Awareness of Breast Cancer and Its Early Detection Measures Among Female Students, Northern Ethiopia

Globally breast cancer is the most common of all cancers. Since risk reduction strategies cannot eliminate the majority of breast cancers, early detection remains the cornerstone of breast cancer control. This paper, therefore, attempts to assess the awareness of breast cancer and its early detection measures among female students in Mekelle University, Ethiopia. An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted on randomly selected female students. Multistage sampling technique was employed to select the participants. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used. Data analysis was carried out using SPSS version 16. In this study, 760 students participated making a response rate of 96 percent. Respondents with good knowledge score for risk factors, early detections measures and warning signs of breast cancer were 1.4 percent, 3.6 percent and 22.1 percent respectively. The majority 477 (62.8 percent) of participants practiced self-breast examination. In conclusion the participants had poor knowledge of risk factors, early detection measures and early warning signs of breast cancer.Therefore, the Ministry of health of Ethiopia together with its stalk holders should strengthen providing IEC targeting women to increase their awareness about breast cancer and its early detection measure

Community knowledge, attitude and practice on rabies, incidence in humans and animals and risk factors to rabies in selected districts of Tigray Region, Ethiopia

Community awareness and assessing the trend of suspected rabies cases play a significant role in preventing its fatality. Therefore, a cross-sectional study design was employed (October 2016 - April 2017) to assess community knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP), and Incidence and risk factors to rabies (human and animal) in the study area. A semi-structured questionnaire was employed to collect required information from 1440 study participants. Retrospective data of five-year (2012-2016) from hospitals and health centers (human cases), and veterinary clinics (animal cases) was used. Majority of the study participants (64.3%) were rural residents, 95.2% have heard about rabies and 50.1% were found dog owners. Among the study participants, 72.2%, 66.0%, and 62.4% have a good level of knowledge, attitude, and practices about rabies, respectively. A strong association between knowledge, attitude and practice with sex; educational level; occupation, dog ownership and rural/urban dwellers (p<0.05) was recorded. Furthermore, a total dog bite cases of 398 domestic animals and 4617 humans were found registered on casebooks of both veterinary and human health service centers of the study districts during the five years study period among which the highest percentage (36.4%) was recorded from canines. The highest anti-rabies vaccine coverage recorded was 36.0% in the year 2016, and higher human dog bite cases recorded was 50.1% on individuals aged between 5-15 years (both male and female). Hence, the current findings suggest that there is a need for coordinated and integrated effort of government, professionals (medical and veterinarians), community and other stake holders towards rabies control and prevention.Keywords: Animal, Human, Tigray, Rabies, Statu

Algae: Feedstock for Biofuels and Biochemicals

Biomass energy is a great alternative for replacing fossil fuel demands. It has a lot of advantages such as producing clean energy, being renewable and creating a sustainable planet. But, there is no perfect energy source in this world. It also has some disadvantages

Methane and nitrous oxide from ground-based FTIR at Addis Ababa: Observations, error analysis, and comparison with satellite data

A ground-based, high-spectral-resolution Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer has been operational in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (9.01∘ N latitude, 38.76∘ E longitude; 2443 m altitude above sea level), since May 2009 to obtain information on column abundances and profiles of various constituents in the atmosphere. Vertical profile and column abundances of methane and nitrous oxide are derived from solar absorption measurements taken by FTIR for a period that covers May 2009 to March 2013 using the retrieval code PROFFIT (V9.5). A detailed error analysis of CH$_{4}$ and N$_{2}$O retrieval are performed. Averaging kernels of the target gases shows that the major contribution to the retrieved information comes from the measurement. Thus, average degrees of freedom for signals are found to be 2.1 and 3.4, from the retrieval of CH$_{4}$ and N$_{2}$O for the total observed FTIR spectra. Methane and nitrous oxide volume mixing ratio (VMR) profiles and column amounts retrieved from FTIR spectra are compared with data from the reduced spectral resolution Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research/Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IMK/IAA) MIPAS (Version V5R_CH4_224 and V5R_N2O_224), the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) (MLS v3.3 of N$_{2}$O and CH$_{4}$ derived from MLS v3.3 products of CO, N$_{2}$O, and H$_{2}$O), and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) sensors on board satellites. The averaged mean relative difference between FTIR methane and the three correlative instruments MIPAS, MLS, and AIRS are 4.2 %, 5.8 %, and 5.3 % in the altitude ranges of 20 to 27 km, respectively. However, the biases below 20 km are negative, which indicates the profile of CH4 from FTIR is less than the profiles derived from correlative instruments by −4.9 %, −1.8 %, and −2.8 %. The averaged positive bias between FTIR nitrous oxide and correlative instrument, MIPAS, in the altitude range of 20 to 27 km is 7.8 %, and a negative bias of −4 % at altitudes below 20 km. An averaged positive bias of 9.3 % in the altitude range of 17 to 27 km is obtained for FTIR N2O with MLS. In all the comparisons of CH$_{4}$ from FTIR with data from MIPAS, MLS, and AIRS, sensors on board satellites indicate a negative bias below 20 km and a positive bias above 20 km. The mean error between partial-column amounts of methane from MIPAS and the ground-based FTIR is −5.5 %, with a standard deviation of 5 % that shows very good agreement as exhibited by relative differences between vertical profiles. Thus, the retrieved CH$_{4}$ and N$_{2}$O VMR and column amounts from Addis Ababa, tropical site, is found to exhibit very good agreement with all coincident satellite observations. Therefore, the bias obtained from the comparison is comparable to the precision of FTIR measurement, which allows the use of data in further scientific studies as it represents a unique environment of tropical Africa, a region poorly investigated in the past

