Prescribed burning and its effect on plant biomass and species diversity in savanna ecosystem, Sokoto, Nigeria

Three burning regime (fire protected, early burning, late burning) and their effects on plant biomass and species diversity in Dabagi forest Reserve of Sokoto State were investigated. Prescribed burning was carriedout on randomly selected plots (10 m x 10 m) in November (early burn) and March (late burn) 2004. The design of experiment was a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) and the burning treatments werereplicated three times. The data obtained were analyzed using analysis of variance. The diversity index of the shrubs species was higher (

Phytochemistry and antimicrobial activities of Cassia occidentalis

Leaves of Cassia occidentalis were extracted with ethanol, methanol and water and the extracts used to carryout antimicrobial screening in vitro on staphylococcus aureus, pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, shigella spp. Chromatographic separation was carried out on the active extracts and the efficacy of the resulting fractions was tested against the susceptible organism. Some of the extracts indicated significant inhibitory activity against the tested organisms. General, phytochemical screening was done on the ethanol, water extracts and fractions. Ethanol extract revealed the presence of tannins, saponins, cardiac glycoside terpenoids and anthraquinones, while the fraction revealed the presence of tannins, terpenoid and anthraquinones. This result might explain the ethno-botanical use of the plant for the treatment of dysentery, gastro internal disorder, constipation and typhoid fever.Keywords: Cassia occidentalis, ethnobotany medicinal plant, photochemistry, antimicrobia

Phytochemistry and antimicrobial activities of Cassia occidentalis used for herbal remedies

Leaves of Cassia occidentalis were extracted with ethanol and water. The extracts were used to carry out in vitro antimicrobial screening on Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi and Shigella spp. Chromatograhic separation was carried out on the active extracts, and the efficacy of the resulting fractions was tested against the susceptible organism. Some of the extracts indicated significant inhibitory activity against the tested organisms. General phytochemical screening was done on the ethanol, water extracts and fractions. Ethanol extract revealed the presence of tannins, saponins, cardiac glycoside, terpenoids and anthraquinones, while the fractions revealed the presence of tannins, terpenoids and anthraquinones. This result might explain the ethnobotanical use of the plant for the treatment of dysentery, gastro internal disorder, constipation and typhoid fever.Keywords: Cassia occidentalis, plant, herbal remedies phytochemistry, antimicrobials International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences, 6(3): 363-367, 201

Predictive ranking: a novel page ranking approach by estimating the web structure

Conference paperPageRank (PR) is one of the most popular ways to rank web pages. However, as the Web continues to grow in volume, it is becoming more and more difficult to crawl all the available pages. As a result, the page ranks computed by PR are only based on a subset of the whole Web. This produces inaccurate outcome because of the inherent incomplete information (dangling pages) that exist in the calculation. To overcome this incompleteness, we propose a new variant of the PageRank algorithm called, Predictive Ranking (PreR), in which different classes of dangling pages are analyzed individually so that the link structure can be predicted more accurately. We detail our proposed steps. Furthermore, experimental results show that this algorithm achieves encouraging results when compared with previous methods.Re-search Grants Councils of the HKSAR, China (CUHK4205/04E and CUHK4351/02E

Ganoderma terpenoid extract exhibited anti-plasmodial activity by a mechanism involving reduction in erythrocyte and hepatic lipids in Plasmodium berghei infected mice

Abstract Bioactive components of Ganoderma lucidum has recently gained intense research attention due to their acclaimed nutritional and medicinal properties. Thus, the terpenoid extract from the fruit bodies of G. lucidum (GT) was evaluated for activity against Plasmodium berghei in mice in two separate experiments. In addition, the effects of the extract on erythrocyte and hepatic lipids as well as liver HMG-CoA reductase activity before and after the treatments were also assessed. Mice with established infection were administered 100 and 250 mg/kg/day GT alone and in combination with chloroquine (CQ), in either case two separate controls designated: CQ (30 mg/kg chloroquine) and INF-CTR (1 mL DMSO) were also included. Treatment was administered orally for 12 days and parasitemia determined every three days. Percentage survival was significantly increased to 87% from 66% due to combination of GT100 with CQ compared to GT100 alone and to 75% from 62% when GT250 was administered with CQ compared to GT250 alone. Erythrocyte triglycerides, total cholesterol (TC), LDL and phospholipids contents were significantly lower in GT + CQ-treated mice compared to CQ alone and INF-CTR. Similarly, hepatic TC and phospholipid levels were significantly lower in the GT + CQ-treated mice compared to CQ alone and INF-CTR and HMG-CoA reductase activity in the liver was significantly inhibited due to administration of GT + CQ. Data from this study suggest that the anti-plasmodial action of GT could involve mechanisms associated with its hypolipidemic activity. It was also demonstrated that chloroquine, when administered in combination with GT, potentiates its curative effect in P. berghei-infected mice