₦airaland Forum

It takes 3 days with good address.You know, in Nigeria ,we are a problem with our street names and house numberings

The writer of this piece is narrow minded. The write-up lacks substance.

it is the Custom Service that calculate the charges,NIPOST only collect on their behalf. NIPOST only charge handling fees which is not more than N500 Naira because USPS do not give NIPOST money for delivering the item

within Nigeria @ most 3days with good address and 1 week from abroad. if it arrives @ its destination ,registered items are kept for a maximum of 60 days for overseas mail ( retention Period ) before it is returned to sender. EMS Courier is kept for 7 days local and 14 days international. hope that answers ur question.

8 commonly misunderstood words



Recently, I received a letter from a new private school opening in my neighborhood. The letter asked parents to attend an open house session to learn more about the school.
It’s the kind of direct mail that we all receive, and the only reason I paid attention to it was because of an error in the salutation. It read, “Dear prospective parent/guardian.”
Hmmmm.
Prospective means “likely or expected to happen or likely to become or be.” I’m already a parent and have been for many years. And so were most of the people who received the letter, otherwise they would not have received it. To address us “prospective parents” is wrong. To address us as “prospective clients” or “parents of prospective students” would have been correct, but awkward. In this case “Dear parent” would have been the better choice.
Word choice can be tricky. The English language is full of words that don’t mean what people think they mean or words that have subtle shades of meaning.

Here are a few examples.


Averse and Adverse

Averse means opposed to or having a strong dislike of something. Example: "He was averse to the idea of using a new style guide."
Averse is often confused with adverse, which means unfavorable or harmful. Ex.: "Report any adverse effects to your physician."

Comprise and Compose

To comprise is to enclose or include. Comprise is used in the active voice; therefore, “comprised of” is not correct. Ex.: "The university comprises six colleges and nine divisions."
Comprise is often confused with compose, which means to make up or be a constituent of. Compose can be used in the passive voice. Ex.: "The company is composed of 14,000 employees."


Imply and Infer

Imply is often used incorrectly as a synonym for infer. To imply is to speak indirectly or suggest.Ex.: "You are implying that changing the style guide is our only alternative."

To infer is to surmise or conclude. Ex.: "I infer from your statement that you agree with this solution."


Less and Fewer

Less is often confused with fewer. Use less to refer to quantities that can’t be counted and fewer to refer to numbers. "There were less people in the office today" is incorrect, because people can be counted. "There were fewer people in the office today" is correct.


Poisonous and Venomous

Poisonous — often confused with venomous — means a plant, animal, or substance capable of causing death or illness if one comes into contact with it. Venomous means capable of injecting venom.
A rattlesnake is not itself poisonous, because if you eat one it won’t poison you. A blowfish will kill you if you eat it, so it is poisonous, but not venomous.


Precision and Accurate

In science and medical writing, precision is how close a set of measured values are to each other. Precision is often confused with accuracy, which means how close a measured value is to the true value.
Confused? As explained on Mathisfun.com, “If you are playing soccer and you always hit the left goal post instead of scoring, then you are not accurate, but you are precise.”


Than and Then

Than should not be confused with then. Than is a conjunction used to compare things. Ex.: "Editing is easier said than done."
Then has several meanings, but none of them are comparative. In general, then is used in relation to time and the order in which events occur. Ex.: "I would like to meet for drinks, then have dessert.

Nairalanders, care to share any other commonly misunderstood words?

Read more of her work at impertinentremarks.com.

Jona the gona (gonner) It was only during Yar'adua's 2 yrs in office that we had Rule of Law. Now all we have is impunity, corruption n insecurity. The few projects executed are not commensurate with the money spent. Keep on wallowing in your self deceit and insincerity. All of us will suffer it in the next four years if ,God forbid, he should continue.

