Climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa: a menace to agricultural productivity and ecological protection

Due to inadequate adaptation capacity, Sub-Saharan Africa has been depicted as the most vulnerable region with regards to global climate change, this is because of its reliance on agricultural activities for sustenance to livelihood which is highly sensitive to climate variables such as temperature variation, rainfall intensity, humidity patterns, and other extreme weather events. This paper reviews how climate change constitutes a menace to agricultural productivity and ecological protection using a qualitative approach. And importantly suggests ways to overcome such problems. Relevant literature was gathered from secondary data through articles, reports, journals from scientific publications, online websites and Conference Papers. From the review, it is revealed that climate change in Africa has a very significant effect on average temperature, rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events. It was also reviewed that climate has a negative effect on agricultural production and the ecological niche in Sub-Saharan Africa. Evidently, due to past and present climate change; agricultural land, growing season and yield as well as, ecological degradation will cause a decline to sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is the center of this problem. Climate change adversely affects biodiversity protection through aggravated weather conditions, increased temperature, increased land salinity, excessive rainfall, storms, hurricanes and tornadoes which climax in ecosystem ruin. This review has clearly confirmed that Sub-Saharan Africa is indeed the most vulnerable region to climate change. To this end, policies aimed at promoting farm level adaptation strategies and mitigation of climate change with regards to ecological protection are highly recommended.Keywords: Climate change, Ecological protection, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sustainable developmen

Simplified R-Symmetry Breaking and Low-Scale Gauge Mediation

We argue that some of the difficulties in constructing realistic models of low-scale gauge mediation are artifacts of the narrow set of models that have been studied. In particular, much attention has been payed to the scenario in which the Goldstino superfield in an O'Raifeartaigh model is responsible for both supersymmetry breaking and R-symmetry breaking. In such models, the competing problems of generating sufficiently massive gauginos while preserving an acceptably light gravitino can be quite challenging. We show that by sharing the burdens of breaking supersymmetry and R-symmetry with a second field, these problems are easily solved even within the O'Raifeartaigh framework. We present explicit models realizing minimal gauge mediation with a gravitino mass in the eV range that are both calculable and falsifiable.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures, references added, minor change

Pure Gravity Mediation with m_{3/2} = 10-100TeV

Recently, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations reported exciting hints of a Standard Model-like Higgs boson with a mass around 125GeV. Such a Higgs boson mass can be easily obtained in the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model based on the "pure gravity mediation model" where the sfermion masses and the Higgs mass parameters are in tens to hundreds TeV range while the gauginos are in the hundreds GeV to TeV range. In this paper, we discuss detalis of the gaugino mass spectrum in the pure gravity mediation model. We also discuss the signals of the model at the current and future experiments such as cosmic ray observations and the LHC experiments. In particular, we show that the parameter space which is consistent with the thermal leptogenesis can be fully surveyed experimentally in the foreseeable future.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure

Dark Matter and Pseudo-flat Directions in Weakly Coupled SUSY Breaking Sectors

We consider candidates for dark matter in models of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, in which the supersymmetry breaking sector is weakly coupled and calculable. Such models typically contain classically flat directions, that receive one-loop masses of a few TeV. These pseudo-flat directions provide a new mechanism to account for the cold dark matter relic abundance. We discuss also the possibility of heavy gravitino dark matter in such models.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures. v2: comments, refs adde

Phytochemical Composition and Antioxidant Activity Screening of Chloroform Leaves Extract of Man-To-Man (Peperomia pellucida) Harvested from Umunomo Ihitteafoukwu in Imo State, South Eastern Nigeria

Peperomia pellucida commonly called man-to-man or pepper elder is a plant of immense medicinal value and used in the treatment of different ailments such as abdominal pain, abscess, acne, boils colic rhematic joint pain and also consumed as vegetable. This study was conducted to investigate the preliminary and quantitative phytochemical properties of Peperomia pellucida. The results obtained revealed the presence of alkaloids (2.49±0.02), phenols (0.05±0.01), flavonoids (0.59±0.01), saponins (0.64 ± 0.02), tannins (0.08± 0.01) with alkaloid registering the highest presence. Peperomia pellucida leaves extract exhibited significant antioxidant activity at minimum and maximum concentrations of 2.0 and 12.0mg/ml respectively (compared to the ascorbic acid used as the free scavenger). The antibacterial result also showed that P. pellucida extract inhibited the growth of the test organisms, with the highest growth inhibition against Escherichia Coli and the lowest growth inhibition against Bacillus Cereus. The antimicrobial properties indicate the potential usefulness of this plant in the treatment of various pathogenic diseases which in future can be developed as a potential antimicrobial agent used in the treatment of infectious diseases

Integrated Care by the Health and Social Services Staff in Joint Emergency Team (JET) to Prevent Unnecessary Hospital Admissions in London Borough of Greenwich

