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Development of high temperature dense refractory bricks using clay minerals and grog has been carried out with a view to determining the consequence of variation in percentages of Al2O3.2SiO2.2H2O and grog on the properties of locally produced dense bricks. The raw materials were used to compose five batches (of five samples each) from all the clay minerals and their blends (ED1–EN5). The clay bodies were hydraulically shaped and oven dried at 1100C. The properties of the produced bricks investigated after sintering at 13500C indicated that samples ED1–EN5 had shrinkage ranging from 8.4%-11.5% with corresponding bulk density of 1.57g/cm3–2.26g/cm3 respectively. The investigation revealed that samples ED1–EN5 of the bricks as stated above had compressive strength ranging from 13.5MPa–23.1MPa with corresponding porosity ranging from 12.84% -23.39% respectively. The estimated refractoriness using shuen’s formula shows that samples ED–EN5 had 16660c-17680c, while the result of the refractoriness using pyrometric cone equivalent indicated that samples ED1–EN5 had cone 30(16600C)–

The residues of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDTs) and hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) in forty-eight (48) composite fruit and vegetable samples (carrot, cucumber, tomato, and watermelon) were qualitatively and quantitatively determined using gas chromatography equipped with electron capture detector (GC-ECD). Safety indices such as the estimated average daily intake (EADI), cancer benchmark concentration (CBC), hazard quotient (HQ) and index (HI), and hazard ratio (HR) were also estimated. Results showed the predominance of HCH and its isomers in the fruits and vegetables as compared with the DDTs. The most predominant HCHs in all the fruits was α-HCH with mean concentrations of 2.704 ± 2.488 mg kg-1 (carrot), 1.536 ± 1.036 mg kg-1 (cucumber), 6.814 ± 2.967 mg kg-1 (tomato), and 9.241 ± 2.735 mg kg-1 (watermelon). The analysis showed that the levels of pesticide residues detected in 25 to 100% of the fruit and vegetable samples were above the UK/European Commission Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs). The non-carcinogenic health risk estimates showed that only α-HCH in tomatoes and watermelon had HQ > 1 which indicates the possibility of systemic health risk in children consumers. The carcinogenic health risk showed that only α-HCH and γ-HCH in children and α-HCH in adults had HR > 1 for tomato and watermelon which implies the possibility of carcinogenic health risk from its consumption. It is therefore paramount to institute a policy and regulatory framework for regular monitoring of pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables in Nigeria in order to ensure food safety for consumers and protect human health.

We earlier reported the protective effect of Solanum dasyphyllum against cyanide neurotoxicity. In furtherance to this, we investigated the protective effect of S. dasyphyllum against rotenone, a chemical toxin that causes brain-related diseases. Mitochondria fraction obtained from the brain of male Wistar rats was incubated with various solvents (hexane, dichloromethane, ethylacetate, and methanol) extracts of S. dasyphyllum before rotenone exposure. Mitochondria respiratory enzymes (MRE) were evaluated along with markers of oxidative stress. The inhibition of MRE by rotenone was reversed by treatment with various fractions of S. dasyphyllum. The oxidative stress induced by rotenone was also reversed by fractions of S. dasyphyllum. In addition, the ethylacetate fraction of S. dasyphyllum was most potent against rotenone-induced neurotoxicity. In conclusion, S. dasyphyllum is rich in active phytochemicals that can prevent some neurotoxic effects of rotenone exposure. Further study can be done in an in vivo model to substantiate our results.

This study appraises the performance of local government on their mandatory roles, especially in delivery of essential services to the populace at the grassroots in southwestern Nigeria between 1999 and 2019. Data for this study were collected through the primary and secondary sources. The study revealed that generally, local government has not been able to perform to expectation in discharging their mandatory functions due to fact that state governments had been diverting their attention more to concurrent functions than their mandatory functions. The study also revealed that the performance of local government in their mandatory functions has been a story of good to bad from year 1999 and 2019. The paper highlighted some recommendations and concluded that local government in southwestern Nigeria has significantly, though at a low ebb, performed their mandatory functions in provision of essential service to the populace between 1999 and 2019.

