fuel wood provides the main source of energy for cooking and space heating for over 80 percent of households living in kenya. the heavy reliance on the biomass energy has exerted an imbalance in demand and supply consequently resulting in adverse environmental effects in kenya. as part of innovation efforts, several energy-conserving technologies have been developed. a unique cook stove named m...

It is known that asset exchange models with symmetric interaction between agents show either a Gibbs/log-normal distribution of assets among the agents or condensation of the entire wealth in the hands of a single agent, depending upon the rules of exchange. Here we explore the effects of introducing asymmetry in the interaction between agents with different amounts of wealth (i.e., the rich be...

Detection of trace levels of persistent pollutants in the environment is difficult but significant. Organic pollutant homologues, due to their similar physical and chemical properties, are even more difficult to distinguish, especially in trace amounts. We report here a simple method to detect polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in soil and distilled spirit samples by the surface-enhanced Raman sc...

existed electricity grids deliver produced power to the consumer passing through transmission and distribution grids. According to high losses of these grids in transmission level and inexistence of bilateral interaction for simultaneous information exchange, a concept of smart grids were made by capabilities such as consciously participation of consumers in the smart electricity grids, an amou...

This Issue Brief addresses three questions raised by recent trends in personal saving: How are national savings measured and what is the meaning of the trends in measured personal saving rates, given what is included and what is not included in those measures? What is the effect of retirement saving programs--in particular, 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs)--on personal sav...

When a person is makes a judgment and assesses confidence, what is the effect of receiving more judgment-relevant information? Following up prior research on belief updating judgments (Oskamp, 1965; Slovic, 1973), we demonstrated that the predictive accuracy of experts did not improve but their confidence climbed steadily as they received more information about the target event. Our findings sh...

The remobilization of water soluble carbohydrates (WSC) has an important role for grain yield. This study investigated the accumulation and remobilization of WSC in non-leaf organs (chaff, upper stem, and lower stem) and their contribution to grain yield, under different irrigation levels (rainfed, reduced irrigation, and full irrigation) and seeding rate treatments (450, 600 and 750 plants...