Attitude and Beliefs of Nigerian Undergraduates to Spectacle Wear

Background: Uncorrected refractive error is a common cause of preventable visual impairment. Glasses are the cheapest and commonest form of correction of refractive errors. To achieve this, patients must exhibit good compliance to spectacle wear. Patients’ attitude and perception of glasses and eye health could affect compliance to spectacle wear.Objective: To determine the attitude and beliefs of Nigerian undergraduates to spectacle wear.Method: A cross sectional study of 500 undergraduates of the University of Benin, Nigeria. Age range was from 18 to 30 years, mean age 23 ± 2.7 years. There were 269 males and 231 females. Semi structured questionnaires were distributed to the participants and collected same day after completion.Results: Two-thirds (68%) of the total population studied had not heard of refractive error. About a third (38%) believed wearing eyeglasses was one of the methods used to correct refractive error. Half (50%) believed they would wear spectacles if prescribed with one by their doctor. Sixty-four percent believed eyeglasses are harmful to the eyes; and 65% did not know that eyeglasses could be used to relieve other forms of ocular discomfort like headache and tearing. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents saw people who wore eyeglasses as visually handicapped, while 60% believed that eyeglasses were meant for old people. Majority of the respondents (56%) believed that they would be teased if they wore glasses.Conclusion: Knowledge of refractive errors and acceptance of glasses for the correction of refractive errors among Nigerian undergraduates is not encouraging. Public enlightenment programs to promote benefits of wearing prescribed spectacles are needed.Keywords: Refractive error, glasses, spectacle, students, blindnes

Political risk and foreign direct investment in Africa: the case of the Nigerian telecommunications industry

Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows are expected to be influenced by political risk factors. However, studies that evaluate the relationship between political risk and FDI flows in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are scarce. This study examines the impact of political risk on FDI flows in a SSA context using the 12 political risk components published as the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) by the Political Risk Services Group (PRS) with the Nigerian telecommunications sector as a case study. The study finds that political risk has a significant influence on the inflow of FDI into developing economies in SSA such as Nigeria and that the 12 components affect FDI in different ways. Irrespective of the political risk rating, a consistent improvement in composite political risk enhances FDI inflow. Among the 12 components, corruption, law and order, democratic accountability and investment profile were found to have significant influences on FDI inflow into the Nigerian telecommunications sector. Corruption, in particular, explains nearly two-thirds of the FDI inflow

Bis­(4-benzoyl-3-methyl-1-phenyl-4,5-di­hydro-1H-pyrazol-5-olato-κ2 O,O′)(methanol-κO)dioxidouranium(VI) methanol monosolvate

In the title compound, [U(C17H13N2O2)2O2(CH3OH)]·CH3OH, the UVI ion is coordinated by seven O atoms in a distorted pentagonal–bipyramidal geometry with two 3-methyl-1-phenyl-4-benzoyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-5-olate groups with two O atoms in a bidentate chelating coordination mode and by three O atoms, one of which is from a methanol ligand. The crystal packing can be described by alternating layers of complex mol­ecules along the a axis. The structure is stabilized by O—H⋯N and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonding and van der Waals inter­actions

Enhanced-RICAP: a novel data augmentation strategy for improved deep learning-based plant disease identification and mobile diagnosis