Moving cleaner fish from the wild into fish farms: A zero-sum game?

Fish that engage in mutualistic cleaning behaviour (‘cleaner fishes’) have recently been popularized as a nature-based method of controlling ectoparasite outbreaks in fish farms. Outbreaks impact animal welfare and threaten wild fish populations; due to this, millions of cleaner fish (especially wrasses from the family Labridae) are wild-caught each year and transferred into Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) farms to remove ectoparasitic sea lice (predominantly Lepeophtheirus salmonis) from farmed salmon and reduce spillover (i.e. parasites transferring from farmed to wild fish) onto vulnerable wild salmonid populations. However, we hypothesize that this practice may result in no net benefit to the infestation pressure on wild fish if gains in farm-based control trade off against the removal of lice from wild fish by wrasse moved from the wild into net pens. Such a scenario would entail a zero-sum game. We test our hypothesis using an ecological simulation of wrasse as cleaners of farmed Atlantic salmon and wild sea trout (Salmo trutta). We parameterized our simulation based on published models of sea lice epidemics from farms to calculate the relative impact of lice when wrasse are removed from the ecosystem to serve as cleaners. Our simulations revealed that a zero-sum game can emerge from this system at unexpectedly infrequent rates of cleaning by wrasse in the wild. Scandinavian wrasses are relatively data poor and parameterizing our simulation revealed a need for better data on the ecological role of these fishes in coastal ecosystems. For the first time, we suggest that wrasse fisheries may be a zero-sum game and that under a plausible set of conditions, fishing wrasse out of coastal ecosystems may do more harm than good for modulating sea lice epidemics. However, we emphasize that these results do not suggest that wrasse alone will play a role in resolving high infestation pressure of lice emanating from fish farms.publishedVersio

Performance Appraisal Fundamentals, Practices and Challenges in Public Sector: Case of Adigrat Town, Ethiopia

PURPOSE & AIM: In Ethiopian Context, the modern Performance Appraisal practices and its implementation are still in its nascent stage, and there exists a gap in understanding the mechanism of performance appraisal processes in the case of Ethiopia’s public sector organizations, which employs a significant proportion of the working population

Temperature Increases Soil Respiration Across Ecosystem Types and Soil Development, But Soil Properties Determine the Magnitude of This Effect

Soil carbon losses to the atmosphere, via soil heterotrophic respiration, are expected to increase in response to global warming, resulting in a positive carbon-climate feedback. Despite the well-known suite of abiotic and biotic factors controlling soil respiration, much less is known about how the magnitude of soil respiration responses to temperature changes over soil development and across contrasting soil properties. Here we investigated the role of soil development stage and soil properties in driving the responses of soil heterotrophic respiration to temperature. We incubated soils from eight chronosequences ranging in soil age from hundreds to million years, and encompassing a wide range of vegetation types, climatic conditions and chronosequences origins, at three assay temperatures (5 °C, 15 °C and 25 °C). We found a consistent positive effect of assay temperature on soil respiration rates across the eight chronosequences evaluated. However, chronosequences parent materials (sedimentary/sand dunes or volcanic) and soil properties (pH, phosphorus content and microbial biomass) determined the magnitude of this temperature effect. Finally, we observed a positive effect of soil development stage on soil respiration across chronosequences that did not alter the magnitude of assay temperature effects. Our work reveals that key soil properties alter the magnitude of the positive effect of temperature on soil respiration found across ecosystem types and soil development stages. This information is essential to better understand the magnitude of the carbon-climate feedback and thus to establish accurate greenhouse gas emission targets.This research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 702057. M.D. was supported by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (FPU-15/00392). M.D. and F.T.M. are supported by the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant Agreement No 647038, BIODESERT). M.D-B. is supported by a Large Research Grant from the British Ecological Society (grant agreement n° LRA17\1193, MUSGONET). F.T.M and M.D-B. acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry (project CGL2017-88124-R). PGP and M.D-B. are supported by a Ramón y Cajal grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2018-024766-I and RYC2018-025483-I, respectively). F.T.M. acknowledges support from the Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2018/041)

