Inducing phenotypic variants in sesame (Sesamunindicum L.) with fast neutron irradiation

The mutagenic efficiency and effectiveness of fast neutron irradiation on sesame was evaluated at M1 and M2 generations with the aim of deserning its abiity to induce beneficial mutants with improved agronomic traits that could facilitate selection within local genotypes. Five grames (5g) each of sesame seeds were exposed to four concentrations of sodium azide (0.5mM, 1.0mM, 1.5mM and 2.0mM).Untreated sesame seeds (5g) served as control. The treatments were laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Fast neutron significantly (p<0.05) induced benefitial variabilities on the agronomic traits evaluated. Mutation frequency, mutagenic efficiency and lethalithy induced by fast neutron were not dose dependent. However, the mutagenic effectiveness decreased with increasing dose. Seeds exposed to 0.16sv fast neutron dose showed taller seedling height (15.70cm), reduced days to flowering (45.00), best height at maturity (32.43cm), highest survival rate (35.43%), highest number of leaf per plants (12.50), highest internode length (16.50cm) and best dry weight (12.70g). However, sesame mutants had the best number of seeds per plant (4.60) and thousand seed weight (5.00g) at 0.32sv fast neutron dose. Broad sense heritability estimates for the agronomic traits ranged from 5.96% to 89.73%. Days to flowering recorded the highest heritability value of 89.73%. High heritabilities were also recorded for height at maturity (86.71%) and thousand seed weight (80.00%). Variability in phenotypic characters reflected the existence of genetic diversity among the genotypes.Keywords: Mutation, Irradiation, Sesame, Heritability, Trait

Farm level efficiency of rubber as a perennial crop: a translog production frontier approach

This paper examines productivity of rubber in Peninsular Malaysia in a disaggregated form, since rubber is a perennial crop and grows in phases. Data collection was done on 327 smallholders among five districts of Negeri Sembilan state. However, only 307 observations were used in computing inferential statistics, because the young-age category has been removed due to statistically scanty nature of the sample size. The districts include Seremban, Tampin, Rembau, Kuala Pilah and Jempol. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were computed. The descriptive statistics revealed that 52.3% of the respondents were males, while 47.7% were females. 282 were Malays, while 7 and 2 were Chinese and Indians race respectively. Ninety three percent were married, almost 50% had secondary school certificate while only 2% were diploma holders. With regards to location, 41% ,32%,12.6%, 11% and 3.4% were from Jempol, Rembau, Kuala Pillah, Serembanand Tampinrespectively. The results further revealed that the mean rubber yield in kg/ha for the all-age, matured-age and old-age crops categories were 3,638 kg/ha, 4,611 kg/ha and 1,653 kg/ha respectively. This is an indication that matured-age category was found to be relatively higher in terms of rubber yield per hectare. The study also revealed that the mean technical efficiencies (TE) were 0.87, 0.91 and 0.65 respectively for all-age, matured-age and old-age crops. This means that there is actually a difference in mean TE between the all-age and the matured-age and old-age categories and thus, the study concludes that there is quite a difference between the aggregate and disaggregated forms as regards to both the yield and rubber efficiency. The study recommends that, number of household, tapping experience, farmers’ age and level of education of smallholders should be given more attention to increase efficiency. Also, tapping system of one-half spiral cut and alternate daily tapping (S/2 d2) should be adopted. The study further recommends that the traditional concept of computing efficiency or productivity of rubber and other perennial crops in an aggregated form should be complemented with the disaggregated form as this eliminates any bias and gives meaningful results.Keywords: Efficiency, Parametric, Stochastic Frontier Analysis, Translog and Rubbe

Isolation and Identification of Air Borne Fungal Spores and Fragments in Buildings Within Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, Nigeria

- Indoor air contains a complex mixture of microorganisms, microorganism fragments, and by products such as molds, bacteria, endotoxins, mycotoxins, and volatile microbial organic compounds. Airborne fungi and bacteria can be toxic, allergenic and/or infectious. A research was conducted to determine the number and types of airborne fungal spores in Buildings of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, Nigeria. Five (5) areas were chosen within the University for the Survey, these were student Hostel, Staff Quarters, Botanical garden, Microbiology laboratory and city campus of Usmanu Danfodiyo University. . A total number of fifteen (15) petri dishes containing potato dextrose agar each were vertically placed in each sampler and exposed at end of each height and site for 10 and 20 minutes respectively. A total of thirteen (13) different fungal specie were identified namely; Aspergillus Niger, A. flavus, A fumigates, A. ustus, A. terreus, Fusarium solani, F. oxysporum, Alterneria altenata, Rhizopus oryzae, R. stolonifer, Helminthosporum sp., Penicillum candidum and Absedia corymbifera. Aspergillus Niger had the highest frequency of occurrence of (14.9%), Helminthosporus species had the least frequency of occurrence of (1.5%). Conclusively it was observed that the concentration of fungal spores was high in the upper surface than the ground level at the time of the survey

