Topic Review
Sustainability Dimensions in the Food Supply Chain
Nowadays, the world is facing numerous sustainability challenges and the modern food system is called to innovate processes or products in order to remain competitive within the market, as well as answering to strategic government guidelines for a more sustainable food supply chain.
  • 682
  • 12 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Remediating Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds
Over the years, the persistent occurrence of superfluous endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) (sub µg L−1) in water has led to serious health disorders in human and aquatic lives, as well as undermined the water quality. At present, there are no generally accepted regulatory discharge limits for the EDCs to avert their possible negative impacts. Moreover, the conventional treatment processes have reportedly failed to remove the persistent EDC pollutants, and this has led researchers to develop alternative treatment methods. Comprehensive information on the recent advances in the existing novel treatment processes and their peculiar limitations is still lacking. In this regard, the various treatment methods for the removal of EDCs are critically studied and reported in this entry.
  • 673
  • 23 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Chemotherapy-Induced Ovarian Damage and Fertility Preservation
Chemotherapy-induced ovarian damage and fertility preservation in young patients with cancer are emerging disciplines. The mechanism of treatment-related gonadal damage provides important information for targeting prevention methods. 
  • 671
  • 25 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Water Accounting
To improve water use efficiency and productivity, particularly in irrigated areas, reliable water accounting methodologies are essential, as they provide information on the status and trends in irrigation water availability/supply and consumption/demand. At the collective irrigation system level, irrigation water accounting (IWA) relies on the quantification of water fluxes from the diversion point to the plants, at both the conveyance and distribution network and the irrigated field level.
  • 671
  • 28 Jul 2023
Topic Review
Development of Robotic Arm Harvesters
Promotion of research and development in advanced technology must be implemented in agriculture to increase production in the current challenging environment where the demand for manual farming is decreasing due to the unavailability of skilled labor, high cost, and shortage of labor. The demand for fruit harvester technologies, i.e., mechanized harvesting, manned and unmanned aerial systems, and robotics, has increased. However, several industries are working on the development of industrial-scale production of advanced harvesting technologies at low cost, no commercial robotic arm has been developed for selective harvesting of valuable fruits and vegetables, especially within controlled strictures, i.e., greenhouse and hydroponic contexts. 
  • 649
  • 28 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Silicon Waveguide Grating Modulators
Silicon waveguide grating modulators are such silicon modulators with waveguide gratings introduced to the modulation regions. As a kind of period optical structure, the waveguide gratings in the modulator will generate slow light effect to increase the light-matter interaction. Through this approach, the modulation efficiency can be enhanced and a more compact modulator footprint can be obtained. Simultaneously, silicon waveguide grating modulators can be fabricated under CMOS process which have lower process requirements than silicon photonic crystal modulators. While maintaining high-speed performance and CMOS compatibility, silicon waveguide grating modulators have ultra-compact footprint compared with conventional silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators, which will play an important role in future high-density optoelectronic integration.
  • 648
  • 14 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Water-Saving Technologies for Rice Production
In the face of the negative impacts of climate change and the accelerated growth of the global population, precision irrigation is important to conserve water resources, improve rice productivity and promote overall efficient rice cultivation, as rice is a rather water-intensive crop than other crops. Water-saving technologies for rice cultivation are varied and can be classified into three groups: water-saving irrigation systems; water-saving irrigation methods and water-saving agronomic practices.
  • 642
  • 25 Jun 2023
Topic Review
Methods, Technologies, and Approaches to Monitoring PWS
Global climate change presents a threat for the environment, and it is aggravated by the mismanagement of water use in the agricultural sector. Since plants are the intermediate component of the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum, and their physiology is directly affected by water availability, plant-based approaches proved to be sensitive and effective in estimating plant water status and can be used as a possible water-saving strategy in crop irrigation scheduling. The plant water status (PWS) assessment is an approach that aims to help farmers elaborate an irrigation schedule as a possible water-saving strategy.
  • 631
  • 27 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Framework Proposal for Achieving Smart and Sustainable Societies
The proposed model is based on the integration of three smart strategies: (1) water provision that consists of the use of greywater and rainwater; (2) sanitation provision that comprises the nutrients recovery from excreta and organic solid waste and; (3) resource-oriented agriculture that conceives the use of the water provision system for the production of food with the use of nutrients recovered from the sanitation system. The S3 framework has the potential to increase the well-being, human development, water availability, food safety, poverty alleviation, and healthy environments of societies through the provision of safely managed basic services as well as the recycling of nutrients and water to achieve sustainability at household and community levels.
  • 628
  • 29 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Designing Post COVID-19 Buildings
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the accessibility, social gathering, lifestyle, and working environment to be changed to reduce the infection. The current state-of-the-art engineering control preventive measures presented include ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI), bipolar ionization, vertical gardening, and indoor plants. They have potential to improve the indoor air quality.
