Nutrition knowledge and food consumption practices and barriers in rural Ghana: The case of foods for preventing vitamin A and iron deficiencies

Food-based approaches such as dietary diversification, nutrient retention and biofortification combined with nutrition education can be effective in eliminating micronutrient deficiencies. The objective of this study was to assess the nutrition knowledge and consumption practices as well as barriers to consumption with specific focus on food-based approaches to vitamin A and iron deficiencies prevention and to identify individual, community and governmental level strategies that may facilitate the adoption of these approaches. Using qualitative methods, one focus group (FG) discussion each was conducted with members of the Cocoa Farmers’ Cooperatives in each of the 25 rural communities in the Amansie West and Asunafo North Districts in Ghana. Findings showed participants in only 3 FGs had knowledge of vitamin A and its deficiency diseases while only 2 FGs had knowledge of foods that could prevent vitamin A deficiency. Participants in 23 FGs were aware of the occurrence of iron deficiency anaemia especially in pregnant women; however, only 8 FGs had knowledge of the causes of anaemia. Furthermore, all the 25 FGs mentioned the use of haematinics in the treatment and prevention of anaemia but only 4 FGs knew about the use of food-based approaches. Various types of animal products, vegetables, fruits, and legumes, which are useful in preventing vitamin A and iron deficiencies, were found to be available in the communities. However, participants in all the 25 FGs indicated that the consumption of these foods particularly dark-green leafy vegetables has been dwindling with time. The FG participants mentioned a number of barriers to consumption of these foods and they include inadequate knowledge of nutritional value of the foods, lack of cooking skill, low production levels, laziness, conflicting media reports, lack of storage facilities, and contamination with agrochemicals. Findings imply that nutrition interventions should focus on education and awareness creation and implementation of strategies that can remove consumption barriers and facilitate the adoption of food-based approaches for managing micronutrient deficiencies.Key words: Vitamin A deficiency, iron deficiency, nutrition knowledge, consumption practices, barrier

Supraesophageal Reflux Disease: Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma

Copyright © 2015 AGA Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Single-crystal growth and dependences on the hole concentration and magnetic field of the magnetic ground state in the edge-sharing CuO2_2 chain system Ca2+x_{2+x}Y2−x_{2-x}Cu5_5O10_{10}

We have succeeded in growing large-size single-crystals of Ca$_{2+x}$Y$_{2-x}$Cu$_5$O$_{10}$ with $0 \le x \le 1.67$ and measured the magnetic susceptibility, specific heat and magnetization curve, in order to study the magnetic ground state in the edge-sharing CuO$_2$ chain as a function of hole concentration and magnetic field. In $0 \le x \le 1.3$, it has been found that an antiferromagnetically ordered phase with the magnetic easy axis along the b-axis is stabilized and that a spin-flop transition occurs by the application of magnetic fields parallel to the b-axis. The antiferromagnetic transition temperature decreases with increasing $x$ and disappears around $x =$ 1.4. Alternatively, a spin-glass phase appears around $x = 1.5$. At $x = 1.67$ where the hole concentration is $\sim$ 1/3 per Cu, it appears that a spin-gap state is formed owing to the formation of spin-singlet pairs. No sign of the coexistence of an antiferromagnetically ordered state and a spin-gap one suggested in Ca$_{1-x}$CuO$_2$ has been found in Ca$_{2+x}$Y$_{2-x}$Cu$_5$O$_{10}$.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

Geological Alterations and Chemical Treatment of a Polluted Limestone Foundation

A large factory for the production of concentrated sulphuric acid is constructed in 1977 and located in the west of Iraq near Al-Kaim city. The footings carrying the installations rest on calcareous rocks which extend deep into the ground. For many years, about 1.5 tons per day of acid seeped and percolated into the ground apart from frequent accidents when larger amounts took their path down into the ground. A record of the footings movement revealed that the footings experienced significant heave and settlement indicating a cyclic movement which depends on the frequency of seepage. The results of the past geotechnical and geochemical investigations have been carefully studied in order to trace the geological alterations occurring in the ground due to the percolation of sulphuric acid over years. It appeared that at certain depths the limestone rock has been almost converted to dough and that a significant amount of dolomitization has taken place in the factory ground. Contaminated samples have been obtained from boreholes executed in the factory site. Many chemical materials have been chosen to treat the contaminated samples. Among these materials are sodium silicate, sodium carbonate, sodium silicate plus calcium chloride, barium sulfate, aluminum oxide, ferric oxide and bentonite. Unconfined compression, ultrasonic wave, physical, wet chemical and XRD tests were performed on intact, contaminated and treated specimens. The results proved that sodium silicate is the best alternative to be used for chemical grouting of the ground. The use of calcium chloride with sodium silicate did not show an additional advantage. Samples contaminated to the degree of having the form of dough have almost regained their original solid state strength when treated with sodium silicate

