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The study examined the effects of Performance Appraisal on Employee Productivity in Federal Ministry of Education Headquarters Abuja. The study used survey research design. The population of the study consists of 1797 employees of Federal Ministry of Education Headquarters Abuja. The sample size of the study was 400 respondents and was determined using Taro Yamane formula. Data for the study was collected using structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and OLS analysis. Results from the findings revealed that the coefficients of appraisal performance and employee feedback had positive and significant effect on employee productivity for the period under study. The coefficients of employee training and employee compensation had positive but insignificant effect on employee productivity for the period under study. The coefficient of multiple determination R2 value of 0.687 percent implied that 68 percent total variation in employee productivity was explained by performance appraisal, employee feedback, employee training and employee compensation. The study recommends that multiple appraisal method should be introduced to further encourage objectivity and eliminate biasedness in the appraisal of workers in the Ministry.

Summary Phenopolis is an open-source web server providing an intuitive interface to genetic and phenotypic databases. It integrates analysis tools such as variant filtering and gene prioritization based on phenotype. The Phenopolis platform will accelerate clinical diagnosis, gene discovery and encourage wider adoption of the Human Phenotype Ontology in the study of rare genetic diseases. Availability and implementation A demo of the website is available at https://phenopolis.github.io . If you wish to install a local copy, source code and installation instruction are available at https://github.com/phenopolis . The software is implemented using Python, MongoDB, HTML/Javascript and various bash shell scripts. Contact n.pontikos@ucl.ac.uk. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The atonal homolog 7 (ATOH7) gene encodes a transcription factor involved in determining the fate of retinal progenitor cells and is particularly required for optic nerve and ganglion cell development. Using a combination of autozygosity mapping and next generation sequencing, we have identified homozygous mutations in this gene, p.E49V and p.P18RfsX69, in two consanguineous families diagnosed with multiple ocular developmental defects, including severe vitreoretinal dysplasia, optic nerve hypoplasia, persistent fetal vasculature, microphthalmia, congenital cataracts, microcornea, corneal opacity and nystagmus. Most of these clinical features overlap with defects in the Norrin/beta-catenin signalling pathway that is characterized by dysgenesis of the retinal and hyaloid vasculature. Our findings document Mendelian mutations within ATOH7 and imply a role for this molecule in the development of structures at the front as well as the back of the eye. This work also provides further insights into the function of ATOH7, especially its importance in retinal vascular development and hyaloid regression.