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Seedling vigor and regrowth ability are important traits for the forage production of winter wheat. The objectives of this study were to map quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with seedling vigor and regrowth vigor traits using a genome-wide association mapping study (GWAS). Seedling vigor and regrowth vigor were evaluated with shoot length, the number of shoots per plant and shoot dry weight per plant 45 days after planting and 15 days after cutting. A large phenotypic variation was observed for all the traits studied. In total, 12 significant QTL for seedling vigor and 16 for regrowth vigor traits were detected on various chromosomes. Four QTL on chromosomes 2B, 4B, 5A and 7A for seedling vigor co-localized with QTL for regrowth vigor due to significant correlations between corresponding traits of the initial growth and regrowth. A BLAST search using DNA sequences of the significant loci revealed candidate genes playing roles in vegetative and reproductive development in different crop species. The QTL and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers identified in this study will be further validated and used for marker-assisted selection of the traits during forage wheat breeding.

We study the vacuum Rabi splitting of a qubit ultrastrongly coupled to a high-$Q$ cavity mode and a radiation reservoir. Three methods are employed: a numerically exact variational approach with a multiple Davydov ansatz, the rotating-wave approximation (RWA), and the transformed RWA. Agreement between the variational results and the transformed RWA results is found in the regime of validity of the latter, where the RWA breaks down completely. We illustrate that the Lamb shift plays an essential role in modifying the vacuum Rabi splitting in the ultrastrong coupling regime, leading to off-resonant qubit-cavity coupling even though the cavity frequency equals to the bare transition frequency of the qubit. Specifically, the emission spectrum exhibits one broad low-frequency peak and one narrow high-frequency peak in the presence of relatively weak cavity-qubit coupling. As the cavity-qubit coupling increases, the low-frequency peak narrows while the high-frequency peak broadens until they have similar widths., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures

One major and three minor QTLs for resistance to pre-harvest sprouting (PHS) were identified from a white wheat variety "Danby." The major QTL on chromosome 3A is TaPHS1, and the sequence variation in its promoter region was responsible for the PHS resistance. Additive × additive effects were detected between two minor QTLs on chromosomes 3B and 5A, which can greatly enhance the PHS resistance. Pre-harvest sprouting (PHS) causes significant losses in yield and quality in wheat. White wheat is usually more susceptible to PHS than red wheat. Therefore, the use of none grain color-related PHS resistance quantitative trait loci (QTLs) is essential for the improvement in PHS resistance in white wheat. To identify PHS resistance QTLs in the white wheat cultivar "Danby" and determine their effects, a doubled haploid population derived from a cross of Danby × "Tiger" was genotyped using genotyping-by-sequencing markers and phenotyped for PHS resistance in two greenhouse and one field experiments. One major QTL corresponding to a previously cloned gene, TaPHS1, was consistently detected on the chromosome arm 3AS in all three experiments and explained 21.6-41.0% of the phenotypic variations. A SNP (SNP-222) in the promoter of TaPHS1 co-segregated with PHS in this mapping population and was also significantly associated with PHS in an association panel. Gene sequence comparison and gene expression analysis further confirmed that SNP-222 is most likely the causal mutation in TaPHS1 for PHS resistance in Danby in this study. In addition, two stable minor QTLs on chromosome arms 3BS and 5AL were detected in two experiments with allele effects consistently contributed by Danby, while one minor QTL on 2AS was detected in two environments with contradicted allelic effects. The two stable minor QTLs showed significant additive × additive effects. The results demonstrated that pyramiding those three QTLs using breeder-friendly KASP markers developed in this study could greatly improve PHS resistance in white wheat.

Consistency of relevance judgments is a vital issue for the construction of test collections in information retrieval. As human relevance assessments are costly, and large collections can contain many documents of varying relevance, collecting reliable judgments is a critical component to building reusable test collections. We explore the impact of document presentation order on human relevance assessments. Our primary goal is to determine if assessor disagreement can be minimized through the order in which documents are presented to assessors. To achieve this goal, we compare two commonly used presentation orderings with a new ordering designed to aid assessors to more easily discriminate between relevant and non-relevant documents. By carefully controlling the presentation ordering, assessors can more quickly converge on a consistent notion of relevance during the assessment exercise, leading to higher overall judging agreement. In addition, important interactions between presentation ordering and topic difficulty on assessor agreement are highlighted. Our findings suggest that document presentation order does indeed have a substantial impact on assessor agreement , and that our new ordering is more robust than previous approaches across a variety of different topic types.

