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The objective of this study is to assess the adoption of alternative pest management methods to reduce risks among cocoa farmers in the Volta region. Cultural control methods found to be the most practiced alternative pest management, especially in the Ho West district where majority of the farmers were more knowledgeable of alternative pest control methods. There was significant relationship between agrochemical shop services (χ2 = 13,028, p < 0.000), farming years of experience (χ2 = 16.424, p < 0.002), knowledge in degree of pest infestation (χ2 = 8.498, p < 0.000), education (χ2 = 10.557, p < 0.014), farmers' community (χ2 = 39.275, p < 0.000) and farmers’ knowledge on alternative pest control methods. Farmers who relied on agrochemical shop services for pest control methods were 87% less likely to be knowledgeable on alternative pest control methods while those who considered degree of pest infestation in pest management were (OR = 1.150, p

Why does human cooperation often unravel in economic experiments despite a promising start? Previous studies have interpreted the decline as the reaction of disappointed altruists retaliating in response to non-altruists (Conditional Cooperators hypothesis). This interpretation has been considered evidence of a uniquely human form of cooperation, motivated by an altruistic concern for equality (‘fairness’) and requiring special evolutionary explanations. However, experiments have typically shown individuals not only information about the decisions of their groupmates (social information) but also information about their own payoffs. Showing both confounds explanations based on conditional cooperation with explanations based on confused individuals learning how to better play the game (Confused Learners hypothesis). Here we experimentally decouple these two forms of information, and thus these two hypotheses, in a repeated public-goods game. Analysing 616 Swiss university participants, we find that payoff information leads to a greater decline, supporting the Confused Learners hypothesis. In contrast, social information has a small or negligible effect, contradicting the Conditional Cooperators hypothesis. We also find widespread evidence of both confusion and selfish motives, suggesting that human cooperation is maybe not so unique after all.

There are several methods available to assess energy expenditure, all associated with inherent pros and cons that must be adequately considered for use in specific environments and populations. A requirement of all methods is that they must be valid and reliable in their capability to accurately measure oxygen consumption (VO2) and carbon dioxide production (VCO2). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the mobile CO2/O2 Breath and Respiration Analyzer (COBRA) relative to a criterion system (Parvomedics TrueOne 2400®, PARVO) with additional measurements to compare the COBRA to a portable system (Vyaire Medical, Oxycon Mobile®, OXY). Fourteen volunteers with a mean of 24 years old, body weight of 76 kg, and a VO2peak of 3.8 L∙min−1 performed four repeated trials of progressive exercises. Simultaneous steady-state measurements of VO2, VCO2, and minute ventilation (VE) by the COBRA/PARVO and OXY systems were conducted at rest, while walking (23–36% VO2peak), jogging (49–67% VO2peak), and running (60–76% VO2peak). Data collection was randomized by the order of system tested (COBRA/PARVO and OXY) and was standardized to maintain work intensity (rest to run) progression across study trials and days (two trials/day over two days). Systematic bias was examined to assess the accuracy of the COBRA to PARVO and OXY to PARVO across work intensities. Intra- and inter-unit variability were assessed with interclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and a 95% limit of agreement intervals. The COBRA and PARVO produced similar measures for VO2 (Bias ± SD, 0.01 ± 0.13 L·min−1; 95% LoA, (−0.24, 0.27 L·min−1); R2 = 0.982), VCO2 (0.06 ± 0.13 L·min−1; (−0.19, 0.31 L·min−1); R2 = 0.982), VE (2.07 ± 2.76 L·min−1; (−3.35, 7.49 L·min−1); R2 = 0.991) across work intensities. There was a linear bias across both the COBRA and OXY with increased work intensity. The coefficient of variation for the COBRA ranged from 7 to 9% across measures for VO2, VCO2, and VE. COBRA was reliable across measurements for VO2 (ICC = 0.825; 0.951), VCO2 (ICC = 0.785; 0.876), and VE (ICC = 0.857; 0.945) for intra-unit reliability, respectively. The COBRA is an accurate and reliable mobile system for measuring gas exchange at rest and across a range of work intensities.

