Participation in partnership : a study of contemporary partnership in mission, as understood by and practised in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, North Western diocese

Master's thesis in Theology. School of Mission and Theology, May 2009The study deal with the Participation in Partnership: A Study of Contemporary Partnership in Mission, as Understood by and Practiced in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, North Western Diocese. Also deal with the Biblical and foundations of Christian partnership. Further the thesis comes up with Christian partnership in praxis and showing its involvement in contemporary mission challenges. There are reflections on Christian partnership participating in mission Dei. There is a discussion on the particularity of Christian partnership mainly because of its foundation in the Bible. Christian partnership is both local and global in scope; and it involves both the clergy and laity in participating in mission. Christian partnership interactions which breed involvement and interdependence remind all Christians that the Church should be a moving out servant. The opportunities found in Christian partnership make this relationship deserve credibility missio Dei

Feasibility Study of a Campus-Based Bikesharing Program at UNLV

Bikesharing systems have been deployed worldwide as a transportation demand management strategy to encourage active modes and reduce single-occupant vehicle travel. These systems have been deployed at universities, both as part of a city program or as a stand-alone system, to serve for trips to work, as well as trips on campus. The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTCSNV) has built a public bikesharing system in downtown Las Vegas, approximately five miles from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). This study analyzes the feasibility of a campus-based bikesharing program at UNLV. Through a review of the literature, survey of UNLV students and staff, and field observations and analysis of potential bikeshare station locations, the authors determined that a bikesharing program is feasible at UNLV

An ecological and economical assessment of Integrated Amaranth (Amaranthus hybridus) and Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) farming in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Organic wastes can be recycled in an ecologically sound way in fishponds by applying integrated agriculture and aquaculture systems (IAA). This kind of waste recycling can help to protect the environment from pollution and improve fishpond yields. Additionally, IAA provides an opportunity for diversification of the output from two or more existing subsystems leading to higher overall farm economic returns. This study explored the potential application of amaranth wastes (AW) as a dietary ingredient for tilapia in a tilapia-amaranths integrated system (ITA). An experimental diet (AD) contained 10% (based on the control diet, CD) inclusion of AW collected from a nearby vegetable market. The experiments included triplicate treatments with; (i) fish fed on AD, where the pond water was used for irrigating the amaranth plants (IAA-fish), and (ii) fish fed on CD, where no pond water was used for irrigating the amaranth plants (non-IAA fish). 90 days after fish stocking, eighteen 4 m2 amaranth plots were prepared and treated with (i) tap water without fertilization (control amaranths), (ii) water from IAA-fish pond and organically fertilized (IAA amaranths), and (iii) tap water and inorganically fertilized (non-IAA amaranths). The use of AW improved the fish feed conversion ratio. The overall net income from ITA was 3.2, 2.3, 2.6, and 1.8 higher than from non-IAA amaranths, IAA-amaranths, non-IAA fish, and IAA fish sub-systems respectively

Teachers’ Moonlighting and its Impact on their Job Performance in Dar es Salaam Region Secondary Schools

This study was conducted to establish how teachers’ moonlighting and its impact on their job performance in Dar es salaam region secondary schools. The research was guided by three research questions these questions were: What are the nature and forms of teachers’ moonlighting in Dar es Salaam region secondary schools? How the moonlighting affects teachers’ job performance? What are the mechanism head teacher’s uses in combating teachers’ secondary job problems? A total of 205 respondents involved in this study. Quantitative and qualitative techniques used to get information from the respondents. The quantitative techniques used to get information from the teachers and students by means of questionnaire whereas qualitative techniques were used to get information by means of interview guide. Data analysis was done by both quantitative and qualitative in which responses were counted into frequencies and percentages. The findings revealed that the activities done by teachers in Dar es Salaam are teaching private tuition, petty trade, part time teaching, salon activities, photographing and attending small garden. The study also reveal the causes of the teachers moonlighting behavior among them were insufficient salary, lack of incentives, extended family, introduction of double session and high demand of teachers. The results of the study also reveal that moonlighting for teachers affects teachers’ job performance in Dar es Salaam. The findings shows that the ways used by heads of school in curbing teachers moonlighting problems that were teachers’ folio inspecting, provide incentives, warning letter, special form, and physical follow up. Basing on the findings of the research study recommendations have been made concerning moonlighting for the teachers and its impacts for their job performance in Dar es Salaam region

