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Ethiopian-affiliated research in Scopus and Web of Science: A bibliometric mapping
No full textThis paper explores the research landscape in Ethiopia using 20-year data drawn from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The focus was to assess yearly research productivity, key research areas, journals in which researchers publish, collaborating countries, languages used to publish papers, and major agencies that fund research. The findings indicate that research productivity has been increasing over the past decades, with biomedical research dominating much of the output. Addis Ababa, Gondar, Jimma, Mekelle and Bahir Dar universities were identified as the institutions with a relatively higher level of research productivity than the other universities in the country. The top five collaborating countries for Ethiopian researchers were found to be the US, UK, India, Germany, and South Africa. The dominant language of research was English. However, since the country has a strong tradition of producing knowledge in local languages, this finding indicates the need to incorporate research published in African languages in journals and databases
The promise of Tele-Dementia: Today’s science and tomorrow’s trial
No full textTelemedicine is the term used to describe the use of technology to provide medical care over a distance. Telephone, email, and real-time videoconferencing are the most frequently used telepsychiatry technology. Telemedicine has been used to provide simple and efficient healthcare solutions in the treatment of illness. Despite it is relatively new, mobile health (mHealth) has grown significantly in popularity as a means of assisting persons living with a chronic condition. The current study reviewed existing mobile health dementia applications from different perspectives. These applications could include a variety of strategies and resources to assist the community especially in caring for individuals with Alzheimer's disease
Towards a Domain Specific Modeling Framework for General Collective Intelligence Platforms
Get PDFA General Collective Intelligence or GCI is a hypothetical platform able to self-organize individuals into potentially massive networks of cooperation on a self-sustaining basis, where those networks might radically increase the group’s general problem-solving ability and hence ability to solve any problem in general, which translates to a radical increase in the capacity of the group to achieve any of it’s collective goals. This potential to significantly increase collective outcomes has been confirmed through analysis of GCI based platform designs targeting social good, such as a proposed “Social Impact Marketplace”. In software, GCI is predicted to create the potential to enable social media platforms, blockchain platforms, or any other type of platform, to self-assemble at a speed, scale, and size of user base not currently possible, while also providing functionality that reliably solves problems that are currently not reliably solvable. In order to achieve this, GCI leverages the concept of “functional state spaces” to provide a semantic representation of the functionality in each domain of software behavior. This paper explores the concept of functional state spaces as a framework for domain specific modeling, as well as how such functional state spaces potentially provide a semantic representation of the functionality in each domain that is universal and therefore suitable for a General Collective Intelligence platform capable of targeting any given problem in any given domain
AfrAbia Society (AAS): The Secret Ingredient for Advancing AfrAbia Neuroscience Research
Get PDFAfrica is marked by a higher frequency of illnesses, trauma, and violence, as well as greater exposure to toxic substances and malnutrition, against a backdrop of far greater genetic variety. All these variables present potential for the neuroscience community in Africa to achieve breakthroughs in fundamental research and develop personalized therapies to boost brain health and well-being throughout the continent. While the high incidence of mental, neurological, and substance-use problems presents unique challenges to the African neuroscience community (Feigin et al., 2017; Feigin et al., 2019), the possibilities are also equally great. For instance, low physician-to-patient ratios expose the average clinician to a high number of patients, hence enhancing possibilities for field-specific competence development. This increased clinical exposure generates topics of study that are directly relevant to the local community, and improves the viability clinical studies, which helps not only the African community, but also the Global North. Recruiting participants for clinical studies on traumatic brain injury, for instance, takes less time in Africa than in Europe. Lastly, there is ample opportunity for clinically oriented neuroscience research to enhance healthcare in Africa, particularly for young people. Specific objectives include the improvement of developmental potential and mental health, as well as the alleviation of mortality and neurological impairment
In vitro antimalarial activity of essential oils of Deverra scoparia Coss. & Dur | JBES
Get PDFSupplemental Materials: https://osf.io/yzev9/The essential oils of the plant Deverra scoparia Coss. & Dur. (Apiaceae) used in traditional medicine in Algeria were subjected to testing the antimalarial activity. Their potential ability to inhibit the in vitro proliferation was evaluated in two strains of Plasmodium falciparum; chloroquine-resistant (K1), and chloroquine-sensitive (3d7) strains. The essential oils displayed good antimalarial activity with IC50 values 1.51 ± 0.71 μg/mL and 0.93 ± 0.89 μg/mL against the 3d7 chloroquine-sensitive and the K1 chloroquine-resistantstrains respectively. So, Deverra scoparia presented a potential source of antimalarial molecules
Assessment of the Impact of Insecurity on Women's Entrepreneurial Activities in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State
Get PDFThis study examined the impact of insecurity on the entrepreneurial activities of women in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State, focusing specifically on issues about women’s financial dependence, the kind of entrepreneurial activities common among them and the dimension of the impact of insecurity on their entrepreneurial endeavours. A sample of 377 women was surveyed, leading to the findings that women in Shiroro are highly entrepreneurial with high level of financial independence, engaging mostly in SMEs. The study also found that while insecurity has an adverse effect on women’s entrepreneurial activities in the form of loss of or decline of capital among other things, the number of women entrepreneurs has not experienced a significant decline. The study recommended that sustainable programmes to improve women’s access to and use of financial services should be created and community policing organisations should also be created and strengthened to combat insecurity in the study area
On a conjecture of Erd\H{o}s on additive basis of large orders : On a conjecture of Erd\H{o}s
No full textUsing the methods of multivariate circles of partition, we prove that for any additive base A of order h ≥ 2 the upper bound.
