Rural homes and urban dwellings? Gender,migration and the importance of tenure in Gaborone,Botswana

"The issue of return migration has been widely debated in African migration literature in view of strong rural-urban ties and urban growth based largely on in-migration. On the basis of fieldwork in Botswana, it is argued that there are important gender differences in terms of the commitment to rural and urban areas. It has been postulated in past studies that the decision to remain in towns depends in part upon urban tenure and it is argued that home owners are more likely than tenants to be permanent urban dwellers. Again, there are important gender differences and women appear to be more committed to the urban dwelling than men."     

Optimal operation of reservoirs for downstream water quality control using linked simulation optimization

A methodology is developed for optimal operation of reservoirs to control water quality requirements at downstream locations. The physicochemical processes involved are incorporated using a numerical simulation model. This simulation model is then linked externally with an optimization algorithm. This linked simulation–optimization‐based methodology is used to obtain optimal reservoir operation policy. An elitist genetic algorithm is used as the optimization algorithm. This elitist‐genetic‐algorithm‐based linked simulation–optimization model is capable of evolving short‐term optimal operation strategies for controlling water quality downstream of a reservoir. The performance of the methodology developed is evaluated for an illustrative example problem. Different plausible scenarios of management are considered. The operation policies obtained are tested by simulating the resulting pollutant concentrations downstream of the reservoir. These performance evaluations consider various scenarios of inflow, permissible concentration limits, and a number of management periods. These evaluations establish the potential applicability of the developed methodology for optimal control of water quality downstream of a reservoir. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of criteria and indicators in community based sustainable mangrove management in the Sunderbans,India

Management of mangroves in a sustainable ecological as well as economic way is a difficult proposition and needs multi-disciplinary intervention. This paper highlights the importance of criteria and indicators to evaluate the status of performance of communities in managing their mangroves sustainably. The framework developed on the basis of 6 principles, 12 criteria, 36 indicators and 47 verifiers had been applied for assessment of Eco-Development Committees of the Sunderbans, India. Results show the presence of a highly positive correlation between performance of the committees and condition of the mangrove environment. Level of implementation of legal and institutional management strategies to protect mangroves proves to be the essential pre-condition in achieving sustainability. The study further demonstrates the effectiveness of the developed framework in the context of community forestry since the methodology was designed to be simple and flexible so as to apply it in forest management unit level without any major difficulty.     

Drift solitary structures in inhomogeneous degenerate quantum plasmas with trapped electrons

In the present work, we have considered the nonlinear effects due to trapped electrons in an inhomogeneous degenerate quantum plasma. The formation of drift solitary structures has been investigated for both fully and partially degenerate plasmas. The Sagdeev potential approach has been employed to obtain arbitrary amplitude solitary structures. Interestingly, for a fixed value of density, not only compressive but rarefactive solitary structures have been obtained for a certain temperature range. Furthermore, it has been observed that the drift solitary structures exist only for the case when the drift velocity is smaller than the velocity of the nonlinear structure. The theoretical results obtained have been analyzed numerically for the parameters typically found in white dwarfs and the relevance of the results with regard to white dwarf asteroseismology is also pointed out.     

Application of Continuous Wavelet Transform in?Examining Soil Spatial Variation: A?Review

An adequate understanding of soil spatial variation as a function of space and scale is necessary in ecological modeling, environmental prediction, precision agriculture, soil quality assessment and natural resources management. Soil spatial variation can be partitioned into frequencies (scale) and positions (location) by the wavelet transform. This review focuses mainly on different applications of the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for the identification of the scale and location dependence of soil attributes. We discussed both wavelet spectra and wavelet coherence in our analysis of soil spatial variation. Global wavelet spectra, being the sum of wavelet spectra over all spatial locations at a scale, can be used to examine the dominant scale of variation. Furthermore, some variations at a particular scale persist over all locations (termed global features), whereas others are present at only a few locations (localized features). Wavelet spectra can be used to identify both localized and global features. The combination of localized and global features provides a complete picture of the scale-location information of different processes in the field and may provide better guidance in designing efficient management practices. Wavelet coherency partitions the total correlation between two variables into correlations at different scales and locations, while also revealing the scale- and location-specific relationship between those two variables. This relationship may be helpful in developing predictive links between one property and another.     

Tokapal tuff-facies kimberlite, Bastar craton, Central India: A nickel prospect?

We report the occurrence of garnierite (a general term referring to Ni-Mg bearing hydrous silicates in laterites) from the crater-facies Tokapal kimberlite of the Bastar craton, Central India. Garnierite occurs as discrete ovoid or amoeboid segregations (up to 200 mm) or as veinlets with up to 18.1 wt% NiO and high iron contents (up to 36.2 wt% FeO^T). Chemical composition of the garnierite implies its derivation from a magnesium-rich protolith. Extensive lateritisation of the large crater-facies (～2.5 km diameter) saucer-shaped kimberlite under tropical weathering conditions, aided by suitable topography, drainage and favourable structural set-up, are the factors inferred to be responsible for the formation of garnierite in the Tokapal system. As lateritic nickel ores constitute significant resources for nickel exploration, the perspective of the Tokapal kimberlite as a nickel prospect needs to be investigated.     

Pressure Energy Diffusion Rates in the Wall-Wake Region of Immobile Solid Sphere in Open Channel Flows-Numerical Simulation and Experimental Study

Water Resources - Present study elucidates the near-bed pressure energy diffusion rates in the wall-wake region of flowpast a stationary solid sphere in open channel. Vertical distributions of...     

Semiactive fuzzy control of the seismic response of building frames with MR dampers

A fuzzy‐logic control algorithm, based on the fuzzification of the MR damper characteristics, is presented for the semiactive control of building frames under seismic excitation. The MR damper characteristics are represented by force–velocity and force–displacement curves obtained from the sinusoidal actuation test. The method does not require any analytical model of MR damper characteristics, such as the Bouc‐Wen model, to be incorporated into the control algorithm. The control algorithm has a feedback structure and is implemented by using the fuzzy‐logic and Simulink toolboxes of MATLAB. The performance of the algorithm is studied by using it to control the responses of two example buildings taken from the literature—a three‐storey building frame, in which controlled responses are obtained by clipped‐optimal control and a ten‐storey building frame. The results indicate that the proposed scheme provides nearly the same percentage reduction of responses as that obtained by the clipped‐optimal control with much less control force and much less command voltage. Position of the damper is found to significantly affect the controlled responses of the structure. It is observed that any increase in the damper capacity beyond a saturation level does not improve the performance of the controller. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.