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In accordance with the requirements for the National Curriculum Statement for both Life sciences and Physical sciences and the importance of community engagement in Higher Education in South Africa, this paper described the use of the lecture-demonstration 'A Pollutant's Tale' to create climate change awareness amongst school learners. 'A Pollutant's Tale' was performed to a total of 981 school learners and 25 educators from both advantaged and disadvantaged areas of the Western Cape...

This paper briefly reports on a number of Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in Australia, including some government programs and funding, then explores several of the challenges and advantages of adopting OER at institutional and individual (educators and learners) levels. This paper also discusses some of the preliminary findings of a centrally funded research project that investigates the state of play of OER in Australia. This project surveyed the higher education sector and...

Reflecting on a personal journey as a geography student, an academic, an educator and a teacher trainer, the article provides a critical narrative of the state of school geography in Singapore and argues that its development has remained relevant to the changing issues at a global level. Using personal reflections and document analyses, school geography is traced from the primary school to tertiary levels, covering aspects of curriculum, teacher education and assessment. A specific example...

Schools, as institutions for general education, are believed to have a responsibility to equip their students with the knowledge and commitment to take personally meaningful decisions and action to address the challenges posed by both lifestyle and societal conditions. Achieving this goal requires, among other things, adequate integration of the ‘challenges’ into the school curricula. This paper reports results of a study that assessed whether (and the extent to which) loss of biological...

Schools, as institutions for general education, are believed to have a responsibility to equip their students with the knowledge and commitment to take personally meaningful decisions and action to address the challenges posed by both lifestyle and societal conditions. Achieving this goal requires, among other things, adequate integration of the ‘challenges’ into the school curricula. This paper reports results of a study that assessed whether (and the extent to which) loss of biological...

The increasing interest in indoor environmental quality of educational buildings has been underpinned by the rising incidence of asthma and respiratory disease among children, who spend a substantial amount of their lives on the school premises. The susceptibility of children to respiratory disease compared with adults has led to the formulation of regulatory frameworks for the school environment, which specifies maximum CO2 concentrations and minimum airflow rates. This article reviews the...

The problems associated with climate change, energy scarcity, water and sanitation insecurity and severe natural disasters are at the forefront of both national and international policy agendas. Increasingly, people with disabilities are those most critically affected by these environmental challenges; however, literature addressing the implications for people with disabilities remains scarce. The well-being of people with disabilities is threatened by this invisibility. Here, we present...

In order to derive complex indices for the evaluation of climate in urban and other planning levels information and data about climate and climate influencing factors are of importance. The models RayMan and SkyHelios are two free available micro-scale models for the calculation and estimation of Sky View Factor, sunshine duration, shadow and in general radiation fluxes. In addition, RayMan is able to estimate the most modern thermal indices used in human biometeorology. The two models have...

A systematic review of the literature on the effects of water and sanitation in schools was performed. The goal was to characterize the impacts of water and sanitation inadequacies in the academic environment. Published peer reviewed literature was screened and articles that documented the provision of water and sanitation at schools were considered. Forty-one peer-reviewed papers met the criteria of exploring the effects of the availability of water and/or sanitation facilities in...

Projections of sea-level rise generally imply that Pacific low-lying reef and atoll islands will be subject to considerable environmental changes, gradually diminishing their habitability. As a result, the option of abandoning the islands either through increased migration and/or relocation has been proposed as a potential adaptation strategy. Drawing on insights from Solomon Islands, this chapter explores how outlying island communities both historically and recently have engaged in human...

Green roofs have several environmental benefits, such as improving building energy efficiency. The present paper provides a comprehensive study of the impact of a green roof on building energy performance. A model of green roof thermal behavior was coupled with a building code to allow the evaluation of green roof foliage and soil surface temperatures. Simulations were conducted for a single-family house with conventional and green roofs in a temperate French climate. In the summer, the...

The application of phase change materials (PCMs) for solar thermal-energy storage has received considerable attention in recent years due to their high storage density. A series of microencapsulated PCMs (micro-PCMs) with good phase change behavior have been synthesized through in-situ polymerization and the applications of the obtained micro-PCMs in thermal regulation of gypsum boards are presented in this study. Scanning electron microscope images reveal that the micro-PCMs were dispersed...

This article focuses on the challenges of technical and vocational education in mitigating climate change induced catastrophes in Nigeria. The concepts of climate change and related areas were discussed in the paper including the causes and effects of climate, as well as, issues of prevention, preparation and adaptation processes. The roles that technical and vocational education may play in preparing citizens to prevent, adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change are presented. These...

This paper analyzes the effects of weather anomalies on migration in sub-Saharan Africa. We present a theoretical model that demonstrates how weather anomalies induce rural–urban migration that subsequently triggers international migration. We distinguish two transmission channels, an amenity channel and an economic geography channel. Based on annual, cross-country panel data for sub-Saharan Africa, we present an empirical model that suggests that weather anomalies increased internal and...

The consequences of environmental change for human migration have gained increasing attention in the context of climate change and recent large-scale natural disasters, but as yet relatively few large-scale and quantitative studies have addressed this issue. We investigate the consequences of climate-related natural disasters for long-term population mobility in rural Bangladesh, a region particularly vulnerable to environmental change, using longitudinal survey data from 1,700 households...

This paper presents the optimization of chillers operating using artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. For the needs of generating chiller models, an artificial neural network was used, trained with data collected from an actual chiller. For that purpose the basic characteristics of artificial neural networks are shown as well as the process of making specific chiller models used for testing the results of application of the genetic algorithm in usage optimization. The optimal...