Speaking Truth To Power: Why Energy Distribution, More Than Generation, Is Africa's Poverty Reduction Challenge

This paper revisits the roles that energy plays in poverty reduction. First, while energy does not reduce poverty itself, it delivers energy services. These services can improve poor people's welfare both directly by enhancing their own productivity, education and health, and indirectly by changing the economy around them. The paper provides a simplified framework for thinking about these energy services, and then reviews the literature on their importance to poverty reduction. From this framework, we draw a series of three important conclusions about energy priorities and their implications for poverty reduction and development.Tackling energy poverty will have less to do with ambitious expansion of electricity capacity, and more to do with ambitious distribution of energy services to poor people.Expansion in centralized power generation serves industry, the services sector and already-connected households, before it serves the poor.Distributed, clean energy interventions are best suited to tackling energy poverty -- and poverty more generally

A Renewable Energy Plan for Mozambique

Mozambique has among the lowest uses of electricity in the world. Yet virtually all of the electricity it does produce from Cahora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi is shipped to its wealthy neighbor, South Africa. As the government prepares to build another costly large dam on the Zambezi that will also power South Africa rather than homes and businesses in Mozambique, a new report lays out a saner plan for developing renewable energy sources across the nation that would share the energy wealth more equitably; diversify the national electricity grid to help the nation adapt to climate change (which is expected to significantly affect large hydro), and build a clean energy sector that would also spare the Zambezi

The digital transformation of business models in the creative industries: A holistic framework and emerging trends

This paper examines how digital technologies facilitate business model innovations in the creative industries. Through a systematic literature review, a holistic business model framework is developed, which is then used to analyse the empirical evidence from the creative industries. The research found that digital technologies have facilitated pervasive changes in business models, and some significant trends have emerged. However, the reconfigured business models are often not ‘new’ in the unprecedented sense. Business model innovations are primarily reflected in using digital technologies to enable the deployment of a wider range of business models than previously available to a firm. A significant emerging trend is the increasing adoption of multiple business models as a portfolio within one firm. This is happening in firms of all sizes, when one firm uses multiple business models to servedifferent markets segments, sell different products, or engage with multi-sided markets, or to use different business models over time. The holistic business model framework is refined and extended through a recursive learning process, which can serve both as a cognitive instrument for understanding business models and a planning tool for business model innovations. The paper contributes to our understanding of the theory of business models and how digital technologies facilitate business model innovations in the creative industries. Three new themes for future research are highlighted

Numerical simulation of bubbles deformation, flow and coalescence in a microchannel under pseudo-nucleation conditions

This paper was presented at the 2nd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2009), which was held at Brunel University, West London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IPEM, the Italian Union of Thermofluid dynamics, the Process Intensification Network, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.The paper reports results of numerical study on bubbles deformation, flow and coalescence under pseudo nucleate boiling conditions in horizontal mini-/micro- channels. The numerical simulation, which is based on the multiphase model of volume of fluid (VOF) method, aims to study the corresponding flow behaviours of nucleate bubbles generated from the tube walls in mini/micro channels so as to understand the effect of confined surfaces/walls on nucleate bubbles and heat transfer. Under the pseudo or quasi nucleate boiling condition, small superheated vapour bubbles are injected at the wall to ensure that the bubbles generation is under a similar condition of real nucleation. The numerical study examined the fluid mechanics of bubble motion with heat transfer, but the mass transfer across the bubble-liquid interface is not simulated in the present work.This work is supported by the UK EPSRC under grant EP/D500125/01

Product Development in the World Auto Industry

macroeconomics, auto industry, management efficiency, productivity

Certified Organic Agriculture: a new field of policy for international organizations

This article analyse and present Certified Organic Agriculture as a new field of policy for international organizations

Crocin loaded nano-emulsions: Factors affecting emulsion properties in spontaneous emulsification

Spontaneous emulsification may be used for encapsulating bioactive compounds in food and pharmaceutical industry. It has several advantages over high energy and other low energy methods including, protecting sensitive compounds against severe conditions of high energy method and its ability to minimize surfactant, removal of cosurfactant and thermal stability compared with other low energy methods. In this study, we examined possibility of encapsulating highly soluble crocin in W/O micro-emulsions using spontaneous method which further could be used for making double emulsions. Nonionic surfactants of Span 80 and polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR) were used for making micro-emulsions that showed the high potential of PGPR for spontaneous method. Surfactant to water ratio (SWR) was evaluated to find the highest amount of aqueous phase which can be dispersed in organic phase. Droplet size decreased by increasing SWR toward the SWR = 100 which had the smallest droplet size and then increased at higher levels of surfactant. By increasing SWR, shear viscosity increased which showed the high effect of PGPR on rheological properties. This study shows in addition to W/O micro-emulsions, spontaneous method could be used for preparing stable O/W micro-emulsions. © 2015 Elsevier B.V

FARM-AGRIBUSINESS LINKAGES IN SOUTH AFRICA: EMPOWERING DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITIES THROUGH LINKS WITH AGRIBUSINESS

Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

A low-voltage retarding-field Mott polarimeter for photocathode characterization

Nuclear physics experiments at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility's CEBAF rely on high polarization electron beams. We describe a recently commissioned system for prequalifying and studying photocathodes for CEBAF with a load-locked, low-voltage polarized electron source coupled to a compact retarding-field Mott polarimeter. The polarimeter uses simplified electrode structures and operates from 5 to 30 kV. The effective Sherman function for this device has been calibrated by comparison with the CEBAF 5 MeV Mott polarimeter. For elastic scattering from a thick gold target at 20 keV, the effective Sherman function is 0.201(5). Its maximum efficiency at 20 keV, defined as the detected count rate divided by the incident particle current, is 5.4(2) x 10-4, yielding a figure-of-merit, or analyzing power squared times efficiency, of 1.0(1) x 10-5. The operating parameters of this new polarimeter design are compared to previously published data for other compact Mott polarimeters of the retarding-field type.Comment: 9 figure