Product stewardship as a novel sustainability pathway for the UK precast concrete industry

Over the last two decades, sustainability has matured to become a societal imperative and is at the forefront of UK government policy and industry strategy. For example, the Strategy for Sustainable Construction (BERR, 2008) and Low Carbon Construction (BIS, 2012) reports have focused on encouraging more sustainable construction through reductions in energy, water and resource use. In response to such demands, the UK precast concrete industry developed a sector sustainability strategy and subsequently chose to continue activities in this area through an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) research project. The project focused on the scope for applying the principles of product stewardship (PS) as a means to mitigate environmental impacts associated with precast products, throughout the entire life-cycle of their use. Numerous PS schemes have been adopted in other industrial sectors, such as chemicals, electronics and product manufacture. One of the distinguishing features of PS is that multiple stakeholders need to take responsibility for their ‘share’ of environmental impacts, and that life-cycle thinking should pervade the value chain. Hence, through PS, the precast industry might be able to address not only the impacts within cradle-to-gate phases, but also develop a framework to positively act on broader, cradle-to-grave impacts. The aim of this research was to develop a framework for embedding the principles of PS more deeply into the precast industry, creating a novel pathway towards more sustainable construction. The research commenced with a literature review to understand the key sustainability issues affecting the industry, followed by an analysis and synthesis of industry key performance indicator (KPI) data from 2006–2012. Industry participation in the research was facilitated through a questionnaire survey and interviews with senior staff within UK precast businesses. Evidence of PS practices was found to exist within the industry through responsible sourcing schemes, implementation of Environmental Management Systems and through the mitigation of various specific impacts. However, the coordinated communication of such initiatives was found to be lacking and with the advent of new European standards around Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for construction, it was decided that the precast industry would benefit from a sector-specific EPD framework to capture and communicate its PS credentials. An EPD framework and tool was therefore developed and validated through a focus group, to establish whether an EPD can be used successfully to deliver environmental information and refine an approach such that it would accord with the principles of PS. Further research and development arising from this research could focus on implementation and evaluation of the industry-specific EPD scheme, a mechanism to communicate and share life-cycle information amongst upstream and downstream stakeholders and a means through which stakeholder responsibility can be attributed and managed effectively. The key findings of this research have been presented in four peer–reviewed papers (one of which is in draft) which are presented in the Appendices

Synthesis and characterisation of Manganese (II), Cobalt (II), Nickel (II) and Copper (II) N,N'-bis(Benzoin)ethylenediiminato complexes

The manganese (II), cobalt (II), nickel (II) and copper (II) complexes of N, N’ –bis(benzoin)ethylenediiminato have been prepared and characterized by infrared, elemental analysis, conductivity measurements and solubility. The potentiometric, and elemental analyses studies of the complexes revealed 1:1 metal to ligand ratio. Key words: Spectrophotometry, potentiometry, N, N’ – bis(benzoin)ethylenediimine, complexes

Characterization and Modification of Activated Carbon Generated from Annogeissus Leiocarpus

Activated carbon (AC) is a versatile adsorbent that is used in the treatment of waste water, colour, odour removal and CO2 capture. Annogeissus leiocarpus is one of abundant agricultural precursor that can be used for the production of activated carbon. Characterization was done to investigate some proximate parameters. The modifications were made by soaking AC in 40% H2SO4 and 40% NaHCO3 for 24hours in the ration of 1:3 w/v. The FT-IR and SEM was conducted for surface functional group and morphology respectively. The result of this study revealed that the activated carbon produced possessed high yield, low Ash content, low Burnt off, low moisture content Average bulk density and large pore volume. The results from FT-IR analysis identified appearance and disappearance of carbonyl and hydroxyl groups which contributed in the creation of more adsorptive site for adsorption process. The results for SEM indicated the development of pores all over the surface of adsorbent with Acid modified activated carbon (AMAC/ H2SO4) having the highest pore distribution followed by Base Modified Activated Carbon (BMAC/NaHCO3) and finally ordinary (AC). The results suggest that the modification of AC using Acid and Base can significantly enhance the surface properties which improves adsorptive properties of the activated carbon produced and enhances it adsorption potentials for wastewater treatment

Do Leader and Organizational Characteristics Affect Scientist's Productivity? A Multilevel Analysis of Nigerian Agricultural Research System

Organizations offer employees with opportunities to cultivate their innovativeness and facilitate greater productivity. In this paper we analyze preconditions for individual productivity of agricultural researchers in Nigeria, measured in terms of the self-reported number of scholarly publications and technologies produced; presence of external collaborators; number of dissemination events for publications produced; and perceived adoption level of technologies developed. It utilizes a multilevel analysis to systematically examine what characteristics of individual scientists and organizations promote greater individual productivity. The statistically significant random-effect estimates show that there is considerable variance across the 47 organizations after adjusting for the effects of differences in individual characteristics. Moreover, several measures of organizational characteristics are statistically significant in explaining variations in individual productivity. This paper contributes to limited studies that systematically analyze the influence of organizational factors and the organization head’s characteristics on individual researcher’s performance.organizational culture, multilevel analysis, poisson, productivity, research, motivation, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q16, L32, D23,

Association of Dietary Acid Load with Insulin Sensitivity Index among Apparently Healthy Nigerians

