Stoves, health and environment

How do we achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7 of affordable and clean energy?  Currently, majority of rural dwellers use firewood, which is cheap and readily available around them.  The use of coal is still prevalent in many households. These approaches poses a threat to the environment and life.  Users are exposed to poisonous gas and use of firewood degrades the environment.  Many of this cooking takes place in confined environments which increases the health risk.  Cooking gas, although subsidized is still beyond the reach of many families.  

Prof. Adedayo and his team at the Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology Akure considered this problem and came up with a plausible solution.  This work focuses on the design, development and construction of a forced-air, top-lit, updraft biomass gasifier stove.  To provide draft for the stove, the group incorporated an electronic fan which can be driven from the mains or solar powered.  The biomass fuel for the present design is palm kernel shell. A picture of the final constructed stove is shown below.

The research group compared the finished product with a kerosene and gas stove.  From the result (shown above), the constructed stove compares well with a gas stove in performance.  The stove was also found to emit less fumes than the conventional firewood stove.  This innovation can go a long way to combat diseases and deaths inhalation of dangerous gases during cooking.   There is the need to improve on this and involve policy makers in this development.

References

1.  Adedayo, K., Owoola, E. & Ogunjo, S. "The development of an enhanced biomass gasifier stove" Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. A Phys. Sci. (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40010-018-0570-y

What is your favourite number?

We all have favourites.  From places to meals, having favourite is an unconscious part of our existence.  Can we ask ourselves, why do i like the things that i like?  Our seemingly innocuous actions such as choosing a random number have a huge significance that we might not be aware of.  For instance, it is used in psychology and psychiatry for a number of diagnosis. If you are asked to choose a number between 1 and 10, what will be your choice?  What does this choice say about you?  What factors will likely affect your choice - religion, age, gender, intelligence, or mood?  

If a group of randomly selected individuals are asked to pick a random number between 1 and 10, what do you think will be the favourite number?  Why do you think it will be 7?  What factors will determine the favourite number?

Ogunjo et al (2018) examined this research questions in their new publication (read here) .  They asked over 2000 undergraduate students to pick a favourite number between 1 and 10.  The favourite number was found to be 1!  

Statistics of chosen numbers

What factors could be responsible for this?  They found that gender (either male or female), age (young or old), intelligence (performance in a quick test) did not contribute statistically to this choice of number.  However, the faculty they belong to was found to be a significant contributor.

There is still very much more to be done.  Researchers need to broaden the scope of contributing factors to include tribe, religion, political affiliation, and  mood.  Can we use the favourite numbers among a group of individuals to predict group dynamics? 

References

Ogunjo, Samuel T, Emmanuel J Dansu, Oluwagbenga Fakanye, and Ibiyinka A Fuwape. 2018. “The Possibility of Uniform Pseudo-Random Number Generation by a Group of Humans.” OSF. October 6. osf.io/ms9y3. 

 

Where is my thesis?

For those who have gone through one or two stages of the Nigerian higher educational system, this question will not be strange.  After four or five years of study as an undergraduate, a student is expected to carry out an independent study in his/her field of study.  It is a rigorous, mentally tasking, time consuming and financially demanding task for every student.   Every student is expected to make four copies of the completed thesis - one for the student, one for the supervisor, one for the Department and the last for the University library (this might vary in some institutions).  The researches reported in this theses are supposedly carried out to solve or address specific societal problems.  It is a requirement for graduation from any higher institution in the country.

Let us put this into context. Assuming there are 20 universities in Nigeria.  Also assuming a total of 20 departments each with 50 students are in all the 20 universities.  Based on this assumptions, there are 20,000 thesis being submitted by undergraduates every year.   This implies that there exists 20,000 reports generated annually that directly (or indirectly) addresses various problems in our society.  Where are these theses?  To access any of these theses, you either know the student or the supervisor or apply to the Department or University library.  Yes, currently you cannot sit in your house and access any thesis within the country (except a few universities).

Why is it like this?  Let me give an unofficial explanation.  All thesis (undergraduate and postgraduate) are proprietary materials for the University.  I do not know of any other reason why theses are not online (if you know, kindly provide and i will update this article).  Well, if Federal and State institutions are funded by tax payers money, are the tax payers not entitled to the reports?  Do the institutions refund the students for the expenses incurred during the research work?  Did the student graduate without paying any school fees?  Is the claim to thesis as proprietary works actually valid? 

