BUILDING A KPI FROM AN EMPLOYERS VIEW

Key objectives of funding the project will be based on grants, non-governmental organizations and social welfare clubs that would want to impact a meaning to the lives of Africans. A grant is a great way to get a project off the ground and is possibly the best source of funding available. There is no interest to be paid and funds are generally non-returnable (except in exceptional circumstances, where grant terms and conditions are not met). Grants are often referred to as ‘free money’, but there are usually a number of strings attached; although they are the hardest to obtain but with so much flexibilities. It is hard work convincing the awarding body that you deserve such support, and a considerable amount of effort and time is involved in making an application. Grants are provided by a myriad of sources, and may come from central, regional and local government, the European Commission, or various other national and local bodies such as Regional Development Agencies, charities and community foundations.

The KPI provides the most important information that enables a stakeholder to understand if the organization is on track or not. The key performance index is based on four action plans;

a.     Act – Monitor, collect data, progress report	b.    Plan –Customer need, determine drives, define indicators
C.   Check—Develop review, collect data,                Create improve plan	D. Do—Find owners, store, prioritize

The aim is the action taken at the appropriate time which gives a satisfying success, it focus on the actions (aim of the project), get value, get success, get momentum this will give you us a path; while on the path we will collect data which needs to be analyzed this ultimately create a process; with the progress part known, then we need to understand our customer’s need. The end user of the services provided give an insight to how the quality and quantity of service defers from, clients to clients. The right drives or motivations need to be spelt out correctly so that the focus is not let out of sight. A good KPI should have room for continuous improvements on a daily basis this calls for a periodic check. The check ensures that the process is up to date; conforming to requirements, with a stated standard, reviewed quarterly and improvement added. By prioritizing, our aim is to improve reporting externally and demonstrate compliance, monitor and control by making sure that the project stated mission is in accordance with the stated standard.

For every good system there must be a method or means of measuring the project progress, the KPI serves to reduce the complex nature of organizational performance, simple homilies can easily be corrected to a small number of key indicators in order to make performance more understandable and digestible for us. It is also a good tool for monitoring people and their personal activities in the project. These could be as performance assessment, performance indicator, performance measurement, use of bench marks as against an expected outcome, added value to customer and project teams and feedback.

Most measurement tools comes with the need to show what is to be measured (from what to what), they usually comprises of work force and management, which can be calculated to meet the budget of the project, a level of improvement is visible, a communicated statue, used to connect the customer to the process, the use of bench mark to track progress, performance expectations which would be measured on a quarterly basis and immediate action to save the situation should in-case need be. The expectation of each team lead would be spelled out correctly so that each party is aware and responsible for his/her team mates. With this few key points in place the project will and effectively be control and concluded.

FISH SUPPLY AND DEMAND IN NIGERIA

Fish constitutes about 41% of the total animal protein intake by the average Nigerian hence there is great demand for fish in the country. Nigeria requires about 2.66 million metric tons of fish annually to satisfy the dietary requirement of its citizens (150 Million). Regrettably, the total aggregate domestic fish supply from all sources (capture and culture fisheries) is less than 0.7million metric tons per annum. Nigeria has to import about 0.7 million metric tons of fish valued at about $500 million annually to augment the shortfall. This massive importation of frozen fish in the country has ranked Nigeria the largest importer of frozen fish in Africa. The huge sum of money spent by Nigeria annually in fish importation could be used to invest in fish farming. Nigeria can substitute fish importation with domestic production to create jobs, reduce poverty in rural areas where 70% of the population lives and ease the balance of payments.

A review of the various food production systems reveals aquaculture (fish farming) as an important strategy in the global fight against hunger, malnutrition and poverty, particularly in the developing nations including Nigeria. Aquaculture is considered as the provider of the direly needed high quality animal protein and other essential micronutrients because of its affordability to the poorer segments of the community in addition to the provision of employment opportunities and cash income. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) classified aquaculture as the World’s fastest growing food production sector for nearly two decades globally; the sector has shown an overall average growth rate of 11.0% per year since 1984, compared with 3.1% for terrestrial farm animal meat production. Nigeria has the capacity to attain the desired fish self‐sufficiency within a short of time if the numerous aquaculture potentials (land 1.7 million Ha and water, 14 million ha), which abound the nation is adequately utilized. These potentials are estimated at about 2.5 million metric tons of fish annually

POWERFUL PLASMA, THE HOPE OF CLEANING OUT CANCER

Beside the familiar solid, liquid and gas, matter has a fourth state: plasma, an immensely hot state of matter where electron is stripped from gas atoms. Very hot flames and lighting are made up of plasma, as are the sun and the stars. Here on earth, the field of plasma physics march forward, Marc Ramsey a PhD  research student has created a small device that creates plasma that can be studied, with results that can extrapolated to the larger scale. Cold plasma is another area of study, particularly for medical applications are created by trapping and cooling neutral atoms and then ionizing the atoms.

