Suspicion of failure in the effectiveness of artemisinin-based combination therapies (currently the first-line treatment of malaria, worldwide) is leading to the unofficial use of alternative ...antimalarials, including chloroquine and sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine, across northern Nigeria. To facilitate evidence-based resistance management, antimalarial resistance mutations were investigated in
(
) and
(
), in isolates from Kano, northwestern Nigeria. Out of the 88 samples genotyped for
N86Y mutation using PCR/restriction fragment length polymorphism, one sample contained the 86Y mutation (86Y
= 1.14%). The analysis of 610 bp fragments of
from 16 isolates revealed two polymorphic sites and low haplotype diversity (H
= 0.492), with only 86 Y mutations in one isolate, and 184 F replacements in five isolates (184F
= 31.25%). The analysis of 267 bp fragments of
isolates revealed high polymorphism (H
= 0.719), with six haplotypes and seven non-synonymous polymorphic sites. Eleven isolates (61.11%) were chloroquine-resistant, CQR (C
V
I
E
T
haplotype), two of which had an additional mutation, D
E. An additional sequence was CQR, but of the C
V
M
E
T
haplotype, while the rest of the sequences (33.33%) were chloroquine susceptible (C
V
M
N
K
haplotype). The findings of these well characterized resistance markers should be considered when designing resistance management strategies in the northwestern Nigeria.
Goat milk (GM) is an excellent alternative to cow milk and has recently been used in commercial infant formula preparation due to its superior fat composition. Here, the fatty acid (FA) composition, ...triacylglycerol (TAG) molecular species, thermal behavior and infrared spectra of extracted milk fat from the milk of the two main breeds of dairy goat bred in China (Guanzhong GM (GZG) and Xinong Saanen GM (XSG)) are investigated. Gas chromatography, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and ultra-performance convergence chromatography with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry are applied. The obtained results evidence significant fat compositional differences based on the breed that produced the considered GM. The major FAs in both GM fats were capric (C10:0), myristic (C14:0), palmitic (C16:0), stearic (C18:0) and oleic (C18:1 n-9c). GZG presented a higher content of medium-chain saturated FAs, while XSG had higher unsaturated FAs with higher ratios of L/Ln and n-6/n-3. A total of 339 and 359 TAGs were detected and quantified in GZG and XSG, and the major TAGs were those of m/z 740.6712 (14.10 ± 0.27%) and m/z 684.6094 (10.94 ± 0.02%), respectively. Milk TAGs of GZG and XSG showed 24-54 and 26-54 total acyl carbon numbers with a 0-4 and 0-5 double bond number at 68 and 72 various retention times, respectively. Thermal analysis showed that all GM fat samples melted below normal body temperature. Infrared spectra revealed higher absorption values of GZG milk fat. This study provides valuable information to the dairy industry sector about GM fat produced in China, assessing the appropriateness of Chinese GM fat to be applied in Chinese infant formula.
The term of jihad has a significant role in the formation of Islamic identity, politics, and nations. For example, the Malay World during the colonial or pre-independence, has created the momentum ...among community to break free from the colonial at the time. This spirit was injected with elements of jihad through the advice of scholars, graduates returning from the middle east who brought the spirit of independence and through writing. Among the writings that may have a role in explaining jihad among the Malay community is Baḥr al-Mādhī 1924-1960. This article will analyse on the representation of jihad and warfare term in the Baḥr al-Mādhī, a book written by Muḥammad Idrīs al-Marbawī 1896-1989. It can be considered as one of the greatest masterpieces of Malay Muslim scholar in the twentieth century. It was composed as a commentary to the hadith in Jāmi‘ al-Tirmidhī and have been written in Malay language. This article also analyses al-Marbawi’s contribution to Malay community understanding jihad in pre independence period of Malaysia through his commentary and translation of the hadith of jihad in Baḥr al-Mādhī. This study applied qualitative study, data collected by library research and analysed by document analysis methodology. Study found that, the Baḥr al-Mādhī by Muḥammad Idrīs al-Marbawī has played a major role in the understanding of jihad among Malays in pre-independence period. This book symbolizes the local wisdom of the Malay community at the earliest time. This contribution can be understood through the background of the writing of this book, its wide pertinence into society and the content of jihad in it.Konsep jihad mempunyai peran signifikan dalam pembentukan identitas keislaman, politik dan kebangsaan. Misalnya seperti dunia Melayu pada masa kolonial atau pra kemerdekaan dimana sarjana muslimnya yang pulang dari belajar di Timur Tengah mendorong masyarakatnya berjuang melawan kolonialisme dan menuntut kemerdekaan melalui tulisan mereka. Salah satu tulisan yang menerangkan konsep jihad dalam masyarakat Melayu adalah Baḥr al-Mādhī. Artikel ini menjelaskan konsep jihad dan perang dalam karya Baḥr al-Mādhī, satu karya terbaik sarjana muslim Melayu abad 20, yang ditulis oleh Muḥammad Idrīs al-Marbawī (1896-1989). Karya ini merupakan komentar terhadap kitab hadist Jāmi‘ al-Tirmidhī yang ditulis dalam bahasa Melayu. Artikel ini juga membahas kontribusi penting al-Marbawī dalam menjelaskan jihad dalam masyarakat Melayu masa pra kemerdekaan. Dengan studi literatur dan analisis dokumen terkait, artikel ini menunjukkan bahwa karya al-Marbawī merupakan simbol dari kearifan lokal masyarakat Melayu pada masa awal. Kontribusi pentingnya terlihat dari luasnya pengaruh dan pendalaman pemahaman tentang jihad di masyarakat Melayu saat itu.
