Immunological Biomarkers Determined In Female Rats Administered With Pro-Fertility Extract Of Anthocleista Vogelii

OBJECTIVE:Anthocleista vogelii Planch, is a plant that has been widely used by Traditional medicine practitioners either singly or in combination with other plant materials to treat several diseases or ailments in humans, including infertility problems both in male and female. DESIGN: Ethanolic extract of Anthocleista vogelii were administered orally for 14 days to rats placed in different groups. Temporary infertility in female rats was induced with Micronor (norethisterone) or N-acetylcysteine (NAC) which was given orally for seven (7) days prior to other treatment. The rats were sacrificed after the completion of extract administration. Blood samples from experimental animal groups were collected through cardiac puncture and transferred into potassium ethylene diamine tetra acetate (K3EDTA) tubes and plain tubes. The absolute counts of clusters of differentiation CD4+ and CD8+ was performed using the Becton Dickinson’s (BD) FACS Count Automated technique. The haematological parameters were performed using the Sysmex® Automated Hematology Analyzer KX-21N. Oestradiol analysis was performed on sera obtained from the experimental animals using commercial standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit. RESULT / OUTCOME: The extract was found to possess Anthraquinones, Terpenoids, Flavonoids, Saponins, Alkaloids, Phenols and Phytosterols The obtained results of the ethanolic extract of Anthocleista vogelii administered group compared with control showed a statistically significant decrease (P<0.05) in CD4+ and CD8+ counts, from (851.33±96.34) to (451.00±21.02) and from (1058.67±93.31) to (636.00±28.93) for CD4+ and CD8+ cells respectively. The haematological parameters showed a significant increase (P<0.05) in absolute middle cells (basophils, eosinophils and monocytes) count. The obtained results showed a significant increase of estradiol concentration in the female rats, from (184.65±30.06 pg/ml) in the control group compared to (288.29±30.06pg/ml) in the extract treated group. These findings suggest that Anthocleista vogelii may have a role in creating the environment required for successful pregnancy by decreasing the levels of CD4+ and CD8+ cytokines production and increasing monocytes and granulocytes activation. The plant can be used to induce oestrogen production therefore, supports the claims on the traditional use of Anthocleista vogelii to enhance fertility in female. KEY: Ethanolic extract, Anthocleista vogelii, WBC, RBC, female fertility, CD4+ and CD8+, `Oestradio

Chemical characterisation of palm kernel (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.), shea butter (Vitellaria paradoxa C.F. Gaertn.) and sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) seed oils as ingredients in breeding broiler diets

Lipids are important to both humans and livestock where they play important role as an excellent source of energy and enhances the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. However, oils are used in formulation without any considerations given to the peculiarities of their innate constituents particularly, vitamin, fatty acids and phytochemicals. Thus, the basis of these determinations. Three lipids: palm kernel oil (PKO), shea butter (SB) and sesame seed oil (SSO), were analyzed chemically in triplicate using standard methods. Results showed that SB had the highest (p<0.05) peroxide value (meq/kg) of 7.4 while PKO (0.7) and SSO (0.3) were similar (p>0.05). The iodine values (g/100g) of the lipids were not significantly different (p>0.05). The saponification value (mgKOH) of PKO (249.9) was significantly higher than SBO (190.9) and SSO (15.8) while the acid value (mgKOH/g) of SBO (10.6) was significantly lower (p<0.05). The α-tocopherol of SBO was 119.2 μg/mL which was significantly higher (p<0.05) than 69.6 μg/mL in SSO and 24.4μg/mL in PKO while there were significant variations (p<0.05) in the fatty acid composition of the oils. Analyses revealed the oils possessed variable chemical characteristics; while PKO would be most appropriate for soap production, SBO and SSO would be more susceptible to rancidity. Keywords: palm kernel oil, sesame seed oil, shea butter, pro-vitamin

Carcass characteristics and organ weights of broiler chickens fed varying inclusion levels of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) peel products-based diets

