Financial costs of disease burden, morbidity and mortality from priority livestock diseases in Nigeria: Disease burden and cost-benefit analysis of targeted interventions

Nigeria’s agriculture sector generates one-third of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs two-thirds of the workforce. Its recent growth dominates Nigerian non-oil economic growth. Small-scale, semi-commercial farms, settled agricultural households and transhumant pastoralists dominate production. Livestock is the second largest agricultural sub-sector and features 16.43 million cattle, 34.69 million sheep, 55.15 million goats, 7.18 million pigs and 183.16 million poultry. These provide nutrition and food security, and a range of services including draught power for cropping activities. Poor animal productivity is widely attributed to the occurrence and endemicity of certain animal diseases. These are often unreported, unconfirmed or poorly documented. The financial losses associated with such outbreaks and costs associated with the disease burden are also rarely documented. Efforts at control of such animal diseases have yielded poor returns due to ineffective or absent control programs, insufficient inputs (such as vaccines), poor vaccination coverage due to limited vaccine supplies and constraints in field mobility and support funds, illiteracy of farmers and poor management systems. In preparation for the World Bank’s Integrated Animal and Human Health Management project for Nigeria, estimates of the economic and financial implications of high disease burden, morbidity and mortality and the costs of implementing various interventions, for all or a combination of priority diseases were required. The Government of Nigeria invited ILRI to provide such estimates for priority diseases: NCD in rural poultry flocks; PPR in sheep and goats; CBPP in cattle; ASF in pigs; and trypanosomosis in ruminants and pigs. For these diseases, and across agroecological zones, the study’s objectives were to: • assess the direct and indirect financial burden of inaction; • estimate the costs of targeted interventions; • determine the additional benefits, additional costs and net benefits associated with interventions; • evaluate of the benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) of targeted interventions; and • make recommendations on the feasibility of the targeted interventions. The study featured epidemiology and economic components. Spreadsheet-based economic modelling was effectively combined with participatory epidemiological fieldwork and analysis, and both national and international specialists contributed. Both primary and secondary data were obtained, and stakeholder consultations and expert interviews were conducted. An extensive literature review was compiled

Arrival time and magnitude of airborne fission products from the Fukushima, Japan, reactor incident as measured in Seattle, WA, USA

We report results of air monitoring started due to the recent natural catastrophe on 11 March 2011 in Japan and the severe ensuing damage to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor complex. On 17-18 March 2011, we registered the first arrival of the airborne fission products 131-I, 132-I, 132-Te, 134-Cs, and 137-Cs in Seattle, WA, USA, by identifying their characteristic gamma rays using a germanium detector. We measured the evolution of the activities over a period of 23 days at the end of which the activities had mostly fallen below our detection limit. The highest detected activity amounted to 4.4 +/- 1.3 mBq/m^3 of 131-I on 19-20 March.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, published in Journal of Environmental Radioactivit

Psychology and aggression

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68264/2/10.1177_002200275900300301.pd

Physics with the KLOE-2 experiment at the upgraded DAϕ\phiNE

Investigation at a $\phi$--factory can shed light on several debated issues in particle physics. We discuss: i) recent theoretical development and experimental progress in kaon physics relevant for the Standard Model tests in the flavor sector, ii) the sensitivity we can reach in probing CPT and Quantum Mechanics from time evolution of entangled kaon states, iii) the interest for improving on the present measurements of non-leptonic and radiative decays of kaons and eta/eta$^\prime$ mesons, iv) the contribution to understand the nature of light scalar mesons, and v) the opportunity to search for narrow di-lepton resonances suggested by recent models proposing a hidden dark-matter sector. We also report on the $e^+ e^-$ physics in the continuum with the measurements of (multi)hadronic cross sections and the study of gamma gamma processes.Comment: 60 pages, 41 figures; added affiliation for one of the authors; added reference to section

Prompt K_short production in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=0.9 TeV

The production of K_short mesons in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 0.9 TeV is studied with the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The luminosity of the analysed sample is determined using a novel technique, involving measurements of the beam currents, sizes and positions, and is found to be 6.8 +/- 1.0 microbarn^-1. The differential prompt K_short production cross-section is measured as a function of the K_short transverse momentum and rapidity in the region 0 < pT < 1.6 GeV/c and 2.5 < y < 4.0. The data are found to be in reasonable agreement with previous measurements and generator expectations.Comment: 6+18 pages, 6 figures, updated author lis

Common variants in SOX-2 and congenital cataract genes contribute to age-related nuclear cataract

Nuclear cataract is the most common type of age-related cataract and a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Age-related nuclear cataract is heritable (h2 = 0.48), but little is known about specific genetic factors underlying this condition. Here we report findings from the largest to date multi-ethnic meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (discovery cohort N = 14,151 and replication N = 5299) of the International Cataract Genetics Consortium. We confirmed the known genetic association of CRYAA (rs7278468, P = 2.8 × 10−16) with nuclear cataract and identified five new loci associated with this disease: SOX2-OT (rs9842371, P = 1.7 × 1