scholarly journals Necessary Parameters of Vertically Mounted Textile Substrates for Successful Cultivation of Cress for Low-Budget Vertical Farming

Tekstilec ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 276-285
Author(s):  
Elise Diestelhorst ◽  
◽  
Jan Lukas Storck ◽  
Bennet Brockhagen ◽  
Timo Grothe ◽  
...  

A growing population needs an expansion of agriculture to ensure a reliable supply of nutritious food. As a variable concept, vertical farming, becoming increasingly popular, can allow plant growth for local food produc¬tion in the vertical sense on, e.g. facades in addition to the classical layered structure in buildings. As substrates, textile fabrics can be used as a sustainable approach in terms of reusability. In our experiment, we investigated which properties a textile should possess in order to be suitable for an application in vertical farming by the example of cress seeds. To determine the best-fitted fabric, four different textiles were mounted vertically, and were provided with controlled irrigation and illumination. Our results showed that a hairy textile surface as provided by weft-knitted plush is advantageous. There, the rooting of cress plants used in this experiment is easier and less complicated than along tightly meshed, flat surfaces, as for woven linen fabrics.

2004 ◽  
pp. 305-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.W.F. Cameron ◽  
S. Wilkinson ◽  
W.J. Davies ◽  
R.S. Harrison-Murray ◽  
D. Dunstan ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (11) ◽  
pp. 1588-1606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett M. Broad

Advocates of indoor vertical farming have pitched the enterprise as key to the future of food, an opportunity to use technological innovation to increase local food production, bolster urban sustainability, and create a world in which there is “real food” for everyone. At the same time, critics have raised concerns about the costs, energy usage, social impacts, and overall agricultural viability of these efforts, with some insisting that existing low-tech and community-based solutions of the “good food movement” offer a better path forward. Drawing from a mix of participant observation and other qualitative methods, this article examines the work of Square Roots, a Brooklyn-based indoor vertical farming company cofounded by entrepreneur Kimbal Musk and technology CEO Tobias Peggs. In an effort to create a market for what I refer to as “techno-local food,” Square Roots pitches its products as simultaneously “real” and technologically optimized. As a way to build trust in these novel products and better connect consumers with producers, Square Roots leans on transparency as a publicity tool. The company’s Transparency Timeline, for instance, uses photos and a narrative account of a product’s life-cycle to tell its story “from seed-to-store,” allowing potential customers to “know their farmer.” The information Square Roots shares, however, offers a narrow peek into its operations, limiting the view of operational dynamics that could help determine whether the company is actually living up to its promise. The research provides a clear case study of an organization using transparency–publicity as market strategy, illustrating the positive possibilities that such an approach can bring to consumer engagement, while also demonstrating how the tactic can distract from a company’s stated social responsibility goals.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chong-Lyuck Park ◽  
Byoung-Gon Kim ◽  
Ho-Seok Jeon ◽  
Gye-Seung Lee ◽  
Jae-Ryeong Lee

Tekstilec ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Ehrmann ◽  

Author(s):  
M. H. Rhee ◽  
W. A. Coghlan

Silicon is believed to be an almost perfectly brittle material with cleavage occurring on {111} planes. In such a material at room temperature cleavage is expected to occur prior to any dislocation nucleation. This behavior suggests that cleavage fracture may be used to produce usable flat surfaces. Attempts to show this have failed. Such fractures produced in semiconductor silicon tend to occur on planes of variable orientation resulting in surfaces with a poor surface finish. In order to learn more about the mechanisms involved in fracture of silicon we began a HREM study of hardness indent induced fractures in thin samples of oxidized silicon.Samples of single crystal silicon were oxidized in air for 100 hours at 1000°C. Two pieces of this material were glued together and 500 μm thick cross-section samples were cut from the combined piece. The cross-section samples were indented using a Vicker's microhardness tester to produce cracks. The cracks in the samples were preserved by thinning from the back side using a combination of mechanical grinding and ion milling.


Author(s):  
J. A. Panitz

Tunneling is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Alpha particle disintegration, the Stark effect, superconductivity in thin films, field-emission, and field-ionization are examples of electron tunneling phenomena. In the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) electron tunneling is used as an imaging modality. STM images of flat surfaces show structure at the atomic level. However, STM images of large biological species deposited onto flat surfaces are disappointing. For example, unstained virus particles imaged in the STM do not resemble their TEM counterparts.It is not clear how an STM image of a biological species is formed. Most biological species are large compared to the nominal electrode separation of ∼ 1nm that is required for electron tunneling. To form an image of a biological species, the tunneling electrodes must be separated by a distance that would normally be too large for a tunneling current to be observed.


