Search results

Sizing system is a fundamental topic in garment fitting. The purpose of this study was to assess the fit of existing police uniforms (shirt, jacket, overcoat and trousers) and develop a sizing system for upper and lower body uniforms of Amhara policemen in Ethiopia.

In total, 35 body dimensions of 889 policemen were taken through a manual anthropometric survey following the procedures in ISO 8559:1989 after each subject was interviewed on issues related to garment fit. The anthropometric data were pre-processed, key body dimensions were identified by principal components analysis and body types were clustered by the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm and verified by the XGBoost classifier in a Python programming environment. The developed size charts were validated statistically using aggregate loss and accommodation rate.

About 44% of the subjects encountered fit problems every time they own new readymade uniforms. Lengths and side seams of shirts, and lengths and waist girths of trousers are the most frequently altered garment sites. Analysis of the anthropometric measurements resulted in 13 and 15 sizes for the upper and lower bodies, respectively. Moreover, the comparison of the developed upper garment size chart with the existing size chart for a shirt showed a considerable difference. This indicates that inappropriate size charts create fit problems.

The study considers the analysis of fit problems and sizing system development in a less researched country. Moreover, the proposed data mining procedure and its application for size chart development is unique and workable.

Using a recent rural farm household survey, the purpose of this paper is to investigate inclusiveness and effectiveness of agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia.

The study employs a logit model to examine inclusiveness and an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model to evaluate the effectiveness of agricultural cooperatives.

The results show that agricultural cooperatives are less inclusive of land-poor and illiterate households. On the other hand, the estimated results indicate that cooperatives effectively improved agricultural performance and welfare of its member households – i.e. membership in cooperatives increases yield and income by 1.37 quintal/hectare and 1,804 birr, respectively. Moreover, the result shows that marketing cooperatives effectively increased marketed surplus of their members by 34 percent.

The study has important implications regarding the ways to improve the effectiveness and/or inclusiveness of agricultural cooperatives.

While accounting for the collective behavior of cooperatives, this study uses multiple outcome variables in examining the effectiveness of cooperatives in Ethiopia. Furthermore, this paper employs the ESR model and accounts for potential problems in estimating impact using non-experimental data.

This paper is a systemic review on enset plant’s role in Ethiopian people’s life as the source of food. This paper aims to summarize the traditional processing and preparation methods of enset-based foods and their nutritional composition.

Available scientific articles were collected and reviewed for enset plant evaluation, description, enset plant’s role in Ethiopian people’s food security, post harvesting and traditional processing of enset plants, microbiology of the fermented enset foods, different foods reported from enset, nutritional profile of the three food from enset base (kocho, bulla and amicho) and other non-food applications of enset plant.

Enset plant has a predominant role in people living in the southern part of Ethiopia. This plant is drought-tolerant and provides many non-food applications. Harvesting of the enset plant, preparing for fermentation and food preparations follow the traditional route by using the indigenous knowledge and practices. Limited studies have been reported on the microbiology of the enset fermentation, but various types of microbes have been reported. In case of nutritional composition, foods from enset are reported to contain high carbohydrate and minerals content, such as calcium, potassium and zinc, but limited protein content; they are also the best source of the essential amino acids such as lysine and leucine. Limited data are available on vitamins, anti-oxidant and fatty acids profiles of enset-based foods. The existing data indicate variations, and the reasons for variability are discussed in this paper.

Scientific reviews on enset food nutrition profile and related issues are scarce; this paper will compile information about enset plant-based foods for researchers for their future research.

Different livestock production systems contribute to globally Greenhouse gas emission (GHG) emission differently. The aim of this paper is to understand variation in emission in different production systems and it is also important for developing mitigation interventions that work for a specific production system.

In this study, the authors used the Global Livestock Environmental Assessment interactive model (GLEAM-i) to estimate the GHG emission and emission intensity and tested the effectiveness of mitigation strategies from 180 farms under three production systems in northern Ethiopia, namely, pastoral, mixed and urban production systems.

Production systems varied in terms of herd composition, livestock productivity, livestock reproductive parameters and manure management systems, which resulted in difference in total GHG emission. Methane (82.77%) was the largest contributor followed by carbon dioxide (13.40%) and nitrous oxide (3.83%). While both total carbon dioxide and methane were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in urban production system than the other systems emission intensities of cow’s milk and goat and sheep’s meat were lower in urban systems. Improvement in feed, manure management and herd parameters resulted in reduction of total GHG emission by 30, 29 and 21% in pastoral, mixed and urban production systems, respectively.

This study is a first time comparison of the GHG emission production by various production systems in northern Ethiopia. Moreover, it uses the GLEAM-i program for the first time in the ex ante settings for measuring and comparing emissions as well as for developing mitigation scenarios. By doing so, it provides information on the various livestock production system properties that contribute to the increase or decrease in GHG emission and helps in developing guidelines for low emission livestock production systems.

Bamboo is still a traditional material that requires additional development before it can be considered as a modern and reliable alternative to steel, wood, and concrete. When compared to the huge volumes of information available on timber and concrete, bamboo has a little quantity of information. When it comes to estimating bamboo structures, there are not many options. As a result, pinpointing the key qualities and events that aid or impede bamboo's integration into the construction sector is vital.

Factor analysis (FA) was used for summarizing and reducing data to significant ones in identifying barriers, benefits and potentials of using bamboo materials for construction. In this method, small number of factors was aimed at to explain most of the variances observed in a much larger number of variables. The goal was to identify not-directly-observable barriers and opportunities based on a larger set of observable or measurable indicators identified from literature. It attempted to identify underlying challenges and potentials that lay the patterns of bamboo material usage in the construction sector.

From the results of FA, six specific components with loadings greater than 0.5 were kept for both the barrier and the advantages of using bamboo Lack of awareness on bamboo material, Unorganized supply chain, Exclusion from standards, Outperformance of industrial products, Lack of innovation and institutional support and Bamboo's mechanistic limitation was considered to be the root causes of all barriers. On the other end, structural suitability of bamboo, viable timber alternative, meeting sustainability's demand, attractive economic model, cost effective material, positive social implications were labeled as benefits of bamboo. Finally, major recommendation regarding research, facility, institutionalizing and resource management were forwarded.

Ethiopia is a major bamboo producer in Africa. The bamboo sector, on the other hand, remains a part of the undeveloped and informal rural economy, preventing it from reaching its full potential. Despite technological advancements, bamboo is not commonly used in construction. As a result, using bamboo as a building material is frowned upon. In order to take effective action to accommodate bamboo as an alternative building material, significant challenges, benefits, and potential of the material must be stated with this purpose in mind.