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The National Committee on the Reform and Harmonisation of Arbitration and ADR Laws in Nigeria recommended the co-existence of a federal arbitration law (dealing with arbitration arising from international and inter-state transactions) and state arbitration laws (dealing with arbitration arising from intra-state transactions). In arriving at its conclusion, the committee relied on the ‘trade and commerce’ argument as well as the ‘pith and substance argument’. But disagreement exists regarding the scope or application of state arbitration laws vis-à-vis the federal arbitration law. Whilst anchoring our foundational argument on the constitution, we will in this article contend that a conflict of laws approach would provide a valid conceptual framework and the mechanics for the co-existence of a federal arbitration law with state arbitration laws in Nigeria.

The objective of this study was to analyse bio-fibre comminution energy and particle size classification as the first step towards converting cellulose based agricultural residues into environment-friendly composite products. Bio-fibres used in the study were water retted, chemically modified and oven dried to remove any trace of moisture. The bio-fibres comminution was performed in a laboratory-scale knife mill at varying mill speed, and chemical treatment concentrations. The particle size classification was aided by mechanical sieving process. Nonlinear Least Square method using the cftool based on Gauss-Newton method of iteration available in MATLAB 2007b was used to fit the experimental data to Rosin-Rammler-Bennett’s (RRB) and Gaudin-Schuhmann’s (GS) size distribution models. Energy consumption was estimated via Kick’s, Rittinger’s and Bond’s models. The result showed that energy requirement for bio-fibre comminution increases with decreasing particle size, with coir fibres requiring the highest energy when compared with banana fibres. As the mill speed increases from 1400 rpm to 2100 rpm the energy consumed in comminution banana fibre increases from 357.46 J/g to 369.38 J/g for 2% NaOH treatment with the kick’s constant increasing from 52.97 J/g to 57.86 J/g for untreated banana fibres. Whereas for coir fibre, the energy consumed in comminution increases from 382.14 J/g to 411.07 J/g for 2% NaOH treatment with the Kick’s constant increasing from 57.25 J/g to 61.83 J/g for untreated coir fibres. Bio-fibre energy consumption was best described by Kick’s model with R2 > 0.910 and RRB model captured the bio-fibres size distribution better than GS model with higher R2and lower value of SSE and RMSE. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the surface of the fibres had changed, becoming rougher as a result of chemical modification. Findings also indicated that comminution of bio-fibres with high chemical concentration results in less fine sizes with median size (S50) ranging from 524 μm–1476 μm for banana fibres and 644 μm–660 μm for coir fibres. The data obtained at different speeds of comminution and from various bio-fibre treatment conditions might guide the selection of initial fibre size and other processing parameters to better exploit bio-fibres potential in particulate fibre reinforced composites products design.

The aim of the study was to compare symptom-triggered and standard benzodiazepine regimens for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal syndrome in an emergency department clinical decision unit. The authors found that the symptom-triggered approach reduced cumulative benzodiazepine dose and length of stay.

Iron oxide bearing wastes in form of dust and sludges are hard to handle because of their micron size particles and moisture content in case of sludge. More often they are stockpiled in large quantities that can occupy large area of real and agricultural estates and cause pollution. Balling or palettization, an agglomeration process was used to process the wastes in order to address the problem of micron size particles and to make them fit for recycling back into metallic iron production route like blast furnace. Balling or green pelletization is the process of forming nearly spherical shaped granules by tumbling moistened particulates with or without binders in balling drums or discs disc. For a pellet to be effective either for being transported or for being recycled in blast furnace to produce metallic iron without disintegrating to dust its balling characteristics should measure up to required standard. Most outstanding of those balling characteristics include Drop Number, Green or Wet Compression Strength, Dry Compression Strength, Abrasion and Tumbler Indices. In this work iron oxide bearing wastes was mixed with iron ore concentrates in various proportions. These mixes were taken through balling or wet pelletization process using Radicon Balling Disc. The balls formed balls were taken through Drop number tests adopting the Free Fall method, where balls are made to fall freely from a height of 50 mm on steel surface, Green compression and Dry compression tests using a 5 kN Universal Testing Machine (INSTRON Corp., model 1011 UK) System while Abrasion and Tumbler indices tests were conducted using Tumbler Index cylinder or drum and adopting ASTM method. It was found that Drop number as high as 7.8 times, Green compression strength and Dry compression strength up to 11.7 N/pellet and 25.99 N/pellet respectively were attained by some of the pellets. The Tumbler and Abrasion indices recorded were up to above 95% and 5% respectively. These values are higher than the minimum recommended.