Exploring Climate Change Adaptation, Mitigation and Marketing Connections

Adaptation and mitigation to the adverse impacts of rising weather and climate extremes require businesses to respond with adequate marketing strategies promoting sustained economic development. Unfortunately, the connections exploring such relationships have not been extensively investigated in the current body of literature. This study investigated the five marketing categories relating to sustainable practices (sustainable marketing, social marketing, green marketing, sustainable consumption and ecological marketing) within core research themes of climate change, global warming and sustainability from a bibliometric approach using the Scopus API. Additional topic modelling was conducted using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) unsupervised approach on downloaded abstracts to distinguish ideas communicated in time through research and publications with co-occurrences of major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports and Google search queries. The results confirmed marketing strategies aligned with the theme of sustainability with little work from small developing island nations. Additionally, findings demonstrated that research exploring business strategies through green marketing directed to green consumers with sustainable supply chain management had been dominantly increasing in the literature over recent years. Similarly, social marketing associated with green consumers was a common concern for the public and academics, rising over the years with strong influence from the published IPCC Assessment Reports. This study did not explore other published databases, including climate change-related meeting transcripts and published speeches from corporate and world leaders.</jats:p

Evidence of Climate Change Engagement Behaviour on a Facebook Fan-Based Page

Climate change has become one of the most debated topics in recent times. The social media platforms have given the general public the power and propensity to share and express concerns about climate change. However, climate change awareness created on social media depends on user engagement with the contents modulated by emotions. Much has been researched in this area using Twitter, but Facebook fan-based pages have not been extensively explored in the past. In this study, we investigate the engagement behaviour of users on a Facebook fan-based page titled “Global Climate Change Awareness” by analysing user insights data for two years starting from April 2018 to April 2020. Results show that the frequency of posts made to the page did not significantly promote engagement but improved visibility of the contents to the users. Overall, fan growth was attributed more to increased post visibility that enhanced post engagement. Hashtags associated with climate change had a significant reach amongst users, but those associated with disasters where the page expressed sadness and informed users about taking precautions had the highest engagement rate. Likewise, users from developing countries, especially from the small islands, were more engaged with climate change awareness. This study did not assess negative responses from users (possible deniers of climate change) and other Facebook fan-based pages due to data privacy and stringent Facebook policy.</jats:p

On Supermodular Contracts and Dense Subgraphs

We study the combinatorial contract design problem, introduced and studied by Dutting et. al. (2021, 2022), in both the single and multi-agent settings. Prior work has examined the problem when the principal's utility function is submodular in the actions chosen by the agent(s). We complement this emerging literature with an examination of the problem when the principal's utility is supermodular. In the single-agent setting, we obtain a strongly polynomial time algorithm for the optimal contract. This stands in contrast to the NP-hardness of the problem with submodular principal utility due to Dutting et. al. (2021). This result has two technical components, the first of which applies beyond supermodular or submodular utilities. This result strengthens and simplifies analogous enumeration algorithms from Dutting et. al. (2021), and applies to any nondecreasing valuation function for the principal. Second, we show that supermodular valuations lead to a polynomial number of breakpoints, analogous to a similar result by Dutting et. al. (2021) for gross substitutes valuations. In the multi-agent setting, we obtain a mixed bag of positive and negative results. First, we show that it is NP-hard to obtain any finite multiplicative approximation, or an additive FPTAS. This stands in contrast to the submodular case, where efficient computation of approximately optimal contracts was shown by Dutting et. al. (2022). Second, we derive an additive PTAS for the problem in the instructive special case of graph-based supermodular valuations, and equal costs. En-route to this result, we discover an intimate connection between the multi-agent contract problem and the notorious k-densest subgraph problem. We build on and combine techniques from the literature on dense subgraph problems to obtain our additive PTAS.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figure

Modelling and analysis of post-occupancy behaviour in residential buildings to inform BASIX sustainability assessments in NSW

Sustainability assessment tools aim to promote high sustainability outcomes in residential buildings, ensuring less consumption of water, energy and less emission of greenhouse gases. However, existing literature often presents variations between the estimated outcomes from the assessment tools and actual outcomes after building occupation. Research suggests that actual energy consumption could be significantly influenced by resident behaviour in addition to the dwelling conditions and the energy efficiency of appliances. This qualitative study explores the nature of resident behaviour in achieving thermal comfort and how these influence the actual energy performance of BASIX-affected dwellings in NSW. A preliminary evidence-based behaviour model is developed to support the behavioural analysis. The model positions the heating and cooling effects of the dwellings' design, the behaviour of residents in space heating and cooling, hot water consumption, etc. as well as multiple influential attributes such as resident's perceptions, preferences, attitudes and knowledge towards energy efficiency in relationship to energy efficiency outcomes. The model not only identifies the key drivers that trigger energy consumption behaviour, but also investigates the potential inter-relationships among all the key influential attributes. The findings of this research will inform the BASIX assessment tool, sustainability policy, building designs and government educational programs on sustainability

