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The impulsive horse: Comparing genetic, physiological and behavioral indicators to those of human addiction.
Get PDFStress and genotype elicit changes in impulse control in a range of species that are attributable to adaptations in
both the central and peripheral nervous system. We examined aspects of this mechanism in the horse by assessing
the effect of a dopamine receptor genotype (DRD4) and central dopaminergic tone (measured via spontaneous
blink rate [SBR] and behavioral initiation rate [BIR]), on measures of impulsivity, compulsivity (3-choice serial
reaction time task) and sympathetic/ parasympathetic system balance (heart rate variability [HRV]). Genotype
did not have a significant effect on any of the parameters measured. SBR but not BIR correlated significantly with
levels of impulsivity. There was no clear association of HRV parameters with either measures of central dopaminergic activity or impulsivity/compulsivity. Overall, some elements of the data suggest that the horse may be a
useful animal model for assessing the genetic and environmental factors that lead to the physiological and
behavioral phenotype of human addiction, particularly when considering the relationship between central
dopaminergic tone and impulsivity
Advancing Solar Energy driven Heterogeneous Photo-Fenton processes for River Water Remediation
No full textWater is essential for life. Many of the countries across the globe that have poor management of potable water resources and lack critical infrastructure for managing wastewater. As the population of the Earth grows exponentially, the demand for water increases. More than 1 billion people across the world do not have access to potable water and they are struggling with epidemic level disease outbreaks, limited water supply among other large-scale public health risks. Large-scale critical infrastructure chains are required in order to produce potable water from raw water sources, and developing countries continue to struggle economically and cannot afford the same treatment chains as the developed world. This research project evaluated the feasibility of two photocatalytic and photo-Fenton solar reactors on their capabilities to breakdown water contaminants present in natural hydrosystems and freshwater resources namely rivers. The approached adopted to achieve this was the photo-Fenton reaction and solar-photochemical reactors designed constructed and tested for the removal efficiencies of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), ammonia, nitrates, nitrites and phosphates via LCK curvette tests, in addition to turbidity and colour. The water quality analysis and results showed that oversaturation of the photo-Fenton reagents reduces the effectiveness of the reaction, and that finding the correct chemical balance has a greater impact on the removal efficiencies of the five pollutants than the use of UV light catalyst. The difference in the reactor builds was their diameter, and the results showed that the reactor of smaller diameter achieved the best removal efficiency across all five pollutants
DynSus: Dynamic sustainability assessment in groundwater remediation practice
Get PDFDecision-making processes for clean-up of contaminated sites are often highly complex and inherently uncertain. It depends not only on hydrological and biogeochemical site variability, but also on the associated health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of taking, or not taking, action. These variabilities suggest that a dynamic framework is required for promoting sustainable remediation. For this, the decision support system DynSus is presented here for integrating a predeveloped contaminant fate and transport model with a sustainability assessment tool. Implemented within a system dynamics framework, the new tool uses model simulations to provide remediation scenario analysis and handling of uncertainty in various data. DynSus was applied to a site in south Sweden, contaminated with pentachlorophenol (PCP). Simulation scenarios were developed to enable a comparison between alternative remediation strategies and combinations of these. Such comparisons are provided for selected sustainability indicators and remediation performance (in terms of concentration at the recipient). This leads to identifying the most critical variables to ensure that sustainable solutions are chosen. Simulation results indicated that although passive practices, e.g., monitored natural attenuation, were more sustainable at first (5–7 years after beginning remediation measures), they failed to compete with more active practices, e.g., bioremediation, over the entire life cycle of the project (from the beginning of remedial action to achieving the target concentration at the recipient). In addition, statistical tools (clustering and genetic algorithms) were used to further assess the available hydrogeochemical data. Taken together, the results reaffirmed the suitability of the simple analytical framework that was implemented in the contaminant transport model. DynSus outcomes could therefore enable site managers to evaluate different scenarios more quickly and effectively for life cycle sustainability in such a complex and multidimensional problem
Technology of Microclimate Regulation in Organic and Energy-Sustainable Livestock Production
