Agrivoltaics in Ontario Canada: Promise and Policy

Well-intentioned regulations to protect Canada’s most productive farmland restrict large-scale so-lar photovoltaic (PV) development. The recent innovation of agrivoltaics, which is the co-development of land for both PV and agriculture, makes these regulations obsolete. Burgeoning agrivoltaics research has shown agricultural benefits including increased yield for a wide range of crops, plant protection from excess solar energy and hail, improved water conservation while maintaining agricultural employment and local food supplies. In addition, the renewable electricity generation decreases greenhouse gas emissions while increasing farm revenue. As Canada in general, and Ontario in particular, is at a strategic disadvantage in agricultural without agrivoltaics, this study investigates the policy changes necessary to capitalize on the benefits of using agrivoltaics in Ontario. Land use policies in Ontario are reviewed. Then, three case studies (peppers, sweet corn and winter wheat) are analyzed for agrivoltaic potential in Ontario. These results are analyzed in conjunction with potential policies that would continue to protect the green-belt of the Golden Horseshoe, while enabling agrivoltaics in Ontario. Four agrivoltaic policy areas are discussed: increased research and development, enhanced education/public awareness, mechanisms to support Canada’s farmers converting to agrivoltaics and using agrivoltaics as a potential source of trade surplus with the U.S.

Malay Editorial Cartoons in the 1930s: Humour and Sarcasm in Visualising the Other

This article defines Malay identity through their portrayal of the Malay Other - the Arabs, Indian Muslims and the Europeans. The Arabs and Peranakan Arabs were identified as foreigners in disguise, the Europeans colonisers as harbingers of modernity. From this perspective not much have been written, using editorial cartoons in Malaysia. This article then focuses on the depiction by the Malay of what constitutes the foreigner (and the West). The medium of the cartoon was a recent innovation in Malay-language newspapers, having first appeared in the first issue of Warta Jenaka a weekly pictorial newspaper on 7 September of 1936. This article surveys three major periodicals in the 1930s including that of Warta Ahad and Utusan Zaman in their construction of ambivalence toward colonialism and Western influence. These were the inter-war years. The periodicals capture Malay sentiments couched in humor and sarcasm ranging from the proximate culture of the Arabs to British or European notions of race, modernity and progress. It is cognizant of the colonial condition and the milieu and the inherent character of the Malay press, serving as instruments of criticism and satire. The visual ethno- nationalistic discourse is observed with regard to the trajectory of modernity brought into Malay awareness during the period.

Swiss Climate Change Law

This chapter explores the relationship between Swiss climate change law and the international and European climate change regimes. At the international level, the chapter reviews the three major international agreements regulating the field: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, and the Paris Agreement. And at the national and regional levels, the chapter briefly describes the CO2 Act—often considered the heart of Swiss climate change policy—and questions whether it will prove effective in achieving its explicitly stated emissions reduction targets. The chapter then reviews the most significant recent innovation in the evolution of Swiss climate change policy: joining the Emissions Trading System (ETS) established by the European Union. Due to long-standing problems afflicting the ETS, the authors raise doubts about whether Switzerland’s joining the scheme will lead to meaningful reductions in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. As an alternative to an ETS-centric approach, the authors refer to an approach centered on human rights. Drawing on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the major international climate change agreements, other sources of international law, and the recent Urgenda decision of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, the authors argue that under the human rights approach, Switzerland would be obligated to take stronger measures to reduce emissions than it could hope to achieve through the ETS and the CO2 Act alone.

Application of Inverted Umbrella Technique in Offshore

The oil and gas industries are setting a new achievement every day by fulfilling the energy security of almost all the nations. With the continuous rise in the demand of a hydrocarbon, industries are facing many new challenges while fulfilling it. One of the major concerns is the safety of an environment and safety of working professionals that HSE Department is continuously focused in. The industry has been in continuous upgradation since its inception to counter all the challenges. Inverted Umbrella Technique (IUT) is the recent innovation in the industry and this could be further more conceptualized by adding its role into the energy industries. This could turn out as a major breakthrough in the oil and gas domain from HSE perspective. The paper here aimed for providing efficient solution by setting up the system that could help us to drawdown the rising concern in the safety of the environment. Inverted Umbrella Technique (IUT) could roll down the new horizons for the offshore productions system in oil and gas industries. The concept is focused on the minimal loss of methane during exploitation of gas hydrates as well as focused on the prevention of oil spill and reducing the damage that blowout of oil or gas well can make to the environment while making sure that industries do not suffer any kind of major capital loss and making it safe for industries to not face many health, safety, and environment (HSE) norms that are decided by the government and most important is, it will help us to create a safe environment for aquatic species living around the offshore platform and nearby.

