Socio-economic determinants for poverty reduction : the case of Fiji : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Economics at Massey University

Poverty is a multi-dimensional issue, which encompasses different dimensions of deprivation that relate to human capabilities including food security, health, education, rights, voice, security, dignity, income and consumption. Above all, poverty is denial of human rights (United Nations, 2009). Despite Fiji's as a most developed island economy, and plays an affluent role among the Pacific Island nations, its history of coups and vulnerability to external shocks have created major obstacles to reducing poverty by half by 2015. The study demonstrates that knowledge on the characteristics of the poor is vital not only because it is essential to tackle the roots of poverty but also shape the policies and strategies to reducing poverty. The study found that, in particular, the households headed by females and people with disability are most prone to poverty. Rural households are more likely subjected to poverty than urban households. The Indo-Fijian households face greater income inequalities than Fijian households, and the urban households endure greater inequalities in comparison to rural households. Being educated and employed are the key fundamental elements in reducing the likelihood of remaining poor. The study shows that people from the lowest income to the highest income groups all benefit from formal education, but it is tertiary education which has the ability to sustainably prevent people falling into poverty when the unseen event occur in the future. Also, employment in manufacturing, construction, trade and services, transportation and communications sectors are all vital determinants of poverty reduction. In particular, the manufacturing sector helps rural households in increasing the possibility of meeting the basic needs, while the transportation and communication sector helps urban households to increase the probability of meeting their basic needs. The research findings suggest that poverty reduction polices and programmes should focus on the core areas of integration and targeting, promotion of human assets, provide resources and transportation linkages for rural and urban activities, promotion of income-job-creation and income redistribution. Releasing land for commercial agriculture farming could contribute to poverty reduction in rural areas and its linkages in the urban sector could also reduce poverty in urban areas

The impacts of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and E-commerce on bilateral trade flows

This paper examines the impact of Internet and e-commerce adoption on bilateral trade in 2014 using a panel of 21 middle- and low-income countries and 30 OECD countries. The empirical results indicate that access to the physical infrastructure for ITC and e-commerce improves export performance at various levels. This paper not only shows the important role of e-commerce in global trade, but also highlights its greater trade potentials for developing and least- developed countries. Given the commitment of East African Community (EAC) to be the front-runner in the export-led economy across the African continent, a separate gravity model of trade is presented to analyse the relationship between the e-commerce adoption and EAC export performance with their trading partner countries

Explainable Reinforcement Learning via a Causal World Model

Generating explanations for reinforcement learning (RL) is challenging as actions may produce long-term effects on the future. In this paper, we develop a novel framework for explainable RL by learning a causal world model without prior knowledge of the causal structure of the environment. The model captures the influence of actions, allowing us to interpret the long-term effects of actions through causal chains, which present how actions influence environmental variables and finally lead to rewards. Different from most explanatory models which suffer from low accuracy, our model remains accurate while improving explainability, making it applicable in model-based learning. As a result, we demonstrate that our causal model can serve as the bridge between explainability and learning.Comment: Accepted by IJCAI 202

Aqueous intercalation-type electrode materials for grid-level energy storage: Beyond the limits of lithium and sodium

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.05.049 © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Intermittent, fluctuational, and unpredictable features of renewable energy require grid-level energy storage (GES). Among various types of GES, aqueous electrochemical storage is undoubtedly the most promising method due to its high round-trip efficiency, long cycle life, low cost and high safety. As the most encouraging candidate for aqueous electrochemical storage, aqueous rocking-chair batteries have been heavily investigated. Recently, intercalation-type aqueous batteries beyond the limits of Li+ and Na+ have caught researchers’ attention due to potentially higher capacity and better cyclability, and the number of publications in this nascent field since 2015 has dramatically increased. Therefore, it is highly demanded to summarize what have been learned in this field. In this first comprehensive review paper, we summarize these novel intercalation-type electrode materials and provide perspectives of opportunities and challenges for future research.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology National Natural Science Foundation of China (51272182, 51772219, 21471116, and 51641210) Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LZ17E020002 and LZ15E020002) Wenzhou Scientific and Technological in Public Project (G20170018

Recessed deposition of TiN into N-doped carbon as a cathode host for superior Li-S batteries performance

