Reuse of wastewater in urban farming and urban planning implications in Katsina metropolis, Nigeria

Studies on urban farming in Sub-Saharan African cities reveal the existence of literatures in Eastern, Southern and Central African cities. A few have focused on West Africa. In Nigeria, there is a paucity of information on reuse of waste water in urban farming. The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of wastewater reuse in urban farming in Katsina, an important urban area in the semi arid region of Nigeria. A total of 120 households were selected and interviewed out of the total number of 250 that officially registered with the Katsina Urban Planning Authority. It was found out that the reuse of wastewater in urban farming in the area is an occupation that is not only practiced as a fulltime and sole income earner for many households, but an activity that the town cannot do without. Being a city located within a semi-arid setting, relying on rainfed for successful promotion of urban farming is certainly a risky enterprise and hence the practice virtually has no substitute. Unfortunately urban planning process has not officially recognised and given attention to this important activity in the town. Appropriate recommendation on how to promote the activity and get it integrated into planning processes in the area have been given

Experimental characterization of gasoline sprays under highly evaporating conditions

An experimental investigation of multistream gasoline sprays under highly evaporating conditions is carried out in this paper. Temperature increase of fuel and low engine pressure could lead to flash boiling. The spray shape is normally modified significantly under flash boiling conditions. The spray plumes expansion along with reduction in the axial momentum causes the jets to merge and creates a low-pressure area below the injector’s nozzle. These effects initiate the collapse of spray cone and lead to the formation of a single jet plume or a big cluster like structure. The collapsing sprays reduces exposed surface and therefore they last longer and subsequently penetrate more. Spray plume momentum increase, jet plume reduction and spray target widening could delay or prevent the closure condition and limit the penetration (delayed formation of the cluster promotes evaporation). These spray characteristics are investigated experimentally using shadowgraphy, for five and six hole injectors, under various boundary conditions. Six hole injectors produce more collapsing sprays in comparison to five hole injector due to enhanced jet to jet interactions. The spray collapse tendency reduces with increase in injection pressure due high axial momentum of spray plumes. The spray evaporation rates of five hole injector are observed to be higher than six hole injectors. Larger spray cone angles of the six hole injectors promote less penetrating and less collapsing sprays

SIM(2) and supergraphs

We construct Feynman rules and Supergraphs in SIM(2) superspace. To test our methods we perform a one-loop calculation of the effective action of the SIM(2) supersymmetric Wess-Zumino model including a term which explicitly breaks Lorentz invariance. The renormalization of the model is also discussed.Comment: 28 page

Very special relativity as relativity of dark matter: the Elko connection

In the very special relativity (VSR) proposal by Cohen and Glashow, it was pointed out that invariance under HOM(2) is both necessary and sufficient to explain the null result of the Michelson-Morely experiment. It is the quantum field theoretic demand of locality, or the requirement of P, T, CP, or CT invariance, that makes invariance under the Lorentz group a necessity. Originally it was conjectured that VSR operates at the Planck scale; we propose that the natural arena for VSR is at energies similar to the standard model, but in the dark sector. To this end we provide an ab initio spinor representation invariant under the SIM(2) avatar of VSR and construct a mass dimension one fermionic quantum field of spin one half. This field turns out to be a very close sibling of Elko and it exhibits the same striking property of intrinsic darkness with respect to the standard model fields. In the new construct, the tension between Elko and Lorentz symmetries is fully resolved. We thus entertain the possibility that the symmetries underlying the standard model matter and gauge fields are those of Lorentz, while the event space underlying the dark matter and the dark gauge fields supports the algebraic structure underlying VSR.Comment: 19 pages. Section 5 is new. Published version (modulo a footnote, and a corrected typo

Reliability analysis of moment redistribution in reinforced concrete beams

Design codes allow a limited amount of moment redistribution in continuous reinforced concrete beams and often make use of lower bound values in the procedure for estimating the moment redistribution factors. Here, based on the concept of demand and capacity rotation, and by means of Monte Carlo simulation, a probabilistic model is derived for the evaluation of moment redistribution factors. Results show that in all considered cases, the evaluated mean and nominal values of moment redistribution factor are greater than the values provided by the ACI code. On the other hand, the 5th percentile value of moment redistribution factor could be lower than those specified by the code. Although the reduction of strength limit state reliability index attributable to uncertainty in moment redistribution factors is not large, it is comparable to the reduction in reliability index resulting from increasing the ratio of live to dead load

