Land Management Decisions and Agricultural Productivity in the Hillsides of Honduras

Increasing land degradation and concomitant low agricultural productivity are important determinants of rural poverty in the hillside areas of Honduras. Using data at the levels of the farm household, parcel and plot, we develop an econometric modeling framework to analyze land management decisions and their impact on crop productivity. Our econometric model allows for endogenous household decisions regarding livelihood strategy choice, use of labor and external inputs, and participation in organizations. We found support for the inverse farm size-land productivity relationship which suggests that improved land access could increase total crop production. Land tenure has no impact on crop productivity, but adoption of soil conservation practices is higher on owner-operated than leased plots. Ownership of machinery and equipment and livestock ownership both positively influence crop productivity. Education positively affects perennial crop productivity. The gender of the household head has no significant effect on crop productivity, but does influence some land management and input use decisions. Even though household participation in training programs and organizations has only limited effects on crop productivity, agricultural extension plays a key role in promoting adoption of soil conservation practices. Location assets have limited impacts on crop productivity but do influence land management decisions. Road density and better market access have a positive effect on perennial crop productivity. Population density has limited direct impact on crop productivity, though it may have indirect effects by affecting farm size and livelihood strategies.agricultural productivity, hillsides, Honduras, land management, soil conservation, Land Economics/Use, Productivity Analysis,

Simplified Method for Efficient Intravascular Inoculation of Chicken Embryos

The simple syringe-stabilizer unit described in this note provides a means for rapid intravascular inoculation of embryonated chicken eggs with minimal embryonic death from vascular trauma

Detection of Overhead Contact Lines with a 2D-Digital-Beamforming Radar System for Automatic Guidance of Trolley Trucks

The benefit of trolley truck systems is the substitution of the diesel fuel by the cheaper and more ecological electrical energy. Trolley trucks are powered by electricity fromtwo overhead contact lines, where one is the supply and the other the return conductor. Such trolley trucks are used for haulage at open pit mining sites but could also be used for freight traffic at roadways in the future. Automatic guidance prevents the trolley-powered trucks fromleaving the track and thus allows higher operating speeds, higher loading capacity, and greater efficiency. Radar is the ideal sensing technique for automatic guidance in such environments.The presented radar systemwith two-dimensional digital beamforming capability offers a compact measurement solution as it can be installed on top of the truck. Besides the distance measurement, this radar system allows to detect the location and inclination of the overhead contact lines by digital beamforming in two dimensions. Besides automatic guidance, the knowledge of the inclination of the overhead contact lines could allow automatic speed adaption, which would help to achieve maximum speed especially in hilly terrain

The Axis-Ratio Distribution of Galaxy Clusters in the SDSS-C4 Catalog as a New Cosmological Probe

We analyze the C4 catalog of galaxy clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate the axis-ratio distribution of the projected two dimensional cluster profiles. We consider only those objects in the catalog whose virial mass is close to 10^{14}h^{-1}M_{sun}, with member galaxies within the scale radius 1000 kpc. The total number of such objects turns out to be 336. We also derive a theoretical distribution by incorporating the effect of projection onto the sky into the analytic formalism proposed recently by Lee, Jing, & Suto. The theoretical distribution of the cluster axis-ratios is shown to depend on the amplitude of the linear power spectrum (sigma_8) as well as the density parameter (Omega_{m}). Finally, fitting the observational data to the analytic distribution with Omega_{m} and sigma_{8} as two adjustable free parameters, we find the best-fitting value of sigma_{8}=(1.01 +/- 0.09)(Omega_{m}/0.6)^{(0.07 +/- 0.02) +0.1 Omega_{m}}$. It is a new sigma_{8}-Omega_{m} relation, different from the previous one derived from the local abundance of X-ray clusters. We expect that the axis-ratio distribution of galaxy clusters, if combined with the local abundance of clusters, may put simultaneous constraints on sigma_{8} and Omega_{m}.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ, 17 pages, 3 figures, improved analysis, more discussion on the validity and the caveats of the mode

