Comparative analysis of aggregate agricultural productivity between low and high external input technology farms in Nigeria

The study compared the aggregate agricultural productivity between the Low External Input Technology (LEIT) and High External Input Technology (HEIT) Farms in Imo State of Nigeria. The state is divided into three agricultural zones, out of which two were randomly selected for the study. Using a multistage sampling technique, 80 LEIT farmers and another 80 HEIT farmers were randomly selected, giving a total sample size of 160 farmers. The result of Chow F- test showed that the LEIT farmers who used animal manure had a higher aggregate agricultural productivity than the HEIT farmers who used inorganic fertilizer. It is therefore recommended that policies geared toward more production and utilization of animal manure be put in place by the government.Keywords: Aggregate agricultural productivity, low and high external input technology farmsAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 9(34), pp. 5530-5534, 23 August, 201

Clinical and Socio-demographic Profile of Women with Post-partum Psychiatric Conditions at a Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Southeast Nigeria between 2009 and 2011

Background: Pregnancy and labor in areas with high maternal morbidities as in Nigeria could be sufficiently stressful to precipitate mental disorders in women after delivery, which may be a new or a relapse of previously existing one, or an exacerbation of an attenuated mental illness in the nursing mother. Mental illness in a nursing mother, if not treated may result in impaired mother.infant relationship. Aim: To determine the clinical and socio.demographic characteristics of women diagnosed with postpartum psychiatric conditions in a tertiary mental health facility of a developing country.Subjects and Methods: A retrospective case note reviews of 76 women diagnosed with postpartum psychiatric conditions for the first time in the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Enugu between January 2009 and December 2011.Results: The mean age of the women was 27.76 years, with 63% (48/76) of them coming from the rural areas. 93% (71/76) of them had at least a secondary education and 78% (59/76) of the women had a family history of psychiatric disorders. Schizophrenia was commonest, 48.7% (37/76) followed by depression, 22% (17/76) and mania, 15% (11/76). Those presenting with schizophrenia were younger when compared with other diagnostic groups, had a lower level of education and presented earlier for treatment. The husbands were the primary caregivers in 48% of them. Conclusion: With 63% (48/76) of them being rural dwellers, policy changes become imperative that would encourage establishment of psychiatric services in rural areas to ensure early detection and prompt treatment of postpartum women with a need for psychiatric services.Keywords: Clinical, Postpartum Mental disorders, Socio.demographic, Southeast Nigeri

The effect of ageing on female fertility in an assisted reproduction programme in Hong Kong: retrospective study.

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the effect of ageing on female fertility in an in vitro fertilisation programme in Hong Kong. DESIGN: Retrospective study. SETTING: University teaching hospital, Hong Kong. PATIENTS: Seven hundred and seventy-one women in whom 1336 cycles of in vitro fertilisation were initiated between 1 January 1986 and 31 December 1995. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patient age and indications for treatment; hormonal response; and the number of cancelled cycles, oocytes retrieved, oocytes fertilised, cleaving embryos, embryos transferred, and clinical pregnancies. RESULTS: Compared with women aged or =36 years (n=398) had a significantly higher cycle cancellation rate (19.3% versus 10.4%), fewer oocytes retrieved per retrieval cycle (6.6 versus 9.0), fewer oocytes fertilised per retrieval cycle (5.0 versus 7.0), fewer cleaving embryos per retrieval cycle (4.8 versus 6.8), and lower serum oestradiol level (9735 [standard deviation, 5681] pmol/L versus 10 708 [5916] pmol/L) despite a larger amount of human menopausal gonadotrophin having been used (all variables, P<0.01; Chi squared test). The clinical pregnancy rate per initiated cycle (range, 7.5%-13.0%) decreased with advancing age (P<0.01; Chi squared test). CONCLUSION: Ageing has a significant deleterious effect on women's reproductive capability. Women should be encouraged to seek early medical advice and treatment for subfertility.published_or_final_versio

Improving polygenic risk prediction from summary statistics by an empirical Bayes approach

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are increasingly used to predict disease risks. However some included variants could be false positives and the raw estimates of effect sizes from them may be subject to selection bias. In addition, the standard PRS approach requires testing over a range of p-value thresholds, which are often chosen arbitrarily. The prediction error estimated from the optimized threshold may also be subject to an optimistic bias. To improve genomic risk prediction, we proposed new empirical Bayes approaches to recover the underlying effect sizes and used them as weights to construct PRS. We applied the new PRS to twelve cardio-metabolic traits in the Northern Finland Birth Cohort and demonstrated improvements in predictive power (in R2) when compared to standard PRS at the best p-value threshold. Importantly, for eleven out of the twelve traits studied, the predictive performance from the entire set of genome-wide markers outperformed the best R2 from standard PRS at optimal p-value thresholds. Our proposed methodology essentially enables an automatic PRS weighting scheme without the need of choosing tuning parameters. The new method also performed satisfactorily in simulations. It is computationally simple and does not require assumptions on the effect size distributions. Improving polygenic risk prediction from summary statistics by an empirical Bayes approach. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258278_Improving_polygenic_risk_prediction_from_summary_statistics_by_an_empirical_Bayes_approach [accessed Sep 29, 2017].published_or_final_versio

