The Role of Livelihood Diversification for Household Food Security: The Case of Kebridahar District, Korahey Zone of Somali Region, Eastern Ethiopia

The majority of the Ethiopia populations live in a rural area which their livelihood heavily depends on rain-fed agriculture. The rainfall pattern of the area is fluctuating from season to season, which causes food insecurity problems. The rural people of the study area participated different income-generating activities but it seems ineffective. To investigate the impact of livelihood diversification on household’s food security in study area, multi-stage sampling methods was employed to select 119 representative household heads from kebridahar district. The collected data were analyzed by using descriptive statistic and econometric model of probit Logistic Regression was used for this. The data analysis tools were conducted such as Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) versions 20 and STATA Software. The study HHs 77.3 % of them said that participating in different livelihood activities has a positive impact for household food security whereas 22.7 % of them responded that participating difference livelihood activities have no longer impact on household food security because it needs start-up capital. The livelihood diversification impacted household food security among MHHs and FHHs differently. The main source of food in the study households categorized as 10.1% of them depends food from the own production, 79% of them depends food from their Purchase whereby, 10.9% of them depends their food source for government support. In this study 54.6% of the sampled households was food secure, whereby 45.4% of them was food insecure with 3140.19 kcal and 1437.54kcal intake respectively. The model revealed that sex being female head and limited extension contact was negatively impacted HH food security whereas, education level of household head and livestock holding positively impacted household food security. It can conclude livelihood diversification play great role for improving the household’s food security status as a whole. Therefore the household’s should contribution in different income generating activities as implication of household food security. Keywords: food security, livelihood diversification, probit regression model, DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/12-17-01 Publication date:September 30th 202

The Role of Livelihood Diversification for Household Food Security: The Case of Kebridahar District, Korahey Zone of Somali Region, Eastern Ethiopia

The majority of the Ethiopia populations live in a rural area which their livelihood heavily depends on rain-fed agriculture. The rainfall pattern of the area is fluctuating from season to season, which causes food insecurity problems. The rural people of the study area participated different income-generating activities but it seems ineffective. To investigate the impact of livelihood diversification on household’s food security in study area, multi-stage sampling methods was employed to select 119 representative household heads from kebridahar district. The collected data were analyzed by using descriptive statistic and econometric model of probit Logistic Regression was used for this. The data analysis tools were conducted such as Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) versions 20 and STATA Software. The study HHs 77.3 % of them said that participating in different livelihood activities has a positive impact for household food security whereas 22.7 % of them responded that participating difference livelihood activities have no longer impact on household food security because it needs start-up capital. The livelihood diversification impacted household food security among MHHs and FHHs differently. The main source of food in the study households categorized as 10.1% of them depends food from the own production, 79% of them depends food from their Purchase whereby, 10.9% of them depends their food source for government support. In this study 54.6% of the sampled households was food secure, whereby 45.4% of them was food insecure with 3140.19 kcal and 1437.54kcal intake respectively. The model revealed that sex being female head and limited extension contact was negatively impacted HH food security whereas, education level of household head and livestock holding positively impacted household food security. It can conclude livelihood diversification play great role for improving the household’s food security status as a whole. Therefore the household’s should contribution in different income generating activities as implication of household food security. Keywords: food security; livelihood diversification; probit regression model (;) DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/118-03 Publication date:August 31st 202

The impact of work placements on the development of transferable skills in engineering

This thesis reports a study of the impact of work placements on the transferable skills of engineering students. The thesis provides a review of the theoretical and empirical literature in the field of student work placements and transferable skills and provides a discussion of the measurement of impact in this field. It also describes the design of the study, methods of data collection and the data analyses used. The research project was carried out at Loughborough University from 2005 – 2008. The data was collected from 247 students and 5 DIS (Diploma in Industrial Studies) tutors from three engineering departments (Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering and the Institute of Polymer Technology and Materials Engineering (IPTME)) and 26 line managers from 19 different companies which take students on placements. The results shows that the overwhelming majority of the students valued work placements as a way of developing transferable skills and identified the transferable skills which work placements were most likely and least likely to develop. There was close agreement on these matters between students who had experienced placements and those that had not. All DIS tutors and 87% of the line managers interviewed considered that a work placement had a very strong or strong impact upon the transferable skills of the students. Triangulation of the responses by students, tutors and line managers revealed close agreement on these matters. Students, tutors and line managers had mixed opinions whether work placements would improve degree results. In fact, work placement students performed significantly better in degree examinations than non work placement students. The tutors and line managers stressed particularly that work placements increased the confidence and maturity of the students. They suggested holiday work, summer work, team based projects as a part of the University degree courses as alternative ways of helping the students who are not doing work placements to acquire and improve their transferable skills, although they did not think that these suggested alternatives will be as effective as the one year placement. They considered that the duration of the work experience period is a key factor in improving transferable skills.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Data-driven framework and experimental validation for security monitoring of networked systems

