The rising issues is what has happened to the impoverished communities in Eket Local Government Area whose livelihoods have been affected due to the activities of oil companies which is the backdrop of this work. However, Two communities were used namely Mkpanak, and Upenekang of which ninety three copies of questionnaire were randomly distributed to each of the community in order to captured the impact of the oil companies activities such as type of infrastructural development ,impact on the environment, nature of activities and companies by-products. The data collected were analyzed using the Pearson’s product moment correlation. However, Findings show that even though the oil companies in the area have contributed significantly to the socio-economic wellbeing of the people through income generation, employment creation, provision of social amenities, their activities were not devoid of environment crises. These crises arises due to oil spills which in turn affect the soil nutrients, lost of aquatic life and mangroves. Beside, the data analyzed show a high positive relationship between the companies by-product and the impact on the environment which indicate that the oil companies have really destroyed the natural ecosystem which is the major source of sustenance to the impoverished communities. Therefore the various stakeholders in environmental management must provide a mechanism that would guarantee the sustainability of the people in the ecosystem.

In recent years, with the innovation and adjustment of financial market, hedge funds grown rapidly and became the major actor in the world financial market. The main law on investment adviser is the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and the US amended it in 2004. In 2010, the Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act of 2010 made further amendment to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The continuously strengthened regulation on investment advisers in the US is of great significance for China.

The use of static analysis and in situ methods were adopted to evaluate the capacity of piles innon cohesive soils of a typical sedimentary formation. The piles were for a proposed five span five span bridge along road dualisation project traversing Northwestern and Northeastern Nigeria. The results shows that the bearing capacity of piles were higher by the static method than those evaluated by in situ techniques. Specifically, the capacity of piles ranges from 2829 – 12,147 kN and 2454 – 6009 kN for static analysis and in situ method respectively. The latter method has proved to be more reliable and shows more inherent agreement than the static method.

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the topical issues of poverty, environmental degradation and sustainable development by highlighting the divergent views and attempting an explanation of the diversity. Poring through the literature, the authors observed that there are three discernable debaters on the trajectory between poverty, environmental degradation and sustainable development namely: those who argue that the poor (the South) is the major cause of environmental degradation as a result of high population and increased pressure on environmental resources; those who contend that the high consumption propensity of the rich (the North) is the main factor in environmental degradation; and, those who argue that both the rich and the poor, in varying capacities, contribute to the unsustainability of the environment. The authors believe that quantitative data are required to ascertain whether the poor (South) more than the rich (North) degrade the environment, or not. Until such evidence is found, the North-South dichotomy on ecological issues will persist. One common thread that runs through the various views is that there is continued degradation of the environment the negative impact of which affects both the poor and the rich. As such, the quest for sustainable development should be utmost concern of all.

Impulse noise in images is present because of bit errors in transmission or introduced during the signal acquisition stage. There are two types of impulse noise, they are salt and pepper noise and random valued noise. In our proposed method, first we apply the Stationary wavelet transform for noise added image. It will separate into four bands like LL, LH, HL and HH. The proposed algorithm replaces the noisy pixel by trimmed median value when other pixel values, 0’s and 255’s are present in the selected window and when all the pixel values are 0’s and 255’s then the noise pixel is replaced by mean value of all the elements present in the selected window. This proposed algorithm shows better results than the Standard median filter (MF), decision based algorithm (DBA). The proposed method performs well in removing low to medium density impulse noise with detail preservation up to a noise density of 70% and it gives better Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and mean square error (MSE) values.

The study investigated a long-term effect of urbanization on the water quality of Ona River in Eleyele Catchment, Oyo State Southwest Nigeria. Secondary water quality data between 1979 and 2007 were collected from Eleyele’s Water Works, Ibadan. In compliment, water samples were collected from five sampling points along River Ona. Important water parameters analyzed using standard procedures were: temperature, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), turbidity, total alkalinity, total hardness, metals (calcium, magnesium, sodium, copper, lead, cadmium, chromium, nickel, iron) and anions (nitrate, sulphate, chloride). Results showed increased concentration of nitrate and chloride and decreased dissolved oxygen level of River Ona over 28-year assessments. Present field study showed relatively high values of Pb (0.06-1.15 mg/L), Cr (0.01-1.31 mg/L), Cd (0.00-0.26 mg/L), Fe (0.40-1.96 mg/L), Ni (0.02- 0.27 mg/L) and nitrate (27.0-50.0 mg/L) compared with World Health Organization (WHO) permissible standards in drinking water. Water quality parameters were generally high between sampling point 1 and 3 due to the influx of industrial effluent from the nearby industries and indiscriminate disposal of wastes at the bank of the river.

This paper is explores the reasons behind the devaluation of Pakistani currency with respect to US $ and answer these questions that, Is interest rate and inflation difference having relationship with exchange rate? Either Exchange rate effect economic growth positively or negatively? Is current account deficit and public debt are determinant of exchange rate? It also checks that how exchange rate fluctuation affects economic growth by evaluating the GDP using data over period of 11 years (2001-2011) of Pakistan. For this purpose we evaluated some of the past literatures on exchange rate, its aim to point out several factors that explains the reason behind Pakistani currency devaluation and its exchange with other currencies specially with US $. The result shows how these determinants fluctuates exchange rate, inflation differential; current account deficit, public debt and interest rate differential are most important determinants which have major impact on exchange rate.We got the resultant that GDP, interest rate, inflation rate and current account affected exchange rate fluctuation but the major and important role played by GDP.

Investigations on the bioconcentration of heavy metals (Cu, Ni, Fe, Co, Mn, Cr and Zn) were observed in Channa punctatus. The results revealed that heavy metals available in water were in the order Fe > Mn > Zn > Co > Ni > Cu = Cr. The accumulation was also observed in tissues such as gills, liver, kidney, muscle and integument. Their pattern of accumulation in muscle was Fe > Zn > Mn > Cu > Cr > Ni > Co. All the heavy metals showed maximum concentration and persistence in gills with the exception of Cu and Co, which showed maximum accumulation in liver and muscle respectively. Fe was the most abundant metal in the water as well as in the fish tissues. Significant (P < 0.01) relations were observed among the metal accumulations in different organs of the fish. The concentration observed was far exceeding the recommended limits of FAO/ WHO.

The effect of microwave drying technique on drying kinetics of date palm was investigated. The results showed that the change of moisture ratio with drying time in the power density range from 4 to 9.5 W/g can be successfully described by Page model. Values of drying rate constant (k) were in the range of 0.052–0.142 (1/min) and the effective moisture diffusivities (Deff) of date range palm from 2.72×10−6 to 4.73×10−6 (m2/s). The values of k and Deff increased with the increase of power density. The power density dependence of the effective diffusivity coefficient was expressed by an Arrhenius type relationship. Activation energy for the moisture diffusion was determined as 3.908 W/g.

Standard firewalls alone can no longer protect the enterprise from Internet dangers; new technologies such as next generation firewalls and advanced packet inspection devices can improve security around your gateways.