Determinants of Female Bargaining Power in Northern Mozambican Households

Melinda Gates stated, “If you search for poverty, you will find women who don’t have power. If you explore prosperity, you will find women who do have power and use it.” Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, women are expected to perform disproportional amounts of labor but are often ignored in household decision-making regarding social and economic matters. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) states that women in Mozambique are highly disadvantaged, relative to men, due to low levels of education, maternal health risks, restricted economic prospects, and cultural norms. This study aims to better understand the causes of female empowerment in Northern Mozambique via a survey which was administered to 58 households in Nampula, Mozambique in 2019. The survey enumerator requested to interview the husband and wife separately regarding a series of social and economic household decision-making questions. Answers where only the husband had a say in a decision were given a zero, and those where the wife/both were given a one. Each participant was given a “decision-making score”, where zero represented no equality for women and seven represented full household decision-making equality. These total scores were regressed on variables the literature had identified as contributing to female empowerment in Africa. The study found that waiting to get married at an older age resulted in more economic bargaining power for women vis-à-vis their husbands, and women with secondary education possessed significantly greater bargaining power. Equality within households is heterogenous, and understanding its determinants may allow for future development to enhance equality and promote economic and societal growth

Mobilizing Students and Community Partners to Enhance the Health of the Rural Elderly

The Health Enhancement of the Rural Elderly (HERE) project is a federally funded grant project designed to empower the rural elderly in Butler and Edmonson counties to maximize their use of the health care system. This project was developed after identifying the needs of approximately 25% of the population in the U.S. that reside in rural areas. Of this population in rural Kentucky, 14-15% is 65 years or older (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2000). A higher incidence of chronic diseases, disabilities, difficulties with daily living activities, and cutbacks in social services have been identified as factors causing this population to be compromised in their success with health care

Review of rotating wing dynamic stall: Experiments and flow control

Dynamic stall has been a technical challenge and a fluid dynamical subject of interest for more than fifty years; but in the last decade significant advances have been made in the understanding, prediction, modeling, and control of dynamic stall on rotors. This paper provides a summary of the state of the art of dynamic stall experiments and future directions in the understanding of dynamic stall on rotors. Experimental data sets are discussed, as well the direction of future research for control of dynamic stall. Coordinated testing between airfoils and rotating blades, as well as close integration between computational and experimental studies were found to be productive approaches. Advanced analysis methods, including statistical methods, modal representations, and artificial intelligence methods have led to significant advances in the understanding of dynamic stall. Investigations of dynamic stall control devices have allowed many useful targeted investigations of the transition to separated flow, but have not yet resulted in a commercially implemented device

Dispersal of Adult Culex Mosquitoes in an Urban West Nile Virus Hotspot: A Mark-Capture Study Incorporating Stable Isotope Enrichment of Natural Larval Habitats

Dispersal is a critical life history behavior for mosquitoes and is important for the spread of mosquito-borne disease. We implemented the first stable isotope mark-capture study to measure mosquito dispersal, focusing on Culex pipiens in southwest suburban Chicago, Illinois, a hotspot of West Nile virus (WNV) transmission. We enriched nine catch basins in 2010 and 2011 with 15N-potassium nitrate and detected dispersal of enriched adult females emerging from these catch basins using CDC light and gravid traps to distances as far as 3 km. We detected 12 isotopically enriched pools of mosquitoes out of 2,442 tested during the two years and calculated a mean dispersal distance of 1.15 km and maximum flight range of 2.48 km. According to a logistic distribution function, 90% of the female Culex mosquitoes stayed within 3 km of their larval habitat, which corresponds with the distance-limited genetic variation of WNV observed in this study region. This study provides new insights on the dispersal of the most important vector of WNV in the eastern United States and demonstrates the utility of stable isotope enrichment for studying the biology of mosquitoes in other disease systems.The open access fee for this work was funded through the Texas A&M University Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Fund

