Sub-Acute Hepatoxicity of Aqueous Leaf Extract of Eucalyptus camaldulensis in Rats

Sub–acute toxicity study of the aqueous leaf extract of Eucalyptus camaldulensis was carried out on albino rats. Doses of 250mg, 500mg, 750mg and 1000mg per kilogram body weight of the extract were administered orally for 21 days. The activities of Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT), Aspartate Aminotransferase (AST), Alkaline Phosphatase (ALP) and the concentrations of total protein, and unconjugated bilirubin in the serum of the experimental rats were determined. The results obtained showed no significant difference (P>0.05) when compared to the control rats that were not administered the extract in all the parameters determined. The results indicated that, aqueous leaf extract of Eucalyptus camaldulensis may not have any toxicological effect at the administered doses.Keyword: Eucalyptus camaldulensis, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, unconjugated bilirubin

Effect of Moringa oleifera marinade on microbial stability of smoke-dried African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus)

The study examined the antimicrobial effect of Moringa oleifera marinade on smoke-dried catfish stored at ambient temperature (37±20C) for two months. The experimental treatments are the control, 1%, 2% and 3% (w/v) Moringa oleifera Marinade (MOM) and 5% Brine (w/v) solutions. Seventy-five fishes of average weight of 260±8g were gutted, washed and randomly assigned to the treatments. Thereafter, the fishes were soaked in the treatments for 2 hours and later hot smoked for 12hours. After smoking, the fishes were stored in netted boxes and placed on laboratory shelves for two months. Microbial counts were conducted at 7-day interval while biochemical tests were conducted on the 8th week. Seven bacterial species namely; Staphylococcus sp, Bacillus sp, Klebsiella sp, Corynebacterium sp, Pseudomonas sp, Escherichia coli and streptococcus sp and six fungal species namely; Penicillium italicum, Cladosporium sp, Neurospora crassa, Candida sp, Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were observed in the study. There was a general increase in microbial load as storage progressed. However, the increment was pronounced in the control and brine treated fish samples. In all levels of MOM and 5% Brine, there was decrease in the bacterial and fungal counts as compared with the control samples. 3% MOM exhibited the highest antibacterial potency while 5% Brine exhibited the highest antifungal potency. Moringa oleifera marinade could be use to protect stored smoke-dried catfish from microbial spoilage thus limiting economic loss and possible heath risk to consumers.Key words: Moringa, marinade, bacteria, fungi, catfish, smoke-drie

Pembelajaran Aswaja Sebagai Implementasi Pendidikan Karakter di SMP Plus Hidayatul Mubtadi’in

Aswaja learning in an educational environment affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama, both structurally and culturally, should be teaching. Because, Aswaja is a method of thinking (Minhaj al-Fikr) in seeing all the problems of public life. This point of view will direct Nahdliyin citizens in social and religious action and behavior. One of the important points internalized against the younger generation of Nahdlatul Ulama, is an inclusive perspective in seeing the problems that arise from paradigmatic friction on Islam. Aswaja's paradigm of thought rests on the source of Islamic teachings; al-Qur'an, al-Sunnah, al-Ijma ', and Qiyas. While at the practical level, following the ideas of al-Asy'ari and al-Maturidi in the field of theology, following one of the four imams of the mazhab (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali) in the field of Fiqh, and following Imam Junaid al-Baghdadi and Imam al-Ghazali in the field of Sufism. Along with the times, ideas and movements to find solutions to educational problems in Indonesia continue to grow. A number of researchers, experts and education practitioners work hand in hand to find the distinctive features of education in Indonesia. Various methods and strategies are used in order to find an educational formulation with distinctive Indonesian characteristics. There are various kinds of character education that are taken from the values of both groups, teachings or certain customs. This new discovery is a form of the responsibility of observers, practitioners and education experts for the face of education in Indonesia. One of them is the idea of ASWAJA Value-Based Character Educatio

In-situ upgrading of Napier grass pyrolysis vapour over microporous and hierarchical mesoporous zeolites

This study presents in-situ upgrading of pyrolysis vapour derived from Napier grass over microporous and mesoporous ZSM-5 catalysts. It evaluates effect of process variables such catalyst–biomass ratio and catalyst type in a vertical fixed bed pyrolysis system at 600 °C, 50 °C/min under 5 L/min nitrogen flow. Increasing catalyst–biomass ratio during the catalytic process with microporous structure reduced production of organic phase bio-oil by approximately 7.0 wt%. Using mesoporous catalyst promoted nearly 4.0 wt% higher organic yield relative to microporous catalyst, which translate to only about 3.0 wt% reduction in organic phase compared to the yield of organic phase from non-catalytic process. GC–MS analysis of bio-oil organic phase revealed maximum degree of deoxygenation of about 36.9% with microporous catalyst compared to the mesoporous catalysts, which had between 39 and 43%. Mesoporous catalysts promoted production olefins and alkanes, normal phenol, monoaromatic hydrocarbons while microporous catalyst favoured the production of alkenes and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. There was no significant increase in the production of normal phenols over microporous catalyst due to its inability to transform the methoxyphenols and methoxy aromatics. This study demonstrated that upgrading of Napier grass pyrolysis vapour over mesoporous ZSM-5 produced bio-oil with improved physicochemical properties

