Growth, phytochemicals and antifungal activity of Bryophyllum pinnatum L. subjected to water deficit stress

The impact of water stress on the growth, concentration of phytochemicals and antifungal potency of Bryophyllum pinnatum L. was investigated. Three weeks old seedlings were subjected to 3, 7 and 10 days water deficit regimes and a control (watered daily). Plant height, number of leaves, whole plant dry weight, net assimilation rate, leaf area ratio and relative growth rate were reduced by 6 to 50% as intervals of water deficit increased. Alkaloids, tannins, saponins and flavonoids were present in all plants and all but alkaloids increased with increase in intervals of water deficit. Alkaloid content decreased by 1.3 to 10.5% while the other phytochemicals increased by 12 to 206% in response to water deficit stress. Ethanolic extracts of plants from the four batches showed varying inhibition zones against Candida albicans. The inhibition zones decreased with increasing water deficit intervals corresponding with the decrease in alkaloid content. This research has revealed that water stress increases the tannin, saponin and flavonoid contents of Bryophyllum but decreases the alkaloid content.Key words: Bryophyllum, water deficit, phytochemicals, inhibition zone

Influence of Land Use Types on Physical and Chemical Properties in Oba Hill Forest Reserve, Iwo, South-western Nigeria

Ecosystems have been affected by series of activities that occurred on lands. The effects of land use change on the physical and chemical properties of the soil in Oba Hill Forest Reserve have been studied using standard instrumentation techniques. Results obtained showed that the texture of the soils ranged from loam to sandy loam while the pH of the soils from the four land use types ranged from 4.92 (acidic) to 7.80 (alkaline).The bulk densities in soils from the four land use types are natural forest (1.01 g/m3), teak plantation (1.21 g/m3), farmland (1.55 g/cm3) and residential (1.66 g/m3). Concentration of Mn in soils are higher than Zn, Cu and Fe from the all the studied land use types. Higher mean concentration values of Mn is recorded in soils from natural land (98.12±0.99 mg/kg) followed by plantation land with mean value of 74.32±0.52 while soils from residential land had lowest mean value of 19.59±0.13mg/kg. Soils from the natural land also have the highest mean concentrations value of Fe (69.04±0.26 mg/kg), Zn (21.48±0.11mg/kg) and Cu (15.43±0.04 mg/kg) while least mean concentration values of Fe (25.46±0.03 mg/kg), Zn (8.59±0.01mg/kg) and Cu (3.55±0.01mg/kg) are recorded in residential land. The results revealed that changing in land use types from natural forest to residential land decrease the organic matter, available nitrogen, soil moisture, porosity exchangeable cations, micronutrients and increased the bulk density in the soils. This study has shown that land use types can affect soil properties and existence of essential nutrients in the soils. &nbsp

Assessment of Agroforestry Practices in Ago-Owu Forest Reserve, Ayedaade Local Government area, Osun State, South-western Nigeria

Agroforestry is a collective name for land use systems and practices in which woody perennials are integrated with food crop and forestry, either in a spatial mixture or in a temporal sequence and there are normally both ecological and economic interactions between woody and non woody components. This study investigated types of agroforestry practiced, the impact of agroforestry on the lives of people, assessed the impact of agroforestry on the environment, and identified possible problems associated with agroforestry system in Ago-owu Forest Reserve, Ayedaade Local Government area of Osun State, Nigeria by collecting samples from Mokore, Ajegunle and Alabameta villages using verified methods. Sampling intensity of 10% for population below 500, 5% sampling intensity for population between 500 and 1000 and 2.5% sampling intensity for the population above 1000. A total of eighty (80) questionnaires were administered, thirty copies of questionnaires were distributed both in Mokore and Ajegunle and twenty in Alabameta. The result was analysed using Descriptive Statistics such as frequency tables, percentages, bar chart and Chi square. The result showed that 47.5 % of the respondents are involved in Agri-silviculture. The benefits derived from agroforestry was also unfolded, they are medicinal (11.25%), Income generation (52.5%), production of food crop (33.75%) and non-timber forest products generation (2.5%). The impact of agroforestry to the environment includes Soil erosion control (48.75%), Soil stabilization (31.25%), and (Stable environment 20%)

