Mapping Diversity in Social History

The paper is an overview of diversity in history, starting as far back as the societies in classical Ancient Europe and traditional non-European societies, where differentiation was basically between the enslaved and free population and the out-of-caste in India. With the end of slavery the European feudal society adopted a functionalist tripartition based on priests, warriors and peasants. The analysis continues in pre-industrial Europe (1500-1800), where in many cities class struggle was represented by the conflicts between crafts and between cities, with some participation of the élites. In 17th century England only one class existed, and class struggle was the struggle inside one class. Other considerations on the stratification of pre-industrial society are related to classes inferred from empirical subjectivity, social hierarchy and horizontal and vertical solidarity. In industrial society, the paper discusses the Marxian, Weberian and Marshall models and the syncretism between status and class. The second part of the paper is devoted to diversity outside formal society with the definitions of the processes that generate the marginalization of people and social groups, while the third part of the paper concerns the urban milieu and social integration/differentiation. Considerations are made on urban topography (e.g. ghettos, “miracle courts”, etc.) and on the relationship between topographic position within the urban tissue and positioning in the social pyramid. Finally, the last part of the paper is an excursus on the historiographic assumptions and policies toward diversity and marginality.Diversity, Marginalization, Social history, Social integration, Social Differentiation

Governance of Diversity Between Social Dynamics and Conflicts in Multicultural Cities. A Selected Survey on Historical Bibliography

This paper is an excursus on multiculturalism from a historical perspective. It ranges from the encounters of different cultures in ancient times, through the Middle Ages, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period up to the present times. It describes the peculiarity of the solutions adopted, juridical or social, formal or informal. Although it is difficult to classify the various attitudes towards foreigners, a decisive distinction should be made between modern history and previous times. Until the 19th century the number of migrants was significant in a historical perspective, but limited in absolute terms. May this fact have helped the hosting institutions to encourage a favourable policy towards foreign settlements? Another distinction must be made between high qualified migration and humble and unskilled workers. Cities’ histories are full of discriminatory measures towards local immigrants from villages who swelled the ranks of urban outcasts. Finally, it seems clear that the category of multiculturalism, as a premise for the successful integration of foreigners can only be applied with precautions to historical examples. The challenge of the clash of cultures was tackled differently in past societies, without necessarily meaning that those societies were racist or xenophobic. Successful examples of integration and development with the contribution of diversity in the past could involve exclusion and discrimination apparently unacceptable nowadays.Social dynamics, Conflicts, Multicultural cities, Diversities

Emotion Detection for Afaan Oromo Using Deep Learning

Emotion detection in text has become more popular due to its various useful applications in a different area, such as tracking product perception, public opinion detection about political tendencies, stock market monitoring, text summarization, information extraction, recommendation system, question answering and etc. However, manually identifying emotion of a million of people and aggregating them towards a rapid and efficient decision is quite a challenging task due to the rapid growth of social media user.  This study aimed to develop Afaan Oromo emotion detection model in order to tackle this challenge.  This study adopts artificial neural network approach. We used python tools with Keras library. We conduct our experiments on five emotion class (anger(arii), love(jaalala), joy(gamachu), disgust(jibba), and sadness(gadda)) by collecting a total of 1005 emotional sentence of Afaan Oromo language that have been manually annotated. The sentence has been scraped from different official Facebook page such as Oromia Broadcasting Network (OBN) pages, Fana Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) Afaan Oromo page, and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Afaan Oromo pages using Facepager tools by creating Facebook API id. After collecting these data all preprocessing steps like tokenization, stop word removal and normalization have been undertaken. We used word embedding’s for feature extraction of preprocessed data. Subsequently, we have applied three artificial neural network algorithms such as Feed forward neural network, long short-term Memory and Bidirectional long short-term memory for classification purpose of the vectorized sentence into their emotion class. We compared the three artificial neural network algorithms and found out that Bidirectional long short-term memory achieved the best performance. We have achieved an average accuracy of 66%, 78%, 83% using Feed Forward Neural Network, Long Short-Term Memory and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory respectively. Based on experimental result, the researcher concluded that increasing amount of dataset, tuning hyper parameters properly and trying by different algorithms can, in some case, improve the performance of the model. Keywords: Emotion Identification, Afaan Oromo, Artificial Neural Network, Social Media DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/92-01 Publication date:August 31st 202