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability

Willingness to Pay for Telemedicine Services Among Uninsured Individuals in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Ziyad S Almalki,1 Abdullah M Alrashdi,1 Dalal E AlHuzaimi,2 Joud O Alotaibi,2 Malek M Alqahtani,1 Ruba D Alzahrani,2 Shahad A Alajmi,2 Rami R AlOsaimi,2 Salman M Majrashi,1 Abdullah K Alahmari,1 Ahmed M Alshehri,1 Abdulaziz I Alzarea,3 Mohammad Tarique Imam,1 Areej A Alshlowi2 1Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia; 2College of Pharmacy, Almaarefa University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 3Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, Jouf University, Sakaka, Aljouf, Saudi ArabiaCorrespondence: Ziyad S Almalki, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia, Tel +966 11 588 6059, Email [email protected]: This study aimed to explore the Willingness To Pay (WTP) of uninsured individuals in Saudi Arabia and the factors influencing their decisions regarding telemedicine services.Patients and Methods: This study used a cross-sectional survey design and convenience sampling to gather data from respondents aged 18 years or older who had visited healthcare facilities at least once in the past year and were uninsured. WTP was determined using the contingent valuation method, and a two-part regression model was applied to analyze the factors influencing WTP.Results: The study included 4232 participants and discovered that approximately 17.41% were willing to pay for telemedicine services. Those aged 60 and older, employed in the government or private sector, in higher socioeconomic quintiles, and experiencing chronic health issues showed a positive association with their WTP value. Conversely, individuals aged between 30 and 44 years, married, and unemployed exhibited a negative association with a lower WTP value.Conclusion: The findings indicate that most respondents hesitated to pay for telemedicine services, with a significant influence from sociodemographic characteristics, underscoring the need to promote telemedicine use among underserved populations and address health disparities.Keywords: healthcare, sociodemographic, questionnaire, contingent valuation metho

Two decades of neuroscience publication trends in Africa.

Neuroscience research in Africa remains sparse. Devising new policies to boost Africa's neuroscience landscape is imperative, but these must be based on accurate data on research outputs which is largely lacking. Such data must reflect the heterogeneity of research environments across the continent's 54 countries. Here, we analyse neuroscience publications affiliated with African institutions between 1996 and 2017. Of 12,326 PubMed indexed publications, 5,219 show clear evidence that the work was performed in Africa and led by African-based researchers - on average ~5 per country and year. From here, we extract information on journals and citations, funding, international coauthorships and techniques used. For reference, we also extract the same metrics from 220 randomly selected publications each from the UK, USA, Australia, Japan and Brazil. Our dataset provides insights into the current state of African neuroscience research in a global context

Awareness of warning signs among suburban Nigerians at high risk for stroke is poor: A cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although stroke is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Nigeria, there is no information on awareness of its warning signs. This study was designed to assess awareness of stroke warning signs in Nigerians at increased risk.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A hospital-based cross-sectional study conducted at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, in southern Nigeria. Patients with a diagnosis of hypertension, diabetes or both were interviewed for the warning signs of stroke in the outpatient clinic by trained interviewers. The main outcome measure was ability to identify at least one stroke warning sign.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were 225 respondents with a mean age of 58.0 ± 11.7 years. Only 39.6% could identify at least one stroke warning sign while the commonest sign identified was sudden unilateral limb weakness (24.4%). On multivariate logistic regression analysis, male sex (β = 0.26, 95% CI = 0.14–0.39, p < 0.001) and 11 or more years of education (β = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.03–0.29, p = 0.02) emerged the independent predictors of ability to identify at least one warning sign.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Awareness of stroke warning signs is poor among Nigerians at increased risk for the disease. Efforts should be made to improve on the level of awareness through aggressive health education.</p

Feature-by-Feature – Evaluating De Novo Sequence Assembly

The whole-genome sequence assembly (WGSA) problem is among one of the most studied problems in computational biology. Despite the availability of a plethora of tools (i.e., assemblers), all claiming to have solved the WGSA problem, little has been done to systematically compare their accuracy and power. Traditional methods rely on standard metrics and read simulation: while on the one hand, metrics like N50 and number of contigs focus only on size without proportionately emphasizing the information about the correctness of the assembly, comparisons performed on simulated dataset, on the other hand, can be highly biased by the non-realistic assumptions in the underlying read generator. Recently the Feature Response Curve (FRC) method was proposed to assess the overall assembly quality and correctness: FRC transparently captures the trade-offs between contigs' quality against their sizes. Nevertheless, the relationship among the different features and their relative importance remains unknown. In particular, FRC cannot account for the correlation among the different features. We analyzed the correlation among different features in order to better describe their relationships and their importance in gauging assembly quality and correctness. In particular, using multivariate techniques like principal and independent component analysis we were able to estimate the “excess-dimensionality” of the feature space. Moreover, principal component analysis allowed us to show how poorly the acclaimed N50 metric describes the assembly quality. Applying independent component analysis we identified a subset of features that better describe the assemblers performances. We demonstrated that by focusing on a reduced set of highly informative features we can use the FRC curve to better describe and compare the performances of different assemblers. Moreover, as a by-product of our analysis, we discovered how often evaluation based on simulated data, obtained with state of the art simulators, lead to not-so-realistic results