The final publication is available at Elsevier via https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.09.034 © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/In this work, we put forward a novel cathode host for Li-S batteries by loading titanium nitride (TiN) nanoparticles into the pores of N-doped carbon as a proof-of-concept. The selection of TiN arises from its strong binding ability with polysulfide and its exceptionally high conductivity of 5 × 106 S/m. As for N-doped porous carbon, it provides necessary physical adsorption and extra chemical adsorption sites from the N-doping. Besides the above advantages, the most substantial merit endowed to this structure is the pore-loaded TiN design. The carbon pore size confines the TiN precursors to the nanoscale and prevents otherwise subsequent agglomeration of TiN nanoparticles. Moreover, the pore-loaded TiN design, with fully exposed adsorptive surface and highly dispersed adsorptive sites, guards against the blocking of future sulfur infiltration and Li+ diffusion. The advantages of the TiN loaded N-doped carbon are finally confirmed by electrochemical evaluations. The capacity is found up to be 1338 mAh/g at a current density of 0.2 C and 690 mAh/g at a current density of 5 C (where 1 C = 1672 mAh/g). For durability evaluations, the capacity is maintained at 700 mAh/g after 800 cycles with a mere decay of 0.04% per cycle. Lastly, the feasibility of a high mass loading with 7 mg/cm2 is demonstrated.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaWaterloo Institute for NanotechnologyCanadian Center for Electron Microscop

Observation of oscillatory relaxation in the Sn-terminated surface of epitaxial rock-salt SnSe {111}\{111\} topological crystalline insulator

Topological crystalline insulators have been recently predicted and observed in rock-salt structure SnSe $\{111\}$ thin films. Previous studies have suggested that the Se-terminated surface of this thin film with hydrogen passivation, has a reduced surface energy and is thus a preferred configuration. In this paper, synchrotron-based angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, along with density functional theory calculations, are used to demonstrate conclusively that a rock-salt SnSe $\{111\}$ thin film epitaxially-grown on \ce{Bi2Se3} has a stable Sn-terminated surface. These observations are supported by low energy electron diffraction (LEED) intensity-voltage measurements and dynamical LEED calculations, which further show that the Sn-terminated SnSe $\{111\}$ thin film has undergone a surface structural relaxation of the interlayer spacing between the Sn and Se atomic planes. In sharp contrast to the Se-terminated counterpart, the observed Dirac surface state in the Sn-terminated SnSe $\{111\}$ thin film is shown to yield a high Fermi velocity, $0.50\times10^6$m/s, which suggests a potential mechanism of engineering the Dirac surface state of topological materials by tuning the surface configuration.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, supplementary materials include

Highly polarized carbon nano-architecture as robust metal-free catalyst for oxygen reduction in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.04.021 © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Metal-free electrocatalysts have eluded widespread adoption in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells due to their far inferior catalytic activity than most non-precious metal-N-C counterparts (M-Nx-C) for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), despite their distinct advantages over the M-Nx-C catalysts, including lower cost and higher durability. Herein, we develop a rational bottom-up engineering strategy to improve the ORR performance of a metal-free catalyst by constructing a three-dimensional ultrathin N, P dual-doped carbon nanosheet. The resultant catalyst represents unprecedented ORR performance with an onset potential of 0.91 V, half-wave potential of 0.79 V. Impressively, a maximum power output at 579 mW cm−2 is generated in the fuel cell test, the best among reported metal-free catalysts and outperforms most of the M-Nx-C catalysts. The outstanding catalytic performance results from the highly active polarized carbon sites which are induced by selective graphitic nitrogen and phosphorous dual doping. Our findings provide new directions for the exploration of alternatives to Pt and bring a renew interests in the metal-free catalysts.National Natural Science Foundation of China || (21633008, 21433003, U1601211, 21733004) National Science and Technology Major Project || (2016YFB0101202) Jilin Province Science and Technology Development Program || (20150101066JC, 20160622037JC, 20170203003SF, 20170520150JH) Hundred Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Recruitment Program of Foreign Experts || (WQ20122200077

The impacts of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and E-commerce on bilateral trade flows

This study examines the impact of Internet and e-commerce adoption on bilateral trade flows using a panel of 21 developing- and least-developed countries and 30 OECD countries. Given the commitment of East African Community (EAC) to become the frontrunner in export-led economy across the African continent, special attention is dedicated to analyse the role of ICT and e-commerce on EAC’s export performance. The empirical results indicate that better access to the modern ICT and adoption of e-commerce applications stimulate bilateral trade flows at various levels. The study notes that the efficient use of ICT equipped with high speed internet and secured servers is a crucial milestone for unlocking the e-trade potentials for developing- and least-developed counties

Diverse Applications of Nanomedicine

The design and use of materials in the nanoscale size range for addressing medical and health-related issues continues to receive increasing interest. Research in nanomedicine spans a multitude of areas, including drug delivery, vaccine development, antibacterial, diagnosis and imaging tools, wearable devices, implants, high-throughput screening platforms, etc. using biological, nonbiological, biomimetic, or hybrid materials. Many of these developments are starting to be translated into viable clinical products. Here, we provide an overview of recent developments in nanomedicine and highlight the current challenges and upcoming opportunities for the field and translation to the clinic. \ua9 2017 American Chemical Society