Perceived effect of climate change on crop production by farmers in Edo state, Nigeria

The study analyzed farmers’ perception of climate change effect on production and examined the perceived effect of climate change on farmers’ livelihood, Data was collected from 270 farmers sampled from nine Local Government Areas in the three agricultural zones of Edo state. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics involving frequency distribution, percentages and mean, Binomial test and Friedman test were used to test the hypotheses of the study. The result of the analysis showed that most of the respondents were female (52.6%), married (87.8%) and relatively young (mean age 53 years), had formal education (73.7%) and having an average family size of nine. The major crops produced by the respondents were maize (65.6%), cassava (64.4%), melon (49.6%) and yam (47.4%). Weather conditions such as early rainfall (84.44%), late rainfall (62.96%), frequency of rainfall (53.30%), and drought (50%) were seen as unpredictable by respondents. The climate change parameters experienced by the respondents were increase in excessive heat at night (88.15%), flooding (71.11%), incidence of gully erosion (61.85%) and increase in temperature (50%). A major effect of climate change on the farmers’ livelihood was reduction in farm income (mean=3.31), while the most perceived effects of climate change on the farmers production were land slide/erosion of farm (mean = 2.6) and damages to crop (mean = 2.6). The study recommended that weather forecasts and predictions should be made available to the farmers right on time and enlightenment campaign on how to cope with climate change should be embarked upon by members of the Agricultural Development Program.Key words: Binomial test., Climate change., crop production., Friedman test., perceptio

Thermal Decomposition of Stichtite

The mineral stitchtite was synthesised and its thermal decomposition measured using thermogravimetry coupled to an evolved gas mass spectrometer. Mass loss steps were observed at 52, 294, 550 and 670 °C attributed to dehydration, dehydroxylation and loss of carbonate. The loss of carbonate occurred at higher temperatures than dehydroxylation

Sulfate-functionalized carbon/metal-oxide nanocomposites from hydrotalcite-like compounds

As a new application of hydrotalcite-like compounds, sulfate-functionalized carbon/metal-oxide nanocomposites have been prepared at relatively low temperatures in a single step, in which interlayer sulfonated polymeric anions are catalytically converted to the nanocarbons (secondary phase) while CoAl-containing brucite-like sheets are converted to the metal oxide matrices. The chemical composition and structure of nanocomposites can be controlled via selecting chemical functional groups in the intercalated polymeric anions and varying processing conditions

Synthesis of nanosize supported hydrotalcite-like compounds coAlx(OH)2+2x(CO3)y(no 3)x-2y·nH2o on γ-Al2O3

10.1021/cm000526iChemistry of Materials132297-303CMAT

Successive Convex Approximations to Cardinality-Constrained Convex Programs: A Piecewise-Linear DC Approach

In this paper we consider cardinality-constrained convex programs that minimize a convex function subject to a cardinality constraint and other linear constraints. This class of problems has found many applications, including portfolio selection, subset selection and compressed sensing. We propose a successive convex approximation method for this class of problems in which the cardinality function is first approximated by a piecewise linear DC function (difference of two convexfunctions) and a sequence of convex subproblems is then constructed by successively linearizing the concave terms of the DC function. Under some mild assumptions, we establish that any accumulation point of the sequence generated by the method is a KKT point of the DC approximation problem. We show that the basic algorithm can be refined by adding strengthening cuts in the subproblems. Finally, we report some preliminary computational results on cardinality-constrained portfolio selection problems