Pro-poor urban adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh : a study of urban extreme poverty, vulnerability and asset adaption

This dissertation investigates pro-poor urban adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh. Dhaka city, a capital of Bangladesh, is widely recognised to be one of the most climate vulnerable mega cities in the world. Climate change impacts are likely to affect the poorest urban residents disproportionately as having the least capacity to adapt to a changing climate. However, the assertion that the poorest are the most vulnerable to climate change is commonly made as a generalisation, with limited examination of the dynamic and differentiated nature of poverty. This research therefore aims to examine pro-poor urban adaptation in the context of climate variability and change. In analysing climate change vulnerability and asset adaptation from urban extreme poverty, this research identifies a differentiated view of poverty and vulnerability and also provides an analysis of how extreme poor households get access to assets and build asset adaptation strategies. This research found that extreme poor households do their best to adapt to perceived climate changes, but in absence of savings, access to credit and insurance, they are forced to adopt adverse coping strategies. Social policy and social protection could therefore become more of a priority sector for adaptation than it has been so far. This can create opportunities for the poorest to accumulate assets which help them to build asset adaptation or resilience strategies. By reviewing key theories and practices, this research first addresses the question of whether there is any interrelation between poverty dynamics and vulnerability. The research then explores drivers of climate change vulnerability for the urban extreme poor. This research critically analyses autonomous adaptation and planned asset based adaptation in order to build a conceptual framework of pro-poor asset adaptation for the urban extreme poor households and groups. Following this framework, this research aims to identify the individual adaptation practices and role of institutions and policies in supporting or constraining these adaptation practices. This research also examines the role of social policy and social protection for pro-poor adaptation. The research then applies the concepts drawn from a critical literature review to analyse the context of Bangladesh. Thus, the research has conducted household life-history interviews to explore the vulnerabilities and asset adaptation strategies of the extreme poor households. To understand household asset endowments (and their returns) descriptive statistics are derived from secondary sources. In addition to household interviews, key informant surveys, focus group discussions, grey materials and analysis of secondary academic materials were analysed to acquire qualitative information on the role of formal and informal institutions and policies for adaptation practices. The household life-history findings support the idea that poverty traps are likely to be linked to vulnerability. The empirical evidence also shows that there is a clear relationship between vulnerability to the market (exclusion from market opportunities), low asset holdings (and their returns) and ill-health. The slums and squatter settlements in Dhaka city are marked by high levels of physical vulnerabilities in the context of climate change, mainly as a consequence of their high politico-legal and socioeconomic vulnerabilities. The individual adaptation practices are impact-minimising, short lived, ad hoc and even harmful measures because the urban poorest are excluded from formal policies and institutions and in the absence of formal rights and entitlements, the process of facilitating and maintaining patron–client relationships is a central coping strategy for the poorest. The social policy and social protection are found to be effective in facilitating asset adaptation for the urban extreme poor and contribute to greater resilience to climate change. Analysing the empirical evidence through the lens of the pro-poor asset adaptation framework, this research reveals that the asset transfer approach was an effective programmatic intervention for building household adaptation strategies. Social funds and supports to community driven development can enhance the capacity of community organisations to develop small infrastructures that actually stops or greatly reduces flooding. However, challenging the adverse structural context is not a matter of building at a household and collective level assets but also capacity to participate in and influence the institutions from which they have previously been excluded. Attention must be paid to building a strong collective organisation in order to break the existing social order and inequalities. The city and municipal government can create an enabling environment for this grassroots mobilisation by providing services and information, and ensuring their access to the decision making process. A combination of micro (household), meso (community) and macro (city and municipal) level asset-based actions can ensure the long term resilience of extreme poor households and groups

Development, validation, and application of methods for analysis of fungal contamination and presence of mycotoxins in grains （穀類のカビとカビ毒汚染の検出法の開発、妥当性確認とその応用）

信州大学(Shinshu university)博士（農学）ThesisMD. ZAKIR HOSSAIN. Development, validation, and application of methods for analysis of fungal contamination and presence of mycotoxins in grains （穀類のカビとカビ毒汚染の検出法の開発、妥当性確認とその応用）. 信州大学, 2015, 博士論文. 博士（農学）, 甲第57号, 平成27年3月20日授与.doctoral thesi

Hydrothermal decarboxylation of fatty acids and their derivatives for liquid transportation fuels

