Addressing the Challenges of Extension and Advisory Services in Uganda: The Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Worker Program

Diffusion of agricultural knowledge is vital to food security and capacity building in the developing world. Many developing world farmers still do not have access to extension and advisory services (EAS), and poor agricultural practices still exist. Diffusion of agricultural knowledge could lead to improved productivity, higher obtained prices, and increased incomes, but it is made more difficult in the developing world by poor infrastructure, high illiteracy rates, and too few extension agents. The rapid spread of mobile phones throughout the developing world has sparked many EAS programs that incorporate mobile technologies. Although they offer great potential for knowledge diffusion, research has not yet identified strong positive impacts of mobile technology-based interventions. The Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) program provides model farmers in Ugandan communities with training and smartphones that are linked to a database with actionable agricultural information. The model farmers (CKWs) interact with their neighbors to share the information in the database. This relatively inexpensive program differs from other EAS initiatives by using a large number of lightly trained “extension agents” and mobile technology that provides those agents with easy-to-access information they share with and help interpret for the farmers in their communities. The program also incorporates ongoing data collection via the smartphones, allowing for a two-way exchange of information and enabling constant monitoring. Two recent studies have shown this program to have positive impacts. An ongoing randomized control trial promises to offer a comprehensive impact assessmen

Metabolic Responses to High Intensity Aerobic and Anaerobic Exercises

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Single-molecule super-resolution imaging of chromosomes and in situ haplotype visualization using Oligopaint FISH probes

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a powerful single-cell technique for studying nuclear structure and organization. Here we report two advances in FISH-based imaging. We first describe the in situ visualization of single-copy regions of the genome using two single-molecule super-resolution methodologies. We then introduce a robust and reliable system that harnesses single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to visually distinguish the maternal and paternal homologous chromosomes in mammalian and insect systems. Both of these new technologies are enabled by renewable, bioinformatically designed, oligonucleotide-based Oligopaint probes, which we augment with a strategy that uses secondary oligonucleotides (oligos) to produce and enhance fluorescent signals. These advances should substantially expand the capability to query parent-of-origin-specific chromosome positioning and gene expression on a cell-by-cell basis

Cardiovascular Responses to High Intensity Aerobic and Anaerobic Exercises

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Practical Challenges and Strategies for Randomised Control Trials in Agricultural Extension and Other Development Programmes

Randomised control trials (RCTs) can yield information about the effectiveness of agricultural extension and other development programmes, facilitating cost–benefit analyses and policy decisions under resource constraints. However, even after RCT design questions have been settled, a number of other practical challenges to successful RCTs remain. As a guide to those interested in applying RCTs more extensively, we outline several ethical, organisational, design and field-based challenges for RCTs, along with potential strategies for mitigating the challenges. We provide illustrations from our experience of an RCT of the Community Knowledge Worker programme, a novel agricultural extension model in Uganda.United States Agency for International Developmen

A Case-by-Case Evolutionary Analysis of Four Imprinted Retrogenes

Retroposition is a widespread phenomenon resulting in the generation of new genes that are initially related to a parent gene via very high coding sequence similarity. We examine the evolutionary fate of four retrogenes generated by such an event; mouse Inpp5f_v2, Mcts2, Nap1l5, and U2af1-rs1. These genes are all subject to the epigenetic phenomenon of parental imprinting. We first provide new data on the age of these retrogene insertions. Using codon-based models of sequence evolution, we show these retrogenes have diverse evolutionary trajectories, including divergence from the parent coding sequence under positive selection pressure, purifying selection pressure maintaining parent-retrogene similarity, and neutral evolution. Examination of the expression pattern of retrogenes shows an atypical, broad pattern across multiple tissues. Protein 3D structure modeling reveals that a positively selected residue in U2af1-rs1, not shared by its parent, may influence protein conformation. Our case-by-case analysis of the evolution of four imprinted retrogenes reveals that this interesting class of imprinted genes, while similar in regulation and sequence characteristics, follow very varied evolutionary paths

Effects of 3-Weeks of High-Intensity Interval Training on Running Economy and Endurance

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Short Interspersed Element (SINE) Depletion and Long Interspersed Element (LINE) Abundance Are Not Features Universally Required for Imprinting

Genomic imprinting is a form of gene dosage regulation in which a gene is expressed from only one of the alleles, in a manner dependent on the parent of origin. The mechanisms governing imprinted gene expression have been investigated in detail and have greatly contributed to our understanding of genome regulation in general. Both DNA sequence features, such as CpG islands, and epigenetic features, such as DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs, play important roles in achieving imprinted expression. However, the relative importance of these factors varies depending on the locus in question. Defining the minimal features that are absolutely required for imprinting would help us to understand how imprinting has evolved mechanistically. Imprinted retrogenes are a subset of imprinted loci that are relatively simple in their genomic organisation, being distinct from large imprinting clusters, and have the potential to be used as tools to address this question. Here, we compare the repeat element content of imprinted retrogene loci with non-imprinted controls that have a similar locus organisation. We observe no significant differences that are conserved between mouse and human, suggesting that the paucity of SINEs and relative abundance of LINEs at imprinted loci reported by others is not a sequence feature universally required for imprinting