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Description of the subject. To boost the development of the national palm oil sector, one of the most promising moves for the Cameroonian government would be to improve partnerships between agro-industries and smallholders in order to increase the latter's plantation yields and oil extraction rates. Objectives. Drawing on successful experiences in Southeast Asia, this paper examines the conditions for establishing a win-win partnership between agro-industrial companies and smallholders in the Cameroonian palm oil sector. Method. The study was carried out in three production basins in the Centre and the Southwest regions of Cameroon where such partnerships were initiated before the collapse of the National Aid Fund for Rural Development (FONADER) in the 1970s. In participatory workshops involving at least twelve stakeholders (palm oil producers, artisanal and industrial millers, intermediaries and agricultural extension services), the participants' knowledge was integrated together through individual and collective reflection, with a guarantee of equal expression and consideration of views. Two workshops followed a strict adaptation of Participatory Prospective Analysis (PPA); a third followed a semi-directed participatory approach. Interactions between participants produced definitions of the systems studied and the variables involved, different plausible future scenarios, and recommendations for decision making. Results. Access to technical and managerial capacity building, terms of the contract, access to shareholding in the company by smallholders, and legalization of the terms of the contract emerged as the major items that would influence a sustainable partnership between agro-industries and smallholders. Conclusions. Participatory derived recommendations show that long-term partnerships between agro-industry and smallholders depend on a negotiated contract agreement between the partners to ensure transparency and trust. In addition, a dedicated smallholder department in charge of village plantations within agro-industrial companies can facilitate communication between partners.

Optimal nutritional status is crucial for enhancing the physical fitness components of amateur basketball players as it directly influences their strength, endurance, and overall performance. This study assessed the effect of nutritional status on the performance components of physical fitness of amateur basketball players in Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria. This was a cross-sectional ex post facto study. Participants were 80 (40 male and 40 female) secondary school basketball players from a population of 160 (80 males (8 teams) and 80 females (8 teams) who were selected using random sampling technique from 16 registered teams from the 2023 Benue State Secondary School Basketball League organized by the Benue State Sports Council, Makurdi. All the participants underwent nutritional assessment based on WHO standards. The participants' height and weight were measured in accordance with the protocol of ISAK. The Slalom test was performed to evaluate agility. The Harre circuit test (HCT) was used to assess coordination. Speed was assessed using the 50m dash. Reaction time was assessed using the reaction time ruler drop test. In all the tests, those with lower time were considered to be more fit and vice versa. Mean and standard deviation were computed for the performance of the participants in agility, coordination, speed and reaction time. The participants were split into three in relation to nutritional status (normal, thin/wasted and stunted). The analysis of variance was used to find out the different performance components of adolescents in relation to nutritional status. All the analyses were performed on 95% confidence intervals using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS v21). The result of the study indicated that nutrition has significant effects on agility (F=10.495, df=2, 77; p Key words: Nutritional status, physical fitness, performance, amateur, basketball, secondary school, INTRODUCTION Basketball is a sport that requires intermittent bursts of high-intensity activity, demanding both physical agility and mental sharpness. Consequently, sports scientists have emphasized the importance of gaining a deeper [...]

Aflatoxins are frequent contaminants of maize especially in the face of climate change with deleterious health and socio-economic impacts. South Africa is ranked 9th maize exporter globally; hence, insights need to be gained in terms of the maize value chain in South Africa with respect to aflatoxin contamination to evaluate consumers’ exposure. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) technique was used in this study to quantify aflatoxins in South African commercial maize. One thousand and twenty-eight (1028) maize samples were collected across six distinct agro-climatic regions over five harvest seasons (2017 – 2021). A total of 205 samples (19.94 %) were found to be contaminated with aflatoxins, with mean total aflatoxin concentration of 64.17 ppb amongst the contaminated samples, which is above the SA regulatory limit of 20 ppb for animal consumption. The year 2018 recorded the highest mean total aflatoxin value while North-West agro-climatic region had the highest mean total aflatoxin value. Drastic reduction in average rainfall significantly influence aflatoxin contamination of South African maize.