Fig1: Plasma Production Courtesy: Ph.D. Marc Ramsey THE LAB mechanical engineering graduate laboratory, Vanderbilt University, Nashville

Scientist at the Plasma and laser engineering institute at Old Dominion University have found that cold plasma kills cancer cell from leukemia sufferers. These streams of ionized gas are thought to trigger a self-destruct mechanism in the cancerous cells while the healthy cells remains unscathed said Mounir Laroussi, who directs the Institute. He and his researchers believe it may be possible to develop a dialysis-style treatment where the blood leukemia patient is passed through the low- temperature cancer cells.

Fig2: Plasma appears inside a common plasma lamp; the matter has many potential applications in physics and astrophysics

Leukemia is the most common childhood malignancy and accounts for approximately one out of every three cancer in children, he said. The researchers expose leukemia cells to a four-minute blast plasma. The cell died around 12hours after being treated.

Fig 3: Ph.D. Marc Ramsey’s cut out section of the high-energy-density plasma for study

Many researchers thick cold plasma produces highly reactive molecules that interact with the cells and that as the cancer cell takes up more cell up, more molecules from the blood than healthy cells, they will be more affected by the plasma than will healthy cells and will die. Cancer cell multiply rapidly and are much more likely to take up the molecules generated by the plasma.

PIPE LINE EXPLOSION: A NEW LOOK BASED ON THEORY

Perhaps the most publicized industrial accidents of recent times occurred at the nuclear reactors at Chernobyl, Three miles island, , Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico and Oil spills in Niger Delta. They and numerous other less noted accidents share common theme. They involve accidental explosions in industrial piping systems not all the cases of pipe vandalism.

Numerous industrial explosions share several common factors: fluid transients were known to occur; trapped flammable gases were known to collect in the piping system; fluid transient sometimes cause pressures exceeding 1000psi which meet the required pressures for auto ignition of gases and explosion in piping occurred with causes that are not yet well understood.

A theory developed by Robert A. Leishear a fellow engineer and member of ASME that many explosions. The theory states that if piping contains a flammable gas and there is an inrush of fluid (or fluid transient) in to the piping, the gas can adiabatically compress to its auto ignition point( similar to a diesel engine) and then the gas, given sufficient quantity and pressure, can ignite and explode. Although further researches are required to support the theory, the safety and environment implications of this theory are significant.

Consider the accident summaries for Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi cite the presence of fluid transients’ plus flammable hydrogen and oxygen in the piping systems. Each of these accidents was caused by events other than explosions, but explosions were reported following accidents onsets.

At Fukushima Daiichi, loss or of reactor coolant followed flooding due to an earthquake induced tsunami. According to this theory, hydrogen and oxygen were generated in the piping through the radioactive decomposition of coolant water. A subsequent inrush of sea water used to cool the reactors could have provided conditions required to cause explosions.

How might the accident at the Macondo Well be related to explosions in nuclear reactor piping or even and oil spill? An explosion at an oil rig was accompanied by shearing of the piping near the sea floor. The new theory may provide a relationship between these seemingly disparate explosions. Flaming gases are known to contribute to fires and explosions in oil pipelines. “Swiss, run, boom” is a common refrain reported by operators describing fires and explosion on offshore rigs. If upward –traveling gas collects between two separate slugs of liquid during the transfer of oil up through a pipeline, conditions may exist to ignite the gas. One slug of liquid can lose momentum and slow down if a large gas pocket is present. The other slug of liquid may accelerate and compress the trapped gas. Depending on the volume of the gas flow rates of the two liquid slugs, auto ignition conditions may exist.

“Swish” would be the sound that would be heard if the gas in the pipeline explodes and accelerates one of the oil slugs in the pipeline up towards the drilling rig. One would have time to “run” before the “boom” occurs, which may damage undersea piping as well as the oil rig. That is the conditions to initiate observed explosions and fire was potentially present during past explosions in pipe lines.

Overall there exist certain similarities between these different explosions to be coincidence. Spills in populated areas often spread out over a wide area, destroying crops and aquaculture through contamination of the ground water and soils. People in the affected areas complain about health issues including breathing problems and skin lesions; many have lost basic human rights such as health, access to food, clean water, and an ability to work which in a way is similar to the other accidental areas although not with mutation issues.

