Assessing the Influence of Gender Awareness and Attitude to Forest Resource Conservation in Cross River State

Over the years man’s activities has drastically affected the forest ecosystem without any effort in providing alternative to ensuring the sustainability of the natural ecosystem. This paper attempts to examine the influence of gender awareness and attitude to forest resource conservation. Ten communities were used in this study and of which six hundred questionnaires were administered using random sampling technique. Findings indicate thatthe indigenouscommunities’ attitude and awareness to forest conservation was very pooras affirmed in the data collected that indicate that, the male gender attitude and awarenessto forest resource conservation was low compared to female gender in the study area. Therefore, adequate measures must be put in place to ensure effective conservation of the forest ecosystem. Keywords: Awareness attitude, conservation, gender, forest resources

Diurnal and Interannual Variability of Rainfall in Nigeria Climatic Zones as Seen from In-situ and Satellite Measurements

Rainfall has been considered as a key indicator of changes in the climate and important factor of flood. Its measurements are important for climate change assessment on the water cycle and water balance of the world while her intensities monitoring are necessary for flood predictions. This study investigated the variation of Rainfall Intensity and Rainfall depth in Nigeria climatic zones and to predict the reoccurrence of such type of rainfall for planning purposes. The climatic zones of Nigeria were grouped into four; Coastal, Rain forest, Savannah and Sahel. The Rainfall data used in this study were collected in five minutes average for rainfall intensity for years 2007 to 2015 from Centre for Atmospheric Research (CAR-NASRDA) using Automatic Weather Stations and Tropical Rain Measuring Mission (TRMM) of NASA while monthly rainfall depth of 1980 to 2010 from Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMet). The Intensity was converted from mm/5mins to mm/h followed by diurnal values over the months and annual rainfall amounts were derived from the monthly rainfall depth for variability and probability analysis. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS package to further ascertain the deviations from normal rainfall pattern. The Result shows that short and violent rain (> 50mm/h) are more frequent in the Savannah and Sahel zones compared to Rain forest and Coastal zones where prolonged and light rain (< 2.5mm/h) persist. The Coastal zone experience the highest precipitation of 2823.50 mm while the least precipitation of 925.70 mm occurred in the Sahel during the period considered with some fluctuations within the zones. The decadal wetter trend zone is the Sahel with an increment in rainy of more than 200mm and other zones rainfall increase by nothing less than 50mm of rain since 1980s. The occurrence of yearly rainfall like these could be predicted using the probability curve generated from the annual rainfall values. Keywords: rainfall, climatic zones, intensity, depth, probabilit

Initial assessment of reuse of sustainable wastes for fibreboard production : the case of waste paper and water hyacinth

In this early study, new cement-bonded bi-composite fibreboard (FB) was made from water hyacinth (WaHy) and waste paper (WP). Ordinary Portland cement (PdCe) used as a binder was mixed with other two additives: gypsum plasters (GyPl) and wood ash (WdAh), in defined proportions to form bonding matrices. The WP and WaHy were pre-treated and a linked process was developed for the mixing and consolidation steps. The FBs produced were based on different proportions of composites, binder, and additives mixed. The FBs produced were made from different proportions of composites, binders, and additives. Improved tensile strength was observed for bi-composite FB from WaHy mixed with WP. In general, FBs having densities in the range of 0.50–0.57 g cm−3 were compared favourably with the ASTM and ANSI standards (95%), thus making the FBs a potential alternative for building and construction purposes. More elaborate research with advanced analytical techniques is hereby suggested

Introduction of Mobile Health Tools to Support COVID-19 Training and Surveillance in Ogun State Nigeria