Get PDFThe control of climatic conditions where cattle are kept is one of the challenges in the livestock sector regarding the digital automation of the process. (1) Background: The main purpose of this study is to define the optimal foundations for automatic climatic systems in organic and energy-sustainable livestock production. In particular, the following components are suggested: (a) the determination of current deviations and interdependency between factors; (b) an algorithm for defining the possible sources of regulation; (c) the ranking approach of the optimal sequence of possible sources; and (d) ensuring transparency and coordination of the model with organic and energy certificates. (2) Methods: This investigation accumulates information on the characteristics of the main microclimatic parameters and simulates their possible combinations in a livestock building in Poland within 24 h of a spring day. A few indices are considered that signal the impact on the thermal comfort of cattle based on the example of recommended measures for the Angus steer genotype. (3) Results: The proposed transparent algorithm is designed for selecting and ranking potential sources of microclimate control according to three criteria. (4) Conclusions: This paper potentially contributes to determining the most optimal digital algorithm for managing microclimate conditions to ensure acceptable comfort for animals, meeting the requirements of organic certification with minimum costs of production, and switching to sustainable types of energy with consideration of technologies’ efficiency. The algorithm is scalable and adjustable to the individual conditions of any livestock premise with a digitally controlled environment
Meeting tree planting targets on the UK’s path to net-zero: A review of lessons learnt from 100 years of land use policies
Get PDFThe UK government has pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Ambitious targets have
been set to plant nearly a million hectares of new woodland in the UK by 2050 to meet these net-zero commitments. More than 70% of UK’s land is used for agricultural production and to meet these targets the Climate
Change Committee has estimated that by 2050 approximately 21% of agricultural land will be required for tree
planting, agroforestry and the extension of farm hedges. Achieving this creates a potential conflict between land
for food production and land for carbon sequestration. However, trees and woodlands, when integrated into
farming systems, can be multifunctional and play a significant role in helping farmers adapt and become more
resilient in the face of climate change.
Over the last 100 years numerous government policies and incentive schemes have endeavoured to encourage
more tree planting activities amongst farmers and landowners with varying degrees of success. This paper reviews the role of policy in determining the presence of trees in the UK’s agricultural landscape over the past 100
years. We quantify the current extent of woodland and tree cover and aim to put the UK’s net-zero tree planting
targets in the context of historical agricultural land use patterns. We evaluate drivers behind the current extent of
trees, woodland and agroforestry on UK farms and identify key elements of success in current and previous
policies and incentive schemes to help inform future policy mechanisms for the UK to meet its tree planting
targets.
Farmers are increasingly under pressure to deliver a wide range of environmental goals as well as producing
food. The effectiveness of financial incentives to influence tree planting is dependent on the pre-existing interest
and values of the farmer or landowner and grants alone may not be sufficient to encourage farmers to plant trees.
Scheme complexity, bureaucracy and insufficient payment rates are barriers to the success of woodland grants
and agri-environment schemes. Simplicity is important to encourage uptake, however oversimplification of
schemes can lead to unintended consequences. Advice and guidance are key elements in the successful adoption
of any new land management methods. A key to future progress will be scheme flexibility to enable farmers to
choose to plant trees where it best suits local conditions, to align policy tools with farmer values and to ensure
that farmers and landowners have the knowledge and support to make these decisions
Research Report Rural family businesses and exporting behaviour
Get PDFDriven by the importance of exporting for growth, this report examines the exporting
behaviour of UK small firms in rural and urban locations. Analysing data from five waves
of the Longitudinal Small Business Survey from 2015 to 2019, the report examines the
development by firms of goods or services that are suitable for exporting and the
subsequent decision to export, either consistently or intermittently. Overall, we find
significant differences between rural and urban firms in terms of exporting, where firms
located in sparse, dispersed areas were more likely to export, although less likely if they
declared themselves as family businesses. We also find that some types of firms, BAME-
owned and women-owned businesses, are much less likely to develop tradeable goods
and services. We demonstrate how the role of advice seems specifically connected to the decision to develop tradeable goods and services, rather than exporting per se. The
research confirms the importance of productivity and innovation on both exporting and developing tradeable goods and services. We propose a future research agenda on the
exporting practices of rural family businesses and women-owned enterprise, and on the role of exporting advice
