Critical Drivers and Consequences of Poor Facility Management in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana

Facilities require massive sums of financial resources to construct and maintain. Available statistics shows that facilities constitute about 80% of the financial resources of established organizations. It also provides an enclosed atmosphere within which organizations operate. However, despite the financial composition and the inextricable link between facilities and achievement of the goals of every organization, it is very unwelcomed that they are poorly managed in many institutions in Ghana. This paper sought to fill the knowledge gap by identifying and ranking the critical drivers and consequences of poor facility management in the Kumasi Metropolis. The study employed case study as a research design within quantitative research methodological paradigm and gathered primary data from 102 respondents comprising of hostel caretakers, facility managers and maintenance teams using questionnaires. It was established the all the 11 drivers and 9 consequences of poor facility management in the study were considered critical because they scored mean values above the conventional mean of 3.5. The study contributed to existing literature by ranking the drivers and consequences of poor facility management. It was consequently recommended among others that rent escalator clauses should be used to regulate indisciplinary conduct of facility users and that facility management should be made one of the top priorities of institutional management. Keywords: Consequences, drivers, facilities, organizations, poor facility managemen

Reducing Unemployment Malaise in Nigeria: The Role of Electricity Consumption and Human Capital Development

One of the greatest challenges that Nigeria is confronted with and which on the average has continued to witness a rising trend over the years is unemployment. Its scourge is known to be responsible for a high level of poverty, inequality, increasing rate of criminality and general low level of living in the country. This study examined how electricity consumption and human capital can be used to reduce unemployment in Nigeria. The study obtained secondary data and analysed the data with the Johansen co-integration technique. The study found out that electricity consumption negatively impact unemployment, so also is government education expenditure. The result showed that a 1% increase in electric power consumption will lead to about 0.22% decline in the level of unemployment and 1% increase in education expenditure will bring about 0.17% decrease in the rate of unemployment. Therefore, the study recommends that the government should put in place policies and measures that will enhance the turn-out of quality graduates with skills and competence to chant the course of development by all stakeholders in the education sector. Keywords: Unemployment, Electricity Consumption, Government Education Expenditure. JEL Classifications: E24, L94, H52 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.759

Reducing Unemployment Malaise in Nigeria: The Role of Electricity Consumption and Human Capital Development

One of the greatest challenges that Nigeria is confronted with and which on the average has continued to witness a rising trend over the years is unemployment. Its scourge is known to be responsible for a high level of poverty, inequality, increasing rate of criminality and general low level of living in the country. This study examined how electricity consumption and human capital can be used to reduce unemployment in Nigeria. The study obtained secondary data and analysed the data with the Johansen co-integration technique. The study found out that electricity consumption negatively impact unemployment, so also is government education expenditure. The result showed that a 1% increase in electric power consumption will lead to about 0.22% decline in the level of unemployment and 1% increase in education expenditure will bring about 0.17% decrease in the rate of unemployment. Therefore, the study recommends that the government should put in place policies and measures that will enhance the turn-out of quality graduates with skills and competence to chant the course of development by all stakeholders in the education sector

Health Condition and Female Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria

The proportion of women’s participation in agriculture differs by regions in developing countries. Nevertheless, this disparity notwithstanding, women actively participate in different nods of agricultural value chain. As at 2011, out of women labour, above 50% were agricultural workers and above 20% were observed to be cultivators. However, only about 13% of the operational holdings were owned by women, which shows gender asymmetry in resource ownership in agriculture. It has been argued that when women are given opportunities in agriculture, such as access to land, credit among others, it will enhance their productivity, which forms the basis of this studies. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of health conditions of female/women on their level of agricultural productivity. Therefore, the study aims to answer the research question ‘what is the impact of women health condition on household agricultural productivity? The study engaged wave 4 (2018/2019) of the Living Stand Measurement Study, Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The reason for using wave 4 is because, it is the more recent wave of the LSMS-ISA, at the point of writing this report. The LSMS-ISA data is a general household data by the World Bank in collaboration with National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of Nigeria. From the pooled data, we disaggregated female-headed households, using the household identification (hhid). Therefore, this study is based on female-headed households, while the male-headed households were excluded from the analysis. The study engaged the descriptive statistics, t-test to examine the significant difference in productivity between household-heads who are healthy and those who are not, the legit regression to estimate the determinants of health condition, and the propensity score matching (PSM) technique to estimate the impact of health condition on female agricultural productivity. The result from the test of mean difference shows that there is a significant difference in productivity between household heads who are healthy and those who are not. It implies that, those who are healthier have higher level of productivity than their counterparts who are not. From the determinants of health condition, using the logit regression, the result shows that household income, education, ICT adoption, and location are significant determinants. From the impact analysis, using the PSM, the result shows that, access to healthcare by female headed households contributes 28.49% to the level of their productivity. The result informs the need to enhance women access to healthcare, especially, farming households in the rural areas, for higher agricultural productivity. Therefore, the study suggests that policies such as improved healthcare systems, among others, geared towards enhancing female engagement in agriculture and services alongside other concerned sectors should be promoted

