Traditional agroecological knowledge and practices:The drivers and opportunities for adaptation actions in the northern region of Ghana

Agroecological practices are promoted as a more proactive approach than conventional agriculture to achieving a collective global response to climate change and variability while building robust and resilient agricultural systems to meet food needs and protect the integrity of ecosystems.There is relatively limited evidence on the key traditional agroecological knowledge and practices adopted by smallholder farmers,the factors that influence smallholder farmers’decision to adopt these practices,and the opportunities it presents for building resilient agricultural systems.Using a multi-scale mixed method approach,we conducted key informant interviews(n=12),focus group discussions(n=5),and questionnaire surveys(N=220)to explore the traditional agroecological knowledge and practices,the influencing factors,and the opportunities smallholder farmers presented for achieving resilient agricultural systems.Our findings suggest that smallholder farmers employ a suite of traditional agroecological knowledge and practices to enhance food security,combat climate change,and build resilient agricultural systems.The most important traditional agroecological knowledge and practices in the study area comprise cultivating leguminous crops,mixed crop-livestock systems,and crop rotation,with Relative Importance Index(RII)values of 0.710,0.708,and 0.695,respectively.It is reported that the choice of these practices by smallholder farmers is influenced by their own farming experience,access to market,access to local resources,information,and expertise,and the perceived risk of climate change.Moreover,the results further show that improving household food security and nutrition,improving soil quality,control of pest and disease infestation,and support from NonGovernmental Organizations(NGOs)and local authorities are opportunities for smallholder farmers in adopting traditional agroecological knowledge and practices for achieving resilient agricultural systems.The findings call into question the need for stakeholders and policy-makers at all levels to develop capacity and increase the awareness of traditional agroecological knowledge and practices as mechanisms to ensure resilient agricultural systems for sustainable food security.

Evaluation of the Efficiency of the Magicramp® Device for Reducing Cramps Resulting from Oncological Treatments: “Double-Blind, Randomized Clinical Trial”

We identified that oncological treatments in general (chemotherapies, immunotherapies and radiotherapies) frequently cause peripheral neuropathy, including cramps, characterized by excess protons due to metabolic and neuronal factors, such as sudden changes in pH, uremia and aspects that affect neuromotor functions. Such situations and others like them are often neglected in treatment, which naturally concerns itself with the main problem: Cancer. Sometimes toxic solutions are implemented that have comorbid side effects, such as duloxetine (standard treatment). Based on monitoring of cancer patients who used the non-toxic product, called “Magicramp® Electrostatic Charge Reduction Cushion” (MECRC), approved in Europe more than 10 years ago, we carried out a controlled test in Brazil. In this clinical trial, we hypothesized that reducing excessive ionic charges (electrostatic charge), which is one of the side effects often described in the literature as “Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy” (CIPN), would decrease or eliminate cramping, under the hypothesis that such elimination would prevent or attenuate muscular vulnerability to action impulses, and increase the power of relaxation through the same mechanism. In this double-blind and randomized clinical trial, 40 (forty) adult patients with muscle cramps caused by oncological treatments were tested, evaluating the degree of efficiency of the product that aims to reduce muscle cramps, by eliminating and/or reducing excess loads electrostatic ionic. Data from the clinical research conducted in this study are available online at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QUS94U.

Experimental Study on Bubble Pulse Features Under the Combined Action of Horizontal and Vertical Walls

The pulse features of a bubble have a close connection with the boundary condition. When a bubble moves near a rigid wall, it will be attracted by the Bjerknes force of the wall, and a jet pointing at the wall will be generated. In real application, the bubble may move under the combined action of walls in different directions when it forms at the corner of a pipe or at the bottom of a dam. The motion of the bubble shows complex and nonlinear characteristics under these conditions. In order to investigate the bubble pulse features near complex walls, a horizontal wall and a vertical wall are put into the experimental water tank synchronously, and an electric circuit with 200 voltages is designed to generate discharge bubbles, and then experimental study on the bubble pulse features under the combined action of horizontal and vertical walls is carried out. The influences of the combined action of two walls on the bubble shape, pulse period, moving trace and inside jet are obtained by changing the distances from bubble center to the two walls. It aims at providing references for the relevant theoretical and numerical research.

