SWV determination of glyphosate in Burkina Faso soils using carbon fiber microelectrode

This paper presents an evaluation using carbon fiber microelectrode (CFME) for the determination of glyphosate in soils from Burkina Faso treated with Glyphonet SL 360 by square wave voltammetry (SWV).The maximum intensity of the electrochemical response signal of  glyphosate has been optimized and conditions using a 0.2 M of phosphate buffer solution at pH 5.2 as supporting electrolyte and the SWV parameters frequency of 60 Hz, a scan increment of 10 mV and a pulse height of 60 mV. The limit of detection for glyphosate in the Glyphonet SL 360 formulation was 25 ìg L-1 while the quantification limit was 83 ìgL-1with a linear dynamic range up to 50 ìg L-1. In these conditions, a sequence of experiments led to recoveries in the range 88.5 to 102.3% for soil samples spiked with 50, 100 and 200 ìgL-1 of glyphosate with a standard deviation of 11.5, 4.2 and 2.3% respectively indicating the precision of the method. The optimized method was successfully applied to determine the residues of glyphosate in soils collected in the fields in two different dates from the application period.Keywords: Glyphosate, Glyphonet SL 360, carbon fiber microelectrode, square wave voltammetry, sensitivit

Study of the characteristic parameters of the normal voices of Argentinian speakers

The voice laboratory permits to study the human voices using a method that is objective and noninvasive. In this work, we have studied the parameters of the human voice such as pitch, formant, jitter, shimmer and harmonic-noise ratio of a group of young people. This statistical information of parameters is obtained from Argentinian speakers.publishedVersionFil: Bonzi, Edgardo Venusto. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina.Fil: Bonzi, Edgardo Venusto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola; Argentina.Fil: Grad, G. B. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina.Fil: Maggi, A. M. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Fonoaudiología; Argentina.Fil: Muñóz, M. R. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Fonoaudiología; Argentina.Otras Ciencias Física

Perception paysanne et impact agro-pédologique du niveau de mécanisation agricole dans les zones cotonnières Centre et Ouest du Burkina Faso

Au Burkina Faso, la production cotonnière est assurée par un travail du sol à traction animale ou motorisée. Les sols assurant l’essentiel de cette production sont soit ferralitiques (à l’Ouest) soit ferrugineux tropicaux (au Centre). Pour évaluer l’impact socio-économique et agro-pédologique du type d’exploitation, des enquêtes (interviews semi-structurés et évaluation participative) ont été réalisées sur un échantillon de 315 exploitants et des mesures agro-pédologiques réalisées sur 140 champs dans les 2 zones cotonnières. Les résultats ont montré un faible niveau de mécanisation générale et trois groupes d’exploitants : les grands exploitants (type E1) qui disposent de grands moyens de productions, les exploitants moyens (type E2) et les petits exploitants (type E3) ayant de faibles revenus. Aussi, une proportionnalité existe entre les facteurs de production d’une exploitation et la catégorie socioprofessionnelle de l’exploitant. L’évaluation participative de l’impact des régimes de travail du sol sur les paramètres agronomiques et sur le sol a montré des perceptions divergentes en fonction de la zone de production. Sur les paramètres  agronomiques les paysans des deux zones sont unanimes sur le fait que le travail profond du sol en traction animale ou motorisée permet d’améliorer les propriétés hydrodynamiques du sol et par conséquent entraine une bonne levée et une meilleure production des cultures. Quant à l’impact de la mécanisation agricole sur la fertilité du sol, les paysans de la zone Ouest à pluviosité > 900 mm et sur sols ferralitiques préconisent un travail minimum du sol. Tandis que ceux de la zone à pluviosité entre 700-900 mm et sur sols ferrugineux tropicaux recommandent le travail profond qui permettrait la récupération des terres encroûtés. Ces perceptions sont effectivement confirmées par les analyses agronomiques et pédoclimatiques faites dans les mêmes milieux. Pour une gestion durable des terres, il faut une intervention concertée avec les paysans. En outre les moyens de production doivent être vulgarisés en fonction des conditions pédoclimatiques de chaque zone.Mots clés: Impacts socio-économiques, mécanisation agricole,  rendements, sol, zones cotonnières, Burkina Faso

Headache: Prevalence and relationship with office or ambulatory blood pressure in a general population sample (the Vobarno Study).

