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Monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons like Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) are among environmental pollutants that are considered among chemicals of concern. They are often found in industrial effluents, which when discharged into farmlands end up contaminating the soils. Such happenings warrant the remediation of the soil for environmental sustainability. Solvent extraction, prominent among the techniques employed for this remediation, is limited by the type of solvent used, as volatile organic solvents end up producing secondary pollutants. Various kinds of green solvents like Ionic Liquids (ILs) and Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) have been used in this technique as replacements for the conventional ones. In this study, DES made from choline chloride and ethylene glycol in the ratio of 1:2 was synthesized, characterized and used for the remediation of soils contaminated with monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (BTEX). Response surface methodology was employed to model and optimize the extraction process. Extraction efficiencies of 76.25, 79.04, 81.93 and 78.66% were obtained for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene in a single stage extraction at optimum condition of 45 minutes, 0.841 and 440 rpm for extraction time, solvent mass fraction and mixing rate respectively. Further studies on the solvent regeneration and reuse were conducted. The findings showed that the solvent has capacity to perform effectively in two (2) successive extraction cycles without regeneration, and can undergo up to five (5) cycles upon regeneration without significant loss in its extracting ability. These studies show the possibility of remediating soils contaminated with BTEX using DES under mild extraction conditions.

Accurate assessment of student engagement is central to technology-enhanced learning, yet existing models remain constrained by class imbalance, instability across data splits, and limited interpretability. This study introduces a multimodal engagement assessment framework that addresses these issues through three complementary strategies: (1) class-aware loss functions to alleviate class imbalance, (2) temporal data augmentation and heterogeneous ensembling to enhance model stability, and (3) SHAP-based analysis of the most stable component for reliable interpretability. Reliability was established through repeated cross-validation with multiple seeds across seven deep learning architectures and the proposed ensemble. The framework established a mean accuracy of 0.901 ± 0.043 and a mean macro F1 of 0.847 ± 0.068, surpassing baselines such as ResNet (Accuracy = 0.917), Inception (Macro F1 = 0.862), and LightGBM (Accuracy = 0.922). Ablation studies highlighted temporal augmentation and ensemble diversity as key contributors, while sensitivity analyses confirmed robustness with variance consistently below 0.07 across seeds and folds. Efficiency profiling established MCNN and TimeCNN as the optimal deployment architecture, combining near-optimal accuracy with superior computational efficiency. SHAP-based interpretation was extended to provide feature-level and class-wise attribution, revealing consistent relationships between predictions and behavioral or cognitive cues. Overall, the study demonstrates that balanced evaluation and ensemble stability are essential for reliable engagement assessment.

After the successful roll out of MenAfriVac, Nigeria has experienced sequential meningitis outbreaks attributed to meningococcus serogroup C (NmC). Zamfara State in North-western Nigeria recently was at the epicentre of the largest NmC outbreak in the 21 st Century with 7,140 suspected meningitis cases and 553 deaths reported between December 2016 and May 2017. The overall attack rate was 155 per 100,000 population and children 5–14 years accounted for 47% (3,369/7,140) of suspected cases. The case fatality rate (CFR) among children 5–9 years was 10%, double that reported among adults ≥ 30 years (5%). NmC and pneumococcus accounted for 94% (172/184) and 5% (9/184) of the laboratory-confirmed cases, respectively. The sequenced NmC belonged to the ST-10217 clonal complex (CC). All serotyped pneumococci were PCV10 serotypes. The emergence of NmC ST-10217 CC outbreaks threatens the public health gains made by MenAfriVac, which calls for an urgent strategic action against meningitis outbreaks.

Systemic inflammatory response to surgical interventions has been characterized by an orchestrated interplay of endogenous mediatory cytokines and haematologic alterations. The study was carried out to determine the changes in plasma levels of pro-inflammatory interleukin-6 (IL-6) and anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 (IL-10) in relation to haematological alterations in response to colo-peritoneo-cystoplasty in dogs. Haematological and plasma concentrations of IL-6 and IL-10 were profiled in four apparently healthy dogs, following the colo-peritoneo-cystoplastic procedure. Mean packed cell volume (PCV) significantly ( P  < 0.05) decreased from the pre-surgical 45.84 ± 3.67 to a lowest value (33.50 ± 2.53%) on day 7 post-surgery. Mean total leukocyte count (TLC) significantly ( P  < 0.05) increased from the pre-surgical value (9.85 ± 1.02 × 10 9 /L) to a peak level (14.20 ± 2.77 × 10 9 /L) on day 7 post-surgery. Mean neutrophil count significantly ( P  < 0.05) increased from the pre-surgical value of 6.63 ± 0.79 to a peak day 7 post-surgical value (10.00 ± 2.39 × 10 9 /L. Mean lymphocyte count rose from 3.59 ± 0.31 to day 4 post-surgical value of 4.42 ± 0.82 × 10 9 /L. Changes in mean eosinophil and monocyte counts were not significant ( P  > 0.05). Mean plasma IL-6 concentration significantly ( P  < 0.05) increased from 7639.45 ± 146.81 (pre-surgical) to 7916.62 ± 32.97 pg/mL on day 4 post-surgery. The pre-surgical mean IL-10 concentration was 93.95 ± 17.18 pg/mL. It remained relatively unchanged post-surgery until on day 9 when it suddenly surged to 449.70 ± 125.79 pg/mL. The mean concentration of the IL-10 slightly decreased and fluctuates until day 35 when another peak rise (457.20 ± 95.78 pg/mL) was observed. It was observed that changes in plasma concentrations of IL-6 and IL-10 positively correlated with the leukocytic changes, which suggest presence of a regulatory interplay of IL-6, IL-10 and leukocytic changes in wound healing inflammatory response to the colo-peritoneo-cystoplasty in dogs.

The global spread of COVID-19 remains unabated in the past few months with a rise in the number of available literature on the novel virus. There are very few paediatric studies and are mainly from developed countries with a paucity of information on the clinical manifestation of COVID-19 disease in African children, including Nigeria. We described the clinical presentation, laboratory findings, treatment and outcome in a group of five Nigerian children managed at a COVID-19 isolation and treatment centre in Nigeria. We managed a total of five children with an age range of 3 months to 8 years in the last four weeks (16th April to 15th May 2020). Three of the five children were males. All the children had close contact with family members that tested positive for COVID-19. Out of the five children, one had moderate disease, three had mild symptomatic disease, and one was asymptomatic. Two out of the five children had lymphocytosis. Out of the four children who had chest radiograph, two had features of pneumonia. COVID-19 is not uncommon in Nigerian children, and all had a confirmed family member with COVID-19. Besides, contrary to leucopaenia with lymphopaenia observed in the adult's population, we found lymphocytosis in this cohort and about 50.0% had pneumonic changes on chest radiograph.