scholarly journals Environmentally safe system for treatment of bio corrosion of ETICS

2018 ◽  
Vol 146 ◽  
pp. 03005
Author(s):  
Katarína Minarovičová ◽  
Dušan Dlhý

Effects of microorganisms on building facades are responsible for aesthetic, bio-geophysical and biogeochemical deterioration. The process of cleaning of contaminated facades involves the removal and eradication of micro flora on the surface of insulation using chemical products, killing cells and eliminating all living mass, including organic ingredients. The removal of bio corrosion coating from ETICS structure by means of chemical and preservative substances (biocides) is currently the only effective and most used technology. Uncontrolled leaching of the used biocides is unacceptable. Meantime, new technology for environmentally safe maintenance of ETICS is needed. Scientists have been working on replacement the biocides currently used in facades treatment with eco-friendly biocides that have no negative effects on the environment or human beings. While the eco- treatment will be available, safe dewatering of chemicals being leached from the surface of the facade could be provided by e.g. special drain systems adjusted to the building type, use and age. The paper gives an overview of the problem in context of Slovakia and examples of leaching systems designed for new and renovated buildings.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1130
Author(s):  
Xiaoke Yang ◽  
Yuanhao Huang ◽  
Xiaoying Cai ◽  
Yijing Song ◽  
Hui Jiang ◽  
...  

Upcycled food, a new kind of food, provides an effective solution to reduce the food waste from the source on the premise of food security for human beings. However, the commercial success of upcycled food and its contribution to environmental sustainability are determined by consumers’ purchase intentions. In order to overcome consumers’ unfamiliarity with upcycled food and fear of new technology, based on the cue utility theory, we adopted scenario simulation through online questionnaires in three experiments to explore how mental simulation can improve consumers’ product evaluation and purchase intentions for upcycled food. Through ANOVA, the t-test, and the Bootstrap methods, the results showed that, compared with the control group, consumers’ product evaluation and purchase intentions for upcycled food in the mental simulation group significantly increased. Among them, consumers’ inspiration played a mediation role. The consumers’ future self-continuity could moderate the effect of mental simulation on consumers’ purchase intentions for upcycled food. The higher the consumers’ future self-continuity, the stronger the effect of mental simulation. Based on the above results, in the marketing promotion of upcycled food, promotional methods, such as slogans and posters, could be used to stimulate consumers, especially the mental simulation thinking mode of consumer groups with high future self-continuity, thus improving consumers’ purchase intentions for upcycled food.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Jadwiga Wyszkowska ◽  
Monika Tomkiel ◽  
Agata Borowik ◽  
Małgorzata Baćmaga ◽  
Jan Kucharski

Environmentally safe ways are sought to prevent the accumulation and to accelerate the degradation of herbicide active substances in agricultural soil. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of finely-ground barley straw and bentonite in mitigating the effects of agricultural soil contamination with Successor T 550 SE. This herbicide was applied in the following doses: 0, 0.73, and 14.63 mg of the active substance per kg. The bentonite and spring barley straw were used at 10 g/kg. The action of these additives was compared to soil without the addition of straw and bentonite. The application of the experimental herbicide disturbed microbial systems, such as organotrophic bacteria, oligotrophic bacteria and their spores, actinobacteria, and fungi. A positive response to the herbicide dose of 14.63 mg a.s./kg was observed only for spores of oligotrophic bacteria. Further disturbances were observed in the agricultural soil biochemical properties, i.e., in the activity of dehydrogenases, urease, catalase, acid, and alkaline phosphatase, arylsulfatase, and β-glucosidase. A significant decrease in the activity of dehydrogenases, acid phosphatase, and arylsulfatase was observed following the application of 14.63 mg a.s./kg. The yield of maize decreased following the application of the analysed plant protection agent. Based on the soil quality index (BA), the addition of straw was more effective in restoring soil homeostasis than bentonite. Both bentonite and straw can be successfully used to improve agricultural soil biological activity. However, more effective mitigation of the negative effects of the herbicide in soil was observed in objects supplemented with barley straw. This improved the microbiological and biochemical properties of the soil. Barley straw was more effective than bentonite in restoring soil biological balance.


2002 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ednilson Miranda ◽  
Sérgio Antonio de Bortoli ◽  
Roque Takahashi

Juvenile hormone analogues have been tested as insect growth regulators in silkworm (Bombyx mori), seeking an increment of silk production. These chemical products, when applied in small or moderate rates, promote the extension of the last larval instar. To understand the physiologic consequences on silk production by the silkworm strain C115 x N108, the application of methoprene, a juvenile hormone analogue, was performed to evaluate its effects on larval development and silk production. Methoprene was topically applied 48h after the fourth larval ecdysis, on the dorsal integument of the 2nd thoracic segment of the insects, at seven rates between 0 and 20 ng a.i. Methoprene influenced positively the duration of the fifth instar and the weight gain of the insects. The application of 1ng methoprene resulted in the heaviest silkglands, cocoons, shell cocoons and pupae weights. Comparatively to the control, the increment on silk production (approximately 24%) by the use of 1ng methoprene was more accentuated than the corresponding negative effects on the cocooning rate (approximately 12%).