Intact but empty forests? Patterns of hunting-induced mammal defaunation in the tropics

Tropical forests are increasingly degraded by industrial logging, urbanization, agriculture, and infrastructure, with only 20% of the remaining area considered intact. However, this figure does not include other, more cryptic but pervasive forms of degradation, such as overhunting. Here, we quantified and mapped the spatial patterns of mammal defaunation in the tropics using a database of 3,281 mammal abundance declines from local hunting studies. We simultaneously accounted for population abundance declines and the probability of local extirpation of a population as a function of several predictors related to human accessibility to remote areas and species’ vulnerability to hunting. We estimated an average abundance decline of 13% across all tropical mammal species, with medium-sized species being reduced by >27% and large mammals by >40%. Mammal populations are predicted to be partially defaunated (i.e., declines of 10%–100%) in ca. 50% of the pantropical forest area (14 million km2), with large declines (>70%) in West Africa. According to our projections, 52% of the intact forests (IFs) and 62% of the wilderness areas (WAs) are partially devoid of large mammals, and hunting may affect mammal populations in 20% of protected areas (PAs) in the tropics, particularly in West and Central Africa and Southeast Asia. The pervasive effects of overhunting on tropical mammal populations may have profound ramifications for ecosystem functioning and the livelihoods of wild-meat-dependent communities, and underscore that forest coverage alone is not necessarily indicative of ecosystem intactness. We call for a systematic consideration of hunting effects in (large-scale) biodiversity assessments for more representative estimates of human-induced biodiversity loss

Self-perceived oral health and orofacial aesthetics of cleft patients

Purpose: To evaluate the self-perceived oral health and aesthetics of the dentition and jaw in patients with different types of oral cleft, measured by patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). Additionally, to compare the results of the PROMs between cleft lip and or/palate (CL/P) patients and non-affected controls. Methods: 420 CL/P patients treated at the cleft team of the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, were included, and 138 non-cleft patients were recruited as control-group. Patient’s perceptions were retrospectively evaluated using the CLEFT-Q Teeth for dental aesthetics at ages 8, 12 and 22, CLEFT-Q Jaw for jaw aesthetics at ages 12 and 22, and the Child Oral Health Impact Profile—Oral Symptoms Subscale (COHIP-OSS) for oral health at ages 8 and 12. One-way ANOVA was used to compare differences in oral health and aesthetic perceptions among age-groups, cleft types, as well as between cases and controls. Results: CL/P patients were significantly less satisfied than controls with their dental aesthetics (p = 0.001). CL/P patients reported significantly lower satisfaction on CLEFT-Q Teeth scores at ages 8 and 12, than at 22 years (p &lt; 0.001). Patients with the most extensive cleft phenotype, Cleft Lip and Palate (CLAP), reported lowest satisfaction on the CLEFT-Q Teeth. No differences in perceptions of oral health nor in aesthetics of the jaw were found in the different cleft types, ages, nor in study versus control group. Conclusion: This study found differences in self-perceived dental aesthetics: CL/P patients are less satisfied than non-affected controls. CLAP patients are least satisfied, but satisfaction increases with age.</p

A Knowledge-based Clinical Toxicology Consultant for Diagnosing Multiple Exposures