Useless points, most of the physical development projects mentioned are things that OBJ n Yar'adua conceived n initiated. The Clueless One cannot conceive any good thing apart from depleting all govt. account n siphoning the funds in the name of projects.
To cap it, he doesn't even have the clue on how to steal, money vanishes from govt accounts without a good explanation.

Hmmmm, reminds me of Otuoke

calaway:
buhari's hausa people have already started their evil even before elections. Nobody in his senses will reward this evil man and his followers who constitute boko haram with votes.
thank GOD they did not kill people.

Youths In Jos Set Pres. Jonathan Campaign Bus On Fire - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8PqV5_wXSa8

For ur info, it was done by youths of PDP who felt shortchanged by the PDP powerbroker in the state.

If you call that a joke, then u must be as joker.

Only the corrupt will be disturbed by Buhari's statement.

Adminisher:
This is going to knock out a number of banks. To be honest with you I don't like the new CBN governor. He lacks foresight and is very parochial. What Nigeria should be doing is targeting diaspora transfers that can be in excess of $45billion a year through special instruments. Our human resources abroad make more foreign exchange than oil and gas makes for us locality and also many things are possible if only the man were really bright instead of bringing ideas like stealing N65 from cross ATM transactions.

What did you expect from a man GEJ brought ?

"Jonathan added that his administration had curbed corruption in the civil service and the agricultural sector through the computerisation of payment system.

The President, however, explained that the system caused the delay in paying federal civil servants December salaries.

He said, “I apologise to those families that suffered because I believe that for you to fight corruption, you must take some measures such as establishing institutions. You don’t just wake up, enter the streets and start arresting people and showing them on television sets and saying you are fighting corruption."

The payment system has been in operation for abt 3-4 yrs without hitches. Don't use it to deceive Nigerians and is it only in salary administration that you find corruption?
Every midweek, you hear of contracts been awarded, contracts that are been padded and over inflated to siphon funds.

HIis 5+ yrs in office has has witnessed zero corruption because no one has been taken to court for such.

Well said, he has done his best as an individual but his best isn't good enough. He should step aside for tougher leaders who can handle the cabals, bad Advisers and overbearing wives that are leading the country astray for their own pecuniary motives.

Teixobactin - First new antibiotic in 30 years discovered in major breakthrough

The discovery of Teixobactin could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics because of the way it was discovered.

The first new antibiotic to be discovered in nearly 30 years has been hailed as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the fight against the growing resistance to drugs.

Teixobactin has been found to treat many common bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, septicaemia and C. diff, and could be available within five years.

But more importantly it could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics because of the way it was discovered.

Scientists have always believed that the soil was teeming with new and potent antibiotics because bacteria have developed novel ways to fight off other microbes.

But 99 per cent of microbes will not grow in laboratory conditions leaving researchers frustrated that they could not get to the life-saving natural drugs.

Now a team from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, have discovered a way of using an electronic chip to grow the microbes in the soil and then isolate their antibiotic chemical compounds.

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They discovered that one compound, Teixobactin, is highly effective against common bacterial infections Clostridium difficile, Mycobacterium tuberculous and Staphylococcus aureus.

Professor Kim Lewis, Director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Centre said: “Apart from the immediate implementation, there is also I think a paradigm shift in our minds because we have been operating on the basis that resistance development is inevitable and that we have to focus on introducing drugs faster than resistance

“Teixobactin shows how we can adopt an alternative strategy and develop compounds to which bacteria are not resistant.”

The first antibiotic Penicillin, was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and more than 100 compounds have been found since, but no new class has been found since 1987.

The lack of new drugs coupled with over-prescribing has led to bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to modern medicines.

Dame Sally Davies, the government’s Chief Medical Officer, said antibiotic resistant was ‘as big a risk of terrorism; and warned that Britain faced returning to a 19th century world where the smallest infection or operation could kill.

The World Health Oganisation has also classified antimicrobial resistance as a "serious threat’ to every region of the world which ‘has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country"

However the new discovery offers hope that many new antibiotics could be found to fight bacterial infections.

