Regional Level Total Factor Productivity Growth in Ghana Agriculture

This paper examines the trends in major principal crop productivity growth in 10 regions in Ghana. A panel dataset is constructed for the period 2000-2009 from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ghana database. A nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) programming method is used to compute Malmquist productivity indices. These are decomposed into two component measures: efficiency change and technical change. The study examines the trends in regional level agricultural productivity growth in Ghana from 2000-2009 and for the sub-periods 2000-04 and 2005-09. The paper also indicates trends between the total factor productivity and partial productivity indices: labor productivity and land productivity. We find that the total productivity growth rate is higher in Northern region of Ghana followed by Eastern and Upper West regions. The overall contribution of technical change is greater than that of efficiency change to overall productivity changes in all the regions except Central, Eastern regions. Keywords: Total factor productivity, Malmquist Index, Regional-wise, Ghana, Agricultural Productio

Course Manual - National Workshop on Effective Management of E-Resources in Research Libraries

The National Workshop on “Effective Management of EResources in Research Libraries" is the first of its kind organised by the Library & Documentation Centre of ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi. Periodic trainings on newer technologies developed in the field of Library & Information Sciences help library professionals to enhance their professional competencies that will contribute largely to the output of the parent organization. Digital repositories are the need of the hour where the Institute can showcase the research findings. ICAR-CMFRI is a pioneer in developing Institute repository and the open access repository of the Institute "eprints@cmfri" now stands 1st among ICAR Institute repositories, 3rd among Indian repositories and 343rd among the world repositories. Topics of current relevance towards development and modernisation of research libraries are included in the Workshop which is expected to help the participants to understand the possibilities and ways of supporting the research activities of the parent Institution more effectively

Hybrid Techniques for MRI Spine Images Classification

829-832The number of persons suffering from spinal tumor has increased significantly from 2010 to 2016. Tumor is one of the major diseases of spinal cord. Thousands of researchers have concentrated on this disease to provide more efficient diagnosis with better understanding of the classification of spinal cord tumor. The proposed convolutional neural network (CNN) is tested with two hybrid recognized techniques of image detection which are K–nearest neighbor (KNN) with principal component analysis (PCA), local binary patterns (LBP) with support vector machine (SVM). Above three techniques overall accuracy is demonstrated, which show that LBP with SVM gives better result compared to KNN with PCA. The proposed CNN provides high accuracy classification and detection of spine diseases compared to other three techniques, which have obtained a best detection accuracy of 99.41 %. This process is fully implemented in MATLAB tool

A CONCEPT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUPRENORPHINE AUTOINJECTOR FOR SELF AND EMERGENCY ADMINISTRATION

Objective: In natural and man-made disasters, pain and infection would increase morbidity and mortality. In these situations immediate treatment is mandatory and the drug has to be absorbed faster. An auto injector would be useful. The objective of this study was to develop an analgesic auto injector with buprenorphine.Methods: The auto injector is a reusable device with a disposable drug cartridge, capable of injecting 1 or 2 ml of drug solution. Sterile water filled cartridges were made from a pharmaceutical company. Water was withdrawn from the cartridge under a laminar flow and buprenorphine hydrochloride was injected to make 0.05 mg/ml concentration. Sterility test was carried out before and after injecting buprenorphine in the cartridge by nutrient agar method and aerobic and anaerobic sterility test mediums. Buprenorphine was injected, intraperitoneally in rats through autoinjector and compared with manual injection for its efficacy as an analgesic using Eddy's hot plate.Results: The water filled cartridge as well as the buprenorphine drug filled cartridge was found to be sterile as no growth was observed in the nutrient agar and no turbidity was observed in the sterility test mediums. The analgesic effect of buprenorphine by autoinjector was found to be significantly (Kruskal Wallis ANOVA) more than manual injection and control group (median analgesic time in seconds, Control-4.0; manual injection–7.0; autoinjector–12.0).Conclusion: Water filled cartridge could be converted to drug filled cartridge aseptically. Buprenorphine administered through autoinjector was better as an analgesic than manual injection.Â

Mannerisms of Millennials: Why are they different?

Differences in attitudes and mannerisms of the millennials and the older generation could result in intergenerational conflicts. This study aims to determine the definitions of good mannerisms as perceived by the two different generations and to identify the factors that contribute to the mannerisms and characteristics of the millennials. Using a non-experimental design, a questionnaire was distributed to 400 respondents. The responses by the millennials differed in some aspects from the older generation. Nevertheless, both groups agreed that the lack of a good upbringing and social media influences were the primary reasons for the lack of good mannerisms among millennials. Keywords: Millennials, Mannerism, Values, Characteristics eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i21.369

Application of in vivo micro-computed tomography in the temporal characterisation of subchondral bone architecture in a rat model of low-dose monosodium iodoacetate-induced osteoarthritis

