NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: IN THE PURSUIT OF RIGHT PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT FOR LEARNING

The right physical environment of learning is a sine qua non for the realization of positive outcomes in any country’s educational programme. Right environment in this work will include the combination of physical structures, right timing of teaching and learning, seating arrangement, level of sanitation and pollution of the environment, climate conditions within the environment and closeness of the learning environment to varied noise effects. According to Nigeria’s National policy on education, one of the five sets of beliefs of the policy is that education in the country should be qualitative, comprehensive, functional and relevant to the needs of the society. The thrust of this paper is to assess the present status of the physical environment of institutions of learning, government policy directions and the philosophical orientation of the educational system. The method employed is a combination of descriptive and philosophical analysis of the physical environment and government policies and issues. The pathway to standard quality education for nation building, the paper suggests, is found in the right combination of effective resource management, adequate educational infrastructural development and appropriate governance structure that will drive all the other factors in the quest for attaining Nigeria educational goal. The paper concludes that there exists a wide infrastructure deficit in spite of government intervention mainly due to lack of political will and mismanagement of scarce resources while a marked improvement is manifested with the intervention of the private sector. The paper recommends among others, a purposeful synergy between parents and government for an improved physical learning environment

ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ CLASSROOM LEARNING OUTCOME: INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

Classroom environment is not supposed to be attractive for teaching and learning alone but conducive for the test or assessment of the degree of learning taking place there. Classroom tests and examinations are means of establishing a students’ level of accomplishment in a given subject. The classroom is expected to protect the learner from the vagaries of weather, air pollution, noise and when tests are to be conducted, the time of the day, invigilation and seating arrangements has to be conducive and appropriate also. The aim of this work is to determine how these environmental factors influence the performance of students in test and examination. The research was conducted using the survey instrument of questionnaire to obtain the perception of the respondents to the effect of environmental factors on learning outcome assessment. The questionnaire was subjected to mean score analysis to obtain respondents satisfaction value of the ordinal data on Likert scale. It is reasonable to assert from the analysis of the data that a test/examination conducted in a poor physical environment, such as those with poor lighting, under poor weather, noisy environment and polluted air will not be conducive to both the student and teacher hence produce poor performance in results of test /examinations. The findings revealed that due to the poor infrastructural development of Nigeria educational system, it is obvious that there is agreement to the effect that the environment factors affect learning. It is therefore advocated that apart from good teachers being employed in our educational system, location of schools should be considered very critically using these environmental parameters before approval is given for its establishment in the country

The nature of the late achromatic bump in GRB 120326A

The long ${\it Swift}$ gamma-ray burst GRB 120326A at redshift $z=1.798$ exhibited a multi-band light curve with a striking feature: a late-time, long-lasting achromatic rebrightening, rarely seen in such events. Peaking in optical and X-ray bands $\sim 35$ ks ($\sim 12.5$ ks in the GRB rest frame) after the 70-s GRB prompt burst, the feature brightens nearly two orders of magnitude above the underlying optical power-law decay. Modelling the multiwavelength light curves, we investigate possible causes of the rebrightening in the context of the standard fireball model. We exclude a range of scenarios for the origin of this feature: reverse-shock flash, late-time forward shock peak due to the passage of the maximal synchrotron frequency through the optical band, late central engine optical/X-ray flares, interaction between the expanding blast wave and a density enhancement in the circumburst medium and gravitational microlensing. Instead we conclude that the achromatic rebrightening may be caused by a refreshed forward shock or a geometrical effect. In addition, we identify an additional component after the end of the prompt emission, that shapes the observed X-ray and optical light curves differently, ruling out a single overall emission component to explain the observed early time emission

Novel pharmacological tools which activate mAChRs: a question of "dualsterism"

Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) represent an excellent model system to study orthosteric and allosteric interactions. The high sequence homology shown by orthosteric sites of mAChRs has hampered the development of subtype selective agonists. On the other hand, allosteric recognition sites are less conserved among the various mAChR subtypes. We synthesized a series of hybrid ligands designed to simultaneously interact with both orthosteric and allosteric sites (\u201cdualsteric\u201d compounds) by fusing orthosteric activators with M2-selective allosteric fragments (W84 and Naphmethonium). In particular, among the oxotremorine-like orthosteric agents, iperoxo emerged as a potent agonist with supraphysiological efficacy but devoid of subtype selectivity.1 To explore the whole chemical space of the binding region, we modified the structure of the three component parts (orthosteric and allosteric moieties and spacer) of dualsteric ligands.2 These ligands permitted to prove for the first time that GPCR\u2019s allosteric vestibule is able to control the extent of receptor movement to govern a hierarchical order of G-protein coupling.3 In addition, they were found to dynamically switch between two distinct binding orientations, engendering both active and inactive populations of receptors bound by a given ligand.4 More recently, some of these ligands (notably N-8-IPER) revealed interesting antinociceptive properties and good tolerability.5 The synthetic approaches together with relevant results and implications of the biological investigation will be presented. References 1. Schrage R et al. Agonists with supraphysiological efficacy at the muscarinic M2 ACh receptor. Br J Pharmacol 2013;169(2):357-70. 2. Disingrini T et al. Design, synthesis, and action of oxotremorine-related hybrid-type allosteric modulators of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. J Med Chem 2006;49(1):366-72; Antony J et al. Dualsteric GPCR targeting: a novel route to binding and signaling pathway selectivity. FASEB J 2009;23(2):442-50. 3. Bock A et al. The allosteric vestibule of a seven transmembrane helical receptor controls G-protein coupling. Nat Commun 2012;3:1044. 4. Bock A et al. Dynamic ligand binding dictates partial agonism at a G protein-coupled receptor. Nat Chem Biol 2014;10(1):18-20. 5. Matera C et al. Bis(ammonio)alkane-type agonists of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors: Synthesis, in vitro functional characterization, and in vivo evaluation of their analgesic activity. Eur J Med Chem 2014;75:222-232

