Ehinlafa, O. E., Abdulsalam et al. (13 contributing authors)
In this study, f o F2 variability diurnally, seasonally and annually was investigated during a Low Solar Epoch (LSE) over Ilorin (latitude 8.31°N, longitude 4.34°E, dip latitude 2.95 o ), a low latitude station along the equatorial anomaly trough. The percentage variability index () was used for the analysis. The percentage variability index () is lowest during the day (2-17%); increases during night to (8-55%); and attained the highest magnitude during pre-sunrise phase (17-68%), for the period of LSE. Two major peaks were noticed in V R : the pre-sunrise peak, which is higher, and the post-sunset peak. Annually, peaks at 44% for the pre-sunrise phase, and 37% for the post-sunset phase, during the LSE. The rapid electron drift away from the equator coincides with subsequent rise in the percentage variability index immediately after sunset for all the seasons.
Critical frequency (foF2)Variability index () 
Ehinlafa, O. E., Johnson et al. (10 contributing authors)
The F2 region critical frequency ( f o F2 ) and peak electron density ( N m F2 ) morphology was investigated over Ilorin (latitude 8.31°N, longitude 4.34°E) during a Low Solar Epochs (LSE), a station along the equator anomaly trough. Diurnally, f o F2 and N m F2 are visibly more prominent during the day than at night with two characteristic peaks: pre-noon and post-noon peaks. The f o F2 and N m F2 pre-noon peak magnitude range: (7.7–8.3 MHz) and (7.3–8.6) × 10 11 /m -3 respectively is less compared to the f o F2 and N m F2 post-noon peak magnitude range: (7.3–9.7 MHz) and (6.7–11.7) ×10 11 /m -3 respectively. Seasonally, the highest values were attained during the post-noon peak in the equinoctial months compared to the solstices months, and also, annually, the post-noon peak is higher than the pre-noon peak. The rapid electron drift away from the equator is responsible for the sharp drop in f o F2 and N m F2 after sunset in all seasons. Seasonal peaks in f o F2 and N m F2 are suspected to be controlled by the enhanced E × B drifts and the onset and turn-off of solar ionization, which is consistent with some earlier results obtained at some stations in the African region during low solar epoch periods.
Egwu, H. A., Yilwa et al. (14 contributing authors)
Hyptis suaveolens , an aromatic plant commonly called Daddoya-ta-daji in Hausa language, is traditionally used as medicine and food. It is used as stimulant, antirheumatic, carminative, against parasitic diseases, headaches, infection of the uterus, stomach, and skin diseases. It is found growing in both oil polluted and non-oil polluted environment. Oil pollution of land is a challenge due to the presence of heavy metals and volatile organic compounds which are harmful to crops and plants. This study investigated the phytoconstituents of the methanol leaf extract as well as antimicrobial activities of Hyptis suaveolens collected from polluted and unpolluted sites. Methanol leaf extracts of H. suaveolens were screened for crucial phytochemicals using standard methods. The in vitro antimicrobial activity was carried out using agar disc-diffusion method by Yahaya et al . (2018), using Mueller Hinton agar medium and potatoes dextrose agar in petri plates seeded with clinical isolates of Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Shigella sp, Staphylococcus aureus (bacteria), Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger (fungi) respectively, and the zone of inhibition determined. The phytochemical results showed that methanol extract of both the polluted and non-polluted H. suaveolens leaves exhibited the presence of some number of bioactive compounds. Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) of polluted and non-polluted leaves of H. suaveolens identified 13 and 21 compounds, respectively such as Octadec-9-enoic acid, 2-Ethylacridine, Methyl ester, Tetracyclo [4.4.1.1(7,10).0(2,5)] dodec-3-en-11-ol, 1,2-Diphenyl-1-isocyanoethane and 7-Isopropyl-1, 1, 4a-trimethy l-1,2,3,4,4a,9,10,10 aocta -hydrophenanthrene. These chemical compounds are considered biologically and pharmacologically important. The results from assessment of the antimicrobial potential of H. suaveolens (L.) on pathogenic microorganisms showed that the pathogenic microorganisms revealed inhibition zones ranging from 6 to 18 mm. This data indicates that the unpolluted methanol extract of H. Suaveolens exhibits a higher bioactive potential compared to the extract derived from polluted leaves. This disparity suggests that oil pollution may have a detrimental impact on the biochemical properties of the plant.
