Socio-Demographic Factors Associated with Alcohol Abuse among Egerton University Students in Njoro-Kenya

The main objective of higher institutions of learning in Kenya is to provide education and growth experiences for its students but alcohol abuse has continued to be a problem in the university campuses that is slowing down their progress and the Kenya vision 2030 that envisages a healthy population free from the impact of alcohol abuse through the reduction of the prevalence and the impact of alcohol abuse disorders in order to attain the highest possible level of physical, social and mental health. Despite the growing problems of global alcohol abuse, accurate information on the prevalence of alcohol abuse among university students in Kenya is still inadequate. The study therefore aimed to determine the socio-demographic factors associated to alcohol abuse among the Egerton University students. This was a cross sectional study among 355 students of Egerton university Njoro campus. Stratified random sampling was utilized to select the study sample and a questionnaire was used to collect the data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data with an aid of SPSS version 18.0. Data presentation was done using frequency tables, charts and in narratives. The study was cleared by the Kenyatta National Hospital and the University of Nairobi ethics board. The study found significant association between the prevalence of alcohol abuse and the year of study, marital status, family's economic status and  the living arrangements (with whom). There was no significant association between the prevalence of alcohol abuse and age, programme of study undertaken and place of residence. It was concluded that alcohol is associated with year of study, marital status, family economic status and living arrangement. Based on the findings of this study, there is need to detect, strengthen various policies and programmes and accordingly make changes to address the factors that contribute to socio-demographic factors associated with alcohol abuse in the institutions of higher learning in Kenyan. The findings of the study will help Commission of University Education (CUE) to better understand the current situation and accordingly make changes to address the factors that contribute to alcohol abuse in these institutions. Keywords: Alcohol, Prevalence, Alcohol abuse, Socio-demographic factors

Evaluation of the Challenges in the Implementation of the Guidance and Counselling Programme in Baringo County Secondary Schools, Kenya

The need for guidance and counselling services in all learning institutions cannot be overstated. In response to this demand, guidance and counselling programme has been implemented since 1971 and more emphasis on its services in 2001 through Legal Notice, No. 95 of the Kenya Gazette that recommended guidance and counseling departments be established in all secondary schools. However, there are indications that student’s still experience problems which are manifested in form of school indiscipline, school unrest, and increased examination cheating, among others. This may be due to lapse in the implementation of the guidance and counselling programme. Thus the purpose of this study was to evaluate the challenges in the implementation of guidance and counselling programme in Baringo county secondary schools. This study employed a survey design. The population of the study was 23 extra county secondary schools, with 23 teacher counsellors. Purposive sampling was used to select the number of schools and teacher counsellors to be included in the study. The sample comprised of 23 schools and 23 teacher counsellors. A total of 23 respondents constituted the study sample. The data was collected through an open ended questionnaire. Piloting of the instrument was done to improve validity and the test items were validated by experts in the Department of Counselling, Psychology and Educational Foundations. Reliability of the TCEQ was established by use of Cronbach’s alpha method and a reliability coefficient of 0.86 respectively was obtained.  Descriptive statistics was utilized to analyse the data with the aid of SPSS version 20 for windows. An analysis of the findings indicated that lack of time and funding, inadequate facilities, uncooperative clients and lack of qualified personnel were among the challenges facing the implementation of the guidance and counselling programme. It was concluded that there are challenges in implementation of the guidance and counselling programme in Baringo county secondary schools. It’s therefore recommended that the teacher counsellors to be provided with training, facilities and funds by the government and school administration. Its further recommended teacher counsellors to be employed on full time basis, time allocated for G&C sessions and the workload of teacher counsellors be reduced. Keywords: Challenges, Teacher Counsellor. Guidance and Counselling Programm

