Population scale data reveals the antidepressant effects of ketamine and other therapeutics approved for non-psychiatric indications.

Current therapeutic approaches to depression fail for millions of patients due to lag in clinical response and non-adherence. Here we provide new support for the antidepressant effect of an anesthetic drug, ketamine, by Inverse-Frequency Analysis of eight million reports from the FDA Adverse Effect Reporting System. The results of the examination of population scale data revealed that patients who received ketamine had significantly lower frequency of reports of depression than patients who took any other combination of drugs for pain. The analysis also revealed that patients who took ketamine had significantly lower frequency of reports of pain and opioid induced side effects, implying ketamine's potential to act as a beneficial adjunct agent in pain management pharmacotherapy. Further, the Inverse-Frequency Analysis methodology provides robust statistical support for the antidepressant action of other currently approved therapeutics including diclofenac and minocycline

Adversity and Leader Development: Mindfulness as a Potential Moderator

Why do some leaders respond to adversity by becoming more empathetic, impactful, and resilient — while others do not? Since the Covid-19 pandemic, suffering has gained personal relevance to each one of us. Although many researchers have explored why some individuals – when faced with trauma – grow as a result, little work has been done to understand this process specifically within the context of leaders and leader development. As such, the primary purpose of this paper is to explore what allows some leaders to respond to adversity/trauma with leadership development. Based on the mediators of productive framing, cognitive engagement, positive affective appraisal of the challenge, and the acceptance of difficult emotions, we would like to suggest mindfulness meditation as a viable possibility for leaders to proactively influence their ability to grow during and after traumatic and adverse circumstances

Managing Cosplay Performance: The Forms and Expectations of Convention Roleplay

Costume play (i.e. cosplay) is a performance of fandom rife with rituals and communication practices. Cosplay roleplaying performances are cultural practices that reveal how cosplayers interact with one another and among non-cosplaying members of their fandoms. This study examines the expectations that cosplayers hold for roleplay, the forms of roleplay, and the ways in which roleplay can become an instigator of harassment. Through the lens of Face-Negotiation Theory, the author discusses how roleplay functions to maintain or threaten the public images of cosplayers and their audiences, and what strategies cosplayers implement to avoid the loss of face

“Supply and demand trends for fertilizer in Zimbabwe: 1930 to date”: Key drivers and lessons learnt

The fertilizer sector in Zimbabwe has evolved over the years in response to different policy changes based on the government’s priorities on agricultural development. The industry grew from the 1930s that targeted primarily large scale commercial farmers, through the liberalization period of the mid 1990s, and recent changes that have introduced controls on the marketing system. Since 2000, following the fast track land reform program, Zimbabwe has faced food insecurity challenges that have been exacerbated by the political and economic crises. This prompted the government to adopt policies that have reduced private sector interests in fertilizer supply. In this situation where explicit fertilizer markets have been absent, relief programs have been leading in facilitating deliveries of fertilizers to poorer smallholder farmers located even in remote areas. The supply of fertilizers in Zimbabwe has been driven by government policy, finance and infrastructure while the demand has primarily been a function of farmer’s capacity to acquire fertilizers, availability of water and farmers knowledge of fertilizer use. There is need for a policy shift that promotes a competitive fertilizer marketing to support a broader range of farmers in Zimbabwe leading to agricultural productivity growth. Investment in infrastructure is critical to reduce marketing costs and to boost fertilizer demand; policies that strengthen farmer’s capacity to acquire fertilizers and increase their knowledge on fertilizer use complemented by technologies that promote water use efficiencies are needed.Fertilizer, supply and demand, policy reform, consumption trends, Crop Production/Industries,

Conservation Agriculture Practices and Adoption by Smallholder Farmers in Zimbabwe

