Prolonged use of oral contraceptive pill, a co-factor for the development of cervical cancer

This study was carried out to assess the use of oral contraceptive pill as a co-factor for the development of cervical cancer. Among the 100 participants, 71% used oral contraceptives pill. Maximum (40%) used oral contraceptive pill for >5 years whereas 31% for <5 years. Histopathologically diagnosed invasive squamous cell carcinoma was 84% and adenocarcinoma was 16%

Agricultural Information's Impact on the Adaptive Capacity of Ghana's Smallholder Cocoa Farmers

Ghanaian smallholders grow one quarter of the world's cocoa, but climate change, individual extreme weather events, such as droughts, as well as deforestation increasingly threaten cocoa production. Pertinent information could bolster adaptive capacity. However, in Ghana's cocoa sector, relevant agricultural information is not available to all farmers, which can exacerbate power asymmetries. This paper focuses on how (i) agricultural and drought-adaptive information and (ii) socio-economic characteristics shape a cocoa farmer's adaptive capacity. We conducted our study in the aftermath of 2015–16's prolonged El Niño-induced drought that negatively impacted the livelihoods of cocoa smallholders across Ghana. In 48 semi-structured interviews and 12 focus groups, we asked smallholders how they responded to the drought to decipher how adaptive capacity compares between farmers receiving four different sources of agricultural information, and of diverse socio-economic status. Overall, agricultural information improved cocoa farmers' adaptive capacity compared to those who received no formal agricultural information. Smallholders detailed adaptive techniques that would be accessible to, and thus replicable by, other poorly-resourced cocoa farmers. Shade tree management and income diversification were identified as pertinent adaptive actions. However, we identified a divergence between exposure to agricultural information and its transformation into substantive adaptive action. Additionally, informal information sharing between smallholders represents an underutilized resource by extension programmes. We found that adaptive capacity is also determined by socio-economic characteristics: particularly gender, and to a lesser extent formal education level, proximity to asphalt roads, and land tenure. Finally, we present evidence that framing adaptive techniques in relatable terms that resonate with farmers' immediate livelihood concerns could narrow the adaptation deficit prevalent in Ghana's cocoa sector

Comparison of outcome of interdigitated versus sequential brachytherapy along with concurrent chemoradiation in locally advanced carcinoma cervix

Background: Carcinoma cervix is a significant health concern, particularly in lower socioeconomic groups. The effectiveness of interdigitated versus sequential brachytherapy, both with concurrent chemoradiation, in treating this condition remains underexplored. Methods: This quasi-experimental study at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital enrolled 63 patients with biopsy-proven squamous cell cervical cancer. They were randomly divided into two arms: arm a received pelvic EBRT 50 Gy in 25 fractions, followed by HDR brachytherapy (7 Gy weekly × 3 weeks) starting after 30 Gy of EBRT; arm B received the same pelvic EBRT, followed by HDR brachytherapy (7 Gy weekly × 3 weeks) starting a week after the completion of EBRT. Results: Mean age was 47.82±8.45 years (range: 29-64 years). The mean OTT was significantly reduced in arm-A (36.58 days) compared to arm-B (59.5 days). In terms of treatment response, 90.32% of patients in arm-A and 78.12% in arm-B experienced a complete response. Conclusions: Interdigitated brachytherapy with concurrent chemoradiation significantly reduces treatment time without compromising treatment effectiveness. Despite a shorter treatment duration, the complete response rate was slightly higher in the interdigitated arm

From Agroforestry to Agroindustry: Smallholder Access to Benefits From Oil Palm in Ghana and the Implications for Sustainability Certification

Oil palm production in Ghana—which is primarily cultivated by smallholders (60%+)—plays an important role in local economies and rural livelihoods. As a multi-functional crop, it is embedded in the everyday life of rural and urban Ghanaians both by individual households and on an industrial level. The sector is currently experiencing a resurgence under Ghana's New Patriotic Party (NPP) rule and is being targeted by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) for yield intensification and increased export production. End goals of these efforts include poverty alleviation, environmentally responsible development efforts, and agricultural diversification in rural areas. We apply Ribot and Peluso's “theory of access” (2003) to assess the barriers and opportunities for smallholder oil palm farmers, and the degree to which these are addressed by RSPO interventions. Our results highlight how Ghanaian smallholders gain many benefits from palm oil production as a source of regular income, a drought-resilient crop, and a source of cooking oil for household use. However, they also report different levels of access to finance, markets, land, and technical support, along with differing views and visions of the oil palm sector's development. The focus of governmental and RSPO initiatives on international trade-based incentives overlooks this diversity and, in particular, the importance of local markets for Ghanaian livelihoods. This poses a threat to women millers and traders, poorer producers, and the local markets they supply who risk losing access to the palm oil supply chain. More generally, these findings illustrate the importance of understanding how markets interact at multiple local to international scales, in order to design interventions that will more equitably reach and benefit local communities

