Moringa Regimen Corrects Nicotine-induced Deficits in Behaviour, Altered Energy Metabolism and Neurotransmitter Processing in Rat Brain

Background: Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco smoking. It has been reported to have a negative neuromodulatory role in the CNS. Moringa oleifera is a medicinal plant with reported antioxidant, anticonvulsant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. Aim and Objectives: This study was purposed to investigate the neuronal adaptation potentials of Moringa Oleifera (MO) on nicotine induced behavioural decline and perturbed bioenergetics. Material and Methods: Twenty-four adult male Wistar rats were used. The treatment regimen was as follows; control group received distilled water, MO group received 200 mg/kg of MO, Nicotine Group received 1.38 mg/kg body weight of nicotine, and Nicotine + MO group received combined treatment of 200 mg/kg body weight of MO after 1.38 mg/kg body weight of nicotine for 28 days. The animals were subjected to Morris water maze for spatial memory, Y maze for working memory and elevated-plus maze tests for anxiety levels after which they were sacrificed for spectrophotometric analysis of global protein expression, neural bioenergetics (lactate dehydrogenase and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase), and Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) levels. Results: Nicotine infusion caused a reduction in the escape latency period, increased the percentage incorrect alternation, and elevated the anxiety levels of rats. These observations were indicative of decreased synaptic activity in the brain. Together with, nicotine induced chromatolytic changes in cells of the frontal cortex and hippocampus. Co-administration with MO prevented nicotine-associated memory decline, perturbed glucose bioenergetics, induced chromatolysis and histomorphological distortion in the frontal cortex and hippocampus. Conclusion: Our data demonstrate that MO administration enhances experience-dependent neuroplasticity and cognitive behaviour function in laboratory animals, modulates energy metabolism and reduced oxidant stress possibly through enhanced production of key antioxidant enzymes against the damaging effects of nicotine. It provided evidence that MO can be further developed as a means to protect the brain from oxidative stress-induced injury

Knowledge Based Performance Evaluation and Predictive Model for Undergraduate Students

In educational data mining, the process of analysing and predicting from a pool of acquired data is a big challenge due to the influence of behavioural, environmental, parental, personal and social traits of students. While existing education predictive systems have used patterns generated from mined common factors to predict student performance based on subject, faculty, and grade amongst others, explicit traits, which defines a student are often neglected. Thus, such existing models are too general for specific and targeted analysis in more recent times when predictive features are although common but in real essence unique to individual students to a certain degree. Here, a Self-Academic Appraisal and Performance Predictive (SAAPP) system was developed to analyse and predict the overall performance of students before the expiration of their course duration. The inherent knowledge driven model analyses common available predictive internal and external factors, with probabilistic analysis of student academic history and pending courses. The system then builds a personal data centric system for individual student through a decision support expert system and a probabilistic optimal grade point analysis for more effective recommendation. The developed system is more accurate, reliable and precise in student performance classification with targeted recommendations