Chemospecific and Regioselective Ethereal Methyl-Oxygen Bond Cleavage Behavior of Aroylated Dimethoxynaphthalenes by Combined Action of AlCl₃and Aroyl Group

AlCl3-mediated cleavage of ethereal methyl–oxygen bond in aroylated 2,7-dimethoxynaphthalene compounds proceeds chemospecifically and regioselectively. The ethereal bond at the β(2)-position of 1-monoaroylated 2,7-dimethoxynaphthalene is cleaved readily and predominantly against the β(7)-position, whereas scission of β-ethereal bonds of 1,8-diaroylated 2,7-dimethoxynaphthalene hardly undergoes like the non-aroylated mother frame compound of 2,7-dimethoxynaphthalene.

Theory of pleiotropic action of biologically active compounds and medicines—Basic principles and practical application

This article represents the main positions of the theory of pleiotropic action of biologically active compounds (BACs) and medicines, which has been designed by the author based on her own experimental researches. The term “pleiotropy” means the ability of the BACs and medicines to implement more than one mechanism of action resulting in the specific biological (pharmacological) effect. The interaction of these mechanisms forms a distinct pattern of biological response (pleiotropic pattern), which reflects the change in his character with the increased dose (concentration)-dependent efficacy of BACs and medicines. The article consists of description of different pleiotropic patterns established in experiments on the model of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation by macrophages dependent on activity of specialized enzyme called Nox2-NAD(P)H oxidase (Nox2, EC 1.6.3.1). Moreover, it consists of explanation of pharmacodynamic nature of pleiotropic patterns by means of application Chou-Talalay median effect equalization and combination index (CI) theory. The novel theory explains unsolved until now universal aspects of activity BACs and medicines, such as slope angles of “dose-effect” dependences in the conditions relevant in vivo, and it is of fundamental interest. However, it has applications in experimental pharmacology, as it allows defining the choice of the individual compounds and combinations, modulating the trust effect selectively and efficiently. This knowledge opens up new approaches to medicines discovery and evaluation, their rational dosing and combining.

Decision Tree and Naive Bayes Algorithm for Classification and Generation of Actionable Knowledge for Direct Marketing

Many companies like credit card, insurance, bank, retail industry require direct marketing. Data mining can help those institutes to set marketing goal. Data mining techniques have good prospects in their target audiences and improve the likelihood of response. In this work we have investigated two data mining techniques: the Naive Bayes and the C4.5 decision tree algorithms. The goal of this work is to predict whether a client will subscribe a term deposit. We also made comparative study of performance of those two algorithms. Publicly available UCI data is used to train and test the performance of the algorithms. Besides, we extract actionable knowledge from decision tree that focuses to take interesting and important decision in business area.

On the Construction of Knowledge Ecology Models in the Strategic Change from Traditional Enterprises to Innovative Enterprises from the Perspective of Combination Innovation

The paper expounds the extensive ecological process of knowledge creation in the strategic change from traditional enterprises to innovative enterprises from the perspective of integrating innovation,analyzes the systematic integration process of the three links including knowledge preparation,knowledge production and knowledge diffusion in the two different change paths of integrated innovation and digestive absorption innovation,and establishes the knowledge ecology models in different paths.

Study on scour around vertical large-size cylinder base due to combined action of wave and current

Based on the mechanism of local scour around vertical large-sized cylinder due to combined action of wave and current,the sour morphology,scour process and the maximum scour depth around the cylinders are studied experimentally.The influence of various ocean environmental parameters on local scour around the cylinder is considered in physical model test.The experimental results indicate that the principal effect factors on the scour in fine-sand seabed are wave height,wavelength,current velocity,ratio of diameter to wavelength and ratio of depth to wavelength when the ratio of cylinder diameter to wavelength is from 0.2 to 0.8.In this paper,dimensional analysis theory is utilized to establish a theoretical equation for forecasting maximum scour depth around large-sized round cylinder base due to the combined action of wave and current.The results computed with the theoretical equation are compared with the experimental results,and found to be in good consistency.The results in this studies can be used to estimate the maximum sour depth around analogous structures.

