Assessing the Impacts of Rico Gado Feed Mill on its Surrounding Communities – A Sustainable Development Approach

Uncontrolled expansion of agro-allied factories on agricultural farmlands usually impact on the socio economic and environmental quality thereby threatening the livelihoods of inhabitants of such communities. Rico Gado feed mill was established to produce feeds for livestock that could help diffuse the conflicts between farmers and herdsmen that compete over land. This research assesses the impact of the physical and socio-economic characteristics of Hosere and Wuro Jauro Bappa communities affected by Rico Gado, with a view to identify existing problems and proffer solutions. The study observed that about 60% of respondents from Hosere and 57% from Wuro Jauro Bappa engage in farming. Despite the acquisition of the land upon which the communities farm and rear livestock, only about 6% - 7% of the people are employed in the factory. The factory has not impacted positively on the income of residents and low income is evident as 25% of respondents earn between N5,000- N10,000 monthly in Wuro Jauro Bappa, while 50% earn N10000 – N20000 in both communities, and about 50% in Hosere and only 25% in Wuro Jauro Bappa earn above N20000. The resulting unemployment rate coined with inadequate infrastructural facilities led to increasing poverty, forcing other residents to relocate elsewhere. The study therefore recommend sustainable development strategies to promote development that impact positively on environmental quality, and encourage desirable physical, economic and socio-economic conditions, in intergenerational manner to circumvent consequent dislodgment of the communities. Keywords: Factory Farming, Physical and Socio-Economic Impact, Sustainable Developmen

Post-Mortem diagnosis of dementia by informant interview.

The diagnosis of normal cognition or dementia in the Brazilian Brain Bank of the Aging Brain Study Group (BBBABSG) has relied on postmortem interview with an informant. Objectives:To ascertain the sensitivity and specificity of postmortem diagnosis based on informant interview compared against the diagnosis established at a memory clinic. Methods:A prospective study was conducted at the BBBABSG and at the Reference Center for Cognitive Disorders (RCCD), a specialized memory clinic of the Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo Medical School. Control subjects and cognitively impaired subjects were referred from the Hospital das Clínicas to the RCCD where subjects and their informants were assessed. The same informant was then interviewed at the BBBABSG. Specialists' panel consensus, in each group, determined the final diagnosis of the case, blind to other center's diagnosis. Data was compared for frequency of diagnostic equivalence. For this study, the diagnosis established at the RCCD was accepted as the gold standard. Sensitivity and specificity were computed. Results:Ninety individuals were included, 45 with dementia and 45 without dementia (26 cognitively normal and 19 cognitively impaired but non-demented). The informant interview at the BBBABSG had a sensitivity of 86.6% and specificity of 84.4% for the diagnosis of dementia, and a sensitivity of 65.3% and specificity of 93.7% for the diagnosis of normal cognition. Conclusions:The informant interview used at the BBBABSG has a high specificity and sensitivity for the diagnosis of dementia as well as a high specificity for the diagnosis of normal cognition

The Informant Volume VI, Number 2

Volume VI, Number 2 Winter 1974 Linguistics Aspects of Intercultural Adjustment in East Africa Course and Program Changes Course Changes -- Undergraduate Courses Course Changes -- 500 Level Courses Revised Linguistics Major and Minor Spring, Summer, and Fall Schedules New Majors and Minors Faculty Activities Enrollment -- Winter Semester 1974 Graduation Student Honors, Awards, and Assistantships Winter Reception and Speaker Call for Paper

How reliable are group informant ratings?

