The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is unusual among eukaryotes in having both unicellular and multicellular stages. In the multicellular stage, some cells, called sentinels, ingest toxins, waste and bacteria. The sentinel cells ultimately fall away from the back of the migrating slug, thus removing these substances from the slug. However, some D. discoideum clones (called farmers) carry...

Arid and desert lands in terms of specific environmental characteristics such as low annual precipitation,sequential droughts, huge drop in ground water levels or the like, have always faced strict limitations in waterresources. In the shadow of these characteristics and many other factors, Water Price Index (WPI) is significantlyaffected. This study set out with the aim of identifying and dete...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and type of lung function disorders in Danish farmers. Three samples of farmers were drawn from a group of unselected farmers who had participated in an epidemiological study. Group I (47 persons) was a sample of the 8% of all farmers who had reported that they had asthma; group II (63 persons) was a sample of the 28% of farmers who had h...

This study examines technical efficiency between Participatory & NonParticipatory farmers under Integrated Crop Management project (ICM) in the north-west region of Bangladesh. Sixty farmers of which 30 participatory & 30 nonparticipatory were selected following stratified random sampling technique from four villages under pirganj upazila in Thakurgaon district. ICM project participatory farmer...

Small-scale farmers in developing countries use hazardous pesticides taking few or no safety measures. Farmer field schools (FFSs) teaching integrated pest management (IPM) have been shown to reduce pesticide use among trained farmers. This cross-sectional study compares pesticide-related knowledge, attitude, practice (KAP), potential exposure, and self-reported poisoning symptoms among 35 FFS ...

Subclinical inflammatory activity may be one of the factors which influences the variable natural history of farmers' lung. Serum lysozyme (LYS) and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) have been measured in 52 farmers with a previous history of farmers' lung and in 51 healthy control farmers. The group with farmers' lung assessed during the winter, although having had no recent acute symptoms, ...

OBJECTIVE Circumstantial evidence suggests that organic farmers may have higher sperm count than other men, but comprehensive epidemiological studies of male fecundity among farmers have never been carried out. A substantial increase of sperm count is expected to translate into a shorter time to pregnancy--the number of menstrual cycles or months it takes a couple to get pregnant from discontin...

This descriptive and analytic study used a secondary data set to describe and compare medication use and agricultural injury experiences between younger (≤54 years old) and older (≥55 years old) farmers; and to examine the relationship between the use of specific classes of medication and reported agricultural injury. The study sample included a total of 316 farmers, age 26 to 80 years old; 103...

This study was conducted to assess the comparative efficiency of Aftab Bahumukhi Farm Limited (ABFL) supervised broiler farms and farmers’ own managed broiler farms. Data were collected from randomly selected 90 broiler farmers of which 45 were ABFL supervised farmers and 45 were own managed farmers. Cobb-Douglas stochastic production function and cost frontier function were applied to determin...

BACKGROUND The association between farmers' market characteristics and consumer shopping habits remains unclear. Our objective was to examine associations among distance to farmers' markets, amenities within farmers' markets, frequency of farmers' market shopping, fruit and vegetable consumption, and body mass index (BMI). We hypothesized that the relationship between frequency of farmers' mark...