ON THE CHOICE OF FUNCTIONAL FORMS IN THE MEASUREMENT OF SCALE AND SCOPE ECONOMIES: GENERALIZED BOX-COX AND COMPOSITE COST FUNCTIONS

This paper estimates and compares generalized Box-Cox and composite cost functions to identify scale and scope economies. The robustness of the outcomes to different functional specifications was examined. Increasing returns to scale was common for product-specific and the overall measures. Generalized Leontief and composite forms yielded more robust elasticity, scale and scope measures. The generalized Box-Cox model was selected as the appropriate functional form as all the special cases were rejected.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Age at menopause and the correlates of natural menopause among urban and rural women in the southern Nigeria

Background: Menopause, the point in a woman’s life when permanent cessation of cyclical menstruation occurs for a period of 12 months due to the loss of ovarian activity marking the end of reproductive lifespan and potential. Natural menopause is a physiological event, universal women phenomenon and irreversible part of the entire normal aging process. It brings the menopausal woman for preventive health care services due to its associated health implications. This study sought to investigate the age at menopause and its correlates in southern Nigerian women.Methods: A cross-sectional survey of datasets of women from two different communities attending annual religious conference was conducted using tested semi-structured researcher-administered questionnaire in 2019.Results: Data was analyzed on 152 participants from an urban and a rural communities. Mean chronological age was 58.8±8.8 years and parity was 6.4±2.2. Mean age at menopause was 50.0±4.6 years, median (IQR) 50.0 (47-53) and 49.2±4.7 versus 50.5±4.5 and median (IQR) 49.5 (46-51) and 50.5 (47-54) for urban and rural participants respectively.  1.3%, 9.2%, 69.7% and 19.7% were premature, early, normal and late onset menopause respectively. Risk of early onset menopause was insignificantly increased by higher education, social class, lower BMI and low parity. Forgetfulness (20.3%), irritability (19.5%), hot flushes (17.3%) and insomnia (16.5%) were the leading symptoms. Main complications were chronic hypertension 62 (40.8%), diabetes mellitus 12 (7.9%) and 4 (2.6%) recent fractures.Conclusions: Age at menopause was moderate, early menopause was rather high, programmed preventive healthcare services should address modifiable risk factors. Cancer screening services for late onset women is equally crucial

Trade-off assessments between reading cost and accuracy measures for digital camera monitoring of recreational boating effort

Digital camera monitoring is increasingly being used to monitor recreational fisheries. The manual interpretation of video imagery can be costly and time consuming. In an a posteriori analysis, we investigated trade-offs between the reading cost and accuracy measures of estimates of boat retrievals obtained at various sampling proportions for low, moderate and high traffic boat ramps in Western Australia. Simple random sampling, systematic sampling and stratified sampling designs with proportional and weighted allocation were evaluated to assess trade-offs in terms of bias, accuracy, precision, coverage rate and cost in estimating the annual total number of powerboat retrievals in 10,000 jackknife resampling draws. The relative standard error (RSE ± standard deviations) obtained by the sampling designs for sampling proportions from 0.4 onwards were below a 20 % threshold for three of the sampling designs across the three boat ramps. Coverage rates of over 90 % were observed for the confidence intervals for the estimated annual number of powerboat retrievals, with low relative standard errors (RSE \u3c 20 %). Interpreting 40 % of camera footage within a year provided the minimum level to obtain sufficient accuracy measures for all sampling designs considered. The stratified random sampling design with weighted allocation consistently resulted in the smallest variance for estimates of annual powerboat retrievals across the various sampled proportions. These findings have the potential to considerably reduce the cost of manual data interpretation, since operating cost increased linearly with increasing sampling proportion

A Study to evaluate the effectiveness of laughter therapy on depression among elderly people in selected old age home, Erode District

OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess the level of depression among elderly people. 2. To evaluate the effectiveness of laughter therapy on depression among elderly people. 3. To findout the association between pre-test level of depression among elderly people with their selected demographic variables. METHODS: The research approaches adopted for this study was quantitative approach, the research design adopted for this study was quasi-experimental (pre-experimental design) one group pretest and post test design. RESULT: The maximum numbers of elderly people, 54% were in age group of 60 to 70 years The proporation of 50 elderly people, 56% was females. The proporation of 50 elderly peoples, 74% was married. The proporation of 50 elderly people, 72% were uneducated. The major findings of the study showed that the pretest mean score (21.78) 73.33% and post test mean score was (15.82) 53.33%. The pretest depression score was no depression 0%, mild depression 32%, moderate and severe depression 68%. It was higher than the posttest score. Whereas, the post test score was no depression 12%, mild depression was 66% moderate and severe depression was 22%. It revealed that laughter therapy was found to be effective in reducing the depression among elderly people. The findings of the study showed that there is significant association between the level of depression and demographic variables (age) at p <0.05 level. There is no association among found between the level of depression and demographic variables sex, marital status, educational status, health status and number of children of elderly people at p > 0.05 level. CONCLUSION: The laughter therapy was effective in reducing depression among elderly people the study revealed that the level of depression score was high in pretest. After laughter therapy the post test score was reduced

Application of genomic and quantitative genetic tools to identify candidate resistance genes for brown rot resistance in peach.

The availability of a complete peach genome assembly and three different peach genome sequences created by our group provide new opportunities for application of genomic data and can improve the power of the classical Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) approaches to identify candidate genes for peach disease resistance. Brown rot caused by Monilinia spp., is the most important fungal disease of stone fruits worldwide. Improved levels of peach fruit rot resistance have been identified in some cultivars and advanced selections developed in the UC Davis and USDA breeding programs. Whole genome sequencing of the Pop-DF parents lead to discovery of high-quality SNP markers for QTL genome scanning in this experimental population. Pop-DF created by crossing a brown rot moderately resistant cultivar 'Dr. Davis' and a brown rot resistant introgression line, 'F8,1-42', derived from an initial almond × peach interspecific hybrid, was evaluated for brown rot resistance in fruit of harvest maturity over three seasons. Using the SNP linkage map of Pop-DF and phenotypic data collected with inoculated fruit, a genome scan for QTL identified several SNP markers associated with brown rot resistance. Two of these QTLs were placed on linkage group 1, covering a large (physical) region on chromosome 1. The genome scan for QTL and SNP effects predicted several candidate genes associated with disease resistance responses in other host-pathogen systems. Two potential candidate genes, ppa011763m and ppa026453m, may be the genes primarily responsible for M. fructicola recognition in peach, activating both PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI) and effector-triggered immunity (ETI) responses. Our results provide a foundation for further genetic dissection, marker assisted breeding for brown rot resistance, and development of peach cultivars resistant to brown rot

Physicochemical Quality and Genotoxic Potential of Wastewater Generated by Canteen Complex

Canteens generate high volumes of wastewater that should constantly be subjected to physicochemical and genotoxicity screening. In this study, the wastewater generated by a canteen complex was screened for physicochemical properties and genotoxic potential using standard procedures and Allium cepa chromosome assay. Results showed that the wastewater had total suspended solids, total dissolved solids, and total hardness concentrations of 120.70 mg/l, 554.50 mg/l, and 500.00 mg/l, respectively. The chloride concentration of the wastewater (7873.60 mg/l) was much higher than the recommended limit of 250 mg/l. The wastewater inhibited root growth in A. cepa at 0.1%, 1%, 10%, 25%, 50%, and 100% concentrations but promoted root growth at 2% and 5% concentrations. The wastewater was highly mitodepressive, with mitotic inhibition generally increasing with rising concentrations. The major chromosomal aberrations observed in A. cepa exposed to different concentrations of canteen wastewater were vagrant, sticky, and bridged chromosomes. No chromosomal aberration was observed in onion roots exposed to water (control). The differences in total chromosomal aberrations across wastewater concentrations were not statistically significant (P &gt; 0.05). In view of these results, the practice of discharging untreated canteen wastewater into drainage canals may not be environmentally sustainable

Amino acid analog toxicity in primary rat neuronal and astrocyte cultures: implications for protein misfolding and tdp-43 regulation