Oil spills are a common event in Nigeria and occur due to a number of causes, including: corrosion of pipelines and tankers (accounting for 50% of all spills), sabotage (28%), and oil production operations (21%), with 1% of the spills being accounted for by inadequate or non-functional production equipment. The largest contributor to the oil spill total, corrosion of pipes and tanks, is the rupturing or leaking of production infrastructures that are described as, "very old and lack regular inspection and maintenance". A reason that corrosion accounts for such a high percentage of all spills is that as a result of the small size of the oilfields in the Niger Delta, there is an extensive network of pipelines between the fields, as well as numerous small networks of flow-lines—the narrow diameter pipes that carry oil from wellheads to flow-stations—allowing many opportunities for leaks. In onshore areas most pipelines and flow-lines are laid above ground.
 Pipelines, which have an estimate life span of about fifteen years, are old and susceptible to corrosion. Many of the pipelines are as old as twenty to twenty-five years. Most of the facilities were constructed between the 1960s and early 1980s to the then prevailing standards. SPDC [Shell Petroleum and Development Company] would not build them that way today.” Sabotage is performed primarily through what is known as "bunkering", whereby the saboteur attempts to tap the pipeline. In the process of extraction sometimes the pipeline is damaged or destroyed. Oil extracted in this manner can often be sold.
Sabotage and theft through oil siphoning has become a major issue in the Niger River Delta states as well, contributing to further environmental degradation.  Damaged lines may go unnoticed for days, and repair of the damaged pipes takes even longer. Oil siphoning has become a big business, with the stolen oil quickly making its way onto the black market . While the popularity of selling stolen oil increases, the numbers of deaths are increasing. In late December 2006 more than 200 people were killed in the Lagos region of Nigeria in an oil line explosion.

This new theory is based on the fundamental physics of fluid and gas dynamics and its consistent with explosions. Ordinarily, it is logical when pipe lines are vandalized however, with certain conditions it could be seen theoretically that fluid pressure in pipe could bring about certain burst causing oil spills and explosion.

18 BIGGEST TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION OF THE LAST 10 DECADES

1. The Internet/Web/search: No explanation needed.
2. E-mail: Electronic messaging recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, but it wasn't a true mass product until the mid-1990s.
3. Cell phones and smart-phones: Cell phones have been around for decades, but the true revolution has only happened since the mid-1990s.
4. Digital cameras: These cameras changed the way I capture and share memories and how I see the worlds of my friends, family, and complete strangers. While more of my friends than ever before sling fancy digital SLRs, the only digital camera I've used in the last 15 months or so is the one in my iPhone. The other day, when someone took a group portrait with a point-and-shoot digital camera, several of us in the picture commented on how long it had been since we had used an "old-fashioned" camera.
5. Laptops and Wi-Fi: Sure, there were ridiculously expensive laptops around in the 1980s, but none had the transformative effect on my life the way the ones in the 1990s did. And the arrival of Wi-Fi freed those laptops from the suffocating Ethernet cord.
6. GPS (with a nod to Web-based Mapquest and Google Maps): I still remember our car vacations started with my dad would going down to the AAA) and get maps with our route highlighted in yellow. When I first saw Mapquest I was blown away by the potential; the arrival of Web-based Google Maps just continued the innovation and set the stage for how we all use GPS today.
7. MetroCard: Prior to the arrival of these, New Yorkers had to be obsessed with having enough tokens on hand to enter the system. The MetroCard literally changed my life.
8. Next-train arrival signs: Londoners and Londonphiles love to tell me how they've had these forever in the Underground, but these arrived in NYC only three years ago. Until these real-time signs showed up, you had no idea if your train was coming in two minutes or 20. Just last week, a handy next step:. It was officially released only for iOS but, in a sign of the times, someone made androids thanks to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's API offerings (more on APIs below). Yes, it's only for a few subway lines, but 90 percent of my trains are covered and this is my list, after all.
9. Wii and Kinect: When I was growing up, Atari, Intellivision, and Commodore were major players in the home console market. The systems that came after that were much more powerful and more popular, but were basically improvements on what came before (sorry, Sega, Nintendo 64, Play station and Xbox But the Wii, which I first tested at a family gathering on Thanksgiving 2006, was a breakthrough worthy of this list. I saw something I'd never seen before: grandparents, parents, and kids all gathered around the big-screen TV, playing digital bowling, golf, and tennis.
   
