Bioenergy production and food security in Africa

Food and energy insecurities are the two greatest problems in Africa. Per capita energy consumption in Africa is less than 10% of that of United States of America while 18 out of 23 countries where starvation and malnutrition are most severe in the world are in Africa. Although various African governments have been making efforts to boast agricultural productivity, crop yields remain very low. Most governments do not even have accurate statistics on the number, location and types of crops produced by smallholder farmers that produce more than 80% of foods in Africa. This makes it very difficult to plan and implement any government support to the farmers. Sub-Saharan African countries have very high potential for production of different forms of bioenergy because the climatic conditions favour production of many energy crops. The big question has always been whether to produce bioenergy from food crops, especially in Africa with high acute food shortages. Large scale production of bioenergy may lead to competition with food crops for land, labour and other agricultural inputs. However, data from various sources indicate that Africa has abundant and underutilized arable land which can be effectively used for mass production of energy crops. Furthermore, shortage of labour cannot be a problem given the present very high rate of unemployment in most African countries. The benefits of bioenergy production in Africa outweigh the possible adverse effects on food security. Bioenergy production will create demand for, and stabilize the prices for crops, thereby increasing the earning of the farmers. This will in turn, facilitate industrialization in other sectors of economy through provision of affordable, renewable and clean energy. In order to minimize possible negative effects of bioenergy production on food security, land allocation for energy crop production can be regulated. Energy security cannot be separated from food security and the two should be seen as complimentary rather than as competitors.Key words: Bioenergy production, food security, energy

Increased number of Judo therapy facilities in Japan and changes in their geographical distribution

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Judo therapy is a well established Japanese co-medical profession specializing in outpatient manual treatment of fractures and sprains. Recently, the number of judo therapists has been rapidly increasing as a result of proliferation judo therapy academies. This study examines whether such rapid increases have improved geographical distribution of judo therapy facilities in Japan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The number of judo therapy facilities and the population in each municipality were obtained from the Web yellow pages and from Japanese census data for 2004, 2006, and 2008, respectively. Lorenz curves and Gini indices were calculated to demonstrate distributions of judo therapy facilities per 100,000 people. A bootstrapped method was used to identify statistical significances of differences in Gini indices.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In all municipalities, the mean numbers of judo therapy facilities per 100,000 people were 15.3 in 2004, 15.8 in 2006, and 17.6 in 2008. The Gini indices for judo therapy facilities nationally were 0.273 in 2004, 0.264 in 2006, and 0.264 in 2008. The numbers of judo therapy facilities increased significantly between 2006 and 2008 (<it>p </it>< 0.05) but the indices did not change significantly in the same period. The Gini indices for local towns and villages remained unchanged and were consistently higher (<it>p </it>< 0.05) than those in urban areas throughout the study periods.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results suggest that recent increases in the number of judo therapy facilities have not necessarily led to greater equality in their geographic distribution in terms of Gini indices.</p

Temperature Control System in Closed House for Broilers Based on ANFIS

 Indonesia is a tropical country with high ambient temperatures for broilers since daily temperature reaches an average daily temperature of 360C (maximum) and 320 C (minimum); whereas the optiml temperature for broilers is in the range of 28-300C. Thefefore, midle or large scale broiler industries have been using a control system to maintain the optimal temperature within a broiler house. Therefore, the role of a control system for regulating environmental parameters, not only temperature but also humidity, light intensity, and amonia content level, is very critical and relevant for better broiler production. This study aims to design an ANFIS control system for controlling the temperature inside a broiler house (closed house) for broiler. Data is collected at three different periods of the starter period (5 days): 29.50C-30.900C, a period of 25 days is a grower-29.0C 34.20C, and the finisher of 30 days is obtained 33.20C. Set point control simulation using the same temperature 290C for starter, grower and finisher period. The simulation results show the output in a closed house temperature fluctuates around set point the 290C-340C

Synthetic data generation method for hybrid image-tabular data using two generative adversarial networks

