Understanding the Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal Gap in Student Performance: Lessons From British Columbia

There exist very large gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal student performance in most B.C. schools. However, Aboriginal students in some school districts perform remarkably well. What are these districts doing right? The authors draw lessons that may well apply across Canada.social policy, socioeconomic conditions, Aboriginal education, British Columbia

Intrusion alert reduction based on unsupervised and supervised learning algorithms

Security and protection of information is an ever-evolving process in the field of information security. One of the major tools of protection is the Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). For so many years, IDS have been developed for use in computer networks, they have been widely used to detect a range of network attacks; but one of its major drawbacks is that attackers, with the evolution of time and technology make it harder for IDS systems to cope. A sub-branch of IDS-Intrusion Alert Analysis was introduced into the research system to combat these problems and help support IDS by analyzing the alert triggered by the IDS. Intrusion Alert analysis has served as a good support for IDS systems for many years but also has its own short comings which are the amount of the voluminous number of alerts produced by IDS systems. From years of research, it has been observed that majority of the alerts produced are undesirables such as duplicates, false alerts, etc., leading to huge amounts of alerts causing alert flooding. This research proposed the reduction alert by targeting these undesirable alerts through the integration of supervised and unsupervised algorithms and approach. The research first selects significant features by comparing two feature ranking techniques this targets duplicates, low priority and irrelevant alert. To achieve further reduction, the research proposed the integration of supervised and unsupervised algorithms to filter out false alerts. Based on this, an effective model was gotten which achieved 94.02% reduction rate of alerts. Making use of the dataset ISCX 2012, experiments were conducted and the model with the highest reduction rate was chosen. The model was evaluated against other experimental results and benchmarked against a related work, it also improved on the said related work

Synthesis, Characterization and Properties of Trimethylolpropane Triesters from Coconut (Cocos nucifera) Methyl Esters

في هذه الدراسة ، تمت متابعة عملية التحويل الحمضي القلوي لزيت بذور جوز الهند المكرر (RCOSO) إلى إستر ميثيل الأحماض الدهنية من خلال إنتاج مادة تشحيم بيولوجية حساسة للحرارة تعتمد على ثلاثي ميثيل البروبان باستخدام هيدروكسيد البوتاسيوم ، وتم تقييم خصائصها الفيزيائية والكيميائية. تم استخدام الاختبار القياسي الأمريكي للمواد (ASTM) للتأكد من نقطة صب مادة التشحيم البيولوجية ومؤشر اللزوجة ، والتي وُجدت بـ -4 درجة مئوية و 283.75 ، على التوالي. تم توضيح العلاقة العكسية بين لزوجة مادة التشحيم ودرجة الحرارة من خلال اللزوجة المقاسة عند تحويل الأسترة المتباينة إلى ديزل حيوي. بعد ذلك ، تم إنشاء مادة تشحيم بيولوجية عن طريق درجة حرارة الاسترة. تم التحقق من مجموعة الإستر بمقارنة أطياف تحويل فورييه بالأشعة تحت الحمراء (FTIR) لوقود الديزل الحيوي ومواد التشحيم الحيوية بين نطاقات الامتصاص (1755.07-1737.21 سم -1). تظهر بيانات كروماتوغرافيا الغاز أن زيت اللوز الحلو يحتوي على 71.725٪ أحماض دهنية غير مشبعة لاستخدامها كمواد تشحيم بيولوجية ، و 53.478٪ أكثر من الأحماض الدهنية غير المشبعة من الأحماض الدهنية المشبعة ، و 9.52 جم من اليود لكل 100 جم من عينة الزيت أكثر من الجلسريدات غير المشبعة. بنسب 31.44 و 45.93٪ على التوالي ، شكل حمض اللينوليك الغالبية بين الأحماض الدهنية في الزيت ومواد التشحيم الحيوية الاصطناعية. بالإضافة إلى ذلك ، كانت أحماض البالمتيكواللينوليكوالأوليك موجودة في زيوزيوت التشحيم والزيت من جوز الهند. ترتبط نتائج توصيف زيوت التشحيم الحيوية ارتباطًا وثيقًا بمعايير ISO VG-32 ، مما يشير إلى أن لديها القدرة على العمل كزيت تروس خفيف للسيارات.In this study, the acid-alkaline transesterification of refined coconut seed oil (RCOSO) to fatty acid methyl ester was followed by the production of a trimethylolpropane-based thermosensitive biolubricant using potassium hydroxide, and its physicochemical characteristics were evaluated. The American Standard Test for Materials (ASTM) was employed to ascertain the biolubricant's pour point and index of viscosity, which were found to be -4 oC and 283.75, respectively. The opposite connection between lubricant viscosity and temperature was shown by the measured viscosities at varied transesterification to be transformed into biodiesel. Following this, a biolubricant was created by further transesterifiedtemperature. The ester group is verified by comparing the Fourier Transfer Infra-red (FTIR) spectra of the biodiesel and the biolubricant between absorption bands (1755.07-1737.21 cm-1). Gas chromatographic data shows that sweet almond oil contains 71.725 % unsaturated fatty acids for use as a biolubricant, 53.478 % more unsaturated fatty acids than saturated fatty acids, and 9.52 g iodine per 100 g of oil sample more than unsaturated glycerides. At 31.44 and 45.93 %, respectively, linoleic acid made up the majority among the fatty acids in the oil and synthetic biolubricant. In addition, palmitic, linoleic, and oleic acids were present in the biolubricant and coconut oil. The biolubricant's characterization results correlated highly with the ISO VG-32 standards, suggesting that it has the capacity to serve as light gear oil

