OBJECTIVE To determine the demographic and health impact of deploying health service nurses and volunteers to village locations with a view to scaling up results. METHODS A four-celled plausibility trial was used for testing the impact of aligning community health services with the traditional social institutions that organize village life. Data from the Navrongo Demographic Surveillance Syst...

Plasticity of the phenotypic architecture of wild barley, Hordeum spontaneum, was studied in response to water and nutrient stress. Direct and indirect selection on several vegetative and reproductive traits was estimated and path analysis used to reveal how regulating pathways via maternal investment differed between environments. Vegetative traits displayed differential regulating effect on f...

The regionally endemic Galapagos Grouper, locally known as bacalao, is one of the most highly prized finfish species within the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). Concerns of overfishing, coupled with a lack of fishing regulations aimed at this species raises concerns about the current population health. We assessed changes in population health over a 30-year period using three simple indicators: ...

Understanding the factors that limit and regulate wildlife populations requires insight into demographic and environmental processes acting throughout the annual cycle. Here, we combine multi-year tracking data of individual birds with a 26-year demographic study of a migratory songbird to evaluate the relative effects of density and weather at the breeding and wintering grounds on population g...

Motivated by the recently observed phenomenon of topology trivialization of potential energy landscapes (PELs) for several statistical mechanics models, we perform a numerical study of the finite-size 2-spin spherical model using both numerical polynomial homotopy continuation and a reformulation via non-Hermitian matrices. The continuation approach computes all of the complex stationary points...

Despite centuries of interest in species range limits, few studies have taken a whole community into consideration. Actually, multiple species may simultaneously respond to environmental changes, for example, global warming, leading a series of dynamical communities toward the advancing front. We investigated multiple species range expansions through the analysis of a two-species dispersion mod...

aim and background: the aim of the present study was to develop a short form of the persian version of the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (cerq-p-short) and to examine its reliability and validity. methods and materials: the cerq-p was administrated to 420 (220 male and 200 female) iranian university students in 2009-2010 academic year. following stepwise omission of the items with ...

Hypothalamic kisspeptin neurons integrate and translate cues from the internal and external environments that regulate gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) secretion and maintain fertility in mammals. However, the intracellular signaling pathways utilized to translate such information into changes in kisspeptin expression, release, and ultimately activation of the kisspeptin-receptive GnRH net...

the rising human population, particularly in the developing countries, and the attendant socioeconomic effects necessitates the need for its effective regulation. this study aims at exploring the contraceptive efficacy of the fruit extract of xylopia aethiopica (dunal) a rich, a plant with wide ethnomedicinal, pharmacological and social values, in combating this public health challenge. forty e...

BACKGROUND The majority of beta-defensin family members are exclusively expressed in the epididymis, and some members have been shown to play essential roles in sperm maturation and fertility in rats, mice and humans. Therefore, beta-defensins are hypothesized to be potential targets for contraception and infertility diagnosis and treatment. Clarifying the regulatory mechanisms for the expressi...