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Este artículo examina la dinámica entre tres actores enfrentados, que utilizan tres discursos diferentes en su lucha, en la cual el objeto del conflicto es el agua. El caso de estudio es el de las comunidades de la isla de Amantaní, que se enfrentan a un cambio en la organización del sistema de gestión, abastecimiento y uso del agua para uso doméstico como resultado de la aprobación del proyecto Agua Para Todos que impulsa el gobierno central. En este contexto, la lucha entre estos actores se impone desde la posición de tradiciones dispares de derechos de agua ya que los comuneros usan el recurso bajo diferentes órdenes legales (el municipal, el de las comunidades campesinas y el de los sistemas de agua formales). El trabajo describe y analiza los procesos de negociación que tienen lugar, utilizando el concepto de Foucault de “programas de poder”, que se refiere a que cada orden legal produce y reproduce discursos y acciones orientados para sus “formas” de ejercer el poder. El artículo argumenta que como resultado de estas luchas y confrontaciones, principalmente por medio de la retórica, se establece un nuevo mapa de distribución de los derechos de agua.

Water is a very essential thing for all forms of life’s in our Ecosystem. Society has the various forms of water demands such as the Domestic needs, Commercial needs, Institutional and industrial water needs, Water for public use and the Fire demand. But due to increase in population and urbanisation the utmost water resource is now under serious threat due to exploitation of water resource and the unsustainable usage of water. The immediate need of the existing situation is sustainable usage of water at all parts of the world. Water resource is an important criteria for Irrigation activities. Tropical countries like India is totally rely on Irrigation to overcome their food demand for their existing population. It is been calculated that the 50 percent of water demand will gets increase towards irrigation in India by the year 2025. This demand can be only achieved by increasing the effectiveness of irrigation. Tank irrigation is much popular in the southern state of India like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu the second largest place in India for the implementation of Tank Irrigation. Nearly 589 thousand hectares of agricultural land in Tamil Nadu covers under the tank irrigation system. This system covers 23 percentage of overall tank irrigation system in India. There are 39,202 tanks, in-charge of Public Works Department (PWD includig Ex-Zamin tanks) and Panchayat Unions, in Tamil Nadu. The research was conducted at Deevanur tank, which is situated in Deevanur village in at Tindivanam Taluk of Vilupuram District in Tamil Nadu, India, This study emphases on the impact generated on Deevanur tank due to the laying of Buried PVC pipe line in sluice command area. The outcome of the study shows that the crop cultivated area 56% and cultivation of paddy crop in second season is well flourished.

Urban expansions into natural habitats have forced many carnivores to adapt to the modified areas; however, our understanding of their ecology in such areas is limited. The Indian fox (Vulpes bengalensis) is a small carnivore species that can adapt and exploit urban areas due to its generalist nature, but there is a paucity of data on Indian foxes in these human-modified areas. To understand the resource requirement of Indian foxes in urban habitats, we conducted a diet analysis by examining 119 scats of Indian foxes in a peri-urban habitat of Baripada town, Odisha, eastern India. To determine the diet composition of Indian foxes, we analyzed scat contents by their frequency occurrence (%FO), the relative frequency of occurrence (%RF) and mean percent volume (%Vm). Indian foxes consumed a wide range of food categories, including arthropods, rodents, reptiles, birds, plant parts and anthropogenic resources. In %Vm, rodents showed the highest volume, followed by polythene, Spondias pinnata fruit and Coleoptera. We found anthropogenic foods in considerable quantities, including polythene and paper. The diet of Indian foxes indicates that the species has opportunistic and generalist feeding habits consisting primarily of easily accessible foods. Furthermore, management efforts should focus on the proper management of waste and control of anthropogenic food sources in urban habitats.

This paper presents a summary of work undertaken by the authors and their teams on a series of Qe'an (plural of Qa’), in the Badia of eastern Jordan. These basins are foci for settlement in the region, with the sites described here (Shubayqa, Wisad and the Qa’ Qattafi) edged by archaeological sites dating from the late Epipalaeolithic (ca. 14,500 - 11,600 cal BP) and the Neolithic (ca. 11,700 - 6100 cal BP), and in areas still used by people today as seasonal wetlands for watering animals and growing cereal. We assess here the potential for the Qe'an sediments to provide what would be rare continuous palaeoenvironmental records for this part of SW Asia.\ud \ud The paper presents the first dates from the Qe'an of this region and the outline sedimentology. Much of the fill is of Holocene age, which leads to discussion of climate and landscape change over the last 15,000 years, particularly due to the close geographical relationship between these basins and archaeology. Our optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating of the basin fill suggests that there was significantly more space in the landscape for water storage in the early Holocene, which may have therefore provided this resource for people and their livestock or game for a longer duration each year than that seen today. Linked to this are hypotheses of a more vegetated landscape during this time period. Given the environmentally marginal nature of our study area subtle changes in landscape and/or climate, and human exploitation of these resources, could have led to significant, and likely detrimental for its inhabitants, environmental impacts for the region, such as desertification. Our data are suggestive of desertification occurring, and sets up a clear hypothesis for testing by future work in the region.

We show that giant and unpredictable oil and gas discoveries trigger FDI bonanzas. Across developing countries, we document a 56% increase in FDI in the two years following a giant discovery. These booms are driven by new projects in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, services, and construction. To assess the job creation effects of one such FDI bonanza in Mozambique, we combine concurrent waves of household surveys and firm censuses and estimate the local job multiplier of FDI. Our estimates suggest that for each new FDI job, an additional 4.4 jobs are created locally, 2.1 of which are formal jobs.

