Summary

Environmental science emerged from the fields of natural history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today, it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems. Environmental studies are incorporating more of the social sciences in order to understand human relationships, perceptions and policies towards the environment. This entry collection features information about design and technology for improving environmental quality in every aspect.

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Topic Review
Industrial Ecology Education
Industrial ecology (IE) education is a topic that has received attention in institutions of higher education throughout the world. Some universities have been teaching and researching IE for the past 20 years but its scope is still being defined. There is a need to catalogue and exchange experiences of IE teaching and their results. In addition to an extensive literature review, this paper provides a framework composed of content and strategies for teaching Industrial Ecology. This framework is tested in teaching IE as a general education course for undergraduate students at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). The methodology applied in this paper is of a descriptive and empirical nature and thus this paper focuses on a practice-oriented perspective in describing the experience at BIT. A range of different strategies, including lectures, group discussions, case studies, role playing games, oral presentations, evaluation, and student feedback have been incorporated into the course. The course received highly positive evaluation by the participating students. Students were impressed by IE’s characteristic of interdisciplinarity, way of thinking and practical value. Additionally, the course appears to influence students’ values, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. The paper concludes with some thoughts on ways of improving IE education in the future.
  • 1.2K
  • 06 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Quinoa for the Brazilian Cerrado
Quinoa stands out as an excellent crop in the Cerrado region for cultivation in the off-season or irrigated winter season. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a pseudocereal rich in natural antioxidants, flavonoids, and anthocyanins, and these compounds may protect plants against biotic and abiotic stress. Water stress increases leaf temperature, and reduces crop height, stomatal conductance, plant biomass, and yield. Here, we tested the effects of different water regimes on the agronomic characteristics, physiology, and grain quality of different elite quinoa genotypes under field conditions.
  • 921
  • 08 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Stationary Fuel Cell System
Fuel cell technologies have several applications in stationary power production, such as units for primary power generation, grid stabilization, systems adopted to generate backup power, and combined-heat-and-power configurations (CHP). The main sectors where stationary fuel cells have been employed are (a) micro-CHP, (b) large stationary applications, (c) UPS, and IPS. The fuel cell size for stationary applications is strongly related to the power needed from the load. Since this sector ranges from simple backup systems to large facilities, the stationary fuel cell market includes few kWs and less (micro-generation) to larger sizes of MWs. The design parameters for the stationary fuel cell system differ for fuel cell technology (PEM, AFC, PAFC, MCFC, and SOFC), as well as the fuel type and supply.
  • 2.1K
  • 09 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Application of Google Earth Engine
Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud computing platform that was launched by Google in 2010. Since then, GEE has demonstrated its capacity of preprocessing and mining of geographic big data. GEE enables cloud computation and is an effective tool for carrying out the analysis of global geospatial big data.
  • 5.5K
  • 08 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Green Goldmining
Green goldmining was proposed since goldmining has brought about hardship in local communities through pollution of water and air; lost grazing and agricultural land; the creation of unprotected mining pits; exploitation and depletion of natural resources; as well as forced eviction and relocation of communities without fair compensation. Environmental management accounting practices are suggested to facilitate greener goldmining processes.
  • 1.2K
  • 29 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Drag Reduction Using Additives
Reduction of fluid resistance using the rheological characteristics of a polymer-surfactant solvent is research that contains many aspects, such as the theory of the drag reduction process, historical journey, and ongoing current research development. Many studies have been conducted, but it is challenging to know all existing and new research threads. The present investigation was conducted using literature studies regarding drag reducing agents. This research will also discuss the characteristics of flowing fluids and their effects on the velocity profile with friction factor of flowing fluids in smooth circular straight pipe geometries based on experimental, theoretical approaches. It concludes with aspects of research conducted around reducing drag using drag reducing agents, ideas about innovations, structuring overlook in testing, and modification of the fluid flow state. 
  • 1.0K
  • 29 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Vitamin D on Skin Aging
The normal vitamin D3 status is important for a general prevention of premature aging maintaining a healthful skin aging. Vitamin D3metabolites including its classical (1,25(OH)2D3) and novel (CYP11A1-intitated) D3hydroxyderivatives exert many beneficial protective effects on the skin, which could influence the process of premature aging via many different mechanisms, leading to a delay or attenuation of both chronological skin aging and photoaging. Skin-resident cells (keratinocytes, fibroblasts, and sebocytes) are capable of locally activating vitamin D3and exhibiting a diverse biological effect such as photoprotection and immunosuppression, similar to the UVR-induced one.
  • 1.3K
  • 29 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Precision Agriculture for Farming
Precision agriculture (PA) is a technology-enabled, data-driven approach to farming management that observes, measures, and analyzes the needs of individual fields and crops. Precision livestock farming (PLF), relying on the automatic monitoring of individual animals, is used for animal growth, milk production, and the detection of diseases as well as to monitor animal behavior and their physical environment, among others.
  • 1.6K
  • 18 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Time Series Aggregation for ESMs
Due to the high degree of intermittency of renewable energy sources and the growing interdependences amongst formerly separated energy pathways, the modeling of adequate energy systems is crucial to evaluate existing energy systems and to forecast viable future ones. However, this corresponds to the rising complexity of energy system models (ESMs) and often results in computationally intractable programs. To overcome this problem, time series aggregation is frequently used to reduce ESM complexity. As these methods aim at the reduction of input data and preserving the main information about the time series, but are not based on mathematically equivalent transformations, the performance of each method depends on the justifiability of its assumptions.
  • 1.7K
  • 29 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Papaya Flavour Profiling
A major challenge to the papaya industry is inconsistency in fruit quality and, in particular, flavour, which is a complex trait that comprises taste perception in the mouth (sweetness, acidity, or bitterness) and aroma produced by several volatile compounds. Current commercial varieties vary greatly in their taste, likely due to historical prioritised selection for fruit appearance as well as large environmental effects. Therefore, it is important to better understand the genetic and biochemical mechanisms and biosynthesis pathways underpinning preferable flavour in order to select and breed for better tasting new commercial papaya varieties. As an initial step, objectively measurable standards of the compound profiles that provide papaya’s taste and aroma, together with ‘mouth feel’, are required. This review presents an overview of the approaches to characterise the flavour profiles of papaya through sugar component determination, volatile compound detection, sensory panel testing, as well as genomics-based studies to identify the papaya flavour. 
  • 2.2K
  • 27 Sep 2021
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