Improving small ruminant productivity and livelihood through feed and health interventions in northern Ghana

United States Agency for International Developmen

An Assessment of Institutional Importance of Climate Change Adaptation in the Volta River Basin of Northern Ghana

Climate change affects a lot of sectors including agriculture. Several measures are being adopted to avert the impacts associated with it. Water resources in semi-arid areas are not excluded. The study, conducted in Lawra District of Upper West region of Ghana was undertaken to identify and assess the adaptation strategies adopted by settlers along and in the Volta River Basin as well as to analyse the level of agreements among the institutions that are helping farmers to adapt to climate change impacts. This study used a mixed method including focus group discussion and a semi-structured questionnaire to obtain information from 160 farming households in 8 randomly selected communities in the Lawra district. Results revealed three classes of adaptation strategies which include environmental, cultural/agronomic and economic strategies. Majority (65%) of the settlers adopted the environmental practices, whiles 52% of the respondents also adopted the cultural/agronomic practices and less than half of the respondents (31%) adopted the economic practices. We viewed that adoption levels, though more than half of the respondents adopted the environmental and cultural strategies, are still not encouraging given the magnitude of interventions related to water management. The results also reveal that community watchdogs, climate change, agriculture and food security platforms and non-governmental organisations are the three most important institutions working to improve farmer resilience to climate change. Therefore the results could restimulate policy implementation with the overall aim of increasing adoption levels of the strategies. Only when this is done, will a significant step have been taken towards saving our water resources from climate change impacts

LHRH-Conjugated Drugs as Targeted Therapeutic Agents for the Specific Targeting and Localized Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Bulk chemotherapy and drug release strategies for cancer treatment have been associated with lack of specificity and high drug concentrations that often result in toxic side effects. This work presents the results of an experimental study of cancer drugs (prodigiosin or paclitaxel) conjugated to Luteinizing Hormone-Releasing Hormone (LHRH) for the specific targeting and treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Injections of LHRH-conjugated drugs (LHRH-prodigiosin or LHRH-paclitaxel) into groups of 4-week-old athymic female nude mice (induced with subcutaneous triple negative xenograft breast tumors) were found to specifically target, eliminate or shrink tumors at early, mid and late stages without any apparent cytotoxicity, as revealed by in vivo toxicity and ex vivo histopathological tests. Our results show that overexpressed LHRH receptors serve as binding sites on the breast cancer cells/tumor and the LHRH-conjugated drugs inhibited the growth of breast cells/tumor in in vitro and in vivo experiments. The inhibitions are attributed to the respective adhesive interactions between LHRH molecular recognition units on the prodigiosin (PGS) and paclitaxel (PTX) drugs and overexpressed LHRH receptors on the breast cancer cells and tumors. The implications of the results are discussed for the development of ligand-conjugated drugs for the specific targeting and treatment of TNBC

Laser application of nanocomposite hydrogels on cancer cell viability

This is the Accepted Manuscript version of this article which has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Materials Research Society or Cambridge University Press, in MRS Advances published by Materials Research Society and Cambridge University Press, together with a copyright notice in the name of the copyright holder (Materials Research Society). On publication, the full bibliographical details of the article (volume: issue number (date), page numbers) will be inserted after the journal-title, together with a link to the Cambridge website address for the JournalNanocomposite hydrogels of poly-n-isopropyl were prepared by incorporating gold and magnetite nanoparticles. The nanocomposite-based hydrogels formed were geometrical, ~7.3 mm in diameter and 5 mm thick (in the swollen state). Morphological analysis was characterized by a scanning electron microscope. Drug-loaded hydrogels were subjected to laser heating at 1 W, 1.5 W and 2 W for 20 min in each laser cycle. The metabolic activities of the cells were analysed. The photothermal conversion efficiency of the nanocomposite hydrogels was also evaluated for P(NIPA)-AuNP-PG and P(NIPA)-MNP-PG to be 36.93 and 32.57 %, respectively. The result was then discussed for potential applications whereby metalbased hydrogels can be employed in microfluidic devices for targeted cancer drug delivery.Pan-African Materials Institute (PAMI) (Grant No. P126974) - funding. Ashesi University, Ghana Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) US

Integrating temperature-dependent life table data into Insect Life Cycle Model for predicting the potential distribution of Scapsipedus icipe Hugel & Tanga

Open Access Journal; Published online: 25 Sept 2019Scapsipedus icipe Hugel and Tanga (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) is a newly described edible cricket species. Although, there is substantial interest in mass production of S. icipe for human food and animal feed, no information exists on the impact of temperature on their bionomics. Temperature-dependent development, survival, reproductive and life table parameters of S. icipe was generated and integrated into advanced Insect Life Cycle Modeling software to describe relative S. icipe population increase and spatial spread based on nine constant temperature conditions. We examined model predictions and implications for S. icipe potential distribution in Africa under current and future climate. These regions where entomophagy is widely practiced have distinctly different climates. Our results showed that S. icipe eggs were unable to hatch at 10 and 40˚C, while emerged nymphs failed to complete development at 15˚C. The developmental time of S. icipe was observed to decrease with increased in temperature. The lowest developmental threshold temperatures estimated using linear regressions was 14.3, 12.67 and 19.12˚C and the thermal constants for development were 185.2, 1111.1- and 40.7-degree days (DD) for egg, nymph and pre-adult stages, respectively. The highest total fecundity (3416 individuals/female/generation), intrinsic rate of natural increase (0.075 days), net reproductive rate (1330.8 female/female/generation) and shortest doubling time (9.2 days) was recorded at 30˚C. The regions predicted to be suitable by the model suggest that S. icipe is tolerant to a wider range of climatic conditions. Our findings provide for the first-time important information on the impact of temperature on the biology, establishment and spread of S. icipe across the Africa continent. The prospect of edible S. icipe production to become a new sector in food and feed industry is discussed