Due to the depletion of fossil fuel reserves, renewable resources are required to produce tomorrow’s fuel range hydrocarbons. This thesis focuses on the hydrothermal decarboxylation of fatty acids and their derivatives derived from renewable sources. These are required for liquid transportation fuels which have similar properties to conventional fuels. Detailed catalytic studies were performed for the decarboxylation of oleic acid as a model compound and corn distiller’s oil (CDO) as a real feedstock. Commercial activated carbon and laboratory prepared Ni-Al2O3, MgO-Al2O3, Mo-Al2O3 catalysts were also examined as catalysts. Fatty acid derivatives such as castor oil, waste cooking oil, and palm oil were explored as potential feedstocks. Activated carbon was found to be an efficient catalyst for oleic acid decarboxylation in both batch and continuous reactor systems. The results showed that up to 97% degree of decarboxylation was achieved using a batch reactor system under optimized experimental conditions, while up to 91% was obtained in a continuous fixed bed reactor system at comparatively low pressure. Liquid yields in both cases were ~ 62 and 63.5 wt% whereas the selectivity of heptadecane was found to be 81 and 89.3%, respectively. This result is attributed to the difference in the process and reaction dynamics of this experimental system. Although the Mo-Al2O3 catalyst exhibited 91% decarboxylation and 71wt% liquid yield using the continuous reactor system, the selectivity of heptadecane was comparatively lower compared to that of activated carbon. This indicates that the Mo-Al2O3 catalyst led to some cracking of the oleic acid feed into lower hydrocarbons instead of heptadecane. On the other hand, decarboxylation of CDO in the batch reactor system provided almost 100% degree of decarboxylation with 65% liquid yield using activated carbon as catalyst under the optimized reaction conditions. It was also found that the fuel properties of the decarboxylated liquid products using activated carbon and Mo-Al2O3 catalyst had a similar density and high heating value (HHV) compared to commercial fuels such as kerosene, jet fuel and diesel. Decarboxylation of Castor oil, palm oil and waste cooking oil were examined using the Mo-Al2O3 catalyst in the continuous reactor system. The results showed that the decarboxylation activities of this feedstocks followed the trend of oleic acid and CDO, indicating high potential for these feedstocks. This thesis shows that hydrothermal decarboxylation of fatty acids or their derivatives provides an excellent opportunity to produce renewable hydrocarbons which can potentially significantly reduce our dependency on fossil fuels

Impending Effects of Basel III in the BRICS Economies

This thesis addresses the concerns whether the universal rules of Basel III would be able to protect banks and ensure macroeconomic benefits in the BRICS economies. The empirical evidence shows that the Basel III regulation is effective in increasing the resilience of banks. The regulation increases GDP albeit with some macroeconomic costs. However, the net benefits are positive. Thus, it seems worthwhile to adopt and implement the Basel III regulation in the BRICS economies

Observer’s Galvanic Skin Response for Discriminating Real from Fake Smiles

Abstract: This paper demonstrates a system to discriminate real from fake smiles with high accuracy by sensing observers’ galvanic skin response (GSR). GSR signals are recorded from 10 observers, while they are watching 5 real and 5 posed or acted smile video stimuli. We investigate the effect of various feature selection methods on processed GSR signals (recorded features) and computed features (extracted features) from the processed GSR signals, by measuring classification performance using three different classifiers. A leave-one-observer-out process is implemented to reliably measure classification accuracy. It is found that simple neural network (NN) using random subset feature selection (RSFS) based on extracted features outperforms all other cases, with 96.5% classification accuracy on our two classes of smiles (real vs. fake). The high accuracy highlights the potential of this system for use in the future for discriminating observers’ reactions to authentic emotional stimuli in information systems settings such as advertising and tutoring systems

Ru-Ni-Al20 3 CATALYSTS FOR SUPERCRITICAL WATER GASIFICATION OF GLUCOSE

Application of biomass and waste for renewable energy sources is gaining an important role in the world’s future energy policy as we are facing a tremendous challenges related to energy and the environment, in particular energy sustainability while reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Supercritical water gasification (SCWG) presents an innovative technology for complete and efficient destruction of biomass or wastes without formation of harmful by-products. The major products formed during supercritical water gasification of biomass are hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide with clean water effluents. Catalysts enhance the overall gasification efficiency as well as the organic carbon destruction in the liquid effluents to enable drinking quality water as the effluent. Since SCWG is a hydrothermal process and catalyst deactivation always occurs in high temperature processes due to coke deposition on the catalyst surface, the aim of this study is to prepare noble and non-noble metal based catalyst on alumina support to reduce the graphitic coke formation during supercritical water gasification. Usually non-noble metal based catalysts are used in high temperature gasification because of their ready availability and low cost but this study showed that introduction of a small amount of noble metal onto non-noble based catalysts greatly influenced the catalyst performance while reducing the graphitic coke formation. In this research, supercritical water gasification (SCWG) of a model biomass compound was studied to produce hydrogen rich gas at moderate temperatures (400-500°C). The catalysts were synthesized by different procedures, evaluated and characterized (fresh and spent) to study the catalyst role in SCWG. The catalysts studied were synthesized by in incipient wetness impregnation and a sol-gel method with and without various templates, respectively to compare the catalytic performance based on their synthetic procedures. It was found that the templating synthesis of catalysts increased the surface area as well as pore volume & strong metal support interactions in the catalysts which play an important role in SCWG. The aerogel catalyst prepared from sol-gel synthesis with supercritical CO2 drying also enabled a catalyst to be produced with a large surface area and strong metal support interaction. The most important finding of this study was to reduce graphitic coke formation during gasification because of the presence of ruthenium metal in the catalyst structure. To the best of our knowledge, the resulting hydrogen yield, total organic carbon (TOC) destruction and gasification efficiency were significantly higher using the novel aerogel and templated Ru-Ni-Al203 catalysts than any other reported results for SCWG of any biomass compound at moderate temperatures (~500 °C) and pressures (~25 MPa). A global kinetic model for TOC destruction in supercritical water was developed using non-linear regression, which convincingly fit the experimental results showing the significant effect of water in SCWG of model biomass compound

