Can we meet targets for biofuels and renewable energy in transport given the constraints imposed by policy in agriculture and energy?

The deployment of biofuels is significantly affected by policy in energy and agriculture. In the energy arena, concerns regarding the sustainability of biofuel systems and their impact on food prices led to a set of sustainability criteria in EU Directive 2009/28/EC on Renewable Energy. In addition, the 10% biofuels target by 2020 was replaced with a 10% renewable energy in transport target. This allows the share of renewable electricity used by electric vehicles to contribute to the mix in achieving the 2020 target. Furthermore, only biofuel systems that effect a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with the fuel they replace are allowed to contribute to meeting the target. In the agricultural arena, cross-compliance (which is part of EU Common Agricultural Policy) dictates the allowable ratio of grassland to total agricultural land, and has a significant impact on which biofuels may be supported. This paper outlines the impact of these policy areas and their implications for the production and use of biofuels in terms of the 2020 target for 10% renewable transport energy, focusing on Ireland. The policies effectively impose constraints on many conventional energy crop biofuels and reinforce the merits of using biomethane, a gaseous biofuel. The analysis shows that Ireland can potentially satisfy 15% of renewable energy in transport by 2020 (allowing for double credit for biofuels from residues and ligno-cellulosic materials, as per Directive 2009/28/EC) through the use of indigenous biofuels: grass biomethane, waste and residue derived biofuels, electric vehicles and rapeseed biodiesel. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A decision support system for managing irrigation in agriculture

In this paper, an automatic Smart Irrigation Decision Support System, SIDSS, is proposed to manage irrigation in agriculture. Our system estimates the weekly irrigations needs of a plantation, on the basis of both soil measurements and climatic variables gathered by several autonomous nodes deployed in field. This enables a closed loop control scheme to adapt the decision support system to local perturbations and estimation errors. Two machine learning techniques, PLSR and ANFIS, are proposed as reasoning engine of our SIDSS. Our approach is validated on three commercial plantations of citrus trees located in the South-East of Spain. Performance is tested against decisions taken by a human expert.

Silicon, the silver bullet for mitigating biotic and abiotic stress, and improving grain quality, in rice?

Adequate silicon fertilization greatly boosts rice yield and mitigates biotic and abiotic stress, and improves grain quality through lowering the content of cadmium and inorganic arsenic. This review on silicon dynamics in rice considers recent advances in our understanding of the role of silicon in rice, and the challenges of maintaining adequate silicon fertility within rice paddy systems. Silicon is increasingly considered as an element required for optimal plant performance, particularly in rice. Plants can survive with very low silicon under laboratory/glasshouse conditions, but this is highly artificial and, thus, silicon can be considered as essential for proper plant function in its environment. Silicon is incorporated into structural components of rice cell walls were it increases cell and tissue rigidity in the plant. Structural silicon provides physical protection to plants against microbial infection and insect attack as well as reducing the quality of the tissue to the predating organisms. The abiotic benefits are due to silicon's effect on overall organ strength. This helps protect against lodging, drought stress, high temperature (through efficient maintenance of transpiration), and photosynthesis by protecting against high UV. Furthermore, silicon also protects the plant from saline stress and against a range of toxic metal stresses (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel and zinc). Added to this, silicon application decreases grain concentrations of various human carcinogens, in particular arsenic, antimony and cadmium. As rice is efficient at stripping bioavailable silicon from the soil, recycling of silicon rich rice straw biomass or addition of inorganic silicon fertilizer, primarily obtained from iron and steel slag, needs careful management. Silicon in the soil may be lost if the silicon-cycle, traditionally achieved via composting of rice straw and returning it to the land, is being broken. As composting of rice straw and incorporation of composted or non-composted straw back to land are resource intensive activities, these activities are declining due to population shifts from the countryside to cities. Processes that accelerate rice straw composting, therefore, need to be identified to aid more efficient use of this resource. In addition, rice genetics may help address declining available silicon in paddy soils: for example by selecting for characteristics during breeding that lead to an increased ability of roots to access recalcitrant silicon sources from soil and/or via selection for traits that aid the maintenance of a high silicon status in shoots. Recent advances in understanding the genetic regulation of silicon uptake and transport by rice plants will aid these goals.

Thin film sputtered silicon for silicon wafer bonding applications

The transfer of functional integrated circuit layers to other substrates is being investigated for smart-sensors, MEMS, 3-D ICs and mixed semiconductor circuits. There is a need for a planarisation and bondable layer which can be deposited at low temperature and which is IC compatible. This paper describes for the first time the successful use of sputtered silicon in this role for applications as outlined above where high temperature post bond anneals are not required. It also highlights the problems of using sputtered silicon as a bonding layer in applications where post bond temperatures greater than 400C are required.

The use of microbeams to investigate radiation damage in living cells.

