80 research outputs found
Assessment of Traffic Congestion and its Impact on Road Capacity in Urban Areas under Mixed Traffic Conditions using Multiple Regression Analysis - A Case Study of Addis Ababa City
No full textTraffic congestion is a complex phenomenon that is connected to several vehicle movements on the road. The major reasons behind this problem are the various continuous activities in the urban areas such as education, employment, recreation, business, political, social, and cultural. In addition to these activities, floating and migration, increase congestion on city roads. This will affect the traffic stream characteristics and reduce the road capacity and level of service. The present study aims to evaluate and analyze traffic congestion and its effect on road capacity and level of service at Mebrathail's mid-block location in Addis Ababa city. To achieve the objective, the Mebrathail mid-block was divided into four segments appropriately, and the traffic volume and speed studies were conducted at each segment for 10 hours a day at 15-minute consecutive intervals. The necessary traffic data including road geometry at each segment was recorded. The congestion levels at each segment were then measured by estimating the reduced speed between each segment. The volume-to-capacity ratio (v/c ratio) was then estimated and found to be exceeding 1 in most of the hours of the day, resulting in a poor level of service F. Various Multiple Regression Models were developed correlating the reduced speed with traffic volume, composition, and road geometry. The results from the analysis indicate that traffic congestion on urban roads has an impact on urban characteristics.
Keywords: Level of Service, Reduction in Speed, Road Capacity, Traffic congestion, V/C rati
Customer Satisfaction Assessment in the Public Transportation System of Anbessa City Bus Services
No full textAssessing public transportation services can significantly contribute to improving their quality, thereby attracting more commuters over time. In the capital city of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), transportation is mostly facilitated by the publicly owned transportation service providers. These public service providers are the Anbessa City Bus Service Enterprise, popularly known as ACBSE Transport, Alliance Bus Services, and Sheger Bus Services. In addition, various other privately owned vehicles, including minibuses and taxis, are also available in the city for public transportation. This study aimed to analyse customer satisfaction with Anbessa city bus services in Addis Ababa using the SERVQUAL model, considering five service attributes, i.e., parameters: Service Responsiveness, Reliability, Tangibility, Assurance, and Empathy. To achieve this objective, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to 500 regular users of Anbessa city bus services in the city. The data obtained was sorted and analysed using SPSS 20.0 software. The research findings indicate that passengers are satisfied with ACBSE transport services based on responsiveness and tangibility, but they are unsatisfied with the reliability, assurance, and empathy dimensions of service quality. The study results are found to be useful for transport planners seeking to improve ACBSE bus services at selected terminals in Addis Ababa.
Keywords: ACBSE, Ambessa City Transport, Reliability, SERVQUAL Model, Tangibility
 
Traumatic injuries in patients with pre-existing mental altering co-morbidities
No full textObjective: Studies that describe the characteristics of injuries in patients with multiple pre-existing mental altering comorbidities are limited. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to study a full spectrum of the patterns of traumatic injuries in patients who were pre-disposed to have mental alteration as a result of selected pre-existing co-morbidities.
Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective study of trauma patients ≥10 years old based on the data from the NTDB. Patients with the diagnosis of pre-existing mental altering co-morbidities were identified using ICD-10 diagnosis codes. Descriptive and multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed using demographic variables and injury characteristics to identify the associations between MOI, PMAC and the intents of injuries in the patients who visited the trauma centers of participating hospitals in the United States.
Results: A total of 1,032,919 patients with the diagnosis of traumatic injuries age between 10 to 89 years old were analyzed. Of this number 200,700(17.6%) were patients with PMAC (targets) and the rest 832,219(73.0%) were patients without documented PMAC (controls), Male=677,943(59.43%) and female=462,570(40.55%). The average age of all injured patients was 47 (SD± 24.66) years old. Overall more geriatric female patients [19,628(9.780%)] with PMAC (age 80-89) suffered from traumatic injuries mainly fall (69.0%) and this was prominent in white (Not Latino) racial group. Self-harm was more prevalent in male target patients (31%). Major psychiatric illness was slightly more prevalent in female targets (20.02%) while substance use disorders in male targets (drug=18.78%, alcohol=14.21%), more than three times higher than the females. There were more common statistically significant (P<0.001) MOI (W01.0XXA the most common) that caused injuries in the target patients. Female patients with substance use disorder (alcohol) major psychiatric illness and CVA had a more predicted probability for fall injury of W01.0XXA (P<0.0001 for all). Male target patients with drug use disorder had the highest probability of getting an assault injury (X93.XXXA) followed by male patients with alcohol use disorder and female patients with drug use disorder. Self-inflicted intents were more prevalent (3.7%) in the target patients and the comparison of the proportion to controls was statistically significant (p<0.0001).
Conclusion: Over all female target patients were found to have higher predicted probabilities for fall and exposure, transport accidents, and assault injuries. But we still need more structured prospective studies to be done to substantiate this finding. The fact that traumatic injuries were more prevalent in female older target patients will remain an important point of future investigation.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Ethiopia’s Hate Speech and Disinformation Prevention and suppression Proclamation: The Need and Compatibility with International Human Rights Standards.
