, fast response and high-efficiency compared to conventional welding machines. Many inverter-based welding machines include analog controllers to meet the requirement of fast transient response. This paper introduces a fully digital control algorithm for the new generation welding machines. Both constant current (CC) and constant voltage (CV) is achieved with the help of a high-speed DSP which has inner comparators and configurable logic units. In the case of digital control, optimizing the required welding properties such as hot start, arc force, and inductance is easier for the operator compared to analog controlled welding machines. All the functions are tested, and the experimental results show that efficiency is around 84%. The designed machine is a part of a project to produce a new generation of welding machines with Manual Metal Arc (MMA) and Metal Inert Gas (MIG) and Metal Active Gas (MAG) properties.

The work focuses on to reduce scarp for different machining operations like facing and chamfering, forming and blanking, slitting operation. Effort made to reduce the scrap when operation is in action for long duration by introducing different dimension block .The dimension block will change depend upon bearing width it can be used for equalizer adjustment. Concentration of reducing scrap for facing and chamfering operation is carried out in this paper. However, it is possible to reduce scrap for other operation too which are mentioned .scrap is reduced to great extent for facing and chamfering operations.

The theme of this work is to design and develop a multi-fixture for a tractor as an attachment. Influence of multi-fixture instead of using a single fixture, the benefit of this fixture is to increase the production rate with accurate clamping design, through which the space requirement of fixtures are highly reduced by designing this fixture performance of the labors are improved, where mounting and unmounting the work pieces are easier. Mismatching and misalignment of the work piece are rectified by proper space allocation for each component to be attached.

The aim of the research work is to study the influence of aggregate types on the strength behaviour of geopolymer concrete. Coarse aggregates of 20 mm from Limestone, Granite and Bush gravel were used. The combination of alkaline solution and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) formed the binding medium in ratio 4:10. The Alkaline solution was a combination of Sodium Silicate and Sodium Hydroxide in ratio 10:25. The amount of alumina and silica oxides in RHA was determined to be 81.28%. The mixing ratio of material constituents used in producing geopolymer concrete was 1:2:4. River sand was used as fine aggregates. Compressive and flexural strengths of all types of aggregates were determined at varying curing hours at constant temperature of 100oC. Results obtained showed that the compressive and flexural strength vary from 13.37 to 14.30 N/mm2 and 2.01 to 2.18 N/mm2 respectively. Both compressive and flexural strengths increased as the curing hours increased, but limestone gave highest strength, this may be attributed to cementing properties of limestone. Conclusively, it can be deduced that RHA is rich in Alumina and Silica oxides; thus, it is useful as source material. Geopolymer concrete showed an excellent workability and the one produced with coarse aggregates from limestone gave optimum performance.

This study assessed effects of locally available additive (Rice Husk Ash - RHA) in partial replacement of conventional one (Cement) on the geotechnical properties of Ado-Ekiti to Ikere-Ekiti road lateritic soil. Two soil samples were taken from the study area and some laboratory tests (Atterberg Limit, California Bearing Ratio (CBR), Compaction and Grain size distribution tests) conducted on them at their natural and stabilized states. The soil samples were initially modified with 6 % Cement before being stabilized with RHA additive at proportion of 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 % by soil weight. Results showed that the natural soil samples were generally and grouply classified as silt – clayey and A – 7 materials respectively with significant constituent of clayey materials. Their general rating as subgrade is fair to poor. These portrayed that the samples require stabilization.LL, PL, PI, MDD, CBR and OMC values of the stabilized soil sample A varied from 28.3 to 42 %, 18.2 to 38.2 %, 3.8 to 12.9 %, 1635 to 2089 Kg/m3, 8.5 to 35.0 % and 13.4 to 3.6 % respectively. While for stabilized soil sample B, LL, PL, PI, MDD, CBR and OMC values varied from 28.8 to 38 %, 18.6 to 33.2 %, 4.8 to 11.4 % , 1545 to 2547 Kg/m3, 8.0 to 34.0 % and 10.1 to 4.3 % respectively.As RHA content increased, LL, PL, MDD and CBR values increased, while PI and OMC values decreased. Conclusively, it can be deduced that stabilizationtook place and improved the soil’sEngineering properties by reducing their moisture contents, increasing CBR and MDD. Thus makes the soil suitable as subgrade, subbase and base filling materials.

In this paper, we will be focusing on brain tumor present in the MRI images. MRI that is directed into intracranial cavity produces a complete image of brain. Identification of Tumor cells leads to classification of stage of Tumor. We have carried out various processing steps to identify the brain tumor using MATLAB. Processing steps like RGB to gray conversion, image resizing are used in this project. We have suggested an effective algorithm on brain tumors based on FCM segmentation. Morphological operations are carried out for background removal and identification of Tumor cells.