Nutritional habits and food consumption pattern of fishing communities around Lake Kainji, Nigeria

The findings are presented of a nutrition survey carried out in the framework of the Nigerian-German Kainji Lake Fisheries Promotion Project in March/April 1995. The major aim of the study was to obtain closer information on the food habits and food consumption patterns of the fishing population, especially the quantification of fish and small fish in particular, consumed at the household level. A standardized questionnaire was used to collect relevant information on demographic, education and occupational profiles; the information was collected in 39 villages in the southern sector of Kainji Lake. (PDF contains 75 pages

Assessment of Microbial Quality and Antibacterial Activity of Commonly used Hand Washes

Hands are the highways to the transmission and spread of pathogens that causes diseases, food borne illnesses and nosocomial infections. Hand washing is the act of cleansing the hands with water or another liquid, with or without the use of soap or other detergents, to ensure proper hand hygiene. To determine the microbiological quality and the antibacterial property and dilution effects on activity of hand wash, seven brands of hand washes were evaluated using susceptibility test by agar well diffusion, minimum inhibitory dilution and time kill test. This was done by assessing different dilutions of the hand washes against standardized 1.5x108 cells of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Results showed that all the hand washes were sterile and all the brands had some level of antibacterial activity. The hand washes were more active on Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli than on Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Activity decreased with dilution as neat and 2-1 dilutions gave better results compared to 2-2, 10-1 and 10-2. Hib hand wash killed all test organisms when exposed for 2, 5 and 10 minutes and at neat and 2-1 dilutions but not at 2-2, 10-1 and 10-2. Rev and Pan hand washes though are sterile, were least active in all the tests. The minimum inhibitory dilution and minimum bactericidal dilution for most of the hand wash was at neat concentration. The time kill test showed that the effect of the hand wash was highest at 5 and 10 minutes and at neat (undiluted) for all the test organisms. It is advised that the dilution of hand washes a common practice in most eateries must stop as these products are not active when diluted, hands should be washed for five to ten minutes for maximum hand hygiene. Key words: Antibacterial Activity, Food Borne Illnesses, Hand Hygiene, Microbiological Quality, Nosocomial Infections and Pathogens

A robust loop-shaping approach to fast and accurate nanopositioning

Peer reviewedPreprin

DCOS, a Real-Time Light-weight Data Centric Operating System

DCOS is a Data Centric lightweight Operating System for embedded devices. Despite limited energy and hardware resources, it supports a data driven architecture with provisions for dynamic loadable Modules. It combines these with Real-Time provisions based on Earliest Deadline First with a simple but smart resource handling mechanism. We will give an overview of the capabilities of DCOS and we will describe the basics of the main mechanisms

Assessment of microbiological and chemical qualities of selected cocoa, tea and coffee brands in Nigerian markets

Background: Cocoa, Tea, and Coffee products are consumed worldwide; they are rich in nutrient and, thus, prone to microbial contaminations that could cause food infections and intoxication.Objective: the objectives of the paper are: To evaluate the microbial and chemical qualities of some popular brands of cocoa, coffee and tea  products in Nigerian market and benchmark it with standard specifications, to determine the products safety for human consumption and proffer solutions on ways to prevent possible food borne hazards associated with these products.Materials and Methods: This study examined the microbiological and chemical qualities of some brands of these products at the consumer level using standard analytical methods. Results: Five (50%) of the cocoa products had coliform counts (cfu/g) significantly (p<0.05) higher than  acceptable limits and range from 2.6×101±0.01 to 4.6×101±0.01. The mean total aerobic plate count and fungal counts (cfu/g) cocoa, coffee, and tea were not significantly (p<0.05) different from standard specifications. The microbial isolates include species of Bacillus (59.2%), Staphylococcus(12.0%), Enterobacter(1.6%), Aspergillus(20.0%), Penicillium(14.4%) and Saccharomyces (12.0%). Moisture contents higher than 6% and 3% standard specifications in tea and cocoa products was detected in 7(70%) of tea and 2(20%) of cocoa products respectively. The samples are rich in phenol contents (mg/ml) and contain varying concentrations of manganese, calcium, iron, and copper. Free Radical Scavenging (DPPH) activity of 6.2±0.01 to  16.3±0.02μg/ml was detected in the samples. Conclusion: Some cocoa products contain unacceptable levels of coliforms, the high moisture contents above 3 and 6% standard specifications in some cocoa and tea products could encourage the proliferation of  mycotoxigenic moulds and pathogenic bacteria to hazardous levels. The use of good raw materials, compliance to good manufacturing practices (GMP) and apt storage are advocated.Keywords: Chemical qualities, Cocoa, Coffee, Microbial qualities,  Mycotoxigenic moulds, Te

