DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A BIOINFORMATICS ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION LEARNING TOOL FOR AFRICA

Bioinformatics refers to the creation and advancement of algorithms, computational and statistical techniques and theories for solving formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data. However, some parts of the African continent have not been properly sensitized to bio-scientific and computing field. Thus, there is the need for appropriate strategies of introducing the basic components of this emerging scientific field to part of the African populace through the development of an online distance education learning tool. This study involved the design of a bioinformatics online distance educative tool an implementation of the bioinformatics online distance educative tool by a programming approach. Design and implementation were done using the Borland Delphi 7 Enterprise edition within its Integrated Development Environment. The advantage of using Delphi programming language in implementing this useful bioinformatics web tool is that Delphi programming language is an object oriented programming language that has a lot of extra facilities for the enhancement of further technical functions, which ordinary HTML cannot handle. The development and use of a bioinformatics distance education software, as a teaching tool, in some African countries holds great promise for accommodating the needs of the populace, who live in cities, small towns and remote areas

Promoting Public Health and Safety: A Predictive Modeling Software Analysis on Perceived Road Fatality Contributory Factors

Extensive literature search was conducted to computationally analyze the relationship between key perceived road fatality factors and public health impacts, in terms of mortality and morbidity. Heterogeneous sources of data on road fatality 1970-2005 and that based on interview questionnaire on European road drivers’ perception were sourced. Computational analysis was performed on these data using the Multilayer Perceptron model within the dtreg predictive modeling software. Driver factors had the highest relative significance. Drivers played significant role as causative agents of road accidents. A good degree of correlation was also observed when compared with results obtained by previous researchers. Sweden, UK, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Netherlands, and Austria, where road safety targets were set and EU targets adopted, experienced a faster and sharper reduction of road fatalities. However, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Portugal experienced slow, but little reduction in cases of road fatalities. Spain experienced an increase in road fatalities possibly due to road fatalities enhancing factors. Estonia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Hungry, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland experienced a fluctuating but decreasing trend. Enforcement of road safety principles and regulations are needed to decrease the incidences of fatal accidents. Adoption of the EU target of -50% reductions of fatalities in all countries will help promote public health and safety

Predicting Fraud in Mobile Phone Usage Using Artificial Neural Networks

Mobile phone usage involves the use of wireless communication devices that can be carried anywhere, as they require no physical connection to any external wires to work. However, mobile technology is not without its own problems. Fraud is prevalent in both fixed and mobile networks of all technologies. Frauds have plagued the telecommunication industries, financial institutions and other organizations for a long time. The aim of this research work and research publication is to apply 3 different neural network models (Fuzzy, Radial Basis and the Feedforward) to the prediction of fraud in real-life data of phone usage and also analyze and evaluate their performances with respect to their predicting capability. From the analysis and model predictability experiment carried out in this scientific research work, it was discovered that the fuzzy network model had the minimum error generated in its fraud predicting capability. Thus, its performance in terms of the error generated in this fraud prediction experiment showed that its NMSE (Normalized mean squared error) for the fraud predicted was 1.98264609. The mean absolute error (M AE = 15.00987244) for its fraud prediction was also the least; this showed that the fuzzy model fraud predictability was much better than the other two models

DEVELOPMENT OF A MEDICAL STAFF RECRUITMENT SYSTEM FOR TEACHING HOSPITALS IN NIGERIA

Recruitment of staff into teaching hospitals in Nigeria, acts as the first step towards creating competitive strength and strategic advantage for such institutions. However, one of the major problems associated with these institutions in the South Western part of Nigeria is their mode of staff recruitment. In this research paper, we developed a suitable staff recruitment system for some health institutions in Nigeria, focusing specifically on some teaching hospitals. Three teaching hospitals in south west Nigeria, were visited and relevant information was collated through personal interviews and questionnaires administration to the staff of Human Resource Departments and other relevant health professionals of these teaching hospitals. The design and development of the system employs 3-tier web architecture. System design of the staff recruitment system consisted of design activities that produce system specifications satisfying the functional requirements that were developed in the system analysis process. A formal model of the staff recruitment system was built using Unified Modeling Language (UML). The UML, as a modeling system, which provides a set of conventions that were used to describe the software system in terms of objects, offers diagrams that provide different perspective views of the system parts. The Web-based Medical Recruitment System (WBMRS) was designed to be user friendly and it is easy to navigate

IN-SILICO APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PROTOTYPE CLINICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR PEDIATRIC UNITS