Given that cultivated land serves as a strategic resource to ensure national food security, blind emphasis on improvement of food production capacity can lead to soil overutilization and impair other soil functions. Therefore, we took Heilongjiang province as an example to conduct a multi-functional evaluation of soil at the provincial scale. A combination of soil, climate, topography, land use, and remote sensing data were used to evaluate the functions of primary productivity, provision and cycling of nutrients, provision of functional and intrinsic biodiversity, water purification and regulation, and carbon sequestration and regulation of cultivated land in 2018. We designed a soil function discriminant matrix, constructed the supply-demand ratio, and evaluated the current status of supply and demand of soil functions. Soil functions demonstrated a distribution pattern of high grade in the northeast and low grade in the southwest, mostly in second-level areas. The actual supply of primary productivity functions in 71.32% of the region cannot meet the current needs of the population. The dominant function of soil in 34.89% of the area is water purification and regulation, and most of the cultivated land belongs to the functional balance region. The results presented herein provide a theoretical basis for optimization of land patterns and improvement of cultivated land use management on a large scale, and is of great significance to the sustainable use of black soil resources and improvement of comprehensive benefits.

BackgroundAnalyzing real-world data, including health insurance claims, may help provide insights into preventing and treating various diseases. We developed a database covering Shizuoka Prefecture (Shizuoka Kokuho Database [SKDB]) in Japan, which included individual-level linked data on health- and care-insurance claims and health checkup results.MethodsAnonymized claims data on health insurance (National Health Insurance [age

Grain is not only the basic living materials of urban and rural residents, but an important strategic resource related to the national security. Therefore, grain security is an important aspect of national security. Farmers' willingness to grow grain is the key factor to guarantee food security. Based on the structural equation model, the main factors that influence the farmers' willingness to grow grain were studied in this paper by investigating 486 dispersed farmers in six counties (cities, districts) of three prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province. The study indicated that aside from the difficulty of measuring the influence of personal characteristic factors, the national grain subsidy policies, grain price, grain planting scale, other farmers' production behaviors, and promotion of agricultural technology affected the farmers' willingness to grow grain in varying degrees. Further regional multi-group analyses demonstrated that the farmers' willingness to grow grain showed an increasing trend from east to west in Shandong Province. Additionally, grain subsidy policies and family characteristic factors had obvious regional differences on the farmers' willingness to grow grain. Therefore, optimizing and improving the national grain subsidy policies, encouraging the management of a moderate scale, stabilizing prices of grain, increasing the propaganda of agricultural information and promoting agricultural technology were the key factors to increase the farmers' willingness to grow grain.

Riparo Dalmeri is an Epigravettian high altitude rock shelter, seasonally occupied for specialized ibex hunting. Its occupation pattern indicates the mobility of human groups from the lowlands to the mountains, in order to exploit a territory which is inaccessible during the winter. This work presents the results of the taphonomic study carried out on the bird bone assemblages from Riparo Dalmeri, where birds play a secondary role as an economic resource, when compared to the intense seasonal exploitation of ibex. Despite its small size, the bird bone assemblage still provides valuable ecological information as well as information about anthropic traces connected with food exploitation and other resources. The most common human modifications detected on the bird bones are those related to butchery: stone tool cut-marks, fresh bone fracture, peeling, crushing, wrenching, and, more rarely, notches or chop-marks. Localized burning traces have also been detected.

Many Countries have rich resources of land, rivers, groundwater, environment and fertilizers availability. Agriculture is the main source of income for several country’s people. Since the last few decades, there are few resource shortages like groundwater, river water. People are unaware of proper utilization of available valuable resources, which leads to use more resources for less crop production. One of the solutions of this problem is to design and implement an IoT based smart framework for agriculture. In this paper, we have proposed a smart agriculture framework to monitor different types of low cost IoT sensors-devices, which collects data from soil, air, water, insects and make appropriate decisions based on analysis of sensors data. Novel contribution of our proposed approach is to automate tasks of irrigation, fertigation, pest detection, pesticide spray in a scientific way with minimal farmer’s intervention in one framework. This paper contains detailed implementation steps and result of smart irrigation module of our framework.

China's rapid urbanization process has pushed rural villages into an urban-rural integration movement. Several modes and approaches have been applied to remake space in rural China, which differ greatly in restructuring outcomes. In response, this article builds on the insights of regime theory to develop a conceptual framework to reveal the mechanism behind China's rural spatial restructuring and seeks to explore the underlying reasons that affect the outcomes. It is found that resource adequacy, the quality of resource coalition, and the effectiveness of implementation determine the rural regime's capacity to manage spatial restructuring. Case studies from Hua County, Chaohu City, and Shenzhen are used to illustrate the conceptual framework's application and facilitate a comparative analysis from the perspective of rural regime capacity. The findings provide a critical rethinking of the “sustainable remaking of rural space”, which could therefore shed light on the rural governance of countries in the global south generally.

For any cities, the optimal objective of development is to fully tap the value of land resources, while pursuing the progress of economy, society, and eco-environment. Currently, there is not yet a unified evaluation standard for sustainable development quality of urban environment; the land resource value has not been deeply evaluated from the three aspects of society, economy, and eco-environment. Therefore, this paper tries to measure urban land resource value based on sustainable environmental space governance. Firstly, the authors constructed a scientific evaluation index system for sustainable development quality of urban environment. Next, a comprehensive evaluation method was developed for sustainable land utilization in urban space governance system. After that, the urban space governance scheme was subject to multi-objective optimization. Finally, experiments were carried out to measure the urban land resource value, and estimate the urban ecological service functions and their values. On this basis, the benefits of the urban space governance scheme were analyzed in various aspects. The results confirm the effectiveness of our measurement algorithm.