The effect of feeding four cassava peel products -based diets on carcass characteristics and organ weights of broiler chickens were investigated with 455, 10-day old Ross 308 broiler chickens randomly divided into thirteen groups of 35 birds each. Each group was replicated five times and a replicate comprised seven chicks. The design was 1+ (4 x 3) augmented factorial arrangement in a completely randomized design. The experimental diets were sundried cassava peel meal (SCPM), coarse cassava peel mash (CCPM), whole cassava peel mash (WCPM) and fine cassava peel mash (FCPM) each at three dietary inclusion levels to replace maize at 20, 40 and 60%, while the control diet was a maize-based diet. The diets were fed ad libitum to the respective grower (10-24 days) and finisher (25-46 days) experimental chickens. Results showed no significant effect (p>0.05) of feeding chickens with cassava peel-based diets on carcass primal cuts and internal offals except breast meat and spleen. Breast meat yield (24.90%) of chicks on maize-based diet was significantly higher (p<0.05) than others. Effect of interaction of cassava peel products and inclusion levels on eviscerated weight and breast weight was significant (p<0.05). The eviscerated weight (80.86%) and breast meat yield (24.90%) of chickens on control were higher (p<0.05). In conclusion, replacement of up to 60% dietary maize with cassava peel products had similar effect on broiler carcass yield and productivity but breast yield. Also, further processing of WCPM to FCPM and CCPM did not confer any advantage on chick productivity. Keywords: Cassava peel, Internal offal, External offal, High-Quality Cassava Peel, Carcass yiel

Comparative Antioxidant Effects of Two Separate Ethanolic Extracts Fed Female Albino Rats on Some Tissue Markers

Garcinia kola and Curcuma longa possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-toxic properties which makes them ideal choices in traditional alternative medicine. Kolaviron and curcumin ethanoic extracts are from Garcinia kola and Curcuma longa respectively and have shown ample beneficial health effect in animal models of diseases and also in the prevention of hepatoxicity induced by several toxins.  The aim of the study was to compare the separate effects of kolaviron and curcumin ethanoic extracts on blood parameters in female Wister albino rats. Eighty-four female albino rats were used in this study and were grouped into fertile, infertile and pregnant rats in the investigation. Anti-oxidant markers such as catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione s-transferase (GST) were assayed for in this study.The result shows that both kolaviron and curcumin, possess antioxidant properties and the results from the three groups investigated, showed that the extracts had similar influence (anti-oxidants effect) on pregnancy, as kolaviron showed a bit more “potency”. In the infertile rats, both extracts present competing anti-oxidants effects on the organs. In conclusion, kolaviron presented a more effective anti-oxidants property across the three subject groups studied compared to curcumin. Keywords: Garcinia Kola, Turmeric, Kolaviron, Curcumin, Haematological, antioxidants Parameters DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/13-6-04 Publication date:March 31st 202

Performance Assessment of some Phishing predictive models based on Minimal Feature corpus

Phishing is currently one of the severest cybersecurity challenges facing the emerging online community. With damages running into millions of dollars in financial and brand losses, the sad tale of phishing activities continues unabated. This led to an arms race between the con artists and online security community which demand a constant investigation to win the cyberwar. In this paper, a new approach to phishing is investigated based on the concept of minimal feature set on some selected remarkable machine learning algorithms. The goal of this is to select and determine the most efficient machine learning methodology without undue high computational requirement usually occasioned by non-minimal feature corpus. Using the frequency analysis approach, a 13-dimensional feature set consisting of 85% URL-based feature category and 15% non-URL-based feature category was generated. This is because the URL-based features are observed to be more regularly exploited by phishers in most zero-day attacks. The proposed minimal feature set is then trained on a number of classifiers consisting of Random Tree, Decision Tree, Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine and Naïve Bayes. Using 10 fold-cross validation, the approach was experimented and evaluated with a dataset consisting of 10000 phishing instances. The results indicate that Random Tree outperforms other classifiers with significant accuracy of 96.1% and a Receiver’s Operating Curve (ROC) value of 98.7%. Thus, the approach provides the performance metrics of various state of art machine learning approaches popular with phishing detection which can stimulate further deeper research work in the evaluation of other ML techniques with the minimal feature set approach

Effects of β-carotene biofortified cassava grits (Mahihot esculenta Crantz) based-diets on retinol bioavailability and performance of broiler chicks

