Lung carcinoma: its profile and changing trends

BACKGROUND: Lung Carcinoma is the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide with an incidence of 1.3 million cases per year. This study was undertaken to determine prevalence of various histological types of lung carcinoma and to analyse their changing trends with time. METHODS: This is a retrospective analytical study. A total of 330 cases of lung carcinoma were analysed from 2003 to 2008. Cases from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) were included in this study. Furthermore, only cases of lung carcinoma were considered while other malignancies were excluded. RESULTS: Squamous Cell carcinoma was found in 42.7% of cases. Overall male to female ratio was 2.67:1. Prevalence of Squamous Cell carcinoma increased from 32% to 57.9% while that of Small Cell carcinoma increased from 12% to 17.1%. Unspecified type showed decrease from 36% to 5.3%. Increase in the prevalence of Squamous Cell carcinoma was found in both males and females while change in the prevalence of Small Cell carcinoma was found on!y in males. CONCLUSION: Squamous Cell carcinoma was the most prevalent variant of lung carcinoma in our region, followed by Adenocarcinoma. Male to female ratio across different histological patterns did not show significant variation. Increase in the prevalence of Squamous Cell carcinoma was statistically significant in both males and females while in case of Small Cell carcinoma change in its prevalence was also significant in males

IMPACT OF FUNDING IN THE ORGANIZATION OF SPORTS FOR THE DISABLED PERSONS IN SPECIAL SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA

The Nigeria National Education Policy (6-3-3-4) is specific on physical education when it stated in paragraph 7 and 8 of section one of the National Policy on Education that physical education will be emphasized at all levels of the educational system. In an attempt to further confirm the attention given to sport in Nigeria, the federal government of Nigeria’s Sports Development Policy documents (FRN, 1989) states that the Federal government accepts special responsibility for ensuring adequate level of funding for such programme as sports for the disabled. Very little efforts have been made in respect of proper funding for sports for the disabled in special schools in Nigeria. This paper discussed the impact of funding in the organization of sports for the disabled persons in special schools in Nigeria. The hypothesis stated in this paper was that funding has no significant impact in the organization of sport for the disabled persons in special schools in Nigeria. The population of this study consists of 5030 disabled students, 38 sports coordinators and 35 coaches of Special Schools in Nigeria. Proportionate sampling technique was used in selecting the number of respondents while simple random sampling technique was used to select the respondents from each of the special schools using the dip and pick method. A sample size of four hundred and eight (408) respondents made up of disabled persons in special schools, sports coordinators and coaches were used. A designed questionnaire for the deaf and dumb, the crippled were administered while the blind were equally administered with questionnaire which was interpreted into braille. The result in table 1 indicated the calculated chi-square value of 441.18 to be higher than the critical chi-square value of 34.17 at df 20 at 0.05 alpha level of significance. This shows that funding has significant impact in the organization of sports for the disabled persons in special schools in Nigeria. Therefore, the null hypothesis which states that funding has no significant impact in the organization of sports for the disabled persons in special schools in Nigeria is hereby rejected.  Article visualizations

Flow-Aware Elephant Flow Detection for Software-Defined Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) separates the network control plane from the packet forwarding plane, which provides comprehensive network-state visibility for better network management and resilience. Traffic classification, particularly for elephant flow detection, can lead to improved flow control and resource provisioning in SDN networks. Existing elephant flow detection techniques use pre-set thresholds that cannot scale with the changes in the traffic concept and distribution. This paper proposes a flow-aware elephant flow detection applied to SDN. The proposed technique employs two classifiers, each respectively on SDN switches and controller, to achieve accurate elephant flow detection efficiently. Moreover, this technique allows sharing the elephant flow classification tasks between the controller and switches. Hence, most mice flows can be filtered in the switches, thus avoiding the need to send large numbers of classification requests and signaling messages to the controller. Experimental findings reveal that the proposed technique outperforms contemporary methods in terms of the running time, accuracy, F-measure, and recall

Gum exudates of Acacia senegal linn is an alternative binding agent in Drosophila melanogaster culture for laboratory maintenance of stocks