#Check uploaded file for detailed abstrac
The Antecedents Of Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX) Relationships In African Context: The Influence Of The Supervisor’s Feedback Delivery-Tactic
Get PDFPurpose
The current paper aims to analyse the antecedents of leader–member exchange relationships (LMX) by specifically focusing on the influence of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses qualitative research methods with primary interviews as the main data source. Primary interviews with 40 managers from top supermarkets in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK were undertaken.
Findings
The authors found that both high-quality positive feedback and constructive criticisms produced the same feelings – more positive interpersonal relationships with their supervisors, higher levels of commitment to their organisations, higher job satisfaction and thus, high-quality LMX relationships. Where criticisms were delivered without greater interpersonal treatment, feedback was perceived as negative, and participants revealed lack of job satisfaction, lack of commitment to their organisations, poor interpersonal relationship with their supervisors, high turnover intent and thus low-quality LMX relationship.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current paper is one of the first studies to highlight the consequences of different feedback delivery tactics on subsequent LMX quality particularly in African context. The authors specifically develop a process-based model of enhancing high-quality LMX, which shows the role of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic in the process. The authors also develop a process-based model that illustrates how negative/unconstructive feedback could result in a low-quality LMX.
Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also one of the first to offer a comparative assessment between African and British (the UK) empirical settings and highlight some interesting dynamics concerning LMX quality and role of supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic
Learning Swahili Morphology
Get PDFWe describe the results of automatic morphological analysis of a large corpus of Swahili text, the Helsinki corpus, using Linguistica, an unsupervised learner of morphology. The result is a fine-grained analysis, with some results corresponding to the familiar linguistic analysis, and with others that are possible only with exact quantitative measures available with computational analysis. The prefixal inflectional morphology is largely done well, while the suffixal morphology is successfully analyzed in some cases and not in others
A Brief Moment in the Great Postcolonial Story: Crime, Violence and Grief in Contemporary South African Theatre
Get PDFMuch has been written about Protest Theatre during the apartheid era; and much has been written about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa. Much has also been written about the profound importance of postcolonial theory in relation to South African, and other African, theatre practices and traditions. This article aims to contribute to the growing knowledge of in-depth and nuanced insights gained from this legacy in the context of current, post-apartheid theatre. This article specifically argues that, in post-apartheid theatre, when the characters and/or audience, collectively experience grief, the traumatic legacy of the binary arrangement of identities (of ‘primitive/civilized, superior/inferior, master/servant’) constructed by and for power during the pre-revolution era, breaks down and the crimes of colonization and apartheid are perceived by the audience. This is seen as a necessary part of the process in the ongoing countering of the received master narrative inculcated by the colonial and apartheid periods. Agreeing with Ash Amin, the paper argues that through such theatre the periphery is liberated and, on those terms, engages with the centre, or historical, hegemonic narrative.
From that perspective, history and the present can be grasped and new post-apartheid identities seen as multi-dimensional, non-stereotyped, and in ‘constant production’ are revealed. Applying this notion, one observes that multiple stories emerge to articulate this countering process. But, core to this process, is the subjective and collective experience of grief leading to the binaries collapsing and the crime of the colonial and apartheid project being seen at the core of the traumatic history which informs the contemporary, multi-layered South African experience. The article explores five contemporary South African plays: Bush Tale, Relativity; Township Stories, Hallelujah!, Reach, Armed Response. Notions of postcolonial and identity theory are incorporated in the article as they help illuminate the plays. In addition, insights gained from the Kleinian School of Object Relations psychoanalytic theory help inform notions of how the processes of grief and trauma deepen our understanding of the plays, and the contemporary South African narrative