Urbanisation Footprints and the Distribution of Air Quality in Nairobi City, Kenya

Various postulations on the relationship between urban morphology and air quality are qualitative. This fails to establish the strength of the contributions of each morphological parameter in the spatial distribution of the air quality. It is this gap in knowledge that this study sought to fill by modelling the correlation existing between the urban morphological variables of development density, land uses, biomass index and air quality values of Nairobi city. While 30 development zones of the city constituted the target population, IKONOS satellite imagery of the city for the year 2015 was utilised in establishing the development densities, land uses and biomass index. The parameters were transformed into numerical surrogates ranging from 1 to 10 with lower values accorded to zones with low biomass index, the highest development density, noxious land uses, high gaseous concentrations and vice-versa. Pearson’s correlation coefficients (r), coefficients of determination (R), t-tests and the Analysis of Variance (F-tests) with levels of significance being 95% were used to determine the strengths, significances and consistencies of the established relationships. The study established that development density is the most significant morphological variable influencing the distribution of air quality. This is followed by biomass index and to a weaker extent, land uses

An Empirical Investigation of the Development of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems Education for Third-level Business Students

This study is an empirical investigation of the development of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) education for Business students. It uses Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) as its case study to determine the benefits of practical ERP education, the challenges faced by third-level institutions and how ERP education should be provided to Business students. The researcher used observation, review of documentation, and semi-structured interviews of fifteen academics as the research techniques. As well as being beneficial for students, employers and ERP vendors, this study finds that the provision of practical ERP education has reciprocal benefits for the third-level institution. By improving graduates skills, enhancing their employability and ensuring students are always up-to-date with new technology, the profile of the college enhanced and important links are built with industry. The challenges facing the institution are personnel issues (such as inadequate training on ERP and inexperience in teaching in a lab setting), programme structure issues (such as the need to rewrite module descriptors and lack of space on the programme) and organisational issues (such as a lack of computer laboratories, cost of running laboratories and need for more technical assistance). However, all of these challenges should be weighed against the benefits that practical ERP education has to offer. This study suggests that in-house training of staff, inclusion of ERP education in the module descriptors, the provision of a dedicated technician, better links with other colleges and industry would all improve the provision of practical ERP education in third-level colleges. The benefits of ERP education can be maximised if it is provided in a mix of theoretical and laboratory settings in a cross-modular fashion in the penultimate year of the degree programme. There is a lot of work to be done in maximising the utilisation of the University Alliance Programme (UAP), small steps have been taken in CIT, but it still has a long way to go. Other third-level institutions can learn from the steps CIT have taken and is taking

Constraints on porosity and mass loss in O-star winds from modeling of X-ray emission line profile shapes

We fit X-ray emission line profiles in high resolution XMM-Newton and Chandra grating spectra of the early O supergiant Zeta Pup with models that include the effects of porosity in the stellar wind. We explore the effects of porosity due to both spherical and flattened clumps. We find that porosity models with flattened clumps oriented parallel to the photosphere provide poor fits to observed line shapes. However, porosity models with isotropic clumps can provide acceptable fits to observed line shapes, but only if the porosity effect is moderate. We quantify the degeneracy between porosity effects from isotropic clumps and the mass-loss rate inferred from the X-ray line shapes, and we show that only modest increases in the mass-loss rate (<~ 40%) are allowed if moderate porosity effects (h_infinity <~ R_*) are assumed to be important. Large porosity lengths, and thus strong porosity effects, are ruled out regardless of assumptions about clump shape. Thus, X-ray mass-loss rate estimates are relatively insensitive to both optically thin and optically thick clumping. This supports the use of X-ray spectroscopy as a mass-loss rate calibration for bright, nearby O stars.Comment: 20 pages, 20 figures. Accepted by Ap

Systemic Behaviour Change: Irish Farm Deaths and Injuries

While the Irish agricultural sector accounts for just 6% of the working population of Ireland, it consistently has the highest proportion of fatal incidents of any sector - generally ranging from between 35% and 45% of all workplace fatalities in any given year. This was again evident in 2014 where 55% (30 of the 56) of the fatal workplace incidents were in the agricultural sector. Agriculture has an ageing workforce with the average age of an Irish farmer now standing at fifty-seven and farmers are eight times more likely to be fatally injured in a farm accident than the general working population. Interviews were conducted with farmers and farm safety advisory bodies. The findings from this research show that a systems social marketing approach should be adopted to eliminate farm deaths and injuries and that interventions should be co-created with the farming community. A grass-roots mentoring system needs to be established to advise farmers on best practice. This needs to be modelled on 3 main pillars (individual farm visits, courses in safe farming, and group farm walks) delivered by and for farmers. Live testimonials from farmers who have been involved in farming accidents also need to be incorporated into all farm safety talks and demonstrations. These need to show farmers the physical, emotional and financial consequences of a farming accident. These farm accident victims should attend individual farm visits, courses in safe farming and group farm walks. Practical workshops need to be set up so farmers learn specific skills appropriate to their farming situation. Lecture-based teaching where farmers sit and listen about safe farming practices should be avoided as farmers like to learn by doing. The issue of farm safety needs to be addressed at a macro marketing level and needs to involve a broadening of the traditional 4Ps to include People, Policy and Partnership

Farm Deaths and Injuries: Changing Irish Farmer Attitudes and Behaviour on Farm Safety

While the Irish agricultural sector accounts for just 6% of the working population of Ireland, it consistently has the highest proportion of fatal incidents of any sector - generally ranging from between 35% and 45% of all workplace fatalities in any given year. This was again evident in 2014 where 55% (30 of the 56) of the fatal workplace incidents were in the agricultural sector. Agriculture has an ageing workforce with the average age of an Irish farmer now standing at fifty-seven and farmers are eight times more likely to be fatally injured in a farm accident than the general working population. Interviews were conducted with farmers and farm safety advisory bodies. The findings from this research show that a mentoring system needs to be established to advise farmers on best practice. This needs to be modelled on 3 main pillars – individual farm visits, courses in safe farming and group farm walks. Live testimonials from farmers who have been involved in farming accidents also need to be incorporated into all farm safety talks and demonstrations. These need to show farmers the physical, emotional and financial consequences of a farming accident. These farm accident victims should attend individual farm visits, courses in safe farming and group farm walks. Practical workshops need to be set up so farmers learn specific skills appropriate to their farming situation. Lecture-based teaching where farmers sit and listen about safe farming practices should be avoided as farmers like to learn by doing. Farm advisory bodies need to explain to older farmers that they should respect the limitations on what they can do on a farm. The media used to promote this safe farming message should be age-appropriate