Multidimensional Modeling of Direct Injection Diesel Engine with Split Multiple Stage Fuel Injections

AbstractIn the present study, an attempt has been made to predict the influence of split multiple stage fuel injection on a DI diesel engine performance and emission characteristics. The predictions have been made for both conventional continuous fuel injection as well as split multiple stage fuel injection. The analysis mainly emphasize on the prediction of SFC and NOx levels in a diesel engine for the above mentioned two fuel injection modes. These computational predictions can enhance the knowledge of the flow and combustion characteristics, which is of vital importance for the design and development of a high performance DI diesel engine. The aforementioned simulation work has been performed using a CFD code. It has been found that the split multiple stage fuel injection exhibits strong effects on combustion characteristics and provides controlled pressure and temperature inside the combustion chamber. It has also been seen that split multiple stage fuel injection significantly reduces the formation of NOx compared to that ofthe continuous fuel injection

Ethyl 3-oxo-2-(2-phenyl­hydrazinyl­idene)butano­ate: a re-determination

The previous crystallographic studies [Wang et al. (2005 ▶). Huaxue Yanjiu 16, 29–32; Wang et al. (2007 ▶). Youji Huaxue, 27, 524] of the title compound, C12H14N2O3, gave only the unit-cell dimensions and an R factor with no other details available: the full structure is presented here. The eth­oxy group is disordered over two orientations with refined occupancies of 0.642 (15):0.358 (15). The nine C atoms and two N atoms of the 1-phenyl-2-(propan-2-yl­idene)hydrazine segment of the mol­ecule are close to being coplanar, with a maximum deviation of 0.0779 (14) Å for the phenyl­amino N atom and an intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond generates an S(6) ring. In the crystal, pairs of C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link mol­ecules into inverson dimers, generating R 2 2(16) loops

Comparative Study of AFB Detection in Concentrated and Unconcentrated Sputum Sample by Ziehl-Neelsen Staining and Auramine-O Staining of Patients Attending the Microscopic Centre of RNTCP at Darbhanga Medical College & Hospital, Laheriasarai

Ziehl-Neelsen is a common bacteriological staining method used from a long time to stain acid-fast bacilli, especially Mycobacterium tuberculosis which causes mainly pulmonary tuberculosis. In recent technologies, fluorescent-staining is considered to be a more reliable method due to more intensive binding of mycolic acids of the bacilli to phenol auramine-O, so the tubercle bacilli is seen more clearly against black background.Objective: This study was done to compare the efficacy of conventional Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) and Auramine-O (AO) fluorescent microscopy in detecting acid-fast bacilli in direct and concentrated sputum samples of patients attending the microscopic centre of RNTCP at Darbhanga Medical College & Hospital, Laheriasarai.Method: One thousand and fifty patients suspected of having pulmonary tuberculosis referred to the RNTCP centre of Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital was included in this study. Spot sputum sample was collected as the clinical sample. Direct smears were prepared from the mucopurulent part of the sputum with a sterile loop. Samples were then concentrated using modified Petroff’s method and smear prepared from the concentrated sediment. Both smears were then stained by ZN and AO staining method respectively.Result: Out of 1050 samples, 165 samples were positive by AO method in direct method and 166 samples were positive by AO method in concentrated method, 147 were positive by ZN staining in direct method and 156 samples were positive by ZN in concentrated method.Conclusion: FM definitely improves the diagnostic value of the sputum smear especially in patients with low density of bacilli that are likely to be missed on ZN-stained smears, concentrated method on both AO and ZN stain were more sensitive than direct method

TEduChain: A Platform for Crowdsourcing Tertiary Education Fund using Blockchain Technology

Blockchain is an emerging technology framework for creating and storing transaction in distributed ledgers with a high degree of security and reliability. In this paper we present a blockchain-based platform to create and store contracts in between students and their higher education sponsors. The sponsorship might be in any form, such as scholarship, donation or loan. The fund will be arranged and managed by a group of competitive agents (Fundraisers) who will hold the distributed ledgers and act as miners in the blockchain network