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Hepatitis B and Dengue virus infections carry significant public health implications due to their potential to cause illness and death. This study focused on examining the prevalence of these infections among young adults seeking care at a secondary health facility at Olabisi Onabanjo University. Ninety samples obtained from study participants underwent screening using Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) for both HBsAg and Dengue IgM. The participants, predominantly female, were aged between 15 and 30 years. The analysis revealed a 13.3% prevalence of Dengue IgM, a 4.5% prevalence of HBsAg, and a 4.4% prevalence for both infections. Regarding age distribution, the highest prevalence occurred among participants aged 15-20 years for both single infections and the co-occurrence of Hepatitis B and Dengue viral infections. Examining gender distribution, female participants exhibited higher seropositivity across all infection categories. Although not statistically significant, these findings lay the groundwork for a comprehensive surveillance study on the Hepatitis B and Dengue viral infections in young adults. This study provides valuable insights into the prevalence patterns of Hepatitis B and Dengue virus, offering a basis for further research and public health interventions in this population.

Abstract Concrete compressive strength is usually determined 28 days after casting via crushing of samples. However, the design strength may not be achieved after this time-consuming and tedious process. While the use of machine learning (ML) and other computational intelligence methods have become increasingly common in recent years, findings from pertinent literatures show that the gradient-boosting ensemble models mostly outperform comparative methods while also allowing interpretable model. Contrary to comparison with other model types that has dominated existing studies, this study centres on a comprehensive comparative analysis of the performance of four widely used gradient-boosting ensemble implementations [namely, gradient-boosting regressor, light gradient-boosting model (LightGBM), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and CatBoost] for estimation of the compressive strength of quaternary blend concrete. Given components of cement, Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS), Fly Ash, water, superplasticizer, coarse aggregate, and fine aggregate in addition to the age of each concrete mixture as input features, the performance of each model based on R 2, RMSE, MAPE and MAE across varying training–test ratios generally show a decreasing trend in model performance as test partition increases. Overall, the test results showed that CatBoost outperformed the other models with R 2, RMSE, MAE and MAPE values of 0.9838, 2.0709, 1.5966 and 0.0629, respectively, with further statistical analysis showing the significance of these results. Although the age of each concrete mixture was found to be the most important input feature for all four boosting models, sensitivity analysis of each model shows that the compressive strength of the mixtures does increase significantly after 100 days. Finally, a comparison of the performance with results from different ML-based methods in pertinent literature further shows the superiority of CatBoost over reported the methods.

A study of the impact of two acetanilide herbicides, viz. alachlor and metolachlor on bacterial and fungal populations and biomass in the Sungai Buluh soil series samples was carried out under laboratory conditions. The effects of the two herbicides were monitored for 70 days under ambient conditions. Metolachlor caused greater reduction in bacterial counts than on fungal populations. There was approximately 75% reduction in bacterial counts 14 days after treatment (DAT) with 2 µg/g metolachlor. Alachlor however was less toxic to bacterial and fungal populations. Alachlor caused a reduction in bacterial counts at 7 and 14 DAT with 2µg/g or above. Fungal population decreased significantly in the presence of 20 µg/g alachlor at 7 DAT but no further effects were observed as the incubation period was prolonged. The study showed that the microbial biomass immediately decreased significantly in the presence of 2 µg/g or more of metolachlor at 0 and 28 DAT. Alachlor, on the other hands, at the lowest experimental dose of 2 µg/g reduced the microbial biomass almost immediately upon incubation, but had no further effects when the incubation period was prolonged.

Maisa A Wahab,1 Alshaymaa M Alhabibi,2 Ahmed Khairy Sakr,1 Mohamed Yahia Zakaria,3 Ola I Saleh,4 Inass Hassan Ahmad,5 Eman Kamel Abdelrahman,6 Randa Sabour Elshahat Taha,4 Fayka Karem Abdel Azeem Ahmed,4 Bothayna Ismail,2 Lamiaa Hosney Azel,5 Asmaa S Hassan,2 Hanaa Mohammed Eid El Sayed,7 Sammar Ahmed Kasim,7 Safaa Abdelfattah Elsharkawy8 1Department of Vascular Surgery, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; 2Department of Clinical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; 3Department of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, Faculty of Medicine for Boys, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; 4Department of Radio-Diagnosis, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; 5Department of Endocrinology, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; 6Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Port Said University, Port Said, Egypt; 7Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; 8Department of Community Medicine and Occupational Health, Faculty of Medicine for Girls, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, EgyptCorrespondence: Alshaymaa M Alhabibi, Tel +201002894075, Email alshaymaa.alhabibi@yahoo.comBackground: One of the major issues affecting global health is Diabetes mellitus (DM), not only in terms of the disease itself but also its complications. Macrovascular complications are both common and serious, affecting many patients. This study aimed to assess fasting C-peptide levels and correlate them with the severity of the peripheral arterial disease complicating type 2 DM (T2DM).Patients and Methods: This study included 200 participants who were categorized into two groups: Group I (n=100, patients with T2DM complicated by femoropopliteal arterial atherosclerosis) and Group II (n=100, healthy age- and sex-matched individuals serving as controls). Fasting C-peptide levels were estimated using an immunochemiluminometric assay.Results: Fasting C-peptide levels were significantly higher in Group I than in the control group. Fasting C-peptide levels were positively correlated with the severity of atherosclerosis. In addition, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed that fasting C-peptide levels served as a specific and sensitive marker for detecting the severity of this disease.Conclusion: Fasting C-peptide levels can be used as a sensitive and specific indicator of the severity of femoropopliteal arteriosclerosis that complicates T2DM.Keywords: diabetes mellitus, femoropopliteal arteriosclerosis, fasting C-peptide

Introduction. The difficulty of managing trash and cleaning up the environment prompted interest in biosurfactants and surface-active proteins made by microbes. The study aims to augment bacterial isolates from agro-industrial wastes targeted for possible mass production of biosurfactants. Methods. Six agro-industrial wastes from Cassava, Palm kernel, and Sawdust from six agro-industrial sites within Ijebu area in Ogun State were collected for standard laboratory analyses in the Biotechnology Unit of the Federal Industrial Institute for Research, Oshodi (FIIRO). Five screening methods; blood hemolysis, lipase activity, blue agar hydrolysis, oil spreading, and emulsification index (EI24) were carried out to confirm biosurfactant production. Isolates with the highest hyper-production were subjected to 16rRNA molecular identification. Results. The study justified efficient biosurfactant production from 4 bacterial isolates out of 26 screened bacterial isolates from hydrocarbon degraders and 29 heterotrophic screened bacterial isolates, making a total of 55 screened bacterial isolates. Screening results reveal the emulsification capacities of identified Pseudomonas putida strain SG1, Acinetobacter baumanii strain MS14413, Bacillus zhangzhouensis strain cdsV18, and Burkholderia cepacia strain 717. Conclusion. Biosurfactant bacteria produced in all agricultural and industrial wastes considered in this study are capable of mass production.