Safety Analysis of Freeway segments with unobserved heterogeneity and Second order spatial effects

Safety analysis of freeway networks entails the quantification of crash frequency influencing factors which include roadway and traffic characteristics, environmental factors as well as human factors. This quantification can be used to detect locations with large impacts on the occurrence of crashes which in turn assist engineers and planners to improve safety levels of the network. Roadway characteristics are comprised of the physical elements of the road geometry such as section length, median and right shoulders, speed-exchange lanes, the number of main facility as well as geometry of the entrance from and exit to the main freeway facility. Traffic characteristics are comprised of traffic flow and vehicular volumes while environmental factors include weather conditions, pavement surface conditions, work zone areas conditions, and lighting conditions along the travel facility. Human factors are comprised of aging, aggressiveness while driving, mental stability, fatigue, alcoholism, acute psychological stress, suicidal behavior, drowsiness, and temporary distraction. Variability in the crash frequency is captured by the interaction of the aforementioned factors either in a multiplicative or additive nature through the use of statistical model formulation. When all factors believed to influence the occurrence of crashes are included in a mathematical formulation and all the assumptions underlying the statistical model are met, variability in the crash frequency referred to as observed heterogeneity can be fully explained. However, not all information believed to generate crashes is available. Some of the factors are latent in nature and some are either not available at the time of analysis or require time and high cost to be established. When such conditions exist, a formulated model does not fully explain observed heterogeneity in the crash frequency. Lack of information to fully explain variability in crash frequency as a result of excluding some factors leads to unobserved heterogeneity problems which results in biased and inconsistent safety estimators. Specifically, when observed crash counts are considered as clusters, analytical approach should consider the possibility of dependence within clustered crash counts. Correlation within clusters may be due to variation being induced by common unobserved cluster-specific factors. Ignoring cluster-effects increases the likelihood in drawing conclusion based on unrealistic inferences because safety estimator standard errors are likely to be underestimated and the usual conditional mean is no longer correctly specified. Cross sectional dependence may also arise when the crash counts have a spatial dimension due to contiguous freeway segments. Such conditions lead to what is known as spatial autocorrelation. This is the presence of spatial pattern in crash frequency over space due to geographic proximity whereby high values of crash frequency tend to cluster together in adjacent freeway segments or high crash frequencies are contiguous with low values of crash frequencies. When the distribution of crash frequency over space exhibit the aforementioned pattern, safety analysis techniques based on the distributional assumption of independence of crash frequency is violated. This study has two objectives: First, analyze safety of freeway geometric features while accounting for the effect of unobserved influencing factors and cluster-specific effects; Second, analyze safety of freeway geometric elements in the presence of spatial autocorrelation due to geographical proximity effects. To achieve the first objective, four models are compared: Two are standard Poisson and Negative binomial regression models which do not account for cluster effects. The other two are mixed effects Poisson and Negative binomial regression models which in addition to fixed effects parts they account for the effects of randomness arising from heterogeneity and clustering. The empirical results indicate that 13.9% of the variation in crash frequency is unaccounted for, which is an indication of the existence of unobserved factors influencing the occurrence of crashes. It is also revealed that weaving segments (EN-EX) had the highest between segment variance compared to non-weaving segments. More vehicles and short segments increased crash frequency while wider right shoulder decreased the crash frequency. It is also observed that weaving segments decreased crash frequency compared to non-weaving segments. These results indicate that by allowing parameters to vary within the weaving and non-weaving segments it is possible to capture and quantify unobserved factors. Ignoring these factors results in biased coefficients because the estimate of the standard errors required determining inferential statistics will be wrong. To achieve the second objective, Conditional Autoregressive models in Bayesian setting framework (CAR) is used. CAR models recognize the presence of spatial dependence which helps to obtain unbiased estimates of parameters quantifying safety levels since the effects of spatial autocorrelation is accounted for in the modeling process. Based on CAR models, approximately 51% of crash frequencies across contiguous freeway segments are spatially autocorrelated. The incident rate ratios revealed that wider shoulder and weaving segments decreased crash frequency by factors of 0.84 and 0.75 respectively. The marginal impact graphs showed that an increase in longitudinal space for segments with two lanes decreased crash frequency. However, an increase of facility width above three lanes results in more crashes which indicates an increase in traffic flows and driving behavior leading to crashes. These results call an important step of analyzing contagious freeway segments simultaneously to account for the existence of spatial autocorrelation

