Archives-March 2013

This study examined the impact of fish farming on household food security and livelihoods for fish farming and non fish farming households in Siaya County. Currently fish farming remains under developed in Western Kenya where pond productivity is low and not rising, despite the effort of several players. Further, capture fish in Lake Victoria and rivers has subsequently declined. These scenarios called for the need to examine the production systems and their current performances. The objective of the study was to determine the socio-economic characteristics of fish farmers and their fish farming practices. A cross sectional survey research design was adopted for the study. Stratified random sampling was used to select fish farming and non fish farming households. Key informants were selected through purposive sampling method. Data gathering was through multiple methods; where primary and secondary data were collected. Data analysis made use of descriptive statistics, where numerical and non-numerical summary of data were used. Chi-Square was used to test the independence between variables. Findings were; fish farming in the study area is economically rewarding and profitable. It is capable of creating employment, increasing income and improving the livelihoods of the people. Fish farming in the area is male dominated, however, women are used to manage the ponds and there is less participation of youth in fish farming. Females and youths need to be encouraged to participate in fish farming in the area as a means of increasing their income and improve their standard of living. The main production level is semi-intensive where mixed sexed tilapia production system provides seed for subsequent restocking. Most of the fish farms are privately owned by individuals who have little access to finance. Therefore, government participation in fish farming should be encouraged to boost the quantity of fish available for consumption. Fish farmers should be organized into formidable groups such as self help and cooperative to realize economies of scale in the purchase of inputs and sale of their fish.

The purpose of this study is to address the gaps in the literature and to examine the predictors of job satisfaction. In this study, the hypothesized predictors influencing one’s job satisfaction are a) gender, b) age, c) level of education, d) salary, e) role in the job, and f) years of working in the organization. This study used Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) as a data gathering tool. The questionnaires were administered to 89 male respondents, and 121 female respondents. For data analysis, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was employed. In addition to conducting a multiple regression analysis (MRA), descriptive statistical analysis was also carried out as part of the data analysis. Of all the predictors studied, results indicated gender as the only significant predictor of one’s job satisfaction. Several recommendations for future studies were also listed.

Radiation and radioactive isotopes constitute a natural part of our environment. High concentrations of these radioactive isotopes in the environment can be a threat to our health. The largest fraction of the natural radiation we receive comes from the radioactive gas radon, which disintegrates by emitting alpha particles. Although it cannot be detected by human senses, radon and its radioactive by-products are a health concern because they can cause lung cancer when inhaled over many years. Radon is present everywhere in the rock, soil, water and air because of the ubiquitous nature of its parent radioactive element uranium in geological terrain. In this paper, we highlight the need for measurement of radon in the environment, and the possible health hazards due to radon gas, especially from building materials and water in Ghana. We present preliminary results from our recent work and suggest remedial measures to avoid high intake of radon. In the preliminary results, using the BEIR III model to calculate the distribution of lung cancer cases per year in Dome in 2009 between the different age groups from radon exposure of 2.03 WLM per year gave a total of 5 cases per year.

Kenya’s economic growth and development agenda depends on donor funding. The recent world wide recession and the stringent measures of awarding credit by the major banks to the low- income earners need not to over emphasize the importance and crucial role of micro-finance institutions in Kenya to the growth of small business enterprises. The reduction of the donor funding to MFI’s has drastically affected its operations and expansions and thus it’s continuous involvement with small business enterprise operations and activities in Uasin-Gishu County. The study sought to evaluate the effects of MFI’s as a microfinance institution on small scale enterprise’s growth in Uasin-Gishu County. The study adopted a survey research design and targeted a population of 285, while simple random sampling was used to select 50 respondents. Questionnaires were administered by the researcher to the selected client groups while an interview schedule was used to collect information from the MFI’s management. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study findings showed that MFI’s plays a very crucial role in the growth of small business enterprise in the division and to further ascertain this claim a modified Evans Growth Model was conducted to examine the effects of MFI’s on small business growth. Level of education, training, gender, monitoring and evaluation, meeting with client groups were found to significantly influence small business enterprises growth. The result has implications for the role microfinance institutions in economics development, small business growth and poverty alleviation in Kenya.

