Autologous blood donations and transfusions among patients undergoing elective orthopaedic, gynaecologic and elective caesarean section at a Tertiary Hospital in North Central Nigeria

Introduction: Allogeneic donor blood is becoming increasingly costly, scarce and associated with multiple risks; there is need for more conservative transfusion strategies, one of which may be adoption of Autologous Blood Donation and Transfusions (ABDT). Despite increased acceptance of ABDT by clinicians and patients in most developed world, awareness in this part of the world is still low.Materials and methods: this is a cross sectional survey of knowledge and acceptance of ABDT by patients scheduled for elective orthopaedic, gynaecologic and elective caesarean section surgeries using structured interviewer administered questionnaire on socio-demographics, clinical presentations, knowledge of blood donations and transfusions, and acceptance of ABDT. The study population comprised of 171 subjects.Results: Gynaecologic/obstetric patients were 120 (70.2%) while 51 (29.8%) of the subjects were Orthopaedic patients. Majority (43.95%) were within the age range 31-45 years, 38.6% were less than 31 years while 17.5% were older than 45 years. Females constituted the larger proportion (77.2%). Twenty one (12.3%) subjects had donated blood in the past, 45 (26.3%) had previous blood transfusions and 30 (17.5%) had knowledge of ABDT. Eight one (47.4%) of all subjects accepted ABDT for the scheduled surgeries while 123 (71.9%) subjects accepted to be voluntary blood donors after surgery. Pre-deposit is the commonest form of ABDT preferred by the subjects (66%), followed by Haemodilution (28%) and Cell salvage (6%). A significant number of the subjects who accepted ABDT were ready to become voluntary blood donors after surgery (90.1%).Conclusion: Acceptance rate as high as 47.4% was recorded in this study despite low awareness. This is higher than what was reported by most authors’ locally but similar to the findings from Europe and Asia. Pre-deposit form was the commonest ABDT acceptable to these patients.  Improving awareness on ABDT will boost voluntary blood donations and improve blood transfusion safety

Development of a Culturally Appropriate Smokeless Tobacco Cessation Program for American Indians

This study describes a multiphasic approach to the development of a smokeless tobacco cessation program targeted for American Indians (AI) of different tribal nations. The authors gathered formative data from a series of focus groups and interviews to investigate the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of AI and smokeless tobacco (SLT) use. Predominant themes emerged from four major topic areas (SLT use, initiation and barriers, policy, and program development) across both studies. This study further assessed educational materials developed for the cessation program for scientific accuracy, readability, and cultural appropriateness. Program materials were scientifically accurate and culturally appropriate. The average corrected reading grade level was 6.3 using the Fry formula and 7.1 using the SMOG formula. Based on this research, a detailed approach to formative research can be used in combination with input from community members to develop health interventions that address health disparities for a specific population

Design and Performance Evaluation of a Solar Dryer

One of the ways to combat food insecurity as world population rises is the reduction of food losses. Drying is one of the oldest methods of food preservation and hence reduces food losses. Solar drying uses energy from the sun and an absorber material to carry out drying of produce. In this project, a solar dryer was designed, constructed and its performance was evaluated. The dryer has overall dimensions of 1000mm by 410mm by 700mm. The inner part of the dryer compartment was lagged with aluminum foil to act as an insulator. The solar collector made of galvanized sheet and the glass on top of it have an area of 800mm by 380mm. Fresh scotch bonnet pepper was used as the produce of choice. The pepper was dried in 2 experiments for 3 weeks each. 200g of pepper was used and weighed to measure weight loss periodically. Temperature and humidity of the drying chamber and the surrounding were measured with data loggers throughout the periods of the experiments. The results showed that the ambient temperature during the experiments was higher than the temperature of the drying chamber in the early hours of the morning between 4am and 10am. During every other period, the temperature in the drying chambers was higher than the ambient temperature. An average moisture content of 81.3% w.b. was removed from the pepper during the experiments. The average efficiency of the dryer was 28.4%

