Case report: Spontaneous staphylococcal arthritis in athymic SPF mice

Six cases of spontaneous purulent arthritis confined to the hock joints in male Han-NMRI-nu/nu mice have been observed in a SPF colony. Bacteriological examination revealed a protein A-positive Staphylococcus aureus belonging to phagegroup II. results of the histological, bacteriological examinations and the importance of S. aureus of the 3A/3C/55/71 phage complex for small laboratory animal are discussed

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: CATALYSTS FOR REAL ENTREPRENEURIAL FIRMS’ GROWTH IN SOUTHWEST, NIGERIA

The study examined the role of Human Resource Management Practices (HRMPs) on entrepreneurial firms’ growth in South West Nigeria.  This was to entrenching a set of adequate human resource management practices that can enhance the growth objective of entrepreneurial firms. A structured questionnaire was used to elicit information on relevant variables of the study. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of IBM SPSS statistics version 21.  The results revealed that employees’ training (    = 31.03, s=8.6405); controlling (   = 25.95, s= 6.721)); organizing manpower (    = 23.20, s = 5.760); job analysis and design (   = 23.10, s = 5.883) were reasonably practiced among the firms under the study. Whereas motivating strategies (    = 21.5, s = 5.2905; recruitment and selection (   = 20.45, s = 4.831); and manpower planning (    = 18.72, s = 4.786) fell below the agreement criterion (    = 23.0).  However, it was established that there was a statistically significant influence of the predictor variables on the outcome variable (R2 = 0.837, adjusted R2 = 0.825).  Therefore, the study concluded that Human Resources Management Practices as an omnibus concept have significant influence on Entrepreneurial firms ‘growth. The study suggested that Human Resource Management Practices should be considered as a process by entrepreneurs as it galvanizes entrepreneurial firms' growth objectives.     &nbsp

A comparative study of some robust ridge and liu estimators

In multiple linear regression analysis, multicollinearity and outliers are two main problems. When multicollinearity exists, biased estimation techniques such as Ridge and Liu Estimators are preferable to Ordinary Least Square. On the other hand, when outliers exist in the data, robust estimators like M, MM, LTS and S Estimators, are preferred. To handle these two problems jointly, the study combines the Ridge and Liu Estimators with Robust Estimators to provide Robust Ridge and Robust Liu estimators respectively. The Mean Square Error (MSE) criterion was used to compare the performance of the estimators. Application to the proposed estimators to three (3) real life data set with multicollinearity and outliers problems reveals that the M-Liu and LTS-Liu Estimator are generally most efficient..Keywords: Ordinary Least Squares, Ridge Regression Estimator, Liu Estimator, Robust Estimator, Robust Ridge Regression Estimator, Robust Liu Estimato

Effect of Thermal Treatment on Chemical, Biological and Mechanical Properties of African Whitewood (Triplochiton scleroxylon K. SCHUM)

The thermal modification of wood is a potential alternative method for improving wood properties. This paper evaluates the effect of thermal treatment on the chemical, biological and mechanical properties of African Whitewood (Triplochiton scleroxylon K. Schum) by subjecting the wood to three temperature (200, 170, 140 ℃) at three different time (3, 6, 12 h). Fourier Transformed infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer was used to ascertain the effect of heat treatment on the chemical constituent of the wood while mechanical properties were determined by Modulus of Elasticity (MOE) and Modulus of Rupture (MOR). Durability of heat-treated wood against subterranean termites using field test was also investigated.  FTIR results provided information on the chemical constituents after heat treatment revealing the cellulose and hemicelluloses of Triplochiton scleroxylon wood samples. The decreasing intensity of hydroxyl groups stretching at 3341 cm-1 indicated that heat-treated samples have lost some of their hydroxyl groups. The results showed that the MOR of heated-treated wood at 200 ℃ was significantly higher than the untreated samples. There was also a 26% increase in the MOE of the 170 ℃ heat-treated wood relative to untreated samples. Wood samples thermally treated at 170 ℃ and 200 ℃ as well as untreated wood samples were strongly degraded in term of weight loss (WL) by termite though the degree of degradation varied based on temperature and time in which the wood was modified. However, heat-treated wood at 140 ℃ gave the lowest WL of 20.41% compared to other treated and untreated wood samples. Therefore, strength properties and termites’ resistance of African whitewood also known as Obeche wood in Nigeria could be improved when thermally modified at 170 ℃ and 140 ℃ respectively

Quantitative Impact Evaluation of the WINNN Programme – Summary Report: Operations Research and Impact Evaluation

This report presents the results of the quantitative impact evaluation of the Working to Improve Nutrition in Northern Nigeria (WINNN) programme. The impact evaluation is conducted by the Operations Research and Impact Evaluation (ORIE) project. ORIE is responsible for undertaking operations research and assessing the impact of the WINNN programme and it is led by Oxford Policy Management (OPM) and implemented in collaboration with other institutions.UK Department for International Developmen