The gum exudates of Acacia senegal Linn was utilized as a single agent or in combination with agar-agar in the formulation of Drosophila diet. Eight (8) corn-meal diets were formulated in two sets consisting of 15 – 40 % (w/w) A. senegal as a single binding agent or a mixture of A. senegal in the ratios of 1:5, 1:2, 1:1 and 2:1 to agar-agar per 100 g corn-meal diet. Biochemical markers of toxicity were analyzed spectrophotometrically. Standard methods of AOAC were employed to determine the physicochemical and proximate compositions of the formulated corn-meal diets. The results from this study showed high level of safety of the gum on adult Drosophila melanogaster (Harwich strain) of both sexes and of the same lineage. LC50 > 100 mg/g with insignificant mortality in all groups at varying concentration (1 – 100 mg/g) of the gum exudate was observed after 7 days of treatment. Significant increases in eclosion in the A. senegal – exposed flies at concentrations of 2, 4 and 5 mg/g diet was also observed after the treatment. A normal trend in locomotor activity was observed in all groups when flies were subjected to negative geotaxic assay, however, at concentrations of 50 mg/g there was an impairment in locomotion. The formulated A. Senegal containing diets have shown varying differences in physicochemical properties, even though no significant changes in the biochemical parameters including SOD1, Catalase and GST in all groups were seen. The collective findings of the present study revealed that the gum exudates of A. senegal L. may be a cost-effective alternative of agar-agar in corn-meal diet for laboratory maintenance of Drosophila melanogaster stocks

Patogenicidad in vitro de Akanthomyces lecanii y Metarhiziumanisopliae contra el pulgón Aphis craccivora

Aphis craccivora is a serious pest of cowpea worldwide and re-sponsible for low crop yields. Entomopathogenic fungi offer envir-onmentally friendly alternatives to conventional synthetic pesti-cides. In the present study, the biological control potential ofAkanthomyces lecanii and Metarhizium anisopliae against cowpeaaphid was evaluated under laboratory conditions. These fungi wereused in the laboratory bioassays: Conidial suspensions with differ-ent concentrations of spores of each isolate were sprayed on filter-paper discs on which bean leaves were placed as food for the in-sects. Aphid mortality was observed and recorded for 10 days. Theconcentration of 1x108 conidia/ml was high enough to cause insectmortality in all the isolates tested while the control mortality was10%. This study confirms the potential of using the indigenousfungi as biological control agents against the cowpea aphids evenat low concentrations.Aphis craccivora es una plaga mundial grave de la alubia ojo deperdiz y responsable del bajo rendimiento del cultivo. Los hongosentomopatógenos ofrecen alternativas ambientalmente respetuo-sas a pesticidas sintéticos convencionales. Se evaluó el potencialde Akanthomyces lecanii y Metarhizium anisopliae contra el pulgónnegro de las leguminosas en laboratorio. Estos hongos se utiliza-ron en bioensayos de laboratorio: Se rociaron discos de papel condiferentes concentraciones de esporas de cada aislado, con hojasde judía como alimento para los insectos. Se observó y registró lamortalidad de los pulgones durante 10 días. La concentración de1x108 conidios/ml fue suficientemente alta para causar mortalidaden todos los ensayos, mientras que en el control fue del 10%. Esteestudio confirma el potencial de hongos autóctonos como agentesde control biológico contra estos pulgones, incluso a bajas concen-tracione

A 5-year review of maternal mortality associated with eclampsia in a tertiary institution in northern Nigeria

Objective : To determine the incidence of maternal mortality associated with eclampsia and to determine how socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of the women influence the deaths. Methodology : Records of 52 eclampsia-related mortalities from January 2003 to December 2007 were reviewed, retrospectively. Their social demography, mode and place of delivery, time of eclampsia, and fetal outcome were extracted for analysis. Results : Eclampsia accounted for 52 (46.4%) of the 112 total maternal deaths recorded within the 5-year period, with case fatality of 22.33%. Age group < 20, 20-29 and above 30 all had similar case fatality rate of 22.1%, 23.8% and 26.7%, respectively. Those who were experiencing their first deliveries have the worst deaths recording 42.5% of the case fatality in that category. As expected, unbooked had higher case fatality of 24.0% compared to 15% among booked cases, while those with no formal education also had more death (22.3% case fatality) as compared to 3.3% among those who had some form of formal education. Antepartum eclampsia was the cause in 50% of the death, 11(21.2%) of the pregnancies were not delivered before their death, while 18 (34.6%) were stillbirth. Conclusion : Eclampsia still remains the major cause of maternal mortality in this region resulting from unsupervised pregnancies and deliveries. There is need to educate and encourage the general public for antenatal care and hospital delivery

Modified low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy protocol for efficient energy consumption in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we propose a Modified Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (MoLEACH) protocol to improve energy consumption in in Wireless Sensor Networks. The novelty of MoLEACH is that, unlike the original LEACH that uses the residual energy of the network, it considers the residual energy of each node for calculation of the threshold value for the next round in cluster head selection. We make comparative simulation analysis between the MoLEACH and LEACH in testing different parameters such as first node dead, half node dead, and the effect of the number of nodes to the network lifetime. The simulation results show that the number of nodes affects the network lifetime in which increments of number of nodes decrease the network lifetime. In small area, minimum number of nodes is better for network lifetime in both MoLEACH and LEACH protocols. Hence, MoLEACH shows improvement of energy efficiency over the LEAC