Employment [Chapter 6]

This chapter focuses on the employment embodied in the hydrogen supply chain activity implied by the headline input-output ‘multiplier’ values introduced in Chapter 3 and decomposed for output and total value-added (GDP) in Chapter 4. Here attention is on considering the composition of hydrogen supply chain multipliers in terms of the sectoral location of jobs and the associated generation of wage income. The latter gives some indication of the ‘quality of jobs’ associated with particular areas of the hydrogen economy. This is in so far as wage income is an element of value-added at the economy-wide level (GDP by an income measure) and to the individuals who receive earnings from paid employment. Given that jobs in the input-output framework are reported in full-time equivalent (FTE) units (for reasons of aggregation across sectors) it is not possible to consider the quality of jobs from a part-time vs. full-time perspective. However, Chapter 7 does go on to consider skills requirements, which is another important indicator of the quality of jobs/employment (and one that may, to some extent correlate with wage incomes)

Fiscal Deficit Sustainability and Fiscal Policy Persistence In The West African Monetary Zone

The Economic Community of West African States launched the name of its proposed currency, eco, in June, 2019 for its proposed monetary union. The Regional body stipulated certain convergence criteria to be met before member countries could be admitted to the proposed union. One such criteria is that the budget deficit-to-Gross domestic product ratio be less than or equal to three percent. Available data for the past two decades indicate the non-compliance of many of these West African countries to this condition despite having control over both fiscal and monetary policies. This study investigates the sustainability of fiscal deficits in a group of six countries known as the West African Monetary Zone. This study has two objectives: First, to investigate the sustainability of deficits in the West African Monetary Zone and secondly, to examine the absence or presence of fiscal policy persistence. Fiscal deficits are sustainable when an increase in public debt is associated with a corresponding increase in the primary surplus. Using panel data, a fiscal reaction model was estimated. The findings of this study showed that deficits are weakly sustainable and fiscal policy is highly persistent. The implication of weak sustainability is that they are easily vulnerable to external shocks and the possibility of becoming unsustainable is very high. Meanwhile, a highly persistent fiscal policy leaves little or no room for fiscal policy discretion and this is a high risk because it means government won’t respond swiftly as at when due. Based on these findings, the study recommends a suspension of the proposed single currency union.DOI: http://doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v06i01.0

Introduction to macroscale scenario switching – from refined fuels to hydrogen in personal transport [Chapter 3]

This chapter introduces the core scenario for which potential economic impacts of hydrogen and fuel cells in the UK are considered in this White Paper. This focuses on the replacement of petrol and diesel in cars with hydrogen, with some attention to the manufacture and uptake of hydrogen-ready cars and short-term investment in activities such as Research and Development and construction required to enable such as switch

Modelling the impact over time - consumer transport [Chapter 9]

This chapter considers a few simple scenarios that introduce some potential scale to the input-output multiplier model analyses in Chapters 3, 4 and 6 in considering the potential wider economic impacts of a projected shift to a hydrogen economy. Again, focus is mainly on the case of private transportation and the shift from petrol/diesel (refined fossil fuels) to hydrogen, with the supply chain of the latter proxied by those of the existing UK gas and/or electricity supply sectors. The key characteristic of these proxies is the markedly stronger up-stream supply chain linkages within the UK economy as compared to the more import-intensive refined fuel supply industry. A central conclusion of the modelling work in this paper is that if a future hydrogen sector shares this characteristic, net positive impacts on the UK economy as whole are likely when/if private transportation transitions to the use of hydrogen as a fuel source

The chemical constituents extractable from teak tree (Tectona Grandis Linn ) obtained from Fountain University, Osogbo

A branch of Teak tree was cut, dried and grounded with mortar  and pestle before using blender. The powder was extracted with  four different solvents namely n-hexane, benzene, chloroform and distilled water; the extracts were concentrated using rotary  evaporator. Gas chromatography- mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) was used to identify various constituents in the samples. Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate was the major constituent common to Chloroform (35.50 %) and benzene (26.78 %) while  n-hexadecanoic acid was the major constituent extracted by n-hexane (21.76 %) and water (24.16 %). Other phthalic acid derivatives extracted by both chloroform and benzene are Phthalic acid, di(2-propylpentyl)ester and di(oct-3-yl)ester. All the extracts were screened for termites repellence; all of them except water extract repelled termites in various degrees.Keywords: Bis (2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, n-hexadecanoic acid, rotary evaporator, termites

Supply chain [Chapter 4]

The Supply Chain is critical to the establishment of a hydrogen fuel cell economy and indeed offers immense benefit to the economy. A range of Lifecycle Analysis studies conducted in EU FC Framework and EU FCH Joint Undertaking projects detailing HFC system inventories readily explains the widespread extent of potential interest showing that the physical bulk of any fuel cell system or application does not involve a great deal of new technology. Although the core fuel cell (or electrolysis) stack is fundamental to the technology – the physical bulk of any system or application is made up of regular engineering and fabricated components. And the greatest proportion of cost and value in such systems is entrained in their overall design and integration content (IP). For example in scoping out the prospects for a hydrogen ferry being built and operated in Scotland, around 200 local supply chain companies were identified which could have an interest in such a development