Transport on flexible Rydberg aggregates using circular states

Assemblies of interacting Rydberg atoms show promise for the quantum simulation of transport phenomena, quantum chemistry and condensed matter systems. Such schemes are typically limited by the finite lifetime of Rydberg states. Circular Rydberg states have the longest lifetimes among Rydberg states but lack the energetic isolation in the spectrum characteristic of low angular momentum states. The latter is required to obtain simple transport models with few electronic states per atom. Simple models can however even be realized with circular states, by exploiting dipole-dipole selection rules or external fields. We show here that this approach can be particularly fruitful for scenarios where quantum transport is coupled to atomic motion, in adiabatic excitation transport or quantum simulations of electron-phonon coupling in light harvesting. Additionally, we explore practical limitations of flexible Rydberg aggregates with circular states and to which extent interactions among circular Rydberg atoms can be described using classical models.Comment: 9 Pages, 5 Figure

Interfacial shear in adiabatic downward gas/liquid co-current annular flow in pipes

Interfacial friction is one of the key variables for predicting annular two-phase flow behaviours in vertical pipes. In order to develop an improved correlation for interfacial friction factor in downward co-current annular flow, the pressure gradient, film thickness and film velocity data were generated from experiments carried out on Cranfield University’s Serpent Rig, an air/water two-phase vertical flow loop of 101.6 mm internal diameter. The air and water superficial velocity ranges used are 1.42–28.87 and 0.1–1.0 m/s respectively. These correspond to Reynolds number values of 8400–187,000 and 11,000–113,000 respectively. The correlation takes into account the effect of pipe diameter by using the interfacial shear data together with dimensionless liquid film thicknesses related to different pipe sizes ranging from 10 to 101.6 mm, including those from published sources by numerous investigators. It is shown that the predictions of this new correlation outperform those from previously reported studies

Family Planning Services in Africa: The Successes and Challenges

The world population is on the increase, and the majority of this increase will be from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It is estimated that by 2030 the population of Africa will rise to 1.3 billion. Published peer-reviewed journals, abstracts, Gray literature (government documents, technical reports, other reports, etc.), internet articles and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) reports were used as resource materials. Manual search of reference list of selected articles was checked for further relevant studies. Family planning (FP) programmes that started in 1960s across SSA have made steady progress with contraceptive prevalence rates still very low and unacceptably high unmet need. Despite near universal knowledge on contraceptives, there is an obvious knowledge-practice gap. There are barriers, personal, religious and community levels, to contraceptive use. Contraceptives have a lot of benefits to the mother, child and community. Thus, there is a need for publicity campaigns through information, education and communication (IEC) to address social and cultural barriers to FP including misconceptions and misinformation. Contraception should be vigorously promoted in SSA not only for its demographic dividends but also on socio-economic and health grounds and the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Vertical annular gas–liquid two-phase flow in large diameter pipes

Gas–liquid annular two phase flow in pipes is important in the oil and gas, nuclear and the process industries. It has been identified as one of the most frequently encountered flow regimes and many models (empirical and theoretical) for the film flow and droplet behaviour for example have been developed since the 1950s. However, the behaviour in large pipes (those with diameter greater than 100 mm) has not been fully explored. As a result, the two- phase flow characteristics, data, and models specifically for such pipes are scarce or non-existent such that those from smaller pipes are extrapolated for use in design and operation. Many authors have cautioned against this approach since multiphase pipe flow behaviour is different between small and large pipes. For instance the typical slug flows seem not to occur in vertical upwards flows when the pipe diameter exceeds 100 mm. It is therefore imperative that theoretical models and empirical correlations for such large diameter pipes are specifically developed. ...[cont.

Gas/liquid flow behaviours in a downward section of large diameter vertical serpentine pipes

An experimental study on air/water flow behaviours in a 101.6 mm i.d. vertical pipe with a serpentine configuration is presented. The experiments are conducted for superficial gas and liquid velocities ranging from 0.15 to 30 m/s and 0.07 to 1.5 m/s, respectively. The bend effects on the flow behaviours are significantly reduced when the flow reaches an axial distance of 30 pipe diameters or more from the upstream bend. The mean film thickness data from this study has been used to compare with the predicted data using several falling film correlations and theoretical models. It was observed that the large pipe data exhibits different tendencies and this manifests in the difference in slope when the dimensionless film thickness is plotted as a power law function of the liquid film Reynolds number

Antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of Aeromonas hydrophila among patients presented with diarrhea attending two teaching hospitals in northern, Nigeria

A total of one hundred and twenty eight (128) stool samples were collected from patients attending Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria and Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital Kano, and screened for the presence of Aeromonas hydrophila infection. Out of the one hundred and twenty eight samples analyzed 4 (3.12%) were found positive for Aeromonas hydrophila infection. Antibioticsusceptibility testing of Aeromonas hydrophila isolated showed that all the 4 (100%) isolates were sensitive to Colistin and Ceftazidime, 3 (75%) to Augmentin and 2(50%) to Gentamicin and Cefuroxine. All the isolates (100%) were however resistant to Cotrimoxazole, Tetracycline, Sulphatriad, Streptomycin, Cephalothin and Ampicilin. This study confirmed that Aeromonas hydrophila as a sole enteropathogen could be responsible for diarrhea and should be considered amongst the causative agents of diarrhea. Key words: Aeromonas, diarrhoea, antibiotic, susceptibility testing, ABUTH, AKTH