Manifestations of Deprivation and Self-Help Coping Strategies to Urban Poverty in Eldoret Municipality, Kenya

The preoccupation with rural development and poverty alleviation in Kenya has obscured the plight of the urban poor. The assumption has been that poverty is a rural phenomenon. Although this may appear true given the high incidences of rural poverty the rapid urbanization coupled with economic factors have led to increased concentration of poverty in urban centres in Africa in recent years. Yet, the analysis of the dynamics of urban poverty and alleviation measures continues to be given little attention at the policy level. Consequently, while rural poverty is well understood, information on urban poverty dynamics is largely not understood and at best speculative. Hence, the qualitative nature of urban poverty largely remains unknown and its dimensions unclear. There is now a growing recognition that poverty is multidimensional and has many faces, and that poverty and deprivation results from processes and interactions between social, economic, cultural and political dynamics of a society. A comprehensive understanding of the many faces of poverty and poverty alleviation measures need to extend beyond income to include the way the poor perceive their situation, its causes and remedial measures. This paper discusses the findings of a household study on the perceptions of poverty conducted in Eldoret Municipality Kenya .The study adopted a wide view of urban poverty that focuses on what people see as the causes of their poverty, its various manifestations and the way people respond to their depressed circumstances. Keywords: Urban poverty, self-help groups, Eldoret municipalit

Users’ awareness and satisfaction with the biodiversity information in Dar Es Salaam, Iringa and Morogoro regions.

This article examines the users’ awareness and satisfaction with biodiversity information that was being provided by their respective information systems. The study was conducted among biodiversity databases user communities in Tanga, Morogoro, Dar es Salaam and Coast regions of Tanzania. Mixed research design was used in which techniques such as questionnaires, observation, interviews and focus groups’ discussions were employed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The key findings indicate that the majority of the respondents were not aware of the existence of biodiversity information in their institutions. The respondents who seemed to be aware of its existence opined that biodiversity information which was being dispensed by their information systems was relevant but not updated and adequate for planning and decision-making. The article incorporates some recommendations on how the situation may be improved to enhance access and use of the biodiversity information in Tanzania

Aspects of chiral pion-nucleon physics

The next-to-leading order chiral pion-nucleon Lagrangian contains seven finite low-energy constants. Two can be fixed from the nucleon anomalous magnetic moments and another one from the quark mass contribution to the neutron-proton mass splitting. We find a set of nine observables, which to one loop order do only depend on the remaining four dimension two couplings. These are then determined from a best fit. We also show that their values can be understood in terms of resonance exchange related to $\Delta$ excitation as well as vector and scalar meson exchange. In particular, we discuss the role of the fictitious scalar-isoscalar meson. We also investigate the chiral expansion of the two P-wave scattering volumes $P_1^-$ and $P_2^+$ as well as the isovector S-wave effective range parameter $b^-$. The one-loop calculation is in good agreement with the data. The difference $P_1^- - P_2^+$ signals chiral loop effects in the $\pi N$ P-waves. The calculated D- and F-wave threshold parameters compare well with the empirical values.Comment: 19 pp, LaTeX, enlarged and revised version, title changed, minor corrections in section 4, more detailed discussion in section 5, additional results in sec. 6 and the appendix, accepted for publication in Nucl. Phys.

Prevalence and Factors Associated with Stunting among Public Primary School Pupils in Kasulu District, Western Tanzania

