Prospect of forestry in poverty alleviation in Nigeria

The subject of poverty alleviation cannot be over emphasized, this is because its incidence is rampant worldwide and most importantly in the developing countries such as Nigeria. A significant number of the populace, both in the rural and urban centers of the country is affected by poverty. Different scholars have defined poverty and a simple, succinct and encompassing definition is that it is a condition where an individual is not able to adequately cater for his/her basic needs or lacks minimum standard of living. There are many causes of poverty and they all have immediate and future effect on the group of people affected. Many attempts have been made to lessen poverty in Nigeria by successive administration but failed due to one reason or the other. Nigeria has been described by many people as a blessed country and “a land flowing with milk and honey”, this is because of the natural resources that the country has among which Forest is. Forests consist of trees, shrubs and diverse animals living in them. Careful and sustainable management of these natural and artificial forests has hope of drastically reducing poverty to the barest minimum in Nigeria.

Plasma Metabolomic Profiles and Clinical Features in Recovered COVID-19 Patients Without Previous Underlying Diseases 3 Months After Discharge

Knowing the residual and future effect of SARS-CoV-2 on recovered COVID-19 patients is critical for optimized long-term patient management. Recent studies focus on the symptoms and clinical indices of recovered patients, but the pathophysiological change is still unclear. To address this question, we examined the metabolomic profiles of recovered asymptomatic (RA), moderate (RM) and severe and critical (RC) patients without previous underlying diseases discharged from the hospital for 3 months, along with laboratory and CT findings. We found that the serum metabolic profiles in recovered COVID-19 patients still conspicuously differed from that in healthy control (HC), especially in the RM, and RC patients. Additionally, these changes bore close relationship with the function of pulmonary, renal, hepatic, microbial and energetic metabolism and inflammation. These findings suggested that RM and RC patients sustained multi-organ and multi-system damage and these patients should be followed up on regular basis for possible organ and system damage.

Assessing the influence of climate on future wintertime SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks

High susceptibility has limited the role of the climate in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to date. However, understanding a possible future effect of climate, as susceptibility declines and the northern-hemisphere winter approaches, is an important open question. Here we use an epidemiological model, constrained by observations, to assess the sensitivity of future SARS-CoV-2 disease trajectories to local climate conditions. We find this sensitivity depends on both the susceptibility of the population and the efficacy of non-pharmaceutical controls (NPIs) in reducing transmission. Assuming high susceptibility, more stringent NPIs may be required to minimize outbreak risk in the winter months. Our results imply a role for meteorological forecasts in projecting outbreak severity, however, reducing uncertainty in epidemiological parameters will likely have a greater impact on generating accurate predictions and reflects the strong leverage of NPIs on future outbreak severity.

Goal-Directed Actions

Personal causation relies on translating goals into goal-directed behavior. This chapter addresses how humans generate a goal-directed behavior, that is, how they initiate and control intentional, goal-directed actions. In particular, it discusses how anticipated action effects are integrated with motor patterns, so to guide future effect-driven actions, and how action intentions struggle with overlearned habits. It argues that intentional and conscious processes typically precede, rather than accompany, intentional actions, and that the experience of personal agency and the identification of action errors are based on a comparison between expected and actual action effects. A final outlook addresses the implications of increasing insight into cognitive embodiment and of increasing interdisciplinarity for the study of human action control and personal causation.

Projecting the Impact of Information Technology on Work and Skills in the 2030s

The research literature in computer science provides a way of understanding the growing capabilities of information technology (IT) and anticipating their future effect on work and skills. This chapter reviews a set of recent computer science articles to identify the IT capabilities that have been demonstrated in research settings. These capabilities are compared to information on occupational ability requirements to identify occupations that are potentially vulnerable to displacement as demonstrated IT capabilities are refined and applied over the next couple decades. The chapter’s preliminary analysis suggests that occupations representing 82 percent of current employment will be potentially vulnerable to displacement by IT in the near future. More rigorous versions of the chapter’s preliminary analysis should be carried out once or twice each decade to track the further development of IT capabilities and regularly update our understanding of their likely consequences for work and skills.