The black box method was developed as an “asocial control” to allow for payoff-based learning while eliminating social responses in repeated public goods games. Players are told they must decide how many virtual coins they want to input into a virtual black box that will provide uncertain returns. However, in truth, they are playing with each other in a repeated social game. By “black boxing” the game’s social aspects and payoff structure, the method creates a population of self-interested but ignorant or confused individuals that must learn the game’s payoffs. This low-information environment, stripped of social concerns, provides an alternative, empirically derived null hypothesis for testing social behaviours, as opposed to the theoretical predictions of rational self-interested agents (Homo economicus). However, a potential problem is that participants can unwittingly affect the learning of other participants. Here, we test a solution to this problem in a range of public goods games by making participants interact, unknowingly, with simulated players (“computerised black box”). We find no significant differences in rates of learning between the original and the computerised black box, therefore either method can be used to investigate learning in games. These results, along with the fact that simulated agents can be programmed to behave in different ways, mean that the computerised black box has great potential for complementing studies of how individuals and groups learn under different environments in social dilemmas.

The strategy method is often used in public goods games to measure an individual’s willingness to cooperate depending on the level of cooperation by their groupmates (conditional cooperation). However, while the strategy method is informative, it risks conflating confusion with a desire for fair outcomes, and its presentation may risk inducing elevated levels of conditional cooperation. This problem was highlighted by two previous studies which found that the strategy method could also detect equivalent levels of cooperation even among those grouped with computerized groupmates, indicative of confusion or irrational responses. However, these studies did not use large samples (n = 40 or 72) and only made participants complete the strategy method one time, with computerized groupmates, preventing within-participant comparisons. Here, in contrast, 845 participants completed the strategy method two times, once with human and once with computerized groupmates. Our research aims were twofold: (1) to check the robustness of previous results with a large sample under various presentation conditions; and (2) to use a within-participant design to categorize participants according to how they behaved across the two scenarios. Ideally, a clean and reliable measure of conditional cooperation would find participants conditionally cooperating with humans and not cooperating with computers. Worryingly, only 7% of participants met this criterion. Overall, 83% of participants cooperated with the computers, and the mean contributions towards computers were 89% as large as those towards humans. These results, robust to the various presentation and order effects, pose serious concerns for the measurement of social preferences and question the idea that human cooperation is motivated by a concern for equal outcomes.

Background: Previous studies that evaluated the prevalence, awareness and treatment of hypertension in Nigeria were either localized to some specific regions of the country or non-standardized thereby making evaluation of trend in hypertension care difficult. Methods: We used the World Health Organization (WHO) STEPwise approach to chronic disease risk factor surveillance to evaluate in a nationally representative sample of 4192 adult Nigerians selected from a rural and an urban community in one state in each of the six geo-political zones of the country. Results: The overall age-standardized prevalence of hypertension was 38.1% and this varied across the geo-political zones as follows: North-Central, 20.9%; North-East, 27.5%; North-West, 26.8%; South-East, 52.8%; South-South, 44.6%; and South-West, 42.1%. Prevalence rate did not differ significantly (p > 0.05) according to place of residence; 39.2% versus 37.5 %; urban vs rural. Prevalence of hypertension increased from 6.8% among subjects less than 30 years to 63.0% among those aged 70 years and above. Awareness was better (62.2% vs. 56.6%; P = 0.0272); treatment rate significantly higher (40.9 % vs. 30.8%; P < 0.0001) and control similar (14 vs. 10.8%) among urban compared to rural residents. Women were more aware of (63.3% vs. 52.8%; P < 0.0001); had similar (P > 0.05) treatment (36.7 vs. 34.3%) and control (33.9% vs. 35.5%) rates of hypertension compared to men. Conclusion: Our results suggest a large burden of hypertension in Nigeria and a closing up of the rural-urban gap previously reported. This calls for a change in public health policies anchored on a primary health care system to address the emerging disease burden occasioned by hypertension.