A Vision for Transdisciplinarity in Future Earth: Perspectives from Young Researchers

Meeting the demand for food, energy, and water as world population increases is a major goal for the food systems of the future. These future challenges, which are complex, multiscalar, and cross-sectoral in nature, require a food systems approach that recognizes the socio-ecological and socio-technical dimensions of food (Ericksen, 2008; Ingram, 2011; Rivera-Ferre, 2012). The United Nations' Future Earth Program aims to provide a new platform for consolidating the knowledge required for societies to transition to global sustainability (Future Earth Transition Team, 2012). In this paper, we explore how Future Earth could become a vehicle for inspiring the production of new research ideas and collaborations for sustainably transforming the future food system. We do this on the basis of a synthesis of views from 28 young (below 40 years old) food system scientists, representing five continents. Their expertise comes from disciplines including food engineering, agronomy, ecology, geography, psychology, public health, food politics, nutritional science, political science, sociology and sustainability science. This paper begins with an outline of the institutional framework of Future Earth and how it might support innovative transdisciplinary research on food systems, and the position of young scientists within this framework. Secondly, we outline the key insights expressed by the young scientists during the Food Futures Conference in Villa Vigoni, Italy, in April 2013, including the core research questions raised during the meeting as well as some of the challenges involved in realizing their research ambitions within their professional spheres

Role of the Subunits Interactions in the Conformational Transitions in Adult Human Hemoglobin: an Explicit Solvent Molecular Dynamics Study

Hemoglobin exhibits allosteric structural changes upon ligand binding due to the dynamic interactions between the ligand binding sites, the amino acids residues and some other solutes present under physiological conditions. In the present study, the dynamical and quaternary structural changes occurring in two unligated (deoxy-) T structures, and two fully ligated (oxy-) R, R2 structures of adult human hemoglobin were investigated with molecular dynamics. It is shown that, in the sub-microsecond time scale, there is no marked difference in the global dynamics of the amino acids residues in both the oxy- and the deoxy- forms of the individual structures. In addition, the R, R2 are relatively stable and do not present quaternary conformational changes within the time scale of our simulations while the T structure is dynamically more flexible and exhibited the T\rightarrow R quaternary conformational transition, which is propagated by the relative rotation of the residues at the {\alpha}1{\beta}2 and {\alpha}2{\beta}1 interface.Comment: Reprinted (adapted) with permission from J. Phys. Chem. B DOI:10.1021/jp3022908. Copyright (2012) American Chemical Societ

Effect of Capillary Tube Length and Refrigerant Charge on the Performance of Domestic Refrigerator with R12 and R600a

In this work, the thermodynamic performance of a domestic refrigerator was experimentally studied by simultaneously varying the refrigerant charge (mr) and the capillary tube length (L). The potential of replacing R12 by R600a was also investigated. The test rig for the experiment was a vapor compression refrigerator designed to work with R12. The enthalpy of the refrigerants R600a and R12 for each data set for the experimental conditions were obtained by using REFPROP software (version 9.0). The results show that the design temperature of -120C (according to ISO - 8187 standard) and pull – down time of 135 minutes are achieved by using 60g of R600a with L= 1.2m and 1.5m. For R12, the design temperature is achieved at pull – down time of 165 minutes with mr = 40g and L = 0.9m. The appropriate combination of L and mr for R600a to be used as a drop-in refrigerant for R12 is found to be 1.5m and 60g on the basis of power consumption per day, pull-down time and COP, whereas by considering the cooling capacity, it is 0.9 m and 60g. The cooling capacity of R600a was about 9.18% higher than that of R12, the power consumed by R600a was about 24 % lower than that of R12 and the COP of R600a was about 6.3% higher than that of R12. In conclusion, the proposed R600a seems to be an appropriate long-term candidate to replace R-12 in the existing refrigerator in terms of power consumption, cooling capacity and COP