Registration of Vital Events in Ethiopia: Gaps in the Laws on Registration of Marriage and Its Dissolution

In any country, a well-established system of registration of vital events plays keyroles to bring political, social, and economic developments. To this end, it isindispensable that the system shall be based, inter alia, on well designed laws.Though many countries have very established system of civil registration, the fullfledged practice of registration of vital events and laws are of recent vintage inEthiopia. Partly attributed to this, there appear some flaws in the laws on vitalevents registration in Ethiopia. The aim of this article is to highlight the gaps in that part of the laws dealing with registration of marriage and its dissolution. In sodoing, it examines the current laws connected with registration of marriage and itsdissolution in light of other laws and established practices. In addition, it alsoattempts to look into Ethiopia’s past experiences in relation to registration of civilstatuses. It then identifies gaps regarding the persons responsible to declaremarriage or divorce for registration, time and place of registration that would have their own impact in the endeavor to build a well-functioning system of registration of vital events across the country. Accordingly, the laws in force shall be considered for further amendment to avoid the defects.&nbsp

Founders of share companies under the Ethiopian share company law: legal analysis

This article explores the Commercial Code and other laws of Ethiopia regarding founders – who they are, liabilities and benefits - who are also called ‘promoters’ by many other company laws. To some extent, it also looks into the business practice based on documents like memorandum of associations, articles of association and prospectuses. By so doing, it discloses many of the flaws in the existing laws. It argues that the Ethiopian share company law recognizes large number of persons as founders which is against the general convention in the area. Accordingly, it tries to indicate that not all founders in the law shall be held responsible for the liabilities that may emanate from the activities pertaining to forming a share company. In addition, it shows that the law does not adequately regulate the matters connected with the liabilities and benefits of founders. Apart from imposing liabilities on a person who should not be responsible at all, it is found that there are several challenges for both the injured parties to claim against the founders and the founders to get their benefits. Accordingly, the article suggests that the law on founders should be revisited to avoid the pitfalls arising out of the process of establishing share companies.Keywords: founder, joint and several liability, pre-incorporation commitments, promoter, Share Compan

Disparities in allele frequencies and population differentiation for 101 disease-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms between Puerto Ricans and Non-Hispanic Whites

BACKGROUND. Variations in gene allele frequencies can contribute to differences in the prevalence of some common complex diseases among populations. Natural selection modulates the balance in allele frequencies across populations. Population differentiation (FST) can evidence environmental selection pressures. Such genetic information is limited in Puerto Ricans, the second largest Hispanic ethnic group in the US, and a group with high prevalence of chronic disease. We determined allele frequencies and population differentiation for 101 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 30 genes involved in major metabolic and disease-relevant pathways in Puerto Ricans (n = 969, ages 45–75 years) and compared them to similarly aged non-Hispanic whites (NHW) (n = 597). RESULTS. Minor allele frequency (MAF) distributions for 45.5% of the SNPs assessed in Puerto Ricans were significantly different from those of NHW. Puerto Ricans carried risk alleles in higher frequency and protective alleles in lower frequency than NHW. Patterns of population differentiation showed that Puerto Ricans had SNPs with exceptional FST values in intronic, non-synonymous and promoter regions. NHW had exceptional FST values in intronic and promoter region SNPs only. CONCLUSION. These observations may serve to explain and broaden studies on the impact of gene polymorphisms on chronic diseases affecting Puerto Ricans.National Institutes of Health, National Institutes on Aging (P01AG02394, P01AG023394-SI); National Insitutes of Health (53-K06-5-10); US Department of Agriculture Research Service (58-1950-9-001, 58-1950-7-707); National Institutes of Health & Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (U 01 HL72524, Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Triglycerides, HL54776

Power and type I error rate of false discovery rate approaches in genome-wide association studies