Cyber attacks have become more prevalent in the last few years, and several attacks have made headlines worldwide. It has become a lucrative business for cybercriminals who are motivated by financial gains. Other motives include political, social and espionage. Organisations are spending a vast amount of money from their IT budget to secure their critical assets from such attacks, but attackers still find ways to compromise these assets. According to a recent data breach report from IBM, the cost of a data breach is estimated to be around $4.24 million, and on average, it takes 287 days to detect and contain such breaches. Cyber attacks are continuing to increase, and no organisation is immune to such attacks, as demonstrated recently by the cyber attack on FireEye, a leading global cybersecurity firm. This thesis aims to develop a data-driven framework for the security monitoring of networked systems. In this framework, models for detecting cyberattack stages, predicting cyber attacks using time series forecasting and the IoC model were developed to detect attacks that the security monitoring tools may have missed. In the cyberattack stage detection, the Cyber Kill Chain was leveraged and then mapped the detection modules to the various stages of the APT lifecycle. In the cyber prediction model, time series based feature forecasting was utilised to predict attacks to help system administrators take preventative measures. The Indicator of Compromise (IoC) model used host-based features to help detect IoCs more accurately. The main framework utilises network, host and IoC features. In these three models, the prediction accuracy of 91.1% and 98.8% was achieved for the APT and IoC models, while the time series forecasting model produced a reasonable low mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) score. The author also contributed to another paper on effective feature selection methods using deep feature abstraction in the form of unsupervised auto-encoders to extract more features. Wrapper-based feature selection techniques were then utilised using Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes and Decision tree to select the highest-ranking features. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) classifier was then used to distinguish impersonation from normal traffic. The contribution of the author to this paper was on the feature selection methods. This model achieved an overall accuracy of 99.5%. It is anticipated that these models will allow decision-makers and systems administrators to take proactive approaches to secure their systems and reduce data breaches

The Development of Lightweight Cellular Structures for Metal Additive Manufacturing

Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies in particular powder bed fusion processes such as Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) are capable of producing a fully-dense metal components directly from computer-aided design (CAD) model without the need of tooling. This unique capability offered by metal AM has allowed the manufacture of inter-connected lattice structures from metallic materials for different applications including, medical implants and aerospace lightweight components. Despite the many promising design freedoms, metal AM still faces some major technical and design barriers in building complex structures with overhang geometries. Any overhang geometry which exceeds the minimum allowable build angle must be supported. The function of support structure is to prevent the newly melted layer from curling due to thermal stresses by anchoring it in place. External support structures are usually removed from the part after the build; however, internal support structures are difficult or impossible to remove. These limitations are in contrast to what is perceived by designers as metal AM being able to generate all conceivable geometries. Because support structures consume expensive raw materials, use a considerable amount of laser consolidation energy, there is considerable interest in design optimisation of support structure to minimize the build time, energy, and material consumption. Similarly there is growing demand of developing more advanced and lightweight cellular structures which are self-supporting and manufacturable in wider range of cell sizes and volume fractions using metal AM. The main focuses of this research is to tackle the process limitation in metal AM and promote design freedom through advanced self-supporting and low-density Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) cellular structures. Low density uniform, and graded, cellular structures have been developed for metal AM processes. This work presents comprehensive experimental test conducted in SLM and DMLS processes using different TPMS cell topologies and materials. This research has contributed to new knowledge in understanding the manufacturability and mechanical behaviour of TPMS cellular structures with varying cell sizes, orientations and volume fractions. The new support structure method will address the saving of material (via low volume cellular structures and easy removal of powder) and saving of energy (via reduced build-time)

Cost evaluation of sustainable solar: diesel hybrid power for water pumping in refugee camps in Dadaab, Kenya

Pumping water from boreholes can be a very expensive endeavour in refugee settings. UNHCR and partners intended to solve this problem by decreasing water extraction and investing in PV solar-diesel generator systems in Dadaab Refugee Camps, Kenya. By analysing the costs before and after the solar implementations, it is possible to evaluate if the investments reached expectations. The results show that 10 PV solar-diesel generator systems in this study save up to 16,000 litres of diesel a month, or 25% of the camps total fuel demand. For the boreholes with PV solar-diesel generator systems, almost 40% of the diesel could be reduced. With 2016 diesel prices in Kenya, the estimated return period would be 6.25 years

Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in COVID-19.

