Proceedings of the Nigerian Academy of Science (Journal)
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - Bio stimulation of indigenous microorganisms with Gomeya: a bioremediation technique
Full text linkThe burden of heavy metals in the environment can be reduced using organic amendment stimulated bacterial remediation. This study employed cattle manure slurry stimulated bacterial inoculum to treat heavy metals-contaminated soil. Samples of contaminated soil and cattle manure were collected from the area surrounding a steel rolling mill and a commercial animal pen respectively. Bacteria were isolated using pour plate technique; identified using various biochemical tests and screened for resistance to heavy metal salts by incorporating heavy metal salts into agar plates. The contaminated soil and manure slurry were analysed for heavy metals and then sterilised separately. Five kilogram of the sterilised contaminated soil was weighed and mixed with 100g of sterilized cow dung slurry and aseptically packed into plastic nursery bags. Bacterial samples showing high tolerance to heavy metal salts were introduced into the bags singly and as a consortium for bioremediation exercise. Thirty-six bacterial isolates were obtained from the contaminated soil. Chemical analysis revealed that the soil was heavily contaminated especially with lead and chromium with concentrations of 1505.1-2333.6 and 1526.0-1678.7 mg/kg, respectively. Alcaligenes faecalis, Pseudomonas azotoformans and Bacillus mycoides exhibited high tolerance to heavy metals salt and were selected for bioremediation. Post bioremediation analysis of the soil samples revealed a reduction in the concentration of heavy metals concentration with major reduction in the concentration of chromium in groups treated with P. azotoformans. Biostimulation of microorganisms with organic amendment effectively remediated heavy metals contaminated soil and can be employed in the treatment of such contaminated environments
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - On the development of UJ-MaGT scientific calculator
Full text linkGraphing is an important skill/knowledge required by almost every scientist, engineer and other professionals that require analysis of data to make sense of phenomena, relationships, etc. This important knowledge is learned right from secondary school through to advanced level of education and it is developed through the study of functions in mathematics and laboratory exercises in sciences, etc. At the secondary school level, learning to graph by hand is the most preferred and common practice in most countries in the African continent and other parts of the world. However, studies have shown that graphing by hand present numerous difficulties to science students due to its high “procedural load”. To reduce the procedural load, an algorithm called UJ-MaGT was developed and tested for effectiveness. Excellent result in time management, simplification and pedagogical change in graph plotting process was achieved with the help of UJ-MaGT. Currently, the algorithm has been incorporated into a scientific calculator
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - Revealing the Nature of COVID-19 Virus Pathogen in Nigeria: Towards a Potential Therapeutic Design and Management
Full text linkThis paper adopted in silico and bioinformatics scientific approaches in revealing the nature of the COVID-19 coronavirus strain in Nigeria. These was revealed in terms of the physical, chemical and biological nature, as well as the isoelectric point, evolutionary relationship, mutation rate and pathway, molecular weight amongst other attributes which project the coronaviruses mutant strains causing the current global pandemic as very deadly and a threat to humanity. The paper revealed the genetic and thermal stability status of the Nigerian (COVID-19) isolate using instability index, aliphatic index, guanine – cytosine content, hydropathicity, nucleotide diversity, amino acids side chains and half-life of the isolate on in vitro human reticulocyte cells as criteria. The paper also revealed the variations in protein structures, phylogeny, bad angles, bad bonds, C-Beta deviations, Ramachandran outliers and Molprobity scores of the virus pathogen in Nigeria and that of Wuhan China, the global epicenter of the pandemic and deduced strong relationship between the strains confirming their common ancestry and nature. The paper revealed that efforts geared towards the development of suitable therapy and vaccines for the COVID-19 globally has not yet been successful due to the variable attenuation coefficients and the fast rate of the S gene mutations of the coronaviruses mutant strains. Hence, the nature of COVID-19 revealed in this study, is necessary for the identification, design and development of effective treatment
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - Novel tier reclassification architecture for non–terrestrial data centre systems
