Correlates of Safe Disposal of Children’s Stool in Nigeria: Evidence from 2018 Demographic and Health Survey

Unsafe Stool disposal has been linked to high under-five morbidity and mortality in many low and middle-income countries. This paper focuses on examining the prevalence of safe disposal of stools in Nigeria and the factors affecting such behaviour. The most-recent Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 2018 (NDHS) Child’s dataset was used for the analysis in this study. Sample size of 7,834 children under age five was analysed. Percentages and frequencies, chi-square test of association, and binary logistic regression were employed for the statistical analysis. Findings show that a little above half of the women respondents reported safe disposal of stool of their under-five children in the study area (53%). Specifically, the odds of having stool safely disposed increased by 133 percent for children whose household wealth index falls within the richer category (adjusted Odd Ratio (aOR): 2.33; p<0.001), reduced by 17 percent for children whose mothers are working (aOR: 0.83; p<0.05), increased for children whose mothers are residing only in North-East and North-West (p<0.001), increased by 19 percent for children whose mothers were exposed to media exposure to mass media (aOR: 1.19; p<0.05), reduced by 24 percent for women whose children are of first birth order (aOR: 0.76; p<0.05), reduced by 31 percent for women whose children are of small size at birth (aOR: 0.69; p<0.001), increased by 66 percent for women who reported that distance to facility was not a problem (aOR: 1.66; p<0.001), reduced by 19 percent for women who delivered their children at an health centre (aOR: 0.81; p<0.05), and increased by 114 percent for women who used improved toilet facility (aOR: 2.14; p<0.001). This study concludes that a combination of socioeconomic, maternal, child’s and environmental factors are the correlates of safe disposal of stool among women with under-five children in Nigeria. It should therefore be prioritised for interventions aimed at reducing high under-five morbidity and mortality in Nigeria

Power Maximization and Turbulence Intensity Management through Axial Induction-Based Optimization and Efficient Static Turbine Deployment

Layout optimization is capable of increasing turbine density and reducing wake effects in wind plants. However, such optimized layouts do not guarantee fixed T-2-T distances in any direction and would be disadvantageous if reduction in computational costs due to turbine set-point updates is also a priority. Regular turbine layouts are considered basic because turbine coordinates can be determined intuitively without the application of any optimization algorithms. However, such layouts can be used to intentionally create directions of large T-2-T distances, hence, achieve the gains of standard/non-optimized operations in these directions, while also having close T-2-T distances in other directions from which the gains of optimized operations can be enjoyed. In this study, a regular hexagonal turbine layout is used to deploy turbines within a fixed area dimension, and a turbulence intensity-constrained axial induction-based plant-wide optimization is carried out using particle swarm, artificial bee colony, and differential evolution optimization techniques. Optimized plant power for three close turbine deployments (4D, 5D, and 6D) are compared to a non-optimized 7D deployment using three mean wind inflows. Results suggest that a plant power increase of up to 37% is possible with a 4D deployment, with this increment decreasing as deployment distance increases and as mean wind inflow increases

Towards Attaining Sustainable Retail Property Locations: The Relationships between Supply, Demand, and Accessibility of Retail Spaces

This study explored retail location performance of cities by investigating relationships between changes in retail property stock (supply), changes in retail rental value (demand), and spatial accessibility (retail consumer movement) across three UK cities, namely, Leeds, Newcastle, and York. This is to understand how retail locations and assets can be managed sustainably. In this sense, sustainability was considered through a dual focus in this paper: (1) the efficient use of retail property assets for economic purposes and (2) the impact of these physical retail assets on the local environment in terms of carbon footprint. The study relied on space syntax ideology in computing spatial accessibility index and adopted business rate datasets in computing changes in retail rental value and stock. Findings showed that spatial accessibility across retail locations could predict the performance of retail rental value (but not stock) across the sampled cities. The study further showed that extent of city analysis (scale) is significant in estimating retail location performance and understanding the influence of accessibility. This evidence has the potential to facilitate better decision-making concerning the planning, design, and management of retail locations and spaces. The study is significant because it can serve as a reference for promoting an urban sustainability agenda, especially in ensuring that urban land and properties are used optimally to maximise their social, economic, and environmental values