There is an observed serious challenge to the provision and management of pediatric healthcare and facilities in most African countries. This has probably contributed to the high mortality rates recorded among African children. It is thus imperative to evaluate all possible approaches to the development of the appropriate manage of the problem. In-silico approaches to information management of pediatrics sections of hospitals could for example help reduce mortality rates among children. This study was aimed at developing a prototype clinic information system for keeping track of infants’ clinical records, diagnosis of their various ailments, proffering possible solutions and their respective responses to drug treatments. Research focus was on the pediatric sections of some hospitals located in southwestern part of Nigeria, particularly sections in care of the children between the ages of 5 and 9 years. A monthly or annual report generated from this system will assist in making proper recommendation to research institutions on ways of improving chemotherapeutic management of common diseases of infants and to governmental agencies on the need for more funding to support in this quest. C#.Net was the programming language used for the implementation of the system, while SQL server 2008 was used to provide the database support. It is hoped that the developed system will help in the reduction of infant mortality rates in hospitals were it is implemented

Computational Predictive Framework towards the Control and Reduction of Malaria incidences in Africa

Malaria persists as a problematic disease in Africa. It is the main cause of morbidity and mortality of children and efforts are currently being pooled to increase the control measures within endemic countries. With this in mind, we developed and applied a malaria control strategy from a computational perspective, to analyze, predict and offer appropriate recommendations and control measures of malaria data obtained from WHO ten Sub Saharan countries malaria report of 2008 . The analytical tool used is based on the C# programming language embedded artificial neural network intelligence system. From the outcome obtained, the system demonstrated some level of intelligence and showed the effects and impacts of some controllable factors on future malaria occurrence. The system at 90% prediction intensity showed malaria infection course to decline sharply by 2014 in all the study countries, ranging from 15.71% in Madagascar, 35.46% in Malawi, 38.44% in Nigeria, 38.98% in Sudan , 39.05% in Ethiopia 39.09% in Zambia, 40,08% in Ghana, 42.61% in Kenya, 45.21% in Uganda and 46.63% Mozambique respectively. Therefore, more future prevention, control and management interventions are needed in Madagascar and Mozambique by 2014 as compared to the rest of the countries studied. In conclusion, the tool can be used to produce sensible and logical results which can be applied to achieve reduction of possible future malaria occurrences by governmental, NGOs and other relevant health agencies for proper public health planning

DIAGNOSIS AND RECOMMENDER SYSTEM FOR SOME NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES

Failure to promptly diagnose and treat of some tropical diseases such as chicken pox, cholera and typhoid fever is affecting the community-based management of such diseases. The high mortality rates caused by these diseases make the quest for effective diagnoses and appropriate treatment an essential task. Thus, precise diagnosis of these diseases coupled with appropriate treatment will result in their control, especially in the tropical regions, which also constitute the developing countries. The system works for this research was based on the client/server architecture, structured as a 3-tier application. The Web browser constituted the first tier, a middleware engine using some dynamic Web content technology active server pages (ASP) constituted the middle-tier and the database was the third tier. The implementation of the system had a front- end web based graphical user interface (GUI) application and back-end relational database management system (RDBMS). The Front–end was implemented with ASP.NET (using vb.net-programming language), while the back-end was designed with Microsoft queried language (MS SQL) server 2005. With this development, a prompt medical diagnosis, effective drug recommendations and promulgation of effective policies could be provided at community settings where there are shortages in material and human resources for managing these neglected tropical diseases

Development of a Secured Information System to Manage Malaria Related Cases in South Western region of Nigeria

Effective community based management of malaria incidences in most community health care centers are hampered by failure in the prompt diagnosis and treatment of malaria. This challenge is exacerbated by the emergence of multidrug resistant plasmodium parasites which makes ineffective most of the effective therapeutic drugs used in the treatment of malaria. Furthermore, even at abrupt changes in the therapeutic recommendations does not always translate to an immediate change in the effective management and control of malaria. Thus, the quest for effective diagnosis and appropriate treatment becomes a daunting and necessary task. . In this article, a secured Information system to manage malaria related cases was developed by 2-tier architecture by using the VB.NET programming language within the Microsoft Visual studio 2008 edition. The database employed for storing relevant data was the SQL server 2005 edition and fingerprint device integrated into the information system was the Microsoft fingerprint reader. From the results in this study, we modeled a feasible medical history system for prompt diagnosis, effective drug recommendations and promulgation of policies that would serve as palliatives for community health care centers that suffers shortages in material and human resources handling malaria and its related diseases

Evaluating the Relationship Between Running Times and DNA Sequence Sizes using a Generic-Based Filtering Program.

Generic programming depends on the decomposition of programs into simpler components which may be developed separately and combined arbitrarily, subject only to well- defined interfaces. Bioinformatics deals with the application of computational techniques to data present in the Biological sciences. A genetic sequence is a succession of letters which represents the basic structure of a hypothetical DNA molecule, with the capacity to carry information. This research article studied the relationship between the running times of a generic-based filtering program and different samples of genetic sequences in an increasing order of magnitude. A graphical result was obtained to adequately depict this relationship. It was also discovered that the complexity of the generic tree program was O (log2 N). This research article provided one of the systematic approaches of generic programming to Bioinformatics, which could be instrumental in elucidating major discoveries in Bioinformatics, as regards efficient data management and analysis