AbstractA structural health assessment of the tunnel lining is carried out to investigate and mitigate the cause of defects in the tunnel lining to ensure user safety. Many factors affect the ...tunnel’s integrity, causing a wide range of defects. Identifying the possible cause and its relation with the degree of associated defect is essential for tunnel stability. In conjunction with defects of tunnel failure, liner cracks were found to be most critical because they could trigger other defects to form and jeopardize tunnel stability. Thus, this research acquires visual inspection followed by comprehensive mapping and quantification of liner cracks to enhance our understanding of the effect of varying overburden on the intensity of liner cracks. The numerical analysis was further performed to analyze the influence of varying topography (overburden) on the crack intensity of the liner using the stress ratio, K as a parameter in terms of the state of stress using induced stress (IS) and stress concentration factor (SCF) as a performance evaluation criterion. The work demonstrates that the shift in magnitude and position of liner cracks on the different portions of the tunnel liner implies the effect of a regionally external factor (varying overburden depth) on tunnel degradation. For advances in tunnel assessment based on the regional diversity of cracks along the longitudinal profile of the tunnel, the tunnel should be divided into zones based on the overburden to identify the varying intensity of the liner crack. This study shows the variable crack density of 575 m to 628 m, 650 m to 700 m, and 704 m to 724 m for shallow, intermediate, and deep zone, respectively. The findings of this study can provide scientific guidance to tunnel inspectors and engineers regarding the tunnel liner health assessment and identifying the subsequent method of repair.
Background
The plant
Olax subscorpioidea
Oliv (Olacaceae) is a shrub that is widely available in Africa. It has been used in traditional medicine to treat various diseases including asthma, pain, ...inflammation, gastrointestinal and central nervous system (CNS) disorders, cough, diabetes mellitus, cancer, infectious diseases, hepatic diseases, and many other diseases. Several phytochemical and pharmacological investigations were conducted on this plant. However, comprehensive information on this medicinally important plant is not available in the literature. Therefore, in this review, we aimed to provide comprehensive and critical information on all the reported ethnomedicinal uses, phytochemistry, pharmacological activities, and potential toxicity of
Olax subscorpioidea
to highlight its therapeutic potentials based on traditional usage and identify research gaps as a basis for further investigations to develop novel therapeutic compounds.
Main body
The available information about the plant was retrieved from the online bibliographic databases (PubMed and Google Scholar) and published PhD dissertation using the search terms
Olax subscorpioidea
, traditional uses, ethnomedicinal uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, and safety. Phytochemical studies have shown that the plant contains several bioactive compounds such as rutin, morin, quercetin, caffeic acid, santalbic acid, n-hexadecanoic acid, squalene, nonacosane, hentriacontane, and many more compounds. Also, pharmacological investigations revealed that
Olax subscorpioidea
has antidepressant, antiepileptic, anti-Alzheimer’s, cytotoxic, antioxidant, antihyperlipidemic, analgesic, antiinflammatory, antiarthritic, antidiabetic, anticancer, antiulcer, antimicrobial, hepatoprotective, apoptotic, antiprotease, and other CNS effects.
Conclusion
Several pharmacological studies on
Olax subscorpioidea
have established its ethnopharmacological uses. However, there are limited phytochemical and pharmacological studies to validate other folkloric claims of the plant. Therefore, extensive phytochemical and further pre-clinical efficacy and safety evaluations to fully establish its therapeutic potentials and elucidate its mechanisms of pharmacological actions could be necessary.
