History of TB in the Sudan

Introduction: Medical history in Sudan is far from being complete. There are no reliable records. Attempt to write on the projects and development of history of TB in the Sudan is a difficult task.Objective: To study and trace the progress of TB in Sudan during the last century through their historical development.Design: A retrospective study.Methods: Data were collected from the annual reports of the Sudan Medical Services. Libraries and a number of previous studies were consulted.Results: The route of entry of TB in the Sudan is mainly from the North. The South was virgin from TB up to 1930s. Northern Sudanese tribes have a high susceptibility and incidence of TB during 1925-1932 (3.7/1000). The south and the Nuba Mountains were almost free from infection or disease. The infectivity rate was highest in North 4.3% while Khartoum showed 3%. In the South, Rumbek district, no TB cases were reported before the age of puberty up to 1930. Prevalence of tuberculosis in 1959/1960 was 26.0% and the detection rate was only 30%.Conclusion: Northern Sudanese contracted tuberculosis while serving in the Egyptian army and cities. The Southern and Western tribes who were almost free from TB infection became highly susceptible to both infection and disease. The infectivity rate remains static during the last 50 years. Keywords: Sennar, Nuba Mountains, Darfur, Kassala, Mediterranea

Fast terminal sliding mode control for gantry cranes

Cranes remain a vital tool for the construction of infrastructure such as buildings, bridges, etc. Recently, there has been renewed interest in crane automation in dealing with concerns on safety and possible performance degradation due to system uncertainties and disturbances. One potential solution to the problem is the use of robust techniques based on the Sliding Mode Control (SMC) methodology. Much research has been conducted to design controllers based on linear sliding surfaces, aiming at achieving the desired control performance in finite time. In this context, this paper proposes a control method, based on the Fast Terminal Sliding Mode (FTSM), to guarantee finite-time stability of the crane. To do that, we have derived a mathematical model of the crane using Lagrangian formulation with uncertainties as bounding functions. Then, sliding surfaces based on the hierarchical sliding mode are defined, and a control law is derived using the Lyapunov stability theory. The hierarchical sliding surfaces consist of two layers. The first layer include sliding functions based on FTSM to enable faster convergence of the system to equilibrium. This can have advantages in high precision tracking applications. In the second-layer, the sliding surface is designed from the linear combination of the first layer sliding functions. Also, we have given a proof of the stability of the system in finite time. Extensive simulation results show the proposed controller based on FTSM can achieve higher performance in stabilizing the swinging load of a gantry crane. Laboratorial experiments have been conducted to verify the obtained results in terms of the superior convergence time and improved performance over conventional SMC

The use of cold shock in inducing triploidy in African mud catfish (Clarias gariepinus)

study was conducted to induce triploidy in African mud catfish Clarias gariepinus using cold shock. The fertilized eggs were exposed at one temperature regime of 0°C with varied shock treatments of 0, 15, 25 and 30 min. Some 3 min after fertilization, the success of triploidy was determined by the presence or absence of bent trunk in the fry as reported by (Aluko et al., 1997). The shock duration of 25 min at 0°C gave the best result of 55% hatch with survival at the end of the exposure regime of 43.5%. Shock exposure of 30 min gave 30% hatch while 15 and 20 min exposure were poor at 15% hatch