Background: The Joint Emergency Team (JET) sees patients that require assessment and care package within 24 hours of referral in their own home, Accident, and Emergency (A and E) department or the Acute Medical Unit (AMU) at the local hospital. The JET Integrated team accepts referrals from all primary, community, acute and social services. There has been greater emphasis on evaluating JET working and the outcomes, studies show more of the differences in policies and design with little evidence on how the integrated team of health and social service carry their daily work. The purpose of the study is to ascertain how JET interventions can help to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions. Method: The researchers interviewed eight JET professionals taken from Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy and Social Services who have been involved in integrated care for two years. The interview was recorded and transcribed verbatim and a thematic analysis was carried out. Findings: The study found that the Joint Emergency Team provides integrated care using multidisciplinary and Trans-disciplinary team approaches to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions in the Accident and Emergency department, Acute Medical Unit (AMU) and the Community in Greenwich borough. Conclusion: The integrated care provided by JET helps to ensure timely assessment and management of patients in the hospital and community which helps to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions

Response of Growing Rabbits to Concentrate Diet Supplemented with Leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala) or Siratro (Macroptilium atropurpureum)Leaves

Thirty (30) 8-week old rabbits of average initial weight of 900 g were used to determine the Growth Performance and Carcass yield of growing rabbits fed Concentrate diet supplemented with Leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala)or Siratro (Macroptilium atropurpureum) leaves. The experiment was in a completely randomized design (CRD) with 5 treatment diets replicated thrice. The control group (T1) was fed a formulated rabbit diet, in T2, 10 % of the formulated rabbit feed was replaced with Leucaena fresh leaves, in T3, 20 % of the formulated rabbit feed was replaced with Leucaena fresh leaves, in T4, 10% of the formulated rabbit feed was replaced with Siratro fresh leaves and in T5, 20% of the formulated rabbit feed was replaced with Siratro fresh leaves. The study lasted 56 days. Feed and water were supplied ad libitum. Performance data indicated that body weight gain and feed conversion ratio were significantly (P<0.05) better in rabbits fed on 10% leucaena and 10% siratro inclusion than those fed on the 20% leucaena and 20% siratro inclusion levels. There were significant (P<0.05) differences in the organ weights of the rabbits except for lung and spleen (P>0.05). The weights of liver, heart and kidney were significantly (P<0.05) higher for rabbits fed 20%leucaena and 20%siratro diets than those fed other diets. From the results, it was concluded that inclusion of 10% leucaena or 10%siratro leaves in rabbits’ diet has no adverse effects on the performance and carcass yield of growing rabbits. Keywords: Leucaena, Performance, Siratro, Rabbits, Carcass yield

Re-thinking instructional strategies for enhancing gender equity in learning primary science: let’s try cooperative small group instructional mode

The study investigated the effect of cooperative small group instructional mode on the cognitive achievement of boys and girls in primary science. Eighty-two pupils (41 girls and 41 boys) were drawn from 2 randomly selected primary schools and from 2 intact primary 5 classes in Uyo Local Government Education Authority. The subjects were exposed to 5 weeks of instruction in selected science concepts from primary 5 curriculum module. Two modes of instruction used were the cooperative small group and the whole class instructional modes. Instrument for collecting the data was the Primary Science Achieve ment Test (PSAT). Data analysis involved the use of t-test statistic. Results revealed no statistically significant difference in the achievement of boys and girls in primary science. The paper claims that cooperative small group instructional mode could remove gender bias in female pupils’ achievement in science.Keywords: cooperative small group instruction, gender bias in achievement, science achievemen

Constraints on Dark Matter from Colliders

We show that colliders can impose strong constraints on models of dark matter, in particular when the dark matter is light. We analyze models where the dark matter is a fermion or scalar interacting with quarks and/or gluons through an effective theory containing higher dimensional operators which represent heavier states that have been integrated out of the effective field theory. We determine bounds from existing Tevatron searches for monojets as well as expected LHC reaches for a discovery. We find that colliders can provide information which is complementary or in some cases even superior to experiments searching for direct detection of dark matter through its scattering with nuclei. In particular, both the Tevatron and the LHC can outperform spin dependent searches by an order of magnitude or better over much of parameter space, and if the dark matter couples mainly to gluons, the LHC can place bounds superior to any spin independent search.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figure

Non-minimal Gauge Mediation and Moduli Stabilization

In this paper we consider U(1)-gauged Polony'i model with two spurions coupled to a twisted closed string modulus. This offers a consistent setup for metastable SUSY breakdown which allows for moduli stabilization and naturally leads to gauge or hybrid gauge/gravitational mediation mechanism. Due to the presence of the second spurion one can arrange for a solution of the \mu and B_\mu problems in a version of modified Giudice-Masiero mechanism, which works both in the limit of pure gauge mediation and in the mixed regime of hybrid mediation.Comment: 12 pages, Discussion extended to include the effects of the gauge boson exchange. This should be version 2