Paraparesis in a patient with advanced HIV disease without manifestations of opportunistic infection

HIV infection had been associated with many symptoms and signs but the least expected is paraparesis in the absence of constitutional clinical  features. This case presentation is to highlight the unusual presentation of a 43 year old who presented with difficulty in walking due to gradual weakness in his lower limbs (more on right than left) and difficulty in passing urine of 8 months duration. All the common symptoms and signs associated with advanced HIV infection were absent. Urethroscopy and prostate biopsy were done and showed normal findings. Cranial computerised tomography (CT) scan finding was normal, but lumbo-sacral Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) showed degenerative disease suggestive of immunosuppression. HIV screening (Unigold and ELISA) and HIV confirmatory tests were done that showed reactivity to HIV-1 antibody and CD4 count and plasma viral load results were 226 cells/ mm3 and 126,000 copies/ml respectively. The patient was commenced on antiretroviral therapy and paraparesis started resolving. Keywords: HIV infection, Constitutional symptoms, Urinary obstruction, Immunological  parameter

Geochemistry and rare-metal bearing potentials of pegmatites of Gbugbu, Lema and Bishewa areas of North Central Nigeria

The authors acknowledge the immense supports received from the management of the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA). Mr. Olufemi Ogedengbe, a retired Director of Economic Geology Department, NGSA was exceptionally supportive in all aspects of this research.   Abstract The pegmatites of Gbugbu, Lema and Bishewa areas belong to the pegmatite belt of North-Central Nigeria which has been prospected for minerals since the early 1940’s. Detailed geological mapping of the pegmatite bodies and sampling of muscovite extracts were carried out, while major, trace and rare earth elements geochemistry were achieved using ICP-OES and ICP-MS. Variation plots of major and trace elements were used to determine the geochemical characteristics of these pegmatite bodies. Structural features of the study area suggest fracture patterns in the Nigerian Basement rocks controlled the distribution of the pegmatites on a regional NW-SE, N-S and NE-SW and minor E-W trends. The pegmatites are peraluminous with major and trace elements pattern indicating similarities with granitic clan of igneous rocks. Qualitative assessment of the pegmatites using K/Rb vs Cs, K/Cs vs Rb, K/Rb vs Rb/Sr, variation plots suggest the majority of the pegmatites are mineralized with Na/K ratio>1 and  belong to the rare metal bearing class with a compositional variation suggesting regional zonation of the pegmatites. Furthermore, these plots suggest the Lema pegmatite field is highly evolved and belong to the Li-Be-Ta Type (III) and Li-Cs-Be-Ta Type (IV) while majority of those in Gbugbu and Bishewa fields belong to the muscovite bearing Type (I) and Be bearing Type (II). It is concluded from this study that the pegmatites of Gbugbu, Lema and Bishewa pegmatite fields have the potentials for rare metal mineralization with alkali and rare alkali fractionation playing significant roles in the mineralization processes. Furthermore, field evidence and Rb vs Sr plot, suggests the pegmatites were emplaced at variable depths of between 20-30km indicating that the Gbugbu and Bishewa pegmatite fields have been extensively eroded and are close to the roots of the primary mineralization exposing mainly the interior pegmatites of the Types I-II. On the other hand, the Lema field which suffered lesser degree of erosion has Type III-IV pegmatite still remaining at the center of a regionally zoned pegmatite body. The significance of this study is that the pegmatites of Gbugbu, Lema and Bishewa areas have potentials for economic mineralization of tantalite, wolframite, cassiterite and columbite. Keywords: Pegmatites, Pnuematolysis, Albitization, Rare-metal, Mineralization, Peraluminous DOI: 10.7176/JEES/9-3-15 Publication date:March 31st 2019

E-Government, Information and Communications Technology Support and Paperless Environment in Nigerian Public Universities: Issues and Challenges

The move toward a paperless environment has become the driving force behind sustainable development and e-government usage in many public sector institutions. It is equally at the heart of the government campaign to make service delivery in public institutions cost-effective, seamless, and efficient. The universities are supposed to be at the front-line of this campaign due to their operations which involve the heavy usage of papers at huge costs. Thus, making it important for university management to provide ICT support in order to promote paperless exchange of information and presentations. It is, however, understood recently, that there are issues which surround the low usage of ICT among university management and ultimately paperless environment. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to conceptually discuss the mode of university operations and how paperless environment can be attained. The paper highlights the cyclical order of document generation, document management and document sharing as the process in which a paperless environment can take place within both the academic and the administrative settings in the university. The paper further discusses the challenges hindering the attainment of paperless environment among which are infrastructural gap, inadequate ICT support and attitudinal challenge. It is recommended that for the smooth operation of a paperless environment, the government must bridge the infrastructure gap especially power as well as train and retrain staff on the path ICT usage

Nonparametric multivariate covariance chart for monitoring individual observations

Parametric and nonparametric multivariate control charts that are proven very useful in monitoring the covariance matrix of multivariate normally or “nearly” normally distributed continuous datasets have been proposed in statistical process control (SPC) literature. However, in many recent practical applications of SPC, the underlying systems or processes are characterised by discrete or a mixture of discrete and continuous multivariate random variables. In such cases, the available multivariate control charts for monitoring the covariance matrix of continuous processes are inadequate. We propose a multivariate nonparametric Shewhart-type chart for monitoring shifts in the covariance matrix of multivariate discrete or mixture of discrete and continuous random variables. The proposed chart first projects the multivariate dataset into Euclidean space. It then uses the Alt's likelihood ratio obtained from the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator estimator that guarantees a well-conditioned estimate of the covariance matrix as the monitoring statistic. The proposed scheme does not require any parametric model assumptions and can be based on any distance measure of choice. It has the advantage of handling multivariate datasets of any type, including discrete, continuous or a mixture of discrete and continuous random variables. It uses the relationships among the process variables to build new variables that capture the dominant structure among the original variables. A bootstrap procedure is employed to obtain the control limit of the proposed chart for a suitable distance-based model through time. Simulation results show the advantage of the proposed chart in monitoring shifts in the covariance matrix. An illustrative example involving monitoring covariance structures of the lapping process in wafer semiconductor manufacturing and diagnosis single-proton emission computed tomography are provided to show the applications of the proposed chart