The generation of synthetic medical records using generative adversarial networks (GANs) has become increasingly important for addressing privacy concerns and promoting data sharing in the medical field. In this paper, we propose a novel method for generating synthetic hybrid medical records consisting of chest X-ray images (CXRs) and structured tabular data (including anthropometric data and laboratory tests) using an auto-encoding GAN ({\alpha}GAN) and a conditional tabular GAN (CTGAN). Our approach involves training a {\alpha}GAN model on a large public database (pDB) to reduce the dimensionality of CXRs. We then applied the trained encoder of the GAN model to the images in original database (oDB) to obtain the latent vectors. These latent vectors were combined with tabular data in oDB, and these joint data were used to train the CTGAN model. We successfully generated diverse synthetic records of hybrid CXR and tabular data, maintaining correspondence between them. We evaluated this synthetic database (sDB) through visual assessment, distribution of interrecord distances, and classification tasks. Our evaluation results showed that the sDB captured the features of the oDB while maintaining the correspondence between the images and tabular data. Although our approach relies on the availability of a large-scale pDB containing a substantial number of images with the same modality and imaging region as those in the oDB, this method has the potential for the public release of synthetic datasets without compromising the secondary use of data.Comment: 14 page

Benzodiazepine prescription and length of hospital stay at a Japanese university hospital

BACKGROUND: The relationship between bed days and benzodiazepine prescription (BDZ) in Western countries is inconclusive, and no hospital-based report has documented this phenomenon in Japan. This study was done to assess the association between bed days and BDZ in a Japanese hospital. METHODS: 21,489 adult patients (55.1% men, mean age 59.9 years old) hospitalized between April, 2005 and December, 2006 were enrolled in the study. Patient age, sex, ICD-10 diagnosis, prescription profile, and days of hospital stay were assessed in 13 non-psychiatric departments using a computer ordering system. Patients prescribed a benzodiazepine during hospitalization were defined as positive. RESULTS: Of the total sample, 19.9% were allocated to the benzodiazepine (+) group. Female sex and older age were significant factors associated with benzodiazepine prescription. The median number of bed days was 13, and the likelihood of BDZ significantly increased with the number of bed days, even after controlling for the effects of age, gender, and ICD-10 diagnosis. For example, when the analysis was limited to patients with 50 bed days or longer, the percentage of BDZ (32.7%) was equivalent to that of a report from France. CONCLUSION: Irrespective of department or disease, patients prescribed benzodiazepine during their hospital stay tended to have a higher number of bed days in the hospital. The difference in the prevalence of BDZ between this study and previous Western studies might be attributed to the relatively short length of hospital stay in this study. Because BDZs are often reported to be prescribed to hospitalized patients without appropriate documentation for the indications for use, it is important to monitor the rational for prescriptions of benzodiazepine carefully, for both clinical and economical reasons

Pharmacological treatment for bipolar mania: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of double-blind randomized controlled trials

A systematic review and random-effects model network meta-analysis was conducted to compare the efficacy, acceptability, tolerability, and safety of pharmacological interventions for adults with acute bipolar mania. We searched PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Embase databases for eligible studies published before March 14, 2021. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of oral medication monotherapy lasting ≥10 days in adults with mania were included, and studies that allowed the use of antipsychotics as a rescue medication during a trial were excluded. The primary outcomes were response to treatment (efficacy) and all-cause discontinuation (acceptability). The secondary outcomes were the improvement of mania symptoms and discontinuation due to inefficacy. Of the 79 eligible RCTs, 72 double-blind RCTs of 23 drugs and a placebo were included in the meta-analysis (mean study duration = 3.96 ± 2.39 weeks, n = 16442, mean age = 39.55 years, with 50.93% males). Compared with the placebo, aripiprazole, asenapine, carbamazepine, cariprazine, haloperidol, lithium, olanzapine, paliperidone, quetiapine, risperidone, tamoxifen, valproate, and ziprasidone outperformed response to treatment (N = 56, n = 14503); aripiprazole, olanzapine, quetiapine, and risperidone had lower all-cause discontinuation; however, topiramate had higher all-cause discontinuation (N = 70, n = 16324). Compared with the placebo, aripiprazole, asenapine, carbamazepine, cariprazine, haloperidol, lithium, olanzapine, paliperidone, quetiapine, risperidone, tamoxifen, valproate, and ziprasidone outperformed the improvement of mania symptoms (N = 61, n = 15466), and aripiprazole, asenapine, carbamazepine, cariprazine, haloperidol, lithium, olanzapine, paliperidone, quetiapine, risperidone, valproate, and ziprasidone had lower discontinuation due to inefficacy (N = 50, n = 14284). In conclusions, these antipsychotics, carbamazepine, lithium, tamoxifen, and valproate were effective for acute mania. However, only aripiprazole, olanzapine, quetiapine, and risperidone had better acceptability than the placebo