The Prevalence of Alcohol Abuse Among Egerton University Students in Njoro-Kenya

The main objective of higher institutions of learning in Kenya is to provide education and growth experiences for its students but alcohol abuse has continued to be a problem in the university campuses that is slowing down their progress and the Kenya vision 2030 that envisages a healthy population free from the impact of alcohol abuse through the reduction of the prevalence and the impact of alcohol abuse disorders in order to attain the highest possible level of physical, social and mental health. Despite the growing problems of global alcohol abuse, accurate information on the prevalence of alcohol abuse among university students in Kenya is still inadequate. The study therefore aimed to determine the prevalence of alcohol abuse among the Egerton University students. This was a cross sectional study which investigated the prevalence of alcohol abuse among 355 students of Egerton university Njoro campus. Stratified random sampling was utilized to select the study group and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test questionnaire was used to assess the prevalence of alcohol abuse. Data was analysed using SPSS version 18.0. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Data presentation was done using frequency tables, charts and in narratives. The study was cleared by the Kenyatta National Hospital and the University of Nairobi ethics board. The study found out that the prevalence of alcohol abuse among Egerton University students is 21.1 %. The study found significant association between the prevalence of alcohol abuse and the year of study, marital status, family's economic status and  the living arrangements (with whom). There was no significant association between the prevalence of alcohol abuse and age, programme of study undertaken and place of residence. It was concluded that alcohol abuse is prevalent among Egerton university students and is associated with year of study, marital status, family economic status and living arrangement. Based on the findings of this study, there is need to detect, strengthen various policies and programmes and accordingly make changes to address the factors that contribute to alcohol abuse in the institutions of higher learning in Kenyan. The findings of the study will help Commission of University Education (CUE) to better understand the current situation and accordingly make changes to address the factors that contribute to alcohol abuse in these institutions. Keywords: Alcohol abuse, prevalence, alcohol, socio demographic factor

Phosphorus legacy: role of long-term soil phosphorus accumulation in the sustainable management of intensive agroecosystems

Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for all organisms. Phosphate rock is primarily utilised for the manufacture of P fertilisers, and is a finite resource. Most agricultural lands worldwide present low levels of available soil P, thus requiring P inputs for productive agriculture. However, constant P inputs result in accumulation of soil P (legacy P), increasing risk of eutrophication of waterways. Efficient P use of agriculture require improvements in utilisation of legacy P. The objective of this work was to investigate and quantify the impact of contrasting agricultural land uses and management on the nature and dynamics of P. Three long-term, replicated field trials were selected: i) long-term irrigation trial, Winchmore, New Zealand; ii) long-term pig slurry inputs, Santa Catarina, Brazil; iii) long-term ecology trial, Lincoln, New Zealand. Four experiments were conducted. The first study investigated the impact of 62 years of irrigation on the amounts and distribution of soil profile P to 100 cm under grazed pasture. Despite identical P inputs, total soil profile P accumulation was inversely proportional to water input rates (6423, 5908 and 5054 kg P ha⁻¹ for the control, low and high irrigation rates, respectively). Differences were mainly attributed to inorganic P forms. Phosphorus removal and transfer/loss occurred under irrigation. For a 3-fold increase in irrigation frequency, P removal in irrigation outwash increased by 13-fold. Combined, annual removal in animal products, internal transfer, and outwash losses were directly related to irrigation frequency and increased from 8 to 18.6 kg P ha⁻¹ for treatments receiving annually, 2.6 or 7.7 100-mm irrigations, respectively. The second experiment quantified the impacts of P inputs in pig slurry to a high P-sorbing Oxisol under cropping in southern Brazil. Fifteen years of slurry additions resulted in P accumulations and vertical movement proportional to application rates. However, changes were confined to the 0-20 cm depth. Phosphorus accumulated mainly in inorganic forms. Slurry input rates of 25, 50, 100 and 200 m³ ha⁻¹ y⁻¹ resulted in accumulations of 25, 57, 106 and 159 kg P ha⁻¹ y⁻¹ (0-40 cm), where 8, 10, 23 and 28 kg P ha⁻¹ y⁻¹ were organic P forms. Mass balance confirmed that most of P added to the system accumulated in the soil. The third and fourth experiments assessed, respectively, long-term and short-term impacts of plant biomass retention or removal in soil biogeochemical properties after 20 years, in absence of P inputs. Grassland plants utilised 35% of the P legacy, mainly from inorganic forms. Plant production and P uptake were up to 2-fold higher for the biomass retained comparatively to biomass removed. Mineralisation of soil organic P was limited following P depletion. Contrastingly, despite increased microbial P immobilisation soils under biomass retained, 20% faster turnover rates and 2-fold increase in P fluxes through microbial biomass were observed. The collective findings of this research show that legacy P in soils plays a dominant role in determining P availability as influenced by land management. Further research is necessary to investigate strategies to enhance legacy P mobilisation and utilisation by plants

Synergism between feremycorrhizal symbiosis and free-living diazotrophs leads to improved growth and nutrition of wheat under nitrogen deficiency conditions