Selecting the appropriate targeted poverty alleviation policies and exploring the implementation path of refined poverty alleviation policies are important to provide support for achieving a comprehensive poverty alleviation for China in 2020. Two models, namely, land resources-environmental carrying capacity (LRECC) index and the coupling coordination degree (CCD), were established to quantitatively explore the important effects of differences in the LRECC in the production, living and ecological spaces on poverty, and determine the important role of superior carrying space in poverty alleviation. Additionally, this study explored the relationship between the poverty incidence and the LRECC by using of the coefficient of geographical association (CGA) to perform the priority and the optimal selection of targeted poverty alleviation policies from the production, living, and ecological spaces. Results showed that the comprehensive CGAs of Long Zhouping township, Huo Shaoping township and other townships were high; therefore, the priority of targeted poverty alleviation was high. By contrast, the comprehensive CGAs of Ya Zikou township, Du Zhenwan township, and other townships were low; thus, the priority of targeted poverty alleviation was low. Long Zhouping and Dayan townships should select the production aspect of targeted poverty alleviation policies, whereas Du Zhenwan and Ya Zikou townships and Gao Jiayan and Moshi townships should select the living and ecological aspects, respectively. Selecting the appropriate targeted poverty alleviation policies by quantitatively identifying the advantages of regional land resource endowment and the poverty incidence will help take the poor out of poverty, and do not become poor again, thereby achieving regional sustainable development.

Software-defined networks (SDNs) can help facilitate dynamic network resource provisioning in demanding applications, such as those involving Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices and systems. For example, SDN-based systems can support increasing demands of multi-tenancy at the network layer, complex demands of micro-services, etc. A typical (large) manufacturing setting generally comprises a broad and diverse range of IoT devices and applications to support different services (e.g., transactions on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, maintenance prediction, asset management, and outage prediction). Hence, this work introduces a demand-supply-based economic model to enhance the efficiency of different multi-tenancy attributes at the network layer, which captures the computational complexity of industrial ERP-IoT transactions and performs network resource provisioning, based on the demand-supply principle. The proposed model is accompanied by a flow scheduler, which dynamically assigns ERP-IoT traffic flow entries on network devices to specific pre-configured queues. This scheduler is used to increase service providers’ utility. The evaluation of the proposed model suggests the utility of our proposed approach. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Methane hydrate has become one promising energy resource for humankind. In this study, recent worldwide onshore/offshore drilling and production activities are analysed. The most recent reports from sites such as Japan (2013 and 2017) and China (2017) show that the road towards comprehensive utilisation of methane hydrate is underway. Though the production methods (depressurisation, thermal stimulation and carbon dioxide (CO2) replacement) diverge in safety and efficiency, potential has been confirmed for future large-scale utilisation. The world hydrate policy is dependent on the socioeconomic status and environmental concerns in major countries. It is urged that international regulations on commercial explorations be settled for methane hydrate projects.

Competition typically takes place in a spatial context, but eco-evolutionary models rarely address the joint evolution of movement and competition strategies. Here we investigate a spatially explicit producer-scrounger model where consumers can either forage on a heterogeneous resource landscape or steal resource items from conspecifics (kleptoparasitism). We consider three scenarios: (1) a population of foragers in the absence of kleptoparasites; (2) a population of consumers that are either specialized on foraging or on kleptoparasitism; and (3) a population of individuals that can fine-tune their behavior by switching between foraging and kleptoparasitism depending on local conditions. By means of individual-based simulations, we study the joint evolution of movement and competition strategies, and we investigate the implications on the resource landscape and the distribution of consumers over this landscape. In all scenarios and for all parameters considered, movement and competition strategies evolved rapidly and consistently across replicate simulations. The evolved movement and resource exploitation patterns differ considerably across the three scenarios. For example, foragers are attracted by conspecifics in scenario (1), while they are repelled by conspecifics in scenario (2). Generally the movement strategies of kleptoparasites differ markedly from those of foragers, but even within each class of consumers polymorphisms emerge, corresponding to pronounced differences in movement patterns. In all scenarios, the distribution of consumers over resources differs substantially from ‘ideal free’ predictions. We show that this is related to the intrinsic difficulty of moving effectively on a depleted landscape with few reliable cues for movement. Our study emphasises the advantages of a mechanistic approach when studying competition in a spatial context, and suggests how evolutionary modelling can be integrated with current work in animal movement ecology.

Bee populations have declined in many parts of the world, raising concerns over their conservation and the pollination services they provide. As a result of declines in agricultural areas, agri-environment schemes have been designed and implemented in order to reverse these trends. Until now, these schemes have largely focused on providing an abundance of herbaceous flowering plants which predominantly provide pollen and nectar during the summer, but flowering trees and shrubs may have been overlooked as a source of earlier-flowering resources. Using Bombus terrestris (L.) micro-colonies, we investigated differences in pollen quality from eight woody and six herbaceous plant species using composi-tional analyses and efficacy assays. Pollen from herbaceous plants had a higher average crude protein and lipid content, but there were no differences in the protein:lipid ratio when compared to woody plants. However, when measuring amino acids directly, woody plants had a slightly higher total and essential amino acid content. Despite these minor differences, micro-colonies fed on woody plant pollen produced a greater mass of larval offspring and had a lower rate of larval ejection. There was substantial variation between individual studied plant species, and whilst no individual woody plant pollen outper-formed the best herbaceous pollen, they all exceeded the performance of the worst herbaceous pollen. This consistent performance suggests that woody plants may be good candidates for inclusion in bee-focused agri-environment schemes in order to provide suitable pollen resources in the early part of the season.

The impacts of Climate Change are not homogeneous globally or for a country or region as a whole. Consequently, it is essential to carry out studies to identify its effects in particular areas. Due to its geographical and topographic characteristics, Chihuahua's state is vulnerable to the adverse effects of Climate Change. The scarce availability of water resources leads to problems of social pressure and economic impact. This paper analyzes the alteration of the rainfall regime in Chihuahua's state and its association with Climate Change. For this, historical characterization is used; trend analysis using the Mann Kendall test; and calculation of 10 indices of climatic extremes proposed by the Group of Experts for Detection and Climate Change Indices for the precipitation variable. The results showed that the precipitation patterns in the south and southeast of Chihuahua's state have been gradually modifying, with a downward trend in annual accumulated and reduction of wet days. Still, in counterpart, there is a slight intensification of extreme rainfall. This fact added to the growing demand for water resources in the entity, requests for public policies for sustainable management and responsible use by users. Otherwise, there is a risk of experiencing negative effects associated with the over-exploitation of water, not only for the resource users but also for the environment.