Emergence and spread of two SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest in Nigeria.

Identifying the dissemination patterns and impacts of a virus of economic or health importance during a pandemic is crucial, as it informs the public on policies for containment in order to reduce the spread of the virus. In this study, we integrated genomic and travel data to investigate the emergence and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.318 and B.1.525 (Eta) variants of interest in Nigeria and the wider Africa region. By integrating travel data and phylogeographic reconstructions, we find that these two variants that arose during the second wave in Nigeria emerged from within Africa, with the B.1.525 from Nigeria, and then spread to other parts of the world. Data from this study show how regional connectivity of Nigeria drove the spread of these variants of interest to surrounding countries and those connected by air-traffic. Our findings demonstrate the power of genomic analysis when combined with mobility and epidemiological data to identify the drivers of transmission, as bidirectional transmission within and between African nations are grossly underestimated as seen in our import risk index estimates

Antioxidant evaluation and computational prediction of prospective drug-like compounds from polyphenolic-rich extract of Hibiscus cannabinus L. seed as antidiabetic and neuroprotective targets: assessment through in vitro and in silico studies

Abstract Background Reports have implicated diabetes mellitus (DM) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as some of the global persistent health challenges with no lasting solutions, despite of significant inputs of modern-day pharmaceutical firms. This study therefore, aimed to appraise the in vitro antioxidant potential, enzymes inhibitory activities, and as well carry out in silico study on bioactive compounds from polyphenolic-rich extract of Hibiscus cannabinus seed (PEHc). Methods In vitro antioxidant assays were performed on PEHc using standard methods while the identification of phytoconstituents was carried out with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). For the in silico molecular docking using Schrodinger’s Grid-based ligand docking with energetics software, seven target proteins were retrieved from the database ( https://www.rcsb.org/ ). Results HPLC technique identified twelve chemical compounds in PEHc, while antioxidant quantification revealed higher total phenolic contents (243.5 ± 0.71 mg GAE/g) than total flavonoid contents (54.06 ± 0.09 mg QE/g) with a significant (p < 0.05) inhibition of ABTS (IC50 = 218.30 ± 0.87 µg/ml) and 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl free radicals (IC50 = 227.79 ± 0.74 µg/ml). In a similar manner, the extract demonstrated a significant (p < 0.05) inhibitory activity against α-amylase (IC50 = 256.88 ± 6.15 µg/ml) and α-glucosidase (IC50 = 183.19 ± 0.23 µg/ml) as well as acetylcholinesterase (IC50 = 262.95 ± 1.47 µg/ml) and butyrylcholinesterase (IC50 = 189.97 ± 0.82 µg/ml), respectively. Furthermore, In silico study showed that hibiscetin (a lead) revealed a very strong binding affinity energies for DPP-4, (PDB ID: 1RWQ) and α-amylase (PDB ID: 1SMD), gamma-tocopherol ( for peptide-1 receptor; PDB ID: 3C59, AChE; PDB ID: 4EY7 and BChE; PDB ID: 7B04), cianidanol for α-glucosidase; PDB ID: 7KBJ and kaempferol for Poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase 1 (PARP-1); PDB ID: 6BHV, respectively. More so, ADMET scores revealed drug-like potentials of the lead compounds identified in PEHc. Conclusion As a result, the findings of this study point to potential drug-able compounds in PEHc that could be useful for the management of DM and AD