Dairy Cow Ownership and Child Nutritional Status in Kenya

This study examines the hypothesis that dairy cow ownership improves child nutritional status. Using household data from coastal and highland Kenya, three econometric model formulations are estimated. Positive impacts on chronic malnutrition are observed for coastal Kenya. No negative effects on acute or chronic malnutrition are found for either region.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Agroindustrialization through institutional innovation

Some small-holders are able to generate reliable and substantial income flows through small-scale dairy production for the local market; for others, a set of unique transactions costs hinders participation. Cooperative selling institutions are potential catalysts for mitigating these costs, stimulating entry into the market, and precipitating growth in rural communities. Trends in cooperative organization in East-African dairy are evaluated. Empirical work focuses on alternative techniques for effecting participation among a representative sample of peri-urban milk producers in the Ethiopian highlands. The techniques considered are a modern production practice (cross-bred cow use), a traditional production practice (indigenous-cow use), three intellectual-capital-forming variables (experience, education, extension), and the provision of infrastructure (as measured by time to transport milk to market). A Tobit analysis of marketable surplus generates precise estimates of non-participants' ‘distances' to market and their reservation levels of the covariates—measures of the inputs necessary to sustain and enhance the market. Policy implications focus on the availability of cross-bred stock and the level of market infrastructure, both of which have marked effects on participation, the velocity of transactions in the local community and, inevitably, the social returns to agroindustrialization.Dairy farming Ethiopia. ,Collective farms Ethiopia. ,

The relevant and reliable language theory:developing a language measure of trust for online groups

This thesis investigated the link between trust and language in online dyadic, online group, and virtual community interactions. The first two empirical studies revealed that positive emotion is reliably linked to trust, that is to say that dyads and groups that produce more positive emotion words show greater trust. In addition, by priming group members to believe their group was either high or low in trustworthiness, the second empirical study revealed that group members produce more positive emotion words as a consequence of greater trust. A third study revealed an additional important language phenomena to trust, this was a type of linguistic mimicry known as linguistic style matching (LSM). The study guided groups through established phases of group development (relational, task, and task resolution), findings revealed that LSM in the early, relational phase, predicted trust. Further analysis of the relationship between phase of development, positive emotion words and LSM revealed that when LSM was low in the relational phase, positive emotion once again became a cue used to trust in subsequent task phases. The Relevant and Reliable Language Theory was proposed to explain the phase of group development dependent effects of LSM and positive emotion on trust. In short, the theory states that language must be relevant, i.e. the group is still undecided regarding trust judgements and still seeks trust relevant information, and reliable, i.e. in a given context, the language must be considered a genuine trust signal, and not one that appears ‘faked’ by ‘opportunists’. Based on the novel theory, it was hypothesised in a forth study that disrupting LSM in an early relational phase, and positive emotion in a subsequent task phase (contexts where LSM and positive emotion were proposed to be most relevant and reliable to trust), would have the most detrimental effect on trust. A confederate implementing these disruptions, relative to a comparable control, supported the theory; with groups who were subject to the ‘strong’ disruption producing lower trust behaviour than the control group. A final study extended finding to real world online interactions in a virtual community focused on discussing credit card fraud, i.e. a criminal online group. The discussions were relational, rather than task focused, thus The Relevant and Reliable Language Theory predicted that LSM would be the most important language variable related to trust. The theory was supported as LSM, but not positive emotion, ebbed and flowed in line with predicted levels of trust

Smallholder dairying under transactions costs in East Africa

In peri-urban areas of the world where cattle are present, dairy farming has typically been part of the adjustment in production patterns of smallholders faced with shrinking arable land, higher population density and rising wage rates. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the economic viability of smallholder agriculture has come under increasing pressure, smallholder peri-urban dairy development has not been widespread outside of the East African highlands. Understanding the nature of constraints limiting smallholder peri-urban dairying so as to promote this activity and improve the livelihoods of smallholders is, therefore, a key public policy issue for African countries. It is argued that dairying is vital to future viability of many small farms in East Africa and that high transactions costs for dairy production and marketing limit participation by asset- and information-poor smallholders. Case studies from Kenya and Ethiopia illustrate the role of dairy cooperatives in reducing transactions costs. Analysis of the determinants of producer prices received by a sample of dairy producers near Addis Ababa suggests that different levels of access to infrastructure, assets, and information explain why they contemporaneously accept widely different producer prices for fluid milk

The practice of qualitative parameterisation in the development of Bayesian networks

The typical phases of Bayesian network (BN) structured development include specification of purpose and scope, structure development, parameterisation and validation. Structure development is typically focused on qualitative issues and parameterisation quantitative issues, however there are qualitative and quantitative issues that arise in both phases. A common step that occurs after the initial structure has been developed is to perform a rough parameterisation that only captures and illustrates the intended qualitative behaviour of the model. This is done prior to a more rigorous parameterisation, ensuring that the structure is fit for purpose, as well as supporting later development and validation. In our collective experience and in discussions with other modellers, this step is an important part of the development process, but is under-reported in the literature. Since the practice focuses on qualitative issues, despite being quantitative in nature, we call this step qualitative parameterisation and provide an outline of its role in the BN development process.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, technical not

Second Set of Spaces

This document describes the Gloss infrastructure supporting implementation of location-aware services. The document is in two parts. The first part describes software architecture for the smart space. As described in D8, a local architecture provides a framework for constructing Gloss applications, termed assemblies, that run on individual physical nodes, whereas a global architecture defines an overlay network for linking individual assemblies. The second part outlines the hardware installation for local sensing. This describes the first phase of the installation in Strathclyde University

Agroindustrialization Through Institutional Innovation: Transactions Costs, Cooperatives and Milk-Market Development in the Ethopian Highlands

Some small-holders are able to generate reliable and substantial income flows through small-scale dairy production for the local market; for others, a set of unique transactions costs hinders participation. Cooperative selling institutions are potential catalysts for mitigating these costs, stimulating entry into the market, and precipitating growth in rural communities. Trends in cooperative organization in East-African dairy are evaluated. Empirical work focuses on alternative techniques for effecting participation among a representative sample of periurban milk producers in the Ethiopian highlands. The techniques considered are a modern production practice (cross-bred cow use), a traditional production practice (indigenous-cow use), three intellectual-capital-forming variables (experience, education, extension), and the provision of infrastructure (as measured by time to transport milk to market). A Tobit analysis of marketable surplus generates precise estimates of non-participants’ ‘distances’ to market and their reservation levels of the covariates—measures of the inputs necessary to sustain and enhance the market. Policy implications focus on the availability of cross-bred stock and the level of market infrastructure, both of which have marked effects on participation, the velocity of transactions in the local community and, inevitably, the social returns to agroindustrialization