A Review On Some Alternative Specifications Of The Logit Model

The logit model, perhaps the simplest and the best possible probabilistic choice model in the discrete choice modeling literature. As a matter of fact, it has been extensively used in many statistical and economic applications. Unfortunately, a very unattractive property of this model in its multinomial situation is independence of irrelevant alternative (IIA) property. Due to such limitation, a number of alternative possible specifications have been proposed in the literature. This paper investigates some of the important alternative specifications of the logit model along with their merits, demerits, estimation techniques, testing procedures and attempts to advocate about the superiority of the existing specifications for the users. Interestingly, we found no such absolutely superior model to be used as an alternative to the logit model. However, generalized extreme value (GEV) model and multinomial probit model have been found to be very promising and much better than other models

UTILIZING URBAN SPACE FOR BETTER TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT- A STUDY OF KHULNA CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, BANGLADESH

A city center or central business district (CBD) is the heart of a city. As a large number of people and business concentrates there for different purposes it deserves special consideration from city planning. Most crucial problem of CBD is that much development blurs beside the streets and it disrupts circulation and communication. The CBD area of Khulna already coped up with this problem. In the Khulna CBD area also faces this sort of traffic problems and to minimize these traffic problems, utilization effectively of urban space through different design considerations is required. This paper also tries to develop layout plan focusing the maximum utilization of the urban space, considered different design criteria and it can be used as a tool to reduce the traffic problems of the CBD area. Various street problems are identified which are responsible for the inefficient circulation system of the study area. It is also identified that street problems are related with design elements. As in the study area, the conditions of urban design elements are poor they can not ensure proper canalizations both for pedestrian and vehicular traffic. In the time of urban design element analysis focus has been given on the street management respect. The proposals included in this research paper will be helpful for improvement of the present level of function as well as can be used to develop development control rules.Urban space, Traffic Management & Central Business District

Acknowledging the Role of Gender in Organic farming, Informal Seed Sector in particular and krisoks’ Perspectives

Seed-the source of life. And woman holds the seed with the hope of new life. Instead of producing diverse seed from homestead agriculture, women are engaged traditionally to select seed, drying, preserving, protecting during storage, saving them from any economical crisis of the family. To ensure the seed quality and the perfect storage place & methods, women hold the vast knowledge. They decide the quantity and variety of seed to be saved and the method of preservation. Seed selection by women is a continuous activity. Working in the fields, they observe the plants and decide which seeds to select. They identify plants of good quality on the basis of size, grain formation and their resistance to pests and insects. Here a woman looks at the seed from the view of a seed scientist. Sometime the relation between seed and women is beyond 'rationale'. Sometime the women hold such knowledge about seed that are not also 'rational'. For instance, to cross the floodwater tying up the jackfruit seeds in a thin fabric. But interestingly, it could have quite scientific base. Now a day, Seed is not only related with women and indigenous knowledge but also with international trade and Intellectual Property Rights. The issue of the 'commodification' of seed and the drive towards the control of genetic resources and the materials derived from has raised environmental, social, political, ethical and economical questions. But for sure most of the credit of genetic resources goes to Women. So it is everyone's moral duty to give credit where credit is due to explore the tremendous potentialities of the informal seed sector in the development of a national 'seed security'. At least in the question of "SEED", man is not competitor to woman, but for sure complementary. We Krisoks do respect individuality of all forms of life – but under fulfillment of certain norms and values of its own community. The initial attempt of this paper is to understand the linkages between gender and biodiversity (including agrobiodiversity). Thus we have been trying to establish the social construction of gender roles and gender dimensions of conservation and resource use. Krisoks perspectives recognises that the empowerment of women is key to raising levels of nutrition, improving the production and distribution of food and agricultural products, and enhancing the living conditions and standards of rural live and livelihood. We all are a part of the “Nature” and Nature exists through us. This paper will shed some light on how with all the elements of nature we Krisoks are proffering new visions of enjoying “Notun Jibon” (New Life) towards a just and peaceful local community for women and men. Integrating women in all strata of agriculture and organic farming by local krisoks community on the way of life, and struggle with all the implications of the word ”happiness and sharing” - is the main thrust of our research