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been ravaging Nigeria and the world with increasing morbidity and mortality. Despite efforts by the Nigerian government implemented through the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to reduce the scourge of the disease through public enlightenment and regular updates, the number of new cases and mortalities from COVID-19 are still increasing. Family physicians (FPs) who are the first contact of care for most patients accessing private and public health facilities in Nigeria have been working tirelessly to reduce the scourge of the pandemic in Nigeria. They continuously update themselves through regular webinars and online resources and guidelines provided by the Society of Family Physicians of Nigeria (SOFPON). Measures adopted by FPs across the country in the fight against the scourge include triaging patients as they present to the family medicine clinics; health education and enlightenment of the populace; and ensuring social distancing, regular handwashing and compulsory use of face mask by both physicians and patients during clinical consultations. Other measures include incorporating family-focused behavioural interventions in their practice, home-based care to reduce the number of persons visiting the hospital, telemedicine and Hospice and palliative care services to the elderly and terminally ill. In conclusion, FPs in Nigeria are helping to reduce the scourge of COVID-19 through patient education and innovative healthcare delivery that does not put patients at increased risk of the disease whilst promptly recognising potential COVID-19 patients and referring them for early diagnosis and treatment.

Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) is a frequent nosocomial pathogen that causes severe diseases in many clinical and community settings. Strains of P. aeruginosa are associated with increased morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs. The rapid emergence of antimicrobial resistance among these strains is a public health crisis. Moreover, there is paucity of data on characterization of P. aeruginosa isolates from human clinical samples in Kwara State. Objectives: The objectives are to investigate the occurrence of metallo β-lactamase enzyme, multiple antibiotic resistant P. aeruginosa among clinical samples and detection of antibiotic resistance genes among them. Methods: Two hundred and thirty-five samples comprising of 145 males and 90 females human clinical specimens were collected aseptically from five selected health institutions within Kwara state, Nigeria. The samples were cultured immediately using standard microbiological procedures. Multiple drug resistance patterns of the micro-organisms to different antibiotics were determined using the Bauer Kirby disc diffusion technique. Metallo β-lactamase production was determined using E – test strip and the DNA samples of the multiple resistant P. aeruginosa strains were extracted and subjected to Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for resistant genes determination. Data were subjected to descriptive statistics using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. Results: A total of 145 isolates were identified for P. aeruginosa from the clinical samples .Thirty were positive for metallo β-lactamase production; 11 (8 %) males and 19 (13 %) females. Absolute resistance to ceftazidime (100 %), gentamicin (100 %), ceftriaxone (100 %) were observed while low resistance to ciprofloxacin (12.4 %), piperacillin (6.9 %) and imipenem (6.9 %). All isolates were sensitive to colistin. The prevalence of various encoding genes blaVIM, , blaCTX-M and blaTEM were 34.4 %, 46.7 %, 16.7 % and 37.7 % respectively. Conclusion: This study has shown that there is a high occurrence of metallo β-lactamase enzyme producing and antibioticresistant strains of P. aeruginosa in clinical specimens from the studied area. Necessary measures must therefore be implemented to stop the problems of this antibiotic resistance.

Local government in Nigeria has constitutional responsibility in primary education; also, the state and federal government attend to all levels of education, including the primary education. Over the years, local and state governments have constituted the real actors in Nigeria primary education sector through the instrumentality of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), and Local Government Education Authority (LGEA). Constitutionally and financially, local governments remain major actors in primary education, but practically, it is SUBEB who manage schools through LGEA with little or no consultation to local government council, regardless of their huge contributions. The paper intends to look at these challenges and reemphasis the contribution of Local government to Primary Education. Using the secondary method of data collection in form of content analysis, the paper revealed that Local government has contributed immensely to the functioning of primary education, both in mandatory and concurrent capacities with the state government especially in payments of teacher’s salary and allowances, provision of instructional materials, provision of classrooms and other infrastructures needed for the smooth running of primary education in Nigeria. The paper concluded that local governments remain the major actor and provider of primary education in Nigeria.Key Words: Primary Education, Local Government, UBEC, SUBEB, LGEA