Organic residues in archaeology - the highs and lows of recent research

YesThe analysis of organic residues from archaeological materials has become increasingly important to our understanding of ancient diet, trade and technology. Residues from diverse contexts have been retrieved and analysed from the remains of food, medicine and cosmetics to hafting material on stone arrowheads, pitch and tar from shipwrecks, and ancient manure from soils. Research has brought many advances in our understanding of archaeological, organic residues over the past two decades. Some have enabled very specific and detailed interpretations of materials preserved in the archaeological record. However there are still areas where we know very little, like the mechanisms at work during the formation and preservation of residues, and areas where each advance produces more questions rather than answers, as in the identification of degraded fats. This chapter will discuss some of the significant achievements in the field over the past decade and the ongoing challenges for research in this area.Full text was made available in the Repository on 15th Oct 2015, at the end of the publisher's embargo period

Siliziumkarbidelektronik: technologische und werkstoffwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zur Metallisierung/Kontaktierung

Abstract The wide band gap semiconductor silicon carbide (SiC) has been recognized as a promising material for future applications in optoelectronics, high frequency technologies, power electronics and especially in high temperature electronics. The presented thesis deals with the production of Ohmic contacts on p-doped 4H-SiC and 6H-SiC for future electronic applications. Based on theoretical considerations and comparative calculations of the carrier concentrations it will be shown that the calculation of the electrically active acceptors can be strongly simplified. The SiC properties and their influence on the formation of contacts will be described in detail. The production of Ohmic p-SiC contacts requires a high hole concentration at the interface between p-SiC and the metallization which might be achieved by an aluminum ion implantation. By means of an implantation through a thin Al layer the maximum acceptor concentration shifts towards the substrate surface and thus, a high acceptor concentration near the surface is obtained. No amorphous regions could be detected after the implantation and the subsequent annealing of the highly doped p-SiC. The specific resistance, the carrier concentration and the carrier mobility are estimated from the temperature dependent sheet resistance. The very high hole mobility indicates an almost 100% incorporation of the acceptors. Tungsten silicide and tungsten carbide are used to realize a metallization and to establish a contact with the SiC samples, in order to avoid undesirable interface reactions between the semiconductor and the metallization. For this reason the influence of the substrate and deposition temperature on the formation of tungsten silicide and tungsten carbide by a sputtering (or co-sputtering) process was investigated in detail. The hexagonal WSi2 phase, which is formed on in-vacuo heated substrates, is used as tungsten silicide metallization. WC and W2C are used as tungsten carbide metallization. Pure WC is formed under a high 2% propane concentration in a propane-hydrogen environment at temperatures above 825°C. W2C is formed under a <= 0.02% propane concentration and temperatures between 750°C - 1050°C. A standard Al/Ti metallization serves as a reference material. It is shown that a hexagonal WSi2 and a pure W2C form on the p-4H-SiC and p-6H-SiC samples, while in the WC layers a small amount of the W2C phase is detectable. No reaction with the SiC substrates is observed for the tungsten-based metallizations. The specific contact resistances of the hexagonal WSi2 on the p-4H-SiC and the p-6H-SiC of rho_K = 6 10^-4 Ohm cm^2 and 1.2 10^-3 Ohm cm^2, respectively, represent an improvement by two orders of magnitude to the previous results. The minimum specific contact resistances of WC and W2C on the p-4H-SiC are 8.9 10^-4 Ohm cm^2 and 1.7 10^-3 Ohm cm^2, respectively, and on the p-6H-SiC 1.8 10^-2 Ohm cm^2 and 2.5 10^-3 Ohm cm^2. The smallest contact resistance at all is reached with the reference material Al/Ti on the 4H-SiC sample with the value of 1.9 10^-4 Ohm cm^2. The specific contact resistances of the tungsten based metallizations and the reference materials lie in the same order of magnitude