Ebonyi State University

About: Ebonyi State University is a education organization based out in Abakaliki, Ebonyi, Nigeria. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Pregnancy. The organization has 1351 authors who have published 1474 publications receiving 20111 citations.

Chemical Constituents of Moringa oleifera Leaves and Seeds from Abakaliki, Nigeria

Abstract: Moringa oleifera is a medicinal plant widely used in folkloric medicine of Africa and Asia for the treatment of ailments such as ulcer, wound, inflammation, heart problem, cancer, stroke, obesity, anaemia and liver damage. The chemical constituents of the methanolic extract of Moringa oleifera leaves and seeds were investigated using Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Sixteen chemical constituents were identified in the leaf methanolic extract; they are 9-octadecenoic acid (20.89%), L-(+)-ascorbic acid- 2,6-dihexadecanoate(19.66%), 14–methyl-8-hexadecenal (8.11%), 4-hydroxyl-4-methyl-2-pentanone (7.01%), 3-ethyl-2, 4-dimethyl-pentane (6.14%), phytol (4.24%), octadecamethyl-cyclononasiloxane (1.23%), 1, 2-benzene dicarboxylic acid (2.46%), 3, 4-epoxy-ethanone comprising (1.78%), N-(-1-methylethyllidene)-benzene ethanamine (1.54%), 4, 8, 12, 16-tetramethylheptadecan-4-olide (2.77%), 3-5-bis (1, 1-dimethylethyl)-phenol (2.55%), 1-hexadecanol (1.23%), 3, 7, 11, 15-tetramethyl-2 hexadecene-1-ol (1.17%), hexadecanoic acid (2.03%) and 1, 2, 3-propanetriyl ester-9 octadecenoic acid(1.23%). Five chemical constituents were identified in methanolic seed extract and they are oleic acid (84%), L-(+) - ascorbic acid- 2, 6-dihexadecanoate (9.80%), 9-octadecenoic acid (1.88%), methyl ester-hexadecanoic acid (1.31%) and 9-octadecenamide (0.78%). Results obtained showed that the methanolic leaf extract of Moringa oleifera has more chemical constituents than the seed with 9-octadecenoic acid (20.8%) as the highest in the leaf and oleic acid (84%) in the seed. These relatively diverse chemical constituents may be responsible for the medicinal properties of Moringa oleifera leaves and seeds.

Sarcasm identification in textual data: systematic review, research challenges and open directions

Abstract: Sarcasm is a form of sentiment whereby people express the implicit information, usually the opposite of the message content in order to hurt someone emotionally or criticise something in a humorous way. Sarcasm identification in textual data, being one of the hardest challenges in natural language processing (NLP), has recently become an interesting research area due to its importance in improving the sentiment analysis of social media data. A few studies have carried out a comprehensive literature review on sarcasm identification in the existing primary study within the last 11 years. Thus, this study carried out a review on the classification techniques for sarcasm identification under the aspects of datasets, pre-processing, feature engineering, classification algorithms, and performance metrics. The study has considered the published article from the period of 2008 to 2019. Forty (40) academic literature were selected from the 7 standard academic databases in order to carry out the review and realize the objectives. The study revealed that most researchers created their own datasets since there is no standard available datasets in the domain of sarcasm identification. Context and content-based linguistic features were used in most of the studies. This review shows that n-gram and parts of speech tagging techniques were the most commonly used feature extraction techniques. However, binary representation and term frequency were utilized for feature representation whereas Chi squared and information gain were used for the feature selection scheme. Moreover, classification algorithm such as support vector machine, Naive Bayes, random forest, maximum entropy, and decision tree algorithm were mostly applied using accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure for performance measures. Finally, research challenges and future direction are summarized in this review. This review reveals the impact of sarcasm identification in building effective product reviews and would serve as handle resources for researchers and practitioners in sarcasm identification and text classification in general.

Seroprevalence of acquired toxoplasmosis in HIV-infected and apparently healthy individuals in Jos, Nigeria.

Abstract: Toxoplasma gondii IgG antibody seroprevalence was studied in two different populations of 219 HIV-infected patients and 144 apparently healthy individuals (AHIs). Clinical toxoplasmosis was assessed among the HIV-infected patients. Antibodies to T. gondii were detected in 85 (38.8%, 95% CI: 32.36%-45.26%) of the HIV-infected patients and in 30 (20.8%, 95% CI: 14.20%-27.46%) of the AHIs. Among the AIHs, males represented 22.0% of infections compared to females (20.0%) and individuals within age group 21-30 years accounted for the highest prevalence of 33.3% (95% CI: 11.56%-55.10%). There was no significant difference in the trend (Chi-square, P < or = 0.05). Assessment of epidemiological factors showed higher seroprevalence of Toxoplasma antibodies among those who eat rodents (29.6%) and those who constantly have contact with the soil (21.2%). Among the HIV-infected, individuals 31-40-years-old had the highest T. gondii seroprevalence (36.5%). Evaluation of the clinical findings of patients with concomitant toxoplasmosis and HIV infection greatly implicated fever (63.5%), headache (44.7%), rashes (41.2%) and anorexia (34.1%). This study contributes to the development of guidelines for the prevention and management of toxoplasmosis in HIV-infected patients and in apparently healthy individuals in a resource scarce setting.

A 30-year review of advanced abdominal pregnancy at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Afikpo, southeastern Nigeria (1976-2006).

Abstract: This analysis attempts to highlight the varied presentations, diagnostic difficulties, management and subsequent obstetric performances of women managed for advanced abdominal pregnancy. A retrospective analysis of all 20 cases of abdominal pregnancies between 1976 and 2006, at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Afikpo, southeastern Nigeria was performed. There were 20 cases of abdominal pregnancy out of 58,000 deliveries, giving an incidence of 0.34 per 1,000 deliveries. The diagnoses were missed in 10 cases and there was one maternal death. There were four live births, two early neonatal deaths and four cases of lithopedion. The placenta was removed in 11 cases. Though the duration of hospital stay was longer in women in whom the placenta was left in situ compared to those in whom the placenta was removed, the observed difference was, however, not statistically significant (p value, 0.538). The majority of the women were lost to follow-up over the years; however, of the five women successfully followed up, only two (40%) had subsequent childbirth. The rate of 50% missed diagnosis in this study highlights the need for a high index of suspicion in the diagnosis of abdominal pregnancies as the clinical features are varied. It calls for vigilance on the part of the obstetrician. The maternal and fetal outcomes relate to early diagnosis and skilled management.