1,720,955 research outputs found
The Contribution of the Agricultural Food Security Pack Programme to Beneficiary Households in Zambia: A Case Study of Mpulungu District
No full textSmall-scale farming provides most of the food produced in Southern Africa. Unfortunately, most vulnerable-but-viable small-scale farmers in Zambia are affected by household food insecurity despite the Zambian government providing them with farming inputs under the food security pack programme. This study investigated the effects of the programme on maize crop production among 147 vulnerable-but-viable farming households in Mpulungu District, using a mixed-methods approach. The study results revealed improved land cultivation, maize crop productivity and access to food by family members after respondents entered the programme. These results imply that the programme contributed positively to the achievement of the aforementioned positive successes, despite the beneficiaries receiving farming inputs late, i.e., outside the planting period. Notwithstanding the many positive effects achieved by the programme, there were some challenges, namely, the late receipt of farming inputs by most beneficiaries, failure by the Zambian government to release timely funds to suppliers of farming inputs, imposition of some male beneficiaries into the programme by politicians, and low literacy levels among most beneficiaries. The study concludes that despite the challenges encountered in the programme implementation, the food security pack programme had positive effects on maize crop production among most of the benefiting vulnerable-but-viable small-scale farmers in Mpulungu District. Therefore, the study recommends scaling up the programme and increasing the number of programme beneficiaries, timely distribution of inputs and budget profiling by the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services — a lead ministry for implementing the programme
A Comparative Analysis of the Effects of the Agricultural Extension Services among Small-Scale Farmers in Mpulungu District, Zambia
Get PDFIn agriculture-oriented economies worldwide, agricultural extension services are influential in the crop productivity of small-scale farmers. In Zambia, despite the provision of extension services to small-scale farmers, some small-scale farmers have not felt their effects. Therefore, this study conducted a comparative analysis of the effects of the agricultural extension services on maize crop productivity of the 147 food security pack beneficiary households and 152 non-beneficiary households using a mixed methods design in the Mpulungu district of Zambia. The results revealed that the food security pack beneficiary and non-beneficiary households knew the extension services provided in the Mpulungu district. However, the extension workers concentrated more on the food security pack beneficiary households than the non-beneficiary households in the provision of extension services because they wanted the programme to succeed. The majority of the non-beneficiary households did not fully benefit from the agricultural extension services provided in Mpulungu district. The programme beneficiary households recorded higher maize crop productivity than the non-beneficiaries suggesting that the extension services had a positive effect. Challenges such as inadequate extension workers, lack of refresher training for extension workers and loss of trust in the extension system affected both groups. However, these challenges affected the non-beneficiary households more than the food security pack beneficiary households. The study concludes that extension services contribute to agricultural crop productivity. Therefore, the study recommends improvement in extension staffing levels, administrative support, in-service refresher training and capacity building of the extension workers. Also, the implementation of a universal extension service targeting strategy for small-scale farmers is recommended
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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