Neurofibromas as bilateral cystic chest wall swellings.

A 35 year old male farmer presented with soft bilateral posterior chest wall swellings. He had no similar swellings elsewhere. There were no associated symptoms, except cosmetic deformity and discomfort when he lies on his back. A clinical diagnosis of posterior chest wall lipomata was made. However at surgery, the two tumours were completely cystic. Following total excision, histology of the two tumours revealed cystic degeneration of neurofibromas. His postoperative recovery was uneventful. The importance of this report is to emphasize the need for histological examinination of all excised human tissues, which is not always the case in most of our rural areas and to document the discovery of such a rare clinical entity in our centre. This rare entity should be borne in mind when considering the differential diagnosis of benign cystic chest wall tumours.Key words: neurofibromatosis, cystic swelling, posterior, chest, wall

Chemical composition, antimicrobial activity, proximate analysis and mineral content of the seed of Detarium senegalense JF Gmelin

Detarium senegalense JF Gmelin (Caesalpiniaceae), commonly known as tallow tree, is used traditionally for the treatment of bronchitis, pneumonia, internal complaints and skin diseases in Tropical Africa. The seed is used as a soup thickener in Eastern Nigeria. Analysis of the petroleum ether extract of the seeds with GC-MS produced ten constituents of which oleic and linoleic acids were the most prominent (30.8 and 44.1% respectively). The extract showed significant antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Micrococcus kristinae, Streptococcus faecalis, Shigella flexneri, Klebsiella pneumonia, Serratia marcescens and antifungal activity against Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger and Penicillium notatum. Proximate analysis revealed that the seeds contain 24.43% carbohydrate, 7.23% protein, 31.16% fiber, 5.89% moisture and 1.93% ash. Mineral content analysis revealed the concentrations of potassium (99.26 mg/g), calcium (71.11mg/g), magnesium (77.83 mg/g), sodium (55.26 mg/g), iron (30.21 mg/g), manganese (7.89 mg/g), zinc (5.26 mg/g) and copper (4.29 mg/g). These results show the nutritional value of the seeds of D. senegalense and justified its use in the traditional treatment of skin diseases.Key words: Detarium, GC-MS, antimicrobial, proximate analysis, mineral content

A maximum entropy classification scheme for phishing detection using parsimonious features

Over the years, electronic mail (e-mail) has been the target of several malicious attacks. Phishing is one of the most recognizable forms of manipulation aimed at e-mail users and usually, employs social engineering to trick innocent users into supplying sensitive information into an imposter website. Attacks from phishing emails can result in the exposure of confidential information, financial loss, data misuse, and others. This paper presents the implementation of a maximum entropy (ME) classification method for an efficient approach to the identification of phishing emails. Our result showed that maximum entropy with parsimonious feature space gives a better classification precision than both the Naïve Bayes and support vector machine (SVM)

Numerical Simulation of Land and Sea Breeze (LSB) Circulation along the Guinean Coast of West Africa

This study uses observed and simulated data to analyze the dynamics LSB rotation along the Guinean Coast of West Africa. A non-hydrostatic fully compressible numerical model is used to simulate LSB circulation. To evaluate the model’s ability to capture the LSB kinematics, the study used a modified model code with ERA-Interim and CFS as forcing data. Comparison of observed and simulated LSB patterns shows that the model reliably captures the LSB circulation in the region. The simulated diurnal evolutions of hodographs and onshore/offshore winds also follow the observations. A dynamical analysis performed by extracting individual forcing terms from the horizontal momentum equations at selected regions within the study area showed that the direction of the wind rotation is a result of a complex interaction between surface and synoptic pressure gradients, advection, and horizontal and vertical diffusions forces. However, hourly analysis of the rotation term suggests that surface gradient seems to dominate over oceanic region, while diffusion terms are more important for land area. This may be attributed to the variation of surface roughness due the landscape and urbanization. Therefore, this reveals the link between urbanization and LSB circulation in coastal region of West Africa, where most important cities are located

A Maximum Entropy Classification Scheme for Phishing Detection using Parsimonous Features

Over the years, electronic mail (e-mail) has been the target of several malicious attacks. Phishing is one of the most recognizable forms of manipulation aimed at e-mail users and usually, employs social engineering to trick innocent users into supplying sensitive information into an imposter website. Attacks from phishing emails can result in the exposure of confidential information, financial loss, data misuse, and others. This paper presents the implementation of a maximum entropy (ME) classification method for an efficient approach to the identification of phishing emails. Our result showed that maximum entropy with parsimonious feature space gives a better classification precision than both the Naïve Bayes and support vector machine (SVM

Increased indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase activity is associated with poor clinical outcome in adults hospitalized with influenza in the INSIGHT FLU003Plus study

BACKGROUND: Indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) mediated tryptophan (TRP) depletion has antimicrobial and immuno-regulatory effects. Increased kynurenine (KYN)-to-TRP (KT) ratios, reflecting increased IDO activity, have been associated with poorer outcomes from several infections. METHODS: We performed a case-control (1:2; age and sex matched) analysis of adults hospitalized with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 with protocol-defined disease progression (died/transferred to ICU/mechanical ventilation) after enrollment (cases) or survived without progression (controls) over 60 days of follow-up. Conditional logistic regression was used to analyze the relationship between baseline KT ratio and other metabolites and disease progression. RESULTS: We included 32 cases and 64 controls with a median age of 52 years; 41% were female, and the median durations of influenza symptoms prior to hospitalization were 8 and 6 days for cases and controls, respectively (P = .04). Median baseline KT ratios were 2-fold higher in cases (0.24 mM/M; IQR, 0.13-0.40) than controls (0.12; IQR, 0.09-0.17; P ≤ .001). When divided into tertiles, 59% of cases vs 20% of controls had KT ratios in the highest tertile (0.21-0.84 mM/M). When adjusted for symptom duration, the odds ratio for disease progression for those in the highest vs lowest tertiles of KT ratio was 9.94 (95% CI, 2.25-43.90). CONCLUSIONS: High KT ratio was associated with poor outcome in adults hospitalized with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09. The clinical utility of this biomarker in this setting merits further exploration. CLINICALTRIALSGOV IDENTIFIER: NCT01056185

The possible role of local air pollution in climate change in West Africa

The climate of West Africa is characterized by a sensitive monsoon system that is associated with marked natural precipitation variability. This region has been and is projected to be subject to substantial global and regional-scale changes including greenhouse-gas-induced warming and sea-level rise, land-use and land-cover change, and substantial biomass burning. We argue that more attention should be paid to rapidly increasing air pollution over the explosively growing cities of West Africa, as experiences from other regions suggest that this can alter regional climate through the influences of aerosols on clouds and radiation, and will also affect human health and food security. We need better observations and models to quantify the magnitude and characteristics of these impacts