Assessment and Evaluation of the Major Ruminant Feed Resources in Bedele Woreda, Oromia, Ethiopia

The study was conducted to assess the available feed resource in Bedele district and evaluate the nutritional quality of the major ruminant feeds.  Semi-structured and pre-tested questionnaire was used in data collection on the available feed resource. . Representative samples of feed resources commonly used in ruminant animal feeding in the study area during the months of December- February were collected monthly and subjected to laboratory chemical analysis.  All the data collected were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (version 20).The results obtained indicated that natural pasture and crop residue were the major basal diets in the study area, during the study period. The highest crude protein of 13.44% was recorded from brewery by product and the lowest (1.17%) from maize stover. The highest fibre contents of 78.2 and 80.03% were recorded from teff straw and maize stover respectively. The total livestock population and annual feed dry matter yield of the study area was estimated to be about 715.01 TUL and 1198.41 tons respectively. The annual total crude protein yield of the study area was estimated at 0.55 tons. At an estimated annual dry matter and crude protein requirement of 1630.23 and 17.87 tons, there is negative dry matter (481.81 tons) and Crude protein (17.32 tons) balance in the study area. The annual metabolisable energy yield of the study area was estimated to be about 0.53% of the annual requirement indicating that strategic supplementation with protein and energy concentrate during the study area is appealing. Keywords: Ruminant, Feed Resources, Nutritional Quality, Bedele Wereda. DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/10-7-04 Publication date: April 30th 202

County-Level Determinants of Local Public Services in Appalachia: A Multivariate Spatial Autoregressive Model Approach

In this paper, multivariate spatial autoregressive model of local public expenditure determination is developed. The empirical model is developed based on maximization of community utility function. The model is estimate by efficient GMM using Appalachian counties and the results indicate significant spatial spillover effects with respect to local public expenditures.Public Economics,

THE ROLE OF SMALL BUSINESS IN ECONOMIC GROWTH AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN WEST VIRGINIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

In OLS and 2SLS regression analysis a positive relationship exists between small business and economic growth. A strong inverse relationship also exists between the incidence of poverty and small business and economic growth. Thus, the empirical result establishes the linkage between small business, economic growth and the incidence of povertyResearch Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Estimation of groundwater recharge and potentials under changing climate in Werii Watershed, Tekeze River Basin

This study was conducted in Werii watershed (1797 km2) of Tekeze river basin, through integrative use of hydrological and climate models with the objective of estimating the impact of climate change on groundwater recharge and groundwater potentials. Statistical downscaling model (SDSM) was used to downscale precipitation and temperature outputs from REMO (REgional climate MOdel) which in turn was used as input to the WetSpa model to simulate future water balance changes based on A1B and B1 SRES emission scenarios. Abyiadi, Adwa, Hawzen and Adigrat meteorological stations was selected based on proximity to the watershed and data availability. Under A1B scenario, precipitation is likely to increase in each station by 11%, 34%, 31% and 20% at Abyiadi, Adwa, Hawzen and Adigrat stations respectively by 2050. Precipitation will also increase under B1 scenario with consistent rate as that of A1B. Change in maximum temperature is investigated higher at Hawzen for A1B (0.16°c) and B1 (0.2°c) and smaller at Adigart (0.05°c for A1B and 0.02°c for B1). Maximum temperature is expected to be in the range of -0.01°c to 0.2°c. Similarly, minimum temperature will change increasingly and positively with maximum change observed at Hawzen station for A1B (0.34°c) and B1 (0.29°c) and smaller change at Adigrat (0.07°c for A1B and 0.09°c for B1). Future likely climate change projections in precipitation and temperature is positive and will show increasing trend in the period from 2015 to 2050. A fully distributed hydrological model, WetSpa is used to simulate the reference period and future (2015-2050) water balances. At the watershed level, precipitation, recharge and actual evapotranspiration will show 13%, 2-5% and 15-18% increment respectively for both scenarios. Moreover, the baseflow will also increase by 14% and 8% for A1B and B1 scenarios respectively. The surface runoff will show decrement within the range of 22-24%. A spatially distributed water balance model, WetSpass, was also used to estimate long term average seasonal groundwater recharge. The average annual long term groundwater recharge is estimated as 30.06 mm of which 19.51 mm occurs during wet and 9.55 mm occurs during dry seasons. About 77% of the annual rainfall is received in the rainy season, however, only 65% of the total recharge occurs in the rainy season. The annual average precipitation (717 mm) is distributed as 90.7% (650.16 mm) evapotranspiration, 6% (44.06mm) runoff, and 4.2% (30.06mm) recharge. WetSpa and WetSpass were compared and their simulations were found consistent. Increased exploitation of these groundwater resources which is equivalent to the water resources increment is recommended. However, optimal allocation of the groundwater resources is useful to sustain the water resources in the watershed

A Spatial Panel Simultaneous-Equations Model of Business Growth, Migration Behavior, Local Public Services and Household Income in Appalachia

