Forms of Academic Cheating During Examination among Students with Hearing Impairment in Nigeria: Implication for Counselling Practice

The pervasiveness of cheating on internal and external examinations among the Nigerian students led to this study. One hundred and forty-four students with hearing impairment purposively selected from Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo,Nigeria participated in the study. Five research questions were pose and tested for the study. A researcher-designed questionnaire titled 'Forms of Academic Cheating during Exam in Institutions of Learning' was used to generate data. Frequency count, percentage, rank-order and chi-square were employed to test the research questions. The findings of the study indicated that all the participants have cheated in the past exams with 53.44% having cheated twice. Signing the correct answers t

A New Generalization of the Lomax Distribution with Increasing, Decreasing, and Constant Failure Rate

Developing new compound distributions which are more flexible than the existing distributions have become the new trend in distribution theory. In this present study, the Lomax distribution was extended using the Gompertz family of distribution, its resulting densities and statistical properties were carefully derived, and the method of maximum likelihood estimation was proposed in estimating themodel parameters. A simulation study to assess the performance of the parameters of Gompertz Lomax distribution was provided and an application to real life data was provided to assess the potentials of the newly derived distribution. Excerpt from the analysis indicates that the Gompertz Lomax distribution performed better than the Beta Lomax distribution, Weibull Lomax distribution, and Kumaraswamy Lomax distribution

Crop protection strategies for major diseases of cocoa, coffee and cashew in Nigeria

A great percentage of people in the developing countries are engaged in agriculture, but the yields of their produce are low due to diseases that plague their crops. In Nigeria, crop protection measures that are cheap, simple, cost-effective and sustainable are desirable to combat Phytophthora pod rot (black pod) and cocoa swollen shoot virus diseases of cocoa, coffee leaf rust and coffee berry diseases, inflorescence blight disease of cashew in order to make farming profitable and sustainable. Disease control strategies include the use of resistant cultivars, chemicals, biological, botanicals, cultural, physical controls and application of biotechnology, each of which is discussed in this paper.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (2), pp. 143-150, 200

The novel choline kinase inhibitor ICL-CCIC-0019 reprograms cellular metabolism and inhibits cancer cell growth.

The glycerophospholipid phosphatidylcholine is the most abundant phospholipid species of eukaryotic membranes and essential for structural integrity and signaling function of cell membranes required for cancer cell growth. Inhibition of choline kinase alpha (CHKA), the first committed step to phosphatidylcholine synthesis, by the selective small-molecule ICL-CCIC-0019, potently suppressed growth of a panel of 60 cancer cell lines with median GI50 of 1.12 μM and inhibited tumor xenograft growth in mice. ICL-CCIC-0019 decreased phosphocholine levels and the fraction of labeled choline in lipids, and induced G1 arrest, endoplasmic reticulum stress and apoptosis. Changes in phosphocholine cellular levels following treatment could be detected non-invasively in tumor xenografts by [18F]-fluoromethyl-[1,2–2H4]-choline positron emission tomography. Herein, we reveal a previously unappreciated effect of choline metabolism on mitochondria function. Comparative metabolomics demonstrated that phosphatidylcholine pathway inhibition leads to a metabolically stressed phenotype analogous to mitochondria toxin treatment but without reactive oxygen species activation. Drug treatment decreased mitochondria function with associated reduction of citrate synthase expression and AMPK activation. Glucose and acetate uptake were increased in an attempt to overcome the metabolic stress. This study indicates that choline pathway pharmacological inhibition critically affects the metabolic function of the cell beyond reduced synthesis of phospholipids

Growth performance and nutritional quality of selected vegetables in response to organic and inorganic fertilizers under low and high irradiance

Vegetables form major part of human dietary/nutritional needs. It provides the necessary vitamins and minerals as well as antioxidants to boost immunity. Different vegetables however have different benefits and require different growing conditions. This study investigated the effect of two growing conditions (Screen-house and open field) and soil amendments; Mexican sunflower compost (MSC; applied at 0, 5, 10 t/ha) and NPK 15:15:15 (applied at 0, 50 and 100 kg N/ha) on the growth performance, yield, and nutritional quality of five selected vegetables (Amaranthus cruentus, Celosia. argentea, Solanum macrocarpon, Solanum nigrum and Solanum incanum). Each treatment was replicated three times and experiment arranged in completely randomized design, Compost was applied a week before seed sowing vegetables grown in the screen-house generally performed better than the open field in terms of leaf area and chlorophyll content. The response however varied based on the vegetable and the soil amendments. Solanum species, performed better than Amaranthus under screen-house than open field. Chlorophyll in the leaf responded positively to NPK fertilizer under screen-house conditions while growth parameters such as plant height, stem girth, number of leaves under screen-house and field conditions varied depending on the vegetables. The number of leaves and leaf area increased with soil amendments. Moisture, crude protein and ash contents were reduced under open field compared to screen-house. The zinc and iron contents of the vegetable leaves showed that addition of compost was superior to NPK and screen-house better than open field. It can be concluded that vegetables grown in the screen-house performed better in their respective growth parameters than vegetables are grown under the open field

Incidence of aflatoxins, fumonisins, trichothecenes and ochratoxins in Nigerian foods and possible intervention strategies

Mycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by some species of fungi. Aflatoxins, fumonisins, trichothecenes and ochratoxins are the common mycotoxins in Nigeria. Aflatoxin is the most frequently reported in literatures, with trichothecenes being the least, they cause yield loss to farmers as well as constituting major health risk to humans. The occurrence of mycotoxins in food is a serious problem that Nigeria is facing presently, as it continues to pose threat to feed and food safety of animals and humans. There is the need to seek for approaches that would lead to reduction in their toxicity. The practice of good sanitary measures right from the farm to storage, creation of awareness campaign to indicate the toxic effects associated with mycotoxin poisonings in humans and livestock, and proper evaluation of food crops for its presence can go a long way in achieving the target reduction in incidence of mycotoxins in Nigeria