Discovered in 1988 by R. Oslisly and B. Peyrot, Elarmékora is a high terrace that, today, is situated 175 m above the Ogooué River in the historical complex of Elarmékora, attached to the Lopé ...National Park in Gabon, a World Heritage site since 2007. The site yielded a small lithic assemblage, including mainly cobble artefacts embedded within the 1 m thick alluvial material. Based on geomorphological and palaeoclimatological criteria, the preliminary dating suggested an age of 400 ka. However, Elarmékora could be a key site for Atlantic Central Africa if this lithic industry can be dated absolutely. In 2018 and 2019, two field trips were organized to collect surface samples as well as samples in vertical depth profiles with the aim of measuring their
in situ
-produced cosmogenic nuclide (
10
Be and
26
Al) content. Results suggest a surface abandonment between 730 and 620 ka ago representing a minimum age for the cobble artefacts. Concurrently, technological reappraisal of the artefacts suggests an atypical lithic industry that should, for the moment, be considered as ‘undiagnostic’ Earlier Stone Age. This age bracketing may be compared with a similar age range obtained for prehistoric occupations in Angola using the same approach. This age will place Elarmékora among the oldest evidence for the presence of hominins in western Central Africa and raises the question of a ‘West Side Story’ to early human dispersals in Africa.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Tropical forests in the deep human past’.
Discovered in 1988 by R. Oslisly and B. Peyrot, Elarmékora is a high terrace that, today, is situated 175 m above the Ogooué River in the historical complex of Elarmékora, attached to the Lopé ...National Park in Gabon, a World Heritage site since 2007. The site yielded a small lithic assemblage, including mainly cobble artefacts embedded within the 1 m thick alluvial material. Based on geomorphological and palaeoclimatological criteria, the preliminary dating suggested an age of 400 ka. However, Elarmékora could be a key site for Atlantic Central Africa if this lithic industry can be dated absolutely. In 2018 and 2019, two field trips were organized to collect surface samples as well as samples in vertical depth profiles with the aim of measuring their
-produced cosmogenic nuclide (
Be and
Al) content. Results suggest a surface abandonment between 730 and 620 ka ago representing a minimum age for the cobble artefacts. Concurrently, technological reappraisal of the artefacts suggests an atypical lithic industry that should, for the moment, be considered as 'undiagnostic' Earlier Stone Age. This age bracketing may be compared with a similar age range obtained for prehistoric occupations in Angola using the same approach. This age will place Elarmékora among the oldest evidence for the presence of hominins in western Central Africa and raises the question of a 'West Side Story' to early human dispersals in Africa. This article is part of the theme issue 'Tropical forests in the deep human past'.
Importance: Sheep and goat pox (SGP) virus infection is a highly fatal viral infection of small ruminants that causes major production losses in sheep and goats in Ethiopia while also limiting ...international trade. Objective: This study aimed to estimate the seroprevalence of SGP infection and assess related risk variables. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from February to August 2023 on 384 serum samples taken from sheep and goats. A serum neutralization test was conducted to detect the presence of antibodies against the SGP virus in Wolaita Sodo Regional Laboratory. Results: The overall seroprevalence rate of SGP was 4.95%. Factors such as sheep (8.26%), female sheep and goats (7.45%), older sheep and goats (8.33%), larger flock size of sheep and goats (10.47%), poorly conditioned sheep and goats (31.58%), sheep and goats with a tick on their skin (10.38%), and animals that had not been vaccinated (5.17%) were found to have higher seroprevalence. Furthermore, the seropositivity in sheep was five times greater than in goats (adjusted odds ratio AOR, 4.73; 95% confidence interval CI, 1.39-15.99). Additionally, large-sized flocks of sheep and goats were more likely to be seropositive to pox disease than small-sized flocks (AOR, 6.73; 95% CI, 1.58-28.67). Conclusions and Relevance: Thus, the study revealed the prevalence of SGP in the Wolaita zone. Additional research should be conducted to estimate the extent of the disease at the regional level, and management measures should be implemented to reduce the economic losses associated with this condition.
