Rising feed cost challenges due to expensive conventional protein sources continue to make headlines in Africa causing drops in profit margins. We assessed the impact of insect (Hermetia illucens ...Linnaeus larvae meal, HILM) protein as a substitute for soybean meal and sunflower seed cake on layer chicken performance and profitability. Our results showed that apart from the growers, chicks (12.37 g/bird) and layer hens (2.02 g/bird) fed diets with 75% HILM inclusion levels had significantly higher average daily weight gain. The average daily feed intake (ADFI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) varied significantly when the chicks and layer hens were provided with the HILM-based diets. For the chicks and layer hens, the lowest ADFI and FCR were observed in birds subjected to diets with 75% and 100% HILM compared to the growers fed diets with 50% HILM. Significantly higher egg production was observed for layer hens fed diets containing 75% of HILM throughout the first (87.41%) and second (83.05%) phase production cycles. Layer hens fed HILM-based diets had a 3–10% increase in egg laying percentage. There was higher profit margins when birds were fed diets containing 75% of HILM (∼1.83 and 5.98 US$ per bird), which mirrored the return on investment estimated at 63.95% and 33.36% for the pullets (growers) and laying hen, respectively. Our findings demonstrate that diets with 75% HILM provided optimum growth performance, reduced feeding costs, increased weight gain and egg production as well as improved economic returns for commercial on-farm poultry production systems.
Animal genetics, management, diseases, feeds and environment affect milk production in cattle. Feed is the most important and when addressed, cattle show immediate responses. In sub-Saharan Africa, ...livestock productivity is low largely due to use of low-quality crop residues and natural pastures, often poor in key nutrients for animal performance. In an 8-week on-farm feeding trial with farmers’ participation, milk production under farmers’ practice (FP) was compared with the use of improved Urochloa hybrid cultivar ‘Cobra’ hay (Cobra hay) as an intervention (IN). A crossover design with each cow undergoing FP and IN phases was used. For the initial 2 weeks, the experiment followed FP before shifting to 50-50 FP/IN in week 3 and 100% IN in week 4 and 5, followed by 50-50 FP/IN in week six and 100% FP in week 7 and 8. Milk production increased by 15 % under IN and was associated with better feed utilization efficiency of 2 kg DM Cobra hay/L of milk. The use of Cobra hay has potential to increase dairy productivity in Tanzania and other similar tropical ecologies and contexts in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unemployment constitutes one of the major problems in developing countries, with factors such as unavailable skills and the proliferation of unskilled workers being cited as main causes. The existing ...literature has shown that using social networks analysis techniques, employment options for students and graduates can be accurately generated through recommender systems (RS) to optimize the chances of employment. Therefore, this study proposes a fine-tuned Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model named Contextual BERT (CoBERT) for item-centered content-based (CB) filtering RS. The model uses socio-political background, graduate-employer relationship and graduate academic competencies of information technology (IT) students as contextual factors to recommend employability profiles of IT students in unstable developing countries (UDCs) such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The performance of the proposed model is verified using four metrics. To evaluate the online performance of the model, the metrics of Diversity and Novelty are used. The metrics of normalized discounted cumulative gain (nDCG) and mean average precision (MAP) are applied to evaluate the model offline. The proposed model shows a high nDCG value at Top-N=4, equaling to 0.99. Validation statistics of 0.5 MAP score and significant t-statistics test values for Diversity and Novelty indicate that the proposed model can be generalized in the DRC and other similar UDCs. The RS model proposed in the current study contributes to the literature on employability models by advancing beyond traditional approaches such as fuzzy logic (FL), and also by taking graduate skills into account. The proposed model is a novel employability recommendation technique that provides highly precise and contextual recommendations. The output from this study contributes a theoretical foundation for implementing RSs in education and the industry.