Background: Underfeeding of a child in the first 2 years of life results in irreversible growth damage. Globally, stunting has declined from 39.7% in 1990 to 26.7% in 2010 while in Africa has remained at 40% since 1990. However, stunting is little known in primary pupils.This study estimated the prevalence of stunting and contributing factors among public primary school pupils in Kasulu District.Method: Cross-sectional study was conducted among public primary pupils. Systematic random sampling was used to select study participants and then stratified to 5-7 and 8-12 years. Socio-economic factors, dietary practices, water, sanitation, and hygiene behaviours; school performance/attendance data were collected using a pretested questionnaire. Measurements were standardised to the World Health Organization HAZ-Scores for both girls and boys. Descriptive statistics, bivariate, and multivariable logistic regression were used to generate results.Results: A total of 400 pupils (100%RR) were recruited into the study, mean age of 7.51 (STD= 1.54) years and a half (50.3%) were boys. The prevalence of stunting was 127 (31.8%) (95% CI: 27.2%–36.6%), with no sex difference (63 (31.7%) – girls vs. 64 (31.8%) – boys; p = 0.969). Household wealth influenced stunting; lowest quintile (AOR= 28; 95% CI: 3.64 – 214.6; p<0.001) 2nd quintile (AOR = 17; 95%CI: 2.20 – 138.5; p<0.01), the 3rd quintile (AOR = 8.0; 95%CI: 0.99 – 64.67; p = 0.051) and 4th quintile (AOR = 4.2; 95%CI: 0.49 – 36.75; p = 0.191) when compared to 5th (highest) wealthquintile. Food insecurity (AOR = 10.6; 95%CI: 4.60 – 24.60; p< 0.001), less protein in meal were the risk for stunting (AOR = 14.6; 95%CI: 4.07 – 52.42; p<0.001).Inappropriate hand wash after toilets both at school, (AOR=3.5; 95%CI:1.62–7.58; p=0.001), and home (AOR = 13.0; 95%CI: 2.73 – 61.76; p = 0.001) were the risk for stunting. Stunted pupils had irregular school attendance (AOR = 9.4;95%CI: 4.42 – 19.93; p<0.001) and poor performance (AOR = 23.6; 95%CI: 10.24 –54.19; p<0.001). Food insecurity influenced poor performance (AOR = 3.9; 95%CI:1.67–8.92; p<0.01) and irregular school attendance (AOR=5.4, p=0.000).Conclusion: Stunting among public primary school pupils is very high despite the prevention effort. Low wealth, food insecurity, poor hand hygiene, and lack of protein in a meal significantly influence stunting. Also, it affects the pupils’ academic performance and attendance, availability of food in both quantity and quality, community nutritio

Automated underwriting in life insurance: Predictions and optimisation

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. Underwriting is an important stage in the life insurance process and is concerned with accepting individuals into an insurance fund and on what terms. It is a tedious and labour-intensive process for both the applicant and the underwriting team. An applicant must fill out a large survey containing thousands of questions about their life. The underwriting team must then process this application and assess the risks posed by the applicant and offer them insurance products as a result. Our work implements and evaluates classical data mining techniques to help automate some aspects of the process to ease the burden on the underwriting team as well as optimise the survey to improve the applicant experience. Logistic Regression, XGBoost and Recursive Feature Elimination are proposed as techniques for the prediction of underwriting outcomes. We conduct experiments on a dataset provided by a leading Australian life insurer and show that our early-stage results are promising and serve as a foundation for further work in this space

Peste des petits ruminants virus transmission scaling and husbandry practices that contribute to increased transmission risk: an investigation among sheep, goats, and cattle in Northern Tanzania

Peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) causes an infectious disease of high morbidity and mortality among sheep and goats which impacts millions of livestock keepers globally. PPRV transmission risk varies by production system, but a deeper understanding of how transmission scales in these systems and which husbandry practices impact risk is needed. To investigate transmission scaling and husbandry practice-associated risk, this study combined 395 household questionnaires with over 7115 cross-sectional serosurvey samples collected in Tanzania among agropastoral and pastoral households managing sheep, goats, or cattle (most managed all three, n = 284, 71.9%). Although self-reported compound-level herd size was significantly larger in pastoral than agropastoral households, the data show no evidence that household herd force of infection (FOI, per capita infection rate of susceptible hosts) increased with herd size. Seroprevalence and FOI patterns observed at the sub-village level showed significant spatial variation in FOI. Univariate analyses showed that household herd FOI was significantly higher when households reported seasonal grazing camp attendance, cattle or goat introduction to the compound, death, sale, or giving away of animals in the past 12 months, when cattle were grazed separately from sheep and goats, and when the household also managed dogs or donkeys. Multivariable analyses revealed that species, production system type, and goat or sheep introduction or seasonal grazing camp attendance, cattle or goat death or sales, or goats given away in the past 12 months significantly increased odds of seroconversion, whereas managing pigs or cattle attending seasonal grazing camps had significantly lower odds of seroconversion. Further research should investigate specific husbandry practices across production systems in other countries and in systems that include additional atypical host species to broaden understanding of PPRV transmission

