This paper assesses illegal fishing in West Africa, one of the regions most affected by Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing (IUU) in the world. The catch, the economic loss and the amount recovered through Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance (MCS) are calculated based on a reconstruction method, and the information made available through national MCS units, between 2010 and 2016 in an effort to assess the effectiveness of surveillance efforts in the region. Results show considerable loss of revenues for Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, estimated at 2.3 billion USD annually, while a minimal amount of 13 million USD is recovered through MCS. In addition, this paper finds that countries touched by the Ebola crisis (Guinea and Sierra Leone) drive a tremendous increase in the loss generated by illegal fishing. However, further analysis shows that the overall severity of illegal fishing, as defined by a range of types investigated here, declines as the fines against the most severe forms of IUU fishing increase. Finally this study finds that Sierra Leone and The Gambia have the highest scoring MCS systems, and were the countries where the most offenders are caught and charged with the highest fines, while Senegal's new legislations which improved MCS during 2015 does not appear to show on the scoring results. This study finds that illegal fishing amounts the equivalent of 65% of the legal reported catch from West Africa and poses serious concern for food security, and the economy in the region.

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The efficiency of two coupling agents in wood-polymer composites was investigated in this study. Thermal behavior of neat polypropylene, wood flour/polypropylene composite, maleated anhydride polypropylene-reinforced wood-polymer composite, and oxidized polypropylene-reinforced wood-polymer composite was investigated by means of differential scanning calorimetry and scanning electron microscopy in order to obtain information on the dispersion of the wood flour in the polymeric matrix, on the crystallization kinetics of polypropylene, and the macrostructure of its composites. The results confirm the expected nucleant effect of wood with and without the coupling agents used. The wide angle X-ray diffraction patterns indicated enhanced compatibility between polypropylene and wood with the addition of coupling agent. As a coupling agent, maleated anhydride polypropylene had a better performance in wood-polymer composites than polypropylene oxide and neat polypropylene because of its stronger interfacial bonding. Coupling agents help overcome the polarity disparity increase. All the results showed that with maleated anhydride polypropylene, oxidized polypropylene or without any coupling agent, wood flour acted as nucleating agent and increased the crystallization rate of polypropylene. For the composites, wood with maleated anhydride polypropylene was a more effective nucleating agent for polypropylene than wood with oxidized polypropylene. The mechanical properties were evaluated and the samples with coupling agent showed superior results like tensile and flexural properties.

In this research, polypropylene/wood-flour composites (WPCs) were blended with different contents of wood and/or maleated polypropylene (MAPP) and clay. We found that the addition of MAPP or clay in the formulation greatly improved the dispersion of the wood fibers in the composite; this suggested that MAPP or clay may have played the role of an adhesion promoter in the WPCs. The results obtained with clay indicate that it also acted as a flame retardant. The thermal tests carried out with the produced samples showed an increased crystallization temperature (T c ), crystallinity, and melting temperature (T m ) with wood loading. The increase of the two former parameters was explained by the incorporation of wood flour, which played the role of nucleating agent and induced the crystallization of the matrix polymer. On the other hand, the T m increase was ascribed to the insulating properties of wood, which hindered the movement of heat conduction. The effects of UV irradiation on T m and T c were also examined. T c increased with UV exposure time; this implied that UV degradation generated short chains with low molecular weight that could move easily in the bulk of the sample and, thus, catalyze early crystallization. The flexural strength and modulus increased with increasing wood-flour content. In contrast, the impact strength and tensile strength and strain decreased with increasing wood-flour content. All of these changes were related to the level of dispersion of the wood flour in the polymeric matrix.

Green electronics is an emerging field of research which aims to manufacture devices in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. Usually, the involved electronic materials are naturally occurring and non-toxic. Also, they can be processed using simple, low energy deposition processes and fabrication techniques. In this work, we present low voltage organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) using almond gum (AG) as the gate dielectric. AG is a natural, biodegradable insulator material that can be directly collected from almond trees and used without any further purification. Moreover, AG possesses interesting properties such as water solubility, ease of processing, good insulation, low leakage current, good film quality, and high capacitance making it a promising dielectric for OFET devices. Bottom gate/bottom contact pchannel OFETs have been processed on glass substrates with poly(3,6-di(2-thien-5-yl)-2,5-polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) blend as the active layer and gold as the source and drain electrodes. The transistors operate at low voltage (VGS ≤ 3 V), with threshold voltages Vth as low as -0.8 V, saturated field effect mobilities μsat above 0.75 cm 2 .V -1 .s -1 , subthreshold swings SS around 270 mV/dec and ON/OFF current ratio equal to 10 3 . The combined favourable properties of both almond gum and low voltage operated OFET devices have a high potential to pave a way towards using naturally occurring, biodegradable electronic materials in future disposable sensors or throwaway, low-end electronics.