East African Journal of Biophysical and Computational Sciences

Mixed Effects Analysis of Height Growth in Ethiopian Children Aged 1-12 Years: A Cohort Study

2024-02-23T12:20:13+03:00

Modelling physical growth is a key component to examine and identify defining characteristics in the growth process. The goal of this study was to model and capture known features of height growth in Ethiopian children aged 1–12 years. Height measurements of 1760 children followed from 1 to 12 years at Young Lives Ethiopia, a younger cohort, used in the study. The mixed effects method was used to estimate the rate of change within and between subjects over time and to identify defining covariates. Adult height and rate of change over time were individual-specific resulting individual-level growth differences. There was a negative relationship between individual-specific adult height and rate of change over time. The decelerated rate of change was observed from childhood to the onset of puberty in both sexes. Boys were taller than girls between the ages of 3 and 7 years. Mother’s educational status, access to quality drinking water, age, and sex had a significant effect on height growth. Children who had a decelerated rate of growth change during the childhood period become taller later in life. Adult height could be determined by an individual-specific rate of change over time.

Effect of Land Use Activities on Water Quality and Vegetation Cover Change in Nsooba - Lubigi Wetland System, Kampala City

2024-08-19T13:17:33+03:00

An assessment of the effect of land use activities on water quality and vegetation cover change in Nsooba - Lubingi Wetland System in Kampala city was conducted between July and October 2020. In order to achieve the set objectives, twelve locations were selected from the Nsooba - Lubingi Catchment. The physico-chemical characteristics of water along the catchment area were determined by standard analytical methods. The average values for Total Dissolved Solids across all the land-use types of wetland, built up areas and agriculture were lower than the National Standard (750 mg/l). A similar pattern of the land-use was observed for the parameters Total phosphorous, Biological oxygen demand, Chemical oxygen demand, Total suspended solids and Total organic carbon, where the observed average values were all below the National Standards of 10 mg/l, 50mg/l, 70mg/l, 50mg/l and 50mg/l, respectively. The Total Nitrogen average value for built-up areas (11.27 mg/l) was higher than the national standard of 10 mg/l while the remaining land use types of wetland (8.05mg/l) and agriculture (5.96mg/l) were below that of the recommended standard. GIS and remote sensing techniques were used to analyze high-resolution satellite imagery captured during 1998, 2008, and 2018. Wetland coverage declined by approximately 5 hectares (47.2% to 14.58%) from 1998 to 2018. Although most of the measured parameters were below the National standard specified by the Uganda National Environmental Management Authority apart from Total Nitrogen for built-up areas, there is need for close monitoring of the water quality in Nsooba - Lubingi catchment to ensure public health safety. The increased built-up environment in the Nsooba - Lubigi wetland affects ecosystems services of the wetland. The buffer zones for flood control and sewage treatment have been turned into a built-up environment. The results from this study suggest a need to protect the Nsooba - Lubingi catchment for its important ecosystems services of flood control and sewage treatment.

Assessment of community knowledge, attitude and practices toward bovine tuberculosis in Jinka Town, Southern Ethiopia

2024-04-04T12:03:41+03:00

Bovine tuberculosis is yet a major public health problem throughout the world, including African countries like Ethiopia. This is due to the lower knowledge, attitude, and practice of the people about the disease. A cross-sectional study was carried out from March 2023 to July 2023 to assess the community knowledge, attitude, and practice on Bovine Tuberculosis in Jinka Town. Questionnaire survey and retrospective data were used as tools for data collection. Among 382 respondents, 254 (66.5%) knew about Bovine tuberculosis, whereas 128 (33.5%) respondents did not have any idea about the disease. Except sex, other predictors like age, marital status, educational level, and occupation were significantly associated with knowledge and preventive practices towards Bovine tuberculosis. Respondents had misconceptions on zoonotic importance of the disease, and 95 (24.87%) respondents consume raw milk. Regarding the retrospective data result, among 1278 patients examined for Tuberculosis, 316 (24.7%) and 5 (0.39%) were positive for pulmonary and extrapulmonary Tuberculosis in 2020 G.C. During 2021 G.C, among 1066 patients examined for Tuberculosis, 190 (17.8%) and 12 (1.12%) patients were positive for pulmonary and extrapulmonary Tuberculosis respectively. Number of patients for pulmonary and extrapulmonary was increased to 18.25% and 4% respectively, in 2022 G.C. Since there were misconceptions among the respondents, awareness creation and detailed investigation on the status of Bovine and human Tuberculosis were recommended.

Penalized Intuitionistic Fuzzy Goal Programming Method for Solving Multi-Objective Decision-Making Problems

2024-04-15T08:20:47+03:00

Many applicable problems have multi-goals that optimize simultaneously,
and decision-makers set imprecise aspiration levels for each goal.
Although such types of problems solved by fuzzy optimization are common
in the literature, intuitionistic fuzzy optimization techniques are
more efficient to handle than fuzzy and classical optimization. This research
study focused on establishing a novel method by combining the
penalty function method with an interactive goal programming methodology
for addressing multi-objective decision-making problems in an intuitionistic
fuzzy environment. One of the challenge that exists in the
literature of the optimization method under an imprecise decision environment is that it is not guaranteed to generate a Pareto-optimal solution for the introduced problem. Therefore, in order to ensure the
Pareto-optimality of the obtained solution, the suggested method has
developed a new aggregation operator, an appropriate relaxation of the
constraint set, and a well-structured extended Yager membership function.
In addition, unlike other methods in the literature, the suggested
method gives decision-makers the option to penalize the most unsatisfied
objective function at a specific attained solution instead of starting
from scratch and working their way through the problem. To illustrate
the proposed method, we used a numerical example.

A Mathematical Model for the Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19 Pandemic Considering Protected and Hospitalized with Optimal Control

2022-12-12T20:30:16+03:00

In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to investigate coronavirus
diseases (COVID-19) transmission in the presence of protected and hospitalized classes. We demonstrate the positivity and boundedness of the
solution of the dynamical system. We compute the disease free equilibrium
point and analyze the stability behavior of the steady state solutions. We
compute the basic reproduction number (R₀) and show that for R < 1 the
disease dies out and for R > 1 the disease is endemic. The local stability
of the endemic equilibrium point is determined using center manifold theory.
The model exhibits a forward bifurcation and the sensitivity analysis
is performed. The sensitivity analysis we establish that R₀is most sensitive
to the rate of protection and that a high level of protection needs to be
maintained as well as hospitalization to control the disease. Based on this
we devise optimal protection and hospitalization strategies. Characterization
of the optimal control is established using Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle. Numerical results for the COVID-19 outbreak dynamics and its optimal control revealed that a combination of protection and hospitalization is the best strategy to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the population.