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a highly transmissible viral infection has spread worldwide causing exponential increase in morbidity and mortality. But so far, there is limited information available to describe the presenting characteristics, outcomes and treatment modalities of COVID-19 patients in Nigeria. This study aimed to describe the demographic and clinical characteristics, underlying comorbidities, treatment modalities and outcomes of patients isolated and treated in a repurposed COVID-19 isolation and treatment centre in Abuja, Nigeria.A retrospective study which reviewed the medical records of 300 confirmed COVID-19 patients isolated and treated according to the World Health Organisation and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control guidelines between 22Out of 300 patients studied, 61.0% were male. The mean age of the participants was 38.2 ± 14.7. Less than half of the patients (40.3%) had one or more underlying comorbidities with hypertension the most common co-morbidity. Majority (62%) of patients were mildly symptomatic, 33% were asymptomatic while only 2% were severely symptomatic. The most common presenting symptoms include cough 34.0%, fever 30.3%, anosmia 28.7% and dysgeusia 22.7%. Older age (P0.001), tertiary education and the presence of underlying comorbidity (P0.001) were significantly associated with symptomatic presentation of COVID-19. The median duration of time between positive laboratory testing and presentation for treatment was 5 days (0-29). All patients were treated with a combination of Ivermectin, Azithromycin, Zinc and Vitamin C with no recorded death. The median length of stay at facility was 9 days.Close attention should be given to patients with co-morbidities as an inefficient management of such co-morbidities could lead to mortalities which may not be directly attributable to COVID-19.

Production and characterization of aluminosilicate refractory brick using Unwana beach silica sand, Ekebedi and Unwana clays has been carried out with a view to determining the suitability of localy available raw materials for refractory bricks production. The sand was used to compose six (with 65%, 60%, 55%, 50%, 45%, and 40% of Unwana beach silica sand) refractory brick body together with Ekebedi and Unwana clays. The properties of the produced bricks investigated after firing shows that samples A - F had total shrinkage ranging from 3.2% to 8.3% with % porosity of 16.58 to 18.66 respectively. The bulk density result revealed that Samples A- F had 1.63g/cm3 to 1.53g/cm3 with compressive strength ranging from 7.90Mpa to 21.49Mpa respectively. The estimated refractoriness result indicated that the samples A-F had values ranging from 16080C to

The profitability of a cement plant depends largely on the efficient operation of the blending stage, therefore, there is a need to control the process at the blending stage in order to maintain the chemical composition of the raw mix near or at the desired value with minimum variance despite variation in the raw material composition. In this work, neuro-fuzzy model is developed for a dynamic behaviour of the system to predict the total carbonate content in the raw mix at different clay feed rates. The data used for parameter estimation and model validation was obtained from one of the cement plants in Nigeria. The data was pre-processed to remove outliers and filtered using smoothening technique in order to reveal its dynamic nature. Autoregressive exogenous (ARX) model was developed for comparison purpose. ARX model gave high root mean square error (RMSE) of 5.408 and 4.0199 for training and validation respectively. Poor fit resulting from ARX model is an indication of nonlinear nature of the process. However, both visual and statistical analyses on neuro-fuzzy (ANFIS) model gave a far better result. RMSE of training and validation are 0.28167 and 0.7436 respectively, and the sum of square error (SSE) and R-square are 39.6692 and 0.9969 respectively. All these are an indication of good performance of ANFIS model. This model can be used for control design of the process.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the coconut hybrid varieties based on Genotype by Traits (GT) biplot to examine its usefulness in visualizing coconut trait relationship and its application in genotypes comparison. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design with two replications; each block consisted of 5 plots with a total of eight palms per plot while the remaining palms were used as guard rows. This experiment was conducted at the Main Research Station of the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. The materials for the present study consisted of 5 hybrid varieties of Coconut palm. Data on individual palms were recorded on seven quantitative traits: thickness of petiole (TP), number of fronds (NFD), number of leaflets (NL), number of fruits per palm (NF), number of bunches per palm (NB), width of leaflet (WL) and circumference of the stem 20 cm from the soil level (CF).The GT biplot analysis revealed close associations among the studied traits. The two Original Research Article Odewale et al.; IJPSS, Article no. IJPSS.2014.005 271 axes explained 90.4% of the total variation among the cultivars due to the various traits measured thus reflecting the accuracy of inter-relationships among the measured characters. Correlation coefficient between the studied traits showed that there is a strong positive relationship between number of fruit and number of bunches. These two traits were however negatively correlated with other traits except number of fronds. Based on the Auto Find QTL function of GGE biplot, bunch yield and width of leaflets were identified as traits suiTable for indirect selection for nut yield improvement. H4 was identified as an ideal genotype as it combines several good traits in its genetic composition and thus could serve as a good genetic raw material from which better cultivars, synthetic varieties and pure lines can be developed. H1 was the best in terms of nut and bunch yields, indicating that it can be used as parents in the development of hybrid varieties and populations that are outstanding in these traits.