Host-mediated lung inflammation is present1, and drives mortality2, in the critical illness caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Host genetic variants associated with critical illness may identify mechanistic targets for therapeutic development3. Here we report the results of the GenOMICC (Genetics Of Mortality In Critical Care) genome-wide association study in 2,244 critically ill patients with COVID-19 from 208 UK intensive care units. We have identified and replicated the following new genome-wide significant associations: on chromosome 12q24.13 (rs10735079, P = 1.65 × 10-8) in a gene cluster that encodes antiviral restriction enzyme activators (OAS1, OAS2 and OAS3); on chromosome 19p13.2 (rs74956615, P = 2.3 × 10-8) near the gene that encodes tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2); on chromosome 19p13.3 (rs2109069, P = 3.98 ×  10-12) within the gene that encodes dipeptidyl peptidase 9 (DPP9); and on chromosome 21q22.1 (rs2236757, P = 4.99 × 10-8) in the interferon receptor gene IFNAR2. We identified potential targets for repurposing of licensed medications: using Mendelian randomization, we found evidence that low expression of IFNAR2, or high expression of TYK2, are associated with life-threatening disease; and transcriptome-wide association in lung tissue revealed that high expression of the monocyte-macrophage chemotactic receptor CCR2 is associated with severe COVID-19. Our results identify robust genetic signals relating to key host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage in COVID-19. Both mechanisms may be amenable to targeted treatment with existing drugs. However, large-scale randomized clinical trials will be essential before any change to clinical practice

Development of product life-cycle cost analysis tool

The main purpose of this project was to develop a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) tool which can be used by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) for the decision making process when comparing different alternatives of their products. The tool is expected to assist designers in making choices regarding the definition of product characteristics, integrating a series of analysis, calculation, and decision-making tools in the most appropriate manner in order to compare different alternatives of their product. LCCA appears to be a useful approach to a comprehensive assessment of economic, environmental and social impacts of the life cycle of a product and aids SMEs to meet environmental requirements adopted in nations around the world. The tool plays a primary role in this specific context due to the fact that not only production costs, but also those costs incurred during use and disposal are greatly conditioned by the initial design choices. Due to the differences exist in the cost structure of different products under evaluation, it is difficult to generalize the model; However, by making some modification to cost categories and by following the general LCCA framework developed, it is possible to match the model to any application desired. The model is simplified for usage in the form of ExcelTM in such away that the analyst can easily input data into tables and generate outputs using Excel Charts. The decision is made based on the alternative with lowest life cycle cost

Data-driven framework and experimental validation for security monitoring of networked systems

Cyber attacks have become more prevalent in the last few years, and several attacks have made headlines worldwide. It has become a lucrative business for cybercriminals who are motivated by financial gains. Other motives include political, social and espionage. Organisations are spending a vast amount of money from their IT budget to secure their critical assets from such attacks, but attackers still find ways to compromise these assets. According to a recent data breach report from IBM, the cost of a data breach is estimated to be around $4.24 million, and on average, it takes 287 days to detect and contain such breaches. Cyber attacks are continuing to increase, and no organisation is immune to such attacks, as demonstrated recently by the cyber attack on FireEye, a leading global cybersecurity firm. This thesis aims to develop a data-driven framework for the security monitoring of networked systems. In this framework, models for detecting cyberattack stages, predicting cyber attacks using time series forecasting and the IoC model were developed to detect attacks that the security monitoring tools may have missed. In the cyberattack stage detection, the Cyber Kill Chain was leveraged and then mapped the detection modules to the various stages of the APT lifecycle. In the cyber prediction model, time series based feature forecasting was utilised to predict attacks to help system administrators take preventative measures. The Indicator of Compromise (IoC) model used host-based features to help detect IoCs more accurately. The main framework utilises network, host and IoC features. In these three models, the prediction accuracy of 91.1% and 98.8% was achieved for the APT and IoC models, while the time series forecasting model produced a reasonable low mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) score. The author also contributed to another paper on effective feature selection methods using deep feature abstraction in the form of unsupervised auto-encoders to extract more features. Wrapper-based feature selection techniques were then utilised using Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes and Decision tree to select the highest-ranking features. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) classifier was then used to distinguish impersonation from normal traffic. The contribution of the author to this paper was on the feature selection methods. This model achieved an overall accuracy of 99.5%. It is anticipated that these models will allow decision-makers and systems administrators to take proactive approaches to secure their systems and reduce data breaches

The value of work placements

This paper reports a study of the impact of work placements on transferable skills. The study was conducted in three engineering departments at Loughborough University. A pre-test intervention post-test model with a control group was used to sample the views of students before and after placements and of students who did not go on placements. These were triangulated with the views of their line managers in industry and their industrial tutors. The findings indicated that there was strong agreement between students, tutors and line managers on the value of work placements for transferable skills; that students developed their transferable skills on work placements and which transferable skills were developed most effectively on work placements. The consensus of line managers and the DIS (Diploma in Industrial Studies) tutors is that there is no satisfactory alternative to work placements for developing transferable skills. There were mixed views on whether work placements enhanced degree results. In fact, students who did go on placements did obtain better degree grades. These results demonstrate the value of work placements for the personal and professional development of students. But some caution is necessary in generalising the results to other courses. Work placements differ in structure, content and duration, the evidence on the transferability of transferable skills is not clear cut and impact in this field is more a matter of judgment than measurement