20505 research outputs found
Sort by
Arsenic contamination of rainfed versus irrigated rice
Get PDFArsenic (As) contamination of rice remains a major human health issue in Asia. Most research has been on irrigated rice. However much of the projected increase in global rice demand over coming decades must be met by rainfed lowland systems, for which As relations are poorly understood. We present the most comprehensive survey to date of As in rice in farmers’ fields across Bangladesh, covering both irrigated and rainfed systems. We collected rice grain and soil at 943 sites in the three rice growing seasons: irrigated Boro, rainfed Aus, and longer-duration rainfed Aman. Grain As concentrations increased in the order Aman ≪ Boro < Aus with 2, 25 and 41 % of the sites exceeding permitted thresholds, respectively. The greater concentration in Aus than Boro challenges the accepted wisdom that contaminated irrigation water is the main source of As. The main growth and grain filling periods, when most As is taken up, coincide in Aus with the peak of the monsoon rains, suggesting a link between rainfall and high grain As. We suggest this is due to stronger soil reducing conditions and hence As solubility during peak rainfall. We discuss implications for rainfed lowland rice across Asia and mitigation options.This research was funded by a grant from the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ‘Metal contamination of rice supplies in Asia’ (Grant Ref. BB/P02274X/1).Environmental Pollutio
Food loss and waste reduction by using Industry 4.0 technologies: examples of promising strategies
Get PDFFood loss and waste (FLW) represent a significant global issue, posing a threat to food sustainability on a worldwide scale. However, the growing awareness among consumers and the development of emerging technologies driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) present numerous opportunities to reduce FLW. This article provides a comprehensive examination of recently developed strategies for reducing FLW. The role of Industry 4.0 technologies, such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain, and big data, is highlighted through examples of various promising initiatives. The results of this analysis show that the application of digital technologies to address the issue of FLW is on the rise globally, with Industry 4.0 technologies revolutionising many sectors, including the food sector. Further research is necessary, and closer collaboration between producers, distributors, consumers, and other actors involved in the food supply chain is still required to reduce FLW further.‘Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship’ with Grant agreement ID: 101052284.International Journal of Food Science and Technolog
Circular bioeconomy and sustainable food systems: what are the possible mechanisms?
Get PDFThe circular bioeconomy has emerged as a promising pathway for sustainable development, yet its specific role in fostering sustainable food systems remains underexplored. To our best knowledge, this study is the first systematic review to examine how the circular bioeconomy contributes to sustainable food practices. Using content analysis of 111 academic papers from SCOPUS database, we identify key mechanisms through which the circular bioeconomy enhances food safety and security. These include the development of innovative food products manufactured from bio-resources, the extension of product life through utilizing biodegradable films and bio-based compounds, and the improvement of food safety via sustainable packaging. Additionally, circular bioeconomy practices increase agricultural productivity by enhancing crop yields. From a corporate perspective, they optimize resource use, boost profitability, and generate new revenue streams from waste. Socially, these practices improve stakeholder wellbeing and generate employment opportunities. Environmentally, they support natural capital regeneration, reduce ecological footprints, and promote the sustainable use of resources. Despite these benefits, significant research gaps remain, particularly regarding the cross-sectoral relationships and multi-level impacts of circular bioeconomy practices. This study provides actionable implications for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers, emphasizing regulatory development, strategic decision making, and future research on corporate-level impacts.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilCleaner and Circular Bioeconom
Control allocation problem transformation approaches for over-actuated vectored thrust VTOLs
Get PDFOne main challenge of vectored thrust VTOLs is actuator thrust control saturation because it may lead to undesired behaviour and loss of control if the control channels are not prioritised. Another challenge of vectored thrust VTOLs is that the vectored thrust results in non-linear effector mapping preventing the direct use of standard linear control allocation approaches. Linear control allocation approaches have lower online computational and complexity burden, and have simplier requirements for fault tolerance and reconfigurability than nonlinear control allocation approaches. This paper proposes three real-time control allocation approaches for transforming a nonlinear control allocation problem to a linear problem so that classical linear control allocation approaches can then be used. The approaches which addresses the two main challenges of the particular VTOL configuration are then tested using three selected flight test manoeuvres on a generic over-actuated vectored thrust three degrees of freedom planar VTOL with no aerodynamics. The first approach transfers the non-linearity from the effector mapping to the computation of the actuator limits by formulating the real controls in cartesian form and then converts the physical actuator limits from polar to cartesian form. The second approach transforms the non-linear effector mapping to a linear mapping via numerical linearisation of the non-linear effector mapping in real-time. The third approach is similar to second approach except an extra step which transforms the virtual controls from cartesian to polar before performing an analytical linearisation resulting in a different and more complicated linear Effector mapping. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control allocation schemes to allocate remaining control authority to higher priority and critical control channels in order to maintain operational safety and stability during certain flight conditions while there is limited control authority.Aerospace Science and Technolog
Techno-economic environmental and risk assessment for large container ship gas turbine combined cycle propulsion systems
Get PDFSampath, Suresh - Associate SupervisorIn recent years, the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) stringent
regulations on air pollutants, which are associated with increased fuel costs, have
encouraged researchers to develop fuels and technologies that are cleaner and
more efficient than conventional propulsion systems. This study defines and
describes a techno-economic environmental and risk assessment (TERA)
method for assessing substitute fuels and technologies that could be utilised in
the maritime sector to replace two-stroke diesel engines fuelled by heavy fuel oil
(HFO). This study aimed to develop a TERA method for marine technologies and
to improve Cranfield University’s ship resistance simulation code, “Poseidon”.