Over the last 2 decades the importance of Andean glaciers, particularly as water resources, has been recognized in both scientific literature and the public sphere. This has led to the inclusion of glaciers in the environmental impact assessment and the development of glacier protection laws in both Chile and Argentina. However, these laws are limited in their ability to protect, manage, and monitor water resources as they do not differentiate between glacier types. We propose three glacier categories that aim to group glaciers based on their sensitivity to environmental changes as a framework that could be adopted to match the level of protection to the current and future needs of society, be region-specific, and evolve through time. Finally, we review both national inventories with respect to this classification to facilitate the evaluation and/or management of water resources.

One of entrepreneurs’ key tasks is mobilizing resources from external resource holders. Although we know how entrepreneurial ventures gain initial access to resources, we do not yet fully understand how they maintain their resource mobilization, particularly in the face of potential threats. During our 11-month study of prosocial ventures that emerged to alleviate the suffering of refugees in Germany, four attacks on the European public occurred that were allegedly committed by refugees. These attacks disrupted the German welcoming culture for refugees, potentially threatening the legitimacy of the prosocial ventures’ core activities. Thus, the attacks provide a starting point for examining how new prosocial ventures are able to maintain access to resources in the face of the potential withdrawal of resource holders. Theorizing from our data, we identify three distinct approaches to explain how prosocial ventures responded to the potential threat undermining the legitimacy of their activities to maintain access to resources. These approaches differ in their initial resource mobilization (i.e., based on the venture’s goal for alleviating suffering), threat appraisals, and responses to maintain resource mobilization in the face of the potential delegitimization of their core activities. Our model provides novel insights into resource mobilization and prosocial venturing.

We explore the limits of in situ resource utilization (ISRU) on the Moon to maximize living off the land by building lunar bases from in situ material. We adopt the philosophy of indigenous peoples who excelled in sustainability. We are interested in leveraging lunar resources to manufacture an entire lunar base in such a fashion that is fully sustainable and minimizes supplies required from Earth. A range of metals, ceramics and volatiles can be extracted from lunar minerals to support construction of a lunar base that include structure, piping and electrical distribution systems. To 3D print a lunar base, we must 3D print the load-bearing structure, electrical distribution system, water-based heating system, drinking water system, air system and orbital transport system from in situ resources. We also address the manufacture of the interior of the lunar base from local resources. The majority of systems constituting a lunar base can be manufactured from in situ resources.

Purpose: Involvement of adolescent and young adult (AYAs) cancer survivors as consumers in research is increasingly encouraged, yet few studies have identified the feasibility and acceptability of ...

A pilot facility was developed to evaluate the digestion efficiency of mixed fruit peel waste by black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens (L.) (Diptera: Stratiomyidae); BSF) larvae in Sri Lanka. Larval biomass was characterised by proximate analysis and the techno-functional properties of BSF larvae flour protein were determined. A cost-benefit analysis was conducted to assess the feasibility of operating an onsite BSF digestion facility for a medium scale fruit juice manufacturer. The observed optimum feeding rate was 1.5 g/larva. A bioconversion rate of 15.41 was achieved. The waste reduction index was 1.73. The feed conversion rate was 3.85. The efficiency of conversion of digested food was 0.29. The highest wet and dry weight reductions were 61.72 and 55.10% respectively, indicating very efficient digestion. The crude protein content of BSF larvae was 40.87% while the crude fat content was 26.67%, proving it is a potential protein source as a feed ingredient. The protein fraction also had highly desirable techno-functional properties (water-binding capacity 3.00 g/gDM, oil binding capacity 5.22 g/gDM, emulsifying capacity 36.00 ml/g, foaming capacity 0.48, and foaming stability 0.15). The waste is currently being dumped in a non-sustainable manner at US$ 10.00 per one metric ton. The cost-benefit analysis showed a net benefit of US$ 3,963.76 per month from this valorisation, suggesting it is a highly viable, eco-friendly option for processing fruit processing industry or similar organic waste under tropical conditions in middle income countries.

The number of teens using electronic cigarettes in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. One in 20 middle school youth currently vapes regularly (Wang et al., 2020), supporting the need for e-cigarette education and prevention programs in this vulnerable population.The evidence-based youth vaping prevention program, CATCH My Breath, was implemented and evaluated in a small, private, parochial middle school using a quasi-experimental, within-subjects, longitudinal design.Students' e-cigarette knowledge significantly improved postintervention (p.001) and was sustained at 3 months follow-up. Attitudes about vaping remained stable after postintervention and at 3 months follow-up (p.05). Susceptibility toward vaping increased or remained consistent despite increased knowledge (p = .096).CATCH My Breath is an effective school-based resource to educate middle school youth about the dangers of vaping. Additional research is needed to evaluate the intervention's impact on e-cigarette attitudes and the measurement of susceptibility in teens.

Most forest soils contain substantial amounts of gravel. However, unlike the more widely known root resource uptake behaviors which respond to resource patches in substrate without gravels, how roots respond to substrate containing different gravel levels is poorly understood. We grew roots in substrates with five gravel levels (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% of volume) in a subtropical Schima superba Gardn. et Champ plantation, determined fine root dynamics and turnover rate with minirhizotrons, measured fine root morphological, architectural, mycorrhizal colonization, chemistry, and mass allocation. The presence of gravel in the substrate delayed the timing of peak root growth. In the substrate with higher gravel content, plants produced more in roots in autumn, but there were fewer roots in summer and the roots tended to exhibit lower fine root turnover rate and mycorrhizal colonization, but higher root biomass allocation. The higher root biomass in the substrate with higher gravel content was associated with higher root carbon/nitrogen ratio. Our findings emphasize the complexity of root resource uptake behavior in response to gravel content and suggest that incorporating substrate gravel content into root studies may help to improve the prediction of patch exploitation and nutrient acquisition in stony soils.

