Globally, 41% of households, over 2.8 billion people, rely on solid fuels (coal and biomass) for cooking and heating. In developing countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where these fuels are predominantly used, women who are customarily responsible for cooking, and their young children, are most exposed to the resulting air pollution. Solid fuels are still in widespread use and it appears t...

ZSM-5-containing catalytic additives are widely used in oil refineries to boost light olefin production and improve gasoline octanes in the Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) process. Under the hydrothermal conditions present in the FCC regenerator (typically >700 °C and >8% steam), FCC catalysts and additives are subject to deactivation. Zeolites (e.g., Rare Earth USY in the base catalyst and ZSM-...

ZnO nanorods (diameters∼25 nmand lengths∼145-150 nm) were synthesized by using a simple solochemical method and their LPG sensing properties were investigated. The ZnO nanorods exhibited outstanding gas sensingcharacteristics such as, higher gas response (∼502 to 50ppm LPG at 300 ◦C), extremely rapid response(∼6-7 s), fast recovery (∼6–7 s), excellent reproducibility, good sensing selectivity a...

Unconventional ways of growing plants, when we return to non-chemical methods of controlling weeds, require new weed control methods. One of the few physical methods, which found wider application in practice, is a flame weeder with heat burners based on the use of gas (LPG). However, the process of practical use of this flame weeder has a number of factors that positively or negatively affect ...

The association of fuel use and ocular morbidity in a village in western India was investigated in a cross sectional prevalence survey involving 469 randomly selected subjects. All subjects were interviewed and underwent medical and ophthalmological examination. Wood use was found to be an important factor in the aetiology of age dependent cataract (OR 2.12, 95% CI 1.03-4.34). When comparing wo...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of cataract is higher in developing countries, and in both developed and developing countries more females than males are blind from cataracts. Three epidemiological studies have associated indoor cooking with solid fuels (e.g. wood or dung) and cataract or blindness. However, associations in these studies may have been caused by unmeasured confounding. METHODS A hos...

Davis, B. R. (Communicable Disease Center, Atlanta, Ga.), and W. H. Ewing. Lipolytic, pectolytic, and alginolytic activities of Enterobacteriaceae. J. Bacteriol. 88:16-19. 1964.-Of 2,262 cultures of Enterobacteriaceae tested, only cultures of Enterobacter liquefaciens (Aerobacter liquefaciens), Serratia, Proteus vulgaris, and P. mirabilis gave evidence of lipolytic activities. None of the cultu...

BACKGROUND Three billion people use solid cooking fuels, and 4 million people die from household air pollution annually. Shifting households to clean fuels, like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), may protect health only if stoves are consistently used. Few studies have used an implementation science framework to systematically assess "de-implementation" of traditional stoves, and none have done so...

The Basic Electricity Support Tariff (BEST) was designed to advance the welfare of poor households (UCT 2002). Specifically the South African government chose to supply 50kWh Free Basic Electricity (FBE) per month per household. We illustrate an alternative that would cost less, with larger benefits for the poor. By offering electricity for free, FBE distorts the energy choices of poor househol...