2,781,349 research outputs found

    Does Cooking Technology Matter? Fuelwood Use and Efficiency of Different Cooking Technologies in Lilongwe District, Malawi

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    Biomass, mainly firewood and charcoal contributes over 90% of Malawi’s total energy demand. As a result, deforestation is increasing at unprecedented rate and firewood is becoming scarce. Individual assessment of various cooking technologies has been widely done without comparison of various cooking technologies. Therefore, this study has been devoted to compare the performance, cooking time and fuelwood usage of the three-stone fireplace, Rocket and Chitetezo cooking technologies. The study used Specific Fuel consumption (SC) as a proxy for principal indicator of cooking technology efficiency. It measures the amount of wood used per kg of food. Rocket stove has been found to use less time, less fuelwood and produces less smoke.Cooking Technology, Fuelwood, Stove Efficiency

    Corrupt Academic Practices: A Tragedy in Nigerian Educational System.

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    The purpose of this article is to x-ray corrupt academic practices which, advertently or inadvertently, has plunged Nigerian educational system into a tragic situation of endemicity of examination malpractices and other examination vices. The paper pointed out the neglect of the use of continuous assessment and total dependence on terminal examination which has been seen as the stigma to corrupt academic practices in Nigeria. This work alarmed that if nothing is done to correct the menace of academic corruption the educational system will continue to produce weak primary and secondary education, half baked grandaunts, poor tertiary education, decline of roles of universities, especially in the area of scientific research development, mass failure, examination as source of income through given cost intensive examination (e.g. UME, PUME, WAEC and NECO). The authors, therefore, suggest urgent steps to be taken which includes amendment of section 1, sub-section 9 (g) of the National Policy on Education that gives room for academic corruption with a focus to abolish terminal examinations and promotion examination and rather accommodate fully the use of well developed uniform standard of continuous assessment. It is a high time we need an adequate means to evaluate and assess our pupils/ students who are the leaders of tomorrow. Key words: academic corruption, examination malpractice, continuous assessment, National Policy on Education (NPE), Terminal examination.

    Effects of high energy radiation on the mechanical properties of epoxy/graphite fiber composites

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    Studies on the effects of high energy radiation on graphite fiber reinforced composites are summarized. Studies of T300/5208 and C6000/PMR15 composites, T300 fibers and the resin system MY720/DDS (tetraglycidyl-4,4'-diaminodiphenyl methane cured with diaminodiphenyl sulfone) are included. Radiation dose levels up to 8000 Mrads were obtained with no deleterious effects on the breaking stress or modulus. The effects on the structure and morphology were investigated using mechanical tests, electron spin resonance, X-ray diffraction, and electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA or X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy). Details of the experiments and results are given. Studies of the fracture surfaces of irradiated samples were studied with scanning electron microscopy; current results indicate no differences in the morphology of irradiated and control samples

    Existence Results for Some Damped Second-Order Volterra Integro-Differential Equations

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    In this paper we make a subtle use of operator theory techniques and the well-known Schauder fixed-point principle to establish the existence of pseudo-almost automorphic solutions to some second-order damped integro-differential equations with pseudo-almost automorphic coefficients. In order to illustrate our main results, we will study the existence of pseudo-almost automorphic solutions to a structurally damped plate-like boundary value problem.Comment: 20 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1402.563

    Microbial Bioremediation and Different Bioreactors Designs Applied

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    Microbial remediation of pollutants involves the use of microorganisms to degrade pollutants either completely to water and carbon dioxide (for organic pollutants) or into less toxic forms. In the case of nonbiodegradable inorganic compounds, bioremediation takes the form of bioaccumulation or conversion of one toxic species to a less toxic form for example Cr(VI) is converted to less toxic (III). Bioremediation is considered an environmentally friendly way for pollution clean-up. Microbial clean up can be applied in situ (in place of contamination) or ex situ (off the site of contamination). In situ remediation in the natural environment is deemed slow and often times difficult to control and optimize the different parameters affecting the bioremediation. To this end, use of engineered bioreactors is preferred. Engineered bioreactors providing for optimum conditions for microbial growth and biodegradation have been developed for use in bioremediation processes to achieve the different desired remediation goals. Bioreactors in use range in mode of operation from batch, continuous, and fed batch bioreactors and are designed to optimize microbial processes in relationship to contaminated media and nature of pollutant. Designed bioreactors for bioremediation range from packed, stirred tanks, airlift, slurry phase, and partitioning phase reactors amongst others