In genome-wide genetic studies with a large number of markers, balancing the type I error rate and power is a challenging issue. Recently proposed false discovery rate (FDR) approaches are promising solutions to this problem. Using the 100 simulated datasets of a genome-wide marker map spaced about 3 cM and phenotypes from the Genetic Analysis Workshop 14, we studied the type I error rate and power of Storey's FDR approach, and compared it to the traditional Bonferroni procedure. We confirmed that Storey's FDR approach had a strong control of FDR. We found that Storey's FDR approach only provided weak control of family-wise error rate (FWER). For these simulated datasets, Storey's FDR approach only had slightly higher power than the Bonferroni procedure. In conclusion, Storey's FDR approach is more powerful than the Bonferroni procedure if strong control of FDR or weak control of FWER is desired. Storey's FDR approach has little power advantage over the Bonferroni procedure if there is low linkage disequilibrium among the markers. Further evaluation of the type I error rate and power of the FDR approaches for higher linkage disequilibrium and for haplotype analyses is warranted

Bacillus subtilis SbcC protein plays an important role in DNA inter-strand cross-link repair

BACKGROUND: Several distinct pathways for the repair of damaged DNA exist in all cells. DNA modifications are repaired by base excision or nucleotide excision repair, while DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) can be repaired through direct joining of broken ends (non homologous end joining, NHEJ) or through recombination with the non broken sister chromosome (homologous recombination, HR). Rad50 protein plays an important role in repair of DNA damage in eukaryotic cells, and forms a complex with the Mre11 nuclease. The prokaryotic ortholog of Rad50, SbcC, also forms a complex with a nuclease, SbcD, in Escherichia coli, and has been implicated in the removal of hairpin structures that can arise during DNA replication. Ku protein is a component of the NHEJ pathway in pro- and eukaryotic cells. RESULTS: A deletion of the sbcC gene rendered Bacillus subtilis cells sensitive to DNA damage caused by Mitomycin C (MMC) or by gamma irradiation. The deletion of the sbcC gene in a recN mutant background increased the sensitivity of the single recN mutant strain. SbcC was also non-epistatic with AddAB (analog of Escherichia coli RecBCD), but epistatic with RecA. A deletion of the ykoV gene encoding the B. subtilis Ku protein in a sbcC mutant strain did not resulted in an increase in sensitivity towards MMC and gamma irradiation, but exacerbated the phenotype of a recN or a recA mutant strain. In exponentially growing cells, SbcC-GFP was present throughout the cells, or as a central focus in rare cases. Upon induction of DNA damage, SbcC formed 1, rarely 2, foci on the nucleoids. Different to RecN protein, which forms repair centers at any location on the nucleoids, SbcC foci mostly co-localized with the DNA polymerase complex. In contrast to this, AddA-GFP or AddB-GFP did not form detectable foci upon addition of MMC. CONCLUSION: Our experiments show that SbcC plays an important role in the repair of DNA inter-strand cross-links (induced by MMC), most likely through HR, and suggest that NHEJ via Ku serves as a backup DNA repair system. The cell biological experiments show that SbcC functions in close proximity to the replication machinery, suggesting that SbcC may act on stalled or collapsed replication forks. Our results show that different patterns of localization exist for DNA repair proteins, and that the B. subtilis SMC proteins RecN and SbcC play distinct roles in the repair of DNA damage

Factors Affecting the Performance in the Implementation of Government Building Construction Projects: A Case Study in Bole SubCity of Addis Ababa

Building project implementation has so many issues and complex performance, such as time, cost, quality, and safety. This study identified and assessed the essential factors influencing the implementation of public building projects, particularly in the Bole Sub-city of Addis Ababa. There were 46 factors identified, validated, and divided into 9 categories. Questionnaires are distributed to 120 respondents, of which 8 for owners, 25 for consultants, 86 for contractors, and one head of the office. The key factors decided upon were: liquidity of the organization, improved availability of commodity prices for people with high experience and expertise, and the quality of equipment and raw materials in the project. The agreement between the parties on the ranking of factors was calculated based on their Relative Importance Index. Besides, the value of the Cronbach’s Alpha for variables calculated above 0.7, which means the data and scale are reliable and accepted for further analysis to correlate the different groups of factors. Results showed that cost, time, quality, productivity, and customer satisfaction are the top five essential factors affecting the performance of the government public building in the study area