Agglomerative Approach for Identification and Elimination of Web Robots from Web Server Logs to Extract Knowledge about Actual Visitors

In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of ensemble-based learners for web robot session identification from web server logs. We also perform multi fold robot session labeling to improve the performance of learner. We conduct a comparative study for various ensemble methods (Bagging, Boosting, and Voting) with simple classifiers in perspective of classification. We also evaluate the effectiveness of these classifiers (both ensemble and simple) on five different data sets of varying session length. Presently the results of web server log analyzers are not very much reliable because the input log files are highly inflated by sessions of automated web traverse software’s, known as web robots. Presence of web robots access traffic entries in web server log repositories imposes a great challenge to extract any actionable and usable knowledge about browsing behavior of actual visitors. So web robots sessions need accurate and fast detection from web server log repositories to extract knowledge about genuine visitors and to produce correct results of log analyzers.

Multiscale Combined Action and Disturbance Characteristics of Pre-summer Extreme Precipitation Events over South China

The dominant frequency modes of pre-summer extreme precipitation events(EPEs)over South China(SC)between1998 and 2018 were investigated.The 67 identified EPEs were all characterized by the 3-8-d(synoptic)frequency band.However,multiscale combined modes of the synoptic and three low-frequency bands[10-20-d(quasi-biweekly,QBW);15-40-d(quasi-monthly,QM);and 20-60-d(intraseasonal)]accounted for the majority(63%)of the EPEs,and the precipitation intensity on the peak wet day was larger than that of the single synoptic mode.It was found that EPEs form within strong southwesterly anomalous flows characterized by either lower-level cyclonic circulation over SC or a deep trough over eastern China.Bandpass-filtered disturbances revealed the direct precipitating systems and their life cycles.Synoptic-scale disturbances are dominated by mid-high latitude troughs,and the cyclonic anomalies originate from downstream of the Tibetan Plateau(TP).Given the warm and moist climate state,synoptic-scale northeasterly flows can even induce EPEs.At the QBW and QM scales,the disturbances originate from the tropical Pacific,downstream of the TP,or mid-high latitudes(QBW only).Each is characterized by cyclonic-anticyclonic wave trains and intense southwesterly flows between them within a region of large horizontal pressure gradient.The intraseasonal disturbances are confined to tropical regions and influence SC by marginal southwesterly flows.It is concluded that low-frequency disturbances provide favorable background conditions for EPEs over SC and synoptic-scale disturbances ultimately induce EPEs on the peak wet days.Both should be simultaneously considered for EPE predictions over SC.

Pattern of Uncomplicated Malaria Treatment and Antimalarial Prescription Practices among Health Workers in the Littoral Region of Cameroon: An Assessment of Ten Years Post-Malaria Treatment Policy Change

