Agricultural Informatization and Technical Efficiency in Maize Production in Zambia

No embargo required.The cropland productivity gap between Africa and the rest of the world is widening. Fortunately, increasing farmers’ access to useful agricultural information reduces the costs of searching for information, thereby leading to higher agricultural productivity and sustainability. This study investigates the association between the adoption of mobile phones to collect agricultural information and farmers’ technical efficiency (TE) in Zambia. Different from previous studies, we focus on the actual use of mobile phones by farmers rather than mere ownership. Farmers were selected using a two-stage sampling procedure, and the Cobb-Douglas (CD) production function is adopted to estimate the association using two approaches—the conventional stochastic production frontier (SPF) and propensity score matching-stochastic production frontier (PSM-SPF) model. In both cases, we found that the use of mobile phones is significantly and positively associated with farmers’ TE. However, the conventional SFP model exaggerates the TE scores by 5.3% due to its failure to mitigate biases from observed variables. Regarding the agricultural growth indicators (income and output) related to TE, a close inspection reveals that increasing mobile phone use to close the TE gap between the two groups could result in a 5.13% and 8.21% reduction in severity of poverty and extreme poverty, respectively. Additional research is essential to corroborate the findings and analyze the potential causal mechanisms. Our study provides strong evidence to promote mobile phone use in agricultural production in rural Zambia.</jats:p

Role of foliar spray of plant growth regulators in improving photosynthetic pigments and metabolites in Plantago ovata (Psyllium) under salt stress – A field appraisal

Salinity is one of the major abiotic factors that limit the growth and productivity of plants. Foliar application of plant growth regulators (PGRs) may help plants ameliorate the negative impacts of salinity. Thus, a field experiment was conducted at the Botanical Garden University of Balochistan, Quetta, to explore the potential role of PGRs, i.e., moringa leaf extract (MLE; 10%), proline (PRO; 1 µM), salicylic acid (SA; 250 µM), and thiourea (TU; 10 mM) in ameliorating the impacts of salinity (120 mM) on Plantago ovata, an important medicinal plant. Salinity hampered plant photosynthetic pigments and metabolites but elevated oxidative parameters. However, foliar application of PGRs enhanced photosynthetic pigments, including Chl b (21.11%), carotenoids (57.87%) except Chl a, activated the defense mechanisms by restoring and enhancing the metabolites, i.e., soluble sugars (49.68%), soluble phenolics (33.34%), and proline (31.47%), significantly under salinity stress. Furthermore, foliar supplementation of PGRs under salt stress led to a decrease of about 43.02% and 43.27% in hydrogen peroxide and malondialdehyde content, respectively. Thus, PGRs can be recommended for improved photosynthetic efficiency and metabolite content that can help to get better yield under salt stress, with the best and most effective treatments being those of PRO and MLE to predominately ameliorate the harsh impacts of salinity

Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

This paper connects Marxist approaches to the agrarian political economy of South Africa with post-Marshallian and Foucauldian analyses of distributional regimes and late capitalist governmentality. Looking at South Africa’s stalled agrarian transition through the lens of biopolitics as well as class analysis can make visible otherwise disregarded connections between processes of agrarian change and broader contests about the terms of social and economic incorporation into the South African social and political order before, during and after Apartheid. This can bring a fresh sense of the broader political implications of the course of agrarian change in South Africa, and helps contextualise the enduring salience of land as a flashpoint within South Africa’s unresolved democratic transition

The Neoliberal Incentive Structure in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This dissertation argues that the persistence of certain aspects of neoliberal market orthodoxy, such as capital account and trade liberalization, fiscal austerity and the inflation targeting (IT) regime, over a twenty-year period in post-apartheid South Africa can be attributed to series of economic incentives and constraints that accompanied the country’s integration into global capital markets in 1995. Specifically, it is posited that capital account liberalization, as well as a new accumulation regime adopted by the South African conglomerates predicated on financialization and outward expansion, has rendered the business community and the political elite dependent on portfolio capital inflows to fund the fiscal deficit and the balance of payments. This development has enabled global credit rating agencies and international investors to wield a potential veto over potential unorthodox economic policies. Global financial integration has thus compelled the Treasury and Reserve Bank to craft orthodox economic policies in line with interests of global asset managers and domestic corporations. Moreover, the ANC’s cash transfer programs to impoverished South Africans, which have been a crucial factor in the party’s electoral success, are partially funded through the international capital markets. Finally, organized labor’s integration into a corporatist governing arrangement has served to dampen the resistance to this neoliberal regime.Ph.D

Epidemiology and Risk factors for Multi-drug Resistant Bacterial Urinary Tract Infections among Pregnant Women in Qatar

Objective Infections caused by multiple drug resistant organisms are on the rise worldwide. Urinary tract infections (UTI) are one of the commonest infections in pregnancy. These infections are known to be associated with poor feto-maternal outcomes. UTIs caused by drug resistant organisms (MDRO) have higher likelihood of complications like pyelonephritis and sepsis in the mother and adverse neonatal outcomes. Hence a clinical survey was conducted to assess the epidemiology and risk factors associated with UTIs caused by drug resistant organisms.  Design: Case control study Methods A case control study was conducted at a secondary hospital. Women delivered between 2016-2019 were included. All patients with UTI caused by multiple drug resistant organisms were included in the study and control patients were selected with random sampling. Prevalence of urinary tract infections and UTIs caused by multiple drug resistant organisms during pregnancy was assessed. Epidemiological and risk factors were observed in women with UTI caused by MDRO and compared with women with UTI caused by non-MDRO. Odds ‘ratio was calculated for statistical analysis.  Results 21520 women delivered between 2016-2019. Overall prevalence of UTI in pregnancy was 1.88%. Out of these 11.88% had UTIs caused by drug resistant organisms. 72.92% of these were caused by extended-spectrum β-lactamases producing Escherichia coli.  Nulliparity, maternal age more than 30 years and infections in third trimester were identified as epidemiological factors for MDRO associated UTIs. Body mass index of more than 30 kg/m2 (OR-3.13, 95% CI-1.51-6.51, P Conclusions High prevalence of MDRO associated UTIs were noted despite complying with the anti-microbial stewardship best practice guidelines in the country. Identifying the risk factors would aid in appropriate management and follow up of these cases to reduce the pregnancy complications.</p

Emergence of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii producing OXA-23 Carbapenemase in Qatar

The objective of our study was to describe the molecular support of carbapenem resistance from randomly selected clinical isolates of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii as a pilot study from the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Qatar. Results of our report will be used to study carbapenemases using molecular techniques in all isolated MDR A. baumannii. Forty-eight MDR A. baumannii were randomly selected from isolates preserved at HMC. Identification of all isolates was confirmed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Antibiotic resistance was tested phenotypically by Phoenix and confirmed by Etest. The molecular support of carbapenemases (blaOXA-23, blaOXA-24, blaOXA-58, blaNDM) was investigated by real-time PCR. The epidemiologic relatedness of the isolates was verified by phylogenetic analysis based on partial sequences of CsuE and blaOXA-51 genes. All 48 isolates were identified as A. baumannii and were confirmed to be resistant to most antibiotics, especially meropenem, imipenems, ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, amikacin, gentamicin and most of the β-lactams; they were sensitive to colistin. All the isolates were positive for blaOXA-23 and negative for the other tested carbapenemase genes. Clonality analysis demonstrated that different lineages were actually circulating in Qatar; and we suggest that an outbreak occurred in the medical intensive care unit of HMC between 2011 and 2012. Here we report the emergence of MDR A. baumannii producing the carbapenemase OXA-23 in Qatar