The Problematization of Sexuality among Women Living with HIV and a New Feminist Approach for Understanding and Enhancing Women’s Sexual Lives

In the context of HIV, women’s sexual rights and sexual autonomy are important but frequently overlooked and violated. Guided by community voices, feminist theories, and qualitative empirical research, we reviewed two decades of global quantitative research on sexuality among women living with HIV. In the 32 studies we found, conducted in 25 countries and composed mostly of cis-gender heterosexual women, sexuality was narrowly constructed as sexual behaviours involving risk (namely, penetration) and physiological dysfunctions relating to HIV illness, with far less attention given to the fullness of sexual lives in context, including more positive and rewarding experiences such as satisfaction and pleasure. Findings suggest that women experience declines in sexual activity, function, satisfaction, and pleasure following HIV diagnosis, at least for some period. The extent of such declines, however, is varied, with numerous contextual forces shaping women’s sexual well-being. Clinical markers of HIV (e.g., viral load, CD4 cell count) poorly predicted sexual outcomes, interrupting widely held assumptions about sexuality for women with HIV. Instead, the effects of HIV-related stigma intersecting with inequities related to trauma, violence, intimate relations, substance use, poverty, aging, and other social and cultural conditions primarily influenced the ways in which women experienced and enacted their sexuality. However, studies framed through a medical lens tended to pathologize outcomes as individual “problems,” whereas others driven by a public health agenda remained primarily preoccupied with protecting the public from HIV. In light of these findings, we present a new feminist approach for research, policy, and practice toward understanding and enhancing women’s sexual lives—one that affirms sexual diversity; engages deeply with society, politics, and history; and is grounded in women’s sexual rights

Broadband mm-wave propagation characterization of planar groove gap waveguide

We present, experimental broadband propagation characterization of a planar groove gap waveguide (PGGWG) from 29 to 40 GHz. The transmission line Q‐factor is found to vary from 110 to 130 over the band, which is shown by comparison of measurement data to be comparable to substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). PGGWG is found to have a phase constant of nearly double that of SIW using the same materials and manufacturing process. This is a significant result for system miniaturization

Design and application of a distributed generation hosting capacity algorithm

Distribution networks in Southern Africa and elsewhere are witnessing an unprecedented growth of consumer-side distributed generation (DG) courtesy of governmental interventions to maximise the utilisation of renewable energy resources through low-carbon grid-edge technologies. To deal with the increasing adoption of consumer-side DG, distribution network operators need to conduct technical studies to foster an understanding of the benefits and impacts of DG and the hosting capacity (HC) of existing distribution networks. This will aid the implementation of measures to manage grid exports. Using a distribution network in Namibia as a case study, this paper presents an algorithm for assessing the HC of consumer-side DG in existing distribution networks that are situated in areas anticipating high and uniform uptake of DG. The algorithm is a hybrid of deterministic and probabilistic methods. The uniqueness of the algorithm is the concept of calculating monthly HC. The algorithm was tested on a real existing residential distribution network and the results confirmed that HC varies monthly. However, the practical implementation of monthly HC requires upgrades to existing inverter technology, which currently contains a single export limit functionality. This opens the possibility to drive innovation in the inverter technology to develop a date-based multiple export limit functionality

Realtime thévenin equivalent impedance at a PCC in the Italian power grid

The increase of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) in distribution networks has underlined the need for new strategies to optimally operate DERs by increasing efficiency in generation and distribution of power. Optimal Power Injection enabled by Thévenin equivalent impedance (TEI) measurements is one of such possible strategies, since this permits the evaluation of the optimal currents that need to be injected into or drawn from a network, in order to reduce energy losses. The first measurement campaign was performed in a three phase four wire point of common coupling (PCC) in Cape Town, South Africa, in which the possibility of multiple simultaneous measurement of the TEI of a power supply grid via two points of common coupling was analyzed. In this paper, the results of a measurement campaign to determine the dynamics TEI at a PCC in Italy is discussed. The results show that there is a significant level of imbalance in the TEI across the phases at the PCC