Education policy ambitions or presumptions in most countries are being accused of turning schools into social factories to supply humanpower to produce commodities. This is apparent bureaucratic education policy imposition on school-actors which promotes class division and conflict in sharing resources. Using the Marxist-critical-lenses, this article aims to interrogate the potential outcomes of adopting-implementing the global policy of competence-based education (CBE). The overarching question is whether CBE empowers the grassroots and-or preserves the old-order? This interrogation is sustained through a longitudinal research protocol that mixes document and survey methods and diverse classes. Cameroon English-speaking general secondary school CBE policy is used as part of global flows. The sample has 19 policies, 361 questionnaires and 20 interviewees randomly drawn from 24 diverse schools. Findings suggest that, transnational actors and 'boss partners' often influence education bureaucrats to buy global policy, coerce or coax school-workers to drill students into conforming to work obligations. It is rather like bureaucrats rebrand old policy to retain the status-quo-order, dictate equal costs for all grassroot school-actors with diverse abilities, and give few means whilst overtly claiming to empower them. School-actors embody policy but decry few means while assuming complex roles that lead to few improved academic and real-world outcomes. The article concludes that, education policy with class issues often places individual over collective interests that foretell inevitable mass revolutions in transition to Marxist socialism and communism. It is necessary to continually deconstruct class as 'an elephant in the room' whilst empowering grassroot-actors against education and real-world biases.

Technical factors related to the rejection of Inland fish farming in the West and North-West provinces of Cameroon. A basic assumption of "adoption diffusion theory" is that once an adaptor accepts a new idea, he/she will continue to use the innovation on a continuous basis. However, results obtained from data on inland fish culture in the North-West and Western Provinces of Cameroon cast doubts on the universal tenability of this assumption. From the study, it was observed that inland fish culture, an innovation, was abandonned after initial adoption by farmers. Several reasons were given by farmers for discontinuance : unprofitability of the activity, ignorance of pond maintenance techniques, lack of time to care for the fish, and inadequate access to reliable extension services. The paper then discusses the implications of these findings for adoption diffusion theory and for the development of fisheries in Cameroon.

The African Light Source (AfLS) project is now almost eight years old. This article assesses the history, current context and future of the project. There is by now considerable momentum in building the user community, including deep training, facilitating access to current facilities, growing the scientific output, scientific networks and growing the local laboratory-scale research infrastructure. The Conceptual Design Report for the AfLS is in its final editing stages. This document specifies the socio-economic and scientific rationales and the technical aspects amongst others. The AfLS is supported by many national and Pan-African scientific professional bodies and voluntary associates across many scientific disciplines, and there are stakeholders throughout the continent and beyond. The current roadmap phases have expanded to include national and Pan-African level conversations with policy makers through new Strategic Task Force groups. The document summarizes this progress and discusses the future of the project.

The aim of this study was to investigate the detection of low hydrostatic pressure, serving as the foundation for developing an underwater pressure sensor. This included creating a single-mode, uniformly structured Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) with a stainless-steel coating. The experiment included loading the sensor with different volumes of fresh water ranging from 0 ml to 6 ml, in increments of 0.25 ml, in the perpendicular vertical direction. This volume range corresponded to hydrostatic pressures ranging from 0 Pa to 40.55 Pa. The experimental results showed a consistent linear relationship between low hydrostatic pressure and Bragg wavelength, implying a sensitivity of 0.8092 pm/Pa, according to theoretical expectations. Subsequently, mathematical simulations were conducted based on the results to predict the sensor performance under various potential seabed temperatures. The simulation results indicated that as the temperature rose, there was a corresponding increase in the reflected wavelength difference by 5.3754 ×10-9 nm/Pa for every 1°C increase in seawater temperature.

