Effect of Blanching Period and Drying Temperature on Selected Physicochemical Properties of Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium) Flour

This study investigated the influence of Blanching Time (BT) and Drying Temperature (DT) on some selected physico-chemical properties of cocoyam flour including water absorption capacity, bulk density, swelling index, wettability and gelatinization point. The quality parameters of the flour were analysed using AOAC standard methods and procedures. Twofactors, 3-levels Historical Data Design of Response Surface Methodology was adopted for the analysis to determine the effects of BT and DT on the investigated parameters. Second order polynomial model was obtained at 5% level of significance. The flour samples had 1.60 to 4.00% water absorption capacity, 0.71 to 0.81 g/cm3 bulk density, 5.2 to 6.8 g/g swelling index, 7 to 16s wettability and 68 to 90oC gelatinization point. Samples dried at 60oC and blanched for 9.05 mins had better quality with optimum response values of 3.37% water absorption capacity, 0.76 g/cm3 bulk density, 6.22 g/g swelling index, 12.71 s wettability, and 85.73oC gelatinization temperature. BT and DT had significant effects on water absorption and wettability while no significant influence was observed on the bulk density, swelling index and gelatinization temperature of the flour at p ≤ 0.05. These findings will serve as a guide in ensuring proper choice of blanching time and drying temperature based on end-use and desired physico-chemical properties of cocoyam flour

Combating the zoonotic trio of Ebola virus disease, Lassa fever, and COVID-19 in Nigeria: a retrospection of the challenges and lessons

Various infectious disease outbreaks linked to zoonotic sources have been recorded over the years, some of which have resulted in epidemics on a national, regional, or global scale. In Africa, a number of such outbreaks occur intermittently, especially in countries like Nigeria with a high-risk of epidemiological transmission. Three viral outbreaks with zoonotic links have hit the Nigerian healthcare system hardest, which are the Ebola virus disease, Lassa fever and Coronavirus disease 2019. Due to the fragile nature of the Nigerian health system, several challenges were encountered in the process of responding to these viral outbreaks, some of which included inadequate healthcare infrastructure, limited diagnostic capacity, unfledged nature of emergency response, unsatisfactory remuneration of health workers, misinformation trends, amongst others. By reminiscing on the challenges and lessons learnt from these viral disease outbreaks, the Nigerian government and policymakers will be able to adopt more effective approaches towards emergency preparedness for future outbreaks of infectious diseases

Water absorption properties of sawdust lignin stabilised compressed laterite bricks

Lignin is reported to have good binding ability with soil particles especially in roadconstruction, however, its application and behavior in compressed bricks is being investigated. The water absorption property of lateritic bricks is essential to its durability as well as its bonding with cement mortar. This study is focused on the determination of the initial rate of absorption and the 45 min total water absorption of lignin stabilised compressed lateritic bricks.Two particle sizes of laterite namely those passing the 2.36 mm BS sieve and those retained on it were stabilised at 4%, 8% and 12% by mass with sawdust lignin extracted through alkaline hydrolysis. Fourier infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to identify the functional groups present in the lignin additives while the laterite sample was subjected to consistency, physical and mineralogical tests. The tests were carried out in order to determine the likely interaction and mechanism of reactions between the soil particles and the additives. The total water absorption after 45 min of full immersion and the initial rate of absorption after 5 and 60 min were determined at 14 and 28 days of air curing.The wood additives showed an improvement in the water absorption properties of the stabilised bricks compared to that of cement stabilised samples. The percentage water absorbed by cement stabilised samples ranges between 6% and 15% which is considered high while that of the wood additives ranges between 2% and 6%. Keywords: Laterite brick, Sawdust lignin, Water absorptio

Predicting Protein Secondary Structure Based on Ensemble Neural Network

Protein structure prediction is very vital to innovative process of discovering new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target. It is also useful for scientifically exposing the biological basis of convoluted diseases and drug effects. Despite its usefulness, protein structure is very complex, thereby making its prediction to be arduous, timewasting and costly. These drawbacks necessitated the need to develop more effective techniques with high prediction capability. Conventional techniques for predicting protein structure are ineffective, perform poorly, expensive and slow. The reasons for these are due to the vague dissimilar sequences among protein structures, meaningless protein data, high dimensional data, and having to deal with highly imbalanced classification task.  We proposed an Ensemble Neural Network learning model that consists of some Neural Network algorithms such as Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Cascade Forward  Network (CFN) and Non-linear Autoregressive Network with Exogenous (NARX) models. These models were trained using training algorithms such as Levenberg-Marquardt (LM), Resilient Back Propagation (RBP) and Scaled Conjugate Gradient (SCG) to improve the performance. Experimental results show that our proposed model has superior performance compared to the other models compared