IntroductionPlant diseases pose a significant threat to global food security and agricultural productivity, making accurate and timely disease identification essential for effective crop management and minimizing economic losses. Although data augmentation techniques such as RICAP improve model robustness, their reliance on randomly extracted image regions can introduce label noise, potentially misleading the training of deep learning models.MethodsThis study introduces Enhanced-RICAP, an advanced data augmentation technique designed to improve the accuracy of deep learning models for plant disease detection. Enhanced-RICAP replaces random patch selection with an attention module guided by class activation maps, focusing on discriminative regions, Enhanced-RICAP reduces label noise and improves model accuracy for plant disease detection, addressing a key limitation of traditional augmentation methods. The method was evaluated using several deep learning architectures, such as ResNet18, ResNet34, ResNet50, EfficientNet-b, and Xception, on the cassava leaf disease and PlantVillage tomato leaf disease datasets.ResultsThe experimental results demonstrate that Enhanced-RICAP consistently outperforms existing augmentation methods, including CutMix, MixUp, CutOut, Hide-and-Seek, and RICAP, across key evaluation metrics: accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The ResNet18+Enhanced-RICAP configuration achieved 99.86% accuracy on the tomato leaf disease dataset, whereas the Xception+Enhanced-RICAP model attained 96.64% accuracy in classifying four cassava leaf disease categories.Discussion and ConclusionTo bridge the gap between research and practical application, the ResNet18+Enhanced-RICAP model was deployed in PlantDisease, a mobile application that enables real-time disease identification and management recommendations. This approach supports sustainable agriculture and strengthens food security by providing farmers with accessible and reliable diagnostic tools

Prevalence of complications of male circumcision in Anglophone Africa: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: There is growing evidence that male circumcision (MC) prevents heterosexual acquisition of HIV by males in sub-Saharan Africa, the region of the world heavily affected by the HIV pandemic. While there is growing support for wide-spread availability and accessibility of MC in Africa, there is limited discussion about the prevalence of physical complications of male circumcision on the continent. METHODS: A systematic literature search and review of articles in indexed journals and conference abstracts was conducted to collect and analyze prevalence of complications of MC in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa. Information extracted included: indications for MC, complications reported, age of patients and category of circumcisers. RESULTS: There were 8 articles and 2 abstracts that were suitable for the analysis. The studies were not strictly comparable as some reported on a wide range of complications while others reported just a limited list of possible complications. Prevalence of reported complications of MC ranged from 0% to 50.1%. Excluding the study with 50.1%, which was on a series of haemophilia patients, the next highest prevalence of complications was 24.1%. Most of the complications were minor. There was no firm evidence to suggest that MCs performed by physician surgeons were associated with lower prevalence of complications when compared with non-physician health professionals. CONCLUSION: The available data are inadequate to obtain a reasonable assessment of the prevalence of complications of MC in sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the available studies however report potentially significant prevalence of complications, though of minor clinical significance. This should be considered as public health policy makers consider whether to scale-up MC as an HIV preventative measure. Decision for the scale-up will depend on a careful cost-benefit assessment of which physical complications are certainly an important aspect. There is need for standardized reporting of complications of male circumcision

Characterization of Genome-Wide Association-Identified Variants for Atrial Fibrillation in African Americans

Despite a greater burden of risk factors, atrial fibrillation (AF) is less common among African Americans than European-descent populations. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for AF in European-descent populations have identified three predominant genomic regions associated with increased risk (1q21, 4q25, and 16q22). The contribution of these loci to AF risk in African American is unknown.We studied 73 African Americans with AF from the Vanderbilt-Meharry AF registry and 71 African American controls, with no history of AF including after cardiac surgery. Tests of association were performed for 148 SNPs across the three regions associated with AF, and 22 SNPs were significantly associated with AF (P<0.05). The SNPs with the strongest associations in African Americans were both different from the index SNPs identified in European-descent populations and independent from the index European-descent population SNPs (r(2)<0.40 in HapMap CEU): 1q21 rs4845396 (odds ratio [OR] 0.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.13-0.67, P = 0.003), 4q25 rs4631108 (OR 3.43, 95% CI 1.59-7.42, P = 0.002), and 16q22 rs16971547 (OR 8.1, 95% CI 1.46-45.4, P = 0.016). Estimates of European ancestry were similar among cases (23.6%) and controls (23.8%). Accordingly, the probability of having two copies of the European derived chromosomes at each region did not differ between cases and controls.Variable European admixture at known AF loci does not explain decreased AF susceptibility in African Americans. These data support the role of 1q21, 4q25, and 16q22 variants in AF risk for African Americans, although the index SNPs differ from those identified in European-descent populations

Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass‐loss rate and stabilization

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to- degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models