Deletions within the azoospermia factor subregions of the Y chromosome in Hong Kong Chinese men with severe male-factor infertility: controlled clinical study.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the patterns and the prevalence of microdeletions in the azoospermia factor subregions of the Y chromosome in Hong Kong Chinese men with severe male-factor infertility. DESIGN: Controlled clinical study. SETTING: Reproductive centre of a university teaching hospital, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-eight men with severe male-factor infertility who participated in the in vitro fertilisation programme from May 1998 through March 1999, and 46 male volunteers with proven fertility. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Polymerase chain reaction analysis of DNA from peripheral blood lymphocytes using six loci spanning the AZFa, AZFb, and AZFc subregions of the Y chromosome. RESULTS. No microdeletions were detected in the fertile controls or in patients with obstructive azoospermia. Deletions within the AZFc subregion were found in 9% (4/44) of men with non-obstructive azoospermia or severe oligospermia. Neither AZFa nor AZFb deletions were detected in any participants. CONCLUSION: Deletions within the azoospermia factor subregions of the Y chromosome are associated with severe male-factor infertility in Hong Kong Chinese men.published_or_final_versio

Knowledge of conversion disorder in children by pediatricians in a developing country

Introduction: Conversion disorder (CD) in children presents the clinician with a diagnostic and treatment dilemma. Mistaking a physical condition for CD carries serious consequences for the child while continued investigation in line with physical disease in a child with CD also may expose the child to serious harm.Materials and Methods: One hundred and seventy‑four consenting doctors who attended a national conference of pediatricians were administered a 10 item questionnaire developed by the researchers.Results: Only 5 (2.9%) of participants had good knowledge (scored above the mean plus one standard deviation of the score obtained by the psychiatry residents. Gender, rank, years of experience, availability of psychiatric service in center and duration of the psychiatry posting as the medical student could not differentiate those with good/fair knowledge from those without. However, those who have referred children for psychiatric assessment (P = 0.015), those who believe that children can have CD (P = 0.000) and those who are fairly confident that they could diagnose CD in children (P = 0.000) had better knowledge of CD.Conclusion: Pediatricians have poor knowledge of CDs in children. Those that know that children could have the condition have confidence that they can identify children with the condition and have referred with mental health problems to psychiatrists have better knowledge than those who did not.Keywords: Conversion disorder, knowledge, pediatrician

Oxidative Stress and Antioxidant Parameters in Earthworm (Esiena fetida andrei); a Probable index of Environmental Pollution Status

Oxidative stress and antioxidant responses in earthworms were investigated for use as an index for environmental pollution. The study was done in three test locations (Refinery road, Okere market and PTI roundabout) in Warri an industrial city in Nigeria and Abraka a less industrial city as control. Levels of five stress and antioxidant parameters; lipid peroxidation (LPO), aldehyde oxidase (AO), superoxide dismutase (SOD) catalase (CAT) and ascorbic acid (Vit. C.) were used. There was observed significant (p&lt;0.05) rise in LPO (5.83\ub10.456, 5.83\ub10.456, 4.04\ub10.58, 4.25\ub10.475, 2.09\ub10.425), oxidative enzyme (AO) levels (0.011\ub10.00012, 0.008\ub10.0021, 0.0058\ub10.0013, 0.0022\ub10.00009) and increase in activities and levels of the antioxidants (SOD: 24.0\ub13.80, 12.0\ub13.80, 16.0\ub14.62, 5.6\ub12.8; CAT: 0.98\ub10.013, 1.08\ub10.061, 0.95\ub10.018, 0.93\ub10.0125 and Vit. C: 0.175\ub10.0172, 0.118\ub10.0148, 0.109\ub10.014, 0.072\ub10.004) respectively in all study locations in Warri compared to Abraka. These changes were significantly higher in refinery road compared to other locations (Okere market and PTI) in Warri. There were also significant (p&lt;0.05) negative relationship between LPO and SOD activities (r=-0.677), AO and CAT(r=-0.718) as well as AO and SOD(r=0.661) activities respectively only in the refinery road area while no significant change (p&gt;0.05) were reported in other locations. The combined data showed significant negative relationship (p&lt;0.01) between LPO and AO(r=-0.719) and a significant positive relationship (p&lt;0.01) between LPO and (SOD r=0.710, Vit C r=.884). It further showed significant (p&lt;0.01) negative relationship between AO and CAT (r=-0.486), SOD and Vit C (r=-.648), and significant (p&lt;0.01) positive relationship between Vitamin C and (SOD r=-0.865, CAT r=0.785). It was concluded that rise in levels of the studied antioxidants and LPO in earthworms found in Warri compared to Abraka may have occurred in response to industrial pollution, thus may be used for environmental monitoring

Patient complexity and genotype-phenotype correlations in biliary atresia: a cross-sectional analysis

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Solving the subset-sum problem with a light-based device

We propose a special computational device which uses light rays for solving the subset-sum problem. The device has a graph-like representation and the light is traversing it by following the routes given by the connections between nodes. The nodes are connected by arcs in a special way which lets us to generate all possible subsets of the given set. To each arc we assign either a number from the given set or a predefined constant. When the light is passing through an arc it is delayed by the amount of time indicated by the number placed in that arc. At the destination node we will check if there is a ray whose total delay is equal to the target value of the subset sum problem (plus some constants).Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, Natural Computing, 200

Genetic study of congenital bile-duct dilatation identifies de novo and inherited variants in functionally related genes

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