Wild bees are less abundant but show better pollination behaviour for sweet cherry than managed pollinators
No full textPollinating insects provide pollination services to many crop species, including sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.), and this can be delivered by both managed and wild pollinators. Managed pollinators are often used to pollinate a range of fruit crops, but increasingly the role of wild insects is being studied. However, the importance of pollinator species depends on their relative abundance and pollination effectiveness, which depends on their foraging activity, and their variability throughout the day. In this study, insect visitors of blossoms were observed in commercial sweet cherry orchards to explore abundance, diversity, and pollination foraging behaviour of different insect pollinator groups throughout the day. A total of 1,174 pollinators from 31 different species were recorded visiting cherry blossoms over two years, of which 71.0% of total visits were by managed pollinators (western honeybee, Apis mellifera L. and buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris L.) compared to 29.0% by wild pollinators. On average, solitary bees visited a sweet cherry blossom for the longest duration (20.7 (± 2.0 SE) seconds), whereas wild queen bumblebees visited the greatest number of flowers per minute (mean of 19.0 (± 1.3 SE)). As both these pollinator groups contacted cherry stigmas more often and moved more frequently between tree rows than managed bees and hoverflies, they are more likely to facilitate cross-pollination. The different pollinator groups also showed variation in behavioural parameters throughout the day, but less variation was recorded when all pollinator groups were considered altogether. This suggests diverse pollinator communities might be expected to provide a more stable pollination service to sweet cherry. This study demonstrates that whilst cherry blossoms were more frequently visited by managed pollinators, wild solitary bee and bumblebee behaviours are likely to be more effective at enhancing pollination in sweet cherry orchards, which, in turn, might lead to increased yields
Can soil improving cropping systems reduce the loss of soil biodiversity within agricultural soils?
Get PDFSoil biodiversity, including abundance and function of species living in the soils are important aspects of soil health, and acknowledges that soil is a living ecosystem. The decline of soil biodiversity can lead to a simplification of the soil food web and the inter-relationships as a result of poor soil management. The impact of agricultural management has been shown to
reduce diversity, with damaging consequences for nutrient cycling, soil structure and potentially crop yields. However, research is often siloed and the effect of soil biodiversity on crop yields is overlooked by soil ecologists focusing on other ecosystem services; and the role of soil
biodiversity on maintaining soil quality and improving crop yields is missed by agronomy researchers. Introducing specific soil improving cropping systems (SICS) have previously been considered as a method to combat soil threats (such as soil erosion or compaction) but have
been overlooked as a method of reducing soil biodiversity losses within agriculture. As soil biodiversity loss is interlinked with these other soil threats, SICS will also potentially reduce the impact of them. Here, we review the range of SICS that can be utilised to reduce the threat of soil biodiversity loss, evaluating the effect of SICS on biodiversity across a wide range of organismal groups and consider the impact this will have on the sustainability of agricultural management. There are examples of measures and practices that combine high crop yields with the promotion
of soil biodiversity. Selecting specific cropping systems designed to maintain or increase soil biodiversity (e.g., cover crops), promoting the stabilisation of the soil environment (minimum tillage), reducing chemical amendments (targeted spraying and biocontrol), or increasing
biological amendments (adding organic matter) are all potential SICS that can be utilised
Microplastics in urban runoff: Global occurrence and fate
Get PDFPublic concerns on microplastic (MP) pollution and its prevalence in urban runoff have grown exponentially. Huge amounts of MPs are transported from urban environments via surface runoff to different environment compartments, including rivers, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and oceans. The global concentrations of MPs in urban runoff range from 0 to 8580 particles/L. Understanding the sources, abundance, composition and characteristics of MPs in urban runoff on a global scale is a critical challenge because of the existence of multiple sources and spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Additionally, dynamic processes in the mobilization, aging, fragmentation, transport, and retention of MPs in urban runoff have been largely overlooked. Furthermore, the MP flux through urban runoff into rivers, lakes and even oceans is largely unknown, which is very important for better understanding the fate and transport of MPs in urban environments. Here, we provide a critical review of the global occurrence, transport, retention process, and sinks of MPs in urban runoff. Relevant policies, regulations and measures are put forward. Future global investigations and mitigation efforts will require us to address this issue cautiously, cooperating globally, nationally and regionally, and acting locally