This paper explores a problem faced by many coastal states worldwide: Should the rights to fish in their exclusive economic zones be attributed to national firms or sold to foreign countries/firms? The European Union for instance, with the so-called Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements gives financial and technical support to developing countries in exchange for fishing rights in their jurisdiction. In order to understand and quantify the basis upon which those agreements are drawn up, we propose a framework based on a multistage game that can be used as a tool to evaluate the fairness of natural resource agreements in general, including fishery ones. By capturing how much it is worth for coastal states to give access to their fishery resources to foreign fleets, this framework can help authorities to decide on a fair sharing of resource rents during negotiations. The problem is addressed through a two-country game, in which “home” represents the resource owner, and “foreign” the one that seeks access to the resource. In each country, there are two decision makers: authorities and harvesting firms. Two markets for selling the resource are considered, one at home and one abroad, where prices are determined endogenously. We begin with the case of exogenous quotas. In a symmetric equilibrium, both firms are active when the foreign authority maximises welfare, but only the home firm is active when it maximises profit. Under cost asymmetry, the home authority has a pool of mutually exclusive price strategies that depend on market conditions and induce a plethora of outcomes. When quotas are endogenous, the shape of optimal price regions changes and the distinct number of pricing options increases.

Fruit and vegetable waste (FVW) contains rich resources that can be recovered by methods such as incineration, anaerobic digestion to generate heat energy, biogas, and preservation by ensiling. However, a horizontal comparison of the resource potential and environmental impact of different recycling methods employed for FVW has not been conducted. This study quantifies and computes the recycling potential and global warming potential (GWP) of anaerobic digestion, ensiling, and incineration of the FVW generated during primary production in China. First, a gray model was employed to estimate the FVW output in 2030, based on the FVW produced between 2002 and 2017. Next, the resource potential and GWP of anaerobic digestion, incineration, and ensiling were evaluated. Finally, an optimization method was utilized to analyze possible strategies of FVW recycling in 2030. Results indicate that FVW output in China is expected to increase to 170 Mt by 2030, highlighting the need for efficient treatment options. Further, the resource potential and GWP of different waste treatment strategies were notably different. The recycling potential of ensiling was the highest at 1950 MJ/t; while the GWP of anaerobic digestion was the lowest at −31 kg CO2eq. An optimization analysis suggested that the optimal target of 100% would be attained if all FVW is ensiled in 2030. The study provides a basis for informed technical decision-making related to FVW recycling options in the future.

Bioeconomy is deemed to be an ambiguous term with multiple facets: new products from biomass, circular and cascading resource systems, developments of new and more resilient plants, or synthetic biology for molecular biotechnology, to name a few. Accordingly, the term is interpreted just as diversely by involved stakeholders and the broader public. To enable a clear and constructive dialog on bioeconomy strategies with and among society requires a profound understanding of these perceptions. Addressing this issue, a representative survey was conducted among the German population in order to scrutinize the general public's understanding of the term bioeconomy, citizens’ knowledge, fears, and expectations, as well as factors explaining their attitudes toward the bioeconomy. Our results indicate that, so far, German citizens are not very familiar with the concept. Its underlying ideas, however, are vastly appreciated. Support for a sustainable bioeconomy is thus strong and connected to high expectations in terms of environmental and economic benefits, which needs to be taken into account both in the implementation and communication of bioeconomy strategies. Support for the bioeconomy is furthermore connected to beliefs that reflect environmental concern and to pro-environmental behavior. While most measures and principles related to the bioeconomy (e.g., the use of biogas, biofuels, renewable materials for everyday products or buildings, or the cascading and circular use of resources) are strongly appreciated, the use of genetic engineering, for example, is opposed, mainly with regard to its applications in agriculture and industry, to a lesser extent in medicine.

Resource effectiveness and the circular economy are crucial for the future of the construction sector. A number of initiatives in Brazil and France are examining how resource efficiency and circularity can be introduced in various construction stages. But there is no unifying arena where both countries can meet. The lack of financial resources and a proper management system for construction and demolition waste are the main challenges which developing countries need to stand. This could encourage the development of innovations mainly in specific areas such as concrete recycling, and also stimulate the society to become aware of the value of material waste in the production supply chain. This proposal follows a waste input-output model to compare recycling and non-recycling scenarios in two stages of the construction process; this approach provides a positive alternative for the analysis of environmental scenarios in the traditional construction process. This research proved that at the construction site, there is a decrease in the amount of waste, concrete, metal, and plastic. However, during demolition, the concrete is not decreasing in the recycling scenario, even with a considerable amount of plastic and metal, probably due to the lack of proper waste separation in the site.

Resource and environmental management are shaping our society and economy. Virgin mining is rapidly becoming unsustainable as primary resources are in increasingly short supply and energy consumption continues to increase. Urban mining through a circular economy has emerged as a promising option for securing copper and aluminum resources. However, the sustainability and viability of this circular economy industry are heavily dependent on its profitability. Here, we demonstrate the economic benefits of urban mining for anthropogenic minerals: e-waste, end-of-life vehicles, and waste wiring and cables. The material and cost flows associated with urban mining are deeply examined. Through life cycle cost and cost-benefit analysis, the cost of obtaining one ton of copper or aluminum is found to be, on average, 3,000 US$ or 1,660 US$, which is significantly lower than the cost of virgin mining. Moreover, in terms of the costs and benefits, copper may differ tremendously from aluminum depending on the type of anthropogenic mineral. Some additional regulations or policies enactment need to reinforce the urban mining and circular economy.

