How Much Extra Affordable Housing is Needed in England?

Booming housing markets in the UK have once again brought into sharper focus the issues of housing affordability, housing need and ‘affordable housing’ solutions. This paper reviews issues in the measurement of problems of affordability, particularly access to homeownership, and reports on modelled estimates for England at regional and local levels. These models provide a method for comparing pressures in different areas, but also for measuring market change over time and its relationship with the economy. They are also useful for identifying and assessing the scope for ‘intermediate’ forms of provision between conventional homeownership and social renting. Measures of recent and prospective needs for additional affordable housing provision, derived from this analysis of affordability, are presented and assessed. These findings are linked to a broader contemporary policy debate about housing and planning policy in England.     

Assessing sediment inputs to small reservoirs in Upper East Region,Ghana

Many small dams and dugouts have been constructed in the Upper East Region of Ghana to address the problem of regional water scarcity. The reservoirs were constructed primarily as water supplies for agricultural irrigation and livestock watering, aquaculture and domestic use. However, many of the reservoirs dry up during the dry season, affecting the livelihoods of their basin inhabitants. A major cause for the dried reservoirs is siltation, which reduces the reservoir’s storage capacities. The goal of this study is to quantify the annual siltation rate of four study reservoirs, using a bathymetric survey and reservoir soil sampling. The sediment yield and its relation to catchment area also were assessed. The results of this study indicate that the annual siltation rates are 1272, 3518, 2764 and 6135 t year^?1 for Doba, Dua, Zebilla and Kumpalgogo reservoirs, respectively. Analyses of the sediment yield and catchment areas illustrated that the sediment yields decreased with increasing catchment area. All the study reservoirs have lost their dead storage capacity, which was meant to store sediment until the end of their anticipated design lives. The decreasing storage capacity because of siltation will affect the livelihoods of the local basin inhabitants, as the reservoirs will not be able to achieve all their intended purposes. The results of this study indicate that, because siltation is not the only factor threatening the benefits gained from the reservoirs, the integrated assessment of all relevant factors is required.     

Civil and structural engineering applications,recent trends,research and developments on pultruded fiber reinforced polymer closed sections: a review

The objectives of this study are to review and evaluate the developments and applications of pultruded fiber-reinforced polymer composites in civil and structural engineering and review advances in research and developments. Several case applications are reviewed. The paper presents a state-of-the-art review of fundamental research on the behavior of pultruded fiber reinforced polymer closed sections and highlights gaps in knowledge and areas of potential further research.     

Applications of artificial intelligence in engineering and manufacturing: a systematic review

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing - Engineering and manufacturing processes and systems designs involve many challenges, such as dynamism, chaotic behaviours, and complexity. Of late, the...     

Road transport energy demand in West Africa: a test of the consumer-tolerable price hypothesis

This study estimates road transport energy demand (both aggregate energy fuel and gasoline energy fuel) in West Africa using the Pooled Mean Group Estimate and the Panel FMOLS. Primarily, we test for the nonlinearity in the price effects (hereafter referred to as the consumer-tolerable price hypothesis), which is motivated by Adom (2017. “The long-run Price Sensitivity Dynamics of Industrial and Residential Electricity Demand: The Impact of Deregulating Electricity Prices” Energy Economics 62: 43–60). First, for the baseline model, we find that, in the long-run, the energy conservation potency of pricing tools is restrained due to the presence of a rebound effect. Similar result is obtained in the short-run with evidence of cross-sectional differences. Second, in the long-run, we find that the demand–price relation is an inverted U-shaped, but we could only confirm this for Nigeria and Ghana; this suggests that, in the long-run, price disincentive tools have to be higher than a required price threshold in order to induce energy conservation behaviours in these economies.     