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://arthritis-research.com/content/13/6/R210Introduction: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a complex, multifactorial joint disease affecting both the cartilage and the subchondral bone. Animal models of OA aid in the understanding of the pathogenesis of OA and testing suitable drugs for OA treatment. In this study we characterized the temporal changes in the tibial subchondral bone architecture in a rat model of low-dose monosodium iodoacetate (MIA)-induced OA using in vivo micro-computed tomography (CT). Methods: Male Wistar rats received a single intra-articular injection of low-dose MIA (0.2 mg) in the right knee joint and sterile saline in the left knee joint. The animals were scanned in vivo by micro-CT at two, six, and ten weeks post-injection, analogous to early, intermediate, and advanced stages of OA, to assess architectural changes in the tibial subchondral bone. The articular cartilage changes in the tibiae were assessed macroscopically and histologically at ten weeks post-injection. Results: Interestingly, tibiae of the MIA-injected knees showed significant bone loss at two weeks, followed by increased trabecular thickness and separation at six and ten weeks. The trabecular number was decreased at all time points compared to control tibiae. The tibial subchondral plate thickness of the MIA-injected knee was increased at two and six weeks and the plate porosity was increased at all time points compared to control. At ten weeks, histology revealed loss of proteoglycans, chondrocyte necrosis, chondrocyte clusters, cartilage fibrillation, and delamination in the MIA-injected tibiae, whereas the control tibiae showed no changes. Micro-CT images and histology showed the presence of subchondral bone sclerosis, cysts, and osteophytes. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that the low-dose MIA rat model closely mimics the pathological features of progressive human OA. The low-dose MIA rat model is therefore suitable to study the effect of therapeutic drugs on cartilage and bone in a non-trauma model of OA. In vivo micro-CT is a non-destructive imaging technique that can track structural changes in the tibial subchondral bone in this animal model, and could also be used to track changes in bone in preclinical drug intervention studies for OA treatments.Geetha Mohan, Egon Perilli, Julia S Kuliwaba, Julia M Humphries, Ian H Parkinson and Nicola L Fazzalar

Percutaneous aspiration versus catheter drainage of liver abscess: A retrospective review

Background/Aims A review of the effectiveness and outcomes in liver abscess drainage performed by different operators using percutaneous aspiration (PA) and catheter drainage (PCD), respectively, from 2008–2013 at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, a tertiary hospital in Australia. Methods Forty-two patients (29 males and 13 females; aged between 28–93 years; median age of 67 years) with liver abscesses underwent either ultrasound or CT-guided PA (n=22) and PCD (n=20) in conjunction with appropriate antimicrobial therapy. A median of 18 Gauge needle and 10 French catheters were utilised. Results Nineteen (86.4 per cent) PA cases and 12 (60 per cent) PCD cases were successfully drained on a single attempt (p=0.08). More male patients (69 per cent) than females (31 per cent) were observed. Portal sepsis (42.9 per cent) was the most common cause identified. Fever (47.6 per cent) was the most frequent clinical presentation on admission. Thirty-two patients (76.2 per cent) had solitary abscesses with a right lobe (59.5 per cent) predilection. CRP was significantly raised. The PCD group observed a significantly larger abscess size (p=0.01). Klebsiella pneumoniae was the most common organism isolated in both pus (33.3 per cent) and blood cultures (11.9 per cent). Five procedure-related complications were noted, all in the PCD group. Thirty-day mortality was 2.4 per cent. No difference was observed in clinical and treatment outcomes in both groups. Conclusion The null hypothesis that both PA and PCD are equally effective in the drainage of liver abscess cannot be rejected. Apart from PA being simpler and safer to perform, the higher incidence of indwelling catheter-associated complications suggests that a trial of PA should always be attempted first

A Systematic Survey on the Research of AI-predictive Models for Wastewater Treatment Processes

Context: To increase the efficiency of wastewater treatment, modeling and optimization of pollutant removal processes are the best solutions. The relationship between input and output parameters in wastewater treatment processes (WWTP) is a complicated one, and it is difficult for designing models using statistics. Artificial Intelligence (AI) models are generally more flexible when compared with statistical models while modeling complex datasets with nonlinearity and missing data. Objective: Studies on WWTP of AI-based are increasing day by day. Therefore, it is crucial to systematically review the AI techniques available which are implemented for WWTP. Such kind of review helps for classifying the techniques that are invented and helps to identify challenges as well as gaps for future studies. Lastly, can sort out the best AI technique to design predictive models for WWTP. Method: With the help of the most relevant digital libraries, the total number of papers collected is 1222 which are based on AI modeling on WWTP. Then the filtration of the papers is mainly based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Also, to identify new relevant papers, snowballing is the other technique applied. Results: Finally selected 76 primary papers to reach the result were published between 2004 and 2020. Conclusion: ANN with MLP approach on BP algorithm become a supervised neural network called BPNN is the most used AI modeling for WWTP and around 40% of the experimental research done with BPNN. Then there are some limitations on AI modeling of WWTP using photoreforming which is the current study of WWTP represents a promising path for generating renewable and sustainable energy resources like chemicals and fuels

Distribution extension of mangrove box jellyfish, Tripedalia cystophora along the eastern Arabian Sea

A regular microplankton sampling in the estuarine stretches of Udyavara in Karnataka, has revealed the presence of Tripedalia cystophora Conant, 1897 a cubozoan jellyfish with cube shaped medusa and known for their potent venom. This estuarine stretch of Udyavara is known for the clam fishery and its proximity to the Malpe Fisheries Harbour. The study confirms the occurrence of Tripedalia cystophora Conant, 1897 in the estuaries of Karnataka and the northward extension in the distribution of this species along the estuaries of eastern Arabian Sea. Among the 40 species of box jellyfish described around the globe Tripedalia cystophora Conant, 1897 is one of the widely distributed small box jellyfish and to the best of our knowledge, no box jellyfishes have been recorded from the estuaries of Karnataka until this report