The micro-irradiation technique continues to be highly relevant to a number of radiobiological studies in vitro. In particular, studies of the bystander effect show that direct damage to cells is not the only trigger for radiation-induced effects, but that unirradiated cells can also respond to signals from irradiated neighbours. Furthermore, the bystander response can be initiated even when no energy is deposited in the genomic DNA of the irradiated cell (i.e. by targeting just the cytoplasm).

On the Exploitation of the Inherent Error Resilience of Wireless Systems under Unreliable Silicon

In this paper, we investigate the impact of circuit misbehavior due to parametric variations and voltage scaling on the performance of wireless communication systems. Our study reveals the inherent error resilience of such systems and argues that sufficiently reliable operation can be maintained even in the presence of unreliable circuits and manufacturing defects. We further show how selective application of more robust circuit design techniques is sufficient to deal with high defect rates at low overhead and improve energy efficiency with negligible system performance degradation.

A review of the global pesticide legislation and the scale of challenge in reaching the global harmonization of food safety standards

Pesticide use is important in agriculture to protect crops and improve productivity. However, they have the potential to cause adverse human health or environmental effects, dependent on exposure levels. This review examines existing pesticide legislation worldwide, focusing on the level of harmonisation, and impacts of differing legislation on food safety and trade. Pesticide legislation varies greatly worldwide as countries have different requirements guidelines and legal limits for plant protection. Developed nations have more stringent regulations than developing countries, which lack the resources and expertise to adequately implement and enforce legislation. Global differences in pesticide legislation act as a technical barrier to trade. International parties such as the European Union (EU), Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex), and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have attempted to harmonise pesticide legislation by providing maximum residue limits (MRLs), but globally these limits remain variable. Globally harmonised pesticide standards would serve to increase productivity, profits and trade, and enhance the ability to protect public health and the environment. 

Influence of temperature on the anisotropic cutting behaviour of single crystal silicon: A molecular dynamics simulation investigation

Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, this paper investigates anisotropic cutting behaviour of single crystal silicon in vacuum under a wide range of substrate temperatures (300 K, 500 K, 750 K, 850 K, 1173 K and 1500 K). Specific cutting energy, force ratio, stress in the cutting zone and cutting temperature were the indicators used to quantify the differences in the cutting behaviour of silicon. A key observation was that the specific cutting energy required to cut the (111) surface of silicon and the von Mises stress to yield the silicon reduces by 25% and 32%, respectively, at 1173 K compared to what is required at 300 K. The room temperature cutting anisotropy in the von Mises stress and the room temperature cutting anisotropy in the specific cutting energy (work done by the tool in removing unit volume of material) were obtained as 12% and 16% respectively. It was observed that this changes to 20% and 40%, respectively, when cutting was performed at 1500 K, signifying a very strong correlation between the anisotropy observed during cutting and the machining temperature. Furthermore, using the atomic strain criterion, the width of primary shear zone was found to vary with the orientation of workpiece surface and temperature i.e. it remains narrower while cutting the (111) surface of silicon or at higher machining temperatures. A major anecdote of the study based on the potential function employed in the study is that, irrespective of the cutting plane or the cutting temperature, the state of the cutting edge of the diamond tool did not show direct diamond to graphitic phase transformation.

Hardware Software Interface: a Strategy for the implementation of Urban Agriculture

This paper describes how urban agriculture differs from conventional agriculture not only in the way it engages with the technologies of growing, but also in the choice of crop and the way these are brought to market. The authors propose a new model for understanding these new relationships, which is analogous to a systems view of information technology, namely Hardware-Software- Interface.
The first component of the system is hardware. This is the technological component of the agricultural system. Technology is often thought of as equipment, but its linguistic roots are in ‘technis’ which means ‘know how’. Urban agriculture has to engage new technologies, ones that deal with the scale of operation and its context which is different than rural agriculture. Often the scale is very small, and soils are polluted. There this technology in agriculture could be technical such as aquaponic systems, or could be soil-based agriculture such as allotments, window-boxes, or permaculture. The choice of method does not necessarily determine the crop produced or its efficiency. This is linked to the biotic that is added to the hardware, which is seen as the ‘software’.
The software of the system are the ecological parts of the system. These produce the crop which may or may not be determined by the technology used. For example, a hydroponic system could produce a range of crops, or even fish or edible flowers. Software choice can be driven by ideological preferences such as permaculture, where companion planting is used to reduce disease and pests, or by economic factors such as the local market at a particular time of the year. The monetary value of the ‘software’ is determined by the market. Obviously small, locally produced crops are unlikely to compete against intensive products produced globally, however the value locally might be measured in different ways, and might be sold on a different market. This leads to the final part of the analogy - interface.
The interface is the link between the system and the consumer. In traditional agriculture, there is a tenuous link between the producer of asparagus in Peru and the consumer in Europe. In fact very little of the money spent by the consumer ever reaches the grower. Most of the money is spent on refrigeration, transport and profit for agents and supermarket chains. Local or hyper-local agriculture needs to bypass or circumvent these systems, and be connected more directly to the consumer. This is the interface. In hyper-localised systems effectiveness is often more important than efficiency, and direct links between producer and consumer create new economies.