Deep fisher discriminant analysis

Fisher Discriminant Analysis’ linear nature and the usual eigen-analysis approach to its solution have limited the application of its underlying elegant idea. In this work we will take advantage of some recent partially equivalent formulations based on standard least squares regression to develop a simple Deep Neural Network (DNN) extension of Fisher’s analysis that greatly improves on its ability to cluster sample projections around their class means while keeping these apart. This is shown by the much better accuracies and g scores of class mean classifiers when applied to the features provided by simple DNN architectures than what can be achieved using Fisher’s linear onesWith partial support from Spain's grants TIN2013-42351- P, TIN2016-76406-P, TIN2015-70308-REDT and S2013/ICE-2845 CASI-CAMCM. Work supported also by project FACIL{Ayudas Fundaci on BBVA a Equipos de Investigación Científica 2016, the UAM{ADIC Chair for Data Science and Machine Learning and Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento. The third author is also supported by the FPU{MEC grant AP-2012-5163. We gratefully acknowledge the use of the facilities of Centro de Computacón Científi ca (CCC) at UA

Optimization of NPK levels of Clementine Sidi Aissa (Citrus reticulata Blanco) trees grafted on different citrus rootstocks

Received: August 15th, 2023 ; Accepted: October 18th, 2023 ; Published: November 5th, 2023 ; Correspondence: [email protected] present study aims to investigate the impact of various nitrogen concentrations on young Clementine Sidi Aissa citrus trees (Citrus reticulata Blanco), grafted on five citrus rootstocks namely Moroccan Carrizo citrange, French Carrizo citrange, Troyer citrange, Citrus macrophylla, and sour orange (Citrus aurantium L.). The experiment took place in greenhouses at the Experimental station of El Menzeh INRA-Morocco, with the young trees grown in containers. We applied five different nitrogen treatments (expressed as mg L-1 of N-P2O5-K2O): (0–0–0), (0–25–50), (25–25–50), (50–25–50), and (100–25–50). The split-plot experimental design was used with three replications. The findings demonstrate that the nitrogen enrichment resulted in enhanced plant growth, marked by increased plant height, rootstock and scion stem diameters, diameter and shoot length, relative water content (RWC), as well as leaf chlorophyll and proline content. Optimal growth of the Clementine Sidi Aissa trees was observed under the 100–25–50 (mg L-1 of N-P2O5-K2O) treatment. The study also found that leaf nitrogen concentration increased in line with the quantity of nitrogen added, whereas the percentages of phosphorous and potassium in the leaves decreased. The most significant growth increase across the majority of the studied parameters was noted in Clementine Sidi Aissa trees grafted on Moroccan Carrizo citrange and Troyer citrange rootstocks

Moving walls accelerate mixing

Mixing in viscous fluids is challenging, but chaotic advection in principle allows efficient mixing. In the best possible scenario,the decay rate of the concentration profile of a passive scalar should be exponential in time. In practice, several authors have found that the no-slip boundary condition at the walls of a vessel can slow down mixing considerably, turning an exponential decay into a power law. This slowdown affects the whole mixing region, and not just the vicinity of the wall. The reason is that when the chaotic mixing region extends to the wall, a separatrix connects to it. The approach to the wall along that separatrix is polynomial in time and dominates the long-time decay. However, if the walls are moved or rotated, closed orbits appear, separated from the central mixing region by a hyperbolic fixed point with a homoclinic orbit. The long-time approach to the fixed point is exponential, so an overall exponential decay is recovered, albeit with a thin unmixed region near the wall.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures. PDFLaTeX with RevTeX 4-1 styl

Investigation of Radioactivity Levels in Soil at JUST Campus Prior to the Construction of JRTR

An investigation of the background radiation level in soil samples collected from the campus of Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) was carried out. A random systematic approach was employed for selecting the sampling locations around the proposed site of Jordan Research and Training Reactor (JRTR). A counting system based on a High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector coupled with GENIE 2000 spectroscopy software was used to analyze the samples. The average concentration of radionuclides 226Ra, 232Th, 40K, 137Cs and 238U were found to be 20.84, 24.45, 312.39, 2.43 and 83.88 Bq/kg, respectively. Results were compared with published data available in the literature. The measured results will form the baseline for future monitoring of radiological impact of JRTR on JUST campus