Following highly prevalent Plasmodium resistant strains to antimalarial monotherapies in malaria endemic countries, uncomplicated malaria treatment policy changed to artemisinine-based combination therapies (ACTs). After adoption of this new treatment policy in a country, sufficient care is needed to be taken to prevent occurrence of resistance to the latest drugs. As Cameroon shifted to ACT in 2004, this study aimed to assess knowledge and practices of health workers in government health facilities of the Littoral region regarding mild malaria management in health facilities as well as according to prescription qualities of ACTs in leaflets received in pharmacies. A total of 66 physicians and 16 nurses were questioned in 10 health facilities and 503 medical leaflets with ACTs prescriptions were viewed in 17 pharmacies. All medical workers questioned correctly were defined mild malaria and were aware of the antimalarial policy change in Cameroon. Overall ACTs prescription for mild malaria management in children and adult patients was 72.2% and 87.8% respectively. An important proportion of health workers prescribed antimalarial monotherapies and non recommended antimalarial for uncomplicated malaria treatment. 31.7% of participants did not systematically recommend laboratory diagnostic test before antimalarial prescription. Of leaflets viewed in pharmacies, ACTs were prescribed by physicians, nurses and laboratory technicians. Age was the only criteria for ACTs prescription. Appropriate ACTs quality prescription ranged between 81.2% and 94.4%. Of the ACTs prescribed, blisters had the highest (92.9%) appropriate quality prescription and solutions the lowest (83.3%). According to qualification of prescribers, physicians had the highest score (93.1%) of appropriate quality prescription and laboratory technicians the lowest score (28.1%). For all ACTs containing medical leaflets, concomitant medications were recorded namely antipyretic (73.9%), antibiotic (21.9%), non steroid anti-inflammatory (19.9%) or vitamins (18.1%). Data gathered indicated that although health workers were aware of uncomplicated malaria treatment policy change in Cameroon, mild malaria mismanagement was prevailing in health facilities of the Littoral region and ACTs quality prescription in medical leaflets was not optimal. Therefore, awareness is still needed among prescribers in order to prevent or at least slow the occurrence of Plasmodium resistant strains to ACTs in Cameroon.

IN SITU OBSERVATION OF DEFORMATION AND FRACTURE FOR SUPERALLOY GH169 UNDER COMBINED FATIGUE-CREEP ACTION

In Situ observation of deformation and fracture for superalloy GH169 under combined fatigue-creep action is made by using high temperature metalloscope,it is shown that under the test conditions the deformution takes place by merely of slipping,twinning and grain houndary sliding,and the mode of failure depends on the microstructure of specimen. lntergranular cracks arise.from W-type voids produced by the stress concentration at triple point which could not be relaxed by the interior deformation of grains and the local deformathm region along grain bounaries.And the crack propagation mechanism is the nucleation,growth and linkage of carities at the grain boundaries.Transgranular cracks form from deformatiom damages within the grain,and its propagation mechanism is shear rupture along the slip phme.

Education Knowledge System Combination Model Based on the Components

Resources are the base and core of education information, but current web education resources have no structure and it is still difficult to reuse them and make them can be self assembled and developed continually. According to the knowledge structure of course and text, the relation among knowledge points, knowledge units from three levels of media material, we can build education resource components, and build TKCM （Teaching Knowledge Combination Model） based on resource components. Builders can build and assemble knowledge system structure and make knowledge units can be self assembled, thus we can develop and consummate them continually. Users can make knowledge units can be self assembled and renewed, and build education knowledge system to satisfy users＇ demand under the form of education knowledge system.

Expert system for earthquake prediction（ESEP）（2）－Knowledge representation and evidence combination

This paper deals with knowledge representation of ESEP (Expert System for Earthqauke Prediction). Attending the characteristics of the knowledge in earthquake prediction domain, production representation and procedural representation are connected in the knowledge repesentation model of ESEP named ESEP/K, and three new ways of evidence conbination are proposed for production rules besides 'AND' and 'OR'.

Nature of Gene Action and Maternal Effects for Pod Borer, <i>Helicoverpa armigera</i>Resistance and Grain Yield in Chickpea, <i>Cicer arietinum</i>

Information on mechanisms and inheritance of resistance is critical to plan an effective strategy to breed for resistance to insect pests. Therefore, we evaluated a diverse array of chickpea genotypes (eight desi and one kabuli) with varying levels of resistance to the pod borer, Helicoverpa armigera to gain an understanding of the nature of gene action and possible maternal effects. The test genotypes were crossed in all possible combinations for a full diallel. The 72 F1s (36 direct and 36 reciprocal crosses) along with the parents were evaluated for resistance to H. armigera under field conditions, and for antibiosis mechanism of resistance (larval survival and larval weight gain) by using detached leaf assay under laboratory conditions, and grain yield under un-protected conditions in the field. Additive gene action governed the inheritance of resistance to H. armigera, while non-additive type of gene action was predominant for inheritance of antibiosis component of resistance (larval survival and larval weight) and grain yield. Greater magnitude of σ2 A(17.39 and 1.42) than σ2 D (3.93 and 1.21) indicated the preponderance of σ2 Ain inheritance of resistance to pod borer, H. armigera under laboratory and field conditions, respectively. There were no maternal effects for inheritance of resistance to pod borer and grain yield. Lines with significant gca effects for pod borer damage and grain yield were identified for further use in the resistance breeding program. The implications of the inheritance pattern of pod borer resistance and grain yield are discussed in the context of strategies to enhance pod borer resistance and grain yield in chickpea.