Abstract Background Understanding the diversity of repair outcomes after introducing a genomic cut is essential for realizing the therapeutic potential of genomic editing technologies. Targeted PCR amplification combined with Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) or enzymatic digestion, while broadly used in the genome editing field, has critical limitations for detecting and quantifying structural variants such as large deletions (greater than approximately 100 base pairs), inversions, and translocations. Results To overcome these limitations, we have developed a Uni-Directional Targeted Sequencing methodology, UDiTaS, that is quantitative, removes biases associated with variable-length PCR amplification, and can measure structural changes in addition to small insertion and deletion events (indels), all in a single reaction. We have applied UDiTaS to a variety of samples, including those treated with a clinically relevant pair of S. aureus Cas9 single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) targeting CEP290, and a pair of S. pyogenes Cas9 sgRNAs at T-cell relevant loci. In both cases, we have simultaneously measured small and large edits, including inversions and translocations, exemplifying UDiTaS as a valuable tool for the analysis of genome editing outcomes. Conclusions UDiTaS is a robust and streamlined sequencing method useful for measuring small indels as well as structural rearrangements, like translocations, in a single reaction. UDiTaS is especially useful for pre-clinical and clinical application of gene editing to measure on- and off-target editing, large and small.

Background: Most electronic resource (e-resource) studies have been undertaken in universities because e-resources are crucial in enhancing students’ research and learning activities. However, there is a paucity of e-resources research in postgraduate theological universities, particularly in Ghana. This study, therefore, investigated students’ level of use of e-resources at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture. Objectives: The study’s specific objectives were to identify the types of e-resources available for use, discover the extent of awareness of e-resources, find out how e-resources were accessed and used, ascertain the purposes of using e-resources and identify the benefits of and problems in using e-resources. Method: Using the survey research design, copies of the questionnaire were administered to 33 postgraduate students by accidental sampling. Data analysed using Microsoft Excel 2013 were mainly presented as frequency and percentage distributions. Results: The study revealed high awareness levels, adequate computer competencies, derivation of multiple benefits, use of e-resources for academic purposes and inadequate search skills of most respondents because of the dearth of training. Constraints to e-resources usage were access problems, search and retrieval problems and staff-related problems. Conclusion: The study informs university administrators and libraries about the need to ensure students leverage e-resources in research and studies. The study proposed, among other recommendations, the provision of regular and mandatory information literacy training for students, the need for the institute’s library staff to provide personalised search support to students and the provision of off-campus access to the institute’s e-resource subscriptions.

There are several methods available to assess energy expenditure, all associated with inherent pros and cons that must be adequately considered for use in specific environments and populations. A requirement of all methods is that they must be valid and reliable in their capability to accurately measure oxygen consumption (VO2) and carbon dioxide production (VCO2). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the mobile CO2/O2 Breath and Respiration Analyzer (COBRA) relative to a criterion system (Parvomedics TrueOne 2400®, PARVO) with additional measurements to compare the COBRA to a portable system (Vyaire Medical, Oxycon Mobile®, OXY). Fourteen volunteers with a mean of 24 years old, body weight of 76 kg, and a VO2peak of 3.8 L∙min−1 performed four repeated trials of progressive exercises. Simultaneous steady-state measurements of VO2, VCO2, and minute ventilation (VE) by the COBRA/PARVO and OXY systems were conducted at rest, while walking (23–36% VO2peak), jogging (49–67% VO2peak), and running (60–76% VO2peak). Data collection was randomized by the order of system tested (COBRA/PARVO and OXY) and was standardized to maintain work intensity (rest to run) progression across study trials and days (two trials/day over two days). Systematic bias was examined to assess the accuracy of the COBRA to PARVO and OXY to PARVO across work intensities. Intra- and inter-unit variability were assessed with interclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and a 95% limit of agreement intervals. The COBRA and PARVO produced similar measures for VO2 (Bias ± SD, 0.01 ± 0.13 L·min−1; 95% LoA, (−0.24, 0.27 L·min−1); R2 = 0.982), VCO2 (0.06 ± 0.13 L·min−1; (−0.19, 0.31 L·min−1); R2 = 0.982), VE (2.07 ± 2.76 L·min−1; (−3.35, 7.49 L·min−1); R2 = 0.991) across work intensities. There was a linear bias across both the COBRA and OXY with increased work intensity. The coefficient of variation for the COBRA ranged from 7 to 9% across measures for VO2, VCO2, and VE. COBRA was reliable across measurements for VO2 (ICC = 0.825; 0.951), VCO2 (ICC = 0.785; 0.876), and VE (ICC = 0.857; 0.945) for intra-unit reliability, respectively. The COBRA is an accurate and reliable mobile system for measuring gas exchange at rest and across a range of work intensities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was carried out with one hundred and twenty one-week-old Hubbard broilers to determine the effect of replacing maize with cassava root meal (CRM) and maize/sorghum brewers’ dried grains (MSBDG) on performance of starter broilers. Four experimental diets were formulated to contain 0, 15, 30 and 45% CRM and MSBDG combined in the ratio of 1:1 in the broiler starter rations. There was no difference (P>0.05) in feed intake among the birds on 0, 15 and 45% CRM/MSBDG, but these were lower (P0.05) in daily weight gain among the birds on 0, 15 and 30 CRM/MSBDG diets, and each of these was higher than that of the birds on 45% CRM/MSBDG diet. The feed convertion ratio of 0% compared favourably with that of the birds on 15% diets, and these two diets were better (P

