scholarly journals Rural Cooling Needs Assessment towards Designing Community Cooling Hubs: Case Studies from Maharashtra, India

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5595
Author(s):  
Kumar Biswajit Debnath ◽  
Xinfang Wang ◽  
Toby Peters ◽  
Sanskriti Menon ◽  
Satish Awate ◽  
...  

In a rapidly warming world, sustainable cooling is directly related to the protection of fresh and nutritious food, medicines, and the population from extreme heat for work conditions, the economic productivity of the working population, and income generation. This study aimed to understand how rural communities are meeting their nutrition, livelihood, health, living space, and mobility requirements regarding the role of cooling. We selected three villages as case studies in Maharashtra, India and conducted household surveys, in-depth interviews of key informants, focus group discussions (FGDs), and social mapping building typology study. The objective was to assess the rural community cooling to propose a community cooling hub (CCH) framework that could be economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable for the three villages. Our study showed that agriculture, dairy, buildings (domestic and commercial), and healthcare require cooling intervention in the studied communities. Based on the needs assessment for cooling, we proposed a CCH framework to provide cooling solutions in an integrated system for rural contexts.

Projections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Reisenzein

Murray Smith’s proposal in Film, Art, and the Third Culture for a naturalized aesthetics is of interest to both film theorists and psychologists: for the former, it helps to elucidate how films work; for the latter, it provides concrete application cases of psychological theories. However, there are reasons for believing that the theory of emotions that Smith has adopted from psychology to ground his case studies—an extended version of basic emotions theory—is less well supported than he suggests. The available empirical evidence seems more compatible with the assumption that the different emotions are outputs of a single, integrated system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-131
Author(s):  
Fanen Terdoo

The aim of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is to help farmers increase productivity, adapt their methods, become resilient to climate impacts and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. However, there has been little published research on the perceptions and knowledge of farmers as to how this approach can fulfill its potential, especially in Africa. This paper presents a study based on interviews and group discussions conducted among farmers in some rural communities in Northern Nigeria. It reveals that the strength of CSA lies in its ability to integrate agricultural productivity with environmental targets and address the livelihood needs and cultural biases of local farmers. It also identified differences in the perception of different groups within society. For example, the younger farmers who possess little farmland showed optimism in the potential of the CSA approach to address livelihood and environmental challenges while the older farmers with larger farmlands were generally uncertain and suspicious. The analysis of interviews presented could be used to identify target groups on which to focus CSA, assuming that groups with a significantly greater proportion of farmlands could have more impact on the environment. The study suggests a continuous effort is made to develop knowledge and build capacity of local farmers and experts. Lessons from this study are important in developing the knowledge and capacities that will make CSA a reality. Further studies across Africa which take local specificities and priorities into consideration are needed.


Author(s):  
Alessia Pugliese ◽  
Jordan Scholten ◽  
Samantha Yeung

Cannabis production has expanded significantly across southern Ontario with the legalisation of theindustry. Much of this expansion has occurred within the rural countryside, through the utilisation of existinggreenhouse infrastructure. While the growth of this sector provides economic benefits to rural communities, complaints from adjacent residents related to lighting and odour issues are common and mitigation of such issues is complex. Land use planning policies have been established across southern Ontario to manage the development of cannabis greenhouses; however, policies vary by region and countyand the appropriateness of these policies have not been tested. This study seeks to analyse municipalplanning policies that regulate cannabis production and understand the impacts of these policies on sector,adjacent land owners and rural communities. Planning policies will be analysed at the municipal, regional orcounty level, with the creation of a database to highlight consistency and differences between communities. Case studies will be utilised to gain better insights into the challenges and opportunities related to cannabis production and planning mitigation. This presentation will provide a summary of current research findings, including highlights of a municipal scan of zoning by-law policies and informalinsights into policy appeals in southern Ontario.


Author(s):  
Manju Jose

This paper emphasizes the possibility of merging artificial intelligence and Blockchain technologies to solve academic qualifications forgery issues in the educational sectors. Empirical data is collected through interviews with specialists and technical people who are interested in the emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and focus group discussions in the field, as well as from reports in the reviewed literary articles. Scientific journals have also been accessed to analyse the paper goals and objectives. The findings suggest that emerging technologies can be integrated to become more efficient and effective in detecting fraud and forgery before it occurs. Considerable attention should be given to reducing and combating these issues because they have significant negative impacts on the economy and education. Accordingly, the study makes recommendations based on the results and areas of future research, considering the establishment of a unified and integrated system. Initially it will be applied as a pilot in Sultanate of Oman, then gradually it will be extended to the Gulf Cooperation Council States (GCC) and internationally particularly the affiliated and the recognized educational institutions to avoid the phenomena that affects the reputation and quality of education institutions and academic qualifications. The conclusion considers the impacts of the proposed system in the education and economy as well in general.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
A.O. Glotova ◽  
◽  

the rapid development of the film industry and its ever-increasing integration into the public and personal lives of people can expand the perspective of the living space of a modern person. In this article, the author considers modern Russian cinema as one of the most popular types of contemporary art and analyzes the products of its activities. The article is written on the basis of qualitative research – focus group discussions with experts in the field of cinematographic art and who have at least 3 years of experience in it. Based on the obtained data analysis, the author describe the products of Russian cinematographic art as a whole and consider its features, trends and development vectors. The author of the work classified the images of modern film characters based on the most discussed trends of modern Russian films and identified the properties characteristic of each type of hero.


Author(s):  
Laura Raffaeli ◽  
Susanna Spinsante ◽  
Ennio Gambi

This paper discusses the design and experimental implementation of an integrated system for the delivery of health related services, based on different technologies and devices. The idea is to create a unique point of access for the user, towards both a cloud-based remote service for the consultation of medical reports, and a personal local service that allows to collect and display data from biomedical sensors, to manage user's reminders for medicines, and to monitor the patient's dietary habits. The proposed system employs suitable technologies to simplify the user interaction, such as Near Field Communications enabled devices, and a smart TV equipment. By this way, it is possible to effectively deliver telehealth services also to users who may be less familiar with technological equipments, such as older adults, or people living in rural communities. The experimental implementation proves the feasibility of the proposed service, and the possibility to gain users' adherence and compliance, through proper design criteria.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darlene F. Russ-Eft ◽  
Catherine M. Sleezer

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhi Chatterjee ◽  
Daniel Burmester ◽  
Alan Brent ◽  
Ramesh Rayudu

Recent reports from international energy agencies indicate that more than a billion of the population in the world is deprived of basic electricity provisions, confined mainly to the remote communities of developing nations. Microgrids are promoted as a potential technology for electricity provisions to off-grid rural communities, but have failed to reach their value proposition in the context of rural electrification access. In view of the rampant rural electrification issues, the objective of this paper is to furnish an understanding of, and advance the knowledge into, methods to facilitate the design and development of microgrid systems for remote communities in developing countries. The methodology involves an integrative review process of an annotated bibliography to summarise past empirical or theoretical literature. As such, this research is based on evaluation attributes, and identifies the challenges and barriers for remote microgrids through an analysis of 19 case studies. The paper concludes by proposing key aspects that need to be considered for developing a framework to improve the sustainability of electricity provisions for off-grid rural communities in developing countries.


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