The Effects of Climate Change on Rural-Urban Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)—The Cases of Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Niger

Water is essential for the existence of living organisms including humans. Water is needed in farms to grow crops, firms and manufacturing industry to produce products and services. This chapter examines water resources availability and management in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in climate change perspective using vector auto-regression (VAR) time series analysis. Water is known to be unevenly distributed among countries and continents around the world, particularly in Sub-Sahara Africa; the water availability varies between member countries and regions in the individual country, water supply systems experience enormous pressure to make water accessible to people in both rural and urban communities. Water security remains to be an integral part of the SSA’s effort to achieve food security and supply, halve poverty and eradicate hunger. This chapter more importantly aims to investigate impact of rainfall and temperature issues––that are climate change proxy variables––on water security and people movement in three Sub-Saharan African countries that are Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Niger. This article assesses some possible causes of migration from rural to urban area using VAR and granger causality tests; this process involves four variables namely Rural Migration ‘MR’, Urban Migration ‘MU’, Rainfall ‘Rain’ and Temperature ‘Temp’. The model predicts rainfall and temperature across 10 years and examines how these changes impact water availability and people movement in relevant countries. This study finds that some countries are experiencing water security challenges upon which large numbers migrate to urban areas. The study reveals that variations in rainfall and temperature have compounded people movements from rural areas. It is noted that the agricultural production in SSA have not improved over time and in fact, it has further decreased due to the move away from rural areas by many farmers

Importance of Risk Analysis and Management – The Case of Australian Real Estate Market

Life is full of risks for example risk is involved in simple things like turning on the gas at home or when dealing with life threatening medical emergency decisions. Risk plays an important role in the way we manage our economy, organization or our family. Risk can be rather complex when household money is involved; such as for individuals or families - for example, mums and dads stand to either gain or lose large sums of money. The types of risks involved influence decisions on how to manage or invest money in shares, bonds or property. When faced with risks, the challenge is how well prepared are we to overcome risks. Risk awareness may be limited in which case there is a high likelihood of risk turning into hazard -leading to disastrous outcomes. Successful businesses make constant efforts to change or update their in house administrative polices and frameworks to allow for possible risks in their business requirements. Some decisions that are likely to have been factored into the component of risk are: rigid corporate governance requirement, human resource planning, succession planning, training and development, merger and acquisitions, adapting to different cultures, foregoing or discontinuing some existing products, outsourcing, new market development etc. No matter how important a decision is made, strategic alignment is critical in business decision making. New ideas should be implemented according to the business needs a company. The introducing of novel ideas should involve all personnel particularly during the decision making processes of development and setting of targets. A well-managed business is also well prepared one and thus able to confront challenges of the modern dynamic business environments.Griffith Sciences, Griffith School of EnvironmentFull Tex

Modified Vogel’s Approximation Method For Solving Transportation Problems

In this research, we have Modified Vogel’s Approximation Method (MVAM) to find an initial basic feasible solution for the transportation problem whenever VAM was developed in 1958. Three methods North West Corner Method (NWCM), least Cost Method (LCM) and Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM) have been used to find initial basic feasible solution for the transportation model. We have taken same transportation models and used MVAM to find its initial basic feasible solution and compared its result with above three methods, but MVAM gives minimum transportation cost and also optimal and in some problems the result of MVAM is same as VAM but better than NWCM and LCM

A Comparison of Numerical Methods for Solving the Unforced Van Der Pol’s Equation

Due to the advancements in the field of computational mathematics, numerical methods are most widely being utilized to solve the equations arising in the fields of applied medical sciences, engineering and technology. In this paper, the numerical solutions of an important equation of applied dynamics: namely, the Unforced Van der Pol’s Equation (UFVDP) are obtained by reducing it to a system of two first order differential equations. The objective of this work is to investigate the efficiency of improved Heun’s (IH) method against the classical Runge-Kutta (RK4) and Mid-point (MP) methods for UFVDP equation. For analysis of accuracy, the Poincare-Lindstedt method has been used as a comparison criterion and respective error bounds are obtained. The results show that the popular RK4 method retains its better accuracy than other methods used for comparison. Keywords: Van der Pol, Runge-Kutta, Mid-point, Improved Heun’s, Poincare-Lindstedt

A comparative study of initial basic feasible solution methods for transportation problems