  • 610
  • 20 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Sustainable Food Production
Fault diagnosis and prognosis methods are the most useful tools for risk and reliability analysis in food processing systems. Proactive diagnosis techniques such as failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) are important for detecting all probable failures and facilitating the risk analysis process. However, significant uncertainties exist in the classical-FMEA when it comes to ranking the risk priority numbers (RPNs) of failure modes. Such uncertainties may have an impact on the food sector’s operational safety and maintenance decisions.
  • 610
  • 28 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Self-Service Electric Vehicle
Electric vehicle sharing is necessary for achieving carbon neutrality. The self-service electric vehicle mode offers unique advantages in terms of freedom of movement and privacy protection. Meanwhile, this mode requires a high-quality service guarantee because of the separation of management and use. 
  • 609
  • 24 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Technological Trends and Engineering Issues on Vertical Farms
Vertical farming has emerged as a promising solution to cope with increasing food demand, urbanization pressure, and limited resources and to ensure sustainable year-round urban agriculture. Vertical farming is a modern agricultural approach that offers exceptional space efficiency, in contrast to conventional farming methods that often result in water wastage and land degradation. The key advantages of vertical farming include the recirculation of freshwater to minimize waste, the optimization of growth conditions for steady year-round harvests, and the ability to sidestep seasonal limitations. These urban-based farms employ advanced technologies to reduce costs by decreasing the need for transportation and labor expenses. 
  • 607
  • 18 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Pigs’ Physico-Temporal Activities
Animals exhibit their internal and external stimuli through changing behavior. Therefore, people intrinsically used animal physical activities as an indicator to determine their health and welfare status.
  • 606
  • 12 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Properties of Starch as Nanocomposites
Starch is one of the most abundant natural polymers globally. Starch and its nanocomposites have been extensively studied for their abundance, low cost, ease of processibility, and chemical and physical properties.
  • 603
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Climate Change and Citriculture on Citrus
A bibliometric analysis of climate change and citrus investigated this research domain's development and current trends. The period studied was from 1992 to 2022, resulting in 178 documents using the Scopus database. The most significant publishers' countries were also the largest citrus producers in the world, besides being G7 members. Three main research areas were identified: modeling, socio-political issues, and plant physiology. A tendency to change interest from modeling and risk analysis to physiology and stress studies was observed. Additionally, some of the most cited papers observed the positive impacts of climate change on certain citrus crops. Despite the multidisciplinary publications, two main gaps were identified: (i) the lack of investigations with combined stresses (abiotic and biotic) instead of isolated studies; and (ii) the lack of studies of predictive models for citrus production in different conditions and climate change scenarios. There was a tendency toward studying water use and irrigation alternatives due to water scarcity and management solutions to improve the production system's resilience, considering the potential impacts of climate change.
  • 602
  • 24 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Hydroponic Cultivation
The increasing demand for food, the lack of natural resources and arable land, and the recent restrictions on energy consumption require an immediate solution in terms of agricultural activities. The soil loss, the crop/soil contamination, and the greenhouse gas emissions were the criteria for the environmental comparison of conventional agriculture and hydroponics. As for resource consumption, the water consumption rates (L/kg), energy consumption rates (kWh), and energy required (kW) were the criteria for comparing conventional agriculture with hydroponics.
  • 594
  • 27 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Cynara cardunculus L. var. altilis Petioles
Cynara cardunculus L. is a species that belongs to the Asteraceae family, commonly designated as cardoon, and comprises three botanical varieties: var. altilis DC, var. scolymus (L.) Fiori, and var. sylvestris (Lamk) Fiori. This species is widely used in Mediterranean cuisine and folk medicine due to its nutritional composition, choleretic, hypocholesterolemic, and diuretic properties and effectiveness in the treatment of hepatic diseases.
  • 590
  • 20 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Payment for Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Water
The Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) concept was introduced to finance the drives that contribute to the flow of ESs. According to UNDP, in PES, the user or beneficiary of an Ecosystem Services (ESs) makes a direct or indirect payment to the provider of that service. Here, a program is set up where monetary value is created for ESs stemming from land management practices.
  • 586
  • 13 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Stabilization of Rice Bran
One of the major problems in food science is meeting the demand of the world’s growing population, despite environmental limitations such as climate change, water scarcity, land degradation, marine pollution, and desertification. Preventing food from going to waste and utilizing nutritive by-products as food rather than feed are easy and powerful strategies for overcoming this problem. Rice is an important staple food crop for more than half of the world’s population and substantial quantities of rice bran emerge as the main by-product of rice grain milling. Usually, rice bran is used as animal feed or discarded as waste. Although it is highly nutritious and comprises many bioactive compounds with considerable health benefits, the rapid deterioration of bran limits the exploitation of the full potential of rice bran. Hydrolytic rancidity is the main obstacle to using rice bran as food, and the enzyme inactivation process, which is termed stabilization, is the only way to prevent it.
  • 583
  • 24 May 2023
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