Privately Estimating a Gaussian: Efficient, Robust and Optimal

In this work, we give efficient algorithms for privately estimating a Gaussian distribution in both pure and approximate differential privacy (DP) models with optimal dependence on the dimension in the sample complexity. In the pure DP setting, we give an efficient algorithm that estimates an unknown $d$-dimensional Gaussian distribution up to an arbitrary tiny total variation error using $\widetilde{O}(d^2 \log \kappa)$ samples while tolerating a constant fraction of adversarial outliers. Here, $\kappa$ is the condition number of the target covariance matrix. The sample bound matches best non-private estimators in the dependence on the dimension (up to a polylogarithmic factor). We prove a new lower bound on differentially private covariance estimation to show that the dependence on the condition number $\kappa$ in the above sample bound is also tight. Prior to our work, only identifiability results (yielding inefficient super-polynomial time algorithms) were known for the problem. In the approximate DP setting, we give an efficient algorithm to estimate an unknown Gaussian distribution up to an arbitrarily tiny total variation error using $\widetilde{O}(d^2)$ samples while tolerating a constant fraction of adversarial outliers. Prior to our work, all efficient approximate DP algorithms incurred a super-quadratic sample cost or were not outlier-robust. For the special case of mean estimation, our algorithm achieves the optimal sample complexity of $\widetilde O(d)$, improving on a $\widetilde O(d^{1.5})$ bound from prior work. Our pure DP algorithm relies on a recursive private preconditioning subroutine that utilizes the recent work on private mean estimation [Hopkins et al., 2022]. Our approximate DP algorithms are based on a substantial upgrade of the method of stabilizing convex relaxations introduced in [Kothari et al., 2022]

Traumatic Tympanic Membrane perforation: An aetiological profile

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Traumatic perforation of the tympanic membrane may be due to direct or indirect source. The aim of the study is to profile the various aetiologies of traumatic tympanic membrane perforation in Ilorin, north central Nigeria.</p> <p>A retrospective review of 64 patients seen at the University of Ilorin Teaching hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria over a ten year period (January 1998 to Dec 2007) with history of traumatic tympanic membrane perforation from various causes, these also included multiply injured patients with bleeding from middle ear as part of their presentations. The data retrieved included the biodata, the clinical presentations, source of injury, the clinical findings and the treatment outcome. The data were entered into an SPSS version 11 computer soft ware and analyzed descriptively.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Sixty four (64) ears were analysed, Age range 6 months to 50 yrs, mean age of 29.2 yrs 7.9% of them were ≤5 years, 29.7% between 21-34 years, and 37.7% were 35 years and above. The male to female ratio was 2.5:1.0. Commonest aetiology was from slaps, then road traffic injury (RTI) in 35.9% and 23.5%, Majority of the slap injury were from fights (30.5%), security agents, senior students and cultists at schools (17.4% each). Sudden hearing loss was a typical presentation (95.3%), majority of the patient defaulted from follow up once the symptoms of bleeding and pain subsided. Only 7.8% had neomembrane formation on follow up</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Traumatic perforation of the tympanic membrane is an uncommon injury that is under-reported, there is the need to educate on alternative punitive measure among students and security agents, unskilled removal of foreign body, early identification, evaluation and referral of patients reduces the attendant morbidity.</p

The Impacts of Public Libraries in Promoting Knowledge Society among Civil Servants in Nigeria

Public libraries serve as gateways to knowledge and culture by playing a fundamental role in society. The aim of this study is to examine the impacts of public libraries on the promotion of knowledge societies among civil servants in Oyo State, Nigeria. The total population was 570, and the sample size was 235 using a simple random sampling technique. The research design adopted was a descriptive survey. A questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection, and a descriptive data analysis technique of frequency and the simple percentage was used. Findings revealed, firstly, that public libraries promote knowledge societies among civil servants through their collections, resources, and internet facilities to enhance the civil service culture. Secondly, public libraries have contributed significantly to improving and promoting knowledge societies as the civil servants make judicious use of the library facility to promote knowledge societies. Thirdly, public libraries have limitation that hindered the promotion of knowledge societies among civil servants; which are inadequate library materials, poor reading culture, inaccessibility to information resources, poor dissemination of information, and inadequate professional staff have. The recommendations of this study are the public libraries should provide more collections, adequate information resources tailored toward the promotion of knowledge societies, recruit professional staff and conduct regular training to improve their discharge of duties to meet the information needs of civil servants for the promotion of knowledge societies