Age And Growth Of An Ecotype Cichlid “Wesafu” In Epe Lagoon, Lagos, Nigeria

A sample of 150 specimens of “Wesafu” in the size range of 78mm and 414mm were collected from Epe Lagoon. The period of collection spanned August to November 2003 and April to Ma y 2004 for age and growth pattern determination of this Ecotype Cichlid of Epe Lagoon. 900 scales were examined and another 232 rejected/discarded because they were regenerated or irregular. Growth rings were counted and scale radii measured. The study showed a mean range of observed lengths to be 181±12.5; 265 ± 11.6; 305 ± 1.6 and 337 ± 3.4 for the successive years of growth. The most rapid growth in length occurred during the first year in life [181mm, (+1yr.)] thereafter decrease to only 32mm in the fourth year (+4yr.). The T-test suggests that there was no significant difference between mean back-calculated body length of male and female samples for age 1+ to 3+. However, in the age group 4+, male specimens were significantly larger than the female. The fact that the fish is highly demanded and commands premium price may result in over exploitation. This explain why only 5 of the 150 specimens were of the age 4+, representing only 3.33% of total specimens which raises serious conservation question and the need for domestication and aquaculture of this highly valued fish in Lagos, Nigeria. Keywords: Age and Growth, Ecotype Cichlid, Epe-Lagoon, NigeriaGlobal Journal of Agricultural Sciences Vol. 7 (1) 2008: pp. 105-10

Adaptive second-order sliding mode control of UAVs for civil applications

Quadcopters, as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have great potential in civil applications such as surveying, building monitoring, and infrastructure condition assessment. Quadcopters, however, are relatively sensitive to noises and disturbances so that their performance may be quickly downgraded in the case of inadequate control, system uncertainties and/or external disturbances. In this study, we deal with the quadrotor low-level control by proposing a robust scheme named the adaptive second-order quasi-continuous sliding mode control (adaptive 2-QCSM). The ultimate objective is for robust attitude control of the UAV in monitoring and inspection of built infrastructure. First, the mathematical model of the quadcopter is derived considering nonlinearity, strong coupling, uncertain dynamics and external disturbances. The control design includes the selection of the sliding manifold and the development of quasi-continuous second-order sliding mode controller with an adaptive gain. Stability of the overall control system is analysed by using a global Lyapunov function for convergence of both the sliding dynamics and adaptation scheme. Extensive simulations have been carried out for evaluation. Results show that the proposed controller can achieve robustness against disturbances or parameter variations and has better tracking performance in comparison with experimental responses of a UAV in a real-time monitoring task

Low-latency vision-based fiducial detection and localisation for object tracking

Real-time vision systems are widely-used in construction and manufacturing industries. A significant proportion of computational resources of such systems is used in fiducial identification and localisation for motion tracking of moving targets. The requirement is to localise a pattern in an image captured by the vision system precisely, accurately, and with a minimum available computation time. As such, this paper presents a class of patterns and, accordingly, proposes an algorithm to fulfil the requirement. Here, the patterns are designed using circular patches of concentric circles to increase the probability of detection and reduce cases of false detection. In the detection algorithm, the image captured by the vision system is first scaled down for computationally-effective processing. The scaled image is then separated by filtering only the colour components, which are made up of outer circular patches in the proposed pattern. A blob detection algorithm is then implemented for identifying inner circular patches. The inner circles are then localised in the image by using the colour information obtained. Finally, the localised pattern, along with the camera and distortion matrix of the vision system, is applied in a perspective-n-point solving algorithm to estimate the marker orientation and position in the global coordinate system. Our system shows significant enhancement in performance of fiducial detection and identification and achieves the required latency of less than ten milliseconds. Thus, it can be used for infrastructure monitoring in many applications that involve high-speed real-time vision systems

Early Detection of Diabetes using Thermography and Artificial Neural Networks

The aim of this work is to demonstrate the usefulness of the artificial intelligence tools for early detection of diseases. From the historic and simple assessment of temperature by the clinical thermometer, thermal imaging camera has opened up new perspectives, and that a whole image field-of-view can be characterized in a single measurement. Thermographic assessment of temperature distribution within the examined skin enables a quick, non-contact, non-invasive relative measurement of their temperature. No literature has been found until date detection of diabetes using thermography and artificial neural networks. An attempt in this regard could help doctors make a safer decision. This work shows that the output predicted using the artificial neural network based on thermography, can be used for early detection of diabetes

Parasitic Infections of the African Giant Rat (Cricetomys Gambianus) in the Semi-Arid Region of Northeastern, Nigeria

