Importance of Sustainability on Agriculture in Southern Africa

This paper seeks to describe and discuss the impact that climate changes, and other challenges in terms of sustainability, have had on Africa and particularly on South Africa. It seeks to discuss the extent to which these changes directly and indirectly impact agriculture and the measures that are currently underway, with particular reference to South Africa, as well as suggest other strategies that could be implemented to attenuate the effects of climate change, thereby advancing the global shift towards sustainability. The paper discusses environmental and other changes that have taken place in Africa and asserts that the continent is in a particularly difficult situation in light of the debate on sustainability versus productivity. The fact that most of the world’s rural poor depend on agriculture and that climatic changes have created new complications makes it more difficult to meet the MDGs and impedes economic development. This is especially relevant in light of the financial crisis and the drop in aid from the developed world. However, although more still needs to be done, it should be noted that significant progress has been made and projects and strategies are currently underway to utilize the region’s natural advantages.sustainability, agriculture, South Africa, climate change, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

From headscarves to donation:Three essays on the economics of gender, health and happiness

Abstract: Zeynep’s research interests are mainly in the field of health and labor economics. In this thesis, she explores a broad range of topics within the domain of the economics of gender, health and happiness. The first chapter provides the motivations for the studies and summarizes the main findings. The second chapter documents differences in educational attainment, labor market outcomes and childbearing among women by their use of headscarves and investigates the impact of the headscarf ban in Turkey on women’s educational attainment, labor force participation and childbearing decisions. In Chapter 3, she explores the relationship between presumed consent legislation and various organ donation indicators such as willingness to donate one’s organs, organ donation card holding, actual organ donation rates and kidney transplantation rates. The last chapter looks at the relationship between pro-social behavior and subjective wellbeing and tries to quantify the happiness effect of donating in the Netherlands.

Assessment of wintertime atmospheric input of European sulfur to the eastern Adriatic

A Lagrangian receptor-oriented long-range transport model has been applied in order to estimate the order of magnitude of the wintertime atmospheric input of sulfur emitted in Europe to the eastern Adriatic. According to the model results, a total of 18.8 · 106 kg of sulfur had been deposited over the 7.2 · 104 km2 of sea surface during the period 1 December 1991–29 February 1992. This means that on the average about 2.9·10 −6 kg m −2 of sulfur was deposited on the sea surface per day. The deposition per unit area over the northern part of the domain (which is closer to the strongest pollution sources) was almost twice the input to the Southern part

INCREASING DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION OF SOUTH AFRICAN WINES: IDENTIFYING THE KEY MARKET SEGMENTS OF THE “BLACK DIAMONDS”

Although South Africans are not predominantly wine drinkers, the industry is looking for ways to develop the local market to balance exports. The black middle class, increasingly referred to as the Black Diamonds are the most powerful marketing trend in the last 10 years as they have emerged as the strongest buying influence in the economy and making inroads in understanding this market presents a good opportunity. The study asserts that the key factors influencing the South African consumers’ behavior are age, gender, income, race and wine drinking history. The study also asserts that not only are the black middle class are different from the white middle class but within the Black Diamonds different segments exist. The industry should particularly focus on marketing to the women and the “Start me up” age group in the group as there is limited consumer knowledge about wines, but a high willingness to experiment. The study also suggests various new brand communication platforms that can be explored to reach this market as well as co-opetition between industry stakeholders.Black Diamonds, wine consumer behavior, alcoholic beverages, Agribusiness, Demand and Price Analysis,

The Fermi surface of underdoped high-T_c superconducting cuprates

The coexistence of $\pi$-flux state and d-wave RVB state is considered in this paper within the slave boson approach. A critical value of doping concentration $\delta_c$ is found, below which the coexisting $\pi$-flux and d-wave RVB state is favored in energy. The pseudo Fermi surface of spinons and the physical electron spectral function are calculated. A clear Fermi-level crossing is found along the (0,0) to ($\pi$, $\pi$) direction, but no such crossing is detected along the ($\pi$, 0) to ($\pi$, $\pi$) direction. Also, an energy gap of d-wave symmetry appears at the Fermi level in our calculation. The above results are in agreement with the angle-resolved photoemission experiments which indicate at a d-wave pseudo-gap and a half-pocket-like Fermi surface in underdoped cuprates.Comment: 18 pages RevTex, 6 figures in PS file

