Agricultural land-use change and disappearance of farmlands in Kaduna Metropolis-Nigeria

This study assessed agricultural land-use change in Kaduna metropolis. This study combined the use of remote sensing and geographic  information system (GIS) application to ascertain the rate of agriculturalland-use change from 1980 to 2012 in the study area. The four imageries (Landsat MSS 1980, Landsat TM 1990, Landsat ETM+ 2005 and Nigeria Sat X 2012) used were classified and compared to understand the rate and extent of agricultural land-use change during the different periods. The  findings revealed that the study area experienced a significant reduction inagricultural land and these leads to continued disappearance of farmlands. Lastly, the decrease in agricultural lands leads to loss of livelihood, reduction in food supply and increase poverty. This has raised so many concerns about the sustainability of Urban and Peri Urban Agriculture (UPA) production in the study area whereby the small scale farmers are the most affected.Key Words: Land-Use, Urban, Farmers, Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Kaduna, Nigeri

Solid-State Microwave Electronics

Contains reports on three research projects.National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NGL 22-009-163)Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E

Pembuatan Edible Film dari Pati Singkong sebagai Pengemas Makanan

Edible film are plastics which can be degraded by microorgaisms and is made from renewable materials. Plastics film is made from cassava starch. Plasticizer used is sorbitol and glycerol. The purposes of this research is to determine the effect of plasticizer variation and starch weight on the characteristics of cassava starch plastic films. Cassava starch weight variation are 1,75 g, 2 g, 2,25 g at sorbitol and 3 g, 3,5 g, 4 g at glycerol and glycerol variations are 1,5 ml, 1,75 ml, and 2 ml and sorbitol variations are 1,5 g, 1,75 g, and 2 g. The reseach results showed that the interactions between starch and plasticizers are significantly effect on tensile strength and elongation of the edible film while the starch cassava weight is significantly effect on the thickness of the edible film. Tensile strength of plastic film are decreased with increasing glycerol volume sorbitol weight. While elongation of plastic film rised with increasing glycerol volume and sorbitol weight. Thickness of plastic film is increase with increasing starch weight

Konsentrasi Merkuri pada Rambut Kepala dan Kesehatan Masyarakat pada Lokasi Penambangan Emas Tradisional Buladu Kabupaten Gorontalo Utara

This study aims to identify mercury concentrations in head hair and its effect on public health at the traditional gold mining. The study was conducted at the gold mining, Buladu Village, North Gorontalo Regency. Samples were taken randomly from human head hair. Samples of public health condition were taken from respondents who served as the samples of mercury concentrations in the head hair. The number of respondents was 20 people. The samples of mercury in the head hair were analyzed at the Integrated Research and Testing Laboratory of UGM by using mercury analyzer. The quality standard used as a reference to the mercury concentrations in the head hair was the recommendation of the National Research Council (NCR), i.e. 12 ppm. The results of the analysis of the public health were tabulated and then interpreted. The results of the analysis indicated that the highest mercury concentration in the head hair was 952.85 mg/kg and the lowest was 0.03 mg/kg with an average mercury concentration of 55.09 mg/kg. This result was above the threshold quality standards established by NCR, i.e. 12 ppm. Many factors affect the mercury concentrations in humans, including education, income, environmental sanitation and food consumption. Waste dumped directly into the river will affect river water and marine aquatic animals. The consumption of food taken from the waters of Sulawesi Sea affects influence the mercury concentrations in the head hair

Assessment of first derivative of doppler blood flow velocity in vascular aging

The aim of this study is to determine the first derivative of blood flow velocity (FDBFV) in common carotid artery (CCA) in order to evaluate cardiovascular functions. The extracted derivative of the velocity is suggested the acceleration waves which able to provide an aging index (AGI) in the cardiovascular system. In the study, acceleration wave derived from FDBFV consist of a, b, c, d, e and f waves which represent the initial positive, early negative, re-increasing, late re-decreasing, diastolic positive waves and diastolic negative waves, respectively. The FDBFV waveforms of 227 healthy volunteers are statistically analyzed in the study. Pearson’s correlation analysis is used to determine the relationship between all variables and factors on the selected hemodynamic data. In the study, there are significant difference (r=0.727, p<0.001) of AGI in FDBFV. We found that f wave in FDBFV waveform shows strong correlation (p< 0.001) to blood pressure. In conclusion, the potential of FDBFV in CCA is an effective method to evaluate the vascular aging

