Life Sciences

The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have a very crucial role in a nation’s economic development. Swaziland’s high unemployment rate, with one third of its labour force unemployed in 2008, amongst them being the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) graduates from the Faculty of Agriculture (FOA), challenges its development. Thus, the production of SMEs has been identified as one coping strategy. This descriptive survey study’s main thrust was to determine challenges faced by Consumer Sciences (COS) graduates of UNISWA both during training, and after graduation.

Enormous sequence information is available in public databases as a result of sequencing of diverse crop genomes. It is important to use this genomic information for the identification and isolation of novel and superior alleles of seed quality. These important genes from different gene pools to suitably deploy for the development of improved seeds with better quality attribute. Allele mining is a promising approach to dissect naturally occurring allelic variation at candidate genes controlling key traits which has potential applications in seed improvement programs.

experiment was conducted to characterize Jalali pigeon phenotypically. Fifteen pairs of Jalali pigeons were reared in scavenging condition. Mean body length, wing span, shank length, bill length and head length of mature Jalali pigeon were 33.28±0.18, 64.37±0.20, 3.08±0.02, 2.04±0.01 and 3.66±0.02 cm, respectively. Mean body weight of Jalali pigeon at 3-day, 15-day, 1-month and 5-month of age were 31.68±1.08, 225.53±3.89, 275.59±1.48 and 324.79±3.41 gm, respectively.

Dihaila Lake is a part of cultural, economical, irrigational and recreational life of Dihaila and Rajpur village. Dihaila Lake is one of the shelter water bodies for migratory birds in Karera Bustard Sanctuary. It is facing multifold pressure due to human interference, agricultural waste discharge, domestic waste discharge, cattle grazing, bathing and washing, agricultural practices and wetland encroachment. Different study stations at Dihaila Lake exhibited seasonal and inter-site variations in physico-chemical parameters.

The aim of this article is to examine the opportunities opened to Nigerian libraries in the current information age as related to the concept of globalization. The paper highlights reasons for current changes in library practices and stresses some areas of importance that can propel Nigerian librarians and libraries into being useful in this global information services’ revolution, while taking a look at the few challenges which traditional library settings have in the global information society.

This study investigate the micro organism spoiling fruits during transportation, storage or waiting to be processed and rendering themselves unedible and disposal of such spoiled fruits is also a problem leading to environmental pollution. With the view of value addition of the so-called waste, the present study is emphasized on isolation of some useful microorganism from such spoiled fruit. Organism was screened specifically for starch and pectin degradation.

The knowledge test was developed to measure the knowledge of small animal farmers. In all 114 items were initially constructed on the basis of promoting thinking rather than root memorization and differentiate the well informed small animal owners from the poorly informed ones. The scores from sample respondents were subjected to item analysis, comprising of item difficulty index & item discrimination index. In the final selection, the scale consisted of 42 items with difficulty index ranging from 30-80 and discrimination index ranging from 0.30 to 0.55.

In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely used in different applications for information gathering and monitoring purpose. Large numbers of sensor nodes are deployed in the environment to increase the quality of service (QoS). A critical issue found in Wireless Sensor Network is node failure. Failure of nodes occurs due to various reasons like hardware failure, energy depletion, harsh environment, malicious attack, etc. To increase the Quality of service, it is important to identify the failure node and take necessary actions to avoid further ruin of the service.

Apomixis is a reproductive mode which bypasses female meiosis and syngamy to produce embryos genetically identical to the maternal parent. Apomixis is usually classified into three modes, apospory, diplospory and adventitious embryogeny. Here, we describe the mechanism of aposporous initial cell appearance in guinea grass (Panicum maximum), which belongs to aposporous mode. Based on the observation of young buds by Nomarski differential interference-contrast microscopy (DIC), there was no cytological difference between sexual and apomicts up to megasporogenesis.

P-glycoprotein (P-gp) plays a major role as an efflux pump for endogenous and exogenous substrates at the blood-brain barrier and is localized in the brain at the apical side of capillary endothelial cells. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is marked primarily by the build-up of protease resistant misfolded prion protein (PrPres) in the brain. In the present study, the relationship between P-gp and BSE was investigated. An increase in the expression of vascular P-gp in the obex was found inclassical BSE, more prominent in the pre-clinical cases.