Impact of Sex Education in Kogi State, Nigeria

The focus of this study was to investigate the impact of family sex education in secondary schools on students in Kogi State, Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was used for the study. A total of 1,960 secondary school students were drawn by stratified random sampling from 40 schools within Kogi State, Nigeria. Three research questions were generated for the study. Data collected using a researchers’ structured questionnaire were subjected to statistics of frequency counts and percentage. The results revealed that students have sexual problems, misuse of sex, high teenage pregnancies and abortion and inadequate information on sex. Among the recommendations made include the provision of adequate counseling and enlightenment programmes for students, teachers and parents on the dangers of sex misuse and abuse, and the implementation of the law against sex abuse of any form, and full enforcement of the child right act of Nigeria. Keywords: Sex, education, abuse, impact, Kogi State, Nigeri

The relative compliance of energy-storing tendons may be due to the helical fibril arrangement of their fascicles

T.S. acknowledges funding for this work from the EPSRC through grant no. EP/L017997/1

Water resource management for sustainable development

Water resource management is the cornerstone for sustainable development. According to the United Nations world water development report, one-fifth of the world?s population lives in areas characterized by physical water scarcity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Urban Street Dust Within Three Land-Uses of Babylon Governorate, Iraq: Distribution, Sources, and Health Risk Assessment

This study is considered to be the first investigation of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in terms of distribution and sources identification for three land-use in Babylon governorate, Iraq. Potential sources of 16 US EPA priority PAHs were identified by employing diagnostic ratio as well as principal component analysis (PCA) method. Additionally, Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risk (ILCR) model was determined in order to assess the risk exposure to the individual PAHs in street dust (SD). Findings in three land-use indicated that the total sixteen PAHs concentrations in the samples were 555.9, 1388, 1221.8 µg Kg−1 for Residential Area, Industrial Area, and Commercial area, respectively, with an average of 1055 µg Kg−1. Moreover, study findings pointed out that the percentages of both LMW and HMW (included MMW) in the street dust were accounted for 38.3% and 61.7% of the total PAHs, respectively. Two components are founded in the PCA with HMW accounted for 75.8% of the total PAHs, and PAHs LMW contributed 24.2% of the total PAHs. Ratios results in nutshell indicated the predominance of pyrogenic source for sixteen PAHs. This suggested by possible sources such as the emission from vehicles, regular gas and fuel combustion activities, as well as coal and wood, were the major cause of 16 principal PAHs in SD samples in all three land-use in Babylon governorate. Results from ILCR model stated that total cancer risk for both targeted individuals exposed to SD in all land-use is more than 10-4 that is referred to increase potential health risk. The PAHs contamination in Babylon governorate needs urgently to be addressed on priority. Moreover, this work is beneficial for Babylon governorate to utilize it as a benchmark for future research

Managing and monitoring chronic non-communicable diseases in a primary health care clinic, Lilongwe, Malawi.

SETTING: Patients with chronic non-communicable diseases attending a primary health care centre, Lilongwe, Malawi. OBJECTIVE: Using an electronic medical record monitoring system, to describe the quarterly and cumulative disease burden, management and outcomes of patients registered between March 2014 and June 2015. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. RESULTS: Of 1135 patients, with new registrations increasing each quarter, 66% were female, 21% were aged ⩾65 years, 20% were obese, 53% had hypertension alone, 18% had diabetes alone, 12% had asthma, 10% had epilepsy and 7% had both hypertension and diabetes. In every quarter, about 30% of patients did not attend the clinic and 19% were registered as lost to follow-up (not seen for ⩾1 year) in the last quarter. Of those attending, over 90% were prescribed medication, and 80-90% with hypertension and/or diabetes had blood pressure/blood glucose measured. Over 85% of those with epilepsy had no seizures and 60-75% with asthma had no severe attacks. Control of blood pressure (41-51%) and diabetes (15-38%) was poor. CONCLUSION: It is feasible to manage patients with non-communicable diseases in a primary health care setting in Malawi, although more attention is needed to improve clinic attendance and the control of hypertension and diabetes

Performance analysis of polling systems with retrials and glue periods

We consider gated polling systems with two special features: (i) retrials, and (ii) glue or reservation periods. When a type-$i$ customer arrives, or retries, during a glue period of station $i$, it will be served in the next visit period of the server to that station. Customers arriving at station $i$ in any other period join the orbit of that station and retry after an exponentially distributed time. Such polling systems can be used to study the performance of certain switches in optical communication systems. For the case of exponentially distributed glue periods, we present an algorithm to obtain the moments of the number of customers in each station. For generally distributed glue periods, we consider the distribution of the total workload in the system, using it to derive a pseudo conservation law which in its turn is used to obtain accurate approximations of the individual mean waiting times. We also consider the problem of choosing the lengths of the glue periods, under a constraint on the total glue period per cycle, so as to minimize a weighted sum of the mean waiting times

Neural Network Fusion of Color, Depth and Location for Object Instance Recognition on a Mobile Robot

International audienceThe development of mobile robots for domestic assistance re-quires solving problems integrating ideas from different fields of research like computer vision, robotic manipulation, localization and mapping. Semantic mapping, that is, the enrichment a map with high-level infor-mation like room and object identities, is an example of such a complex robotic task. Solving this task requires taking into account hard software and hardware constraints brought by the context of autonomous mobile robots, where short processing times and low energy consumption are mandatory. We present a light-weight scene segmentation and object in-stance recognition algorithm using an RGB-D camera and demonstrate it in a semantic mapping experiment. Our method uses a feed-forward neural network to fuse texture, color and depth information. Running at 3 Hz on a single laptop computer, our algorithm achieves a recognition rate of 97% in a controlled environment, and 87% in the adversarial con-ditions of a real robotic task. Our results demonstrate that state of the art recognition rates on a database does not guarantee performance in a real world experiment. We also show the benefit in these conditions of fusing several recognition decisions and data from different sources. The database we compiled for the purpose of this study is publicly available

Activated K-ras and INK4a/Arf Deficiency Cooperate During the Development of Pancreatic Cancer by Activation of Notch and NF-κB Signaling Pathways

BACKGROUND:Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, suggesting that novel strategies for the prevention and treatment of PDAC are urgently needed. K-ras mutations are observed in >90% of pancreatic cancer, suggesting its role in the initiation and early developmental stages of PDAC. In order to gain mechanistic insight as to the role of mutated K-ras, several mouse models have been developed by targeting a conditionally mutated K-ras(G12D) for recapitulating PDAC. A significant co-operativity has been shown in tumor development and metastasis in a compound mouse model with activated K-ras and Ink4a/Arf deficiency. However, the molecular mechanism(s) by which K-ras and Ink4a/Arf deficiency contribute to PDAC has not been fully elucidated. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:To assess the molecular mechanism(s) that are involved in the development of PDAC in the compound transgenic mice with activated K-ras and Ink4a/Arf deficiency, we used multiple methods, such as Real-time RT-PCR, western blotting assay, immunohistochemistry, MTT assay, invasion, EMSA and ELISA. We found that the deletion of Ink4a/Arf in K-ras(G12D) expressing mice leads to PDAC, which is in part mediated through the activation of Notch and NF-κB signaling pathways. Moreover, we found down-regulation of miR-200 family, which could also play important roles in tumor development and progression of PDAC in the compound transgenic mice. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:Our results suggest that the activation of Notch and NF-κB together with the loss of miR-200 family is mechanistically linked with the development and progression of PDAC in the compound K-ras(G12D) and Ink4a/Arf deficient transgenic mice