Hadron beam test of a scintillating fibre tracker system for elastic scattering and luminosity measurement in ATLAS

A scintillating fibre tracker is proposed to measure elastic proton scattering at very small angles in the ATLAS experiment at CERN. The tracker will be located in so-called Roman Pot units at a distance of 240 m on each side of the ATLAS interaction point. An initial validation of the design choices was achieved in a beam test at DESY in a relatively low energy electron beam and using slow off-the-shelf electronics. Here we report on the results from a second beam test experiment carried out at CERN, where new detector prototypes were tested in a high energy hadron beam, using the first version of the custom designed front-end electronics. The results show an adequate tracking performance under conditions which are similar to the situation at the LHC. In addition, the alignment method using so-called overlap detectors was studied and shown to have the expected precision.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Journal of Instrumentation (JINST

Novel design of a parallax free Compton enhanced PET scanner

Molecular imaging by PET is a powerful tool in modern clinical practice for cancer diagnosis. Nevertheless, improvements are needed with respect to the spatial resolution and sensitivity of the technique for its application to specific human organs (breast, prostate, brain, etc.), and to small animals. Presently, commercial PET scanners do not detect the depth of interaction of photons in scintillators, which results in a not negligible parallax error. We describe here a novel concept of PET scanner design that provides full three-dimensional (3D) gamma reconstruction with high spatial resolution over the total detector volume, free of parallax errors. It uses matrices of long scintillators read at both ends by hybrid photon detectors. This so-called 3D axial concept also enhances the gamma detection efficiency since it allows one to reconstruct a significant fraction of Compton scattered events. In this note, we describe the concept, a possible design and the expected performance of this new PET device. We also report about first characterization measurements of 10 cm long YAP:Ce scintillation crystals. r 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Low-energy Pion-nucleon Scattering

This paper contains the results of an analysis of recent low-energy pion-nucleon scattering experiments. Obtained are phase shifts, the pion-nucleon coupling constant and an estimate of the Sigma term.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures, LaTe

Prevalence of Campylobacter and Salmonella in African food animals and meat: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Campylobacter and Salmonella, particularly non-typhoidal Salmonella, are important bacterial enteric pathogens of humans which are often carried asymptomatically in animal reservoirs. Bacterial foodborne infections, including those derived from meat, are associated with illness and death globally but the burden is disproportionately high in Africa. Commercial meat production is increasing and intensifying in many African countries, creating opportunities and threats for food safety. Methods: Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we searched six databases for English language studies published through June 2016, that reported Campylobacter or Salmonella carriage or infection prevalence in food animals and contamination prevalence in food animal products from African countries. A random effects meta-analysis and multivariable logistic regression were used to estimate the species-specific prevalence of Salmonella and Campylobacter and assess relationships between sample type and region and the detection or isolation of either pathogen. Results: Seventy-three studies reporting Campylobacter and 187 studies reporting Salmonella across 27 African countries were represented. Adjusted prevalence calculations estimate Campylobacter detection in 37.7% (95% CI 31.6–44.3) of 11,828 poultry samples; 24.6% (95% CI 18.0–32.7) of 1975 pig samples; 17.8% (95% CI 12.6–24.5) of 2907 goat samples; 12.6% (95% CI 8.4–18.5) of 2382 sheep samples; and 12.3% (95% CI 9.5–15.8) of 6545 cattle samples. Salmonella were detected in 13.9% (95% CI 11.7–16.4) of 25,430 poultry samples; 13.1% (95% CI 9.3–18.3) of 5467 pig samples; 9.3% (95% CI 7.2–12.1) of 2988 camel samples; 5.3% (95% CI 4.0–6.8) of 72,292 cattle samples; 4.8% (95% CI 3.6–6.3) of 11,335 sheep samples; and 3.4% (95% CI 2.2–5.2) of 4904 goat samples. ‘External’ samples (e.g. hide, feathers) were significantly more likely to be contaminated by both pathogens than ‘gut’ (e.g. faeces, cloaca) while meat and organs were significantly less likely to be contaminated than gut samples. Conclusions: This study demonstrated widespread prevalence of Campylobacter species and Salmonella serovars in African food animals and meat, particularly in samples of poultry and pig origin. Source attribution studies could help ascertain which food animals are contributing to human campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis and direct potential food safety interventions