Background: Physical activity can significantly reduce burden of NCDs. Physical activity is a low-cost and high impact interventions that can be easily implemented among majority of the population throughout the life. Global reports show that physical inactivity has become unique feature. As per the 2014 WHO report, globally, 20 percent of adult men and 27 percent of adult women did not meet the normal- recommendations of physical activity for health most of these being from urban settings.Objective: To assess the magnitude and determinants of physical inactivity among Ethiopian population.Methods: Community-based Cross-sectional study based on the World Health Organization (WHO) NCD Stepwise approach was conducted in Ethiopia from April to June 2015. All men and women age 15-69 years old were the target of this study. A mix of sampling approach namely stratified, three-stage cluster sampling, simple random sampling and Kish method were employed to select the study settings and the study participants. A total of 9801 from 513 enumerations areas were involved with response rate of 95.5%.Result: Among the study participants, 94.2% (95% of male, and 91% of female) of the participants reported physical activity as per WHO recommendations. Based on multivariate analysis, rural residents were 2.5 (AOR=2.46, (95% - CI: 2.12, 2.86) times more likely to engage in physical activity as compared to urbanites. The youngest age group 15-29 were 3.5 (AOR=3.46, (95% - CI: 2.74, 4.36) times more likely to be physically active than the older age group 60-69 years old. Participants who had college and above education were 28 percent (AOR=0.72, (95% - CI: 0.55, 0.96) less likely to do physical activity compared to respondents with no formal education.Conclusion: Considerable proportion of the study population did not meet WHO recommendations on physical activity for health. It showed that, individuals in rural areas were more engaged in physical activity while individuals who had college and above education were less likely to do physical activity. The highest percentage of individuals not meeting the WHO recommendations for physical activity were the older ones in the age group 60–69 years. Key Words: STEPs survey, physical inactivity determinants, Ethiopia

Introduction: No assessment was conducted previously in Ethiopia to monitor, review and evaluate the availability and readiness of health facilities for non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Thus, the present study aims to provide evidence on service availability and readiness for NCDs in Ethiopia.Method: A Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) was conducted in Ethiopia in 2016. The survey used stratified random sampling design to provide data for 11 regions in Ethiopia for different facility types and managing authorities. A total of 547 public and private health facilities were included in this analysis (210 hospitals, 165 health centres and 172 clinics). Data were collected using CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interview) designed using CSPro 6.3 Software. This study uses tracer indicators in data analysis. Tracer indicators aim to provide objective information about whether or not a facility meets the required conditions to support provision of basic or specific services with a consistent level of quality and quantity.Result: Overall, among all health facilities offering service for NCDs, the availability of diagnosis and/or management of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease and cervical cancer were 22%, 41%, 45% and 2%, respectively. Cervical cancer diagnosis was the least available; only 2 in 10 facilities offered this diagnosis service. Among all health facilities offering services for NCDs, the availability of trained staff for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease and cervical cancer prevention and control were 10%, 7%, 8% and 61% respectively. Among health facilities that were offering diabetes diagnosis and/or management services, none of them had all thirteen services. On average, 53% of facilities had seven of the thirteen items. Among facilities that provided cardiovascular disease services, only 1% of them had all twelve items. On average, 41% of these facilities had six of the twelve items. Among health facilities that offered diagnosis and/or management of chronic respiratory disease, no facility had all eleven items. On average, approximately three out of ten health facilities had six of the eleven items. From health facilities that were providing diagnosis and/or management of cervical cancer, only five out of ten health facilities had all four items. On average, 72% of facilities had two out of the four items.Conclusion: Overall, service availability and readiness of the health facilities to provide NCDs related health services are suboptimal. The overall level of diabetes diagnosis and/or management by health facilities was unsatisfactory and it varied between urban (34%) and rural (5%) health facilities. In general, cervical cancer diagnosis was rarely provided and no rural health facilities offered this service. We hope that the findings of this study will prompt appropriate national policy response for NCDs towards improved health care service delivery across health facilities. Key words: NCD, availability, readiness, Ethiopia