Graphical abstract
The eco-friendly biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNps) from bark extract of Albizia chevalier are reported here for their anti-proliferative, antibacterial and pollutant degradation ...potentials. The synthesized AgNps were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-rays spectrometry (EDS) and X-ray diffraction studies. The TEM and FESEM images show a monodispersed spherical shaped particles of approximately 30 nm. Crystalline peaks were obtained for the synthesized AgNps in XRD spectrum. The AgNps were investigated for in vitro anticancer and antibacterial activities and its potential to degrade 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) and congo red dye (CR). The MTT results shows a significant dose-dependent antiproliferation effect of the AgNps on the cell lines HepG2, MDA-MB-231 and MFC7. The effect was found more pronounced in MDA-MB-231 as compared to MFC-7 cell lines. The antibacterial results indicated 99 and 95% killing of Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) respectively, after 24 h of incubation with the AgNps. The AgNps were found to speed up the reductive degradation of 4-NP and CR dye, which give an alternative route for the removal of toxic organic pollutants from the wastewater. The synthesized AgNps were not only used as a bactericidal and anticancer agent, but also effectively used for the reductive degradation of carcinogenic compounds which are listed as the priority pollutants. Therefore, AgNps have the potential for the treatment of various cancers, bacterial infections and for industrial detoxification of wastewater.
Display omitted
•Biosynthesis of AgNps from aqueous stem bark extract of A. chevalier•Characterization of the synthesized AgNps•Anticancer activity of the AgNps•Antibacterial activity of the AgNps•Biodegradation of toxic compounds
Visual-based obstacle detection from an autonomous surface vessel (ASV) is a complex task due to high variance of scene properties such as different illumination and presence of reflections. One ...approach in implementing the task is through extracting waterlines to enable inferring of vessel orientation and obstacles presence. Classical computer vision algorithms for detection holds limitation in robustness and scalability. With recent breakthroughs in deep neural network architectures, vision-based object detection is seen to obtain high performance. In this work, the deep learning models based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to implement binary semantic segmentation is studied. This architecture identifies each pixel to water and non-water classes. In purpose of benchmarking models, Fully Convolutional Network (FCN), SegNet and U-Net are trained on a publicly available dataset, IntCatch Vision Data Set (ICVDS), to evaluate the performance. From the experiments carried out, quantitative results show effectiveness of the models with accuracy all above 95.55% and lowest average speed of 11 frames per second. To improve, pre-trained networks (VGG 16, Resnet-50 and MobileNet) are used as a backbone, obtaining an improved accuracy above 98.14% with lowest inferring speed of 10 frame per second. Using the developed ASV, new dataset of 143 images called Malaysia ASV Dataset (MASVD) is collected, labelled and made publicly available. The trained models are tested with the newly collected dataset obtaining accuracy of 75%. The high accuracy performance shows potential for the models to be employed for collision avoidance algorithm in ASV navigation.
Development of Hausa Acoustic Model for Speech Recognition Ibrahim, Umar Adam; Boukar, Moussa Mahamat; Suleiman, Muhammad Aliyu
International journal of advanced computer science & applications,
2022, Letnik:
13, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Acoustic modeling is essential for enhancing the accuracy of voice recognition software. To build an automatic speech system and application for any language, building an acoustic model is essential. ...In this regard, this research is concerned with the development of the Hausa acoustic model for automatic speech recognition. The goal of this work is to design and develop an acoustic model for the Hausa language. This is done by creating a word-level phonemes dataset from the Hausa speech corpus database. Then implement a deep learning algorithm for acoustic modeling. The model was built using Convolutional Neural Network that achieved 83% accuracy. The developed model can be used as a foundation for the development and testing of the Hausa speech recognition system.
Abstract
The classical construction of boxplot requires estimates of five robust statistics of interest namely, the first quartile, the median, the third quartile, the lower fence and the upper ...fence. The fence estimate is usually dependent on the three quartiles and is utilized to visually identify outliers in a batch of univariate dataset. Some scholars are critical of the limitation of boxplox to display individual data points, density of observations and distributional shape in multiple batch comparison among to mention. In this paper display enhancement to address the limitations of classical boxplot is proposed according to a new construction method called stairboxplot. The construction begins with display of four stairs of consecutive boxes according to quadbins to replace box and whiskers in the classical boxplot construction and an inscription of individual observations using scale adjusted outlyingness estimate of each data point. The advantage of stairboxplot as a data display toolkit was explored using simulation and real life dataset.
The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship of resource competence, entrepreneurial leadership and good governance towards business performance and examine the moderating role of ...financial accessibility to the business performance of Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). This quantitative research involved 155 professional business women community (MSMEs), Batam, Riau, Indonesia. The data collected through a survey questionnaire with a non-probability sampling technique. The data analysed by using the structural equation modelling – partial least square (SEM-PLS). This study showed that resource competence, entrepreneurial leadership, and good governance have a significant positive relationship with Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Also, financial accessibility moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and performance. In conclusion, this study has successfully identified the determinant factors that affect the business performance and moderating role of financial accessibility on business performance for Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
PDF