Mobile health (mhealth) tools delivered through wireless technology are emerging as effective strategies for delivering quality training, ensuring rapid clinical decision making, and monitoring implementation of simple and effective interventions in under-resourced settings. We share our early experience of developing and deploying the InStrat COVID-19 health worker training application (App) in Ogun State, Western Nigeria where the country's first COVID-19 case was reported. This App was designed to directly provide frontline health workers with accurate and up-to-date information about COVID-19; enable them to quickly identify, screen and manage COVID-19 suspects; provide guidance on specimen collection techniques and safety measures to observe within wards and quarantine centers dealing with COVID-19. The App was deployed in 271 primary health care facilities in Ogun state and a total of 311 health workers were trained to use it. Of the 123 health workers who completed knowledge pre- and post-tests, their average test score improved from 47.5 (±9.4) to 73.1(±10.0) %, P < 0.0001 after using the tutorial. Rapid adoption and uptake were driven largely by public-private sector involvement as well as certification of health workers with reported satisfaction levels of over 95% among those who completed pre- and post-test surveys. Challenges encountered included a lack of universal availability of android phones for frontline health workers, lack of internet access in remote areas and a need to incentivize the workers. The timely deployment of this App targeting primary health care workers, mostly in hard-to-reach areas, obviated the need for conventional didactic training with potential of savings in training costs and time and could be applied to similar contexts

Microfluidic Microcirculation Mimetic as a Tool for the Study of Rheological Characteristics of Red Blood Cells in Patients with Sickle Cell Anemia

Sickle cell disorder (SCD) is a multisystem disease with heterogeneous phenotypes. Al- though all patients have the mutated hemoglobin (Hb) in the SS phenotype, the severity and frequency of complications are variable. When exposed to low oxygen tension, the Hb molecule becomes dense and forms tactoids, which lead to the peculiar sickled shapes of the affected red blood cells, giving the disorder its name. This sickle cell morphology is responsible for the profound and widespread pathologies associated with this disorder, such as vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC). How much of the clinical manifestation is due to sickled erythrocytes and what is due to the relative contributions of other elements in the blood, especially in the microcapillary circulation, is usually not visualized and quantified for each patient during clinical management. Here, we used a microfluidic microcirculation mimetic (MMM), which has 187 capillary-like constrictions, to impose deformations on erythrocytes of 25 SCD patients, visualizing and characterizing the morpho-rheological properties of the cells in normoxic, hypoxic (using sodium meta-bisulfite) and treatment conditions (using hydroxyurea). The MMM enabled a patient-specific quantification of shape descriptors (circularity and roundness) and transit time through the capillary constrictions, which are readouts for morpho-rheological proper- ties implicated in VOC. Transit times varied significantly (p < 0.001) between patients. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of microfluidics-based monitoring of individual patients for personalized care in the context of SCD complications such as VOC, even in resource-constrained setting

Applications and Action Mechanisms of Probiotic-Based Multi-Components

editorial reviewedProbiotic-based multi-component preparations refer to a mixture of bioactive agents, containing probiotics or postbiotics as main functional ingredients, and prebiotics, protectants, stabilizers, encapsulating agents, and other compounds as additional constituents.One Health approaches to support agroecological transformation of peri-urban farming1. No poverty2. Zero hunger3. Good health and well-being10. Reduced inequalities11. Sustainable cities and communities12. Responsible consumption and production13. Climate action17. Partnerships for the goal

Rohlin Distance and the Evolution of Influenza A virus: Weak Attractors and Precursors

The evolution of the hemagglutinin amino acids sequences of Influenza A virus is studied by a method based on an informational metrics, originally introduced by Rohlin for partitions in abstract probability spaces. This metrics does not require any previous functional or syntactic knowledge about the sequences and it is sensitive to the correlated variations in the characters disposition. Its efficiency is improved by algorithmic tools, designed to enhance the detection of the novelty and to reduce the noise of useless mutations. We focus on the USA data from 1993/94 to 2010/2011 for A/H3N2 and on USA data from 2006/07 to 2010/2011 for A/H1N1 . We show that the clusterization of the distance matrix gives strong evidence to a structure of domains in the sequence space, acting as weak attractors for the evolution, in very good agreement with the epidemiological history of the virus. The structure proves very robust with respect to the variations of the clusterization parameters, and extremely coherent when restricting the observation window. The results suggest an efficient strategy in the vaccine forecast, based on the presence of "precursors" (or "buds") populating the most recent attractor.Comment: 13 pages, 5+4 figure