Full text linkData centres play an important role in hosting and enabling content access in wireless communication networks and computing applications. The use of data centres is accompanied with high operational costs due to the necessity of powering and cooling. In addition, data centres are mostly terrestrial facilities with different performance levels influenced by the data centre tier rating. The need to reduce operational costs has prompted the siting of data centres in non–terrestrial locations such as the ocean and stratosphere with free cooling benefits. The location of future data centres raises new challenges such as reclassifying data centre Tiers. The Tier re-classification challenge should be addressed to identify factors that influence the performance of non-terrestrial data centres. This paper addresses the challenge of designing tier classification architecture for non-terrestrial data centre systems. In this paper, primary and secondary criteria required for the Tier classification of ocean and stratosphere data centres are identified. The proposed tier re–classification architecture is also compared with the Tier 5 data centre standard recently proposed for terrestrial data centres
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - Application of Mobile Technology in Community Transmission Surveillance for 2020 Corona Virus Disease
Full text linkThe corona virus disease (COVID-19) outbreak reached community transmission scenario in Nigeria less than 2 months from its first case on 27thFebruary 2020; a scenario which requires aggressive and effective contact tracing, identification, monitoring and reporting of disease trend. Surveillance is one of the working strategies in responding to community spread. Currently the COVID-19 community spread response mechanism relies on contact tracing and community testing, requiring a huge testing capacity, and its coverage is bound to be undermined by the lack of accessibility to the typical rural Nigerians. Massive testing is currently threatened by the short supply of test kits reported globally, inadequate trained manpower and limited molecular laboratories and testing centers, which cause delay in sample certification. This paints a picture of a massive unreached population in our communities and a predictable escalation of community transmission due to non- or untimely identification, isolation and management of cases. These gaps could be closed by the application of an appropriate tool that engages remote and real-time functions into the process. This article documents the feasibility of employing the mobile telephone opportunities for community transmission monitoring and case reporting of 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with crowdsourcing and whistle-blowing effects; as an effective alternative to indefinite single case recording and unidirectional contact tracing
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - Antibiogram of bacterial flora of public health significance associated with postharvest Irvingia gabonensis seeds in Lagos State, Nigeria
Full text linkThe spread of resistant bacteria within the community has continually posed obvious additional problems for infectious control. Efforts to identifying sources of resistant bacteria have not been channeled towards medicinal food condiments. This study investigated the antibiogram of bacterial flora of public health significance associated with postharvest Irvingia gabonensis seeds in Lagos State, Nigeria. The blended, homogenized and serially diluted samples of I. gabonensis seeds were plated using the spread plate technique on selective and differential agar media. API 20E and API 20NE were used for identification of members of Enterobacteriaceae and non-Enterobacteriaceae, respectively. The agar disc-diffusion method was employed to determine the antibiotic resistance profiles of the isolates. A total of 263 bacterial isolates (129 Gram-positive and 134 Gram-negative) were encountered. Eighty-five (66%) of Gram-positive isolates exhibited resistance to penicillin, gentamicin 65 (50.4%), erythromycin 69 (53.5%), cloxacillin 63 (43.8%), chloramphenicol 73 (56.6%), amoxicillin 75 (58.1%), tetracycline 58 (45%) while 69 (53.5%) showed resistance to streptomycin. However, 87 (65%) of Gram-negative bacterial strains exhibited resistance to cloxacillin, ceftazidime 82 (61.2%), ciprofloxacin 67 (50%), gentamicin 77 (57.5%), cefotaxime 74 (55.2%), augmentin 84 (62.7%), nitrofuratoin 61 (45.5%) and 24 (17.9%) to ofloxacin. This study showed that I. gabonensis seeds could be a source of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, despite its enormous medicinal properties, which is a threat to public health. The antibiotic resistance patterns of isolated bacterial strains are of medical importance as there are chances of transferring resistant traits
COMMENTARY - Developing COVID-19 Simulation Tool for Low and Middle-Income Countries: The Nigerian Case Study
Full text linkThe MRC centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College has created a COVID-19 simulation for 130 Low and Middle countries available at covidsim.org. The simulation shows an epidemic trajectory and healthcare demand pattern for selected countries based on logic that is said to be a venture between Imperial College, London and a private firm, Bio Nano Consulting, The Jameel Group and is research funded by the Wellcome Trust and UK Aid from the UK government. The commentary focuses on the results that pertain to Nigeria, the country of interest of the authors. Although the simulation looks at mortality outcomes based on interventions and healthcare demand and supply situation, the emphasis of the commentary was on number for infections and associated mortality as displayed by the simulation.The inputs and the outputs of the model were critiqued. A result of the model was that a population far in excess of the country’s population is expected to be infected, and the simulated deaths associated with these numbers of infected people were considered excessive, improbable and unjustifiable. Suggestions were made to improve the simulated outputs, and a conclusion of the adjusted model involving calibrating the model for actual results envisaged thus far and adjusting for the population that is expected to be infected based on the basic reproduction number, herd immunity and age demography resulted in a much lower estimate of mortality. This resulted in a reduction of simulated deaths from 989,475 deaths from the original model to 19,719 deaths in the adjusted model
