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Freshwater macro‐organismic environmental DNA (eDNA) is gaining increasing popularity in detecting invasive species, assessing community assemblages, and in mapping the distribution of taxa that are rare or otherwise difficult to monitor. The objectives of this article are to review the targets of published freshwater eDNA research in relation to aquatic conservation with a focus on geographic regions covered, as well as the habitats and species investigated.The analysis of 272 peer‐reviewed articles published between 2005 and 2018 revealed that 57% of the 238 primary research papers have a focus on conservation science, mostly addressing invasive and endangered species, followed by 23% papers investigating methodological developments and 11% biodiversity surveys also using eDNA metabarcoding. A strong geographical pattern emerged, with Africa, South America, and the tropics being under‐represented. Taxonomic coverage was dominated by 123 fish species, followed by 29 amphibian and 28 mollusc species. Freshwater arthropods (27 taxa) were under‐represented in relation to their estimated species richness.Taxonomic bias towards certain species such as fishes observed in freshwater eDNA research is pervasive in biodiversity research and conservation sciences, and thus is not surprising. Geographical representation was biased, with a few industrialized countries from the Northern Hemisphere contributing 72% of the studies. Both findings parallel biases known from other research areas, such as marine eDNA analysis, taxonomy, or invasion biology.The application of eDNA in freshwater conservation will benefit from the development of general standards and guidelines that are necessary to integrate freshwater macrobial eDNA techniques in existing monitoring frameworks. To aid future freshwater conservation, our suggestions are to harmonize eDNA methods for comparable and easier implementation worldwide, and to increase international cooperation and funding for under‐represented geographical regions and neglected taxa. This is especially crucial for the known biodiversity hotspots in developing countries where rapid changes occur to freshwater habitats and biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breastfeeding provides optimal nutrition for the healthy growth of infants and is associated with reduced risks of infectious diseases, child and adult obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Migration has been shown to influence breastfeeding especially among migrants from low-and-middle-income countries. This mixed-methods systematic review aimed to identify, synthesise, and appraise the international literature on the breastfeeding knowledge and experiences of African immigrant mothers residing in high-income countries. MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, PsychINFO, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge databases were searched from their inception to February 2019. Grey literature, reference, and citation searches were carried out and relevant journals hand-searched. Data extraction and quality assessment were independently carried out by two reviewers. An integrated mixed-methods approach adopting elements of framework synthesis was used to synthesise findings. The initial searches recovered 8,841 papers, and 35 studies were included in the review. Five concepts emerged from the data: (a) breastfeeding practices, showing that 90% of African mothers initiated breastfeeding; (b) knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, which were mostly positive but included a desire for bigger babies; (c) influence of socio-demographic, economic, and cultural factors, leading to early supplementation; (d) support system influencing breastfeeding rates and duration; and (e) perception of health professionals who struggled to offer support due to culture and language barriers. African immigrant mothers were positive about breastfeeding and willing to adopt best practice but faced challenges with cultural beliefs and lifestyle changes after migration. African mothers may benefit from more tailored support and information to improve exclusive breastfeeding rates., (© 2020 The Authors. Maternal & Child Nutrition published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Burnout and related concepts such as resilience, wellness, and taking care of healthcare professionals have become increasingly prevalent in the medical literature. Most of the work in this area comes from high‐income countries, with the remainder from upper‐middle‐income countries, and very little from lower‐middle‐income or low‐income countries. Sub‐Saharan Africa is particularly poorly represented in this body of literature. Anglo‐American concepts are often applied to different jurisdictions without consideration of cultural and societal differences. However, anesthesia providers in this region have unique challenges, with both the highest burden of "surgical" disease in the world and the least resources, both in terms of human resources for health and in terms of essential drugs and equipment. The effect of burnout on healthcare systems is also likely to be very different with the current human resources for the health crisis in East and Central Africa. According to the Joint Learning Initiative Managing for Performance framework, the three essential factors for building a workforce to effectively support a healthcare system are coverage, competence, and motivation. Current efforts to build capacity in anesthesia in East and Southern Africa focus largely on coverage and competence, but neglect motivation at the risk of failing to support a sustainable workforce. In this paper, we include a review of the relevant literature, as well as draw from personal experience living and working in East and Southern Africa, to describe the unique issues surrounding burnout, resilience, and wellness in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developed countries, public health engineering has been closely associated with extensions of life expectancy and declines in infant mortality well beyond the contributions of medicine. However, different approaches have had to be taken in poorer countries. This paper uses cases from South and Southern Africa to illustrate the challenges and the responses and to consider whether these reflect a formal 'development engineering' approach. While external agencies have actively promoted a variety of approaches, engineered interventions were most successful where they took account of social, economic and environmental contexts, reflected local preferences and were developed by, or in close coordination with, the operational institutions concerned. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the incidence, drivers, and persistence of skill and educational mismatches among employed youths from 10 African countries surveyed between 2012 and 2015. Results indicate that, unlike most findings from developed countries, underskilling and undereducation are more prevalent among the youth than overskilling and overeducation. The levels of education of the youth and their parents, the field of study, the quality of job and the firm size are found to be key predictors of job mismatches. Our results also show that the perspective of unemployment has a scarring effect for underskilled youths but a stepping‐stone effect for overskilled and overeducated. Using a pseudo‐panel approach, skill and educational mismatches of youths are found to be persistent over time and the likelihood of transitioning into education matching jobs is significantly increasing with the levels of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute kidney injury ( AKI) is imposing a severe burden of morbidity and mortality both in developed and developing countries. Also AKI has a major economic impact on healthcare expenditure. This is particularly so in poor countries where AKI especially impacts young productive people, imposing severe penury upon their families. The mission is to lessen the high burden in terms of death consequent to this disorder in low-resource regions, which in many cases is preventable and treatable with simple measures. The International Society of Nephrology has launched a long-term program, called '0 by 25', which advocates that zero people should die of untreated AKI in the poorest part of Africa, Asia, and Latin America by 2025. This paper illustrates how the project will be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: To describe the construction and testing of a portable point‐of‐care low‐field MRI system on site in Africa. Methods: All of the components to assemble a 50 mT Halbach magnet‐based system, together with the necessary tools, were air‐freighted from the Netherlands to Uganda. The construction steps included individual magnet sorting, filling of each ring of the magnet assembly, fine‐tuning the inter‐ring separations of the 23‐ring magnet assembly, gradient coil construction, integration of gradient coils and magnet assembly, construction of the portable aluminum trolley and finally testing of the entire system with an open source MR spectrometer. Results: With four instructors and six untrained personnel, the complete project from delivery to first image took approximately 11 days. Conclusions: An important step in translating scientific developments in the western world from high‐income industrialized countries to low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) is to produce technology that can be assembled and ultimately constructed locally. Local assembly and construction are associated with skill development, low costs and jobs. Point‐of‐care systems have a large potential to increase the accessibility and sustainability of MRI in LMICs, and this work demonstrates that technology and knowledge transfer can be performed relatively seamlessly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Listeriosis is rarely reported in the Southern African Hemispheres in spite of the increasing rate of Listeria in several foodborne outbreaks reported in advanced countries. This paper reviews the emerging trends in the spread, distribution, and epidemiology of Listeria species in foods, water, human, animals, and different environments in Southern Africa based on the appraisal of scholarly articles. In this regard, information obtained from literatures from various online databases revealed that Listeria species are commonly recovered from food, water, and human samples. Fewer articles provided information on Listeria recovered from animals (ruminants) and soil samples. Generally, reports of studies were more focused on Listeria monocytogenes among other Listeria species. To this end, reports obtained from literature on the method of identification of Listeria were mostly based on serological, classical biochemical methods and the principle of aesculin hydrolysis, usually characterized by black coloration on selective media for Listeria. These methods may not be reliable, as they could sometimes give a false positive report. Therefore, molecular methods are more reliable, accurate, could show the genetic relationship between isolates, and at the same time capable of enabling tracking the source of this pathogen should be embraced as a better substitute for the identification of Listeria in Southern African sub‐region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of EuroChoices is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Is age discrimination ethically objectionable? One puzzle is that we sometimes assume that the target of both age discrimination and ageism must be older people, yet in poorer nations, older people are generally shown more respect. This article explores the ethical question. It looks first at ethical arguments favoring age discrimination toward younger people in low‐income, less industrialized countries of the global South, using sub‐Saharan Africa as an illustration. It contrasts these with arguments favoring age discrimination toward older people in high‐income, more industrialized countries of the global North, particularly the United States and United Kingdom. Finally, it considers what role, if any, differences in life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and prospects for healthy lives should play in the moral embrace of a particular view by a community. It argues that there can be reasons to favor different types of discrimination in different parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike previous studies on electoral investment cycle—the tendency for firms to reduce investment expenditure during an election year relative to nonelection years—that have primarily focused on developed countries, this study documents cycles in private investments in relation to the timing of national elections across a broader set of African countries. The estimation results indicate that during election years, private investment decreases by an average of 16% relative to nonelection years. The results also reveal that private investment falls in the year leading up to an election and increases in the immediate year after an election, consistent with the view that electoral uncertainty deters investments. These findings suggest that electoral investment cycles apply strongly to African countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the paper "On Economic Bargaining Between African Governments and Multi-National Companies," by Robert L. Curry. The author examines the bargaining process between African governments and multinational companies. A survey of experience in recent years leads the authors to conclude that African governments could have obtained more favorable agreements if they had conducted their bargaining differently. The article starts with a review of the main elements in the negotiation situation chiefly in natural resource under-takings. The government is perceived as gaining benefits, primarily in employment and income for its people as well as public revenue against certain costs resulting from having a foreign based company exploit a resource rather than a local one. For its part the firm has costs in the allocation of capital, technology and expertise that it employs in return for benefits of income and profits. The authors observe that the approaches of countries are influenced by impatience for maximum economic development and therefore they tend to hurry to conclude transactions especially where only one company is immediately available for a project.

We investigate the empirical determinants of China's outward direct investment (ODI). It is found that China's investments in developed and developing countries are driven by different sets of factors. Subject to the differences between developed and developing countries, there is evidence that: (i) both market-seeking and resource-seeking motives drive China's ODI; (ii) Chinese exports to developing countries induce China's ODI; (iii) China's international reserves promote its ODI; and (iv) Chinese capital tends to agglomerate among developed economies but diversify among developing economies. Similar results are obtained using alternative ODI data. We do not find substantial evidence that China invests in African and oil-producing countries mainly for their natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on Microsoft Corp.'s launching of the Kiswahili version of its technology glossary. Narrowing of digital divide between Africa and industrialized nations.