Reasoning about Epistemic Actions and Knowledge in Multi-Agent Systems Using Coq

In this paper, the authors outline a formal system for reasoning about agents＇ knowledge in knowledge games-a special type of multi-agent system. Knowledge games are card games where the agents＇ actions involve an exchange of information with other agents in the game. The authors＇ system is modeled using Coq-a formal proof management system. To the best of the authors＂ knowledge, there are no papers in which knowledge games are considered using a Coq proof assistant. The authors use the dynamic logic of common knowledge, where they particularly focus on the epistemic consequences of epistemic actions carried out by agents. The authors observe the changes in the system that result from such actions. Those changes that can occur in such a system that are of interest to the authors take the form of agents＇ knowledge about the state of the system, knowledge about other agents＇ knowledge, higher-order agents＇ knowledge and so on, up to common knowledge. Besides an axiomatic ofepistemic logic, the authors use a known axiomatization of card games that is extended with some new axioms that are required for the authors＇ approach. Due to a deficit in implementations grounded in theory that enable players to compute their knowledge in any state of the game, the authors show how the authors＇ approach can be used for these purposes.

Dynamic simulation of hydrodynamic model of drum level wave action and sloshing

In order to build the model of the drum level wave action and sloshing, based on the method of modularization modeling, the hydrodynamic model of drum level wave action and sloshing was developed, and dynamic simulation researches were carried out based on the model. The results indicate that both drum level and drum length have functional relations with period of drum level wave action and sloshing. When the drum level decreases or drum length increases, the period of drum level wave action and sloshing increases, density of liquid and number of sub-module division have little influence on the period of drum level wave action and sloshing. The model was validated by the analytical solution theory of liquid’s wave action and sloshing in cuboid container, and the 3D graphics of drum level wave action and sloshing was also obtained. The model can dynamically reflect the rules of wave action and sloshing of water in the container exactly.

LARGE DEFLECTION PROBLEM OF CIRCULAR PLATES WITH VARIABLE THICKNESS UNDER THE ACTION OF COMBINED LOADS

By using the modified iteration method of large deflection theory of plates with variable thichness[1], we solve the problem of circular plates with variable thickness subjected to combined loads under the boundary conditions of the clamped edges and get comparatively more accurate second-order approximate analytical solution. If the results of this paper are degraded into the special cases, the results coinciding with those of papers [1,2] can be obtained. In this paper, the characteristic curves are plotted and some comparisons are made. The results of this paper are satisfactory.

Reagent types and action mechanisms in ilmenite flotation:A review

Ilmenite is an essential mineral for the extraction of titanium.Conventional physical separation methods have difficulty recovering fine ilmenite,and dressing plants have begun applying flotation to recover ilmenite.The interaction of reagent groups with Ti and Fe sites on the ilmenite surface dramatically influences the ilmenite flotation.However,the investigation on Fe sites has received more attention because the activity of Ti is lower than that of Fe.For the activators on ilmenite flotation,most are metal ions but typically lead ions.The metal ions of activators promote ilmenite flotation by increasing the active sites on the ilmenite surface.Combined reagents have a better selective separation of ilmenite than single reagents due to their synergistic effect.Combining the lead ion(Pb^(2+))and the benzyl hydroxamic acid(BHA)into a Pb-BHA complex has a marked effect on ilmenite flotation,which puts forward a new idea of developing combined reagents for ilmenite flotation.This review considers reagent types and action mechanisms in ilmenite flotation.On the basis of the analysis of previous research,a brief future outlook of reagent types and action mechanisms in ilmenite flotation is also proposed in this study.