Ceaser A. Moses1, Olumuyiwa A. Owolabi2, Ijeoma Okolo2 et al. (5 contributing authors)
Consumption of diets rich in vegetables and fruits protects the human body from acute and chronic diseases. This study determines the effect of blanching on some antinutritional factors and mineral content of Basella alba and Amaranthus hybridus using standard methods. The vegetables were blanched in deionized water for 5 minutes at 100oC. The phytate and oxalate contents of unblanched Basella alba were significantly (p<0.05) lowered when compared with unblanched Amaranthus hybridus. Blanching caused a significant (p<0.05) decrease in the phytate content by 22.3% and 32.8%, respectively when blanched Amaranthus hybridus and blanched Basella alba BBA were compared with their corresponding unblanched leaves. Also blanching elicited a significant (p<0.05) reduction in the oxalate level by 44.4% and 18.8%, respectively when blanched Amaranthus hybridus and blanched Basella alba BBA were matched with their unblanched counterparts. The mineral (Fe, Ca, Mg, Cu, and Zn) content was significantly (p<0.05) higher in unblanched Basella alba than unblanched Amaranthus hybridus, which decreases significantly (p<0.05) to varying extents after blanching in both vegetables. Blanching reduces the mineral content of Basella alba and Amaranthus hybridus leaves but makes them more bioavailable by reducing their phytate and oxalate. Hence, other processing techniques should be developed which reduce the antinutrient content only.
The enhancement of corrosion inhibition of galvanised steel by synergised leave extracts of Sida acuta (S.A.) and Jatropha curcas (J.C.) in 1.0 M HCl solution was investigated using the gasometric technique at 30 oC and 50 oC. Results obtained showed that complimenting plant extracts with galvanisation of steel enhanced the inhibition of Zinc in the protection of steel. Fourier transform infrared analysis confirmed the O-H functional group of alcohol at 3851 and 3436 cm-1 band. Surface morphology of the steel, synergised were studied with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Analysis revealed the protection of the internal grains of the metal from dissolution into corrodents provided by the adsorbed film the extract. Inhibition efficiency improved from 57.57 % to 95.45 %, corrosion rate 0.454 cm3 /hr to 0.093 cm3 /hr for zinc-coated steel only to extract enhanced-zinc coated steel. Langmuir isotherm best explained the adsorption mechanism of extract of zinc surface. Zinc coated steel has a half-life less than 0.04531539 x 1010 minutes, while effective enhancement of Zinc coated steel with extract gave a half-life of 0.075132088 x 1010 minutes. This implies that the enhancement of galvanised (Zinc coated) steel with synergised extract improved the inhibitory characteristics of the composites over that of zinc coat alone, which corrodes in place of steel.
F. A. Kasali, J. A. Balogun, O. D. Adekola et al. (4 contributing authors)
In the education sector, constructing a personalized timetable is an important aspect that should be given uppermost priorities when it comes to academic planning and implementation. Basically, in most schools, the timetable is done to encompass all courses, segregation only comes in departmentally, by faculty or by programs being studied by the students involved. This could be cumbersome especially for schools with numerous programs, departments or faculties as students and faculty members have to glance through such complex timetables before they are able to map out theirs. This could lead to resource wastage in terms of time, misinterpretation by students involved, clashing of courses being taken by students, poor utilization of available venues amongst other issues. In other to proffer solutions to some of the identified problems, a personalized and user-centric timetable system was designed for the College of Basic and Applied Sciences (CBAS), Mountain Top University, Ogun State, Nigeria. System design was specified using unified modeling language (UML) diagrams such as use-case, sequence and activity diagrams. The system was implemented using mobile application development technologies. The android based timetable system presented an administrative module who could schedule lecture periods, specify time amongst other constraints and overall management of course scheduling based on courses registered for by the students. Evaluation of the system was done using Post Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) version 3 measuring tool and analysed using descriptive statistics with SPSS version 21. One hundred and twenty five (125) participants were chosen randomly and purposefully for the study. Results of analysis gave the perceived satisfaction score as 2.56, system usefulness with 1.98, information quality with a mean score of 2.72 while interface quality performed the lowest with a mean score of 3.19 since in PSSUQ analysis, the higher the mean score, the poorer the performance. The timetable system was basically designed to reduce the problem of accessibility and better convenience especially on the part of the students. Future works would also consider a fully automated system with the use of scheduling algorithms and the integration of examination and invigilation scheduling in the same system.