Concerns around comprehension and recall of consent information by research participants have typically been associated with low health and research literacy levels. In genomics research, this concern is heightened as the scientific and ethical complexities of genetics research, such as biobanking, genetic susceptibility, data sharing, and incidental findings may be more difficult for potential research participants to understand. However, challenges to research participants' comprehension of consent information may be compounded by factors beyond health and research literacy levels. To identify factors that may impact research participants' understanding and recall of consent information, we designed a qualitative study to explore whether participants enrolled in a tuberculosis genetics study (TBGEN-Africa) in Cameroon understood the objectives of the study, the risks and benefits and certain key aspects of the study such as biobanking and data sharing. The results showed that research participants had limited understanding and/or recall of the TBGEN-Africa study goals and methods. Some participants were of the opinion that TBGEN-Africa was not a genetics study because tuberculosis is not an inheritable condition. Factors that may have hindered understanding and/or recall of study information are diagnostic misconception (research participants consider research as part of medical diagnosis), and information overload and situational vulnerability (consent at a time of physical and emotional distress). There is a need for improved practices to support research participants' understanding of consent information in genetics studies including designing the consent process in ways that minimize psychological distress and diagnostic/therapeutic misconception.

Abstract In 2021, only 6.4 million of the 10.6 million people with tuberculosis (TB) were diagnosed and treated for the disease. Although the World Health Organization recommends initial diagnostic testing using a rapid sensitive molecular assay, only 38% of people diagnosed with TB benefited from these, due to barriers including the high cost of available assays. Pooled testing has been used as an approach to increase testing efficiency in many resource-constrained situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has not yet been widely adopted for TB diagnostic testing. Here we report a retrospective analysis of routine pooled testing of 10,117 sputum specimens using the Xpert MTB/RIF and Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra assays that was performed from July 2020 to February 2022. Pooled testing saved 48% of assays and enabled rapid molecular testing for 4156 additional people as compared to individual testing, with 6.6% of specimens positive for TB. From an in silico analysis, the positive percent agreement of pooled testing in pools of 3 as compared with individual testing for the Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra assay was estimated as 99.4% (95% CI, 96.6% to 100%). These results support the scale-up of pooled testing for efficient TB diagnosis.

This paper discusses the outcomes of an exploratory study into the obstacles posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and a post-COVID recovery in the South African educational tourism sector. By reviewing the challenges and the key technological innovations developed and implemented during the pandemic, this study established that, while the COVID-19 restrictions significantly impacted the viability of every business in the edutourism sector, the use of important technological platforms (like social media, virtual reality, mobile apps, computer-based technology and virtual reality/augmented reality [VR/AR]) helped the sector remain resilient. However, the current paucity of empirical data in this regard suggests an investigation, the motivation for the current study, which assumes an inductive approach. This paper highlights the challenges, trends and prospects of COVID-19-related revival strategies for South Africa’s edutourism sector, with the ensuing debates contributing to increasing academic debates on the subject, while highlighting both practical policy-related input and theoretical contributions.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies have suggested compensatory brain overactivation in cognitively healthy (CH) older adults with pathological beta-amyloid(Aβ42)/tau ratios during working memory and interference processing. However, the association between glutamatergic metabolites and brain activation proxied by EEG signals has not been thoroughly investigated. We aim to determine the involvement of these metabolites in EEG signaling. We focused on CH older adults classified under (1) normal CSF Aβ42/tau ratios (CH-NATs) and (2) pathological Aβ42/tau ratios (CH-PATs). We measured plasma glutamine, glutamate, pyroglutamate, and γ-aminobutyric acid concentrations using tandem mass spectrometry and conducted a correlational analysis with alpha frequency event-related desynchronization (ERD). Under the N-back working memory paradigm, CH-NATs presented negative correlations (r = ~−0.74–−0.96, p = 0.0001–0.0414) between pyroglutamate and alpha ERD but positive correlations (r = ~0.82–0.95, p = 0.0003–0.0119) between glutamine and alpha ERD. Under Stroop interference testing, CH-NATs generated negative correlations between glutamine and left temporal alpha ERD (r = −0.96, p = 0.037 and r = −0.97, p = 0.027). Our study demonstrated that glutamine and pyroglutamate levels were associated with EEG activity only in CH-NATs. These results suggest cognitively healthy adults with amyloid/tau pathology experience subtle metabolic dysfunction that may influence EEG signaling during cognitive challenge. A longitudinal follow-up study with a larger sample size is needed to validate these pilot studies.