Crucially, the scientists believe that bacteria will not become resistant to Teixobactin for at least 30 years because of its multiple methods of attack.

Testing on mice has already shown that the antibiotic works well at clearing infections, without side-effects. The team is now concentrating on upscaling production so that it could be tested in humans.

“Right now we can deliver a dose that cures mice and a variety of models of infection and we can deliver 10 mg per kg so it correlates well with human usage,” added Professor Lewis.

The breakthrough was heralded by scientists who said it could prove a ‘game-changer’ in the struggle against antimicrobial resistance.

Prof Laura Piddock, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Birmingham, said: “The screening tool developed by these researchers could be a ‘game changer’ for discovering new antibiotics as it allows compounds to be isolated from soil producing micro-organisms that do not grow under normal laboratory conditions.”

Prof Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, from the University of Edinburgh added: “Any report of a new antibiotic is auspicious, but what most excites me about the paper is the tantalising prospect that this discovery is just the tip of the iceberg.

“Most antibiotics are natural products derived from microbes in the soil. The ones we have discovered so far come from a tiny subset of the rich diversity of mi

WhatsApp Tops 700 Mill. Users, 30 Bill. Daily Messages


Facebook-owned cross-platform messaging application WhatsApp surpassed two significant milestones, topping 700 million monthly active users, as well as 30 billion messages sent daily.

WhatsApp co-founder and CEO and Facebook board member Jan Koum announced the news in a Facebook post:

"I hope you all had a happy and peaceful holiday season. Today, we’re thrilled to share that WhatsApp has more than 700 million monthly active users. Additionally, every day, our users now send over 30 billion messages. As humbled and excited as we are by these numbers and our continued growth, we’re even more excited to keep building a great product in 2015. Most of all, we’re grateful that so many of you are using WhatsApp to stay in touch with your friends and family, business colleagues and classmates. We promise to continue working hard to make WhatsApp even better."

Readers: How many of you use WhatsApp?

" Hence, what amounts to a violation of the law is when the expenses incurred exceeds 1billion naira and not when they generate in excess.

From a simple accounting knowledge, we know that there is a great difference between Income and Expenditure, hence, the APC should kindly not mislead the people. If you are to lead the nation, possibly in 2015, you should garner your votes through accurate dissemination of truthful information and not falsehood neither should they tell INEC to prosecute the PDP when it is clear that they haven't violated the law. "



True talk. I'm APC but I like this assertion.

I believe most of you Nairalanders are young and those days its at least 7yrs to finish primary school. He did up to standard 7 as it is called then.

These tubers of yam were purported to have been seen in Minna , Niger State. What's your take on it ?

Dundee's, the mother is bearing the father's name Mrs Sixty-two so that's the father's name.

Beats my imagination why this should be FP material or is it a lack of news items?

They have suddenly realised GEJ is caught in the quardmire of his irresponsible govt. they want to try and fool us by this feeble attempt to whip up sentiments like the shoeless propaganda strategy that went awry. Every leadership position goes with its attendant risk,but for Edwin Clerk or is it Clark to go that far is very crass of him.

APC don't lie,you have abused the President severally, though I like it sha.

'Orikinla:
Boko Haram is taking over northern Nigeria and the Commnader-in- Chief has gone AWOL.


are you not happy? or you still want one naijerya?'

@Orikinla: Is BH a ploy to make the North jettison the 'noble' cause of one naijerya?

Pls try to update, don't kill the application. They need the money too.

Have Nigerians ever wondered why David Mark has never been impeached for almost two tenures as Senate president. Something which is unheard of in Nija Senate politics.

Read as many comments as I could, so no nairalander will comment in support of PEJ? Is she all alone.

I believe its because they didn't agree terms with MUFC for an extention.

Have u all 4gotten Kenneth Zeigbo who was touted as the next Rashidi Yekini by the press?