American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS)
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Grain Yield of Rice, Corn, and Sorghum to Low External Input Agriculture Practices in Maliana, Bobonaro, Timor Leste
Get PDFA farmers’ field yield trial during the 2018 dry season was conducted in Maliana, Bobonaro District, Timor Leste to evaluate the compatibility of selected hybrid and inbred varieties of rice, maize, and sorghum to low external input crop management practices common to subsistence farmers in the region. In rice, grain yield performance as influenced by genotype (hybrid or inbred) and planting density (single or double row spacing) was assessed by measuring grain yield and selected agronomic traits. In rice, grain yield was not significantly different, between hybrid and inbred varieties, but higher planting densities gave 17-27% advantage for hybrids and 36-45% for inbred varieties. The observed yield from farmers’ field was, however, 60-70% lower than yield obtained from experimental fields. Agronomic traits (plant height, tiller, panicle, and spikelet counts) were found to have very strong genotype x planting density interaction effects, and although post-hoc analyses revealed marginal differences on selected yield-related components between the two planting densities, these differences were not statistically significant, and did not contribute to improvement in rice grain yield. Hybrid and inbred varieties of maize and sorghum showed comparable yield levels in two independent yield trials, and although agronomic traits showed significant differences between varieties, these did not account for any yield advantage.
Impact of the Implementation of the Construction Guidelines Practiced Among Industries in Cabanatuan City During Pandemic
Get PDFMost countries have directed a complete lockdown as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the corona-virus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic. Covid 19 cases bring out an alarming increase. It can be seen everywhere through limited mobility and the closure of many on-site businesses and some industries. Human resources as one of the utmost in the construction industry\u27s operations are greatly affected by the pandemic that cannot escape, with some complete shutdowns. Most projects have been put on hold until further notice. The condition resulted in addressing prudently the pandemic\u27s impact at the start and end of the crisis making everyone to future readiness and preparations. The study was purposely understanding the extent of the impact of the pandemic on the implementation of the construction guidelines among the selected construction industries in Cabanatuan City. The findings divulged that majority of the participants were in middle management level positions, and 47 percent of the respondents with an average of 9.5 years of construction work experience had 5 years or less experience. Initial measures through the dissemination of information creating awareness were implemented by most establishments including construction firms along with the social distancing, sanitation, and provision of PPE’s as resumption underwent. Respondents experienced the impact of the pandemic on the implementation of the construction guidelines to a moderate extent in terms of materials; manpower; and equipment. The significant relationship between the implementation of the construction guidelines and its impact during the pandemic manifested a positive relationship. Therefore, the researchers concluded that the pandemic impacted the implementation of the construction guidelines among the selected construction industries in Cabanatuan City
Sale of Charcoal in the City of Bunia, Ituri Province, DRC
Get PDFAn environmental study using surveys was done on 60 sellers in six markets in Bunia city in order to assess the sale of charcoal. The Komanda forest is the main supply route with Cynometra alexandri as the tree species of choice. The average monthly supply is 5 891,69 kg (5,89 T) and the average monthly sale is 3 632,36 kg (3,63 T) per seller. Charcoal sellers in Bunia make sales with an average monthly expenditure of CDF 2 307,710 (approx. USD 1 153,85) per seller, giving an average monthly profit of CDF 257,876 (around USD 128,93), or an average commercial profitability of 10%. Thus, it is important to organize and supervise these sellers for a sustainable management of this type of wood-energy
Automatic Segmentation of Land Cover in Satellite Images
Get PDFSemantic segmentation problems such as landcover segmentation rely on large amounts of annotated images to excel. Without such data for target regions, transfer learning methods are widely used to incorporate knowledge from other areas and domains to improve performance. In this study, we analyze the performance of landcover segmentation models trained on low-resolution images with insufficient data for the targeted region or zoom level. In order to boost performance on target data, we experiment with models trained with unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised transfer learning approaches, including satellite images from public datasets and other unlabeled sources.According to experimental results, transfer learning improves segmentation performance by 3.4% MIoU (mean intersection over union) in rural regions and 12.9% MIoU in urban regions. We observed that transfer learning is more effective when two datasets share a comparable zoom level and are labeled with identical rules; otherwise, semi-supervised learning is more effective using unlabeled data. Pseudo labeling based unsupervised domain adaptation method improved building detection performance in urban cities. In addition, experiments showed that HRNet outperformed building segmentation approaches in multi-class segmentation
Creation of Small Rural Energy Communities in the Island of Crete, Greece. Are They Feasible?