In my own opinion, academic theses should be readily available online in a variety of format.  One, it will reduce the rate of plagiarism among students as previous theses will be captured online.  Two, the availability of theses online will afford access by policy makers, industry experts and the general public for implementation.  Three, it is in line with best and emerging global trend in education.  Four, it serves as a means of preservation when hard copies of the theses are disposed or recycled (do we recycle?).  Five, it can generate income for the institution (http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do). Six, will supervisors allow students go away with shoddy research work if their names will be appended to the online work? Methinks it will improve quality of research at all stages.

Where is your thesis?

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Is Solar energy predictable?

If you start a journey from point A at time T₁ and get to point B at time T_n. We say the "system" is linear if the arrival time is a function of the start time e.g. If you start at T₁₊₁, you get there at time T_n+1 or generally, if you start at T_a+1 you arrive at T_n+a.    Not all journey are smooth, there might be delay due to traffic and other unforeseen circumstances.  Let's call the addition of all possible delay on the route d.  If you take off  at time T₁, your arrival time due to delay on the route will be T_n+d.   We refer to this "system" as a stochastic system.     However, if the arrival time cannot be predicted based on the take off time T₁ due to conditions around the starting conditions, we say the "system" is chaotic.  Long term prediction of chaotic system is not possible.  Chaos in this case does not mean random or disorder but sensitivity to initial starting conditions.

Chaos is aperiodic time-asymptotic behaviour in a deterministic system which exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions (http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/329/lectures/node57.html).

 

Initially, studying chaos was limited to complicated differential equations but in recent times, natural phenomena has been investigated for chaos.   Many systems such as menstrual period (Derry and Derry, 2010), rainfall (Sivakumar, 2001), temperature (Fuwape et al, 2015), stock market (Fuwape and Ogunjo, 2013) have been found to be chaotic.  To investigate chaos, tools such as correlation dimension, Lyapunov exponent, and other tools have been developed.  Is chaos good or bad?  This will be the subject of another post.  In light of current agitation for use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, there is the need to study the predictability of the proposed energy systems.  

Ogunjo, Adediji and Dada from the Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Akure investigated if solar radiation available at Akure, Southwestern Nigeria for a period of two years.   The researchers found that the solar radiation at Akure during the dry season is more chaotic than during the wet season.  This means that it is easier to predict the solar energy available in the location during the wet season than during the wet season of the year.  

Figure 1:  Phase space reconstruction of solar radiation data from Akure  (Source:  Ogunjo et al. 2014)

The Nigerian government is currently on a drive to provide off-grid power based on solar energy. From the results presented by the researchers, it is imperative that the chaotic nature of solar energy over Nigeria be investigated and taken into consideration before large scale deployment.  There is the need to further study the variation of incident solar radiation in different parts of the country for the most cost effective and reliable solar energy solution.  For instance, further studies will give insight into the feasibility of combining solar energy with wind or other forms of energy for better reliability.  Also, the possibility of solar panels that can track the rising and setting of the sun need to be investigated.

References

Derry, G., & Derry, P. (2010). Characterization of chaotic dynamics in the human menstrual cycle. Nonlinear Biomedical Physics, 4(1), 5. http://doi.org/10.1186/1753-4631-4-5

Fuwape, I. I. A., & Ogunjo, S. T. (2013). Investigating Chaos in the Nigerian Asset and Resource Management (ARM) Discovery Fund. CBN Journal of Applied Statistics, 4(2), 129–140. article.

Fuwape, I. A., Ogunjo, · S T, Oluyamo, · S S, Rabiu, · A B,  (2016). Spatial variation of deterministic chaos in mean daily temperature and rainfall over Nigeria. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, In Press. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1867-x

Ogunjo, S. T., Adediji, A. T., & Dada, J. B. (2015). Investigating chaotic features in solar radiation over a tropical station using recurrence quantification analysis. Theoretical and Applied Climatology. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1642-4

Sivakumar, B. (2001). Is a chaotic multi-fractal approach for rainfall possible? Hydrological Processes, 15(6), 943–955. http://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.260