Theoretical models indicate that speciation, especially when the scope for gene flow is great (e.g., sympatric speciation), is most likely when strong performance trade-offs coincide with reproduction. We tested this classic hypothesis using measures of the strength of three prezygotic reproductive isolating barriers (habitat isolation, reduced immigrant fecundity, and behavioral isolation) between two young (~2,000 years) and sympatric red crossbill (

The appropriate use of limited natural resources for generating basic human needs such as energy, food, and water, is essential to help the society function efficiently. Hence, a new approach called nexus is being considered to resolve the effects of intrinsic trade-offs between the essential needs. A review of different methods and frameworks of the water-energy-food nexus was done in this article to give a detailed repository of information on existing approaches and advocate the development of a more holistic quantitative nexus method. Assessing biofuels under the water-energy-food nexus perspective, this review addresses the sustainability of bioenergy production. The results show the countries that can sustainably produce first-generation biofuels. Only a few methods have varied interdisciplinary procedures to analyse the nexus, and more analytical software and data on resource availability/use are needed to address trade-offs between these interacting resource sectors constituting the nexus. Also, “land” is suggested as an additional sector to consider in future studies using both the nexus index and life cycle assessment methodology. The review reveals that to tackle composite challenges related to resource management, cross-disciplinary methods are essential to integrate environmental, socio-political facets of water, energy, and food; employ collaborative frameworks; and seek the engagement of decision-makers.

Xanthomonas fragariae is a global quarantine pathogen, which typically inflicts angular leaf spots. In the present study, we report a new 4.11-Mb high-quality genome sequence of X. fragariae YL19. YL19 can cause the typical angular leaf spot symptoms on strawberry plants in China as well as crown infection pocket symptoms. This new symptom has not been reported in other X. fragariae. Compared with typical X. fragariae strains, including PD885, NBC2815, PD5205, Fap21, and Fap29, the genome and plasmid in YL19 were smaller in size, lacking 109 coding genes, and have more carbohydrate-active enzyme and secondary metabolism genes. The YL19 genome ought to clarify the molecular mechanisms of genome evolution, host adaptation, and pathological process of X. fragariae and help improve strawberry management strategies. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .

The academic debate on whether there is a “resource curse” has lasted for nearly three decades. This paper aims to verify the existence of a “resource curse” with the proposed new model, named the generalised weighted least squares support vector panel regression (GWLS-SVPR) model, from the perspective of spatial heterogeneity, in response to the debate of scholars. Our case study focuses on the data of 31 regions in China from 2009 to 2018. The results show that the impact of natural resources on economic growth has spatial correlation and heterogeneity, and different proxy variables have different conclusions. Overall, it is easier to conclude that there is a “resource curse” by using resource dependence as a substitute variable for natural resources than by using resource abundance. Using per capita GDP as the proxy variable of economic growth is easier to get the conclusion that there is no “resource curse” than per capita GDP growth rate. After considering both spatial heterogeneity and proxy variable differences, we conclude that a “resource curse” does exist in some regions of China, but there are obvious spatial differences.

Many consumers engage in frequent consumption indulgences. Because such indulgences accumulate resource costs (e.g., money, calories), consumers are often prompted to cut back, posing questions for how to design cutback programs with consumer appeal. This research distinguishes between frequent indulgences that consumers think of as social (vs. solitary), demonstrating that thinking of an indulgence as social (vs. solitary) decreases preferences to cut “frequency” (how often the indulgence occasion occurs) and increases preferences to cut “intensity” (choosing a within-category substitute that involves lower resource expenditure). The author explains these effects by differentiating between enjoyment from the product itself and enjoyment from aspects outside the product. Thinking of an indulgence as social (vs. solitary) heightens people’s anticipated enjoyment, particularly for aspects outside of the product, decreasing interest in cutting the number of occasions (cutting frequency) and increasing interest in cutting back on the product itself via a within-category substitute (cutting intensity). This divergence in cutback preferences for social (vs. solitary) experiences is thus eliminated (1) when consumers think of social experiences with distant (vs. close) others, which involve lower enjoyment outside of the product, or (2) when solitary experiences primarily involve heightened enjoyment for aspects outside of the product.

Dementia is a stigmatizing condition requiring enhanced awareness and understanding. Churches are a trusted source of support for African Americans, a demographic disproportionately affected by dementia. However, many African American churches are not equipped with the knowledge and means to provide safe environments, resources, and spiritual and social support for their parishioners living with dementia and their families. This protocol is written to detail the design and implementation of a nurse-led, dementia-friendly congregation program, Alter. The Alter program was developed to increase dementia awareness, develop a supportive, faith-based dementia-friendly infrastructure, and create a community supporting the well-being of African Americans living with dementia and their families. Engagement in this program aims to improve brain health status of older adults, improve physical and mental health outcomes, reduce dementia stigma, and enhance personal agency. Improved outcomes for persons living with dementia translate into lower use of acute and emergency services due to more stability in community care. It is expected that the churches participating in this program will be recognized by their community as a great resource for dementia information and support. The long-term goal of the Alter program is to be widely adapted in various health systems to reduce health disparities associated with dementia in the African American community.

Corporate environmental information disclosure systems are important for controlling pollution caused by corporate activities. However, different motives associated with environmental information disclosure have different influences on the financing of companies. This paper adopts renewable energy companies instead of high pollution industries as a research object. The study analyzes the resource-dependent disclosure motivation of renewable energy companies, and the impact of environmental information disclosure on the scale and cost of direct and indirect financing. The results show the following. First, renewable energy companies in China have a resource-dependent motivation to disclose environmental information, with a gap between the level of environmental information disclosure and their actual environmental performance. Second, renewable energy companies may obtain more direct financing amount and lower indirect financing costs, but cannot obtain lower direct financing costs and more indirect financing amount by improving the level of environmental information disclosure with the resource-dependent motivation. Third, there are differences in the specific incentives for environmental information disclosure among the Eastern, Middle, and Western regions of China. The government needs to standardize the detailed rules and standards of the corporate environmental information disclosure system, and improve the environmental protection awareness and the implementation of green credit in the Western region.

Smallholder farmers usually face insecure land rights and limited social protection, so that farmland serves as an important safety net against income shocks. Safety-net value of farmland makes the loss of land rights extra costly and strengthens the well-documented incentive for self-cultivation as an informal way of protecting land rights. This article provides theoretical and empirical evidence of allocative effects of the non-productive value of farmland. Further, employing survey data from China, sector-level simulations show that eliminating the non-productive value would significantly increase the consolidation of land, raise smallholder income, and expand labor supply away from smallholders’ own land.