This study is based on a panel survey interviewing 416 farmers practising conservation agriculture for at least five cropping seasons. Farmers obtained higher yields on conservation agriculture plots than on nonconservation agriculture ones. The mean maize yield on conservation agriculture was 1546 kg/ha compared to 970 kg/ha for non-conventional draft tillage plots across all 15 districts. However, the contribution of conservation agriculture to total household food security requirements was limited due to small plot sizes. Labor and land still remains a major challenge that limits the expansion of conservation agriculture area. Winter weeding remains a challenge, with 63% of farmers practicing it. Application of residues is still limited (56% of farmers practising it). Fertilizer application is largely dependent on access to free fertilizer. The survey results show that the 78 % of the respondent farmers were initially selected by the NGOs and were provided with inputs such as seed and fertilizer. The other 22% of the farmers in the sample were selected as spontaneous adopters, who did not initially receive any NGO support to implement conservation agriculture practices. Eleven percent of the interviewed farmers had stopped conservation agriculture practices by the 2008/09 cropping season due to withdrawal of input support by NGOs. Research should continue to explore different recommendations for different areas as farmers face dynamic agro-ecological and soil environments. Conservation agriculture should not be introduced as a blanket technology for all areas, but should be flexible and adaptable to local conditions.conservation agriculture, planting basins, yield gains, adoption labor, and fertilizer, Farm Management, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

INTERPRETING THE 3D ORIENTATION OF VASCULAR CANALS IN CORTICAL BONE IN BIRDS AND BATS

Vascular canals in cortical bone during growth and development typically show an anisotropic pattern with canals falling into three main categories: circumferential, radial, and longitudinal. Two major hypotheses attempt to explain the preferred orientations in bone: that vascular canal orientation is optimized to resist a predominant strain direction from functional loading, or that it reflects growth requirements and velocity. This thesis presents a novel method to measure the three dimensional (3D) orientation of vascular canals. Image data are obtained from micro-CT scans and two angles are measured: phi, determining how longitudinal a canal is; and theta, determining whether a canal is radial or circumferential. This method offers a direct (3D) method for quantifying features of canal orientation and can be applied easily and non-destructively to multiple species and bones. This thesis describes two major studies to examine the orientation of vascular canals in birds and bats, the two extant groups of flying vertebrates. The first study examined the vascular canal network in the humerus and femur of a comparative sample of 31 bird and 24 bat species to look for a connection between canal orientation and functional loading. In addition to canal orientation several cross-sectional geometric parameters and strength indices were measured. The results indicated that the bat cortices are relatively thicker and poorly vascularized, whereas those of birds are thinner and more highly vascularized, and that bird bones have a greater resistance to torsional stress than the bats; in particular, the humerus in birds is more adapted to resist torsional stresses than the femur. Our results show that birds have a significantly higher laminarity index than bats. Counter to expectation, the birds had a significantly higher laminarity index in the femur than in the humerus. We conducted a comparison between our 3D method and an analogue to 2D histological measurements. This comparison revealed that 2D methods significantly underestimate the amount of longitudinal canals by an average of 20% and significantly overestimate the laminarity index by an average of 7.7%, systematically mis-estimating indices of vascular canal orientations. The second study was a controlled growth experiment using broiler chickens to investigate the effect of growth rate on vascular canal orientation. Using feed restriction we set up a fast growing control group and a slow growing restricted group. We found consistent patterns in the comparison between the humerus and the femur in both groups, with the humerus having higher laminar and longitudinal indices and a lower radial index than the femur. The faster growing group had higher radial indices and lower laminar and longitudinal indices in both the humerus and the femur than the restricted group. The higher radial indices in our control group point to a link between radial canals and faster growth, and laminar canals and slower growth, while the higher laminar indices in the humerus contradict the results of the first study and point to a link between circumferential canals and torsional loading. We believe this difference is due to differences in femoral loading between chickens and other birds. Overall our results indicate that the orientation of the cortical canal network in a bone is the consequence of a complex interaction between that bone’s growth rate and functional loading environment