Archives-December 

Meningococcal disease is a severe illness with high case fatality (5-10%) and frequent sequelae. Meningococcal meningitis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the meningitis belt. Meningococcal disease is a major public health challenge in countries of sub-Saharan Africa lying in the meningitis belt. Human infections caused by meningococcal (Neisseria meningitidis) remain a serious health problem, infecting 500,000 to 1.2 million people and killing between 50,000 and 135,000 per year worldwide. The causative agent, Neisseria meningitidis normally lives in a commensal relationship with humans, colonizing the nasopharynx, and is transmitted between healthy persons by close contact. The most common symptoms are a stiff neck, high fever, sensitivity to light, confusion, headaches and vomiting. Low meningitis thresholds improve timely detection of epidemics. The diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis is confirmed by cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis, Gram stain, polymerase chain reaction, culture of cerebrospinal fluid. Meningococcal disease can be treated with a number of effective antibiotics. It is important that treatment be started as soon as possible. If meningococcal disease is suspected, antibiotics are given right away. Antibiotics effective for this purpose include rifampicin, ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone or azithromycin. Currently available meningococcal vaccines include polysaccharide vaccines against serogroups A, C, W135 & Y and newer protein polysaccharide conjugate vaccines against serogroup C. This review covers key aspects of the pathogenesis and management of meningococcal disease, as well as the very recent developments in disease epidemiology, outbreaks, and the evolution of meningococcal immunizations.

Tensile stresses on concrete leading to the formation of cracks which further leads to the spalling of concrete. To overcome this shortcoming, due to its high tensile strength, ductility, ability to arrest propagation of cracks, improved bond strength, etc. This paper investigates the different strengths of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) using Fly ash as cement replacement. Silica fume and fly ash are the by-products and so has the uncontrolled engineering properties which sometimes don’t give the required results. The objective of this paper is to study the behavior of fly ash concrete with steel fibers under shear and torsion.

The Densu River is a typical river used for drinking water source, flowing through agricultural areas in Southern Ghana. Surface water and sediment samples at 45 sampling sites from the river and its tributaries were collected and analyzed for pesticides residues using GC with ECD/FID. Sampling was over a period of 24 months covering both the wet and dry seasons of 2007 and 2008.  Pesticide residues and metabolites detected in water and sediment samples were organochlorines (dieldrin, DDT, DDE, endosulfan sulphate, ?-endosulfan, ?- HCH, ?- HCH, aldrin, ? - chlordane ,endrin, endrin ketone, endrin aldehyde, methoxychlor and  heptachlor). In an average of 13.69% of sediment and 3.30% of water samples, at least one pesticide residue was detected per sample. A total of 8 different pesticides residues were detected in water samples with concentrations ranging between 0.1µgL^-1 and 48.6µgL^-1 whiles in sediment samples 14 different types were detected with concentrations ranging between 0.10µgL^-1 and 163.00µgL^-1. The maximum levels of residues were found in downstream section of the basin. Aldrin and dieldrin levels detected were above the recommended limit of 0.03 µgL^-1 with endosulfan, endrin and chlordane registering levels above their recommended limits of 20.0µgL^-1, 0.6µgL^-1 and 0.2 µgL^-1 respectively for drinking water. The ratio of DDE/DDT  in environmental matrix were quite high indicating there old input of DDT and significant degradation. The results implicitly revealed that improper land use in the basin has led to poor water quality.

Mineral, physico-chemical, functional properties and fatty acid composition of Nigerian Periwinkle (Tympanotonus fuscatus var radula) were studied. The highest mineral in the sample was sodium with the value of 130mg per 100g while phosphorus had the lowest value of 2.18 mg per 100g. The refractive index was 1.46 and specific gravity was 0.89 g/cm3while the viscosity was 40.8 mPa/sec. Oleic acid had the highest value of 30.1% followed by Linoleic acid (27.9%) while palmitoleic acid (0.14%) was the lowest fatty acid in the sample.

The research paper represents a brief analysis of physico-chemical characteristics of three different water bodies viz. earthen pond, cemented pond and lake located at Bhimtal, Nainital, Uttarakhand during winter season. Air temperature, water temperature, pH, DO, free CO2, total alkalinity, total hardness, total nitrogen, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, ammonium and silicate were the physico-chemical parameters observed during the experimental period.