Wheat (Triticum spp.) stem rust, caused by Puc cinia graminis f. sp. tritici Eriks. and E. Henn. (Pgt), re-emerged as a devastating disease of wheat because of virulent race Ug99 (TTKSK). Many bread wheat ( T. aestivum L.) cultivars grown in North America are susceptible to Ug99 or its derivative races that carry additional viru lence. ‘Gage’ was released in 1963 mainly for its excellent field resistance to leaf rust (caused by Puccinia triticina Eriks) and stem rust. However, Gage’s resistance has not been genetically char acterized, which would facilitate its use in breed ing programs. To better define the nature of the resistance in Gage, we created an F 2 population and the corresponding F 2:3 and F 4:5 families from crosses between Gage and stem rust suscep tible cultivar ‘Bill Brown’. Inheritance of resis tance to Pgt race QFCSC and molecular marker analysis indicated that Sr2 and additional genes explain the stem rust resistance of Gage. Using seedling plant infection types from the F 2 , F 2:3

In recent years, gathering relevance judgments through non-topic originators has become an increasingly important problem in Information Retrieval. Relevance judgments can be used to measure the effectiveness of a system, and are often needed to build supervised learning models in learning-to-rank retrieval systems. The two most popular approaches to gathering bronze level judgments - where the judge is not the originator of the information need for which relevance is being assessed, and is not a topic expert - is through a controlled user study, or through crowdsourcing. However, judging comes at a cost (in time, and usually money) and the quality of the judgments can vary widely. In this work, we directly compare the reliability of judgments using three different types of bronze assessor groups. Our first group is a controlled Lab group; the second and third are two different crowdsourcing groups, CF-Document where assessors were free to judge any number of documents for a topic, and CF-Topic where judges were required to judge all of the documents from a single topic, in a manner similar to the Lab group. Our study shows that Lab assessors exhibit a higher level of agreement with a set of ground truth judgments than CF-Topic and CF-Document assessors. Inter-rater agreement rates show analogous trends. These finding suggests that in the absence of ground truth data, agreement between assessors can be used to reliably gauge the quality of relevance judgments gathered from secondary assessors, and that controlled user studies are more likely to produce reliable judgments despite being more costly.

Judging the relevance of documents for an information need is an activity that underpins the most widely-used approach in the evaluation of information retrieval systems. In this study we investigate the relationship between how long it takes an assessor to judge document relevance, and three key factors that may influence the judging scenario: the difficulty of the search topic for which relevance is being assessed; the degree to which the documents are relevant to the search topic; and, the order in which the documents are presented for judging. Two potential confounding influences on judgment speed are differences in individual reading ability, and the length of documents that are being assessed. We therefore propose two measures to investigate the above factors: normalized processing speed (NPS), which adjusts the number of words that were processed per minute by taking into account differences in reading speed between judges, and normalized dwell time (NDT), which adjusts the duration that a judge spent reading a document relative to document length. Note that these two measures have different relationships with overall judgment speed: a direct relationship for NPS, and an inverse relationship for NDT. The results of a small-scale user study show a statistically significant relationship between judgment speed and topic difficulty: for easier topics, assessors process more quickly (higher NPS), and spend less time overall (lower NDT). There is also a statistically significant relationship between the level of relevance of the document being assessed and overall judgment speed, with assessors taking less time for non-relevant documents. Finally, our results suggest that the presentation order of documents can also affect overall judgment speed, with assessors spending less time (smaller NDT) when documents are presented in relevance order than docID order. However, these ordering effects are not significant when also accounting for document length variance (NPS).

Human relevance judgments are a key component for measuring the effectiveness of information retrieval systems using test collections. Since relevance is not an absolute concept, human assessors can disagree on particular topic-document pairs for a variety of reasons. In this work we investigate the effect that document presentation order has on inter-rater agreement, comparing two presentation ordering approaches similar to those used in IR evaluation campaigns: decreasing relevance order and document identifier order. We make a further distinction between "easy" topics and "hard" topics in order to explore system effects on inter-rater agreement. The results of our pilot user study indicate that assessor agreement is higher when documents are judged in document identifier order. In addition, there is higher overall agreement on easy topics than on hard topics.

