Weather-Based Crop Insurance Contracts for African Countries

Weather constitutes the major source for production risk in agriculture. Weather index can be used construct crop insurance that demand less information and can avoid moral hazard and adverse selection problems. Based on mean-variance model, theoretical results on the optimal insurance coverage and its impact from risk preference, basis risk, and premium loading are derived, which are quite consistent to the empirical results from the expected utility model. Using South Africa corn data, we investigate growers' demand and efficiency of alternative hypothetical weather index crop insurance programs. In contrast to previous work that suggests that a single-variable weather index suffices to develop an insurance contract, this study shows that the insured grower achieves a higher utility from multivariate weather indices. The most important single weather index we found in the study area was GDD, and the combination of rainfall and either temperature or GDD outperformed the single variable indices by a large margin. Depending on the growers risk preference, s/he may choose to buy o r offer such insurance for sale if the price is not actuarially fair. The risk protection value of weather-indexed-insurance follows the predictive power of the index on yield in general, though not exactly.Risk and Uncertainty, C51, C61, G22, Q14,

Flaming dormant alfalfa for pest control

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa Leyss) is an important forage crop whose production is hampered by pests, including the alfalfa weevil (Hypera postica Gyllenhal) which is a major problem in many areas. Flaming during dormancy could be an alternative control measure. Late fall and early spring flaming at three intensities were compared with pesticide and no treatment for their effects on alfalfa weevil damage and weed density. In four site-years, flaming at high intensity generally reduced weevil damage to alfalfa. When winter annual broadleaf weeds were prevalent, flaming decreased their density. When fall and spring flaming effects were different, spring flaming gave better results

Halo Coronal Mass Ejections: Comparing Observations and Models

Since 1996, the SOHO LASCO coronagraphs have detected "halo" CMEs that appear to be directed toward Earth, but information about the size and speed of these events seen face-on has been limited. From a single vantage point along the Sun-Earth line, the primary limitation has been ambiguity in fitting the cone model (or other forward-modeling techniques, e.g., Thernisian et al., 2006). But in the past few years, the STEREO mission has provided a view of Earth-directed events from the side. These events offer the opportunity to compare measurements (width and speed) of halo CMEs observed by STEREO with models that derive halo CME properties. We report here results of such a comparison on a large sample of LASCO CMEs in the STEREO era

Efficacy of REACH Forgiveness across Cultures

Across cultures, most people agree that forgiveness is a virtue. However, culture may influence how willing one should be to forgive and how one might express forgiveness. At a university in the United States, we recruited both foreign-extraction students and domestic students (N = 102) to participate in a six-hour REACH Forgiveness intervention. We investigated the efficacy of the intervention overall as well as whether foreign-extraction and domestic students responded differently to treatment. Forgiveness was assessed using two measures—decisional forgiveness and emotional forgiveness. The six-hour REACH Forgiveness intervention improved participants’ ratings of emotional forgiveness, but not decisional forgiveness, regardless of their culture. Thus, the REACH Forgiveness intervention appears equally efficacious for participants from different cultural backgrounds when conducted in the United States with college students

Gait Mechanics And Proprioceptive Adaptations From Minimalistic “Five-Finger” Shoe Use

Barefoot running is a growing phenomenon in the running community and has spurred the popularity of minimalistic shoe use. Little is known about how minimalistic shoed running effects gait mechanics and relatively no research has been performed to analyze how the habitual use of these shoes effects proprioception

Cattail Invasion of Sedge/Grass Meadows in Lake Ontario: Photointerpretation Analysis of Sixteen Wetlands over Five Decades