Carbon-based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have the advantages of a long lifetime and are compatible with highly scalable manufacturing processes. The use of carbon electrodes and the absence of a hole selective layer (HSL) promote a simplified fabrication process. However, the efficiency of HSL-free carbon-based PSCs is inferior to PSCs that utilize metal electrodes and HSL due to poor hole extraction at the perovskite/carbon interface. To overcome those issues, researchers added an interlayer on the perovskite/carbon interface or incorporated additive material into the carbon layer. However, there is limited research on utilizing both strategies to improve carbon-based PSC performance. Here, we use CuSCN as an interlayer between the perovskite/carbon interface and a carbon additive in carbon-based PSCs. By utilizing both strategies, the charge transfer of carbon-based PSC was significantly improved compared to carbon-based PSC utilizing only one improvement strategy. Confirmed by photoluminescence (PL) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) characterizations, the CuSCN interlayer and CuSCN-incorporated carbon electrode enable more efficient hole transfer, resulting in an increased power conversion efficiency from 0.58% to 5.06%. The proposed PSC structure shows promising results for further improving carbon-based PSC performance.

After pediatric residency, the author worked in a rural community where he was able to immediately practice skills acquired during training such as intubations, bag-mask ventilation, IV placement, ear irrigation, foreign body removal from eyes and ears, abscess incision and drainage, intraosseous placement for rapid hydration of a severely dehydrated infant, EKG, X-ray readings, and ear-irrigations to cite but a few examples. Furthermore, the writer acquired other high-valued procedural skills such as neonatal male circumcision, frenotomy, ligation of supernumerary digits, and manual separation of labial adhesions. The author feels that he could only have acquired and maintained these skills by working in a busy rural pediatric practice. When the writer later became a faculty member, he was able to effectively train medical students and pediatric residents to acquire these same skills. Even though there is a paucity of research information on procedural skills acquisition among general pediatric residents, the writer proposes that the recruitment of full-time general academic pediatricians with real-world experience may be potentially beneficial for the training of medical students and pediatric residents.

The article focuses on the impact of strategic marketing elements on the customer relationship program of the Tshwane Tourism Association (TTA) in South Africa. Adopting a quantitative approach, random sampling was implemented in collecting data from twenty tourism and marketing experts from ten universities across South Africa. SPSS was applied in the data analysis process. Key findings indicated that strategic marketing elements were essential for the success of the customer relationship program for the TTA. Particularly it was highlighted that the adoption of a customer relationship program was important specifically for effective strategic marketing performance. While there was agreement that customer relationship management improves customer interactions leading to improved customer experience, sales and marketing, the implementation of a successful customer relationship program required clear focus and attention to be afforded to strategic marketing elements from the onset. Suggestions are made for further empirical enquiry into the barriers to developing a customer relationship management program and to investigate its impact on customer loyalty.

Background Mental health disorders (MHDs) are considered a serious public health concern globally. The burden of mental health conditions is estimated to be higher in low-income and middle-income countries, including Cameroon, where reliable estimates are lacking. This review aims to synthesise evidence on the prevalence of MHDs, the effectiveness of mental health management interventions and identify risk factors for MHDs in Cameroon.Method This review will systematically search electronic databases for studies focusing on one or more MHDs of interest within the context of Cameroon. We will include cohort, case–control and cross-sectional studies which assessed the prevalence or risk factors for MHDs in Cameroon and intervention studies to provide evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for managing MHDs. Two reviewers will independently perform all screening stages, data extraction and synthesis. We will provide a narrative synthesis and, if we identify enough articles that are homogeneous, we will perform a meta-analysis using a random effect model. The strength of the evidence will be assessed using the Grading of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach.Conclusion This review will contribute to the current body of knowledge by providing a synthesis of current evidence on the prevalence of common MHDs, risk factors for different MHDs and the effectiveness of interventions for managing different mental health conditions in Cameroon.Ethics and dissemination This study will involve synthesis of published literature and does not warrant ethical approval. The findings will be disseminated through internationally peer-reviewed journals related to mental health.PROSPERO registration number CRD42022348427.