Author(s):  
Tai D. Nguyen ◽  
Ronald Gronsky ◽  
Jeffrey B. Kortright

Nanometer period Ru/C multilayers are one of the prime candidates for normal incident reflecting mirrors at wavelengths < 10 nm. Superior performance, which requires uniform layers and smooth interfaces, and high stability of the layered structure under thermal loadings are some of the demands in practical applications. Previous studies however show that the Ru layers in the 2 nm period Ru/C multilayer agglomerate upon moderate annealing, and the layered structure is no longer retained. This agglomeration and crystallization of the Ru layers upon annealing to form almost spherical crystallites is a result of the reduction of surface or interfacial energy from die amorphous high energy non-equilibrium state of the as-prepared sample dirough diffusive arrangements of the atoms. Proposed models for mechanism of thin film agglomeration include one analogous to Rayleigh instability, and grain boundary grooving in polycrystalline films. These models however are not necessarily appropriate to explain for the agglomeration in the sub-nanometer amorphous Ru layers in Ru/C multilayers. The Ru-C phase diagram shows a wide miscible gap, which indicates the preference of phase separation between these two materials and provides an additional driving force for agglomeration. In this paper, we study the evolution of the microstructures and layered structure via in-situ Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and attempt to determine the order of occurence of agglomeration and crystallization in the Ru layers by observing the diffraction patterns.


Author(s):  
M. Gajdardziska-Josifovska ◽  
B. G. Frost ◽  
E. Völkl ◽  
L. F. Allard

Polar surfaces are those crystallographic faces of ionically bonded solids which, when bulk terminated, have excess surface charge and a non-zero dipole moment perpendicular to the surface. In the case of crystals with a rock salt structure, {111} faces are the exemplary polar surfaces. It is commonly believed that such polar surfaces facet into neutral crystallographic planes to minimize their surface energy. This assumption is based on the seminal work of Henrich which has shown faceting of the MgO(111) surface into {100} planes giving rise to three sided pyramids that have been observed by scanning electron microscopy. These surfaces had been prepared by mechanical polishing and phosphoric acid etching, followed by Ar+ sputtering and 1400 K annealing in ultra-high vacuum (UHV). More recent reflection electron microscopy studies of MgO(111) surfaces, annealed in the presence of oxygen at higher temperatures, have revealed relatively flat surfaces stabilized by an oxygen rich reconstruction. In this work we employ a combination of optical microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and electron holography to further study the issue of surface faceting.


Author(s):  
Lee H. Veneklasen

This paper discusses some of the unique aspects of a spectroscopic emission microscope now being tested in Clausthal. The instrument is designed for the direct parallel imaging of both elastic and inelastic electrons from flat surfaces. Elastic contrast modes of the familiar LEEM include large and small angle LEED, mirror microscopy, backscatter diffraction contrast (for imaging of surface structure), and phase contrast (for imaging of step dynamics)(1). Inelastic modes include topology sensitive secondary, and work function sensitive photoemission. Most important, the new instrument will also allow analytical imaging using characteristic Auger or soft X-ray emissions. The basic instrument has been described by Bauer and Telieps (2). This configuration has been redesigned to include an airlock, and a LaB6 gun, triple condensor lens, magnetic objective lens, a double focussing separator field, an imaging energy analyzer, and a real time image processor.Fig. 1 shows the new configuration. The basic beam voltage supply Vo = 20 KV, upon which separate supplies for the gun Vg, specimen Vs, lens electrode Vf, and analyzer bias Vb float. The incident energy at the sample can be varied from Vs = 0-1 KV for elastic imaging, or from Vg + Vs = (3 + Vs) KV for inelastic imaging. The image energy window Vs±V/2 may be varied without readjusting either the illumation, or imaging/analyzer optics. The diagram shows conjugate diffraction and image planes. The apertures defining incoming Humiliation and outgoing image angles are placed below the separator magnet to allow for their independent optimization. The instrument can illuminate and image 0.5-100 μm fields at 0-1 keV emission energies with an energy window down to 0.2 eV.


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