Equipping Health Professions Educators to Better Address Medical Misinformation

As part of a cooperative agreement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Federal Award Identification Number [FAIN]: NU50CK000586), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) began a strategic initiative in 2022 both to increase confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and to address medical misinformation and mistrust through education in health professions contexts. Specifically, the AAMC solicited proposals for integrating competency-based, interprofessional strategies to mitigate health misinformation into new or existing curricula. Five Health Professions Education Curricular Innovations subgrantees received support from the AAMC in 2022 and reflected on the implementation of their ideas in a series of meetings over several months. Subgrantees included the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, the Maine Medical Center/Tufts University School of Medicine, and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. This paper comprises insights from each of the teams and overarching observations regarding the challenges and opportunities involved with leveraging health professions education to address medical misinformation and improve patient health

Prevalence and Pattern of Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency in Different Haemoglobin Types in Ile-Ife

Status of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G-6-PD) and haemoglobin (Hb) types were determined in 1,216 individuals in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, using methaemoglobin reduction and cellulosoe acetate electrophoresis methods. The subjects were made up of 556 males and 660 females. Their ages ranged between 1 and 65 years. Three hundred and twenty-five (26.7%) were G-6-PD deficient. Of the 149 deficient females, 36 (5.4%) were homozygous and 113 (17.2%) were heterozygous. G-6-PD deficiency was recorded in subjects with Hb types AA, AS, AC, SC and SS except CC, hence there is no dependency relationship between G-6-PD status and Hb types. The prevalence rate of G-6-PD deficiency (26.7%) in Ile-Ife is high, hence it is suggested that for better management, G-6-PD screening should be done for patients who will be treated with oxidant drugs such as anti-malarials. Keywords: G-6-PD deficiency, prevalence, pattern. Journal of Medical Laboratory Science Vol. 13 (2) 2004: pp. 67-7

Modelling Attendees' Participation in Virtual Events

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A dynamic intrusion detection system for critical information infrastructure

The inflow of cyber-attacks on the services of critical information infrastructure (CII) has necessitated adequate attention to their security, functionality and continuous existence. Current attack detection strategies for CII have challenges of high false positive rate, low detection accuracy and lack of immediate response to the security breach. This work presents a Dynamic Intrusion Detection System (DIDS) to control the flow of cyber-attacks on CII and provide a dynamic response to every detection in real-time using a multiclass support vector machine (m-SVM) learning algorithm. Principal component analysis was used for feature reduction to enhance the classification accuracy of m-SVM. Hyper-parameter-tuning was conducted with a support vector classifier and the lowest cost was obtained at a parameter value (c) of 100 with a gamma value of 0.1. The highest performance accuracy of 97.64% and the detection rate of 99.20% were recorded by DIDS when compared with related approaches. DIDS demonstrated a strong capability for securing CII against malicious activities with comparative advantages in terms of efficiency, accuracy and effectiveness

On-orbit performance of the ISS-CREAM calorimeter

Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) experiment is designed to study the composition and energy spectra of cosmic-ray particles from 10^12 to 10^15 eV. ISS-CREAM was launched and deployed to the ISS in August 2017. The ISS-CREAM payload employs a Silicon Charge Detector for charge measurements, Top and Bottom Counting Detector for electron-hadron separation and a low-energy trigger, a Boronated Scintillator Detector for additional electron-hadron separation, and a Calorimeter (CAL) for en-ergy measurements and a high-energy trigger. The CAL is constructed of 20 layers of tungsten plates interleaved with scintillating fiber ribbons read out by hybrid-photodiodes (HPDs) and densified carbon targets. Each CAL layer is made of 3.5 mm (1 X_0) thick tungsten plates alter-nating with fifty 0.5 mm thick and 1 cm wide scintillating fiber ribbons. Consecutive layers of fiber ribbons are installed orthogonal to each other. Energy deposition in the CAL determines the particle energy and provides tracking information to determine which segment(s) of the charge detectors to use for the charge measurement. Tracking for showers is accomplished by extrapolating each shower axis back to the charge detectors. The performance of the ISS-CREAM CAL during flight is presented

e/p separation study using the ISS-CREAM top and bottom counting detectors

Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) is an experiment for studying the origin, acceleration, and propagation mechanisms of high-energy cosmic rays. The ISS-CREAM instrument was launched on the 14th of August 2017 to the ISS aboard the SpaceX-12 Dragon spacecraft. The Top and Bottom Counting Detectors (TCD/BCD) are parts of the ISS-CREAM instrument and designed for studying electron and gamma-ray physics. The TCD/BCD each consist of an array of 20 × 20 photodiodes on a plastic scintillator. The TCD/BCD can separate electrons from protons by using the difference between the shapes of electromagnetic and hadronic showers in the high energy region. The Boosted Decision Tree (BDT) method, which is a deep learning method, is used in this separation study. We will present results of the electron/proton separation study and rejection power in various energy ranges