Cross-border smuggling undermines Cameroon’s law on non-biodegradable plastic

The smuggling chain includes wholesalers and state officials embedded in the criminal economy. Dealers of the contraband plastic sometimes bribe the officials through backdoor negotiations to free the arrested wholesalers and release the seized items

Climate change and pastoralism contribute to the Sahel’s conflict and insecurity

Depleting resources and climate-induced drought in the Sahel are increasingly provoking confrontations between farmers and pastoralists. Oluwole Ojewale argues that multilateral institutions and national governments in the region should prioritise solutions that recalibrate security strategies to address climate stress more systematically

America’s Inconsistent Foreign Policy to Africa; a Case Study of Apartheid South Africa

This study lays bare the inconsistencies in the United States of America’s Foreign Policy, and how it contributed to the longevity of apartheid in South Africa. Michael Mandelbaum opined that America’s foreign policy post-Cold War era drifted from containment to transformation.1 America became involved with transferring their democracy and constitutional order to the countries they entangled with in running those countries’ internal governance. Instead of war, America preached and practiced proper, organized governance. Thus, America’s foreign policy to Europe and Asia post-Cold War was all about democracy and protection of fundamental human rights. However, the role of America’s Foreign Policy in Africa took a turn in Africa, with Congo in 1960, Ghana in 1966 and Nigeria with their successive military regimes. This study intends to make sense of it all

Towards Predictable and Intelligent Real-time IoT Applications

CPS Student Forum Portugal was held as part of the Cyber-Physical Systems Week (CPS Week 2018), 10 to 13 April, Porto-Portugal.Predictable timing property is fundamental to Real-Time applications. ï Real-Time IoT applications requires both predictable and intelligent responses to actionable events ï A previous work proposed fog computing for intelligent IoT applications but does not examine timing properties of the approach.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Frequency of ABO and Rhesus blood groups among blood donors in Lagos, Nigeria

Background: The ABO is a blood group system that is responsible for most blood transfusion reactions, transplant rejections and determining some forensic cases. The ABO and Rhesus blood group systems have been shown to show variations in different part of the world and race. Aim: The study is to show the frequency of ABO and Rhesus blood groups amongst blood donors in Lagos, Nigeria and confirm Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.Methods: This is a two-year retrospective study of all blood donors from the two major tertiary health institutions in Lagos State between July 2004 and June 2006. Data from the blood bank records were extracted and analysed using SPSS version 20. Hardy-Weinberg equation was used to confirm if the population is in equilibrium. Results: In all, 11,911 donors were analysed and showed A+ 20.4%, A- 0.97%, B+ 16.7%, B- 0.87%, AB+ 2.2%, AB- 0.17%, O+ 55.6%, O- 3.1% and RhD positive frequency is 95.6%. The allelic frequency in this study is O – 0.7631, A - 0.1303, B – 0.1066 and Rh – 0.7786. There is no significant difference between the blood group distributions from the two institutions. Conclusion: Blood group O was the commonest blood group seen followed by group A. This is at variance with other studies in Nigeria where blood group B was the second commonest. The population was also found to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The study provides important and reliable genogeographical information that can advance the fields of blood transfusion, organ transplantation and forensic medicine in Nigeria.Key words: Blood group, ABO, Rhesus, allelic frequency, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, transfusion reaction