Summary The sexuality of women during fieldwork with men becomes constantly scrutinised, and sexualised, and the perceptions of others on our sexuality often impinge on sex research processes in patriarchal societies. This paper discusses challenges and conceptual reflections of gender interactions in sex research fieldwork by a woman with men aged 18–54 in Nairobi, Kenya. It also provides insights on practical safety strategies for women conducting sex research fieldwork. The paper draws on the researcher's field notes and reflections on experiences and interactions with gatekeepers and male participants to present brief accounts of challenges of gender interactions in sex research fieldwork. The impact of gender on the well-being of women doing gender interactions sex research during fieldwork in patriarchal societies is particularly salient. The scrutiny on women, women's sexual subjectivities and positioning of their sexuality by men occur more often than may occur with male researchers who research women. The reproduction of sex knowledge is a key aspect of ethical considerations and part of the ethical reproduction of knowledge, which needs to consider difficulties with gender interactions. Hence, this paper is a proposed resource for fieldwork and policy making in programmes that support the sexuality of men.

The question still remains whether financial development, natural resources, and energy consumption can successfully alleviate environmental pollution during the mode of globalization. In this regard, this study presents empirical evidence of supporting this theoretical argument, exploring the influence of financial development, natural resources, globalization, non-renewable and renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprint in financially resource-rich countries from 1990 to 2018. The empirical findings confirm the strong cross-sectional dependence across cross-sections. Therefore, the second-generation panel data approach is applied to produce more robust and reliable results. The results explore that financial development, natural resources, and non-renewable energy positively affect the ecological footprint, while globalization and renewable energy reduce the ecological footprint in these countries. Similarly, the interaction between financial development integration with globalization and renewable energy usage with natural resources is confirmed to reduce environmental deterioration. Additionally, bidirectional causality discovers between financial development, non-renewable energy, renewable energy, and ecological footprint; however, unidirectional causality is significantly running from natural resources towards ecological footprint and ecological footprint towards globalization. Therefore, these countries require improving financial and natural resource structures and further upgrading of renewable energy consumption. Moreover, globalization plays a vital role in reducing ecological deterioration and requires instantaneous policy reactions in these countries.

Endorheic freshwater lakes can be vital water resources for sustaining large populations. However, their land-locked nature can lead to overexploitation and long-term sediment accumulation, reducing water storage and quality. Lake Naivasha supports a rapidly expanding population and agricultural industry. Therefore, maintaining good water storage and quality within this endorheic lake is crucial for the Kenyan economy and population. The lake has a long history of level fluctuations and the region is considered to be suffering from a chronic imbalance between water supply and demand. This study quantifies the sediment deposition rate and its impact on Lake Naivasha's water levels and volume, using inexpensive remote sensing techniques that could be easily replicated for future monitoring. Evidence of sedimentation in the northern area averaging 23 mm yr−1 was identified, which is likely annually displacing between 40.2 – 576 × 103 m³ of water. The volume displaced each year is equivalent to the water required to sustain between 40 – 1152 people. These results imply that current abstraction management, based purely upon lake level readings that govern a ‘traffic lights’ system, are detrimental to the long-term survival of the lake. The results also imply that lake health is decreasing. We recommend that future monitoring of this water resource and all endorheic lakes consider measurements of available water volume in combination with lake level data using the remote sensing methods we describe.

This study examines agrobiodiversity production and consumption among indigenous people and smallholders engaged with cascading migration, coca, and water resource changes. Addressing the questions if and how agrobiodiversity is viable amid intensifying extra-local influences, it combines the theorization of a pathway that has emerged via infrastructure entanglements and the extended case study of local utilization practices. The theoretical orientation integrates key elements of political ecology and social-ecological systems. We undertook surveys, interviews, and ethnographic participant observation in 10 communities and villages of Cochabamba, Bolivia, between 1990 and 2013. Results show how agrobiodiversity was utilized at moderate-high levels in the land and water systems, foods, and other uses of indigenous peasants and smallholder farmers in the 1990–2013 period even as certain minor crops were significantly reduced. Moreover, the results reveal how agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods have functioned in production and consumption amid the infrastructure entanglements of migration, roads, and irrigation. Embeddedness as both quotidian resource capacities and contingent sociocultural symbols was hinged to agrarian change in these accelerated entanglements. Mobilities of both meaning and people in recent infrastructure entanglement is characteristic of the unfolding utilization of agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods. Social power in the complex contours of accelerated entanglement have furnished meanings ranging from the resistance politics of indigenous people and smallholders to the purposeful agendas of more powerful groups. The conclusion highlights how dynamic agrobiodiversity utilization has emerged via the pathway of indigenous people and smallholders who are engaged in cascading, extra-local entanglements.

The academia has paid much attention to the ecological protection and poverty alleviation functions of carbon sink afforestation project (CSAP), an important means to realize forestry carbon sink. However, whether CSAP can promote county industrial structural upgrading (ISU) and propel high-quality economic development remains unanswered. Based on the panel data of counties in Sichuan Province, China in 2000–2016, this paper estimates the impacts of CSAP on ISU through difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing (VTT-DID) and synthetic control method. The results show that: CSAP can improve the advanced level of county industrial structure. This finding remains valid after a series of robustness tests. Government guidance dominates the impacts of CSAP on ISU, while market regulation plays a limited role in the impact mechanism due to the presence of elite capture. Government guidance and market regulation have a positive synergistic effect. The ISU impacts of CSAP are affected by resource endowment, level of economic development, and culture difference of ethnic monitories at the county level. Mechanism analysis shows that CSAP mainly acts on county ISU by increasing capital accumulation. The research results provide a reference path for China to transform its concept of economic development, and the key evidence for the fact that CSAP is an important way to realize high-quality economic development and environment protection at the county level.