Weight and Weight-Related Behaviors Among 2-Year College Students

The purpose of this paper is to describe weight indicators and weight-related behaviors of students enrolled in 2-year colleges, including sex differences

Efficient gene-driven germ-line point mutagenesis of C57BL/6J mice

BACKGROUND: Analysis of an allelic series of point mutations in a gene, generated by N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) mutagenesis, is a valuable method for discovering the full scope of its biological function. Here we present an efficient gene-driven approach for identifying ENU-induced point mutations in any gene in C57BL/6J mice. The advantage of such an approach is that it allows one to select any gene of interest in the mouse genome and to go directly from DNA sequence to mutant mice. RESULTS: We produced the Cryopreserved Mutant Mouse Bank (CMMB), which is an archive of DNA, cDNA, tissues, and sperm from 4,000 G(1 )male offspring of ENU-treated C57BL/6J males mated to untreated C57BL/6J females. Each mouse in the CMMB carries a large number of random heterozygous point mutations throughout the genome. High-throughput Temperature Gradient Capillary Electrophoresis (TGCE) was employed to perform a 32-Mbp sequence-driven screen for mutations in 38 PCR amplicons from 11 genes in DNA and/or cDNA from the CMMB mice. DNA sequence analysis of heteroduplex-forming amplicons identified by TGCE revealed 22 mutations in 10 genes for an overall mutation frequency of 1 in 1.45 Mbp. All 22 mutations are single base pair substitutions, and nine of them (41%) result in nonconservative amino acid substitutions. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) of cryopreserved spermatozoa into B6D2F1 or C57BL/6J ova was used to recover mutant mice for nine of the mutations to date. CONCLUSIONS: The inbred C57BL/6J CMMB, together with TGCE mutation screening and ICSI for the recovery of mutant mice, represents a valuable gene-driven approach for the functional annotation of the mammalian genome and for the generation of mouse models of human genetic diseases. The ability of ENU to induce mutations that cause various types of changes in proteins will provide additional insights into the functions of mammalian proteins that may not be detectable by knockout mutations

Student Employment: Linking College and the Workplace

The focus of National Student Employment Association (formerly the National Association of Student Employment Administrators, or NASEA) publications has always been on students in transition. From the freshman moving from high school to higher education, to the senior attempting the transition to professional employment and financial independence, we always have explored how students can better accomplish these linking experiences. Student employment is a hybrid, serving as a bridge between work and school, and ultimately, a link between school and full-time work. Student employment links elements of financial aid, career development, academic learning, experiential education, and personal development. Student employment, in all of these ways, is a bridge, moving the student from point A to point B. Because of this variety, any publication on student employment must necessarily speak to diverse themes. We have organized this publication in four sections: an introduction followed by three themed sections.https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/bookshelf/1000/thumbnail.jp

Discovery and Characterization of Proteins Associated with Aflatoxin-Resistance: Evaluating Their Potential as Breeding Markers

Host resistance has become a viable approach to eliminating aflatoxin contamination of maize since the discovery of several maize lines with natural resistance. However, to derive commercial benefit from this resistance and develop lines that can aid growers, markers need to be identified to facilitate the transfer of resistance into commercially useful genetic backgrounds without transfer of unwanted traits. To accomplish this, research efforts have focused on the identification of kernel resistance-associated proteins (RAPs) including the employment of comparative proteomics to investigate closely-related maize lines that vary in aflatoxin accumulation. RAPs have been identified and several further characterized through physiological and biochemical investigations to determine their causal role in resistance and, therefore, their suitability as breeding markers. Three RAPs, a 14 kDa trypsin inhibitor, pathogenesis-related protein 10 and glyoxalase I are being investigated using RNAi gene silencing and plant transformation. Several resistant lines have been subjected to QTL mapping to identify loci associated with the aflatoxin-resistance phenotype. Results of proteome and characterization studies are discussed