• Area students competing in Hinds Community College’s Eagle Beauty Revue at 7 p.m. Thursday are Haley Sims of Vicksburg and Indiana Martin, Jessica Rhinehart and Taylor Strong, all of Utica. The event will be at Cain-Cochran Hall on the Raymond campus. Admission is $2 for students with HCC identification, free for HCC employees and $5 for members of the public.

• Dr. Alex D.W. Acholonu, professor of biology at Alcorn State University, has returned from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he attended the International Congress of Tropical Medicine and Malaria. He presented a paper on the “Prevalence of Toxoplasma Gondii Infection in Chickens (Gallus domesticus) from McComb, Miss.,” which analyzed whether the parasitic protozoa is prevalent in chickens from Mississippi and compared its frequency of occurrence with those in pigs and goats in Mississippi previously reported. Dr. Acholonu also published two articles titled “Water As a Renewable Energy Source and Environmental Issues” and “Issues in Nuclear Energy Production and Usage with Special Reference to USA and Nigeria” as part of the Renewable Energy for National Industrial Growth conference in Nigeria.