38 research outputs found
Linking crop and livestock diversification to household nutrition: Evidence from Guruve and Mt Darwin districts, Zimbabwe
This study analyzed the role of crop and livestock production diversification on household nutrition in Zimbabwe using data from 986 households in Guruve and Mt Darwin districts. Data were analyzed using poisson and negative binomial regression, which showed that livestock and crop diversification were positively associated with household dietary diversity and food consumption. Pulse production was associated with a significant increase in dietary diversity and food consumption in both districts. Cattle production was significant and positively correlated with food consumption in the two districts. Goat and poultry rearing were significant and positively correlated with dietary diversity and food consumption in Mt Darwin. Promoting crop and livestock diversification is crucial for improved nutrition among smallholder farmers. In particular, investments in cereals, roots and tubers and pulse production together with cattle and small livestock such as poultry and goats are viable interventions for the improvement of household nutrition among smallholder farmers. A diversification strategy, which integrates crop and livestock production needs to be promoted
Perinatal care and breastfeeding education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Perspectives from Kenyan mothers and healthcare workers
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on breastfeeding (BF) practices in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is not well understood. Modifications in BF guidelines and delivery platforms for breastfeeding education during the COVID-19 pandemic are hypothesised to have affected BF practices. We aimed to understand the experiences with perinatal care, BF education and practice among Kenyan mothers who delivered infants during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted in-depth key informant interviews with 45 mothers who delivered infants between March 2020 and December 2021, and 26 health care workers (HCW) from four health facilities in Naivasha, Kenya. While mothers noted that HCWs provided quality care and BF counselling, individual BF counselling was cited to be less frequent than before the pandemic due to altered conditions in health facilities and COVID-19 safety protocols. Mothers stated that some HCW messages emphasised the immunologic importance of BF. However, knowledge among mothers about the safety of BF in the context of COVID-19 was limited, with few participants reporting specific counselling or educational materials on topics such as COVID-19 transmission through human milk and the safety of nursing during a COVID-19 infection. Mothers described COVID-19-related income loss and lack of support from family and friends as the major challenge to practising exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) as they wished or planned. COVID-19 restrictions limited or prevented mothers’ access to familial support at facilities and at home, causing them stress and fatigue. In some cases, mothers reported job loss, time spent seeking new means of employment and food insecurity as causes for milk insufficiency, which contributed to mixed feeding before 6 months. The COVID-19 pandemic created changes to the perinatal experience for mothers. While messages about the importance of practising EBF were provided, altered HCW education delivery methods, reduced social support and food insecurity limit EBF practices for mothers in this context
Aspects of language and society among the Murle of Sudan
SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D172903 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
Making the srok: resettling a mined landscape in northwest Cambodia
This thesis is an ethnographic study of place-making in a war-altered
landscape. It describes over a decade of resettlement efforts in a village in northwest
Cambodia. As war drew to a close in the late 1990s, land on the former frontlines
was allotted to those willing to risk occupancy on possibly mined terrain. Area
resettlement was driven by need, forged by hope, and fraught with physical risk and
material dangers. Food security and the prospect of acquiring land rights required
settlers’ physical presence in and active engagement with the materialities of a
forested landscape strewn with the remnants of war and the ruins of earlier
settlements.
Residents' conceptual and corporeal engagements with place were influenced
by longstanding Khmer depictions of the srok, the ordered and cultivated landscape
of agriculture and human dwelling, and the prai, the wild and fecund landscape of
the forest, replete with powerful but often malevolent spirits. The srok was the
landscape that the inhabitants of Handsome village longed to dwell within and
struggled to create. The area’s pre-war reputation as a famously fertile agricultural
zone had drawn many of its residents to risk the hazards of resettlement. The dream
of the srok drove residents' actions in the actively dangerous, ever fluctuating terrain.
In addition to being envisioned, the place was intimately known and directly
experienced through the corporeal bodies of its inhabitants and their engagements
with its material assemblages. Making the srok involved arduous physical effort in a
constantly shifting material environment along with concentrated social and
conceptual work.
Resettlement did not merely entail hewing fields out of forests and removing
mines and ordnance, but also encompassed attempts to transition into peacetime—to
move from soldiering to farming, to come to rest after years of mobility and
displacement, and to recreate social and moral order. This study analyzes successes
and failures in place-making processes, illustrating how different aspects of
landscape posed both affordances and constraints to these processes. Particular
attention is paid to the ways in which material assemblages contributed to
uncertainty in place-making efforts, illustrating that the material dimensions of
landscape may resist as much as they acquiesce to human alteration. On a material
level, place-making was a struggle that pitted human agency and will against an
active and agentive landscape. Village residents were interacting with material
environs in a constant state of change and becoming. The unsettling material traces
of the past and the continuing threat some remnants posed in the present contributed
to the ongoing indeterminacy residents experienced about the state and contents of
the once famous ground. The landscape that residents sought to form and fix was
always in danger of undoing its formation and categorization and revealing itself to
be something else. Yet despite their failures at establishing and fixing the srok in the
constantly shifting landscape of Handsome village, residents maintained their quest
to transform the present configuration of place into the landscape and the future that
they desired
Design and analysis of the front suspension geometry and steering system for a solar electric vehicle
Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 43).A study on the design of the front suspension geometry and steering system to be used in a solar electric vehicle. The suspension geometry utilizes a double wishbone design that is optimized to fit in the space constraints of the vehicle. The steering system consists of a rack and pinion connected through tie rods to the steering knuckles, largely optimized based on the space within the vehicle. The final suspension geometry consists of upper and lower wishbone lengths of 4.25 inches and 3.75 inches, respectively. This system is optimized to maintain a proper camber angle and minimize scrub due to track distance changes throughout the travel of the suspension. The geometry of the steering system is designed to fit in the vehicle while achieving a near- Ackermann steering condition. The steering knuckle and steering rack extenders, both made out of Aluminum 6061-T6, are designed based off of this geometry and are optimized for weight and machinability.by Bruce Arensen.S.B