The Perna sp. Perna indica is an important marine bivalve resource due to their dietary and medicinal properties. The increasing atmospheric CO2, ocean warming and consequent acidic changes of the ocean waters adversely affected these sedentary organisms by directly influencing the physiological activities and their energy levels. Experiments were conducted in the present study to infer the influence of temperature on the physiological responses of Perna sp. collected off Kadiapattanam coast, Tamil Nadu, India. The mussels were acclimatized at different temperatures viz., 25.0 to 40.0°C and the oxygen consumption levels were examined. The results indicated that the smaller size group P. species. (viz., 60 mm shell length) was more active at 35.0°C compared to the larger size groups. The oxygen consumption of P. indica acclimated at 35.0°C was higher with 0.0.37±0.01ml/lit/g/h than those acclimated at 40.0 and 25.0°C. It was also observed that, byssal threads were not produced by those specimens reared at the temperature of 25 to 40.0°C at 60 to 80mm shell size species at 1hour interval. The observations point out to the fact that temperature increase due to global warming and size variation could adversely affect physiological responses of the Perna sp. in its natural marine conditions.

During the current years, eBanking has been adopted quite extensively as a channel of distribution for financial services, and this is mainly due to speedy progress in ICTs and competitive banking markets. iBanking permits extended customer contact through vast geographical reach at lower cost of delivery channels. Another vital benefit of eBanking is the collection and management of useful information. Internet has proved as an efficient channel for the banks to gather information from customers and manage them in a best way to meet the wide range of financial needs of individuals and businesses. Currently the customers in the developed countries like UK, USA, Sweden, and Denmark are enjoying the benefits of eBanking but Pakistan is still lagging far-behind in the field of eBanking. This research is focused to study the prospects of eBanking in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, KPK, Pakistan. The researcher has reviewed the literature from different countries of the World, and developed and tested a research model in the local environment.

The present paper is focused on the modification of the properties of polystyrene by adding cobalt chloride and manganese chloride. The composites are prepared using casting technique with different percentages of fillers. The experimental results show that the D.C conductivity of composites increases with the increase of cobalt chloride and manganese chloride concentrations. The D.C electrical conductivity changes with increasing of temperature. Also the activation energy of electrical conductivity of (PS-CoCl2) and (PS-MnCl2) composites decreases with increasing cobalt chloride and manganese chloride concentrations.

One of the issues in perception research that continues to be a matter of intrigue and moot point for both philosophy of perception and its neurophysiology is how vision can play an active role in the haptic adeptness of the visually deprived, especially the congenitally blind and the early blind, if it is granted that visual and tactile modalities follow two different routes of processing of information in the brain. Traditionally, philosophers adhering to the empiricist tradition, such as Berkeley and Locke have maintained that although visual and tactual modalities share one thing in common in that they can process the same object property like figure, spatial properties like distance and motion, the mode of visually grasping any of these properties is at variance with that of haptically perceiving them. This view offers one alternative to a locus classicus in this field of study — the oft-cited Molyneux’s dilemma over whether a long-time blind person familiar with object shapes through touch would also be able to identify the shape for the first time if he ever recovers his visual sensory capacity. In this brief study evidence has been collated, examined and analyzed in support of another alternative to Molyneux’s question. In this alternative, a case has been made for a robust visuo-tactile interplay. Another question this study addresses is whether the skillfulness perceived in vision-mediated tactile performance sparked by loss of vision or forced visual deprivation is an outcome of compensatory but de novo neural restructuring or indicates an integral, latent capacity for neuroplasticity that harnesses visual or spatial imagery so as to help the visually deprived sail through tactile identification and discrimination activities.

AbstractIn this work, a neural network with chaos activation function has been applied as a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG). Chaotic neural network (CNN) is used because of its noise like behaviour which is important for cryptanalyst to know about the hidden information as it is hard to predict. A suitable adaptive architecture was adopted to generate a binary number and the result was tested for randomness using National Institute of Standard Technology (NIST) randomness tests. Although the applications of CNN in cryptography have less effective than traditional implementations, this is because these systems need large numbers of digital logic or even a computer system. This work will focus on applications that can use the proposed system in an efficient way that minimize the system complexity.