A project of the CGIAR systemwide program on Soil, Water and Nutrient Management (SWNM), concerned with improving integrated nutrient management practices on small-scale farms in Africa, has been carried out in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for last two years (September 1999 to September 2001). The project aims to enable small-scale farmers to profitably reverse nutrient depletion of their soils b...

When in-vitro fertilization (IVF) was introduced in the 1970s, doctors were criticized for not properly informing prospective users about its possible risks and limited success rates as well as for medicalizing fertility problems. Nowadays, many fertility clinics are seeking to improve their accountability to stakeholders through patient-centred practices. Based on an ethnographic study of a Du...

BACKGROUND Awareness of infertility risk factors is an essential first step to safeguard future fertility. Whereas several studies have examined university students' awareness of female fertility and related risk factors, the topic of male infertility has not been well examined. The objective of this study was to assess young men and women's awareness, knowledge and perceptions of infertility, ...

The modern world is the product of two momentous changes: the Industrial Revolution of 1800, which brought sustained efficiency advances in economies, and the Demographic Transition of 1900, which channeled those efficiency advances mainly into increased income per capita, instead of increases in population. How these revolutions were connected has been a persistent unsolved puzzle in the histo...

Developing new, improved and totally safe, effective and acceptable contraceptives based on the recent advances in cellular and molecular biology of reproduction is a new challenge to biomedical scientists involved in research in reproductive biology. The present article reviews some of the major contributions made during the last decade by scientists working in India in developing new strategi...

Circadian rhythms impact on a wide range of physiological systems and this impact extends to fertility, such that disruptions to timing systems can impact upon reproductive capacity. This is highlighted most obviously in mutant mouse models whereby deletion or mutation of single genes results not only in disrupted circadian rhythmicity, but also compromised male and female reproductive function...

As part of a major effort to address soil fertility decline in West Africa, an integrated soil fertility management project promoted two technology packages: a combined application of inorganic fertilizer and manure (BNMS-manure) and a soybean/maize rotation practice (BNMS-rotation) in the northern Guinea savanna (NGS) of Nigeria. This study used a tobit regression model to examine factors that...

The size of ovarian follicular population evaluated by direct antral follicular count or endocrine markers can help determine the success of reproductive biotechnologies in cattle. However, although highly repeatable within animal, the antral follicular population (AFP) appears to be greatly variable across individuals. Therefore, laboratory methods that reliably predict AFP could have a signif...