Determinants of household fuel choices among Nigerian family heads: are there gender-differentiated impacts?

The consensus in the literature holds that female-headed households (FHHs) are more vulnerable to social and economic exclusion than male-headed households (MHHs). This paper investigates the socioeconomic determinants of household cooking fuel choices across MHHs and FHHs, using the rich Nigerian Demographic Health Survey data. Using the exogenous switching treatment effect regression (ESTER) technique, the study is able to unravel differences in socioeconomic effects of gender inequality on cooking fuel choices in Nigeria. The results validate the energy ladder hypothesis in the Nigerian case and show that the choices of dirty fuel (biomass) is more prevalent among the de-jure FHH when compared with the de-facto FHH and MHHs. Also, the probability of biomass-use among MHHs would have fallen by 1.3% if MHHs had similar socioeconomic attributes as the FHHs. In the same vain for FHHs, the probability of kerosene-use would have increased by 2%. The study observed no gender gap in kerosene-use. Thus, the established gender gap in biomass- and kerosene-use would have reduced to 6.7% and 2.8%, respectively, if the de-facto FHHs had same socioeconomic attributes as the de-jures. Considering the traditional gendered household division of labor within the households, de-jure FHHs’ energy choices may be due to limited economic opportunities that guarantees cleaner energy options.

     

Anaerobic tapered fluidized bed reactor for starch wastewater treatment and modeling using multilayer perceptron neural network

Anaerobic treatability of synthetic sago wastewater was investigated in a laboratory anaerobic tapered fluidized bed reactor(ATFBR) with a mesoporous granular activated carbon(GAC)as a support material.The experimental protocol was defined to examine the effect of the maximum organic loading rate(OLR),hydraulic retention time(HRT),the efficiency of the reactor and to report on its steady- state performance.The reactor was subjected to a steady-state operation over a range of OLR up to 85.44 kg COD/(m~3.d).The COD removal efficiency was found to be 92% in the reactor while the biogas produced in the digester reached 25.38 m~3/(m~3·d) of the reactor. With the increase of OLR from 83.7 kg COD/(m~3.d),the COD removal efficiency decreased.Also an artificial neural network(ANN) model using multilayer perceptron(MLP)has been developed for a system of two input variable and five output dependent variables. For the training of the input-output data,the experimental values obtained have been used.The output parameters predicted have been found to be much closer to the corresponding experimental ones and the model was validated for 30% of the untrained data.The mean square error(MSE)was found to be only 0.0146.     

Nutrient and enzymatic changes of hydrolysed tannery solid waste treated with epigeic earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae and phytotoxicity assessment on selected commercial crops

Animal fleshing (ANFL) is the predominant proteinaceous solid waste generated during processing of leather and it is confronting disposal problems. The aim of this study was to assess the potential of epigeic earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae to utilize and transform the fermented ANFL in the solid state (SSF) and submerged state (SmF) into a value added product along a low residence period (25 days). A total of six treatment units containing different waste mixture compositions were established. Fifty healthy and non-clitellated earthworms were introduced in three different treatment containers: control, SSF, and SmF (+worm). Another set of treatment mixtures (control, SSF, SmF) was established without earthworms (?worm) to compare the results. The products were characterized for physico-chemical, enzymatic analysis and seedling growth parameters to compare the differences in the process with and without earthworms. The changes observed in the analytical parameters were in the following order: SSF > SmF > control mixtures (p?<?0.05). The vermicompost showed a significant reduction in heavy metals, total organic carbon and an increase in total Kjeldhal nitrogen as compared to the product untreated by earthworms. The maximum enzymatic activities were observed after 21 days of vermicomposting. The relative seed germination of vermicompost extracts were in the order of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) > green gram (Vigna radiata) > cucumber (Cucumis sativus) > bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl.) and showed no phytotoxicity effects. The results indicated that the combination of both ANFL hydrolysis through fermentation and vermicomposting is a good alternative to the management of this kind of waste.     

Paths to the job satisfaction of bank employees

Using a sample of 267 bank employees, this study traced the paths to the job satisfaction of employees at the workplace through the quality of life factors of job involvement and sense of competence. Results indicated that personal, job, and organizational climate factors influenced the ego investment or job involvement of people in their jobs, which in turn influenced the intrapsychic reward of sense of competence that they experienced, which then directly influenced employees' job satisfaction. Implications of these findings for managers are discussed.     

