The 11th International Conference on Emerging Ubiquitous Systems and Pervasive Networks ( EUSPN 2020)

The potential of IoT in contributing towards sustainable economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through digital transformation and effective service delivery is widely accepted. However, the unreliability/unavailability of connectivity and power grid infrastructure as well as the unaffordability of the overall system hinders the implementation of a multi-layered IoT architecture for rural societal services in SSA. In this work, affordable IoT architecture that operates without reliance on broadband connectivity and power grid is developed. The architecture employs energy harvesting system and performs data processing, actuation decisions and network management locally by integrating a customized low-cost computationally capable device with the gateway. The sharing of this device among the water resource and quality management, healthcare and agriculture applications further reduces the overall system cost. The evaluation of LPWAN technologies reveals that LoRaWAN has lower cost with added benefits of adaptive data rate and largest community support while providing comparable performance and communication range with the other technologies. The relevant results of the analysis is communicated to end-users’ mobile device via 2G/3G GPRS. Hence, the proposed IoT architecture enables the implementation of IoT systems for improving efficiency in three key application areas at low cost.</p

The 11th International Conference on Emerging Ubiquitous Systems and Pervasive Networks (EUSPN 2020)

 Ensuring food security has become a challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) due to combined effects of climate change, high population growth, and relying on rainfed farming. Governments are establishing shared irrigation infrastructure for smallholder farmers as part of the solutions for food security. However, the irrigated farms often failed to achieve the expected crop yield. This is partly due to lack of water management system in the irrigation infrastructure. In this work, IoT-based irrigation management system is proposed after investigating problems of irrigated farmlands in three SSA countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa as case studies. Resource-efficient IoT architecture is developed that monitors soil, microclimate and water parameters and performs appropriate irrigation management. Indigenous farming and expert knowledge, regional weather information, crop and soil specific characteristics are also provided to the system for informed-decision making and efficient operation of the irrigation management system. In SSA, broadband connectivity and cloud services are either unavailable or expensive. To tackle these limitations, data processing, network management and irrigation decisions and communication to the farmers are carried out locally, without the involvement of any back-end servers. Furthermore, the use of green energy sources and resource-aware intelligent data analysis algorithm is studied. The intelligent data analysis helps to discover new knowledge that support further development of agricultural expert knowledge. The proposed IoT-based irrigation management system is expected to contribute towards long term and sustainable high crop yield with minimum resource consumption and impact to the biodiversity around the case farmlands.</p

A systems model describing the impact of organic resource use on farming households in low to middle income countries

We are grateful for support from the DFID-NERC El Niño programme in project NE P004830, “Building Resilience in Ethiopia’s Awassa region to Drought (BREAD)”, the ESRC NEXUS programme in project IEAS/POO2501/1, “Improving organic resource use in rural Ethiopia (IPORE)”, and the NERC ESPA programme in project NEK0104251 “Alternative carbon investments in ecosystems for poverty alleviation (ALTER)”. We are also grateful to Dr. V.U.M. Rao (Former Project Coordinator, AICRP on Agrometeorology, CRIDA, Hyderabad) and Dr. S.K. Chaudhari (DDG, NRM Division, KAB-II, ICAR, New Delhi) for their assistance in collecting meteorological data of Parbhani, Maharashtra.Peer reviewedPostprin

Treatment of organic resources before soil incorporation in semi-arid regions improves resilience to El Niño, and increases crop production and economic returns

We are grateful for support from the DFID-NERC El Niño programme in project NE P004830, “Building Resilience in Ethiopia’s Awassa region to Drought (BREAD)”, the ESRC NEXUS programme in project IEAS/POO2501/1, “Improving organic resource use in rural Ethiopia (IPORE)”, and the NERC ESPA programme in project NEK0104251 “Alternative carbon investments in ecosystems for poverty alleviation (ALTER)”. We are also grateful to Anke Fischer (James Hutton Insitute) for her comments on the paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Local Increase of Arginase Activity in Lesions of Patients with Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Ethiopia

The leishmaniases are a complex of diseases caused by Leishmania parasites. Currently, the diseases affect an estimated 12 million people in 88 countries, and approximately 350 million more people are at risk. The leishmaniases belong to the most neglected tropical diseases, affecting the poorest populations, for whom access to diagnosis and effective treatment are often not available. Leishmania parasites infect cells of the immune system called macrophages, which have the capacity to eliminate the intracellular parasites when they receive the appropriate signals from other cells of the immune system. In nonhealing persistent leishmaniasis, lymphocytes are unable to transmit the signals to macrophages required to kill the intracellular parasites. The local upregulation of the enzyme arginase has been shown to impair lymphocyte effector functions at the site of pathology. In this study, we tested the activity of this enzyme in skin lesions of patients presenting with localized cutaneous leishmaniasis. Our results show that arginase is highly upregulated in these lesions. This increase in arginase activity coincides with lower expression of a signalling molecule in lymphocytes, which is essential for efficient activation of these cells. These results suggest that increased arginase expression in the localized cutaneous lesions might contribute to persistent disease in patients presenting with cutaneous leishmaniasis

Sarcoma treatment in the era of molecular medicine

Sarcomas are heterogeneous and clinically challenging soft tissue and bone cancers. Although constituting only 1% of all human malignancies, sarcomas represent the second most common type of solid tumors in children and adolescents and comprise an important group of secondary malignancies. More than 100 histological subtypes have been characterized to date, and many more are being discovered due to molecular profiling. Owing to their mostly aggressive biological behavior, relative rarity, and occurrence at virtually every anatomical site, many sarcoma subtypes are in particular difficult-to-treat categories. Current multimodal treatment concepts combine surgery, polychemotherapy (with/without local hyperthermia), irradiation, immunotherapy, and/or targeted therapeutics. Recent scientific advancements have enabled a more precise molecular characterization of sarcoma subtypes and revealed novel therapeutic targets and prognostic/predictive biomarkers. This review aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the latest advances in the molecular biology of sarcomas and their effects on clinical oncology; it is meant for a broad readership ranging from novices to experts in the field of sarcoma.Peer reviewe