Two perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) varieties and 5 festulolium hybrids (L. perenne × Festuca spp.) were evaluated on-farm for their performance over one growing season on clay loam soils at ...Ol-joro-Orok in the central highlands of Kenya at about 2,600‒2,800 masl. Seed was sown in May 2015 and fertilizer (90 kg N + 90 kg P/ha) was applied at planting. The study continued for 8 months with harvests after 113, 99 and 32 days (3 growth cycles). Growth attributes assessed included dry matter yield (DMY) and plant height, while forage nutritive value was measured in terms of crude protein (CP), acid detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) concentrations. At the end of the first growth cycle, 61 local dairy farmers rated the grasses on criteria they nominated as being important, including DMY, growth rate, height, frost tolerance, disease tolerance and leafiness. Total herbage yields for the whole study period (8 months) ranged from 14.6 to 18.0 t DM/ha for perennial ryegrass and 14.3 to 20.9 t DM/ha for festulolium with very poor growth in the third growth cycle. All perennial ryegrass and festulolium lines contained similar (P>0.05) concentrations of CP (163–190 g/kg DM), ADF (264–281 g/kg DM) and NDF (448–493 g/kg DM). For perennial ryegrass, farmers gave a minimum weighted score of 6.7 and for festulolium, 7.9. Based on herbage production, forage nutritive value and farmers’ assessments, we conclude that all perennial ryegrass and festulolium lines tested have the potential to contribute to improving the forage resource base in this and other similar areas, especially for farmers whose land sizes allow grazing instead of stall-based feeding only. Further studies with N applications after each harvest would determine whether yields can be maintained at high levels for longer than in this study, while grazing and feeding studies would determine how well the pastures support weight gains and milk yields. Studies over a number of years are needed to assess how persistent these varieties/hybrids are in this and other environments.
Background: Currently there are increased cases of men presenting with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) especially in low resource countries. The purpose of this study was to establish the ...influence of patient related factors on health seeking behaviors for LUTS among men attending surgical outpatient clinic at Meru hospital, Kenya.Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study design was used. Population involved 120 men suffering from LUTS, 2 physicians and 2 nurses. Questionnaires and interview guides were used for data collection. Study period was from August 2018 to March 2020.Results: Patients (67.0%) were aged between 61-70 years. Primary education level (68.8%). Farmers (72.0%) with income level of below Kenyan Shilling (Ksh.) 20,000. Logistic regression was used whereby p values (p≤0.05). The inferential statistics pointed out that patient related factors test items had a statistical significant influence since the p values were found to be less than 0.05 at 95% confidence interval.Conclusions: There was a significant negative influence of patient related factors such as lack of knowledge, low income levels and distance to health care facilities on health seeking practices. Patients sought medical attention when quality of their lives had been threatened. The study recommends adopting measures of rising awareness on need for seeking early medical attention and initiate outreach health services in underserved areas or through telehealth.
In the context of global efforts to transition toward renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal energy is increasingly recognized as a viable and sustainable option. This paper ...presents a comprehensive assessment derived from a subset of a larger sample collection within the Dunántúli Group of the Pannonian Basin, Hungary, focusing on optimizing micro-computed tomography (µ-CT) resolution for analyzing pore structures in sandstone formations. By categorizing samples based on geological properties and selecting representatives from each group, the study integrates helium porosity and gas permeability measurements with µ-CT imaging at various resolutions (5 µm, 2 µm, and 1 µm). The findings reveal that µ-CT resolution significantly affects the discernibility and characterization of pore structures. Finer resolutions (2 µm and 1 µm) effectively uncovered interconnected pore networks in medium- to coarse-grained sandstones, suggesting favorable properties for geothermal applications. In contrast, fine-grained samples showed limitations in geothermal applicability at higher resolutions due to their compact nature and minimal pore connectivity, which could not be confidently imaged at 1 µm. Additionally, this study acknowledges the challenges in delineating the boundaries within the Dunántúli Group formations, which adds a layer of complexity to the characterization process. The research highlights the importance of aligning µ-CT findings with geological backgrounds and laboratory measurements for accurate pore structure interpretation in heterogeneous formations. By contributing vital petrophysical data for the Dunántúli Group and the Pannonian Basin, this study provides key insights for selecting appropriate µ-CT imaging resolutions to advance sustainable geothermal energy strategies in the region. The outcomes of this research form the basis for future studies aimed at developing experimental setups to investigate physical clogging and enhance geothermal exploitation methods, crucial for the sustainable development of geothermal resources in the Pannonian Basin.