The association of headache and arterial hypertension is still controversial, although headache is usually considered a symptom of hypertension. The aim of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of headache in a general population sample and the relationship with arterial hypertension, as diagnosed by office measurements and ambulatory monitoring of blood pressure (BP).In the randomized sample of the Vobarno population, 301 subjects (126 males, 175 females, age range 35-50 years) underwent a structured standardized headache questionnaire, office and 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring.Prevalence of lifetime headache and of migraine was greater in females than in males. Office and 24-h BP values did not differ between subjects without headache and subjects with headache. No differences in headache prevalence (58% vs 55%), migraine prevalence (32% vs 28%) and use of analgesic drugs in the presence of headache (82% vs 78%) were observed between hypertensive patients (93.5% newly diagnosed, 6.5% treated) and normotensive subjects.In a general population sample, hypertension (diagnosed by office and/or 24-h BP) is not associated with headache

Team size matters : collaboration and scientific impact since 1900

This paper provides the first historical analysis of the relationship between collaboration and scientific impact, using three indicators of collaboration (number of authors, number of addresses, and number of countries) and including articles published between 1900 and 2011. The results demonstrate that an increase in the number of authors leads to an increase in impact–-from the beginning of the last century onwards—and that this is not simply due to self-citations. A similar trend is also observed for the number of addresses and number of countries represented in the byline of an article. However, the constant inflation of collaboration since 1900 has resulted in diminishing citation returns: larger and more diverse (in terms of institutional and country affiliation) teams are necessary to realize higher impact. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential causes of the impact gain in citations of collaborative papers

The Association between Peptic Ulcer Disease and Gastric Cancer: Results from the Stomach Cancer Pooling (StoP) Project Consortium

Background. Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common type of cancer and the fourth most common cause of cancer-related mortality. Although the risk of GC and peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is known to be increased by H. pylori infection, evidence regarding the direct relationship between PUD and GC across ethnicities is inconclusive. Therefore, we investigated the association between PUD and GC in the Stomach cancer Pooling (StoP) consortium. Methods. History of peptic ulcer disease was collected using a structured questionnaire in 11 studies in the StoP consortium, including 4106 GC cases and 6922 controls. The two-stage individual-participant data meta-analysis approach was adopted to generate a priori. Unconditional logistic regression and Firth’s penalized maximum likelihood estimator were used to calculate study-specific odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between gastric ulcer (GU)/duodenal ulcer (DU) and risk of GC. Results. History of GU and DU was thoroughly reported and used in association analysis, respectively, by 487 cases (12.5%) and 276 controls (4.1%), and 253 cases (7.8%) and 318 controls (6.0%). We found that GU was associated with an increased risk of GC (OR = 3.04, 95% CI: 2.07–4.49). No association between DU and GC risk was observed (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 0.77–1.39). Conclusions. In the pooled analysis of 11 case–control studies in a large consortium (i.e., the Stomach cancer Pooling (StoP) consortium), we found a positive association between GU and risk of GC and no association between DU and GC risk. © 2022 by the authors.This work is supported by Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC), Project no. 21378 (Investigator Grant); Fondazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (FIRC); Italian League for the Fight Against Cancer (LILT); European Cancer Prevention (ECP) Organization; and UPMC Start-up Grant (to HNL). P Paragomi was supported by a cancer research training grant from NIH (grant # T32CA186873)

A small world of citations? The influence of collaboration networks on citation practices

This paper examines the proximity of authors to those they cite using degrees of separation in a co-author network, essentially using collaboration networks to expand on the notion of self-citations. While the proportion of direct self-citations (including co-authors of both citing and cited papers) is relatively constant in time and across specialties in the natural sciences (10% of citations) and the social sciences (20%), the same cannot be said for citations to authors who are members of the co-author network. Differences between fields and trends over time lie not only in the degree of co-authorship which defines the large-scale topology of the collaboration network, but also in the referencing practices within a given discipline, computed by defining a propensity to cite at a given distance within the collaboration network. Overall, there is little tendency to cite those nearby in the collaboration network, excluding direct self-citations. By analyzing these social references, we characterize the social capital of local collaboration networks in terms of the knowledge production within scientific fields. These results have implications for the long-standing debate over biases common to most types of citation analysis, and for understanding citation practices across scientific disciplines over the past 50 years. In addition, our findings have important practical implications for the availability of 'arm's length' expert reviewers of grant applications and manuscripts

The Association between Peptic Ulcer Disease and Gastric Cancer: Results from the Stomach Cancer Pooling (StoP) Project Consortium