The study examined conventional propulsion systems, such as two-diesel
engines fuelled by marine diesel oil and gas and steam combined cycle fuelled
by liquefied natural gas and marine diesel fuel. The characteristic cryogenic
properties of liquefied natural gas were employed to improve the efficiency of the
combined cycle gas turbine cycles. The study selection criteria were
performance, emissions, weight, and investment costs, including installation,
operation, and maintenance costs for advanced combined gas and steam turbine
cycles and two-stroke diesel engine propulsion systems for large container ships.
A risk assessment was conducted to evaluate the impacts of capital cost, fuel
cost, hull fouling resistance, container shipment price, discount rate, and
emission taxation on the economic analysis. The results indicated that enhanced
LNG combined cycles were the most efficient. Their enhanced combined cycle
efficiency was 11% higher than two-stroke diesel engine efficiency and they
reduced nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide emissions by 76.3% and 44.7%,
respectively. Regarding the weight of the propulsion systems, the combined gas
and steam turbine propulsion system was approximately 24.7% lighter than the
diesel engine propulsion system. For the routes that were considered and
compared to a two-stroke diesel engine fuelled by MDO, the simple,
intercooler/reheat, and enhanced gas and steam combined cycles that were
fuelled by LNG increased the net present value by 78.3%, 78.5%, and 76.4%,
respectively, and the payback period was reduced by 38.8%, 38.9%, and 35%,
respectively. Additionally, the IRR showed a low-risk investment with significant
potential benefits of CCGT cycles fuelled with LNG. The discount rate, container
price, capital cost, emissions tax, and fuel cost scenarios showed the highest
impact on economic results compared with the other scenarios for all
technologies. The TERA was performed for different routes to evaluate the
benefits and disadvantages of installing combined cycles instead of two-stroke
diesel engines.PhD in Aerospac
Physical Critical Infrastructure Protection - Security by Obscurity is No Defence for Western Survivability
Get PDFCritical Infrastructure - the systems, facilities and assets that are vital for the functioning and protection of society and the economy.
The aim of this white paper is to undertake a broad analysis of the threats to Critical Infrastructure and how western democracies address them, alongside highlighting the enormity and the complexity of the issue, hopefully prompting new dialogue and, more importantly, action.
For the purpose of this paper, the authors have identified four vectors that define the threats relevant to critical infrastructure (Fig. 1).
The increasing volume of academic research into the critical infrastructure ecosystem, as referred to later in this paper (Fig 10.) is a tangible indicator of its importance, particularly the patterns emerging from Chinese institutions. The question of whether this evolving research is from a futureproofing/defence perspective or to greater understand the weakness of other nations is beyond the scope of this paper; it does however demonstrate a desire for increased knowledge and therefore capability.
As a current example, the targeting of Ukrainian critical infrastructure by Russian forces demonstrates the importance of this arena, with such infrastructure now clearly
Physical Critical Infrastructure Protection 3
identified as battlefield assets with game-changing strategic and psychological potential worthy of high levels of defence and a ‘building back better’ mindset.
Drilling down into the threats affecting the critical infrastructure ecosystem, we observe that the challenges facing the two attack vectors are neither exclusively civil nor exclusively military but both, in the context of what has been termed ‘total war’. Indirectly, the same could be said of the two non-confrontational vectors.
In the current geo-political climate, we are once again at a point where we must protect civilian assets from potential overt military, terrorist and covert aggression; our enemies are both seen and unseen. Due to the complex nature of the threats against critical infrastructure, the non-confrontational vectors, arguably both man-made and natural, require an almost identical style of response to those of the physical attack vector – namely enhanced physical resilience.
Enhanced physical resilience is a passive form of defence and comes in the form of greater protection. As an example of the inherent importance of this approach, it is applicable even to elements of the seemingly less tangible ‘cyber’ domain. While the cyber-attack vector is proactively defending against attacks online and supported by a combination of public/private sector investment, tech development and constant deployment, the hardware, power and communications aspects of the cyber threat are at constant risk and require effective physical protection against converging threats.
The authors have developed the Critical Infrastructure Threat Prism to highlight the protective synergy across the western powers at the strategic and operational levels. Only in the cyber-attack vector, however, is there any collective Critical 5 tactical level guidance or action in the form of the recent recommendation to include 12 essential security elements into all official and corporate Operational Technology (OT) procurement, as a minimum cyber security requirement.