A controlled-environment study was conducted to explore possible synergistic interactions between the feremycorrhizal (FM) fungus Austroboletus occidentalis and soil free-living N2-fixing bacteria (diazotrophs). Wheat (Triticum aestivum) plants were grown under N deficiency conditions in a field soil without adding microbial inoculum (control: only containing soil indigenous microbes), or inoculated with a consortium containing four free-living diazotroph isolates (diazotrophs treatment), A. occidentalis inoculum (FM treatment), or both diazotrophs and A. occidentalis inoculums (dual treatment). After 7 weeks of growth, significantly greater shoot biomass was observed in plants inoculated with diazotrophs (by 25%), A. occidentalis (by 101%), and combined inoculums (by 106%), compared to the non-inoculated control treatment. All inoculated plants also had higher shoot nutrient contents (including N, P, K, Mg, Zn, Cu, and Mn) than the control treatment. Compared to the control and diazotrophs treatments, significantly greater shoot N content was observed in the FM treatment (i.e., synergism between the FM fungus and soil indigenous diazotrophs). Dually inoculated plants had the highest content of nutrients in shoots (e.g., N, P, K, S, Mg, Zn, Cu, and Mn) and soil total N (13–24% higher than the other treatments), i.e., synergism between the FM fungus and added diazotrophs. Root colonization by soil indigenous arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi declined in all inoculated plants compared to control. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicons revealed that the FM fungus modified the soil microbiome. Our in vitro study indicated that A. occidentalis could not grow on substrates containing lignocellulosic materials or sucrose, but grew on media supplemented with hexoses such as glucose and fructose, indicating that the FM fungus has limited saprotrophic capacity similar to ectomycorrhizal fungi. The results revealed synergistic interactions between A. occidentalis and soil free-living diazotrophs, indicating a potential to boost microbial N2 fixation for non-legume crops

Modelling cropland expansion and its drivers in Trans Nzoia County, Kenya

Population growth and increasing demand for agricultural production continue to drive global cropland expansions. These expansions lead to the overexploitation of fragile ecosystems, propagating land degradation, and the loss of natural diversity. This study aimed to identify the factors driving land use/land cover changes (LULCCs) and subsequent cropland expansion in Trans Nzoia County in Kenya. Landsat images were used to characterize the temporal LULCCs in 30 years and to derive cropland expansions using change detection. Logistic regression (LR), boosted regression trees (BRTs), and evidence belief functions (EBFs) were used to model the potential drivers of cropland expansion. The candidate variables included proximity and biophysical, climatic, and socioeconomic factors. The results showed that croplands replaced other natural land covers, expanding by 38% between 1990 and 2020. The expansion in croplands has been at the expense of forestland, wetland, and grassland losses, which declined in coverage by 33%, 71%, and 50%, respectively. All the models predicted elevation, proximity to rivers, and soil pH as the critical drivers of cropland expansion. Cropland expansions dominated areas bordering the Mt. Elgon forest and Cherangany hills ecosystems. The results further revealed that the logistic regression model achieved the highest accuracy, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.96. In contrast, EBF and the BRT models depicted AUC values of 0.86 and 0.77, respectively. The findings exemplify the relationships between different potential drivers of cropland expansion and contribute to developing appropriate strategies that balance food production and environmental conservation

Mapping the distribution of invasive tree species using deep one-class classification in the tropical montane landscape of Kenya

Some invasive tree species threaten biodiversity and cause irreversible damage to global ecosystems. The key to controlling and monitoring the propagation of invasive tree species is to detect their occurrence as early as possible. In this regard, one-class classification (OCC) shows potential in forest areas with abundant species richness since it only requires a few positive samples of the invasive tree species to be mapped, instead of all the species. However, the classical OCC method in remote sensing is heavily dependent on manually designed features, which have a limited ability in areas with complex species distributions. Deep learning based tree species classification methods mostly focus on multi-class classification, and there have been few studies of the deep OCC of tree species. In this paper, a deep positive and unlabeled learning based OCC framework—ITreeDet—is proposed for identifying the invasive tree species of Eucalyptus spp. (eucalyptus) and Acacia mearnsii (black wattle) in the Taita Hills of southern Kenya. In the ITreeDet framework, an absNegative risk estimator is designed to train a robust deep OCC model by fully using the massive unlabeled data. Compared with the state-of-the-art OCC methods, ITreeDet represents a great improvement in detection accuracy, and the F1-score was 0.86 and 0.70 for eucalyptus and black wattle, respectively. The study area covers 100 km2 of the Taita Hills, where, according to our findings, the total area of eucalyptus and black wattle is 1.61 km2 and 3.24 km2, respectively, which represent 6.78% and 13.65% of the area covered by trees and forest. In addition, both invasive tree species are located in the higher elevations, and the extensive spread of black wattle around the study area confirms its invasive tendency. The maps generated by the use of the proposed algorithm will help local government to develop management strategies for these two invasive species.Peer reviewe

