The efficacy of retirement plans and flexible scheduling in improving the quality of service delivery among civil servants in Nandi south Kenya

Retirement plans and flexible scheduling guides most organizations and is part of most complaints of citizen’s due to poor service in government counties such complaints was reflected during the year 2002 Constitutional Referendum in Kenya which in part called for an overhaul of the civil service structure through various Civil Service Reform Programmes and major reshuffles. This paper highlighted therefore the effects of these variables in service delivery within Civil Service offices in Kenya: A case of Nandi south. Stratified random sampling techniques were used to select 350 employees of Nandi south. Data collected through the use of questionnaires was analyzed using both descriptive and regression statistics. Descriptive findings revealed that there was low level of retirement plan services to the employees of Nandi south. Nevertheless, high levels of Flexible Scheduling services among employees were observed an indicator that retirement plans in the Workplace had significant effect on Service Delivery. Keywords: Services Delivery, Workplace, Retirement Plans and Flexible Schedulin

The efficacy of retirement plans and flexible scheduling in improving the quality of service delivery among civil servants in Nandi south Kenya

Retirement plans and flexible scheduling guides most organizations and is part of most complaints of citizen’s due to poor service in government counties such complaints was reflected during the year 2002 Constitutional Referendum in Kenya which in part called for an overhaul of the civil service structure through various Civil Service Reform Programmes and major reshuffles. This paper highlighted therefore the effects of these variables in service delivery within Civil Service offices in Kenya: A case of Nandi south. Stratified random sampling techniques were used to select 350 employees of Nandi south. Data collected through the use of questionnaires was analyzed using both descriptive and regression statistics. Descriptive findings revealed that there was low level of retirement plan services to the employees of Nandi south. Nevertheless, high levels of Flexible Scheduling services among employees were observed an indicator that retirement plans in the Workplace had significant effect on Service Delivery. Keywords: Services Delivery, Workplace, Retirement Plans and Flexible Schedulin

TOUCHING THE FINISH LINE: PREDICTORS OF MOTIVATION AMONG LONG DISTANCE ELITE RUNNERS (EXPLORING SPORTSPSYCHOLOGY)

This study sought to determine what factors cause the motivation of long distance elite runners in marathons, whether intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation. The study utilized a descriptive method in determining if age, gender, and years of running are predictors of motivation among the respondents. The researchers measured the motivation of the selected respondents through a standard questionnaire called the Sports Motivation Scale developed by Pelletier, et. al. (2012). The participants were asked to fill out the questionnaire after the marathon event. The data gathered was analyzed and interpreted using IBM SPSS version 20. As shown in the results, the age, gender, and years of running have no significance with intrinsic motivation. Similar to extrinsic motivation, the age and gender have no significance. However, there is significance between the years of running and extrinsic motivation. Therefore, the researchers concluded that long-distance elite runners who have been running for a number of years are more extrinsically motivated. Future researchers and present sports psychologists and educators may use this study as a guide for them to press forward towards sports amelioration.&nbsp

Citizen science pioneers in Kenya – A crowdsourced approach for hydrological monitoring

Although water is involved in many ecosystem services, the absence of monitoring data restricts the development of effective water management strategies especially in remote regions. Traditional monitoring networks can be expensive, with unaffordable costs in many low-income countries. Involving citizens in monitoring through crowdsourcing has the potential to reduce these costs but remains uncommon in hydrology. This study evaluates the quality and quantity of data generated by citizens in a remote Kenyan basin and assesses whether crowdsourcing is a suitable method to overcome data scarcity. We installed thirteen water level gauges equipped with signboards explaining the monitoring process to passers-by. Results were sent via a text-message-based data collection framework that included an immediate feedback to citizens. A public web interface was used to visualize the data. Within the first year, 124 citizens reported 1175 valid measurements. We identified thirteen citizens as active observers providing more than ten measurements, whereas 57% only sent one record. A comparison between the crowdsourced water level data and an automatic gauging station revealed high data quality. The results of this study indicate that citizens can provide water level data of sufficient quality and with high temporal resolution

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 2: The Physics Program for DUNE at LBNF

The Physics Program for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at the Fermilab Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) is described

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 1: The LBNF and DUNE Projects

This document presents the Conceptual Design Report (CDR) put forward by an international neutrino community to pursue the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF/DUNE), a groundbreaking science experiment for long-baseline neutrino oscillation studies and for neutrino astrophysics and nucleon decay searches. The DUNE far detector will be a very large modular liquid argon time-projection chamber (LArTPC) located deep underground, coupled to the LBNF multi-megawatt wide-band neutrino beam. DUNE will also have a high-resolution and high-precision near detector

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 2: The Physics Program for DUNE at LBNF

The Physics Program for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at the Fermilab Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) is described

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report, Volume 4 The DUNE Detectors at LBNF

A description of the proposed detector(s) for DUNE at LBN

User-assisted Object Detection by Segment Based Similarity Measures in Mobile Laser Scanner Data

This paper describes a method that aims to find all instances of a certain object in Mobile Laser Scanner (MLS) data. In a userassisted approach, a sample segment of an object is selected, and all similar objects are to be found. By selecting samples from multiple classes, a classification can be performed. Key assumption in this approach is that a one-to-one relationship exists between segments and objects. In this paper the focus is twofold: (1) to explain how to get proper segments, and (2) to describe how to find similar objects. Point attributes that help separating neighbouring objects are presented. These point attributes are used in an attributed connected component algorithm where segments are grown, based on proximity and attribute values. Per component, a feature vector is proposed that consists of two parts. The first is a height histogram, containing information on the height distribution of points within a component. The second contains size and shape information, based on the components’ bounding box. A simple correlation function is used to find similarities between samples, as selected by a user, and other components. Our approach is tested on a MLS dataset, containing over 300 objects in 13 classes. Detection accuracies heavily depend on the success of the segmentation, and the number of selected samples in combination with the variety of object types in the scene

Factors Affecting Adoption of Climate-Smart Agricultural Technologies: Evidence from Nandi County, Kenya

Adoption of Climate Smart Agricultural Technologies (CSAT) such as Biogas production, silage making, agroforestry, and water conservation help in improving smallholder production. However, in rural areas of Nandi County of Kenya, the adoption of CSAT amongst smallholder dairy farmers is low. In this study, we analyze factors that affect the adoption of CSAT using information drawn from 350 smallholder dairy farmers participating in the East Africa Dairy Development program.  Using the ordered Logit model, we find that the intensity of adoption of CSAT is partly affected by access to extension and credit services. Specifically, we showed that farmers who had access to extension services and credit lines were more likely to adopt drought-resistant crops but not biogas production, agro-forestry, and silage making. Moreover, our result showed that owning a stable tenure system allows farmers to adopt technologies that require more land and take more time like biogas production, drought crops, agroforestry, water storage, and silage making. Finally, we showed that distance between a farmer’s home and the farm is an important factor in adopting agricultural technology. This effect is more pronounced amongst technologies that are heavy to transport like biogas production, water storage and conservation, zero-grazing, and silage making