Reducing Interanalyst Variability in Photovoltaic Degradation Rate Assessments

The economic return on investment of a commercial photovoltaic system depends greatly on its performance over the long term and, hence, its degradation rate. Many methods have been proposed for assessing system degradation rates from outdoor performance data. However, comparing reported values from one analyst and research group to another requires a common baseline of performance; consistency between methods and analysts can be a challenge. An interlaboratory study was conducted involving different volunteer analysts reporting on the same photovoltaic performance data using different methodologies. Initial variability of the reported degradation rates was so high that analysts could not come to a consensus whether a system degraded or not. More consistent values are received when written guidance is provided to each analyst. Further improvements in analyst variance was accomplished by using the free open-source software RdTools, allowing a reduction in variance between analysts by more than two orders of magnitude over the first round, where multiple analysis methods are allowed. This article highlights many pitfalls in conducting 'routine' degradation analysis, and it addresses some of the factors that must be considered when comparing degradation results reported by different analysts or methods

Performance of Five Species of Phytoseiid Mites (Acari: Phytoseiidae) on Bactrocera zonata Eggs (Diptera: Tephritidae) as a Factitious Food

Development, survival and reproduction of the generalist predatory mites, Amblyseius largoensis (Muma), Neoseiulus barkeri (Hughes), Typhlodromips swirskii (Athias-Henriot), Proprioseiopsis kadii (El-Halawany and Abdel-Samad) and Cydnosus negevi (Swirski and Amitai) were assessed when fed on eggs of Bactrocera zonata (Saunders) (Diptera: Tephritidae) as a factitious food. For N. barkeri and P. kadii, the development was faster, while the reproduction was higher in N. barkeri and A. largoensis than for P. kadii. Survival of immatures of T. swirskii and C. negevi was low on eggs of B. zonata and all failed to develop beyond the protonymphal stage. A total of 35.4, 31.2 and 19.6 eggs per female, respectively, were obtained when N. barkeri, A. largoensis and P. kadii were fed B. zonata eggs. A diet of the peach fruit fly eggs provided the longest female longevity and highest mean total fecundity, which resulted in the highest net reproductive rate (Ro=34.61 and 32.78) and doubling time (DT=1.53 and 1.60) for N. barkeri and A. largoensis, respectively

Experimental joint signal-idler quasi-distributions and photon-number statistics for mesoscopic twin beams

Joint signal-idler photoelectron distributions of twin beams containing several tens of photons per mode have been measured recently. Exploiting a microscopic quantum theory for joint quasi-distributions in parametric down-conversion developed earlier we characterize properties of twin beams in terms of quasi-distributions using experimental data. Negative values as well as oscillating behaviour in quantum region are characteristic for the subsequently determined joint signal-idler quasi-distributions of integrated intensities. Also the conditional and difference photon-number distributions are shown to be sub-Poissonian and sub-shot-noise, respectively.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

A new parameterization of the Effective Temperature for L-band Radiometry.

An accurate value of the effective temperature is critical for soil emissivity retrieval, and hence soil moisture content retrieval, from passive microwave observations. Computation of the effective temperature needs fine profile measurements of soil temperature and soil moisture. The availability of a two year long data set of these surface variables from SMOSREX (Surface Monitoring Of the Soil Reservoir EXperiment) makes it possible to study the effective temperature at the seasonal to interannual scale. This study shows that present parameterizations do not adequately describe the seasonal variations in sensing depth. Therefore, a new parameterization is proposed that is stable at the seasonal to interannual scales while retaining simplicity. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union