Objective The objective of this study is to develop an isotope dilution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry assay to screen for hepatorenal tyrosinemia (HT) from newborn filter paper samples using pooled extracts to increase high throughput screening. Design and methods Succinylacetone (SUAC), the marker for HT, was extracted from dried blood spots with the formation of the hydrazone derivative of SUAC; up to eight sample extracts were pooled and the SUAC-derivative was analyzed by mass spectrometry methods with an injection-to-injection time of one minute. If any pooled sample extract screened positive, then the samples comprising the pooled sample were assayed individually. Results Two newborn infants were identified with high levels of SUAC (7 & 23 μM) and later confirmed to have HT. Three older children whose initial filter paper samples were taken at 195 days to 614 days of age with elevated SUAC (range 4.9–5 μM) were identified; one of the three had clinical signs of HT and was placed on treatment (diagnosis of the other two are unavailable). Conclusion MS/MS analysis of pooled dried blood sample extracts permits sensitive, reduced instrumental analytical time and increase high throughput screening for HT.

Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is a major cause of gynaecological morbidity globally. Complications from PID include infertility, ectopic pregnancy and chronic pelvic pain. Low socioeconomic status (SES) is a risk factor for the occurrence of PID.The aim of this study was to determine the association between SES of parents and the occurrence of PID among undergraduates attending Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Irrua.The study was a hospital-based, descriptive cross-sectional study. Three hundred and sixty female undergraduates attending the hospital were consecutively recruited and clinically assessed for the presence of PID using the WHO and CDC MMWR 2010 criteria for the clinical assessment of PID. Their SES was determined by Oyedeji social class categorisation. Data were analysed using Epi Info 3.5.4. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data, and Chi-square was used to test for association.There was a significant association between SES of parents and multiple sex partners (P0.02), previous sexually transmitted infection (STI) (P = 0.05), unprotected sex (P0.001), history of induced abortion (P0.001) and surgical termination of pregnancy (P0.01). There was also association between occurrence of PID among respondents and multiple sexual partners (P0.001), previous history of STI (P = 0.02), non-persistent use of condom (P0.001), history of induced abortion (P0.01) and surgical termination of pregnancy (P0.01). There was however no significant association between SES of parents and occurrence of PID (P = 0.14) though PID was highest among respondents from low SES.Occurrence of PID among undergraduates was not associated with their SES. However, identified risk factors for PID among study population such as multiple sex partners, previous STI, unprotected sex and history of induced abortion were associated with the SES.

Background: Adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been proven to be the only effective treatment for HIV/AIDS worldwide. Good adherence to HAART might require good family support. Objective: To determine the family dynamics and social support of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and its roles on HAART adherence at an ARV treatment clinic in Osogbo, Nigeria Method: Descriptive cross-sectional study. Consenting PLWHA on HAART were interviewed using pre-tested semistructured questionnaire incorporating Perceived Social Support- Family Scale and Family APGAR. HAART adherence was measured using patient self report. Results: A total of 379 PLWHA were interviewed. Their mean age was 40.8 (SD=9.9) years. Most (60.7%) were females. More than half (55.7%) were currently married and the majority (72.1%) had secondary education and were Yoruba (86.3%). Most respondents (95.5%) were adherent to HAART. Over 90% were satisfied with support received from their family while 82.3% were treated like other family members. Most attributed their HAART adherence to the care and support received from their family. Conclusion: Most PLWHA had good social support and were adherent to HAART. Keywords: Family dynamics; HAART adherence; Nigeria African Health Sciences 2013; 13(4): 920 - 926