Dynamics of factors associated with rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths in African countries.

Background: African countries have not had the high case and death rates from COVID-19 as was predicted early in the pandemic. It is not well understood what factors modulated the rate of COVID-19 cases and death on the continent.

Methods: We collated data from the World Bank data site, Our World in Data and Freedom House for African for 54 African countries who are members of the African Union.

Protein secondary structure prediction using neural network and simulated annealing algorithm.

Predicting the secondary structure of a protein (alpha-helix, beta-sheet, coil) is an important step towards elucidating its three dimensional structure, as well as its function. In this research we use a multilayer feed forward neural network for protein secondary structure prediction. The RS126 data set was used for training and testing the proposed neural network.