The B-carotene content of five cassava varieties and products as well as B-carotene bioavailability in cassava grit from TMS 01/1371 were undertaken using 240 one-day old Arbor acre broiler strain randomly divided into eight groups of 30 birds each. Each group comprised a triplicate of 10 birds each assigned in a completely randomized design. The eight dietary treatments were: Diets 1 and 8 had yellow and white maize respectively as the main energy source, while diets 2, 3 and 4 had maize replaced with cassava grit from TMS 01/1371 at 25%, 50% and 75%. Diets 5, 6 and 7 also had the maize contents similarly replaced with 25%, 50% and 75% grits from TME 419 respectively. Yellow maize, white maize, grits from TME 419 and TMS 01/1371 contained 238.33, 13.33, 6.67 and 108.33. B-carotene in the peeled fresh tuber of TMS 01/1412 (468.33), unpeeled fresh tuber (425.00), dried peeled tuber (391.67) and dried unpeeled cassava (323.33) were significantly higher (P < 0.05) than the corresponding values in TMS 01/1371 (416.67, 371.67, 311.67 and 283.33) and TMS 01/1368 (401.67, 350.00, 295.00 and 258.33). TME 419 cassava and products (peeled fresh tuber, unpeeled fresh tuber, dried peeled tuber and dried unpeeled tuber, garri, garri flour, grit, grit flour, peeling, peels and leaves) contained significantly lower (P < 0.05) levels of B-carotene. The FCR of chicks on diet 1 (1.50) was lowest (P < 0.05) while those on diet 8 (2.24) was highest. The main and interactive effects of cassava varieties and inclusion levels of grits on all indices of performance were significantly different (P < 0.05). Dietary B-carotene only correlated negatively with grits inclusion levels (P < 0.05) from TMS 01/1371 (r = 0.40). The B-carotene content of the diets when related to the inclusion levels of grits from TMS 01/1371 were both significantly negative linearly and quadratically. Regression equations were: (1) Y = 15.333 – 0.0530x (R2 = 0.16); (2) Y = 13.667 + 0.147x – 0.003x2 (R2 = 0.36) Conclusively, processing methods adopted in this study reduced B-carotene content of cassava grits which may have affected the bioavailability of retinoic acid in broiler chicks’

Phishing the cyberspace: a taxonomic review of a decade-long cyber-pandemic

Phishing attacks is one of the severest cyber-attacks in which both experienced and naYve online users experienced every time It is one attack that open doors for other attacks such as ransomware where critical online assets can come under serious threats. To mitigate the adverse effects of phishing, various countermeasures have been provided by security communities and research institutions. How-ever, the situation has led to an arms race between the phishers and the security solutions thereby necessitating a constant review of existing solutions in the face of newer attack. In this paper, a review of different anti-phishing solutions is dis-cussed from different taxonomy of anti-phishing solutions. The review also provides for open issues that need attention from security communities to reduce the vulnerable gap available for phishers to exploit in current solutions

Evaluation of knowledge and practice of pharmaceutical waste disposal in hospitals and pharmacies within Lagos State, Nigeria

Background: Treatment and disposal of waste is a major challenge in most developing countries, including Nigeria. Improper disposal of pharmaceutical waste could have negative impact on the environment and human health as they can cause harmful effects.Objectives: This study assessed the knowledge and practise of healthcare personnel in Lagos State, Nigeria towards pharmaceutical waste disposal.Methods: The study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey carried out using structured questionnaires. Target respondents were healthcare workers involved in the use and disposal of pharmaceutical waste in several hospitals and pharmacies located within the State. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 and presented as tables and charts using descriptive and inferential statistics.Results: There was 83.3 % response to the questionnaires. Majority of the respondents (63.07 %) dispose refuse via authorized garbage collectors. The survey indicated that the drainage systems of most hospitals and pharmacies are connected to general drainages while 6.2 % have sewage systems installed. Most of the respondents (68.9 %) indicated that there was no waste disposal method in place for pharmaceutical waste. Knowledge of most appropriate disposal method for pharmaceutical waste amongst most of the respondents was poor (30.85 %).Conclusion: Limited knowledge on pharmaceutical waste disposal was evident amongst the respondents. Hence, the need to enlighten health care personnel on proper pharmaceutical waste disposal methods, so as to avoid associated environmental hazards, is recommended.Keywords: Healthcare workers, Pharmaceuticals, Waste disposal, Environmental, Hazar