The University of Fort Hare is a public university in Alice, Eastern Cape, South Africa.It was a key institution of higher education for Africans from 1916 to 1959 when it offered a Western-style academic education to students from across sub-Saharan Africa, creating an African elite. Fort Hare alumni were part of many subsequent independence movements and governments of newly independent African countries.In 1959, the university was subsumed by the apartheid system, but it is now part of South Africa's post-apartheid public higher education system. It is the alma mater of well-known people including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Robert Sobukwe, Oliver Tambo, and others. Fort Hare alumni were part of many subsequent independence movements and governments of newly independent African countries.
This study synthesizes 280 peer-reviewed studies (2002–2025) into a deployment-directed “sensor-to-governance” blueprint for AI/ML-enabled hazardous-waste risk detection. Publication activity shifted from early exploratory work (2002–2014) to sustained scaling after 2017, with stable output since 2022. China and the United States dominate publication volume, while wider Global South participation strengthens the case for privacy-preserving collaboration. Evidence clusters into eight innovation streams spanning multimodal sensing, geospatial intelligence, edge analytics, knowledge-graph governance, smart sensing materials, exposure analytics, circularity intelligence, and digital-twin integration. Performance gains become decision-relevant only when uncertainty calibration, drift auditing, and cost-aware risk mapping are co-optimized. Transformative potential lies in converting fragmented detections into auditable, privacy-preserving risk intelligence linked to intervention choices and equity-relevant exposure endpoints. However, sparse ground truth, domain shift, cybersecurity barriers, and the sustainability cost of continuous monitoring remain binding constraints. Practical deployment remains limited by sparse labels and external validation. Priority gaps include leakage-resistant splits, ground truth scarcity, sensor interoperability, and cybersecurity safeguards for deployed monitoring networks.
This review presents a materials-centred yet systems-informed synthesis of hydrogen storage, designed to reconcile intrinsic material properties with real-world performance requirements. The analysis focuses on the principal hydrogen storage classes that directly govern hydrogen retention and release, namely solid-state hydrides, porous adsorbents, chemical hydrogen carriers, cryogenic liquid hydrogen, and compressed gaseous hydrogen systems. Rather than treating storage materials in isolation, the review evaluates how their defining characteristics interact with practical performance-conditioning factors, including storage mechanism, gravimetric and volumetric capacity, operating temperature and pressure, sorption and desorption kinetics, reversibility, cycling durability, thermal-management demand, impurity sensitivity, safety behaviour, and technological maturity. A structured review protocol covering the 2001–2025 literature was used to identify and synthesise studies relevant to these storage classes and their enabling interfaces. The synthesis shows that gravimetric capacity alone is an insufficient basis for ranking hydrogen storage options, because performance-conditioned usability is strongly shaped by enthalpy constraints, heat and mass transfer limitations, activation barriers, structural degradation, catalyst dependence, containment penalties, and application-specific operating conditions. Solid-state hydrides offer high volumetric density and intrinsic containment advantages but remain constrained by kinetic and thermal bottlenecks. Porous adsorbents provide rapid and reversible uptake, although their practical performance remains highly sensitive to pressure, temperature, and binding-energy optimisation. Chemical carriers enable dense and logistics-compatible storage, yet catalytic release penalties, purity constraints, and reaction-energy demands limit direct applicability. Liquid and compressed hydrogen provide benchmark physical storage routes, although boil-off control, compression burden, and containment integrity remain decisive. The review concludes that meaningful comparison across hydrogen storage pathways requires a unified framework that places storage materials at the analytical centre while explicitly accounting for the enabling technological conditions that determine deliverable capacity, durability, safety, and application readiness.
The escalating global climate crisis demands innovative materials for sustainable energy conversion, spotlighting vacancy-ordered double perovskites A2OsX6 (A = K, Rb; X = Cl, Br, I) as promising photocatalysts for H2 production via water splitting and CO2 reduction. This study employs density functional theory (DFT) with the Wu-Cohen Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA-WC) and Tran-Blaha modified Becke-Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential, incorporating spin-orbit coupling (SOC), to unravel the structural, electronic, optical, and magnetic properties of these osmium-based materials. The face-centered cubic (Fm 3 m) structure exhibits tunable band gaps (1.43-3.00 eV), enhanced by SOC-induced narrowing (0.10-0.20 eV), optimizing visible-light absorption for photocatalytic applications. Ferromagnetic ground states, driven by Os6+ (5d2) unpaired electrons, further enhance spin-polarized charge separation and magnetic functionality. Band edge alignments reveal thermodynamic suitability for H2 evolution and CO2 conversion, with chloride variants excelling in water oxidation and iodides optimizing reduction. Comparative analysis against TiO2, Cs2AgBiBr6, CdS, and g-C3N4 underscores A2OsX6's superior visible-light activity and stability. These findings position A2OsX6 as a versatile platform for next-generation photocatalysts, bridging sustainable energy and spintronic technologies.
The discharge of persistent artificial dyes, like the cationic methyl violet (MV) dye from textile industrial sewages, requires the development of efficient, cost-effective, and recyclable adsorbents. This work reports on the synthesis of hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) and amino-modified alpha-Fe2O3 via the solvothermal method. The effects of surface amination on the nanomaterials' physicochemical attributes were probed by the adsorption of MV wastewater. Successful amine functionalization was confirmed using FTIR and elemental analyses. SEM analysis revealed porous spherical morphologies with an enhanced surface texture following amination. XRD and TGA confirmed the structural stability and thermal resilience of the nanomaterials. Zeta potential showed that the aminated alpha-Fe2O3 carried a negative surface charge above pH 3, favoring the cationic dye adsorption. The aminated material exhibited a maximum MV adsorption capacity of 10.21 mg/g with equilibrium data conforming to the Langmuir isotherm (R2 = 0.978) as compared to the Freundlich (R2 = 0.662) and Temkin (R2 = 0.634) isotherms, while kinetics data fitted the pseudo-second-order model (R2 = 0.966). The regeneration of aminated alpha-Fe2O3 sorbent with 0.4 M HCl favoured reclaim for four successive cycles with a slight decrease in efficiency of about 19%. The study demonstrates that the solvothermally produced alpha-Fe2O3 is a promising low-cost adsorbent for the removal of organic dyes in wastewater treatment applications.
Women in resource-scarce communities navigate daily scarcity, structural neglect, and gendered violence, leaving profound but often invisible impacts on mental and reproductive health. Women play an active role in the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) space; they provide water, food, and household security daily. This study investigates how chronic deprivation across the WEF nexus shapes experiences of psychological distress, reproductive vulnerability, and social marginalization in South African settings: Lorentzville, a migrant urban informal settlement, and Mqanduli, a peri-urban Eastern Cape community. Using ethnographic methods, including in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory observation, and an analytical framework combining structural violence and feminist political ecology, we show that insecurity over water, energy, and food constrains reproductive autonomy, amplifies self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, and drives coping and adaptation strategies such as informal work, transactional sex, and fragile social support networks. These strategies, while mitigating immediate risks, cannot fully offset systemic harms. By foregrounding women's lived experiences, this study extends the WEF nexus framework to include embodied, emotional, and reproductive dimensions, linking historical legacies of colonial and apartheid neglect to contemporary inequities. The findings offer critical insights for integrated health, social, and resource policy interventions that center on gender, care, and justice within environmental, wellbeing, and livelihood.