A review on global ferns invasions: mechanisms, management and control

There has been paucity of information and inadequate studies on the invasive potentials of ferns as most invasive ecological studies have so far focused on higher plants across the continents. This paper therefore, reviews ferns invasions, mechanisms of invasions and management of invasive ferns that have been reported in literatures. We searched four databases including Jstor, Science direct, Willey online library and Scopus for relevant literature between 1990 – 2018. A total of seventy articles reporting ferns invasions in various countries in six continents were harvested. Eighteen ferns reported to be invasive across the world include Lygodium microphyllum, Lygodium japonicum, Azolla pinnata, Pteridium arachnoideum, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, Thelypteris noveboracensis, Pityrogramma calomelanos, Azolla filiculoides, Acrostichum spp, Asplenium adiantum-nigrum, Dryopteris carthusiana, Dryopteris intermedia, Polystichum acrostichoides, Cyclosorus afer, Sphaeropteris cooperi, Angiopteris evecta, Salvinia molesta and Pteridium aquilinum. Most of these ferns were reported to have invaded parts of North America than other continents. Prevalent mechanisms of invasion for these ferns include their polyploidy nature, ability to disperse spores for long distance, allelopathy, adaptation to disturbed areas and unfavourable environmental conditions. It was suggested that using biological approaches which enable ecological succession and ecosystem restoration is preferable to other methods of controlling these invasive ferns.Keyword: control, Cyclosorus, ecology, ferns, invasion, Pteridiu

Product-service system inventory control: manufacturing perspectives

This thesis explores the role of Inventory Control in Product Service System (PSS) applications within manufacturing contexts. This research led to a new approach for dealing with inventory control and contributes to understanding of the PSS paradigm in manufacturing industries. PSS embraces the product and service continuum as one system; meanwhile, Inventory Control has led to substantial improvements in performance across many industries. PSS and Inventory Control have for many years been recognized in the scientific literature and by industry as enablers of manufacturing operations. Most studies in the field of PSS and Inventory Control have only focussed on its individual scenarios; little is known about where the boundaries of PSS should lie as it needs to integrate both external and internal elements in managing PSS Inventory Control. To date, very little research has been reported related to inventory control in product-service systems from manufacturing operations perspectives. Research has been done in three stages: (1) PSS characteristics were synthesised from the literature; (2) current industry example of PSS inventory were investigated through a survey; four case studies were developed; (3) uncertainty elements were identified from the literature related to the current PSS Inventory Control scenario and these were evaluated, developed and validated producing a generic model. The research carried out involved collecting primary data from qualitative research conducted through four case studies with companies in the United Kingdom and Malaysia; and information from secondary sources; utilising techniques such as survey, interview, matrix and modelling language method. This thesis contributes to the current PSS research by developing a generic model of PSS Inventory Control from manufacturing operations perspectives and a PSS Inventory Control (PSSIC) Framework

Assessment of the potability of water sources in some rural communities in Ilorin East, Kwara, Nigeria

Sources of water at Oke - Ose, Abantan and Idi - Igba communities in Ilorin, Kwara, Nigeria were evaluated for potability. A total of 21 wells and 6 boreholes were sampled in these communities. The sanitary survey, total viable bacterial count, total coliform and faecal coliform counts as well as some physicochemical parameters of the water were assessed. The total viable bacterial counts of the well water and the borehole water ranged from 0.4 x 102 – 3.8 x 102 CFU/mL and 0.5 × 10² - 1.4 × 102 CFU/mL respectively. Furthermore, the range of total coliform counts of the well water and borehole water were 3 – 150 MPN/100ml and 3 – 28 MPN/100 mL respectively. Faecal coliform was not isolated in all the water samples. Only 50% and 42.9% of the boreholes and wells had sanitary score of less than 80%. All the water samples were within the limit of the physicochemical parameters allowed by Nigerian standard for drinking water quality (NSDWQ) for turbidity, total solid, dissolved solid, chloride, nitrate, and electrical conductivity. All the water samples did not meet up with the permissible limit of 100mg/l of sulphate. The bacteria isolated in this study include Budvicia aquatica, Enterobacter agglomerans, Myroides odoratus, Burkholderia cepacia, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Aeromonas hydrophila, Listeria sp. and Corynebacterium sp. It was concluded from this study that 19.0% of the wells water and 16.7% of the borehole water supplies satisfied bacteriological qualities of potable water. It is recommended that the resident of these communities need to be enlightened on the need for hygienic environment and measures of protecting their water supplies from contamination