The reliability of food security rating, a variant of the more familiar wealth ranking procedure, was tested in a rural area of Western Honduras. Twenty workshop sessions were conducted in 13 different communities, with members of organized small farmers' groups attended by a large agricultural development project. Participants were all poor farmers with no more than 10 hectares of land. Participants, who generally knew each other well, were split into small sets and each set was asked to rate the food security status of all households in their organized group. Inter-rater agreement was assessed using the Kappa statistic, and related to other characteristics of the informants and workshop sessions, using multiple regression methods. Agreement was very poor (median value 6 = 0.29), especially for the category "Intermittenly Food Insecure," and was associated with time elapsed since training of the session moderators. Women were 49 percent more likely than men to classify a given family as food insecure (P 0.001). The authors put forward seven different hypotheses to explain the poor reliability of the rating method, which should be investigated in future research if the credibility of the method is to be reinforced.Statistics. ,Food security Household. ,Small farmers. ,

The Informant Volume XI, Number 2

Volume XI, Number 2 Winter 1979 Chomsky\u27s Visit to WMU The Language and Linguistics Forum The Informant Career English Program Latvian Studies Program Course and Curriculum Changes for 1979-80 Faculty/Staff News New Students -- Recent Graduates Student/Alumni News Undergraduate Major and Minor Critical Language Minor Graduate Major Linguistics Department Fall 197

Informant single screening questions for delirium and dementia in acute care – a cross-sectional test accuracy pilot study

Background Cognitive impairment often goes undetected in older people in hospital. Efficient screening tools are required to improve detection.<p></p> To determine diagnostic properties of two separate informant-based single screening questions for cognitive impairment (dementia and delirium) in hospitalised older people.<p></p> Methods Patients over 65 years non-electively admitted to medical or geriatric wards within a teaching hospital. Our index tests were single screening questions (SSQ), one for dementia (“How has your relative/friend’s memory changed over the past 5 years (up to just before their current illness)?”) and one for delirium (“How has your relative/friend’s memory changed with his/her current illness?”), which were assessed with informant response given on a five point Likert scale.<p></p> Any deterioration on our index tests of SSQ-dementia and SSQ-delirium was accepted as a positive screen for cognitive impairment. Scores were compared to the Informant Questionnaire for Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) >3.38 accepted as dementia, and Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) diagnosis of delirium. We also collected direct cognitive screening data using Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE).<p></p> Results Informant responses were obtained in 70/161 (43.5%) patients, median age 80.8 (range:67–97) years; mean MMSE score 18.5 (SD: 8.1). The SSQ-dementia when compared to the IQCODE had a sensitivity of 83.3% and specificity of 93.1%. The SSQ-delirium when compared to CAM diagnosis had sensitivity of 76.9% and a specificity of 56.1%.<p></p> Conclusions These findings show promise for use of an informant single screening question tool as the first step in detection of dementia in older people in acute hospital care, although this approach appears to be less accurate in screening for delirium.<p></p&gt

American Informant

Part of my childhood was spent in Baghdad, Iraq, during the rule of Saddam Hussein. At that time, the regime offered free and universal education and healthcare. Literacy rates in the country surpassed much of the Arabic-speaking world and, indeed, the Global South. As the celebrated Egyptian intellectual, Taha Hussein, famously put it: “Cairo writes; Beirut prints; and Baghdad reads.” Booksellers were everywhere in Baghdad. Its people read voraciously and passionately debated literature, poetry, and a range of other subjects. But what struck me, even as a child, was the absence of sustained talk about politics in bookshops, markets, and other public spaces. I knew that adults could not stay away from the topic of politics in more intimate, private settings, where a deeper level of trust usually reigned. Once you entered the public sphere, however, discretion about politics—and especially local politics—clearly became the better part of valor. Iraqi society had been so thoroughly infiltrated by elements of Hussein’s intelligence services that ordinary people knew to tread with extreme caution. After all, the person standing within earshot at a bustling Baghdad market, overhearing your conversation—or maybe even your direct interlocutor— could be an informant. And the stakes were high: incarceration, torture, or death. That was an early introduction to the valency of informants—their capacity to interact with the society that surrounds them and their distorting effect on it. The lesson has colored my subsequent work on surveillance, including this reflection on the contemporary role of informants in the United States