The h-Integrability and the Weak Laws of Large Numbers for Arrays

In this paper, the concept of weak laws of large numbers for arrays (WLLNFA) is studied, and a new notion of uniform integrability referred to as h-integrability is introduced as a condition for WLLNFA in obtaining the main results

On a Survey of Uniform Integrability of Sequences of Random Variables

This paper presents explicitly a survey of uniformly integrable sequences of random variables. We also study extensively several cases and conditions required for uniform integrability, with the establishment of some new conditions needed for the generalization of the earlier results obtained by many scholars and researchers, noting the links between uniform integrability and pointwise convergence of a class of polynomial functions on conditional based

Eco-Friendly Use of Guinea Corn Straw as Building Material in Construction for Sustainable Development

Globally, million tonnes of straws are produced annually from farms as agricultural wastes. Walls made from plastered straw bale blocks are known to have low thermal conductivity and provide insulation for houses when used in building construction. In this study, the use of guinea corn straw encapsulated in cement mortar to produce masonry units for construction of building was carried out.The baled straws were manually compressed and tightly bound with twine purposely to avoid looseness, thus increasing the density of bale. Construction of wooden moulds of inner sizes of 150mm x 200mm x 400mm for straw brick blocks was adopted catering for mortar thickness of 50mm as cover for adequate protection of the baled straw encased. The average compressive strength of mortar used was determined, the density and strength of the resulting masonry units were also determined. A prototype building of plan dimension 5000 mm x 3000 mm was constructed with the use of straw brick blocks. The average compressive strength of the mortar was 11.11N/mm2, the density and strength of the straw bale block was found to be 62.86 kg/m3 and 1.87N/mm2 respectively. These values meet the minimum specification outlined in BS5628-1:1992 for masonry unit standard for building construction. The cost of producing a square meter of wall with straw block was compared with that of the conventional sandcrete block. The comparison showed that the use of straw block in wall construction reduced the cost of producing blocks by almost 35%. Keywords: straw bale, straw block, compressive strengt

Ion-beam-induced reconstruction of amorphous GaN

Wurtzite GaN can be rendered amorphous by high-dose heavy-ion bombardment. We show here that relatively low-dose reirradiation of such amorphous GaN (a-GaN) with MeV light ions can significantly change some of the physical properties of a-GaN. In particular, light-ion reirradiation of a-GaN results in (i) an increase in material density, (ii) the suppression of complete decomposition during postimplantation annealing, (iii) a significant increase in the values of hardness and Young's modulus, and (iv) an apparent decrease in the absorption of visible light. Transmission electronmicroscopy shows that a-GaN remains completely amorphous after light-ion reirradiation. Therefore, we attribute the above effects of light-ion reirradiation to an ion-beam-induced atomic-level reconstruction of the amorphous phase. Results indicate that electronic energy loss of light ions is responsible for the changes in the mechanical properties and for the suppression of thermally induced decomposition of a-GaN. However, the changes in the density of a-GaN appear to be controlled by the nuclear energy loss of light ions

Disintegration of concrete construction induced by acid mine drainage attack

Abstract: In this paper, microanalytical investigation was conducted on disintegrated field concrete that had been used to construct a weir within a coal mine in South Africa. The concrete was in contact with polluted mine water, commonly referred to as acid mine drainage (AMD). Accordingly, the concrete weir had been exposed to dynamic conditions associated with flowing AMD. Investigations were conducted by optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The field concrete samples examined consisted of soft broken concrete chunks and whitish powdery substance that had crystallized and formed a surface coating on the widely cracked locations of the deteriorated concrete. No evidence of sulphate attack or pyrite oxidation was found in the investigation; acid attack mechanism was diagnosed