Design and Fabrication of a Maize Sheller Machine

For the attainment of processed maize of high-quality forms with insignificant labour-intensive tasks, this paper considered the design and development of the maize shelling machine with locally sourced materials. The developed machine was tested and its performance was evaluated against a hand maize shelling machine. The developed machine is found to be faster in shelling operation by more than 3 times than the hand maize shelling machine, the designed machine was documented with 100Kg/hr and 99.73% shelling effective capacity and shelling efficiency, respectively. An overall production cost of N95.970 was incurred. Keywords: Maize, Sheller, Fabrication, Machine, Design DOI: 10.7176/ISDE/13-2-05 Publication date:August 31st 202

Is there a need for extra-length spinal needles for obstetric spinal anaesthesia in obese parturients? A multi-centre study

Background: Neuraxial blocks are often the preferred anaesthetic techniques in obese mothers for caesarean section because of  increased risk of difficult intubation in them. However, these techniques may be challenging possibly because of poor landmark of spinal space and poor selection of spinal needles in them. Objective: To investigate if there is need for extra-length spinal needles in obese parturients during caesarean section. Design: A prospective observational study Setting: Four University Teaching Hospitals in South-Western Nigeria. Subjects: Parturients scheduled for caesarean section under spinal anaesthesia Results: The mean age, weight, body mass index and skin to subarachnoid space depth (SSD) were 31.49 ± 5.12 years, 75.21 ± 14.14 kg, 27.68 ± 5.45 kg/m2 and 6.08 ± 0.98 cm respectively. Of the 485 parturients, 156 (32.2%) were obese. Majority of the obese patients were greater than 30 years of age when compared with those that were under 30 years and this was statistically significant (p= 0.007). Only one obese parturient needed an extra-length spinal needle for skin to sub-arachnoid space depth (SSD) of 10 cm. There was a more positive linear correlation between depth of spinal needle and weight (0.455) than BMI (0.229) Conclusion: Although about one-third of parturients in our study were obese, only one required an extra-length spinal needle. Extra-length spinal needle is rarely needed in our populatio