Hybrid Hydrogen Peroxide for Viral Disinfection

Decontamination is often necessary in facilities with sensitive spaces where pathogen elimination is critical. Historically, high concentration vaporized hydrogen peroxide technologies have been applied in these areas for pathogen disinfection. While effective, these high concentration solutions come with inherent risks to human health and safety. Alternatively, one recent innovation is a hybrid hydrogen peroxide system which combines a 7% hydrogen peroxide solution with a calibrated fogging device that delivers a mixture of vaporous and micro aerosolized particles, significantly lowering the risk of exposure to high-concentration hazardous chemicals. Studies performed with this technology demonstrate high level pathogen decontamination across a variety of tested pathogens and substrates. This chapter will cover a brief history of hydrogen peroxide technologies and their application processes; examine the correlations between viral inactivation, viral disinfection, and biological indicators for validation; demonstrate the necessity of dwell time for optimal efficacy; discuss the effects of viral disinfectant use on laboratory surfaces; and examine various studies, including virologic work performed in Biosafety Level 3 facilities and good laboratory practice (GLP) data performed by EPA-approved laboratories. This chapter will provide readers a deeper understanding of essential components and considerations when implementing hydrogen peroxide systems for viral decontamination.

New approaches to vaccines for endemic and pandemic diseases of Africa with particular focus on building local competencies in Cameroon

Vaccines have been recognized as major and effective tools for the control and eventual elimination of infectious diseases and cancer. This brief review examines vaccine classification and development pipeline as well as recent innovations driving the vaccine development process. Using COVID-19 as an example recent innovation in vaccine development are highlighted. The review ends with a call for intensified efforts to build vaccine production capacity in Cameroon and other other African countries. Les vaccins ont été reconnus comme des outils majeurs et efficaces pour le contrôle et l’élimination éventuelle des maladies infectieuses et du cancer. Cette brève revue examine la classification et le pipeline de développement de vaccins ainsi que les innovations récentes à l’origine du processus de développement de vaccins. En utilisant COVID-19 comme exemple, les innovations récentes dans le développement de vaccins sont mises en évidence. La revue se termine par un appel à intensifier les efforts pour renforcer les capacités de production de vaccins au Cameroun et dans d’autres pays africains.

Code switching in contemporary isiZulu performance poetry

Recent developments in isiZulu poetry have been marked by an emergence of performance poets whose poems have gained popularity with younger audiences. A constant feature in contemporary isiZulu poetry is a conscious deviation from adherence to rigid structural and formal linguistic requirements. Contemporary isiZulu poetry is also characterised by a shift from textual to performance-specific conventions that cater for radio, theatre, social-media platforms and so forth, and is more accommodative of linguistic dynamics that shape the current generation of artists and audiences. While contemporary isiZulu performance is a rather more recent innovation, it still owes its roots to oral poetry traditions and has evolved from literary art forms that were committed to memory and performed during family gatherings and communal events. This article explores code switching in contemporary isiZulu performance poetry and argues for appreciation of this phenomenon for its aesthetic appeal rather than as infringement on long-held attitudes about purity of artistic linguistic expressions. Hyme’s Ethno-poetic Theory will inform analysis of selected poems in this article. Ethno-poetic Theory focuses, amongst others, on how a performance displays literary qualities.

Software as a service and security

Nowadays, Cloud Computing is an important hi-tech research area in the most recent innovation. These advancements give clients a few benefits: cost-adequacy, effective asset usage, cooperation, catastrophe recuperation, and elite. Cloud offers administrations for processing on a solitary mouse click. The overview was completed in the type of an online survey. This examination paper exhibits that SaaS is safer than other web applications. SaaS is superior to different applications and SaaS is savvy. This Research paper investigates the significance of SaaS for productive distributed computing for associations and its suggestions. This examination paper additionally talks about the significance of SaaS application engineering, usefulness, proficiency, benefits, and weaknesses.

An Optimization Methodology for Adapting Legacy SGX Applications to Use Switchless Calls

A recent innovation in the trusted execution environment (TEE) technologies enables the delegation of privacy-preserving computation to the cloud system. In particular, Intel SGX, an extension of x86 instruction set architecture (ISA), accelerates this trend by offering hardware-protected isolation with near-native performance. However, SGX inherently suffers from performance degradation depending on the workload characteristics due to the hardware restriction and design decisions that primarily concern the security guarantee. The system-level optimizations on SGX runtime and kernel module have been proposed to resolve this, but they cannot effectively reflect application-specific characteristics that largely impact the performance of legacy SGX applications. This work presents an optimization strategy to achieve application-level optimization by utilizing asynchronous switchless calls to reduce enclave transition, one of the dominant overheads of using SGX. Based on the systematic analysis, our methodology examines the performance benefit for each enclave transition wrapper and selectively applies switchless calls without modifying the legacy codebases. The evaluation shows that our optimization strategy successfully improves the end-to-end performance of our showcasing application, an SGX-enabled network middlebox.