Improvement of Grassland Through Community Participation in the Middle AwashValley of Ethiopia

The natural resources of the grassland in the middle Awash valley of Ethiopia are subjected to competing claims: development to generate revenue for the state, conservation of wildlife and wilderness areas, as well as use for local production. The combination of climatic conditions causing drought and the over use of the natural resource can be cited as the primary cause of grassland deterioration in the area. Since the problems of the grasslands are complex and multi-dimensional, they are not amenable to quick and easy fixes. Hence, if sustainable progress is to be achieved, the responsibility for change must be in the hands of the communities and household themselves. Pastoral communities, in collaboration with CARE-Ethiopia, local government and other partner NGOs embarked on grassland improvement activities that were based on traditional activities. The objective of this study was to assess the condition of the traditionally-improved grazing lands

Risk factors in hospital deaths in severely malnourished children in Kampala, Uganda

BACKGROUND: Although the risk factors for increased fatality among severely malnourished children have been reported, recent information from Africa, during a period of HIV pandemic and constrained health services, remains sketchy. The aim of this study has been to establish the risk factors for excess deaths among hospitalized severely malnourished children of below five years of age. METHOD: In 2003, two hundred and twenty consecutively admitted, severely malnourished children were followed in the paediatric wards of Mulago, Uganda's national referral and teaching hospital. The children's baseline health conditions were established by physical examination, along with haematological, biochemical, microbiological and immunological indices. RESULTS: Of the 220 children, 52 (24%) died, with over 70% of the deaths occurring in the first week of admission. There was no significant difference by sex or age group. The presence of oedema increased the adjusted odds-ratio, but did not reach significance (OR = 2.0; 95% CI = 0.8 – 4.7), similarly for a positive HIV status (OR = 2.6, 95% CI = 0.8 – 8.6). Twenty four out of 52 children who received blood transfusion died (OR = 5.0, 95% CI = 2 – 12); while, 26 out of 62 children who received intravenous infusion died (OR = 4.8, 95% CI = 2 – 12). The outcome of children who received blood or intravenous fluids was less favourable than of children who did not receive them. Adjustment for severity of disease did not change this. CONCLUSION: The main risk factors for excess hospital deaths among severely malnourished children in Mulago hospital include blood transfusion and intravenous infusion. An intervention to reduce deaths needs to focus on guideline compliance with respect to blood transfusions/infusions

Optical and near-UV spectroscopic properties of low-redshift jetted quasars in the main sequence context

This paper presents new optical and near-UV spectra of 11 extremely powerful jetted quasars, with radio to optical flux density ratio >103, which concomitantly cover the low-ionization emission of Mg ii?2800 and h? as well as the Fe ii blends in the redshift range 0.35 â z â 1. We aim to quantify broad emission line differences between radio-loud (RL) and radio-quiet (RQ) quasars by using the 4D eigenvector 1 parameter space and its main sequence (MS) and to check the effect of powerful radio ejection on the low-ionization broad emission lines. The h? and Mg ii?2800 emission lines were measured by using non-linear multicomponent fittings as well as by analysing their full profile. We found that broad emission lines show large redward asymmetry both in h? and Mg ii?2800. The location of our RL sources in a UV plane looks similar to the optical one, with weak Fe iiUV emission and broad Mg ii?2800. We supplement the 11 sources with large samples from previous work to gain some general inferences. We found that, compared to RQ, our extreme RL quasars show larger median h? full width at half maximum (FWHM), weaker Fe ii emission, larger MBH, lower Lbol/LEdd, and a restricted bf space occupation in the optical and UV MS planes. The differences are more elusive when the comparison is carried out by restricting the RQ population to the region of the MS occupied by RL sources, albeit an unbiased comparison matching MBH and Lbol/LEdd suggests that the most powerful RL quasars show the highest redward asymmetries in h?. © 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.The authors thank the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions that helped us to significantly improve the paper. STM acknowledges the support from Jimma University under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. STM and MP acknowledge financial support from the Space Science and Geospatial Institute (SSGI) under the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MInT). STM, ADO, and MP acknowledge financial support through the grant CSIC I-COOP + 2020, COOPA20447. STM especially acknowledges the IAA for all the support received during the two stays. ADO, MP, JP, PM, and IM acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion-Agencia Estatal de Investigacion through projects PID2019-106027GB-C41 and PID2019-106027GB-C43, and from the Severo Ochoa grants SEV-2017-0709 and CEX2021-001131-S funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. MAMC has been supported by the Spanish Research project PID 2021-122961NB-IOO