Background: The burden of disease, injury and death associated with excessive alcohol consumption remains high in most countries. Although there were studies done in different parts of Ethiopia that looked at hazardous use and dependence, no national survey was done on excessive alcohol consumption which is an important risk factor for many health and social problems. This study assessed the magnitude and predictors of excessive alcohol use and associated factors in Ethiopia.Methods: A community based cross-sectional survey was conducted using the WHO STEPwise approach to explore risk factors for NCDs including excessive alcohol consumption. A mix of stratified, three-stage cluster and simple random sampling were used to the study setting or clusters and households. The sampling frame was based on the population and housing census conducted in Ethiopia in 2007. A total of 10,260 households were selected from the 513 enumeration areas. Data were collected using WHO STEPS questionnaire. For this report, Heavy Episodic Drinking was taken as a dependent variable. Descriptive statistics including frequency table, mean, median, interquartile range and standard deviations were computed. Logistic regression was used to analyze the predictors of Heavy Episodic Drinking.Results: A total of 9,800 participants were interviewed in the study. The majority59.4% of the study subjects were female, 40.4% were aged 15-29 years. The overall prevalence of lifetime alcohol consumption was 49.3%, and 40.7% of the study participants reported consumption of alcohol in the past 30 days, defined as current drinkers. Heavy episodic drinking was reported by 12.4% of the participants (20.5% males and 2.7% females). In multivariate logistic regression, factors independently associated with heavy episodic drinking, after adjusting for other characteristics, were male sex, rural residence, married, and current tobacco smoking.Conclusion: More than one in five males reported heavy episodic drinking which will predispose them to non-communicable diseases and other risks. Concurrent tobacco smoking is also a major concern. The findings will be helpful to initiate effective public health interventions to reduce heavy episodic drinking and consequently reduce the risks associated with it. It will also serve as a baseline to conduct further studies on this issue in Ethiopia. Key words: Alcohol, Heavy Episodic Drinking, NCD, Ethiopia, WHO STEPS

Background: Chewing of the leaves of the plant khat (Catha edulis Forsk) is a common habit in some countries of East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Khat is chewed by an estimated 20 million population every day in the Arabian Peninsula and in Eastern Africa region including Ethiopia. Ethiopia is believed to be the country of origin of khat where millions chew khat on a daily bases. Khat is also one of Ethiopia's biggest export commodities. This particular study assessed the prevalence of khat chewing and its predictors in Ethiopia.Method: We used a community based cross-sectional data collected in 2015 as part of the National STEPs survey on NCD risk factors. .. The target population for this survey was all men and women aged 15-69 years who had been living at their place of residence for at least six months prior to the survey. A mix of stratified, three-stage cluster and simple random sampling were used to the study setting or clusters and households. The sampling frame was based on the population and housing census conducted in Ethiopia in 2007. A total of 10,260 households were selected from the 513 enumeration areas. Data were collected using WHO STEPS questionnaire and a locally constructed structured questionnaire to collect data on life time and current khat chewing and associated factors. Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 20, descriptive statistics as well as association tests were carried out.Result: Nineteen percent of the respondents had ever chewed khat where among these, the majority (83%) were current khat chewers giving an overall prevalence of current khat chewing rate of 15.8% (21.1% of males and 9.4% of females). Khat was significantly higher in Afar [AOR and (95% CI)] [7.23 (2.01-26.01)], Dire Dawa [AOR and (95% CI)] [5.945 (2.116-16.706)], Harari [AOR and (95% CI)] [5.83 (1.49-22.87)] and Somali [AOR and (95% CI)] [4.315 (1.36-13.71)] among others. Similarly, the odds of khat chewing in urban areas [AOR and (95% CI)] [1.726 (1.18-2.53)] and current users of tobacco [AOR and (95% CI)] [2.882 (1.744 to 4.764)] were higher than their counterparts. Those who were in the third and fourth quartile income ranges [AOR and (95% CI)] 0.612 (0.384-0.974)], [AOR and (95% CI)] [0.508(0.309-0.84)] and those in high school education [AOR and (95% CI)] [0.386 (0.213-0.70)] were less likely to use Khat respectively.Conclusion: Almost 1 out of 5 respondents had ever chewed khat and among these, the vast majority, more than 80%, reported to have been current khat chewers. Being educated and in a better economic status were the protective factors for current khat chewing. Current tobacco use was associated with khat chewing increasing the risk to NCDs. Hence, policy measures aiming at prevention of khat chewing are recommended. Further studies aiming at problematic khat chewing and associated psychosocial and physical health problems is recommended. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2017;31(Special Issue):320-230]Key words: Ethiopia, Risk Factors, Khat, NCD, Protective Factors, Tobacco