No full textThe claim of preventing and suppressing hate speech and disinformation inextricably linked to
the roots of contemporary international human rights discourse. Article 19(2) of ICCPR
recognizes that everyone has the right to freedom of expression. However freedom of expression
can be limited on the grounds of hate speech and disinformation since they can cause harms to
other human rights. Accordingly, Ethiopia is under obligation by cumulatively looking at Article
13(2) of the FDRE constitution and Article 20(2) of ICCPR to confront any advocacy of national,
racial and religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence by
law. Ethiopia has no comprehensive law regarding hate speech and disinformation though there
are some provisions directly or indirectly related to them by analyzing the existing domestic
laws. Hence, she has enacted hate speech and disinformation prevention and suppression
proclamation No.1185/2020.But this proclamation must be with in strictly defined parameters
for limitation of freedom of expression as stated under article 19(3) of ICCPR. Accordingly, the
author by assessing the Ethiopia‟s existing laws and international human rights laws has found
that the above proclamation leads to a kind of double warning since some of its provisions are
already provided and is incompatible with international human right standards such as legality,
legitimacy, necessity and proportionality standards and the widely accepted international norm
the Rabat Plan of action
Nutritional composition and sensory quality of injera prepared from tef (Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter) complemented with lupine (Lupinus spp.)
No full text© 2021 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.There is currently an emerging problem of protein malnutrition in Ethiopia. This food formulation was done to increase the accessibility of nutrient-rich food products for the consumers. Lupine is a legume crop, which is an excellent source of protein. This study aimed to investigate the effect of tef, lupine varieties and blending ratio on the chemical composition of injera and sensory acceptability of Ethiopians staple food. The effect of blending ratio and lupine varieties (Australian sweet lupine and Dibettered lupine seed) were studied. The formulations were generated by using mixture design software. Lupine variety and blending proportion had significant (P < 0.05) effect on proximate, mineral, anti-nutritional compositions and sensory acceptability of blended injera. The nutritional compositions of formulated injera ranged from 60.37 to 66.97%, 1.76 to 2.05 %, 11.78 to 18.84 %, 2.53 to 4.01 %, 2.83 to 3.16%, 72.55 to 81.32% and 393.19 to 400.91 kcal/100 g for moisture content, total ash, crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, utilizable carbohydrate and gross energy, respectively. The result showed that the crude protein content highly increased as the proportion of lupines increased. Crude protein and crude fat contents were higher for injera blended with dibettered lupine seed variety while crude fiber content was higher for those blended with Australian sweet lupine variety because of the raw material. Mineral content of composite injeras varied from 12.26 to 14.98 mg/100 g, 2.39 to 2.83 mg/100 g, and 145.31 to 163.96 mg/100 g for iron, zinc and calcium contents, respectively. All three mineral contents were higher in tef blended with dibettered lupine seed variety. The Tannin and phytic acid contents ranged from 9.59 to 11.95 mg/100 g and 98.91 to 120.64 mg/100 g, respectively. Therefore, this study showed significant increment in protein content of injera and provides insights for use of Lupine-tef flour mixture at home and industry level for enriched injera. As the sensory acceptability scores data indicated for both lupine varieties blended with tef for the production of injeras of up to 15% lupines almost all sensory attributes showed higher scores without significantly different among them but after 15% lupine addition there were observed drop of the sensory acceptability scores in a 7 point hedonic scale
Clarifying the role of radiative mechanisms in the spatio-temporal changes of land surface temperature across the Horn of Africa
No full textVegetation plays an important role in the climate system. The extent to which vegetation impacts climate through its structure and function varies across space and time, and it is also affected by land cover changes. In areas with both multiple growing periods and significant land cover changes, such as the Horn of Africa, identifying vegetation influence on land surface temperature (LST) through radiative changes needs further investigation. In this study, we used a 13-year time series (2001 - 2013) of remotely sensed environmental data to estimate the contribution of radiative mechanism to LST change due to growing season albedo dynamics and land cover conversion. Our results revealed that in taller woody vegetation (forest and savanna), albedo increases during the growing period by up to 0.04 compared with the non-growing period, while it decreases in shorter vegetation (grassland and shrubland) by up to 0.03. The warming impact due to a decrease in albedo during the growing period in shorter vegetation is counteracted by a considerable increase in evapotranspiration, leading to net cooling. Analysis of land cover change impact on albedo showed a regional annual average instantaneous surface radiative forcing of -0.03 +/- 0.02 W m(-2). The land cover transitions from forest to cropland, and savanna to grassland, displayed the largest mean albedo increase across all seasons, causing an average instantaneous surface radiative forcing of -2.6 W m(-2) and -1.5 W m(-2) and a decrease in mean LST of 0.12 K and 0.09 K, all in dry period (December, January, February), respectively. Despite the albedo cooling effect in these conversions, an average net warming of 1.3 K and 0.23 K was observed under the dominant influence of non-radiative mechanisms. These results show that the impact of radiative mechanism was small, highlighting the importance of non-radiative processes in understanding the climatic impacts of land cover changes, as well as in delineating effective mitigation strategies.Peer reviewe
Democracy and Human Rights in the European-Asian Dialogue: A Clash of Cooperation Cultures?
