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This study assessed smallholder farmers’ participation in IFAD-Community Based Agricultural and Rural Development Project in Katsina State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage sampling technique was employed to select the 698 respondents. In the first stage, a purposive sampling technique was used to select one village area that had the highest participating farmers out of the three village areas in each LGA. The second stage involved the use of systematic random sampling technique to select 12% of the population. This gave a total of three hundred and fourty nine (349) participating farmers from the twelve participating village areas. Also, 349 non-participating farmers were selected from neighbouring communities using systematic random sampling. Descriptive statistics and logit regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The result shows that 23% of the participating farmers were between the ages of 46-50 years and 91% were males. The result also shows that level of education with coefficient value of (-0.309), household size (-0.041), farm size (0.801), membership of cooperative (0.547) and extension contact (-0.283) were the factors influencingsmallholder farmers participation in the project. The result further shows that inadequate capital, inadequate agricultural credits and inadequate storage facilities were the major constraints to participation in the programme. The study recommends that extension workers should assist farmers to form viable co-operatives associations and where they are in existence, efforts should be made to strengthen them for easy access to credit, farm inputs and markets for their agricultural products.

Effects of ingredient combination and Post-Frying Centrifugation (PFC) on qualities of low-fat and high fiber-fried snacks were investigated. Wheat Flour (WF), High-Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) and Corn Bran (CB) were combined in the ratios 92:8:0, 83:12:5, 75:15:10, 62:18:20, 50:20:30, and 40:20:40, respectively. Conditioned blends (moisture content of 37.8%) were rested, sheeted, cut and fried at 170 ± 2°C for 5 min. Some fried matrices were centrifuged for 3 min immediately after frying. Samples with the highest CB had the highest oil uptake (19.91 ± 0.04%) and Total Dietary Fiber (TDF) (20.47 ± 0.41 g/100 g) but expanded least (61.52 ± 13.78%). Oil Uptake (OU), redness, change in color and TDF increased with CB inclusion but OU decreased by 55.21% after PFC. Negative correlation existed between OU and expansion (r = −0.852) and TDF with expansion (r = −0.85) while a positive correlation existed between TDF and OU (r = 0.945). Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) revealed the role of CB in OU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The associations between adrenal histopathology, lateralization studies, and surgical outcomes in primary aldosteronism remain poorly characterized. We examined the value of immunohistochemical analysis of CYP11B2 for evaluation of adrenalectomy outcomes after anatomical versus functional subtyping. Design: A retrospective multicenter study of 277 patients operated for primary aldosteronism who had an adrenalectomy sample available in the Finnish biobanks from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2019. Adrenal slides from biobanks were analyzed centrally after CYP11B2 and CYP11B1 staining. Clinical data were obtained from patient registries. Histopathological diagnosis and cure after surgery were assessed as outcome measures. Results: Re-evaluation with CYP11B2 staining changed the histopathological diagnosis in 91 patients (33%). The presence of a CYP11B2-positive adenoma and the use of functional subtyping independently predicted clinical cure of primary aldosteronism. CYP11B2-positive

Research has been conducted on the growth regulators (+)-ampullicin and (+)-isoampullicin. The synthesis of these regulators from (-)-carvone has been carried out via the internal displacement of tosylate by the lactone enolate and the results are discussed.

The persistent application of chemicals in pest control and agricultural processes possess a public health concern as their use are often associated with acute or chronic poisoning cases in both humans and animals. In veterinary medicine, pesticides such as organophosphates and carbamates are exclusively used in ectoparasitic control through pour on, tick bath and fumigation. The incidence of organophosphate or carbamate poisoning in dogs within Maiduguri, north-eastern Nigeria was assessed using three government approved and licensed veterinary centres. Data were obtained through the review of three years (2016-2018) retrospective cases of organophosphate/carbamate poisoning and administration of questionnaires to actively practising veterinarians. Investigation revealed that organophosphate/carbamate poisoning in dogs within Maiduguri metropolis constituted 37% of poisoning cases and was on the increase in recent years with 22.96% of the total cases reported in 2016, 34.08% in 2017 and 42.96% in 2018. The case was most prevalent at the peak of the rainy season around July and August. The common clinical signs observed include salivation, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle spasms, severe weakness and paralysis. Management was usually supportive and symptomatic while antidotal therapy revolved on atropine sulphate only. The effect of ageing in organophosphate poisoning was neglected by most of the clinicians as more than 50% would administer atropine sulphate without considering the duration of the onset of poisoning. It was concluded that the incidence of organophosphate and carbamate poisoning in dogs in Maiduguri constituted 37% of all poisoning cases where 22.96% and 42.96% of it were reported in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Enlightenment programmes for the public and professionals are recommended on the increased cases of poisoning and proper use of antidote in the treatment of chemical toxicosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Brazos Valley Food Bank (BVFB) is a non-profit organization in the Bryan-College Station area of Texas. It distributes food supplies through partner agencies and special programs to eradicate hunger in Brazos Valley. However, a big gap exists between the meals distributed by BVFB and the size of the food-insecure population. This research is motivated by BVFB’s desire to reach more people by recruiting more sustainable partner agencies. We used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map food desert areas lacking access to nutritious food. We combined expert knowledge with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) to address the challenges and time consumption of manually identifying sustainable partner agencies for local food delivery. We identified evaluation criteria for all agencies based on BVFB managers’ preferences using a qualitative approach, and then applied three quantitative decision-making models: the Weighted Sum Model (WSM), the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and the Multi-criteria Optimization and Compromise Solution (VIKOR) models to obtain ranking results. We compared the quantitative models’ rankings to BVFB managers’ manual choices and discussed the impacts of our research. The key innovation of the research is to develop a mixed method by combining expert knowledge with mathematical decision models and GIS to support spatial decision making in food distribution. Although our results were specific to BVFB, these procedures can be applied to food banks in general. Future studies include finetuning our models to measure and address human biases, wider applications and more data collections.

This paper introduces a project design on estimating air pollution over geographical regions that have a mono-source of data acquisition. Fourteen years (2000-2013) aerosol optical depth dataset was obtained from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR). The peculiar design that has been discussed in this paper focusses on human health and environmental disturbances. The secondary datasets that were generated from the primary data were aerosol loading, particles sizes, Angstrom parameter, and the statistics of the primary dataset. A computational data treatment was introduced for the determination of data reliability of the dataset. The techniques highlighted in this study are germaine to be reproduced in several geographical locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]