Pharmaceutical industry is facing high rates of turnover among sales and marketing employees. Turnover intentions of the pharmaceutical employees are increasing gradually and the organizations have to take serious steps to control it. Even with the severe problem, we are ignorant of any scholastic investigation that has studied the factors of turnover among sales & marketing professionals. This research study analyzes the effect of organizational commitment and organizational support on employees’ retentions. In order to investigate employees’ retentions relationship with organizational commitment and organizational support, regression and correlation techniques were used. The result of the study suggests that there is a significant positive impact of predictors on the response variable.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable vehicles to communicate with each other (V2V) as well as roadside infrastructure units (V2I) without any fixed infrastructure. These roadside units provide different services such as driver information systems and Internet access. VANETS can be used to improve the comfort applications such as traffic information, weather information, gas station/restaurant location information or interactive communication such as Internet access and downloads. The high speed and high mobility of vehicles cause many challenges to establishing and maintaining connection of these roadside units. In this paper we introduce Fuzzy Logic Based Stable Routing in VANET. The essential purpose of new algorithm is to predict the future behaviour of vehicles by the use of the characteristics of vehicle movements such as speed average, speed of drivers and standard deviation; and also to calculate stablitiy of routes with the help of fuzzy logic for selecting routes with the most stability and least length. The proposed algorithm is simulated by considering mobility model, generated by the VanetMobiSim tool. The simulation results show that the proposed approach with increasing the number of nodes, will increase the Average Route Stability Indicator Minimum and decrease Average Route Length Minimum. This issue cause to provide an accurate and efficient method of estimating and evaluating the route stability in dynamic VANETs.

Under most pathological conditions there is generation of reactive oxygen species and other free radicals. An increase in the antioxidant reserves of the organism can reduce oxidative stress and some of the plant-derived agents may help to reduce it. The aim of this study was to evaluate in vitro antioxidant activity inhibition of superoxide, nitric oxide, hydroxyl, reducing power assay and total antioxidant capacity. At (10-50mg/ml) concentration the S.spontaneum of 50mg/ml concentration exhibited high superoxide, nitric oxide and hydroxyl radical scavenging capacity using vitamin E rutin and ascorbic acid as positive control. In the concentration range (1-5mg/ml) investigated, the extract demonstrated that reducing power and total antioxidant capacity were increased linearly with concentration. Collectively, our results indicate that the ethanolic root extract of S.spontaneum has the potential to scavenge free radicals and act as a good antioxidant for treating various diseases.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a plan for reducing a lead time in a small scale furniture manufacturing industry by using Value Stream Mapping Technique with Value Engineering. In this paper VSM technique is applied in furniture manufacturing small scale industry to identify the ways of reducing waste while at the same time increasing the proportion of the processes that add value to the product. The wastes in this furniture industry is mostly in the form of over production, transportation and delay. The reasons observed are inadequate coordination among the operators, improper planning, non effective use of machine, improper flow etc. Here the flow process chart is constructed to calculate the number of operation, transportation, delay, inspection and storage with distance travelled by the product for existing and proposed methods in which considerable saving is achieved. Also the Current and Future VSM is created for small scale furniture industry which manufactures office tables. In this the lead time can be reduced considerably with the reduction in NVA time and the process time. There is a considerable rise in VA time of 10.41% with the value addition by modification of the table with less process time.

The book Basic Communication Skills is prescribed for the First Semester Bachelor of Commerce students. A teacher reads out the conversations in Chapter 2 section (B) as there is no facility of playing the CD accompanying the book in the classroom. The students follow the conversations word by word in the book (only those who have the book and their immediate neighbours!). They underline the expressions used for denying permission with her help. She also helps the students to fill the blanks in the conversation on page 25 and asks them to practise the same.

When the status of English changes from being a subject in its own right to a service industry for other specialisms, the approaches meant for teaching such English also warrant a few special considerations. Extending a blanket approach to the teaching of ESP as in the case of ESL, will result in gaps between performance levels and target requirements. English for business and technology is distinguished from General English not merely by the existence of learners’ needs but by the teachers’ awareness of such needs. It is not exactly the mastery of ESP teacher in the carrier content that motivates the learners of business and technology as much as his/her ability to drive home the real content using the carrier content as via media and planning interesting activities for the effective delivery of the content. Needs analysis is the epicentre of any sensible approach to the teaching of English for business. The language audit conducted by the teacher at the initial stages sensitizes him/her to the present proficiency levels of learners in a specific area and paves the way for an effective course design. This also projects the role of teacher more as a consultant available for help regarding specific problems in usage. The paper discusses the effectiveness of a few approaches to the teaching of English for business in the Indian context.