In North America, impassable, man-made barriers block access to salmonid spawning habitat and require costly restoration efforts in the remaining habitats. Evaluating restored spawning habitat quality requires information on salmon water velocity and depth preferences, which may vary in relation to other variables (e.g., water temperature). We demonstrate a generalizable, low-cost method to gather and analyze these data by combining aerial redd surveys of winter-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), 2D hydraulic modeling, and generalized linear models to calculate spawning resource selection functions (RSFs). Our method permits the examination of interactions between environmental variables and habitat selection, which are frequently treated as independent. Our methods resulted in an RSF that shows interactions between both velocity and depth preference with changing temperature. Preferred depth increased and preferred velocity decreased with increasing temperature. Spawning RSFs for environmental variables may change as other environmental conditions (i.e., water temperature) change; thus, it is important to account for potential interactions when using or producing RSFs.

Franchising is a competitive business strategy to expand the market. In the food industry franchising is considered as a unique strategy to expand its operations in different geographical areas. In India, 15% of the franchises fail in the initial years of their business. This paper aims to identify the challenges faced by the food franchises concerning the Chennai region. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with company executives, academicians and researchers to identify the challenges which pose a great threat to the food franchises. Nine challenges were identified from the data collected. The challenges identified were customer satisfaction, human resource, economic aspect, competition landscape, incorporation, innovation, resource and capabilities, supply chain management and government regulatory measures and ecosystem. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) method is used to identify the most challenging factor which poses a great threat to the food franchise. The finding reveals that government regulatory measures and ecosystem is the most challenging factor in the franchised food sector.

Separation of the cow and calf shortly after birth is a common practice on commercial dairy farms around the world, but there are emerging concerns about this practice among citizens and other stakeholders. Continuous improvement of on-farm management practices in collaboration with dairy sector stakeholders increases the likelihood that farming systems evolve in a way that is consistent with societal expectations. Few commercial dairy farms provide extended cow-calf contact, and there is little understanding of how dairy farmers view this practice. This study examined the views of New Zealand dairy farmers toward providing cow-calf contact, particularly the barriers to adopting such a system in a seasonal-calving pasture-based dairy system. Standard farm practice in New Zealand is to remove the calf from the cow around 24 h (but could be up to 48 h) after birth. These conventional farmers (n = 63) were randomly selected from the database of all dairy farmers in New Zealand and telephone-interviewed using a semistructured interview format. Their responses to questions about providing cow-calf contact (defined as contact beyond the standard practice of 48 h) were analyzed using thematic analysis. Three major themes of concern were identified by these farmers about providing cow-calf contact as follows: (1) poor animal welfare, especially the risk of mastitis in the dam, inadequate colostrum for the calf, increased stress from delayed separation, and lack of shelter for calves while outdoors with the cow; (2) increased labor and stress on staff; and (3) system-level changes required, including infrastructure and herd management. Many of these concerns stemmed from challenges related to the nature of large-scale seasonal-calving pasture-based dairy systems, where a large number of calves are born in a short period of time and may be exposed to inclement weather in late winter in some areas. Several small-scale farmers (n = 4) providing cow-calf contact for longer than standard practice of 48 h were also interviewed; all permitted contact for at least 4 wk. These farmers also felt that animal welfare and health were important, and that this was promoted in their cow-calf contact systems. Concerns about colostrum and mastitis, for example, were not raised by these farmers, but they did agree that additional infrastructure and shelter were important considerations for cow-calf contact systems. Some conventional farmers expressed cognitive dissonance in that they theoretically preferred cow-calf contact but could not see it being realistic or practical to implement. Farmers currently providing longer cow-calf contact may be a useful resource for better understanding of how practical and economical cow-calf contact systems could be adopted on commercial pastoral dairy farms.

A comprehensive understanding of mechanisms of allelopathy and resource availability is critical for protecting rare and endangered species, biodiversity, and ecosystems. We treated 20 major plant species with three concentrations of an aqueous extract of Dacrydium pierrei Hickel litter and different irrigation and nutrients to compare the relative importance of allelopathy and resource availability on roots, stem growth, and seed germination, using bioassays. The results showed that the height, ground diameter, and aboveground biomass of individuals increased more quickly in the early stage, and the rate of increase tended to slow down in the later stages. The allelopathy was species specific (inhibitory, neutral, or promotive), and the survival rate and growth rate of saplings changed significantly along a resource treatment gradient (P < 0.05), indicating that the native species diversity was reduced by lower or higher resource availability in natural forests. The effect of allelopathy on trees was relatively weak during the treatments, and that of resource availability was relatively strong. Resource availability is relatively more important than allelopathy in mediating the reduction in plant biodiversity. Therefore, water and nutrient availability and the species and number of allelochemicals released by plants have substantial influences on the survival and growth of plant species in a natural Dacrydium forest.

Punjab is a state with enormous biomass potential resource available as crop residue called agri-waste. In the wake of utilizing agricultural waste as local fuel, feeding and thatching, it is widely available. The burning of agricultural-waste in the atmosphere pollutes the environment and promotes global warming. Thereby it is essential to use this waste for human’s worthiness. This article presents the region-wise production from biomass build-ups and the surplus potential. Roughly 64 Mty-1 of the total build-up is created from diverse main and insignificant yields, out of which 60.22% is expended in diverse structures, bringing about 40.3% as a net surplus accessible for energy generation. Essential and net surplus product build-ups for energy potential were calculated in every province. Moga, Patiala, Gurdaspur, Ludhiana, and Jalandhar are the actual excess biomass potential areas. In contrast, Pathankot, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, Bathinda are the least biomass potential locale inside the state. About 1.263 GW and 1.199 GW of energy in the state can be produced using essential and net surplus biomass surplus individually. This paper also discussed the block-wise biomass potential in district Ludhiana. The proposed power plant location in this district, fuel cost, fuel availability and transportation cost are considered as constraints. It has been seen that maximum fuel is available at Sidhwanbet village. Still, by adding transportation cost and comparing results, it has been seen that the effective cost of fuel of plant located at the block–II Ludhiana is minimum.