REVIEW ARTICLE - The Potential Benefit of Mouthwashes in Reducing COVID-19 Viral Load: A Mini Review
Full text linkScientists throughout the world are searching for a lasting solution in the form of a vaccine or a drug that could be used to combat COVID-19 infections. A number of studies have proposed the antiviral efficacy of mouthwashes across a different population. Research has shown over the years that active ingredients present in commercially available mouthwash are potent enough to damage viruses, particularly those with the lipid envelope, rendering them harmless. This paper reviews the effect of mouthwashes on few viruses, including those possibly linked to SARS-COV-2. The aim is to provide evidence on the potential benefit of mouthwashes in reducing viral load and pool together the impact of various mouthwashes in managing individuals diagnosed with viral infections. We searched academic, English-scripted paper published between 1995 and June 2020 on PubMed, MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, EMBASE, WHO and the Cochrane Library databases. Two review authors independently assessed the eligibility and quality of the retrieved papers using the Jadad scale. Result showed there were evidences indicating that the benefits of mouthwashes to viral infections might be transferrable to COVID-19. However, future trials are recommended to establish the benefits of mouthwashes in reducing the burden of COVID-19
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE - Synthesis, characterization and biological evaluation of hexagonal wurtzite structured ZnO nanoparticle from Zn (II)-Schiff base complex
Full text linkStudies on transitional metal compounds of Schiff base ligands have been of great significance due to their spectral properties and wide applications. Tetradentate Schiff base-Zn (II) complex was prepared and used as a precursor for the synthesis of Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles through a one-step calcination process at a different temperature: 250-350 °C. The influence of temperature on the antioxidant activities of synthesized nanoparticles was investigated. The precursor (zinc complexes) was characterized by melting point, thermogravimetric analysis, UV-Vis, FT-IR spectroscopy. elemental analysis, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) of tridentate Schiff base was synthesized and characterized using The structural studies of synthesized metal oxides were carried out with powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), FTIR, and UV-visible. The energy band gap of the nanoparticles was 3.15 eV for ZnO@250, 3.31 eV for ZnO@300, while ZnO@350 was found as 3.17 eV and 3.56 eV. The average sizes of the ZnO nanoparticles were found to be around 25 nm. The antioxidant activities of the product were investigated through scavenging activity on DPPH. The obtained IC50 value of the DPPH activity for the product @ 350 °C (IC50 = 4.09 ± 0.32µM) was higher than other nanoparticles
Research And Innovation For Sustainable Development In Africa
Full text linkAgenda 2063 is the continental framework that projects transition of the continent from resource based economy to innovation-led knowledge driven economy portrayed an array of polices, strategies and frameworks among of which the African Union Science and Technology Strategy for Africa 2024.This was developed by High Level Panel consist of experts both within and outside the continent, the strategy was built on the experiences accumulated during the implementation of Africa’s Science and Technology Consolidated Plan of Action in addressing the international STI challenges and to respond to the mission of the AU Agenda 2063. The output of the panel comprise regional consultations and inputs of the stakeholders gave an impetus to the Science, Technology and Innovation for Africa Strategy (STIAS 2024) that was subsequently endorsed by the African Union Head of States and Governments. Similar to any regional Strategy STISA 2024 has its challenge to be adopted; integrated and implemented at all AU levels i.e. at the level of Member States, Regional Economic Communities and the Continent. In this regards, the African Union Scientific, Technical Research Commission (AU-STRC) took the responsibility to identify the institutional and policy gaps in all AU levels to ensure STISA’s successful implementation. Using finite element analysis and problem tree methodology and taking into cognizance STASA output/objectives as the boundary conditions for the analysis leads to the identification of policies and institutional gaps that may exist in our Member States. This article is to highlight these gaps and to encourage the leading STI African Countries to champion the transition of the Africa’s economy by utilizing Science Technology and Innovation