Photointerpretation studies were conducted to evaluate vegetation changes in wetlands of Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence River associated with regulation of water levels since about 1960. The studies used photographs from 16 sites (four each from drowned river mouth, barrier beach, open embayment, and protected embayment wetlands) and spanned a period from the 1950s to 2001 at roughly decadal intervals. Meadow marsh was the most prominent vegetation type in most wetlands in the late 1950s when water levels had declined following high lake levels in the early 1950s. Meadow marsh increased at some sites in the mid-1960s in response to low lake levels and decreased at all sites in the late 1970s following a period of high lake levels. Typha increased at nearly all sites, except waveexposed open embayments, in the 1970s. Meadow marsh continued to decrease and Typha to increase at most sites during sustained higher lake levels through the 1980s, 1990s, and into 2001. Most vegetation changes could be correlated with lake-level changes and with life-history strategies and physiological tolerances to water depth of prominent taxa. Analyses of GIS coverages demonstrated that much of the Typha invasion was landward into meadow marsh, largely by Typha × glauca. Lesser expansion toward open water included both T. × glauca and T. angustifolia. Although many models focus on the seed bank as a key component of vegetative change in wetlands, our results suggest that canopy-dominating, moisture- requiring Typha was able to invade meadow marsh at higher elevations because sustained higher lake levels allowed it to survive and overtake sedges and grasses that can tolerate periods of drier soil conditions

Single-Tube Real-Time PCR Assay for Differentiation of Ixodes Affinis and Ixodes scapularis

Ixodes affinis Neumann (1899) and Ixodes scapularis Say (1821) are tick vectors of the etiologic agent of Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto. Ixodes affinis and I. scapularis are morphologically very similar, and as they are sympatric in the mid- and south-Atlantic U.S. coastal states, their accurate identification is crucial to studies of disease and vector ecology in this area. This work describes a rapid, single-tube SYBR® Green-based real-time PCR assay for differentiation of I. affinis and I. scapularis at all life stages. The assay employs 2 pairs of species specific primers directed against the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region of the nuclear rRNA operon. Amplification products for these primer pairs differ in size and may be differentiated with a melt curve analysis. This tool is intended as a supplement to morphological methods for accurate identification of these ticks

Human Races Are Not Like Dog Breeds: Refuting a Racist Analogy

In 1956, evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane posed a question to anthropologists: “Are the biological differences between human groups comparable with those between groups of domestic animals such as greyhounds and bulldogs…?” It reads as if it were posted on social media today. The analogy comparing human races to dog breeds is not only widespread in history and pop culture, but also sounds like scientific justification for eschewing the social construction of race, or for holding racist beliefs about human nature. Here we answer Haldane’s question in an effort to improve the public understanding of human biological variation and “race”—two phenomena that are not synonymous. Speaking to everyone without expert levels of familiarity with this material, we investigate whether the dog breed analogy for human race stands up to biology. It does not. Groups of humans that are culturally labeled as “races” differ in population structure, genotype–phenotype relationships, and phenotypic diversity from breeds of dogs in unsurprising ways, given how artificial selection has shaped the evolution of dogs, not humans. Our demonstration complements the vast body of existing knowledge about how human “races” differ in fundamental sociocultural, historical, and political ways from categories of nonhuman animals. By the end of this paper, readers will understand how the assumption that human races are the same as dog breeds is a racist strategy for justifying social, political, and economic inequality

Nutritional Intake after Liver Transplant: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Cardiovascular disease and its concurrent risk factors are prevalent after liver transplant (LT). Most of these risk factors are modifiable by diet. We aimed to synthesise the literature reporting the nutritional intake of liver transplant recipients (LTR) and the potential determinants of intake. We performed a systematic review and meta-analyses of studies published up until July 2021 reporting the nutritional intake of LTR. The pooled daily mean intakes were recorded as 1998 (95% CI 1889, 2108) kcal, 17 (17, 18)% energy from protein, 49 (48, 51)% energy from carbohydrates, 34 (33, 35)% energy from total fat, 10 (7, 13)% energy from saturated fat, and 20 (18, 21) g of fibre. The average fruit and vegetable intake ranged from 105 to 418 g/day. The length of time post-LT and the age and sex of the cohorts, as well as the continent and year of publication of each study, were sources of heterogeneity. Nine studies investigated the potential determinants of intake, time post-LT, gender and immunosuppression medication, with inconclusive results. Energy and protein requirements were not met in the first month post-transplant. After this point, energy intake was significantly higher and remained stable over time, with a high fat intake and low intake of fibre, fruits and vegetables. This suggests that LTR consume a high-energy, low-quality diet in the long term and do not adhere to the dietary guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention.Peer reviewe