Neutrino-electron scattering in noncommutative space

Neutral particles can couple with the $U(1)$ gauge field in the adjoint representation at the tree level if the space-time coordinates are noncommutative (NC). Considering neutrino-photon coupling in the NC QED framework, we obtain the differential cross section of neutrino-electron scattering. Similar to the magnetic moment effect, one of the NC terms is proportional to $\frac 1 T$, where $T$ is the electron recoil energy. Therefore, this scattering provides a chance to achieve a stringent bound on the NC scale in low energy by improving the sensitivity to the smaller electron recoil energy.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Nonequilibrium Dynamics in Noncommutative Spacetime

We study the effects of spacetime noncommutativity on the nonequilibrium dynamics of particles in a thermal bath. We show that the noncommutative thermal bath does not suffer from any further IR/UV mixing problem in the sense that all the finite-temperature non-planar quantities are free from infrared singularities. We also point out that the combined effect of finite temperature and noncommutative geometry has a distinct effect on the nonequilibrium dynamics of particles propagating in a thermal bath: depending on the momentum of the mode of concern, noncommutative geometry may switch on or switch off their decay and thermalization. This momentum dependent alternation of the decay and thermalization rates could have significant impacts on the nonequilibrium phenomena in the early universe at which spacetime noncommutativity may be present. Our results suggest a re-examination of some of the important processes in the early universe such as reheating after inflation, baryogenesis and the freeze-out of superheavy dark matter candidates.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figure

Quantized Nambu-Poisson Manifolds in a 3-Lie Algebra Reduced Model

We consider dimensional reduction of the Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson theory to a zero-dimensional 3-Lie algebra model and construct various stable solutions corresponding to quantized Nambu-Poisson manifolds. A recently proposed Higgs mechanism reduces this model to the IKKT matrix model. We find that in the strong coupling limit, our solutions correspond to ordinary noncommutative spaces arising as stable solutions in the IKKT model with D-brane backgrounds. In particular, this happens for S^3, R^3 and five-dimensional Neveu-Schwarz Hpp-waves. We expand our model around these backgrounds and find effective noncommutative field theories with complicated interactions involving higher-derivative terms. We also describe the relation of our reduced model to a cubic supermatrix model based on an osp(1|32) supersymmetry algebra.Comment: 22 page

Compliance of smokeless tobacco supply chain actors and products with tobacco control laws in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan: protocol for a multicentre sequential mixed-methods study

Introduction: South Asia is home to more than 300 million smokeless tobacco (ST) users. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan as signatories to the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) have developed policies aimed at curbing the use of tobacco. The objective of this study is to assess the compliance of ST point-of-sale (POS) vendors and the supply chain with the articles of the FCTC and specifically with national tobacco control laws. We also aim to assess disparities in compliance with tobacco control laws between ST and smoked tobacco products. Methods and analysis: The study will be carried out at two sites each in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. We will conduct a sequential mixed-methods study with five components: (1) mapping of ST POS, (2) analyses of ST samples packaging, (3) observation, (4) survey interviews of POS and (5) in-depth interviews with wholesale dealers/suppliers/manufacturers of ST. We aim to conduct at least 300 POS survey interviews and observations, and 6-10 in-depth interviews in each of the three countries. Data collection will be done by trained data collectors. The main statistical analysis will report the frequencies and proportions of shops that comply with the FCTC and local tobacco control policies, and provide a 95% CI of these estimates. The qualitative in-depth interview data will be analysed using the framework approach. The findings will be connected, each component informing the focus and/or design of the next component. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approvals for the study have been received from the Health Sciences Research Governance Committee at the University of York, UK. In-country approvals were taken from the National Bioethics Committee in Pakistan, the Bangladesh Medical Research Council and the Indian Medical Research Council. Our results will be disseminated via scientific conferences, peer-reviewed research publications and press releases