A study of the internal and external parasites infections of the African giant rat (Cricetomys gambianus) was undertaken using standard parasitological methods. Of the 100 wild giant rats captured, 22(43.14%) males and 16(32.65%) females harboured gastrointestinal parasites. Similarly, 14(31.11%) juveniles and 24(43.64%) adults were also infected. Thevarious species of gastrointestinal parasites recovered from the giant rats at post-mortem were Hymenolepis nana 19(50%), Ancylostoma caninum 4(10.53%), Strongyloides stercoralis 7(18.42%), Aspicularis tetraptera 5(13.16%) and Taenia cysts 3(7.89%). The post-mortem worm counts showed that Hymenolepis nana had the highest burden than the otherhelminths. At the same time, 12(23.53%) males, 10(20.41) females, 14(31.11%) juveniles and 8(14.55%) adults also harboured various degree of ectoparasitic infestations. No statistical variation was observed on the prevalence of ectoparasitic infestations according to sex (p>0.05) however, juveniles 14(31.11%) were significantly (

Energy, carbon dioxide and water use implications of hydrous ethanol production

Sub-azeotropic hydrous ethanol has been demonstrated as an effective diesel fuel replacement when used in dual-fuel compression ignition engines. Previous studies have also suggested that hydrous ethanol may be more efficient to produce from corn than anhydrous ethanol. In this study, we investigate corn ethanol production from a dry-mill, natural gas-fired corn ethanol refinery, producing ethanol with a range of ethanol concentrations from 58°wt% - 100°wt% to determine the effect on energy use, water consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the refining stage of the corn ethanol lifecycle. A second law (exergy) analysis of anhydrous ethanol refining revealed the overall process to be 70% efficient, whereby 86% of the exergy losses could be accounted for by three processes: fermentation (34%), steam generation (29%) and distiller’s grains and solubles drying (23%). We found that producing 86°wt% ethanol is optimal as thermal energy consumption decreases by a maximum of 10% (from 7.7°MJ/L to 6.9°MJ/L). These savings have the potential to reduce energy costs by approximately 8% ($0.34 /L) and reduce refinery emissions by 8% (2°g°CO_2e/MJ). Production of hydrous ethanol reduced refinery water use due to decreased evaporative losses in the cooling towers, leading to water savings of between 3 - 6% at 86°wt% ethanol.This work was supported in part by the Minnesota Corn Growers Association under contract number 1051-14EU and St Edmund’s College (Cambridge, United Kingdom).This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2015.08.03

Metabolic Syndrome among Undergraduate Students Attending Medical Clinics for Obligatory Medical Screening

Purpose: To determine the prevalence and risk factors for metabolic syndrome (MS) among first-year undergraduate students in three Sudanese universities.Methods: A total of 384 first-year students attending university medical clinics for obligatory medical checkup in Khartoum, Sudan participated in this cross-sectional study. Anthropometric parameters, including weight, height, body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) were measured with reference to National Cholesterol Education Program’s Adult Treatment Panel III (NCEP/ATP III) guidelines. Fasting blood samples were collected from all participants and assayed for fasting blood glucose (FBG), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL), and low density lipoprotein (LDL).Results: The overall prevalence of MS in the test group was 7.8 %. The prevalence of MS, though higher in females, was statistically not significant (p = 0.32). According to residential area (rural – urban), the prevalence was higher in urban than rural, 10.4 and 4.4 %, respectively (p = 0.25 and p = 0.25, respectively). In addition, frequency of MS was directly proportional to age. The weight of patients with MS was significantly different from that of non-MS subjects (p ˂ 0.001). Same was also observed when obese patients were compared with non-MS subjects. (p ˂ 0.001).Conclusion: The prevalence of MS among Sudanese first-year university students in Khartoum is moderately high. Incidence of MS among the students is directly proportional to BMI.Keywords: Metabolic syndrome, Obesity, Hypertension, Diabetes, Dyslipidemia, Anthropometri