Background. Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common type of cancer and the fourth most common cause of cancer-related mortality. Although the risk of GC and peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is known to be increased by H. pylori infection, evidence regarding the direct relationship between PUD and GC across ethnicities is inconclusive. Therefore, we investigated the association between PUD and GC in the Stomach cancer Pooling (StoP) consortium. Methods. History of peptic ulcer disease was collected using a structured questionnaire in 11 studies in the StoP consortium, including 4106 GC cases and 6922 controls. The two-stage individual-participant data meta-analysis approach was adopted to generate a priori. Unconditional logistic regression and Firth’s penalized maximum likelihood estimator were used to calculate study-specific odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between gastric ulcer (GU)/duodenal ulcer (DU) and risk of GC. Results. History of GU and DU was thoroughly reported and used in association analysis, respectively, by 487 cases (12.5%) and 276 controls (4.1%), and 253 cases (7.8%) and 318 controls (6.0%). We found that GU was associated with an increased risk of GC (OR = 3.04, 95% CI: 2.07–4.49). No association between DU and GC risk was observed (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 0.77–1.39). Conclusions. In the pooled analysis of 11 case–control studies in a large consortium (i.e., the Stomach cancer Pooling (StoP) consortium), we found a positive association between GU and risk of GC and no association between DU and GC risk

NEOTROPICAL XENARTHRANS: a data set of occurrence of xenarthran species in the Neotropics

Xenarthrans – anteaters, sloths, and armadillos – have essential functions for ecosystem maintenance, such as insect control and nutrient cycling, playing key roles as ecosystem engineers. Because of habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting pressure, and conflicts with 24 domestic dogs, these species have been threatened locally, regionally, or even across their full distribution ranges. The Neotropics harbor 21 species of armadillos, ten anteaters, and six sloths. Our dataset includes the families Chlamyphoridae (13), Dasypodidae (7), Myrmecophagidae (3), Bradypodidae (4), and Megalonychidae (2). We have no occurrence data on Dasypus pilosus (Dasypodidae). Regarding Cyclopedidae, until recently, only one species was recognized, but new genetic studies have revealed that the group is represented by seven species. In this data-paper, we compiled a total of 42,528 records of 31 species, represented by occurrence and quantitative data, totaling 24,847 unique georeferenced records. The geographic range is from the south of the USA, Mexico, and Caribbean countries at the northern portion of the Neotropics, to its austral distribution in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. Regarding anteaters, Myrmecophaga tridactyla has the most records (n=5,941), and Cyclopes sp. has the fewest (n=240). The armadillo species with the most data is Dasypus novemcinctus (n=11,588), and the least recorded for Calyptophractus retusus (n=33). With regards to sloth species, Bradypus variegatus has the most records (n=962), and Bradypus pygmaeus has the fewest (n=12). Our main objective with Neotropical Xenarthrans is to make occurrence and quantitative data available to facilitate more ecological research, particularly if we integrate the xenarthran data with other datasets of Neotropical Series which will become available very soon (i.e. Neotropical Carnivores, Neotropical Invasive Mammals, and Neotropical Hunters and Dogs). Therefore, studies on trophic cascades, hunting pressure, habitat loss, fragmentation effects, species invasion, and climate change effects will be possible with the Neotropical Xenarthrans dataset

Assessment of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) producers'exposure level to pesticides, in Kouka and Toussiana (Burkina Faso)

To assess producers’ exposure level to pesticides in vegetable production in Burkina Faso, a study was carried out in 2016 and 2017 among 30 tomato producers in the municipalities of Kouka and Toussiana. Eighteen (18) commercial formulations were identified, with more than 50% of pesticides destined for cotton production. Eleven active substances have been identified and the most frequently used are -cyhalothrin (35%), acetamiprid (22%) and profenofos (13%). The most commonly used chemical families are pyrethroids (28%) and organophosphates (18%). The study revealed a low level of training for producers, a high use of pesticides according to the Frequency Treatment Indicator, and a very low level of protection used by producers. The Health Risk Index shows that active substances such as methomyl, -cyhalothrin and profenofos present very high risk to operators’ health. Based on the UK-POEM model, the predictive exposure levels obtained varied from 0.0105 mg/kg body weight/day to 1.7855 mg/kg body weight/day, which is several times higher than the Acceptable Operator Exposure Level. However, the study also shows that exposure can be greatly reduced if the required Personal Protective Equipment is worn. Producers’ awareness and training on integrated pest management are necessary to reduce the risks linked to the pesticides use in Burkina Faso.PIC Project “Integrated Management of Phytosanitary Problems in Burkina Faso