Comparison of the Effects of Supplemental Red Palm Oil and Sunflower oil on Maternal Vitamin A Status.

Conflicting results have been reported on the ability of dietary carotenoids to improve vitamin A status in lactating women. Red palm oil is one of the richest dietary sources of beta-carotene. We aimed to determine the efficacy of red palm oil in increasing retinol and provitamin A status in pregnant and lactating women. Ninety rural, pregnant Tanzanian women from 3 randomly selected villages were recruited during their third trimester to participate in 3 dietary intervention groups: a control group, who were encouraged to maintain the traditional practice of eating staples with dark-green leafy vegetables, and 2 study groups, who were given either sunflower or red palm oil for use in household food preparations. The intervention lasted 6 mo. Plasma samples were collected at the third trimester and 1 and 3 mo postpartum, and breast-milk samples were collected 1 and 3 mo postpartum. Supplementation with red palm oil, which is rich in provitamin A, increased alpha- and beta-carotene concentrations significantly (P < 0.001) in both plasma and breast milk. Plasma retinol concentrations were similar in all dietary groups. Breast-milk retinol concentrations tended to decrease from 1 to 3 mo postpartum in the control group, but were maintained in both oil groups. The difference in change in breast-milk retinol concentration between the red palm oil group and the control group was significant (P = 0.041). Consumption of red palm oil increases concentrations of alpha- and beta-carotene in both breast milk and serum and maintains breast-milk retinol concentrations. Sunflower oil consumption seems to conserve breast-milk retinol similarly to consumption of red palm oil. Breast-milk retinol might be maintained through increased dietary intake of these vegetable oils and use of mild cooking preparation methods (such as the addition of oil at the end of cooking and avoidance of frying)

Evaluation of Geometric Design Needs of Freeway Systems Based on Safety and Geometric Data