   Some of that may have happened on occasion in the Atari days, but now, the players were all standing, not sitting on a couch, thanks to the wireless remotes. I predicted on my local TV segment the following week that the Wii would be unlike any other video game product and outsell the competition. At the time and in the years to follow, gamer-snobs felt the Wii wasn't any good in comparison to consoles with fancier graphics, better sound and more complex -- and more gruesome -- titles. The Wii went onto to outsell the other so-called "seventh generation" consoles, including PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
   
   A logical next step in gaming has to be on my list. The Microsoft Kinect sensor, which works on Xbox, does away with the wireless remote and uses a player's arms and entire body to control the games -- everything from sports to dance-offs. As I wrote in January 2011 about " this is only the beginning. "The Kinect shows that there's still lots of room for innovation in a field that seemed pretty saturated. I expect to see more developments in this area as the sensors gets smarter, the cameras gets sharper and the game play gets more sophisticated."
10. Social media, including blogging: Here I'm including various platforms -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging -- that have changed the way a billion-plus people spend their time, express themselves, and engage with each other. For better and worse.
11. Wikipedia: While it's easy to complain about some of the problems of Wikipedia, the fact is that it has completely changed the way I do everyday research. It's my first stop, not my last. And I sometimes spend as much time on the footnotes and where they lead as I do on the main text. Even hoaxes like the one uncovered last week don't deter me (see). If you want to truly understand Wikipedia's impact, potential and pitfalls, you have to read the definitive book about it, YouTube: I had considered not including YouTube because it is, in many ways, just an evolution in online video. But in recent years, YouTube has become its own community with 4 billion hours of video watched every month; an important tool for all kinds of marketing, promotion and propaganda; and a source of entertainment and information for 800 million people every month -- a stat I found in that makes that case that Al Jazeera English should have gone with a Web-only platform, rather than buying Current TV as announced this week.
12. Zipcar: This car-sharing service changed my family's life, allowing us to access a car in more convenient ways than traditional rental cars (we don't own a car, in part, because parking in our Manhattan building is $500 a month). This week's purchase of Zipcar by Avis for $500 million is causing consternation. Here's an article saying here's one that
13. Credit cards in NYC taxis: Until they came along, I had to always check my wallet for cash before grabbing a taxi. Since credit card readers in cabs became widely available in 2007, I've not had to hesitate before hailing a cab. And unlike some folks who complain about drivers unhappy to take cards, I've never faced an issue with that.
    
    There's another reason to use credit cards in cabs, as I wrote: "I'll always pay for my NYC cabs with credit cards. Turns out the taxi medallion number (the unique number displayed on top of all yellow cabs in Manhattan) is recorded with every credit card purchase, meaning you have way of tracking down cabs you've taken." The taxi industry in the city is the process of a much bigger disruptionDVR: The arrival of TiVo, and, later, the generic digital video recorder provided by the cable company, introduced us all to time-shifting TV in ways the complicated VHS system and its blink "12:00" clock never could.
14. Netflix: I'm including Netflix here as a representative of a whole new class of video watching, a big leap from the DVR. Whether Netflix will be the eventual winner in this space or not (Amazon, Hulu and others are attacking it), the concept of getting movies anytime from anywhere has changed how my family accesses entertainment.
    
    But I don't understand how anyone uses Netflix without also accessing which provides a much better, searchable listing of the on-demand movies on Netflix, including my favorite feature,
    
    If you don't want to spring for Netflix, but are an HBO subscriber, you have to check out the which provides access to dozens of movies and entire seasons of HBO shows that are no longer available on the HBO On Demand service on your cable box. For instance, I saw and enjoyed " a quirky, charming show I never saw when it first ran on the network.
15. iPod and iTunes: These changed the music world forever, letting us carry thousands of songs at a time and getting millions of us to pay for digital music for the first time.
16. Tablets and apps: In some ways, tablets feel like cousins of laptops and not worthy of this list. But in many other ways, they are, indeed, new. The key here are the apps we use in smartphones, too. As millions of users have discovered, tablets can be used in ways that are different from laptops and we see them being used as cash registers, restaurant menus, medical devices and much more. And all this is just getting started.
    I didn't include e-readers such as the Kindle on this list because while they were innovative, they are not going to stick around much longer. Thanks to tablets that let you read Kindle content without a Kindle, e-readers are dying much faster than anyone could have predicted. See
17. APIs: I am not an engineer, but I play one on TV, thanks to. Since I don't program, it's not obvious why I'd include APIs -- or application programming interfaces -- on this list.
    But these Web APIs, which allow live data and content from one Web service to be posted and used on another have changed how we access information. Everything from mash-ups of to embedding videos, to the subway-arrival app I mentioned in No. 7 above, APIs are now a critical part of our digital lives. Here's a
18. Cordless irons: I know some of you will claim to have had cordless electric irons for decades now, but the day I saw one of these, I had to have one when the prices became reasonable. They aren't as good as corded ones (the heat dissipates too quickly), but they changed my ironing life.