Utilization of lignocellulosic waste for ethanol production : Enzymatic digestibility and fermentation of pretreated shea tree sawdust

Enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation methods were evaluated on alkaline peroxide pretreated shea tree sawdust conversion to ethanol. Optimum pretreatment conditions of 120 °C reaction temperature, 30 min reaction time, and 20 mL L^?1 of water hydrogen peroxide concentration (1%(v/v)H₂O₂) solubilized 679 g kg^?1 of hemicellulose and 172 g kg^?1 of lignin. 617 g kg^?1 cellulose was retained in the solid fraction. The maximum yield of reducing sugar with optimized enzyme loadings by two enzyme preparations (cellulase and β-glucosidase) was 165 g kg^?1 of dry biomass. The ethanol yield was 7.35 g L^?1 after 72 h incubation period under the following conditions: 2% cellulose loading, enzyme concentration was 25 FPU (g cellulose)^?1 loading, yeast inoculums was 10% (v/v), 32 oC, and pH 4.8. The pretreatments gave information about the hindrances caused by lignin presence in lignocellulosic materials and that hemicelluloses are better hydrolyzed than lignin, thereby enhancing enzymatic digestibility of the sawdust material.     

Accelerated hardware video object segmentation: From foreground detection to connected components labelling

This paper demonstrates the use of a single-chip FPGA for the segmentation of moving objects in a video sequence. The system maintains highly accurate background models, and integrates the detection of foreground pixels with the labelling of objects using a connected components algorithm. The background models are based on 24-bit RGB values and 8-bit gray scale intensity values. A multimodal background differencing algorithm is presented, using a single FPGA chip and four blocks of RAM. The real-time connected component labelling algorithm, also designed for FPGA implementation, run-length encodes the output of the background subtraction, and performs connected component analysis on this representation. The run-length encoding, together with other parts of the algorithm, is performed in parallel; sequential operations are minimized as the number of run-lengths are typically less than the number of pixels. The two algorithms are pipelined together for maximum efficiency.     

Ingroup Favoritism and Outgroup Derogation: Effects of News Valence,Character Race,and Recipient Race on Selective News Reading

This study examined whether the positive or negative valence of a news story, and the race of the character portrayed in the story, would influence Black or White readers' selection of a story. The study employed selective exposure methodology to unobtrusively measure story selections among Black and White readers as they browsed a news site. The results demonstrated Black newsreaders were more likely to select and read positive and negative stories featuring their racial ingroup, and more likely to select and read negative vis‐à‐vis positive stories about their outgroup. In contrast, Whites' story preference was not affected by story valence or character race. Theoretical assumptions from social identity, social comparison, and social cognitive theories are used to explain the findings.     

A preliminary assessment of consumer’s exposure to organochlorine pesticides in fruits and vegetables and the potential health risk in Accra Metropolis,Ghana

Accra Metropolis is the major recipient of agricultural produce in Ghana, with almost the entire population depending on rural agricultural activities for subsistence. To increase agricultural produce, various forms of pesticides are normally used in fruits and vegetable farming. The consequence is that several cases of pesticide poisoning have been observed. In this preliminary study, a field survey was carried out to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and peoples’ perception concerning the use of pesticides by farmers in fruit production. The residual concentrations of selected pesticides in pawpaw, imported apples and tomato samples and the potential health risks associated with the exposure to these pesticides were also assessed. The field survey data indicated that more than 70% of the participants reported one or more poisoning upon fruits consumption resulting in pesticide-related illnesses. Pesticide residues in the various environmental samples were determined by gas chromatography with electron capture detector (GC-ECD). The results showed that, the levels of pesticide residues varied from <0.01 μg/g to as high as 0.11 μg/g depending on the pesticide monitored. The analysis of health risk estimates revealed heptachlor, heptachlor epoxide, endrin aldehyde, and endrin ketone levels exceeded the reference dose, suggesting a great potential for systemic toxicity in children considered the most vulnerable population subgroup. Lastly, the public is in the know of pesticide residues in fruits and calls for the curtailing of pesticide use on fruits and vegetable production via educational programmes for farmers on control and safer use of pesticides.     

Supplementing urban water supply with rainwater harvesting in Accra,Ghana

This article examines the challenges associated with rainwater harvesting and usage in peri-urban Accra. Data collected from 357 heads of household reveal that rainwater harvesting has the potential to supplement existing water sources in peri-urban Accra. However, high investment costs for rainwater harvesting facilities, short-term tenancy arrangements, the perception that rainwater is not clean, and the unique dry climate of the Accra Plains emerge as key challenges limiting domestic use of rainwater. Public education for house owners to invest in rainwater harvesting facilities and governmental support will be needed to increase investment in rainwater harvesting, purification and usage.