No full textWhereas the European Union (EU) favors a formal, binding, output-oriented, and to some extent supranational approach to cooperation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is based on informal, non-binding, process-oriented intergovernmental forms of cooperation. This article addresses the question of whether these differences between European and Asian cooperation norms or cultures can account for interregional cooperation problems in the areas of democracy and human rights within the institutional context of EU-ASEAN and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The author argues that a clash of cooperation cultures basically occurs in both forms of interregional collaboration between Asia and Europe, with slight differences due to the institutional context: while disagreements over the question of democracy and human rights between the EU and ASEAN have led to a temporary and then a complete standstill in cooperation, the flexible institutional mechanisms of ASEM seem, at first glance, to mitigate the disruptive effects of such dialogues. Yet informality does not remove the issues from the agenda, as the recurrent disputes over Myanmar’s participation and the nonintervention norm favored by the Asian side of ASEM clearly indicate. Antagonistic cooperation cultures thus play a significant role in explaining the obstructive nature of the interregional human rights and democracy dialogue between Asia and Europe.cooperation culture, human rights, democracy, Myanmar, EU-ASEAN, ASEM
Earning pocket money and girls’ menstrual hygiene management in Ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textBACKGROUND: Many adolescent girls in Ethiopia and elsewhere missed school during their monthly cycles due to a lack of affordable menstrual absorbent materials or money to buy sanitary pads. So far, few studies have looked into the relationship between earning pocket money and maintaining good menstrual hygiene. Hence, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to synthesize the best available evidence regarding the association between earning pocket money and menstrual hygiene management among adolescents in Ethiopia. METHODS: We systematically searched PubMed, Hinari, Science Direct, Cochrane Library, ProQuest, POPLINE, African Journal Online, Direct of Open Access Journals, and Google Scholar for studies examining the association between earning pocket money and menstrual hygiene management among adolescent girls in Ethiopia, without restriction in a publication year. The Joanna Briggs Institute quality assessment tool for the cross-sectional studies was used to assess the quality of included studies. A prefabricated checklist, including variables: first author, publication year, sample size, type of questionnaire, and the region was used to extract data from the selected articles. A random-effect meta-analysis model was used to estimate the pooled odds ratio (OR) of the association between earning pocket money and menstrual hygiene management. The heterogeneity and publication bias was assessed by using I(2) test statistics and Egger’s test, respectively. RESULTS: Data from nine studies involving 4783 adolescent girls were extracted. The meta-analysis revealed that adolescent girls who earned pocket money from their parents or relative had 1.64 times higher odds of having good menstrual hygiene management than their counterparts [pooled OR = 1.64, 95% CI: 1.16–2.34, I(2):66.7%, n = 7 (number of studies)]. Similarly, the likelihood of having good menstrual hygiene management was lower by 49% among adolescent girls who did not receive any pocket money from their parents compared to their counterparts (pooled OR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.35–0.74, I(2):48.4%, n = 2). CONCLUSIONS: The findings revealed that adolescent girls who earned pocket money were more likely to practice good menstrual hygiene management. Progress toward better menstrual hygiene will necessitate consideration of this factor. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12905-022-01855-2
Classification of ground deformation using sentinel-1 persistent scatterer interferometry time series
No full textDisplacement time series (TS) provides temporal and spatial information related to ground deformation. This study aims to investigate temporal behavior of ground deformation TS, including classification of displacement trends and periodicity evaluation, which ease the interpretation of movements. To this end, we propose several modifications to an existing automatic classification workflow of Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) TS using new tests to classify ground deformations into seven main trends: Stable, Linear, Quadratic, Bilinear, Phase Unwrapping Errors (PUE), Discontinuous with constant and different velocities. We illustrate our approach over 1500 km2 of the Granada region and the metropolitan area of Barcelona, which were monitored using Sentinel-1 images and a PSI technique. This study provided the spatial distribution of different ground movement types and was useful to detect several TS anomalies due to PUE. The proposed approach also identified stable targets, which were wrongly classified as moving scatterers by the existing classification method. A periodicity analysis was finally performed using the Welch’s power spectral density estimator to investigate seasonal and yearly fluctuations. The method was validated using simulated data, where the classified TSs characterized by probable phase unwrapping errors were verified by PSI experts. The overall classification accuracy was 77.8%, indicating that the proposed method has a considerable TS classification potential. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.The work of S. Mohammad Mirmazloumi has been funded by the Spanish State Research Agency, through a grant for a pre-doctorate contract (Ref: PRE2018-083394). The work of Yismaw Wassie has been funded by AGAUR, Generalitat de Catalunya, through a grant for the recruitment of early-stage research staff (Ref: 2019 FI_B 00050). The processing of Granada has been funded by the project "RISKCOAST" (SOE3/P4/E0868) of the Interreg SUDOE Programme
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