Onion cultivation approach by custom-made outdoor hydroponics: A very first attempt in Bangladesh

Onion is one of the most important economic crops in the world for growing, trading and consuming. But its production rate is lower in Bangladesh due to insufficient farmlands and alternative production systems. So, onion cultivation hydroponically would be a potential consideration in Bangladesh. In this experiment, onions were grown in custom-made outdoor hydroponics using ground water of Barishal, Kirtankhola River water and deionized water as treatments to check their performances for future use. Ground water demonstrated best performances and the average yields of ground water were more than half of land based yields. Besides, only plant growth was normal in ground water treatments throughout the experiment. Finally, the authors concluded that onion production is possible hydroponically in Bangladesh and to minimize the need of commercial fertilizers; the ground water of Barishal is recommended

A new technique for multi-cell joint channel estimation in time division code division multiple access based on reduced rank singular value decomposition

A new technique for multi-cell joint channel estimation (MCJCE) in time division code division multiple access based on singular value decomposition (SVD) reduced rank technique is proposed in this paper. MCJCE is one of the effective solutions to improve the mobile system performance throughout mitigate the inter-cell interference form the neighboring cells. The increasing complexity of multi-cell system model due to the additional processing of the interferer users will be solved by using SVD reduced rank technique, where a limited number of parameter that really need it to describe the channel matrix will be estimated. Two models of multi-cell approaches are discussed, the first one depended on reconstruct the convolutional midamble matrix of inactive users in serving cell by the strongest interferer users from the neighboring cells. The second one will be more inclusive to user traffic scenarios in mobile systems and will be expanding to contain all detected users. The simulation results prove the validity of the proposed reduced rank technique for precision channel estimation (6.4 and 5 dB) and (9 and 7 dB) for case 1 and 2 respectively; BER performance improvements over the conventional estimators

Household-level risk factors for secondary influenza-like illness in a rural area of Bangladesh

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.Objective To describe household‐level risk factors for secondary influenza‐like illness (ILI), an important public health concern in the low‐income population of Bangladesh. Methods Secondary analysis of control participants in a randomised controlled trial evaluating the effect of handwashing to prevent household ILI transmission. We recruited index‐case patients with ILI – fever (<5 years); fever, cough or sore throat (≥5 years) – from health facilities, collected information on household factors and conducted syndromic surveillance among household contacts for 10 days after resolution of index‐case patients’ symptoms. We evaluated the associations between household factors at baseline and secondary ILI among household contacts using negative binomial regression, accounting for clustering by household. Results Our sample was 1491 household contacts of 184 index‐case patients. Seventy‐one percentage reported that smoking occurred in their home, 27% shared a latrine with one other household and 36% shared a latrine with >1 other household. A total of 114 household contacts (7.6%) had symptoms of ILI during follow‐up. Smoking in the home (RRadj 1.9, 95% CI: 1.2, 3.0) and sharing a latrine with one household (RRadj 2.1, 95% CI: 1.2, 3.6) or >1 household (RRadj 3.1, 95% CI: 1.8–5.2) were independently associated with increased risk of secondary ILI. Conclusion Tobacco use in homes could increase respiratory illness in Bangladesh. The mechanism between use of shared latrines and household ILI transmission is not clear. It is possible that respiratory pathogens could be transmitted through faecal contact or contaminated fomites in shared latrines

An assessment of climate change impacts on the tropical forests of Central America using the Holdridge Life Zone (HLZ) land classification system

Ecological models have predicted shifts in forest biomes, yet there have been very few studies that have looked at the implications on carbon stocks due to these shifts. Carbon is closely correlated to biomass and constitutes an important characteristic of the forest ecosystem. It has implications for conservation and land use practices, especially for climate change mitigation strategies currently under discussion, such as REDD+. This study couples the Holdridge Life Zone (HLZ) classification with the ECHAM5 model, to evaluate the impacts of climate change using the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2, A1B and B1 for the Central American region. We utilize methodologies which combine biophysical variables with model output to assess the impacts on carbon stocks for two time periods, 2000 and 2100, . Results show that overall, the tropical category of the HLZ classification gains area as a result of one type of HLZ shifting to another forest type. In many cases the shifts result in some categories of HLZ being lost in their entirety. Elevation-associated life zones are particularly vulnerable to future climatic changes. A strong point of our approach is that differences between disaggregate regional and aggregate country levels can be compared. We suggest that a critical focus of conservation and management efforts should be concentrated on where vulnerable biomes are at most risk (biomes that shift and/or reduce fall under the vulnerable category)