This research was conducted to study the gene expression of coffee (Coffea arabica L.) seedlings under salt stress condition. A solution of five percent ($2.3dS\;m^{-1}$) deep sea water was used for ...the salt treatment, and it was thereby compared to normal irrigation water ($0.2dS\;m^{-1}$) used for the control treatment. The mRNA was extracted from the leaves of the coffee seedlings for a comprehensive analysis. In this study, a total of 19,581 genes were identified and aligned to the reference sequences available in the coffee genome database. The gene ontology analysis was performed to estimate the number of genes associated with the identified biological processes, cellular components and molecular functions. Among the 19,581 genes, 7369 (37.64%) were associated with biological processes, 5909 (30.18%) with cellular components, and 5325 (27.19%) with molecular functions. The remaining 978 (4.99%) genes were therefore grouped as unclassified. A differential gene expression analysis was performed using the DESeq2 package to identify the genes that were differentially expressed between the treatments based on fold changes and p-values. Namely, a total of 611 differentially expressed genes were identified (treatment/control) in that case. Among these, 336 genes were up-regulated while 275 of the genes were down-regulated. Of the differentially expressed genes, 60 genes showed statistically significant (p < 0.05) expression, 44 of which were up-regulated and 16 which were down-regulated. We also identified 11 differentially expressed transcription factor genes, 6 of which were up-regulated and rest 5 genes were down-regulated. The data generated from this study will help in the continued interest and understanding of the responses of coffee seedlings genes associated with salinity stress, in particular. This study will also provide important resources for further functional genomics studies.
As a user in modern societies with the rapid growth of Internet environment and more complicated business flow processes in order to be effective at work and accomplish things on time when the ...manager of the company went for a business trip, he/she need to delegate his/her signing authorities to someone such that, the delegatee can act as a manager and sign a message on his/her behalf. In order to make the delegation process more secure and authentic, we proposed a secure and efficient identity-based proxy signcryption in cloud data sharing (SE-IDPSC-CS), which provides a secure privilege delegation mechanism for a person to delegate his/her signcryption privilege to his/her proxy agent. Our scheme allows the manager of the company to delegate his/her signcryption privilege to his/her proxy agent and the proxy agent can act as a manager and generate signcrypted messages on his/her behalf using special information called ”proxy key”. Then, the proxy agent uploads the signcrypted ciphertext to a cloud service provider (CSP) which can only be downloaded, decrypted and verified by an authorized user at any time from any place through the Internet. Finally, the security analysis and experiment result determine that the proposed scheme outperforms previous works in terms of functionalities and computational time.
Objectives: Ongoing, proactive, planned, and patient-centered diabetes education is the cornerstone of care for all persons with diabetes. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore the information ...needs of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients receiving insulin treatment in North-East Ethiopia. Methods: The study was conducted from July 2019 to January 2020 using a qualitative enquiry (phenomenological approach) with purposive sampling. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were used to collect data until reaching theoretical saturation. The participants were type 2 diabetes patients receiving insulin treatment. They were identified from the diabetes patients' registration book at the diabetes clinic and interviewed at their appointment time, and were selected to include wide variations in terms of socio-demographic characteristics. Twenty-four participants (11 men and 13 women), with a median age of 57 years, were interviewed. The data were organized using QDA Miner Lite version 2.0.7 and analyzed thematically using narrative strategies. Results: Most participants had not heard of diabetes before their diagnosis. They had limited knowledge of diabetes, but ascribed different connotations for it in the local language (Amharic). The needs reflections of patients were categorized into diabetes education and participants' recommendations. Diabetes education was totally absent at hospitals, and patients received education primarily from the Ethiopian Diabetes Association and broadcast and digital media. Thus, the major concern of patients was the availability of diabetes education programs at health institutions. Conclusions: Patients' main concern was the absence of routine diabetes education, which necessitates urgent action to implement diabetes education programs, especially at health institutions.
Freshwater scarcity is a growing concern, placing considerable importance on the accuracy of indicators used to characterize and map water scarcity worldwide. We improve upon past efforts by using ...estimates of blue water footprints (consumptive use of ground- and surface water flows) rather than water withdrawals, accounting for the flows needed to sustain critical ecological functions and by considering monthly rather than annual values. We analyzed 405 river basins for the period 1996-2005. In 201 basins with 2.67 billion inhabitants there was severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. The ecological and economic consequences of increasing degrees of water scarcity--as evidenced by the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo), Indus, and Murray-Darling River Basins--can include complete desiccation during dry seasons, decimation of aquatic biodiversity, and substantial economic disruption.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this paper, a uniformly convergent numerical scheme is designed for solving singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion problems. The problem is converted to an equivalent weak form and then a ...Galerkin finite element method is used on a piecewise uniform Shishkin mesh with linear basis functions. The convergence of the developed scheme is proved and it is shown to be almost fourth order uniformly convergent in the maximum norm. To exhibit the applicability of the scheme, model examples are considered and solved for different values of a singular perturbation parameter ε and mesh elements. The proposed scheme approximates the exact solution very well.
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