Factors Affecting Arab Goat Flock Dynamics in Western Lowlands of Ethiopia

The study was conducted to estimate flock dynamics of western lowland Arab goat and to assess their contribution to income of smallholder farmers in Kurmuk and Assosa districts, western Ethiopia. Flocks of 30 households were monitored for a period of 12 months in 2016. Data were analyzed using the general linear model procedure of SAS and two-way interaction effects were fitted in the model and retained when found significant in the preliminary analysis. The study result indicates that total entrances for all flock were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in dry and hot-cool seasons than wet season. Most of the entrance was kids born in hot-cool season (January) (4.0 ± 0.42) and hot-dry season (May) (5.4 ± 1.09) for Assosa and Kumruk study sites, respectively. Kid mortality constituted the greater part of outflow. High kid mortality was occurred during July, February, January, and September. Most of the sell of castrated goats were occurred in September and April for both small and large flocks targeting holidays celebrated during this months. Male goat owners had significantly lower goat production potential (GPP) value than female (0.47 ± 0.02 vs. 0.52 ± 0.02). The GPP was lower in small flock than in large flock (0.48 ± 0.02 vs. 0.51 ± 0.02). Higher GPP was recorded in the months of January, February, and March for both large and small flocks. The off-take was higher (P < 0.05) in Assosa (0.06 ± 0.01) than Kumruk (0.02 ± 0.02) district. The average goat production efficiency (GPE) was higher (P < 0.05) in Assosa large (193.23 ± 20.0) and small flocks (93.44 ± 17.3) than Kumruk large (84.71 ± 15.6) and small flocks (33.33 ± 26.3).The production efficiency recorded was not comparable to the potential that the farmers had to sell goats or consume goats’ meat and milk. The lower goat production potential observed for small flocks implies that high mortality rates severely restrict receiving higher benefits from goat. Therefore, in order to optimize the productivity of goats flock dynamics, developing health intervention strategies that target reduction of kids’ mortality is imperative.

Begait Goat Production Systems and Breeding Practices in Western Tigray, North Ethiopia

A study was undertaken to characterize production system, breeding practices and production constraints of Begait goat in Kafta humera district, northwestern lowlands of Ethiopia. Personal observations, focus group discussions and a detailed structured questionnaire were used to collect data from 150 respondents (99 small-scale and 51 large-scale farmers). Mixed crop-livestock production system was found to be the dominant farming system in the study district. The farmers kept a variety of livestock species including goats, sheep, cattle, chickens and donkeys. Small ruminants are the most numerous and are of great importance in the area. Goats are herded with sheep in the open fields by the young boys in the family/hired grazers. They have a number of roles though mainly kept as a source of cash income. Breeding was generally uncontrolled. Size, growth rate and libido were the most frequently reported traits in selecting bucks, whereas does were selected based on size, twining ability and milk yield. Effective population size and rate of inbreeding were calculated by considering random mating and flocks were not mixed. The major constraints hampering goat production in the area were water scarcity, feed and grazing land shortages and insufficient veterinary services among the others. Therefore, addressing these constraints is important to design a successful genetic improvement scheme in the area for goat.

Effects of Mulching Material on the Early Fruit Yield of Tomato （Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.） Varieties under Polyhouse Growing Condition

Tomato is one of the most widely produced and consumed vegetable crops in Ethiopia. It is not produced during the rainy season, mainly due to high disease pressure and low soil temperature. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to study the effect of different types of mulch （black and white plastic mulch as well as grass mulch） on early yield of tomato varieties （Miya ＆ Cochoro） under polyhouse growing condition at Bahir Dar during the rainy season in 2012. Treatments were arranged in 4 - 2 factorial combinations in randomized complete block design with three replications. One month old seedlings were transplanted on 8.4 m2 gross plots size （3 m x 2.8 m） at a spacing of 70 cm x 40 cm between rows and plants, respectively. Data recorded from plants found in the two middle rows of each plot. Di-ammonium phosphate （DAP） and Urea fertilizers were applied at the rate of 200 kg and 100 kg/ha, respectively. Sixteen plants were considered for data collection in each plot. White plastic mulch resulted in significantly （P 〈 0.05） earlier flowering, fruit setting and fruit maturity compared to other mulching materials. Varieties were also significantly different in days required to flowering, fruit setting and fruit maturity. Miya took significantly short period to flower, fruit set and fruit maturity compared to Cochoro variety. The effect of different mulch types on early fruit yield was found statistically significant. The highest early marketable fruit yield of 10.99 ton/ha and 10.54 ton/ha were recorded when Miya variety was grown with white and black plastic mulch, respectively. Therefore, use of white and black plastic mulches recommended for early tomato fruit yield.

Hyperscale Puts the <i>Sapiens</i>into <i>Homo</i>

The human mind’s evolution owes much to its companion phenomena of intelligence, sapience, wisdom, awareness and consciousness. In this paper we take the concepts of intelligence and sa-pience as the starting point of a route towards elucidation of the conscious mind. There is much disagreement and confusion associated with the word intelligence. A lot of this results from its use in diverse contexts, where it is called upon to represent different ideas and to justify different ar-guments. Addition of the word sapience to the mix merely complicates matters, unless we can relate both of these words to different concepts in a way which acceptably crosses contextual boundaries. We have established a connection between information processing and processor “architecture” which provides just such a linguistic separation, and which is applicable in either a computational or conceptual form to any context. This paper reports the argumentation leading up to a distinction between intelligence and sapience, and relates this distinction to human “cognitive” activities. Information is always contextual. Information processing in a system always takes place between “architectural” scales: intelligence is the “tool” which permits an “overview” of the relevance of individual items of information. System unity presumes a degree of coherence across all the scales of a system: sapience is the “tool” which permits an evaluation of the relevance of both individual items and individual scales of information to a common purpose. This hyperscalar coherence is created through mutual inter-scalar observation, whose recursive nature generates the independence of high-level consciousness, making humans human. We conclude that intelligence and sapience are distinct and necessary properties of all information processing systems, and that the degree of their availability controls a system’s or a human’s cognitive capacity, if not its appli-cation. This establishes intelligence and sapience as prime ancestors of the conscious mind. How-ever, to our knowledge, there is no current mathematical approach which can satisfactorily deal with the native irrationalities of information integration across multiple scales, and therefore of formally modeling the mind.