Risk of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality in frail and pre-frail older adults : Results from a meta-analysis and exploratory meta-regression analysis

Frailty is common and associated with poorer outcomes in the elderly, but its role as potential cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor requires clarification. We thus aimed to meta-analytically evaluate the evidence of frailty and pre-frailty as risk factors for CVD. Two reviewers selected all studies comparing data about CVD prevalence or incidence rates between frail/pre-frail vs. robust. The association between frailty status and CVD in cross-sectional studies was explored by calculating and pooling crude and adjusted odds ratios (ORs)+/- 95% confidence intervals (CIs); the data from longitudinal studies were pooled using the adjusted hazard ratios (HRs). Eighteen cohorts with a total of 31,343 participants were meta-analyzed. Using estimates from 10 cross-sectional cohorts, both frailty and pre-frailty were associated with higher odds of CVD than robust participants. Longitudinal data were obtained from 6 prospective cohort studies. After a median follow-up of 4.4 years, we identified an increased risk for faster onset of any type CVD in the frail (HR= 1.70 [95%CI, 1.18-2.45]; I-2 = 66%) and pre-frail (HR= 1.23 [95%CI, 1.07-1.36]; I-2 = 67%) vs. robust groups. Similar results were apparent for time to CVD mortality in the frail and pre-frail groups. In conclusion, frailty and pre-frailty constitute addressable and independent risk factors for CVD in older adults. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Comparison of bioresorbable vs durable polymer drug-eluting stents in unprotected left main (from the RAIN-CARDIOGROUP VII Study)

International audienceAbstract Background There are limited data regarding the impact of bioresorbable polymer drug eluting stent (BP-DES) compared to durable polymer drug eluting stent (DP-DES) in patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention using ultrathin stents in left main or bifurcations. Methods In the RAIN registry (ClinicalTrials NCT03544294, june 2018 retrospectively registered) patients with a ULM or bifurcation stenosis treated with PCI using ultrathin stents (struts thinner than 81 μm) were enrolled. The primary endpoint was the rate of target lesion revascularization (TLR); major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE, a composite of all-cause death, myocardial infarction, TLR and stent thrombosis) and its components, along with target vessel revascularization (TVR) were the secondary ones. A propensity score with matching analysis to compare patients treated with BP-DES versus DP-DES was also assessed. Results From 3001 enrolled patients, after propensity score analysis 1400 patients (700 for each group) were selected. Among them, 352 had ULM disease and 1048 had non-LM bifurcations. At 16 months (12–22), rates of TLR (3.7% vs 2.9%, p = 0.22) and MACE were similar (12.3% vs. 11.6%, p = 0.74) as well as for the other endpoints. Sensitivity analysis of outcomes after a two-stents strategy, showed better outcome in term of MACE (20.4% vs 10%, p = 0.03) and TVR (12% vs 4.6%, p = 0.05) and a trend towards lower TLR in patients treated with BP-DES. Conclusion In patients with bifurcations or ULM treated with ultrathin stents BP-DES seems to perform similarly to DP-DES: the trends toward improved clinical outcomes in patients treated with the BP-DES might potentially be of value for speculating the stent choice in selected high-risk subgroups of patients at increased risk of ischemic events. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03544294 . Retrospectively registered June 1, 2018

Stereo-Selectivity of Human Serum Albumin to Enantiomeric and Isoelectronic Pollutants Dissected by Spectroscopy, Calorimetry and Bioinformatics

1–naphthol (1N), 2–naphthol (2N) and 8–quinolinol (8H) are general water pollutants. 1N and 2N are the configurational enantiomers and 8H is isoelectronic to 1N and 2N. These pollutants when ingested are transported in the blood by proteins like human serum albumin (HSA). Binding of these pollutants to HSA has been explored to elucidate the specific selectivity of molecular recognition by this multiligand binding protein. The association constants (Kb) of these pollutants to HSA were moderate (104–105 M−1). The proximity of the ligands to HSA is also revealed by their average binding distance, r, which is estimated to be in the range of 4.39–5.37 nm. The binding free energy (ΔG) in each case remains effectively the same for each site because of enthalpy–entropy compensation (EEC). The difference observed between ΔCpexp and ΔCpcalc are suggested to be caused by binding–induced flexibility changes in the HSA. Efforts are also made to elaborate the differences observed in binding isotherms obtained through multiple approaches of calorimetry, spectroscopy and bioinformatics. We suggest that difference in dissociation constants of pollutants by calorimetry, spectroscopic and computational approaches could correspond to occurrence of different set of populations of pollutants having different molecular characteristics in ground state and excited state. Furthermore, our observation of enhanced binding of pollutants (2N and 8H) in the presence of hemin signifies that ligands like hemin may enhance the storage period of these pollutants in blood that may even facilitate the ill effects of these pollutants