Freeways are arterial highways characterized by high levels of safety and high speed vehicular traffic. Access to and from the freeways is provided through ramps. Geometric elements making up freeway facilities include the roadway, median shoulders, grades, and ramps to and from the traveled way at selected locations, shoulders, radius of curvature, lane width, and speed-change lanes. With the increase of traffic using the freeway systems, there arises more traffic weaving movements within the elements making up the freeway systems. This causes traffic flow to compete at the limited spaces available and reduces safety performance of freeway system. In studies on safety issues of freeway systems, geometric elements of freeways have been evaluated for their safety effects on crashes occurring on the freeways. These studies have included interchange spacing, number of through lanes, median shoulder width and type, ramp spacing, length of segment, speed change lanes, and lengths for limited and extended lanes. Their findings revealed that freeway safety issues are associated with freeway geometric characteristics. However, the previous studies did not consider the safety impact of all segment types on the crash frequency on freeways. This study observed four types of segments when a freeway is divided into segments with Exit and Entry terminals. These segments were defined as EN-EN, EX-EX, EN-EX, EX-EN segments where EX stands for Exit from the freeway and EN stands for Entrance to the freeway. The study also extends types of weaving movements taking place in weaving segments. Crash rate and severity models were developed in this study based on the data collected for every freeway segment type. A complete set of geometric data was included in the data for each freeway segment type. Models for individual freeway segment type (EN-EN, EX-EX, EN-EX, and EX-EN) were developed. The results indicated that for EN-EN segment type; only two freeway characteristics had an impact: median width and segment length. Wider median and long segments both reduced crash while they were insignificant for severity model. For EX-EX segment type, the number of through lanes, median width, and AADT had an impact on average crash rate while for a severity model, only the number of through lanes had an impact. Specifically, it was found that, the number of through lanes reduced both average crash rate and high severity crashes when all through lanes were combined together. However, on individual segment type in a specific freeway, it was found that, the number of through lanes on I-15 increased average crash rate while they reduced average crash rate on I-215. Wider median reduced average crash rate while it increased high severity crashes. Traffic volume increased average crash rate while it was found insignificant on severity model. At a freeway level, EX-EX segment type reduced average crash rate compared to both I-215 and US95 while it reduced average crash rate for I-215 compared to I-15 and US95. For EN-EX segment type, shoulder width had a significant impact on average crash rates while the number of through lanes, median width, length of segment, and curve radius indicated significant impact on severity crashes. Wider shoulders on I-15 reduced average crash rate. The number of through lanes increased high severity crashes when all number of lanes were combined together. However, on individual freeways, the number of through lanes on reduced high severity crashes while they were insignificant on I-215 and US95. Wider median increased high severity crashes when all freeways were combined together while they reduced high severity crashes on I-15. Long segment increased high severity crashes when all EN-EX segment type from all freeways was combined together. Segments with large radius of curvature reduced high severity crashes when all for combined freeways while they increased high severity crashes for I-15. At a freeway level, I-15 increased both average crash rate and high severity crashes compared to I-215 and US95. For EX-EN segments, shoulder and AADT had a significant impact on average crash rate while the number of through lanes, median width, radius curvature and lane changes from ramp-to-freeway had a significant impact on severity crashes. Wider shoulder reduced average crash rate for combined data from all freeways but increased crash rate on I-215.Wider median increased high severity crashes for combined data from all freeways while they were insignificant on average crash rate models. Segments with large radius of curvature increased high severity crashes while it was insignificant on average crash rate model. Lane changes from ramp-to-freeway increased high severity crashes. AADT increased average crash rate while it was found insignificant on severity crashes

Assessment of pond and integrated aquaculture (IAA) systems in six districts of Tanzania

Integrated agriculture and aquaculture systems (IAA) are well known for their ability to improve the overall farm productivity and profitability. This is through recycling of on-farm resources, such as nutrient rich fish pond water and agriculture remains that would otherwise be considered as wastes. The present study explores the existing and potential IAA systems in Tanzania. It also examines management strategies and their influence on fish yield and the economic returns between IAA and non-IAA fish farming. The study assesses farmer’s socio-demographic characteristics and their perception towards fish farming. The study was conducted through an on-site survey of 129 fish ponds owned by 89 farmers in six districts in Tanzania, involving 65 and 64 IAA and non-IAA ponds respectively. Results indicate that tilapia-vegetables is the most common type of IAA practiced by fish famers. Despite higher fish feed use and stocking density in non-IAA ponds, IAA ponds had an average fish yield of 2.46 t ha-1, which was significantly (p0.05) higher than the fish yield of 1.54 t ha-1 found for non-IAA ponds. IAA ponds had also 1.6 and 2.9 times higher (p 0.05) revenue and net profit, respectively, than non-IAA ponds. Additionally, the net return from IAA ponds in an integrated system was significantly (p0.05) higher than when practiced as stand-alone activities. IAA famers were more positive towards fish farming compared to non-IAA farmers. Thus, IAA systems should be promoted among small-scale farmers to cover for an increased fish demand and to improve food security