Environmental factors associated with overweight among adults in Nigeria

Background: Understanding environmental factors related to obesity can inform interventions for the world wide obesity epidemic, yet no study has been conducted in this context in Africa. This study examined associations between neighbourhood environment variables and overweight in Nigerian adults. Methods: A total of 1818 randomly selected residents (age: 20-65 years, 40% female, 31% overweight and 61.2% response) living in high and low socioeconomic (SES) neighbourhoods in Metropolitan Maiduguri, Nigeria, participated in a cross-sectional study. Anthropometric measurements of height and weight and an interview-assisted self-reported measure of 16 items of perceived neighborhood environments were conducted. The primary outcome was overweight (body mass index [BMI] > or = 25 kg/m(2)) vs. normal weight (BMI = 18.5-24.9 kg/m(2)). Results: After adjustment for sociodemographic variables, overweight was associated with distant access to commercial facilities (odds ratio [OR], 1.49; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-2.18), poor neighbourhood aesthetics (OR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.16-2.09), perceiving garbage and offensive odours in the neighbourhood (OR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.05-1.89) and feeling unsafe from crime at night (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.13-1.91) and unsafe from traffic (OR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.17-2.07) in the total sample. Significant interactions regarding overweight were found between gender and four environmental variables, with low residential density (OR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.02-1.93) and poorly maintained pedestrian pathways (OR, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.13-3.17) associated with overweight in men only, and absence of beautiful things (OR, 2.23; 95% CI, 1.42-3.50) and high traffic making it unsafe to walk (OR, 2.39; 95% CI, 1.49-3.83) associated with overweight in women only. There were few significant interactions between environmental factors and neighborhood SES regarding overweight. Conclusion: Neighbourhood environment factors were associated with being overweight among Nigerian adults. These findings support previous reports in international literature, but should be replicated in other African studies before any firm conclusions can be drawn

Flexibility of in vitro cortical circuits influences resilience from microtrauma

BackgroundSmall clusters comprising hundreds to thousands of neurons are an important level of brain architecture that correlates single neuronal properties to fulfill brain function, but the specific mechanisms through which this scaling occurs are not well understood. In this study, we developed an in vitro experimental platform of small neuronal circuits (islands) to probe the importance of structural properties for their development, physiology, and response to microtrauma.MethodsPrimary cortical neurons were plated on a substrate patterned to promote attachment in clusters of hundreds of cells (islands), transduced with GCaMP6f, allowed to mature until 10–13 days in vitro (DIV), and monitored with Ca2+ as a non-invasive proxy for electrical activity. We adjusted two structural factors–island size and cellular density–to evaluate their role in guiding spontaneous activity and network formation in neuronal islands.ResultsWe found cellular density, but not island size, regulates of circuit activity and network function in this system. Low cellular density islands can achieve many states of activity, while high cellular density biases islands towards a limited regime characterized by low rates of activity and high synchronization, a property we summarized as “flexibility.” The injury severity required for an island to lose activity in 50% of its population was significantly higher in low-density, high flexibility islands.ConclusionTogether, these studies demonstrate flexible living cortical circuits are more resilient to microtrauma, providing the first evidence that initial circuit state may be a key factor to consider when evaluating the consequences of trauma to the cortex

Projections of rapidly rising surface temperatures over Africa under low mitigation.

An analysis of observed trends in African annual-average near-surface temperatures over the last five decades reveals drastic increases, particularly over parts of the subtropics and central tropical Africa. Over these regions, temperatures have been rising at more than twice the global rate of temperature increase. An ensemble of high-resolution downscalings, obtained using a single regional climate model forced with the sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice fields of an ensemble of global circulation model (GCM) simulations, is shown to realistically represent the relatively strong temperature increases observed in subtropical southern and northern Africa. The amplitudes of warming are generally underestimated, however. Further warming is projected to occur during the 21st century, with plausible increases of 4-6 °C over the subtropics and 3-5 °C over the tropics by the end of the century relative to present-day climate under the A2 (a low mitigation) scenario of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios. High impact climate events such as heat-wave days and high fire-danger days are consistently projected to increase drastically in their frequency of occurrence. General decreases in soil-moisture availability are projected, even for regions where increases in rainfall are plausible, due to enhanced levels of evaporation. The regional dowscalings presented here, and recent GCM projections obtained for Africa, indicate that African annual-averaged temperatures may plausibly rise at about 1.5 times the global rate of temperature increase in the subtropics, and at a somewhat lower rate in the tropics. These projected increases although drastic, may be conservative given the model underestimations of observed temperature trends. The relatively strong rate of warming over Africa, in combination with the associated increases in extreme temperature events, may be key factors to consider when interpreting the suitability of global mitigation targets in terms of African climate change and climate change adaptation in Africa.SP2016http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/08500

A 4-year audit of retained placenta at Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Southwestern Nigeria

Background:Retained placenta, with its attendant complications, remains a significant cause of maternal morbidity and mortality. Objective:  To determine the incidence of predisposing factors to and complications of retained placenta at the institution of study.Materials and Methods: At the Obstetric unit of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH), Ado Ekiti, a 4-year retrospective, descriptive study was conducted between 1st of January, 2014 and 31st of December 2018.Version 20 of the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used to process the data. For data analysis, descriptive statistics was used; continuous variables were summarized with mean, while discrete variables were summarized with numbers and percentages. Results: Out of a total deliveries of 3,314 during the study period, there were 60 cases of retained placenta, giving an incidence of 1.8%. Majority of those that had retained placenta 66.7% (40) were within 30- 39 years age bracket; and with grand multiparous women carrying the largest percentage 33.3% (20). Among the various identifiable risk categories, the major identifiable risk factors were previous history of dilatation and curettage (61.7%) and previous history of retained placenta (16.7%). PPH was recorded in 46.7% (28) of the parturients; there was no maternal mortality. Conclusion: To reduce the prevalence of D&C complications, efforts should be geared towards increasing contraceptive prevalence and proficiency in post-abortal care. There is a pressing need for training and retraining of skilled birth attendants in the various health institutions running maternity care services; coupled with proficiency in handling retained placenta. There should also be a burning desire and political will to capture both the poor and the rich under the National Health Insurance program (NHIS) covering maternity care services