    Assessing the impact of loal content policy on youth culture in Mbare Harae: the case of Youth.com

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    The study sought to establish the impact of using the local content policy in reducing television cultural influences on Mbare youth in Zimbabwe. It is assumed that television has ideological and hegemonic functions which have come to dominate the life styles of the youths on issues of dress styles, musical tastes and language, thus threatening and weakening the long established local cultures. Hence the Zimbabwean government’s local content policy was established to reduce influences of alien cultures. This study, therefore, sought to establish if Mbare youth cultures confirm or reject the imitation of television cultures with regard to dress styles, music tastes and language. In addition, the investigation aimed at establishing the feasibility of using the local content policy to reduce foreign cultural intrusions vis-à-vis globalisation challenges. The three theories utilised in the discussion of the influence of television on Mbare youth culture in this study include the cultivation theory, the theory of hegemony and the uses and gratification theory. A qualitative study was adopted to gather data using focus group discussions, questionnaires and semiotic analysis. The sample of the study consisted of 87 participants and 4 Youth.com programmes. The study revealed that television has ideological and hegemonic functions. As such, it tends to be a dominant influence on the life styles and culture of Mbare youths. The study also established that Youth.com influences youth culture through music. In Zimbabwe music has become the most influential aspect of Youth.com despite not being specified in the local content policy on television broadcasting. Furthermore, the study shows that the implications of globalisation on local television content are undermining government efforts to preserve local cultures through the local content policy. The primary reason for this has to do with the fact that Youth.com programme does not contain a higher quota of local content as stipulated in the policy. However, although the local content policy was viewed as a political gimmick, the the study revealed that it was necessary in view of youths’ vulnerability to television’s ideological and hegemonic influences. Nevertheless, in view of the loopholes revealed by this study, the policy requires to be revised to cater for all the essential cultural elements, such as, music, which are allowing alien cultures to penetrate local ways of life. For instance, the urban groove music has major impacts on the culture of Mbare youths

    Misalignment challenges when integrating security requirements into mobile banking application development

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    This study identifies and explores the core challenge faced when integrating security requirements into the mobile application software development life cycle. Studies on key issues in Information Systems (IS) have been on-going in the past decades, with security moving up the ranks of top issues in IS. Security requirements can be added into mobile application development processes by practising secure coding or by adding a third party security tool. This study gathered data from a single case study and employs grounded theory methodology to reveal misalignment as the core challenge to integrating security requirements into mobile banking application development. Identified forms of misalignment include that between security requirements and (1) external entities, (2) roles, (3) skills and (4) system requirements. Some of the findings indicate the need for further research. Research indicates that mobile application development follows agile methods for development. Agile methods have been compared with Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). For this reason, research in IS could benefit from studies that focus on CAS as a theory to provide a better explanation on the misalignment issues in mobile application development. From the current study, the research also identified the need to address misalignment issues before embarking on a project involving integrating of security requirements

    The Banks of the Cohomology River

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    We give sharp bounds on the vanishing of the cohomology of a tensor product of vector bundles on the n-dimensional projective space in terms of the vanishing of the cohomology of the factors. For this purpose we introduce regularity indices generalizing the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity. As an application we give a sufficient condition for a vector bundle to have an unobstructed deformation theory that depends only on the cohomology table of the bundle. We construct complete families of bundles with such cohomology tables.Comment: 16 page

    Euler-like recurrences for smallest parts functions

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    We obtain recurrences for smallest parts functions which resemble Euler's recurrence for the ordinary partition function. The proofs involve the holomorphic projection of non-holomorphic modular forms of weight 2
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