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1100-1107
Author(s):  
Nguyen Van Phu

Climate change is one of the greatest threats to human beings, and agriculture is one of the fields that is most negatively affected by climate change. Farmers around the world and global food supply chains are impacted by the more extreme weather phenomena and increased damage of diseases and pests caused by climate change. Today, almost all agricultural enterprises and farms consider climate change a serious long-term risk for their production. Agricultural land systems can produce significant greenhouse gases (GHGs) by the conversion of forests to crop- and animal lands, and also through the weak management of crops and livestock. Around the world, cultivation and cattle production accounts for 25% of global GHG emissions (Javeline, ‎2014). However, under suitable conditions, agriculture can create environmental conditions that can help minimize pollution and the negative effects of climate change including carbon absorption by green plants in forests, and fields for watershed protection and biodiversity conservation. Sustainable agriculture helps farmers to adapt, maintain, and improve productivity without applying harmful techniques. In turn, this allows farms to manage and mitigate climate-related risks in their supply chains. The Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) has found new ways to incorporate smart climate cultivation methods into all farming practices to help farms and enterprises carry out agriculture sustainably.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (55) ◽  
pp. e12459
Author(s):  
Óscar Iván Rodríguez-Cardoso ◽  
Vladimir Alfonso Ballesteros-Ballesteros ◽  
Manuel Francisco Romero-Ospina

Engineering, understood as the gathering of scientific and technological knowledge for innovation, creation, advancement and optimization of techniques, as well as a set of useful tools to meet social needs and solve technical problems of both individuals and the community, makes its main actors, engineers, key players in sustainable development and in the creation of alternatives that minimize the negative effects of technology on society. It is in this sense that technology assessment approaches should take importance among those who manage technology development and implementation policies. Generally, the undesirable effects of the intrusion of a new technology are acted upon when they already occur, and technology assessment is intended to anticipate the risk. This paper presents a bibliographic review of technology assessment, its approaches and future study needs. Based on an articulating axis that positions technological change and innovation as an imperative need for social development, an exhaustive review of related articles in specialized databases was carried out. The most important results of this work reveal that the field of technological assessment has been strongly inclined towards the health or sanitary sector; however, research is being developed in central engineering topics such as the development of nanotechnology, robotics, and the handling of big data, where the European model stands out as a reference for technological assessment processes due to its inclusive and democratic nature.


Author(s):  
Fen LIN

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract in English only.In the dominant discourse of the "human–machine relationship," people and machines are the subjects, with a mutually shaping influence. However, this framework neglects the crux of the current critical analysis of AI. It reduces the problems with new technology to the relationship between people and machines, ignoring the re-shaping of the relationship between "people and people" in the era of new technology. This simplification may mislead policy and legal regulations for new technologies. Why would a robot killing cause more panic than a murder committed by a human? Why is a robot's misdiagnosis more troubling than a doctor's? Why do patients assume that machines make more accurate diagnoses than doctors? When a medical accident occurs, who is responsible for the mistakes of an intelligent medical system? In the framework of traditional professionalism, the relationship between doctors and patients, whether trusted or not, is based on the premise that doctors have specialized knowledge that patients do not possess. Therefore, the authority of a doctor is the authority of knowledge. In the age of intelligence, do machines provide information or knowledge? Can this strengthen or weaken the authority of doctors? It is likely that in the age of intelligence, the professionalism, authority and trustworthiness of doctors require a new knowledge base. Therefore, the de-skilling of doctors is not an issue of individual doctors, but demands an update of the knowledge of the entire industry. Recognizing this, policy makers must not focus solely on the use of machines, but take a wider perspective, considering how to promote the development of doctors and coordinate the relationship between doctors with different levels of knowledge development. We often ask, "In the era of intelligence, what defines a human?" This philosophical thinking should be directed toward not only the difference between machines and people as individuals, but also how the relationship between human beings, i.e., the social nature of humans, evolves in different technological environments. In short, this commentary stresses that a "good" machine or an "evil" machine—beyond the sci-fi romance of such discourse—reflects the evolution of the relationships between people. In today's smart age, the critical issue is not the relationship between people and machines. It is how people adjust their relationships with other people as machines become necessary tools in life. In the era of intelligence, therefore, our legislation, policy and ethical discussion should resume their focus on evolutionary relationships between people.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 41 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.