In this paper we develop a spatial panel simultaneous-equations model of business growth, migration behavior, local public services and median household income in a partial lag-adjustment growth-equilibrium framework and utilizing a one-way error component model for the disturbances. This model is an extension of the jobs follow people or people follow jobs literature and it improved previous models in the growth-equilibrium tradition by: (1) explicitly modeling local government and regional income in the growth process; (2) explicitly modeling gross in-migration and gross out-migration separately in order to spell out the differential effects, which used to be glossed over under net population change in previous studies; (3) explicitly incorporating both spatially lagged dependent variables and spatially lagged error terms to account for spatial spillover effects in the data set; and (4) extending and generalizing the modeling and estimation of simultaneous systems of spatially interrelated cross sectional equations into a panel data setting. To estimate the model, we develop a five-step new estimation strategy by generalizing the Generalized Spatial Three-Stage Least Squares (GS3SLS) approach outlined in Kelejian and Prucha (2004) into a panel data setting. The empirical implementation of the model uses county-level data from the 418 Appalachian counties for 1980-2000. Generally, the results from these model estimations are consistent with the theoretical expectations and empirical findings in the equilibrium growth literature and provide support to the basic hypotheses of this study. First, the estimates show the existence of feedback simultaneities among the endogenous variables of the model. Second, the results also show the existence of conditional convergence with respect to the respective endogenous variable of each equation of the model and the speed of adjustment parameters are generally comparable to those in literature. Third, the results from the parameter estimation of the model indicate the existence of spatial autoregressive lag effects and spatial cross-regressive lag effects with respect to the endogenous variables of the model. One of the key conclusions is that sector specific policies should be integrated and harmonized in order to give the desirable outcome. Besides, regionally focusing resources for development policy may yield greater returns than treating all locations the same.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

A SPATIAL MODEL OF REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN EMPLOYMENT GROWTH IN APPALACHIA

In this study, a spatial equilibrium model of employment growth is developed and empirically estimated by Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares (GS2SLS) estimator using cross-sectional data from Appalachian counties for 1990-2000. Besides the existence of spatial spillover effects, the results suggest that agglomerative effects that arise from the demand and the supply side contribute to employment growth in the study area during the study period. The policy implications of the findings are: (1) Regional cooperation of counties and communities is advisable and may in fact be necessary to design effective policies to encourage employment growth; and (2) Policy makers at the county level may need to design policies that can attract people with high endowments of human capital and higher income into their respective counties.APPALACHIA, EMPLOYMENT GROWTH, SPATIAL MODEL

Integrating Family Planning Training into Medical Education: A Case Study of St. Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College (SPHMMC), Addis Ababa

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148156/1/integrating-family-planning-into-medical-education-a-case.pdf-1Description of integrating-family-planning-into-medical-education-a-case.pdf : Case Study (PDF

Document Filtering for Long-tail Entities

Filtering relevant documents with respect to entities is an essential task in the context of knowledge base construction and maintenance. It entails processing a time-ordered stream of documents that might be relevant to an entity in order to select only those that contain vital information. State-of-the-art approaches to document filtering for popular entities are entity-dependent: they rely on and are also trained on the specifics of differentiating features for each specific entity. Moreover, these approaches tend to use so-called extrinsic information such as Wikipedia page views and related entities which is typically only available only for popular head entities. Entity-dependent approaches based on such signals are therefore ill-suited as filtering methods for long-tail entities. In this paper we propose a document filtering method for long-tail entities that is entity-independent and thus also generalizes to unseen or rarely seen entities. It is based on intrinsic features, i.e., features that are derived from the documents in which the entities are mentioned. We propose a set of features that capture informativeness, entity-saliency, and timeliness. In particular, we introduce features based on entity aspect similarities, relation patterns, and temporal expressions and combine these with standard features for document filtering. Experiments following the TREC KBA 2014 setup on a publicly available dataset show that our model is able to improve the filtering performance for long-tail entities over several baselines. Results of applying the model to unseen entities are promising, indicating that the model is able to learn the general characteristics of a vital document. The overall performance across all entities---i.e., not just long-tail entities---improves upon the state-of-the-art without depending on any entity-specific training data.Comment: CIKM2016, Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. 201

Assessment of Knowledge and Practices Toward COVID-19 Prevention Among Healthcare Workers in Tigray, North Ethiopia

Background: The incidence rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is increasing in several countries despite that public health measures are put in place. Given that COVID-19 is a newly emerging disease, there is little knowledge about the disease. The present study aims to assess knowledge, perception, and preventive practices toward COVID-19 among health workers in Tigray, North Ethiopia.Materials and Methods: A health facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted among health professionals working in public hospitals. Data were collected between April and May 2020. The researchers included 403 participants and recruited them via a simple random sampling technique. To collect data, the researchers prepared a structured questionnaire guided by the WHO survey questions. Data were entered into Epi-info 7 and exported to SPSS version 20.00 for analysis. The researchers applied descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. Tables and graphs were used to describe data, and multivariate binary logistic regression was used to determine factors affecting knowledge, perception, and practices toward COVID-19 prevention.Results: Among the participants, 79, 88, and 64.3% of them had adequate knowledge, positive perception, and good practice toward preventing COVID-19, respectively. Besides, 92% of the study participants knew that the COVID-19 virus does not have curative treatment and vaccine. The findings revealed that 55% of the respondents did not use the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) at all times. The result showed that being female [AOR: 2.43, 95% CI (1.50–3.94)] and having a work experience of 2–5 years [AOR: 2.44, 95% CI (1.10–5.39)], news media as a source information [AOR: 7.11, 95% CI (3.07–16.49)], social media as a source information [AOR: 4.59, 95% CI (2.15–9.84)], and governmental website as a source information [AOR: 4.21, 95% CI (2.15–8.27)] were reported as protective factors; and being single [AOR: 0.15, 95% CI (0.03–0.75)] was reported as risk factor toward the prevention of COVID-19.Conclusion: Most health workers had adequate knowledge and positive attitude toward COVID-19; nevertheless, a significant proportion of health workers had poor practice toward the prevention of COVID-19, including the use of PPE. Additionally, some groups of health professional showed poor practices of implementing the public health measures, hence the call for them to improve in the prevention and control of COVID-19