Extinction risk of the endemic vascular flora of Kauai,Hawaii, based on IUCN assessments

The International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List) is the world's most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of species. Governmental agencies and conservation organizations increasingly rely on IUCN Red List assessments to develop conservation policies and priorities. Funding agencies use the assessments as evaluation criteria, and researchers use meta-analysis of red-list data to address fundamental and applied conservation science questions. However, the circa 143,000 IUCN assessments represent a fraction of the world's biodiversity and are biased in regional and organismal coverage. These biases may affect conservation priorities, funding, and uses of these data to understand global patterns. Isolated oceanic islands are characterized by high endemicity, but the unique biodiversity of many islands is experiencing high extinction rates. The archipelago of Hawaii has one of the highest levels of endemism of any floristic region; 90% of its 1367 native vascular plant taxa are classified as endemic. We used the IUCN's assessment of the complete single-island endemic (SIE) vascular plant flora of Kauai, Hawaii, to assess the proportion and drivers of decline of threatened plants in an oceanic island setting. We compared the IUCN assessments with federal, state, and other local assessments of Kauai species or taxa of conservation concern. Finally, we conducted a preliminary assessment for all 1044 native vascular plants of Hawaii based on IUCN criterion B by estimating area of occupancy, extent of occurrence, and number of locations to determine whether the pattern found for the SIE vascular flora of Kauai is comparable to the native vascular flora of the Hawaiian Islands. We compared our results with patterns observed for assessments of other floras. According to IUCN, 256 SIE vascular plant taxa are threatened with extinction and 5% are already extinct. This is the highest extinction risk reported for any flora to date. The preliminary assessment of the native vascular flora of Hawaii showed that 72% (753 taxa) is threatened. The flora of Hawaii may be one of the world's most threatened; thus, increased and novel conservation measures in the state and on other remote oceanic islands are urgently needed.     

Chemical and enzymatic interactions of Direct Black 38 and Direct Brown 1 on release of carcinogenic amines

Release of amine products from azo compounds is of considerable interest, since most of the metabolized amine products have toxic and carcinogenic characters. Moreover, most of the azo dyes are extensively used as coloring agents in inks, textiles, leathers, food and pharmaceutical industries. The present study emphasis on the quantification and comparison of amines released from water soluble dyes by (i) extra cellular protein (ECP) of Streptomyces sp. SS07 and by (ii) chemical methods. It has been observed that both the methods release considerable quantities of similar type of amine products. Release of amine compounds by ECP and chemical reduction in acid and alkaline sweat medium from a leather garment sample was also assessed. ECP (0.7852 mg protein/mg of ECP) releases benzidine and 4-amino biphenyl from Direct Black 38 and Direct Brown 1 as stable products at pH 9.2 and at 37 degrees C for a contact period of 24 h. On comparison with chemical reduction, it was observed that about 5-20% increase in the release of amine products by ECP was observed. However, more than 60% of amine products were released by chemical method from leather garment samples than direct treatment with ECP.     

Response surface modeling for optimization heterocatalytic Fenton oxidation of persistence organic pollution in high total dissolved solid containing wastewater

The rice-husk-based mesoporous activated carbon (MAC) used in this study was precarbonized and activated using phosphoric acid. N₂ adsorption/desorption isotherm, X-ray powder diffraction, electron spin resonance, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, ²⁹Si-NMR spectroscopy, and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy were used to characterize the MAC. The tannery wastewater carrying high total dissolved solids (TDS) discharged from leather industry lacks biodegradability despite the presence of dissolved protein. This paper demonstrates the application of free electron-rich MAC as heterogeneous catalyst along with Fenton reagent for the oxidation of persistence organic compounds in high TDS wastewater. The heterogeneous Fenton oxidation of the pretreated wastewater at optimum pH (3.5), H₂O₂ (4 mmol/L), FeSO₄?7H₂O (0.2 mmol/L), and time (4 h) removed chemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand, total organic carbon and dissolved protein by 86, 91, 83, and 90 %, respectively.     

Upscaling heterogeneity in aquifer reactivity via exposure-time concept: forward model

Reactive properties of aquifer solid phase materials play an important role in solute fate and transport in the natural subsurface on time scales ranging from years in contaminant remediation to millennia in dynamics of aqueous geochemistry. Quantitative tools for dealing with the impact of natural heterogeneity in solid phase reactivity on solute fate and transport are limited. Here we describe the use of a structural variable to keep track of solute flux exposure to reactive surfaces. With this approach, we develop a non-reactive tracer model that is useful for determining the signature of multi-scale reactive solid heterogeneity in terms of solute flux distributions at the field scale, given realizations of three-dimensional reactive site density fields. First, a governing Eulerian equation for the non-reactive tracer model is determined by an upscaling technique in which it is found that the exposure time of solution to reactive surface areas evolves via both a macroscopic velocity and a macroscopic dispersion in the artificial dimension of exposure time. Second, we focus on the Lagrangian approach in the context of a streamtube ensemble and demonstrate the use of the distribution of solute flux over the exposure time dimension in modeling two-dimensional transport of a solute undergoing simplified linear reversible reactions, in hypothetical conditions following prior laboratory experiments. The distribution of solute flux over exposure time in a given case is a signature of the impact of heterogeneous aquifer reactivity coupled with a particular physical heterogeneity, boundary conditions, and hydraulic gradient. Rigorous application of this approach in a simulation sense is limited here to linear kinetically controlled reactions.