Exploring the Effect of Climate Change on Biological Systems

The present and potential future effect of global warming on the ecosystem has brought climate change to the forefront of scientific inquiry and discussion. For our investigation, we selected two organisms, one from cyanobacteria and one from a cereal plant to determine how climate change may impact these biological systems. The study involved understanding the physiological and adaptive responses at both the genetic and protein function levels to counteract environmental stresses. An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is a key factor in global climate change and can lead to alterations in ocean chemistry. Cyanobacteria are important, ancient and ubiquitous organisms that can aid in the study of the biological response to increasing carbon dioxide. Climate predictions estimate that by the year 2100 atmospheric carbon dioxide will exceed 700 ppm. In our first study, we looked at the transcriptional effect of high pCO2 on the cyanobacteria, Trichodesmium erythraeum. Total RNA sequencing was used to quantify changes in gene expression in T. erythraeum grown under present day and projected pCO2 concentrations for the year 2100. Two bioinformatics methods were used to analyze the transcriptional data. The results from this study indicate that a substantial number of genes are affected by high pCO2. However, increased pCO2 does not completely alter any one specific metabolic pathway. As the climate shifts throughout the world, it becomes essential for crops to withstand weather changes. In our second study, we investigated the function of the temperature induced lipocalin (Tatil) from Triticum aestivum, which is proposed to help plants survive adverse conditions. This protein is part of a functionally diverse and divergent superfamily of proteins called the lipocalins; they share a common three-dimensional structure, which consists of an antiparallel β-barrel and a C-terminal α-helix. Lipocalins are found in various organisms with a wide range of functions such as pheromone activity, lipid transport and coloration. Recently, proteins from wheat and Arabidopsis were identified as lipocalins through the elucidation of three structurally conserved regions. The study is particularly timely, as recent studies within the scientific community have shown that at higher temperatures wheat yields will decrease and production will decline by 6% for each 1°C increase. We analyzed the nature of conservation in a large group of sequentially divergent and functionally diverse lipocalins and identified seventeen highly conserved positions as well as built models of the native three-dimensional state of the wheat lipocalin. Based on these computational studies, the wild-type protein and three variants were chosen for a cellular localization study involving site-directed mutagenesis, a gene gun and a confocal microscope. The results provide support for the hypothesis that the L5 loop is involved in the association of the protein with the plasma membrane. We also developed an expression and purification system to produce the wild-type wheat lipocalin protein. Gel filtration chromatography eluted two different sized proteins. Based on the elution volume, one is believed to be the wheat lipocalin trimer while the other one is the monomer. Circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy show that the biological characteristics of the two proteins are different. In the study, Tatil maintains its structure up to approximately 50°C (122°F). In summary, we provide experimental data to better understand mechanistically how microorganisms and plants adapt to environmental change. In cyanobacteria, we show that T. erythraeum adapts to pCO2 increases by up- or down-regulating its genes. In plants, we provide insight into the way in which Tatil interacts with the plant cell membrane as part of its putative function to facilitate robustness in response to temperature increases. The study of Tatil is vital as this protein is believed to help plants tolerate oxidative stress and extreme conditions which broadens our understanding of plant sustainability in different environments

Determinants of Marketed Surplus of Groundnut Producers in Digga District of Oromia State, Ethiopia