The possible role of regular consumption of diets with high acid forming potential in decreasing cellular sensitivity to insulin and its associated complications has been investigated. However, findings across different study groups are conflicting. It is likely that the association is affected by genetic and environmental factors that differ among different populations. We investigated the impact of diet-induced acidosis on the degree of insulin sensitivity among apparently healthy adult Nigerians. Assessment of dietary intake was done using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire and the Nigerian Food Composition Table. Acid forming potential of our local diets were estimated as Potential Renal Acid Load (PRAL) scores. Fasting plasma glucose and insulin were measured. Degree of insulin sensitivity was calculated as Quantitative Insulin Sensitivity Check Index (QUICKI). About 35 (16.2%) of the study subjects were observed to have insulin resistance. Across the study groups, there was a statistically significant trend with higher intake of dietary acid associated with decreased insulin sensitivity (p for trend < 0.05). We conclude that among apparently healthy adult subjects in this study, regular consumption of diets with high acid forming potential might be linked with worsening of insulin sensitivity.&nbsp

Maternal serum level of TNF-α in Nigerian women with gestational diabetes mellitus

Introduction: alterations in the circulating level of tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) has been proposed to be involved in the pathogenesis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), but its role is not completely understood, findings from studies done across different ethnic groups are often inconsistent. We carried out this study to determine maternal serum level of TNF-a and it's association with body weight status in a group of Nigerian women with GDM. Methods: a cross sectional analytical study conducted among 169 pregnant women, 85 with GDM and 84 with normal gestation. Diagnosis of GDM was made between 24-28 weeks gestation according to the WHO diagnostic criteria. Maternal serum level of TNF-α was measured and compared between the study groups. Results: maternal serum TNF-α level was significantly higher in the pregnant women with GDM than in the controls (2.50 ± 0.30 vs. 2.10 ± 0.30 pg/ml, p < 0.05). Also when comparing the serum TNF-α levels of the pregnant women with GDM and the controls for each level of body mass index, serum TNF-α levels remained significantly higher in both the normal weight and overweight pregnant women with GDM compared to their matched controls (2.40 ± 0.30 vs. 1.90 ± 0.20 pg/ml, p < 0.05) and (2.60 ± 0.30 vs. 2.30 ± 0.20 pg/ml, p < 0.05) respectively. Conclusion: it is concluded that pregnant women with GDM in this study have higher maternal serum TNF-α level compared to the pregnant women with normal glucose tolerance regardless of body weight status

Optical solitons and modulation instability analysis to the quadratic-cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation

This paper obtains the dark, bright, dark-bright, dark-singular optical and singular soliton solutions to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with quadratic-cubic nonlinearity (QC-NLSE), which describes the propagation of solitons through optical fibers. The adopted integration scheme is the sine-Gordon expansion method (SGEM). Further more, the modulation instability analysis (MI) of the equation is studied based on the standard linear-stability analysis, and the MI gain spectrum is got. Physical interpretations of the acquired results are demonstrated. It is hoped that the results reported in this paper can enrich the nonlinear dynamical behaviors of the PNSE

Semantic Retrieval System for Nigerian Onion Domain Ontology

With the recent Nigerian Government’s effort to diversify its economy, several efforts have been put in place by the Government to revitalize Nigerian Agricultural sector as part of the diversification effort. Part of effort put in place to revitalize Agriculture it to encourage local and international investment into Agriculture in the country.  However, due to lack of enough information on the agricultural activities in the country remains a challenge in the revitalization of the country’s agriculture. Although Google and other search engines provide access to data on the Web, these search engines are base on traditional keyword search and therefore lack semantics which affect the effectiveness of the retrieved results.   This paper presents semantic document retrieval of Nigerian Onion domain. The work involves developing Ontology for Nigerian Onion domain. Protégées Ontology editor is then used to store the Ontology and OWL-DL query is used to retrieve the documents semantically.  To measure the effectiveness of the proposed work, precision and recall evaluation metrics were used. Keywords: Ontology, Onion, Information Retrieval, Semantic Retrieval, Domai

Public policy process: The system of actions

Public Policy is a formal documented statement of intentions and sets of actions of a government to either remove certain deficiencies or improve the conditions in any particular area of concern/interest. It is “whatever governments choose to door not to do” and it as a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of actions and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity its representatives. Public policy is very crucial to public sector managers because public policy is one subject that affects the lives and well being of the people and the knowledge of it will adequately equip the public sector managers with clearer understanding of the reasons for some, if not all of governments thought process and its actions or inaction's. This will help public sector managers to proffer intelligent advice to the government. From the literature, there are three reasons for studying public policy. They include; a) professional reasons, b) scientific reasons and c) political reasons. The analyses of the nature, basic elements and scopes as well as types of public policies in this unit have elucidated more on public policy analysis. The effort was geared to make you a good public policy analyst. There are still other types of public policy like reversible and irreversible policies, explicit and implicit policies, material and symbolic policies as well as collective good-private good policies

Lie symmetry analysis, exact solutions and conservation laws for the time fractional modified Zakharov–Kuznetsov equation

In this work, Lie symmetry analysis (LSA) for the time fractional modified Zakharov–Kuznetsov (mZK) equation with Riemann–Liouville (RL) derivative is analyzed. We transform the time fractional mZK equation to nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) of fractional order using its point symmetries with a new dependent variable. In the reduced equation, the derivative is in Erdelyi–Kober (EK) sense. We obtained exact traveling wave solutions by using fractional DξαG/G-expansion method. Using Ibragimov's nonlocal conservation method to time fractional nonlinear partial differential equations (FNPDEs), we compute conservation laws (CLs) for the mZK equation