Assessment of Maize Yield Response to Agricultural Management Strategies Using the DSSAT-CERES-Maize Model in Trans Nzoia County in Kenya

Maize production in low-yielding regions is influenced by climate variability, poor soil fertility, suboptimal agronomic practices, and biotic influences, among other limitations. Therefore, the assessment of yields to various management practices is, among others, critical for advancing site-specific measures for production enhancement. In this study, we conducted a multiseason calibration and evaluation of the DSSAT-CERES-Maize model to assess the maize yield response of two common cultivars grown in Trans Nzoia County in Kenya under various agricultural strategies, such as sowing dates, nitrogen fertilization, and water management. We then applied the Mann-Kendall (MK), and Sen's Slope Estimator (SSE) tests to establish the yield trends and magnitudes of the different strategies. The evaluated model simulated long-term yields (1984-2021) and characterized production under various weather regimes. The model performed well in simulating the growth and development of the two cultivars, as indicated by the model evaluation results. The RMSE for yield was 333 and 239 kg ha(-1) for H614 and KH600-23A, respectively, representing a relative error (RRMSE) of 8.1 and 5.1%. The management strategies assessment demonstrated significant feedback on sowing dates, nitrogen fertilization, and cultivars on maize yield. The sowing date conducted in mid-February under fertilization of 100 kg of nitrogen per hectare proved to be the best strategy for enhancing grain yields in the region. Under the optimum sowing dates and fertilization rate, the average yield for cultivar KH600-23A was 7.1% higher than that for H614. The MK and SSE tests revealed a significant (p < 0.05) modest downwards trend in the yield of the H614 cultivar compared to the KH600-23A. The eastern part of Trans Nzoia County demonstrated a consistent downwards trend for the vital yield enhancement strategies. Medium to high nitrogen levels revealed positive yield trends for more extensive coverage of the study area. Based on the results, we recommend the adoption of the KH600-23A cultivar which showed stability in yields under optimum nitrogen levels. Furthermore, we recommend measures that improve soil quality and structure in the western and northern parts, given the negative model response on maize yield in these areas. Knowledge of yield enhancement strategies and their spatial responses is of utmost importance for precision agricultural initiatives and optimization of maize production in Trans Nzoia County

Frações de fósforo em solo cultivado com vinhedos após 62 anos de adição de cama-de-aves

The objective of this work was to evaluate changes in phosphorus fractions in a Humic Cambisol cultivated with vineyards, after 62 years of additional fertilization with poultry litter. Soil samples were collected from two vineyards (V1 and V2) and a forested area adjacent to them. A total of 1,365 and 910 kg ha-1 P were applied to V1 and V2, respectively, throughout the past 62 years. Samples were collected at 0–10, 10–20, 20–30, and 30–40-cm soil depths for the analysis of soil physicochemical properties. The addition of poultry litter to the soil of the vineyards increased the contents of inorganic P (Pi) in all fractions, except in the residual fraction (residual-P), mainly at the 0–10-cm soil depth, in comparison with the forested area. The addition of poultry litter as fertilizer does not affect the organic P (Po) stock in the Humic Cambisol, it only increases the Pi contents of the soil.O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar as modificações de frações de fósforo em um Cambissolo Húmico cultivado com vinhedos, após 62 anos de fertilização adicional com cama-de-aves. Amostras de solo foram coletadas de dois vinhedos (V1 e V2) e de uma área de floresta (F) adjacente a eles. Foram aplicados 1.362 e 910 kg ha-1 de P ao V1 e ao V2, respectivamente, durante os últimos 62 anos de cultivo. Amostras de solo foram coletadas a 0–10, 10–20, 20–30 e 30–40 cm de profundidade, para análises das propriedades físico-químicas do solo. A adição de cama-de-aves ao solo dos vinhedos aumentou os teores de P inorgânico (Pi) em todas as frações, exceto na fração residual, principalmente à profundidade de 0–10 cm, em comparação à área de floresta. A adição de cama-de-aves como fertilizante não afeta os estoques de P orgânico (Po) do Cambissolo Húmico, apenas aumenta os teores de Pi do solo