Get PDFEnergy communities are well developed in many EU countries allowing the local production of green energy with the participation of environmentally conscious residents willing to be energy self-sufficient utilizing indigenous green energy resources and eliminating their carbon emissions. The possibility of creating energy communities in small rural villages in Crete, Greece has been investigated in the present study. Two small villages in western Crete, Modi and Ravdoucha, have been selected and their annual energy requirements in electricity, domestic hot water and space heating have been calculated. The characteristics of the solar photovoltaic systems generating annually all the electricity demand in these two villages have been estimated. The nominal power of the solar-PV system in Modi village has been evaluated at 334.02 KWp while the investment cost for each inhabitant in the village at 1,787 €. The corresponding nominal power of the solar-PV system in Ravdoucha village has been evaluated at 370.86 KWp and the corresponding cost for each inhabitant at 3,617 €. The solar photovoltaic system in each village can be created collectively with the establishment of an energy cooperative and the active participation of all the residents. Additionally, it has been indicated that the annual demand for domestic hot water and space heating in these two villages can be covered individually using their indigenous carbon-free green energy resources. Therefore, the creation of small energy communities in small rural villages in Crete is technically and financially feasible. The results of the present study can be used by policy makers and local authorities in Crete willing to promote the green energy transition in small rural societies
Recent Advances of ZnO-Based Perovskite Solar Cell
Get PDFPerovskite solar cells (PSCs) have developed rapidly over the past few years, and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSCs has exceeded 25%. It has the characteristics of low cost, high efficiency, simple process and so on, and hence has a good development prospect. Due to the difference in electrons and holes diffusion lengths, electron transporting materials (ETMs) play a crucial role in the performance of PSCs. ZnO electron transport layer (ETL) has the advantages of high electron mobility, high transmittance, suitable energy level matching with neighbor layer in PSCs, low temperature preparation and environmental friendliness, so it has become the main application material of electron transport layer in perovskite solar cells. In this review, the application of ZnO-ETMs in PSCs in recent years is reviewed, and the effect of ZnO-ETMs on the performance of PSCs is also introduced. Finally, the limitations of ZnO-ETMs based PSCs and the methods to solve these problems are discussed, and the development prospect of PSCs is prospected
Agile Testing for Blockchain Development QA
Get PDFAgile testing has evolved into a commonly employed practice in most development disciplines. It has been around as long as the agile manifesto and has developed all the hallmarks of a mature set of practices, i.e., tools, metrics, techniques, etc. But its overlap with blockchain is something that has yet to reach the maturity of either – agile testing or blockchain development. The QA for blockchain development hasn’t been standardized in the same manner as the QA for web development and other areas of software development, even newer ones like cloud-native development. Agile testing leans heavily towards automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML) and can benefit from collective or separate advances in the three technologies. But these technologies, regardless of their influence on blockchain development and its QA, cannot become the bridge connecting the two. Blockchain development QA suffers from a significant lack of standardization and a unified set of good practices, and this hinders its ability to adapt agile testing practices into the existing paradigm. However, as blockchain development is adopted by agile teams and its QA becomes more standardized, we may see more overlap between agile testing and blockchain development QA
Evaluating Challenges of Using IOT Devices in Competency Based Curriculum
Get PDFThe education sector has benefited greatly with the adoption of information communication technology (ICT). The labor market is in need of competent and skilled labor force that graduates from training institutions. To achieve this objective, adoption of ICT has been encouraged by many proponents of ICT in education.
In the recent years, growth of smart devices and Internet of Things (IoT) technology has revolutionized how various sectors of economy consume and benefit from this technology. According to [21] IoT has a started to gain momentum in matters adoption in developing countries. As early as a kindergarten level a pupil is able to use a smart phone to learn basic level subject, while in institutions of higher learning students are using IoT to conduct research, attend lecture take examinations among other things. By introducing new communication avenues, this approach is giving students the abilities they need to succeed in the twenty-first century. IoT devices may be used in classrooms by both teachers and students to enhance the teaching and learning process.
This paper fills in this vacuum by identifying the IoT issues that are pertinent for students with the bounds of competency based learning.This project aims to solve this by adapting discovery learning methodologies while also identifying the challenges of such an adoption.This study addresses two issues one potential use of IoT in competency based curriculum and two Challenges attached to the use of IoT in competency based learning
Transient Stability Analysis of Nigeria 330kv Power System Network Using Numerical Method: A Case Study of Calabar, Alaoji and Afam 330kv Network
Get PDFInstability constitutes part of the major challenges in the power system industry as a result of the increase in the complexity of power system networks. Electric energy demand keeps increasing while the expansion of electrical power generation and transmission is faced with severe challenges due to some factors which range from loss of synchronization as a result of some contingencies on the network. This study analyzes the transient stability of the Nigeria 330KV sub-network (Odukpani, Alaoji and Afam) with its analysis performed using MATLAB software to simulate a 3 - phase fault on the network to determine the fault clearing time of the system. The results obtained show that the relative swing between the generator rotor angles is less when the fault clearing time is less with fault clearing time at 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 seconds respectively. By these, there is a tendency for the system will regain stability due to the swing within the stability limit of 0.1sec to 0.4sec with a critical clearing time of 0.45sec. For an unstable condition, the fault clearing time increases at 0.5, 0.6, 0.7 and 0.9 seconds respectively with the rotor angle of the generator increasing out of limit or out of step. Hence, for a system to be stable the fault that occurs should be cleared within a minimum of 0.1sec to 0.4sec which implies the lesser the fault clearing time the greater tendency for stable condition and vice versa
Analysis of Biases in Corporate Income Tax-CIT
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the biases in CIT in some countries around the world. Most corporate tax systems are found in the Tax Codes. The sample covers the Tax Codes in force in ten countries in Africa, America, Asia and Europe. Assuming that corporate tax is the cost of using public capital, the analysis of the content of these tax codes relating to corporate income taxation, has made it possible to identify several biases or differences in taxation and/or tax treatment. The biases in CIT identified relate to financing, investment, result, rate and tax base. This paper is one of the first to expand the literature by analyzing the biases in CIT, likely to affect tax behavior and, by extension, the financial behavior of firms