Objective: This paper presents continued research toward the development of a knowledge-based system for the diagnosis of human toxic exposures. In particular, this research focuses on the challenging task of diagnosing exposures to multiple toxins. Although only 10% of toxic exposures in the United States involve multiple toxins, multiple exposures account for more than half of all toxin-related fatalities. Using simple medical mathematics, we seek to produce a practical decision support system capable of supplying useful information to aid in the diagnosis of complex cases involving multiple unknown substances. Methods: The system is automatically trained using data mining techniques to extract prior probabilities and likelihood ratios from a database managed by the Florida Poison Information Center (FPIC). When supplied with observed clinical effects, the system produces a ranked list of the most plausible toxic exposures. During testing, the system diagnosed toxins at three levels: identifying the substance, identifying the toxin’s major and minor categories, and identifying the toxin’s major category alone. To enable comparison between these three levels, accuracy was calculated as the percentage of exposures correctly identified in top 10% of trained diagnoses. Results: System evaluation utilized a dataset of 8,901 multiple exposure cases and 37,617 single exposure cases. Initial system testing using only multiple exposure cases yielded poor results, with diagnosis accuracies ranging from 18.5-50.1%. Further investigation revealed that the system’s inability to diagnose multiple disorders resulted from insufficient data and that the clinical effects observed in multiple exposures are dominated by a single substance. Including single exposures when training, the system achieved accuracies as high as 83.5% when 2 diagnosing the primary contributors in multiple exposure cases by substance, 86.9% when diagnosing by major and minor categories, and 79.9% when diagnosing by major category alone. Conclusions: Although the system failed to completely diagnose exposures to multiple toxins, the ability to identify the primary contributor in such cases may prove valuable in aiding medical personnel as they seek to diagnose and treat patients. As time passes and more cases are added to the FPIC database, we believe system accuracy will continue to improve, producing a viable decision support system for clinical toxicology

A Knowledge-based Clinical Toxicology Consultant for Diagnosing Single Exposures

Objective: Every year, toxic exposures kill twelve hundred Americans. To aid in the timely diagnosis and treatment of such exposures, this research investigates the feasibility of a knowledge-based system capable of generating differential diagnoses for human exposures involving unknown toxins. Methods: Data mining techniques automatically extract prior probabilities and likelihood ratios from a database managed by the Florida Poison Information Center. Using observed clinical effects, the trained system produces a ranked list of plausible toxic exposures. The resulting system was evaluated using 30,152 single exposure cases. In addition, the effects of two filters for refining diagnosis based on a minimum number of exposure cases and a minimum number of clinical effects were also explored. Results: The system achieved accuracies (calculated as the percentage of exposures correctly identified in top 10% of trained diagnoses) as high as 79.8% when diagnosing by substance and 78.9% when diagnosing by the major and minor categories of toxins. Conclusions: The results of this research are modest, yet promising. At this time, no similar systems are currently in use in the United States and it is hoped that these studies will yield an effective medical decision support system for clinical toxicology

Professional Skills and Competence for Safe and Effective Procedural Sedation in Children: Recommendations Based on a Systematic Review of the Literature

Objectives. To investigate which skills and competence are imperative to assure optimal effectiveness and safety of procedural sedation (PS) in children and to analyze the underlying levels of evidence. Study Design and methods. Systematic review of literature published between 1993 and March 2009. Selected papers were classified according to their methodological quality and summarized in evidence-based conclusions. Next, conclusions were used to formulate recommendations. Results. Although the safety profiles vary among PS drugs, the possibility of potentially serious adverse events and the predictability of depth and duration of sedation define the imperative skills and competence necessary for a timely recognition and appropriate management. The level of effectiveness is mainly determined by the ability to apply titratable PS, including deep sedation using short-acting anesthetics for invasive procedures and nitrous oxide for minor painful procedures, and the implementation of non-pharmacological techniques. Conclusions. PS related safety and effectiveness are determined by the circumstances and professional skills rather than by specific pharmacologic characteristics. Evidence based recommendations regarding necessary skills and competence should be used to set up training programs and to define which professionals can and cannot be credentialed for PS in children

INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF RESIDENTIAL ENERGY USE: INDICATORS OF RESIDENTIAL ENERGY USE AND EFFICIENCY PART ONE: THE DATA BASE

This summary report presents information on the end-uses of energy in the residential sector of seven major OECD countries over the period 1960-1978. Much of the information contained herein has never been published before. We present data on energy consumption by energy type and end-use for three to five different years for each country. Each year table is complemented by a set of indicators, which are assembled for the entire 20-year period at the end of each country listing. Finally, a set of key indicators from each country is displayed together in a table, allowing comparison for three periods: early (1960-63), pre-embargo (1970-73), and recent (1975-78). Analysis of these results, smoothing and interpolation of the data, addition of further data, and analytical comparison of in-country and cross-country trends will follow in the next phase of our work