In this research three methods have been used to find an initial basic feasible solution for the balanced transportation model. We have used a new method of Minimum Transportation Cost Method (MTCM) to find the initial basic feasible solution for the solved problem by Hakim [2]. Hakim used Proposed Approximation Method (PAM) to find initial basic feasible solution for balanced transportation model and then compared the results with Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM) [2]. The results of both methods were noted to be the same but here we have taken the same transportation model and used MTCM to find its initial basic feasible solution and compared the result with PAM and VAM. It is noted that the MTCM process provides not only the minimum transportation cost but also an optimal solution.   Keywords: Transportation problem, Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM), Maximum Penalty of largest numbers of each Ro

The role of algebraic knowledge, higher-order thinking and affective factors on students' performance on novel algebraic word-problem solving

This thesis focuses on solving algebraic novel word-problems. The study aimed to investigate the role of algebraic knowledge, higher-order thinking and affective factors in problem solving. Sixteen Year 11 students were selected and requested to solve fifteen novel algebraic word-problems. Ginsburg's (1992) mixed methods involving the talk-aloud and clinical methods were used to interview the students as they solved the various word-problems. The interview sessions were videoed and the data transcribed. Protocol analysis was then used to examine in depth the performance of the students in terms of the factors studied. The results of this study showed that algebraic knowledge, higher-order thinking and affective factors were associated with success in novel algebraic word-problem solving. However, higher-order thinking was found to the most important factor in successful performance. The students who exhibited critical thinking by analysing the problems in sufficient detail, identifying/developing relationships between variables, identifying assumptions and engaging in high levels of metacognitive thinking performed better overall than the students who demonstrated low levels of critical and metacognitive thinking. Likewise, students who used algebraic methods were more likely to succeed than those who did not. Although algebraic knowledge was not as strongly associated with success as higher-order thinking the importance of domain knowledge was nevertheless noted in this study. Although affective factors were found to be less important than domain knowledge and higher-order thinking the results showed that students' belief, attitude, persistence and confidence were associated with performance. The students who demonstrated positive attitude and/or appropriate belief regarding algebraic methods used algebraic methods more often than others who demonstrated inappropriate attitudes and/or beliefs about knowledge generally. Further, the students who demonstrated high levels of persistence and confidence performed better overall in terms of number of correct solutions than the students who demonstrated low levels of persistence and confidence

Water exchange traded funds: A study on idiosyncratic risk using Markov switching analysis

We investigate the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and return among four water exchange traded funds—PowerShares Water Resources Portfolio, Power Shares Global Water, First Trust ISE Water Index Fund, and Guggenheim S&P Global Water Index ETF using the Markov switching model for the period 2007–2015. The generated transition probabilities in this paper show that there is a high and low probability of switching between Regimes 1 and 3, respectively. Moreover, we find that the idiosyncratic risk for most of the exchange traded funds move from low volatility (Regime 2) to very low volatility (Regime 1 and 3). Our study also identify that the beta coefficients are positive and entire values are less than 1. Thus, it seems that water investment has a lower systematic risk and a positive effect on the water exchange traded index funds returns during different regimes

The effects of tidal buffering on acid sulphate soil environments in coastal areas of New South Wales

One-way floodgates installed on flood mitigation drains in regions affected by acid sulphate soils restrict carbonate/bicarbonate buffering, thereby creating reservoirs of acid water (pH \u3c 4.5) that discharge during the ebb tide. The drain water quality and hydrodynamic conditions prior to and following floodgate modifications that allowed for controlled saline intrusion are described with reference to data collected from intensively drained and floodgated coastal lowlands located in southeastern New SouthWales, Australia. Cl:SO4 ratios taken from groundwater samples depicted an acidic environment with little soil buffering capacity. Prior to modification, water quality upstream of the one-way floodgate was consistently acidic (average pH 4.6) with high concentrations of aluminum and iron that fluctuated with precipitation. Over a two-week period before modifications, floodgate leakage permitted alkaline water to intrude upstream of the floodgate and react with H+ions. This period showed the strongest supporting field evidence for tidal buffering via modified floodgates. After installing vertical lifting, two-way floodgates average drain water pH increased to 5.89 and aluminum and iron concentrations decreased by more than 30%. A large rainfall (131.8mm) during the post-modification period caused acidic groundwater flushing, however, in comparison to the pre-modification period, recovery time and average pH were markedly improved. Preliminary investigations of groundwater salinity in response to tidal intrusion has shown that electrical conductivity fluctuates with rainfall and it is predominately limited to 10 m perpendicular to the drain