Ticks and tick-borne diseases cause significant loss in livestock production with about 80% world's cattle at risk. The cost of chemical control is high and there is an ever-increasing tick ...resistance to chemical acaricides. Genetic selection as alternative long-term control strategy is constrained by laborious phenotyping using tick counts or scores. This study explored the use of host volatile semiochemicals that may be attractants or repellents to ticks as a phenotype for new tick resistance, with potential to be used as a proxy in selection programmes. Approximately 100 young cattle composed of Bos indicus and Bos taurus were artificially infested with 2,500 African blue tick, Rhipicephalus decoloratus larvae, with daily female tick (4.5 mm) counts taken from day 20 post-infestation. Volatile organic compounds were sampled from cattle before and after tick infestation by dynamic headspace collection, analysed by high-resolution gas chromatography (GC) and subjected to multivariate statistical analysis. Using 6-day repeated measure analysis, three pre-infestation GC peaks (BI938 - unknown, BI966 - 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one and BI995 – hexyl acetate) and one post-infestation GC peak (AI933 – benzaldehyde / (E)-2-heptenal) were associated with tick resistance (P < 0.01 and P < 0.05 respectively). The high correlation coefficients (r = 0.66) between repeated records with all volatile compounds support the potential predictive value for volatile compounds in selective breeding programmes for tick resistance in cattle.
Predicting employability in an unstable developing country requires the use of contextual factors as predictors and a suitable machine learning model capable of generalization. This study has ...discovered that parental financial stability, sociopolitical, relationship, academic, and strategic factors are the factors that can contextually predict the employability of information technology (IT) graduates in the democratic republic of Congo (DRC). A deep stacking predictive model was constructed using five different multilayer perceptron (MLP) sub models. The deep stacking model measured good performance (80% accuracy, 0.81 precision, 0.80 recall, 0.77 f1-score). All the individual models could not reach these performances with all the evaluation metrics used. Therefore, deep stacking was revealed to be the most suitable method for building a generalizable model to predict employability of IT graduates in the DRC. The authors estimate that the discovery of these contextual factors that predict IT graduates’ employability will help the DRC and other similar governments to develop strategies that mitigate unemployment, an important milestone to achievement of target 8.6 of the sustainable development goals.
Production of livestock and dairy products in Sub-Saharan Africa struggles to keep pace with growing demand. The potential exists to close this gap in a climate-friendly way through the introduction ...of improved forage varieties of the Brachiaria genus. We assess the potential economic impact of the development and release of such varieties in 6 Eastern African countries using an economic surplus model. Results are presented across a range of potential scenarios involving different adoption rates and percentage increases in production. For all but the lowest levels of adoption and production increases, improved forages have the potential for positive return on investment. Using these results, we present formulae that help readers calculate the adoption rate or percentage increase in production necessary to achieve specific desired levels of net benefit. Overall, the model output suggests that investment in a forages research program related to the qualities of the forage itself as well as programs to enhance dissemination and adoption of new materials would be low risk and have high likelihood for positive outcomes, generating discounted net benefits in the order of multiple tens of millions of dollars over a 30-year time horizon.
A study to determine the physiological and biochemical responses of eight tea Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze cultivars to water-deficit stress was conducted in a ‘rain-out shelter’ using potted ...plants. Three levels of soil moisture content 34, 26, or 18% (v/v) water were applied to three plants of each cultivar in a complete randomised design, and the whole experiment was replicated three-times. The treatments were applied for 12 weeks, during which time plant water status, shoot extension rates, changes in gas exchange parameters, and leaf proline and glycinebetaine concentrations were determined. The imposition of severe water-deficit conditions 18% (v/v) soil water content caused a significant (P ≤ 0.05) decline in the relative water content of leaves, shoot water potentials, and shoot extension rates from mean values of 84.8% to 50.6%, –0.80 to –1.15MPa, and 1.87 to 0.29 mm d–1, respectively, compared to plants grown in a well-watered soil 34% (v/v) soil water content. The three gas exchange parameters measured (stomatal conductance, evapotranspiration rate, and rate of net photosynthesis) also declined significantly (P ≤ 0.05) with decreasing soil moisture content. In contrast, water-deficit stress increased the accumulation of leaf proline and glycinebetaine from mean values of 0.104 to 0.244 μmol g–1 FW, and from 1.567 to 2.025 μmol g–1 DW, respectively. The eight tea cultivars differed significantly (P ≤ 0.05) in their responses to water-deficit stress. Proline accumulation was significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher in the drought-tolerant cultivars, ‘TRFK 306’, ‘TRFCA SFS150’, and ‘EPK TN14/3’, suggesting that proline concentration could be used as a marker for drought-tolerance in tea.
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