Author(s):  
Sanϳay Roy

One of the oldest habits of human beings is to chew gum that was continuing from ancient civilizations to the modern world. Chew the gum could be a quiet pleasure that charming people for a long time. The non-food item chewing gum has a long history. The stepwise progress of its development has given us better flavour and additional medicative values. The stress-releasing properties and different medical outcomes have to make chewing gum popular for everyone. Chew the gum isn’t bring solely stripling pleasure, in near future ‘chewing gum’ perhaps use as a part of the drug delivery system. Unfortunately, it has also produced some negative effects. Modern chewing gum is made by non-biodegradable hydrophobic polymer together with artificial sweetener and flavour. So chew this sort of synthetic materials over a long time could produce some adverse effects. Again, because of our irresponsible attitude to toss the waste part of chewing gum anywhere creates some kind of serious environmental litter known as ‘gum pollution’. Therefore this widespread habit causes some sort of nuisance. Thus it’s the time to think how chewing gum offers us additional pleasure and benefits while not hampering human health and surroundings.


2030 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutger van Santen ◽  
Djan Khoe ◽  
Bram Vermeer

Human beings are much more complex than any technology we could devise today. How many machines are good for 80 or 90 years of service? Our immune system—set up at birth—is able to repel diseases that don’t even exist yet. Most viruses that proliferate 50 years after we were born can be defeated just as easily as maladies that have been dogging humans for generations. Effective health care means that—in most regions of the planet—we are living longer and longer. All the same, human beings are not perfect: We get sick and we wear out over time. In the wealthier regions, we spend a great deal of money trying to get as close as possible to a 100-year span. Our greatest task is to bring a long and healthy life within the reach of as many people as possible. New technology is required to hold down the cost of health care, to nip outbreaks of disease in the bud, and to ease discomfort in our old age. Scientists believe that substantial benefits can be gained by identifying abnormalities earlier. A cancerous growth measuring just a few millimeters is still relatively harmless, and an infection caught in its early stages won’t leave any scars. Although techniques for accurately diagnosing incipient abnormalities can often be very expensive, prompt diagnosis generally means that treatment will be easier, cheaper, and more likely to succeed. Thus, we can end up saving money despite the need for expensive equipment. To adequately fight the outbreak of diseases in the future, our technology must be able to respond more rapidly. This could pose a particular challenge because there is also a trend at present toward superspecialization, which is fragmenting medical knowledge and slowing down responses. Take the science of ophthalmology in which the various specializations focus on extremely specific parts of the eye. This is fine once a precise diagnosis has been made, but it could be a significant problem if the patient consults the wrong doctor at the outset. The way we currently approach diagnosis needs to change.


2030 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutger van Santen ◽  
Djan Khoe ◽  
Bram Vermeer

Over a billion people don’t have access to a safe water supply. And a third of the world’s population lacks basic sanitation with the result that more than 2 billion human beings are afflicted with infections that result in diarrhea and other diseases. Tens of millions of them die every year. Improving this state of affairs poses a massive challenge. Take sanitation: What if we could provide basic facilities for all those people over the next 20 years? You’d have to hook them up to the sewer system at the rate of half a million a day. We know how to install individual toilets and sewage pipes, but a project on that kind of scale is way beyond our capabilities. It would not only require new technology but a huge amount of money and political will, too. The challenges for providing all humanity with access to clean water are similarly gigantic. It’s not a matter of scarcity. There is enough drinking water for everyone on Earth even as its population continues to grow. According to the United Nations, a human being needs 20 liters of drinking water a day to live healthily. Every year, 100,000 cubic kilometers of rain fall on the earth, which translates into 40,000 liters per person per day. That would be plenty even if you only manage to tap a tiny fraction. Sufficient drinking water is available for all even in the driest regions of the earth. The problem is one of quality: People don’t die of thirst; they die from drinking water that’s not safe. The use of water for agriculture is another story. Roughly 70 percent of the human use of fresh water is for farming. People rarely realize just how much water agriculture requires. It takes 1,000 liters to grow the wheat for a single kilogram of fl our, for instance. Other products soak up even larger amounts of water. A kilogram of coffee needs 20,000 liters, and a liter of milk takes 3,000—mostly for the cattle feed and the grass consumed by the cow.


Smart Cities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Tobey ◽  
Robert B. Binder ◽  
Soowon Chang ◽  
Takahiro Yoshida ◽  
Yoshiki Yamagata ◽  
...  

Urban systems design arises from disparate current planning approaches (urban design, Planning Support Systems, and community engagement), compounded by the reemergence of rational planning methods from new technology (Internet of Things (IoT), metric based analysis, and big data). The proposed methods join social considerations (Human Well-Being), environmental needs (Sustainability), climate change and disaster mitigation (Resilience), and prosperity (Economics) as the four foundational pillars. Urban systems design integrates planning methodologies to systematically tackle urban challenges, using IoT and rational methods, while human beings form the core of all analysis and objectives. Our approach utilizes an iterative three-phase development loop to contextualize, evaluate, plan and design scenarios for the specific needs of communities. An equal emphasis is placed on feedback loops through analysis and design, to achieve the end goal of building smart communities.


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