In this paper, the soil temperature dynamics in south-western Nigeria is investigated using nonlinear time series analysis approach. The 5-mins interval soil temperature data observed continuously over a period of 1 year (from January to December, 2012) were analysed to investigate the existence of chaos. We employed the method of false nearest neighbour carefully interlaced with the average mutual information method to reconstruct the original attractor of the soil temperature's evolution process. The Lyapunov exponent, in addition to the strange attractor of the process, was also employed to identify chaos in the process. Numerical simulations were performed to show the validity of our approach. Tabular and graphical are presented. The results of the computation show the existence of chaos in the soil temperature.
Soil temperaturechaosnonlinear time seriesfalse nearest neighbouraverage mutual information
C. O. Tinubu, O. J. Falana, D. O. Aborisade et al. (5 contributing authors)
Application layer Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are becoming increasingly prevalent on Internet based web services. Severe HTTP GET flood attacks are often launched by attackers, wherein web servers become overwhelmed with superfluous GET requests. This exhausts the processing and connectivity resources of the servers, hence resulting in service failures. As availability of services is key to online service providers, this work presents a behavioral based detection system named 'DDoSDetect' for HTTP GET flood attacks. In DDoSDetect, a traffic monitor tracks incoming GET requests sent to the server. Four distinct behavioral features such as the rate of requests, time interval between successive requests, session rate and the frequency of requests on a web page, are employed to analyze user's behaviors. A detection unit driven by three phases: LRP (Legitimate Request Phase), IRP (Illegitimate Request Phase) and SVM-RC (Support Vector Machine-Request Classifier) is designed to intelligently classify incoming GET requests. Illegitimate GET requests are dropped while legitimate requests are forwarded to the web server. DDoSDetect is implemented and results obtained from evaluation processes signify the effectiveness of the system towards the mitigation of HTTP GET flood attacks. Also, the system is real time and capable of handling sophisticated attacks.
Application layeravailabilityDDoS attacksHTTP GET floodInternet
J. A. Balogun, F. A. Kasali, O. D. Adekola et al. (5 contributing authors)
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus and it primarily affects the liver. Hepatitis C often leads to liver disease and occasionally cirrhosis while in some cases, those with cirrhosis will develop complications such as liver failure. This study was aimed at developing a classification model for the classification of the survival of patients living with hepatitis C. The study collected data containing 19 attributes and 155 records from an online repository created by UCI machine learning repository following which C4.5 decision trees algorithm was adopted for developing the classification model. The results of the study showed that the decision tree is suitable for developing the classification model because of its structural representation of the classification of the survival of Hepatitis C disease. The evaluation of the model simulation process showed that the best performance using the percentage split was achieved using 90 percent for training and 10 percent for testing with an accuracy of 86.67% while using the k-fold cross validation was achieved using 10-fold with an accuracy of 83.87%. Overall, the best performance was achieved using 90 percent of the dataset for training and 10 percent for testing owing for an accuracy of 86.67%. The results also showed that a number of variables were extracted from the initially identified variables and were deemed more relevant for the classification of survival. The study concluded that the If-Then rules which were extracted from the decision tree proved effective in providing decision-support to experts due to its simplicity in interpretation thus mitigating deaths associated with hepatitis C disease.
Hepatitis Cclassification modelingsurvival classificationdecision trees algorithm.
The enhancement of corrosion inhibition of galvanised steel by synergised leave extracts of Sida acuta (S.A.) and Jatropha curcas (J.C.) in 1.0 M HCl solution was investigated using the gasometric technique at 30 oC and 50 oC.
Ceaser A. Moses, Olumuyiwa A. Owolabi, Ijeoma Okolo et al. (5 contributing authors)
Consumption of diets rich in vegetables and fruits protects the human body from acute and chronic diseases. This study determines the effect of blanching on some antinutritional factors and mineral content of Basella alba and Amaranthus hybridus.