Scalable Synthesis of Micron Size Crystals of CH3NH3PbI3 at Room Temperature in Acetonitrile via Rapid Reactive Crystallization

From application point of view, scalable, facile and rapid synthesis method for mass production of a homogeneous and phase pure CH3NH3PbI3 micron size crystal at the industry level is still highly required, although it has been claimed that the CH3NH3PbI3 crystals can be prepared by solution-annealing the precursors at elevated temperature or prolonged reaction time. Herein, polycrystalline CH3NH3PbI3 micron size crystals can be prepared by reactive crystallization of PbI2 and CH3NH3I in a stoichiometric ratio at room temperature. TXM (Transmission X-ray Microscopy), optical microscope, TEM and TEM-EDX analysis were used to confirm the nature of the CH3NH3PbI3 product. Moreover, Ostwald ripening of iodide ion into PbI2 is proposed as the key step to form 3D PbI3−, followed by the intercalation of CH3NH3+ for this reactive crystallization. Interestingly, this result suggests that industry level mass production of micron CH3NH3PbI3 crystals is possible with this novel synthesis method

Unexplained chronic liver disease in Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is assumed to be the major cause of chronic liver disease (CLD) in sub-Saharan Africa. The contribution of other aetiological causes of CLD is less well documented and hence opportunities to modulate other potential risk factors are being lost. The aims of this study were to explore the aetiological spectrum of CLD in eastern Ethiopia and to identify plausible underlying risk factors for its development. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was undertaken between April 2015 and April 2016 in two public hospitals in Harar, eastern Ethiopia. The study population comprised of consenting adults with clinical and radiological evidence of chronic liver disease. The baseline evaluation included: (i) a semi-structured interview designed to obtain information about the ingestion of alcohol, herbal medicines and local recreational drugs such as khat (Catha edulis); (ii) clinical examination; (iii) extensive laboratory testing; and, (iv) abdominal ultrasonography. RESULTS: One-hundred-and-fifty patients with CLD (men 72.0%; median age 30 [interquartile range 25-40] years) were included. CLD was attributed to chronic HBV infection in 55 (36.7%) individuals; other aetiological agents were identified in a further 12 (8.0%). No aetiological factors were identified in the remaining 83 (55.3%) patients. The overall prevalence of daily khat use was 78.0%, while alcohol abuse, defined as > 20 g/day in women and > 30 g/day in men, was rare (2.0%). Histological features of toxic liver injury were observed in a subset of patients with unexplained liver injury who underwent liver biopsy. CONCLUSION: The aetiology of CLD in eastern Ethiopia is largely unexplained. The widespread use of khat in the region, together with histopathological findings indicating toxic liver injury, suggests an association which warrants further investigation

On the role of soil water retention characteristic on aerobic microbial respiration

Soil water status is one of the most important environmental factors that control microbial activity and rate of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Its effect can be partitioned into effect of water energy status (water potential) on cellular activity, effect of water volume on cellular motility, and aqueous diffusion of substrate and nutrients, as well as the effect of air content and gas-diffusion pathways on concentration of dissolved oxygen. However, moisture functions widely used in SOM decomposition models are often based on empirical functions rather than robust physical foundations that account for these disparate impacts of soil water. The contributions of soil water content and water potential vary from soil to soil according to the soil water characteristic (SWC), which in turn is strongly dependent on soil texture and structure. The overall goal of this study is to introduce a physically based modeling framework of aerobic microbial respiration that incorporates the role of SWC under arbitrary soil moisture status. The model was tested by comparing it with published datasets of SOM decomposition under laboratory conditions.</p