Do economic games show evidence of altruistic or self-interested motivations in humans? A huge body of empirical work has found contrasting results. While many participants routinely make costly decisions that benefit strangers, consistent with the hypothesis that humans exhibit a biologically novel form of altruism (or "prosociality"), many participants also typically learn to pay fewer costs with experience, consistent with self-interested individuals adapting to an unfamiliar environment. Key to resolving this debate is explaining the famous "restart effect," a puzzling enigma whereby failing cooperation in public goods games can be briefly rescued by a surprise restart. Here we replicate this canonical result, often taken as evidence of uniquely human altruism, and show that it 1) disappears when cooperation is invisible, meaning individuals can no longer affect the behavior of their groupmates, consistent with strategically motivated, self-interested, cooperation; and 2) still occurs even when individuals are knowingly grouped with computer players programmed to replicate human decisions, consistent with confusion. These results show that the restart effect can be explained by a mixture of self-interest and irrational beliefs about the game's payoffs, and not altruism. Consequently, our results suggest that public goods games have often been measuring self-interested but confused behaviors and reject the idea that conventional theories of evolution cannot explain the results of economic games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The black box method was developed as an "asocial control" to allow for payoff-based learning while eliminating social responses in repeated public goods games. Players are told they must decide how many virtual coins they want to input into a virtual black box that will provide uncertain returns. However, in truth, they are playing with each other in a repeated social game. By "black boxing" the game's social aspects and payoff structure, the method creates a population of self-interested but ignorant or confused individuals that must learn the game's payoffs. This low-information environment, stripped of social concerns, provides an alternative, empirically derived null hypothesis for testing social behaviours, as opposed to the theoretical predictions of rational self-interested agents (Homo economicus). However, a potential problem is that participants can unwittingly affect the learning of other participants. Here, we test a solution to this problem in a range of public goods games by making participants interact, unknowingly, with simulated players ("computerised black box"). We find no significant differences in rates of learning between the original and the computerised black box, therefore either method can be used to investigate learning in games. These results, along with the fact that simulated agents can be programmed to behave in different ways, mean that the computerised black box has great potential for complementing studies of how individuals and groups learn under different environments in social dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy method is often used in public goods games to measure an individual's willingness to cooperate depending on the level of cooperation by their groupmates (conditional cooperation). However, while the strategy method is informative, it risks conflating confusion with a desire for fair outcomes, and its presentation may risk inducing elevated levels of conditional cooperation. This problem was highlighted by two previous studies which found that the strategy method could also detect equivalent levels of cooperation even among those grouped with computerized groupmates, indicative of confusion or irrational responses. However, these studies did not use large samples (n = 40 or 72) and only made participants complete the strategy method one time, with computerized groupmates, preventing within-participant comparisons. Here, in contrast, 845 participants completed the strategy method two times, once with human and once with computerized groupmates. Our research aims were twofold: (1) to check the robustness of previous results with a large sample under various presentation conditions; and (2) to use a within-participant design to categorize participants according to how they behaved across the two scenarios. Ideally, a clean and reliable measure of conditional cooperation would find participants conditionally cooperating with humans and not cooperating with computers. Worryingly, only 7% of participants met this criterion. Overall, 83% of participants cooperated with the computers, and the mean contributions towards computers were 89% as large as those towards humans. These results, robust to the various presentation and order effects, pose serious concerns for the measurement of social preferences and question the idea that human cooperation is motivated by a concern for equal outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]