Lower production and marketing problems of groundnut are the main problems though Digga district is potential in groundnut production. So, this study aims to analyze determinants of groundnut marketed surplus in Digga district of Oromia state. Two-stage sampling procedure was employed to draw a sample of 123 groundnut producers. Descriptive statistics was used for characterizing farmers and econometrics analysis was used for identifying determinants of marketed surplus. Explanatory variables resulted from OLS which significantly affected  groundnut marketed surplus were age of the household heads, distance from nearest market, groundnut farming experience, access to extension service, access to credit, and size of land allocated for groundnut. The findings of the study suggest that improving and strengthening institutional services, and infrastructural development to enhance groundnut marketed surplus. Keywords: Groundnut, Marketed Surplus, Multiple Linear Regression

Factors Affecting Market Outlet Choice of Groundnut Producers in Digga District of Oromia State, Ethiopia

Various problems constrain farmers in order not to choose appropriate market outlets for their produce. By taking these issues into consideration, this study is undertaken with the objective of identifying determinants of groundnut market channel choice producers in Digga district of Oromia region, Ethiopia. Both primary data which is collected from 123 randomly selected households from four kebeles and secondary data were used. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to draw sample of groundnut producers. Multivariate probit model was used to identify factors affecting market outlet choices of groundnut producers and the result revealed that variables like educational level, distance to the nearest market, access to extension service, size of land allocated for groundnut, quantity of groundnut produced, transport facilities, buyers’ trust and access to off/non-farm income affected the choice of appropriate market outlets of producers. Providing and strengthening services from extension services, timely and adequately providing production inputs to improve quantity produced, improving road infrastructures are recommended by the study to enhance farmers’ choice of suitable market outlets Keywords: groundnut, market outlet choice, multivariate probit mode

Implementing Tele-Coaching Diabetes Education to Improve Self-Care And Clinical Outcomes For Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

Abstract Background: Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) requires initial and continuous patient education for lifelong management due to the complexity of the disease. However, diabetes education is not very well-supported in the office setting due to the providers’ limited time per patient. However, with the aid of technology-based intervention, patients can be more supported and educated, leading to better T2DM control. Aims: The purpose of this scholarly project was to evaluate the effectiveness of diabetes education through tele-coaching in patients with T2DM for improved self-care and clinical outcomes, including hemoglobin A1c (A1c) and body mass index (BMI). Method: A mixed-method, single group quasi-experimental study and a post-intervention qualitative interview was conducted on 14 patients with T2DM and A1c greater than 6.5%. The intervention consisted of weekly tele-coaching diabetes education via phone calls or Zoom and action prompt text messages twice a week for 8 weeks. After completing the intervention, an individual interview with four structured interview questions was performed to explore the participants’ tele-coaching experience. Results: Eleven participants completed the study. After 8 weeks of intervention, the BMI change from pre- to post-intervention was not statistically significant, and the effect size was small (t(10) = 1.174, p = .268, d = 0.35). The A1c from pre- to post-intervention was also non-significant, and had a small effect (V = 33.50, p = .213, d = 0.43). However, the diabetes self-care activity score from pre- to post-intervention was statistically significant and the effect was large (V = 4, p = .006, d = 0.92). The post-intervention interviews show that tele-coaching diabetes education had positive impacts on the participants’ diabetes self-care and their motivation through more frequent support in reminding them for continuous self-care. However, 4 out of 11 participants preferred in-person office visits over tele-coaching. Conclusion: Diabetes self-care activity significantly improved after tele-coaching diabetes education, but A1c and BMI did not improve substantially. Patients perceived that tele-coaching was supportive, but some still preferred in-person education. Keywords: Type 2 diabetes, hemoglobin A1c, weight loss, diabetes self-care, diabetes education, tele-coaching

Audit market competition: causes and consequences

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of competition in audit market and client importance to perceived auditor independence from the perspective of Malaysian auditors, loan officers and senior managers of public listed companies. It is found that auditor independence would be threatened if auditors were to receive significant fees from a single client. The dependence on a single client would cause auditor to face a 'self-threat' risk, where they were economically and financially reliant on a single customer. The interview survey disclosed that regulatory authorities should closely monitor the profession by persistently scrutinising each audit firm's revenue and expenses