Background: Consuming any form of tobacco is one of the leading causes of preventable morbidity and mortality. Tobacco smoking has been identified as one of the major risk factors for NCDs, including cardiovascular, chronic respiratory diseases, and different cancers. Although there is national information on magnitude of tobacco use, to date there is limited nationally representative data on factors associated with tobacco use. The aim of this study is to assess the distribution and predicators of tobacco use in Ethiopian adult population between 15 -59.Objectives: The main aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of tobacco use and its predictor in Ethiopia.Methods: A cross-sectional population based study design was employed among population age from 15- 69 years. A stratified, three-stage cluster sampling was used to identify the study subjects. Households in each cluster were selected using simple random sampling method. The sampling frame was based on the population and housing census conducted for Ethiopia in 2007. Data was collected using WHO NCD STEPS questionnaire; current tobacco use of any type was taken as the dependent variable. Five hundred thirteen enumeration areas (EAs) as primary sampling units (PSUs) (404 rural and 109 urban) were selected with probability proportionate to size, followed by selection of households as a secondary sampling units (SSUs). A total of 10,260 households were selected from the 513 EAs (20 households per EA). Eligible individuals were selected from households using Kish method (a pre-assigned table of random numbers to find the person to be interviewed). Descriptive statistics using frequency table, mean, median, interquartile range and standard deviations were computed. Step wise logistic regression was used to analyse the predictors of tobacco use. An Estimator of 95% confidence interval was used both for computing descriptive statistics as well testing associations using logistic regression.Results: The prevalence of tobacco use (all tobacco products) was 4.2%. The mean age (± SD) of starting tobacco use was 21(7) years. The mean frequency of tobacco use was 2 times per day. Hierarchical Logistic regression analysis revealed that participants in age groups 30-44 years, and 60-69 years were less likely to use any tobacco type compared to younger age group of15-29 years. Heavy episodic drinking, AOR 2.46 [95% CI= 1.4 – 4.5], and khat chewing, AOR 4.71[95%= 2.26 – 9.8], were independently associated with tobacco use.Conclusion and recommendations: The overall prevalence of tobacco use was relatively higher in males. Factors associated with tobacco use were heavy episodic drinking and khat chewing. Although tobacco use is an important risk factor for different disease on its own, the additional use of these substances exposes individuals to increased risk of NCDs. The findings warrant the need to implement existing anti-tobacco laws in the country, enhance anti-tobacco awareness raising efforts, and implement interventions to help current tobacco users, focusing attention more on regions with high rates of tobacco use and males. Key words: Ethiopia, NCDs, Predictors, Risk factors, Tobacco use, WHO STEPS

La ricerca, finanziata da Il Sole Onlus, ha valutato l’efficacia di un intervento di supporto psicopedagogico, counselling e recupero sociale per bambine etiopi vittime di violenza sessuale. In Etiopia i bambini vittime di violenze riportano scarso supporto sociale, bassa autostima e pensieri intrusivi. 19 bambine (eta media 9.7 anni), vittime di violenza sessuale, hanno partecipato all’intervento. Si e valutato nelle bambine all’inizio e 12 mesi dopo l’intervento il PTSD, il rischio depressivo, i problemi comportamentali e i comportamenti sessualizzati. Dopo un anno di intervento si e verificata la diminuzione di: rabbia, sintomi post-traumatici, problemi internalizzanti ed esternalizzanti, depressione, problemi sociali, di attenzione e pensiero, e comportamento aggressivo. La riduzione di tali problematiche indicano l’efficacia dell’intervento.