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Comfort temperature and sleep quality involving 20 participants were determined in two cases: Case A (arbitrary, controlled air-conditioner setting) and Case B (adjustment of 3 °C higher than the setting of Case A with cool bed linen). Data of indoor thermal comfort and electricity consumption were collected every night throughout the measurement period. Questionnaires on thermal comfort and sleep quality were distributed twice a night for a duration of three nights for each case; the first night was for respondents’ adaptation and the following two nights were for measurement. The sleep quality of the respondents was objectively measured using a commercially available activity tracker. Results found that most respondents were thermally comfortable in both cases, with 39% lower energy consumption reported for Case B compared to Case A. The thermal conditions of Case B were found to be more tolerable than those of Case A. Most respondents reported to have a calm and satisfied sleep for both cases. Comfort temperature and Sleep Efficiency Index (SEI) were found to be maintained in both cases.

The growing population and increasing urbanization have led to a surge in domestic wastewater generation, posing significant challenges for effective and sustainable treatment. The present study demonstrates a novel and sustainable approach for the onsite treatment of domestic wastewater using an integrated settler-based biofilm reactor (ISBR) with efficient biogas generation. The ISBR provides an optimized environment for the growth of biofilm, facilitating the removal of organic pollutants and pathogens. Moreover, the ISBR enables the recovery of a valuable resource in the form of biogas, thus enhancing the overall utility of the treatment process. The performance of the ISBR was comprehensively evaluated at laboratory scale through treating the actual domestic wastewater generated from the hostel of Manipal University Jaipur. The ISBR system was operated under an ambient environment at a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 24 h. The results demonstrated remarkable efficiency in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), and coliforms removal, with average removal efficiency being more than 90%. According to the COD mass balance analysis, 48.2% of the influent COD was recovered as bioenergy. The chromatogram revealed a high percentage of methane gas in the collected biogas sample. The field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) analysis of the accumulated sludge in the ISBR system depicted the morphology of methanogenic bacteria. Both the experimental and theoretical results confirmed the feasibility and sustainability of the ISBR system at the onsite level.

Aquaponics systems and technologies are growing primary industries in many countries, with high environmental and socio-economic advantages. Aquaponics is a closed-loop system that produces aquatic animals and plants in a new way using recirculated water and nutrients. With a growing world population expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, food production sustainability is a primary issue in today’s world agenda, and aquaponics and aquaculture systems can be potential contributors to the challenge. Observing the climate changes and global warming’s impact on the ecosystem, decreasing aqua animal stocks, and responding to increasing demand are turning points in the sustainability era. In the past 15 years, fish production has doubled, thus denoting that aquaponics transforms into commercial scales with a revolutionized production, high efficiency, and fewer resources’ utilization, thus requiring proper operation and management standards and practices. Therefore, this study aims to shape a new framework for sustainable aquaponics modeling and utilization as the all-in-one solution platform covering technical, managerial, socio-economic, institutional, and environmental measures within the suitability requirements. The proposed model in this study offers a systematic approach to the design and implementation of sustainability-efficient aquaponics and aquaculture systems. Through an exhaustive coverage of the topic, this research effort can be counted as a practical reference for researchers, scholars, experts, practitioners, and students in the context of aquaponics and aquaculture studies.

Gender-specific perceptions and needs are critical to better understanding climate change adaptation capacities of local smallholder communities in Africa and elsewhere. As many rural agricultural practices are heavily impacted by male-centered traditional customs and mores, gender dimensions can determine the level of success for policy interventions. To better understand how and what gender dimensions can be important factors for farmer’s climate change adaptations, this study attempts to examine smallholder farmers’ adaptation needs and perspectives in Ghana’s Upper East Region. A focus group discussion and a questionnaire survey were conducted among 200 smallholder farmers. We found that the female respondents, who mostly belonged to low/middle-income groups, emphasized their urgent need for financial support to improve their income. They needed more farmland as 94% of them had only less than 5 acres to farm. In addition, 91% of the female respondents expressed the importance of being connected to farmers’ mutual-help groups to share information about common farming needs. We also found gender-specific needs for extension services, farm inputs, climate information, mechanization, and infrastructure. Regarding access to resources, the women respondents had little interest in investing more in farming as the land they borrowed could be taken away by male owners. The study recommends the need for gender-specific support initiatives that prioritize social protection and gender equality.

Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil; it is essential to manage its palm oil industry in a sustainable manner through swapping the oil palm plantation in peatland to mineral soil to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. This study employed the latest spatial data using the ArcGIS software to analyze the potential area for the land swap option and to calculate the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Kalimantan, Indonesia. There are 1.08 million ha of oil palm in peatland, while 0.64 million ha of the area in mineral soil under the convertible production forest have the potential for land swapping. Via the land-swap option, emission reductions of 65.43% (from 979.05 MtCO2eq to 336.64 MtCO2eq) for the calculation period of 25 years and up to 61.19% (from 2147.81 MtCO2eq to 833.67 MtCO2eq) for that of 50 years is possible compared to the initial condition. The land swap will also increase the production of fresh fruit bunch (FFB) by 17.16% per year because the productivity of FFB in mineral soil is higher than that of the peatland. Considering that land swaps are costly, policymakers and stakeholders must collaborate to execute the land-swap option for the sustainability of Indonesian palm oil.

Land degradation poses a major threat to agricultural production and food security in Ethiopia, and sustainable land management (SLM) is key in dealing with its adverse impacts. This paper examines the covariates that shape rural livelihood diversification and examines their effects on the intensity of adoption of SLM practices. Household-level data were collected in 2017 from 270 households in three drought-prone watersheds located in northwestern Ethiopia. We used the Herfindahl–Simpson diversity index to explore the extent of livelihood diversification. A stochastic dominance ordering was also employed to identify remunerative livelihood activities. A multivariate probit model was employed to estimate the probability of choosing simultaneous livelihood strategies, and an ordered probit model was estimated to examine the effect of livelihood diversification on the adoption intensity of SLM practices. In addition to mixed cropping and livestock production, the production of emerging cash crops (e.g., Acacia decurrens for charcoal, and khat) dominated the overall income generation of the majority of farmers. Stress/shock experience, extent of agricultural intensification, and agro-ecology significantly affected the probability of choosing certain livelihood strategies. Livelihood diversification at the household level was significantly associated with the dependency ratio, market distance, credit access, extension services, membership in community organizations, level of income, and livestock ownership. A greater extent of livelihood diversification had a significant negative effect on adopting a greater number of SLM practices, whereas it had a positive effect on lower SLM adoption intensity. Overall, we found evidence that having greater livelihood diversification could prompt households not to adopt more SLM practices. Livelihood initiatives that focus on increasing shock resilience, access to financial support mechanisms, improving livestock production, and providing quality extension services, while also considering agro-ecological differences, are needed. In addition, development planners should take into account the livelihood portfolios of rural households when trying to implement SLM policies and programs.

The Internet of Things has recently been a popular topic of study for developing smart homes and smart cities. Most IoT applications are very sensitive to delays, and IoT sensors provide a constant stream of data. The cloud-based IoT services that were first employed suffer from increased latency and inefficient resource use. Fog computing is used to address these issues by moving cloud services closer to the edge in a small-scale, dispersed fashion. Fog computing is quickly gaining popularity as an effective paradigm for providing customers with real-time processing, platforms, and software services. Real-time applications may be supported at a reduced operating cost using an integrated fog-cloud environment that minimizes resources and reduces delays. Load balancing is a critical problem in fog computing because it ensures that the dynamic load is distributed evenly across all fog nodes, avoiding the situation where some nodes are overloaded while others are underloaded. Numerous algorithms have been proposed to accomplish this goal. In this paper, a framework was proposed that contains three subsystems named user subsystem, cloud subsystem, and fog subsystem. The goal of the proposed framework is to decrease bandwidth costs while providing load balancing at the same time. To optimize the use of all the resources in the fog sub-system, a Fog-Cluster-Based Load-Balancing approach along with a refresh period was proposed. The simulation results show that “Fog-Cluster-Based Load Balancing” decreases energy consumption, the number of Virtual Machines (VMs) migrations, and the number of shutdown hosts compared with existing algorithms for the proposed framework.