Availability and transfer to grain of As, Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn in a barley agri-system: Impact of biochar, organic and mineral fertilizers

With biochar becoming an emerging soil amendment and a tool to mitigate climate change, there are only a few studies documenting its effects on trace element cycling in agriculture. Zn and Cu are deficient in many human diets, whilst exposures to As, Pb and Cd need to be decreased. Biochar has been shown to affect many of them mainly at a bench or greenhouse scale, but field research is not available. In our experiment we studied the impact of biochar, as well as its interactions with organic (compost and sewage sludge) and mineral fertilisers (NPK and nitrosulfate), on trace element mobility in a Mediterranean agricultural field (east of Madrid, Spain) cropped with barley. At harvesting time, we analysed the soluble fraction, the available fraction (assessed with the diffusive gradients in thin gels technique, DGT) and the concentration of trace elements in barley grain. No treatment was able to significantly increase Zn, Cu or Ni concentration in barley grain, limiting the application for cereal fortification. Biochar helped to reduce Cd and Pb in grain, whereas As concentration slightly increased. Overall biochar amendments demonstrated a potential to decrease Cd uptake in cereals, a substantial pathway of exposure in the Spanish population, whereas mineral fertilisation and sewage sludge increased grain Cd and Pb. In the soil, biochar helped to stabilise Pb and Cd, while marginally increasing As release/mobilisation. Some of the fertilisation practises or treatments increased toxic metals and As solubility in soil, but never to an extent high enough to be considered an environmental risk. Future research may try to fortify Zn, Cu and Ni using other combinations of organic amendments and different parent biomass to produce enriched biochars.

Cytotoxicity Evaluation of Si-Diatom Frustules in a Mouse Model

Silica additives in bone substitute materials are topical, clinically interesting and have significant support in the Orthopaedic field. Biosilica, e.g isolated from diatoms, has many advantages over its synthetic counterparts, e.g. it is amorphous, thus will be absorbed by the body, however, issues such as purity, presence of endotoxins and cytotoxicity need to be addressed before it can be further exploited. Biosilica isolated from Cyclotella Meneghiniana was then tested in a mouse model, to test the immunological response, organ toxicity (kidney, spleen, liver) and route of metabolism/excretion of silica. Five-week-old Balb-c mice were injected subcutaneously with a single high dose (50mg/ml) of Si-frustules, Si-frustules + organic linker and vehicle only control. Animals were sacrificed at 1d and 28d. The animal studies were conducted under an ethically approved protocol at Queen’s University, Belfast. The animals showed no adverse stress during the experiment and remained healthy until sacrifice. Blood results using ICP-OES analysis suggest the frustules were metabolized between comparator groups at different rates, and clearly showed elevated levels of silicon in groups injected with frustules relative to control. The histology of organs showed no variation in morphology of mice injected frustules relative compared to the control group.
Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowships from the EU and Beaufort Marine Biodiscovery Award as part of the Marine Biotechnology Ireland Programme for providing financial support to this project.

Substrate evaluation for a microbeam endstation using unstained cell imaging.

A cellular imaging system, optimized for unstained cells seeded onto a thin substrate, is under development. This system will be a component of the endstation for the microbeam cell-irradiation facility at the University of Surrey. Previous irradiation experiments at the Gray Cancer Institute (GCI) have used Mylar film to support the cells [Folkard, M., Prise, K., Schettino, G., Shao, C., Gilchrist, S., Vojnovic, B., 2005. New insights into the cellular response to radiation using microbeams. Nucl. Instrum. Methods B 231, 189-194]. Although suitable for fluorescence microscopy, the Mylar often creates excessive optical noise when used with non-fluorescent microscopy. A variety of substrates are being investigated to provide appropriate optical clarity, cell adhesion, and radiation attenuation. This paper reports on our investigations to date.

Occupation and Breast Cancer: a Canadian Case-Control Study

A local collaborative process was launched in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to explore the role of occupation as a risk factor for cancer. An initial hypothesis-generating study found an increased risk for breast cancer among women aged 55 years or younger who had ever worked in farming. On the basis of this result, a 2-year case–control study was undertaken to evaluate the lifetime occupational histories of women with breast cancer. The results indicate that women with breast cancer were nearly three times more likely to have worked in agriculture when compared to the controls (OR = 2.80 [95% CI, 1.6–4.8]). The risk for those who worked in agriculture and subsequently worked in automotive-related manufacturing was further elevated (OR = 4.0 [95% CI, 1.7–9.9]). The risk for those employed in agriculture and subsequently employed in health care was also elevated (OR = 2.3 [95% CI, 1.1–4.6]). Farming tended to be among the earlier jobs worked, often during adolescence. While this article has limitations including the small sample size and the lack of information regarding specific exposures, it does provide evidence of a possible association between farming and breast cancer. The findings indicate the need for further study to determine which aspects of farming may be of biological importance and to better understand the significance of timing of exposure in terms of cancer risk.