220606

To reduce the latency of time-sensitive flows in Ethernet networks, the IEEE TSN Task Group introduced the IEEE 802.1Qbu Standard, which specifies a 1-level preemption scheme for IEEE 802.1 networks. Recently, serious limitations of this scheme w.r.t. flows responsiveness were exposed and the so-called multi-level preemption approach was proposed to address these drawbacks. As is the case with most, if not all, real-time and/or time-sensitive preemptive systems, an appropriate priority-to-flow assignment policy plays a central role in the resulting performance of both 1-level and multi-level preemption schemes to avoid the over-provisioning and/or the sub-optimal use of hardware resources. Yet on another front, the multi-level preemption scheme raises new configuration challenges. Specifically, the right number of preemption level(s) to enable for swift transmission of flows; and the flow-to-preemption-class assignment synthesis remain open problems. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior work in the literature addressing these important challenges. In this work, we address these three challenges. We demonstrate the applicability of our proposed solution by using both synthetic and real-life use-cases. Our experimental results show that multi-level preemption schemes improve the schedulability of flows by over 12% as compared to a 1-level preemption scheme, and at a higher abstraction level, the proposed configuration framework improves the schedulability of flows by up to 6% as compared to the dominant Deadline Monotonic Priority Ordering.This work was partially supported by National Funds through FCT/MCTES (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), within the CISTER Research Unit (UIDP/UIDB/04234/2020); also by FCT through the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Regional Operational Programme (ROP) Norte 2020, under grant 2020.09636.BD.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On Multi-Level Preemption in Ethernet

Ethernet is increasingly being considered as the solution to high bandwidth requirements in the next generation of timing critical applications that make their way in cars, planes or smart factories to mention a few examples. Until recently, ethernet frames used to be transmitted exclusively in a nonpreemptive manner. That is, once a frame starts transmitting on a switch output port, its transmission cannot be interrupted by any other frame until completion. This constraint may cause time critical frames to be blocked for long periods of time because of the transmission of non-critical frames. The IEEE 802.3br standard addressed this issue by introducing a one-level ethernet frame preemption paradigm. In this approach, frames transmitted through a switch output port are classified as express frames or preemptable frames, depending on their priority levels. Express frames can preempt preemptable frames and two frames belonging to the same class cannot preempt each other. While this partially solves the problem for express frames, all preemptable frames can still suffer blocking irrespective of their priority level. In this work, we investigate the feasibility and advantages of multi-level preemptions in time-sensitive ethernet networks.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy among Nigerians living with noncommunicable diseases: A qualitative study

The discovery and subsequent manufacture of various types of COVID-19 vaccines were considered a breakthrough in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, limited supplies of COVID-19 vaccines warranted vulnerable populations such as people living with chronic non-communicable diseases and the elderly to be prioritised for vaccination. Nevertheless, the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines among these populations was suboptimal. In this study, we aimed to describe the drivers of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among people living with chronic non-communicable diseases in Ibadan, Nigeria

Microanatomical and biochemical changes of the cerebellum following ethanol gavage in adult Wistar rats

Ethanol consumption has been linked with social and medical problems, coupled with damage of multiple organs including the cerebellum. The present study is aimed at investigating the histological and biochemical changes in the cerebellum of Wistar rats associated with ethanol exposure. The experimental animals were grouped into five groups designated as Group 1 which served as the control group and was given distilled water, Groups 2,3,4 and 5were given 40%, 25%, 12% and 5% v/v of ethanol respectively. Each of the experimental animals was administered 10mls/kg body weight of the stock solution for 42days after which the animals were sacrificed humanely. The cerebellum was removed, fixed in Bouins fluid for histological study while brain homogenates were prepared and used for the biochemical studies. Data was analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Tukey HSD Post-Hoc comparison test was used to determine where the difference lies. Oxidative stress studies showed significant increase and decrease in some oxidative stress markers when compared to the control group (p<0.05). The sialic acid studies showed a dose dependent decrease in the mean sialic acid concentration of the cerebellum across the groups when compared to the control (p<0.05). The histological studies showed the following changes; necrotic Purkinje cells with reduced linear distribution of Purkinje cells, in section of the cerebellar tissue of rats in Groups 2 and 3 with sections from Groups 4 and 5 remaining relatively normal when compared to the slide from the control group. Exposure to ethanol from the present studies showed a dose dependent effect on the cerebellum, as manifested in the histological and biochemical studies.Keywords: Ethanol gavage, Histological, Biochemical changes, Cerebellu