Amino acid analogs promote translational errors that result in aberrant protein synthesis, and have been used to understand the effects of protein misfolding in a variety of physiological and pathological settings. TDP-43 is a protein that is linked to protein aggregation and toxicity in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. In this study we exposed primary rat neurons and astrocyte cultures to established amino acid analogs (Canavanine and Azetidine-2-carboxylic acid), and observed both cell types undergo a dose-dependent increase in toxicity, with neurons exhibiting a greater degree of toxicity as compared to astrocytes. Neurons and astrocytes exhibited similar increases in ubiquitinated and oxidized protein following analog treatment. Analog treatment increased Heat shock protein (Hsp) levels in both neurons and astrocytes. In neurons, and to a lesser extent astrocytes, the levels of TDP-43 increased in response to analog treatment. Taken together, these data indicate that neurons exhibit preferential toxicity and alterations in TDP-43, in response to increased protein misfolding, as compared to astrocytes

A Narrative Review of Specialist Parkinson’s Nurses:Evolution, Evidence and Expectation

Extended nursing roles have existed since the 1940s. The first specialist nurse for Parkinson’s disease, a complex neurodegenerative disease, was appointed in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1989. A review was undertaken using MEDLINE and Cumulative Index to the Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), relating to the role and evidence for Parkinson’s disease nurse specialists (PDNSs). PDNSs fulfil many roles. Trials of their effectiveness have failed to show a positive benefit on health outcomes, but their input appears to improve the wellbeing of people with Parkinson’s. Now embedded in the UK Parkinson’s multidisciplinary team, this care model has since been adopted widely, including successful dissemination of training to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The lack of evidence to support the benefit of PDNSs may reflect an insufficient duration and intensity of the intervention, the outcome measures selected or the need to combine PDNS input with other evidence-based interventions. Whilst the current evidence base for their effectiveness is limited, their input appears to improve subjective patient wellbeing and they are considered a vital resource in management. Better evidence in the future will support the development of these roles and may facilitate the application of specialist nurses to other disease areas

Imputation of missing data from time-lapse cameras used in recreational fishing surveys

While remote camera surveys have the potential to improve the accuracy of recreational fishing estimates, missing data are common and require robust analytical techniques to impute. Time-lapse cameras are being used in Western Australia to monitor recreational boating activities, but outages have occurred. Generalized linear mixed effect models formulated in a fully conditional specification multiple imputation framework were used to reconstruct missing data, with climatic and some temporal classifications as covariates. Using a complete 12-month camera record of hourly counts of recreational powerboat retrievals, data were simulated based on ten observed camera outage patterns, with a missing proportion of between 0.06 and 0.61. Nine models were evaluated, including Poisson and negative binomial models, and their associated zero-inflated variants. The imputed values were cross-validated against actual observations using percent bias, mean absolute error, root mean square error, and skill score as performance measures. In 90% of the cases, 95% confidence intervals for the total imputed estimates from at least one of the models contained the total actual counts. With no systematic trends in performance among the models, zero-inflated Poisson and its bootstrapping variant models consistently ranked among the top 3 models and possessed the narrowest confidence intervals. The robustness and generality of the imputation framework were demonstrated using other camera datasets with distinct characteristics. The results provide reliable estimates of the number of boat retrievals for subsequent estimates of fishing effort and provide time series data on boat-based activity

Spark Plasma Sintered High-Entropy Alloys: An Advanced Material for Aerospace Applications

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are materials of high property profiles with enhanced strength-to-weight ratios and high temperature-stress-fatigue capability as well as strong oxidation resistance strength. HEAs are multi-powder-based materials whose microstructural and mechanical properties rely strongly on stoichiometry combination of powders as well as the consolidation techniques. Spark plasma sintering (SPS) has a notable processing edge in processing HEAs due to its fast heating schedule at relatively lower temperature and short sintering time. Therefore, major challenges such as grain growth, porosity, and cracking normally encountered in conventional consolidation like casting are bypassed to produce HEAs with good densification. SPS parameters such as heating rate, temperature, pressure, and holding time can be utilized as design criteria in software like Minitab during design of experiment (DOE) to select a wide range of values at which the HEAs may be produced as well as to model the output data collected from mechanical characterization. In addition to this, the temperature-stress-fatigue response of developed HEAs can be analyzed using finite element analysis (FEA) to have an in-depth understanding of the detail of inter-atomic interactions that inform the inherent material properties