The Critical 5 nations have made no mitigation recommendations for the physical attack vector in relation to minimum physical resilience guidelines for critical infrastructure, nor the non-confrontational threat vectors relating to adverse weather and structural decay. This oversight could dramatically affect the defence capabilities of both the Five Eyes Alliance and NATO as well as the domestic operability of member states’- built infrastructure, critical or otherwise.
The basic three-phase analysis of each critical infrastructure vector in this paper has also highlighted similar patterns of underreach in relation to the proactive hardening of physical critical infrastructure as a passive defence against attack and wider protection against adverse weather and structural decay.Cranfield University and Soteria Shielding Ltd
A robust machinery action recognition in construction using a mixed graph convolution block
No full textExisting computer vision-based approaches struggle to identify machinery actions due to the challenges posed by environmental complexity and various obstructions in construction. This study introduces a novel two-stage framework that benefits from a newly proposed Residual Fusion Graph Convolution Network (RFGCN) to classify machinery actions with enhanced robustness and accuracy. The framework first extracts key machinery components from video data, subsequently transforming them into a graph-based representation. This spatio-temporal graph is then fed into the RFGCN model, specifically designed to overcome issues like partial obstructions and missing information common in busy construction sites. Experimental evaluations reveal the method's high efficacy, achieving an accuracy of up to 96.4 % and outperforming state-of-the-art. Additionally, the proposed RFGCN model achieved state-of-the-art performance on four established benchmark datasets for graph classification using spatial data only. These results suggest the potential of the proposed framework in facilitating the transition towards more intelligent and automated construction sites.Expert Systems with Application
Chromium speciation monitoring platform for drinking water: machine learning-assisted dual-emission fluorescence sensor array
Get PDFDifferent chromium (Cr) speciation in drinking water shows distinct risk levels to humans, failing to reflect real environmental impacts only by total Cr analysis. Integrated with machine learning, a novel fluorescence sensor array was developed for rapid identification and quantitative detection of Cr speciation without sample pretreatment other than filtration. This system prepared three-component fluorescence hybrid materials (MSN@Zr@Au and MSN@Zr@AgAu) with dual emission wavelengths. The sensing unit with a dual-mode algorithm was specific for Cr speciation and accurately identified chromium speciation among 11 coexisting cations. The algorithm of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) assisting hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) provided higher selectivity for Cr speciation for real samples. Finally, this method showed good analytical performance ranging from 1 to 60 μM, exhibiting a low detection limit of 1.29 μM. This strategy shows excellent practicability for Cr speciation analysis in drinking and tap water, developing a practical monitoring platform for real water.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 22176075 and 21876067), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20240887), the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (24KJB610002), and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Technology and Material of Water Treatment.Environmental Science & Technology Letter
Engineering aqueous electrolytes with vicinal s‐based organic additives for highly reversible zinc‐ion batteries
Get PDFThe commercial deployment of aqueous zinc‐ion batteries (AZIBs) is hampered by dendrites, the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and corrosion reactions. To tackle these challenges, we have introduced 3,3′‐dithiobis‐1‐propanesulfonic acid disodium salt (SPS), a symmetrical sulfur‐based organic salt, as an electrolyte additive for AZIBs. Unlike conventional electrolyte additives that favor (002) deposition, SPS enables dense (100) growth through a unique symmetrically aligned concentration‐controlled adsorption network, affording structural uniformity and compactness to the Zn deposit layer. The dual‐action symmetrical SPS additive adsorbs onto the Zn surface via vicinal sulfur atoms, blocking electrolyte access to the Zn anode, enhancing the transportation kinetics of Zn2+, and simultaneously promoting desolvation by displacing water molecules from the solvation shell. This synergistic effect improves the stability of the Zn anode by mitigating HER and corrosion, resulting in over 1100 h of cycling at 5 mA cm−2, 5 mAh cm−2, stable operation at even 15 mA cm−2, 15 mAh cm−2, and achieving impressive Coulombic efficiency (CE) of 99.41%. As validation, the Zn/NaV3O8·1.35H2O cell with SPS‐additive afforded high cycling stabilization and excellent capacity retention of 95.5%. This study offers valuable insights for advancing AZIBs and other metal‐based batteries.National Natural Science Foundation of China: 22350410378National Natural Science Foundation of China: 52274299Angewandte Chemi
Field-based risk assessment of sea-dumped munitions: insights from the ALKOR 622 monitoring expedition in the Baltic sea
No full textDr. Aaron Beck and his team from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany, invited Prof. Tracey Temple and her team from Cranfield University, Shrivenham, to visit the research vessel ALKOR 622. The objective was to exchange knowledge and technical expertise on the monitoring and risk assessment of World War-era sea-dumped munitions. I joined the Centre for Defence & Security, Cranfield University, Shrivenham in October 2023 to pursue PhD under the supervision of Prof. Tracey Temple and Prof. Frederic Coulon. My research focuses on “Scientific Advancements in the Development of Risk Assessment for the Clearance of Dumped Munitions”. I had the privilege of participating in the expedition aboard ALKOR 622 on October 19, 2024, departing from Neustadt, Holstein in Germany.UK Ministry of Defence and Det Norske Veritas (DNV)Explosives Engineerin