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Essential Oils of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants as Botanical Biocide for Management of Coconut Eriophyid Mite (Aceria guerreronis Keifer)
No full textThe present study investigated the efficiency of essential oils extracted from different aromatic and medicinal plant sources on Aceria guerreronis Keifer, one of the serious pests of coconut. The essential oils and the herbal extracts were prepared in two different formulations and were used both in laboratory and field conditions to assess the efficiency of the formulations against the coconut mite infestation. The field trial results showed that reduction in infestation intensity was found to vary between 73.44% and 44.50% at six different locations of trial farms with an average of 64.18% after four spells of treatment. The average number of live mites was higher in the third month old nuts both in the control as well as the treated nut samples. The laboratory experiments on the efficacy of botanical biocide showed that the time taken for dehydration and shriveling of body cells took only sixty seconds. The multilocational field trials revealed the overall efficiency of the biocide to significantly control the eriophyid mite in coconut crop in an ecofriendly and sustainable manner without adopting any chemical pesticide
FINANCIAL EXCLUSION AND LIVELIHOOD ASSETS ACQUISITION AMONG MUSLIM HOUSEHOLDS IN ILORIN, NIGERIA: A STRUCTURAL INVARIANCE ANALYSIS
No full textABSTRACT This study examined the relationship that exists between the latent variables of financial exclusion (credit, savings, and remittances) and sustainable livelihood assets (social capital, natural capital, physical capital, and human capital) among some poor Muslim households in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. Data elicited via survey questionnaire administered on poor Muslim households was analysed based on both factor analysis and structural equation modelling using SPSS 19.0 and Amos 19.0 software. The results indicated that the lack of financial inclusion significantly and statistically impedes the acquisition of the livelihood assets. The invariance analysis also revealed that both gender and educational attainment do not moderate the hypothesised structural model. The relatively small sample size and coverage of study area are major limitations to generalizing the findings. Nonetheless, the findings imply that financial inclusion strategies in Nigeria and perhaps in other Muslim majority areas should be located within a broader sustainable livelihood framework. This paper contributes to the literature on implication of financial exclusion from an integrated welfare analysis perspective given that access to, and uses of finance are viewed as independent rather than conjoined. JEL Classifications: I320, D14, G2
Antidiabetic effect of oral borapetol B compound, isolated from the plant Tinospora crispa, by stimulating insulin release,” Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol
No full textAims. To evaluate the antidiabetic properties of borapetol B known as compound 1 (C1) isolated from Tinospora crispa in normoglycemic control Wistar (W) and spontaneously type 2 diabetic Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats. Methods. The effect of C1 on blood glucose and plasma insulin was assessed by an oral glucose tolerance test. The effect of C1 on insulin secretion was assessed by batch incubation and perifusion experiments using isolated pancreatic islets. Results. An acute oral administration of C1 improved blood glucose levels in treated versus placebo groups with areas under glucose curves 0-120 min being 72 ± 17 versus 344 ± 10 mmol/L ( < 0.001) and 492 ± 63 versus 862 ± 55 mmol/L ( < 0.01) in W and GK rats, respectively. Plasma insulin levels were increased by 2-fold in treated W and GK rats versus placebo group at 30 min ( < 0.05). C1 dose-dependently increased insulin secretion from W and GK isolated islets at 3.3 mM and 16.7 mM glucose. The perifusions of isolated islets indicated that C1 did not cause leakage of insulin by damaging islet beta cells ( < 0.001). Conclusion. This study provides evidence that borapetol B (C1) has antidiabetic properties mainly due to its stimulation of insulin release
Item Cold-Start Recommendations: Learning Local Collective Embeddings
No full textABSTRACT Recommender systems suggest to users items that they might like (e.g., news articles, songs, movies) and, in doing so, they help users deal with information overload and enjoy a personalized experience. One of the main problems of these systems is the item cold-start, i.e., when a new item is introduced in the system and no past information is available, then no effective recommendations can be produced. The item cold-start is a very common problem in practice: modern online platforms have hundreds of new items published every day. To address this problem, we propose to learn Local Collective Embeddings: a matrix factorization that exploits items' properties and past user preferences while enforcing the manifold structure exhibited by the collective embeddings. We present a learning algorithm based on multiplicative update rules that are efficient and easy to implement. The experimental results on two item cold-start use cases: news recommendation and email recipient recommendation, demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach and show that it significantly outperforms six state-of-theart methods for item cold-start
