Fairness-Enabling Practices in Agro-Food Chain

Fairness in the agro-food system is an increasingly important issue. Ensuring fair and ethical practices in the agro-food chain is essential for sustainable, effective, and resilient agro-food systems. Identifying and understanding fairness-enabling practices and existing business applications in the agro-food chain is crucial to create a sustainable system. This research study is an extensive literature review analyzing academic and grey literature. Thus, this study aims: (i) to conceptualize fairness in the agro-food system; (ii) to identify the fairness-enabling practices contributing to a fair agro-food system; and (iii) to explore existing agro-food chain business applications relevant to achieving a sustainable and fair agro-food chain. Fairness-enabling practices have a vital role in achieving fairness in the upstream and downstream operational stages of the agro-food chain. On the one hand, the upstream cycle includes many elements, from a ban on unfair trading practices to ethical treatment to farmers, from transparency through technology and innovation to ensuring fair remuneration. The key goal is to improve the position of farmers in the chain. The study considers the following five upstream focused business applications to enable fairness practices: blockchain, cooperatives, interbranch organizations, business applications for small-scale farmers, and Fairtrade. On the other hand, achieving success in the downstream operational stage of the chain depends on fairness-oriented consumer food choice, consumer intention to buy fair food, consumer perceived value of fair food, and increased information and transparency on agro-food costs and price. This paper takes into account two consumer-focused business applications which provide downstream fairness practices: dual entitlement and dynamic pricing. To conclude, agro-food chain actors should learn how to find profit in fairness, and turn fairness-related costs into profitable business models

Carbon supported nano-sized Pt-Pd and Pt-Co electrocatalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Nano-sized Pt-Pd/C and Pt-Co/C electrocatalysts have been synthesized and characterized by an alcohol-reduction process using ethylene glycol as the solvent and Vulcan XC-72R as the supporting material. While the Pt-Pd/C electrodes were compared with Pt/C (20 wt.% E-TEK) in terms of electrocatalytic activity towards oxidation of H(2), CO and H(2)-CO mixtures, the Pt-Co/C electrodes were evaluated towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and compared with Pt/C (20 wt% E-TEK) and Pt-Co/C (20 wt.% E-TEK) and Pt/C (46 wt.% TKK) in a single cell. in addition, the Pt-Pd/C and Pt-Co/C electrocatalyst samples Were characterized by XRD, XPS, TEM and electroanalytical methods. The TEM images of the carbon supported platinum alloy electrocatalysts show homogenous catalyst distribution with a particle size of about 3-4 nm it was found that while the Pt-Pd/C electrocatalyst has superior CO tolerance compared to commercial catalyst, Pt-Co/C synthesized by polyol method has shown better activity and stability up to 60 degrees C compared to commercial catalysts Single cell tests using the alloy catalysts coated on Nafion-212 membranes with H(2) and O(2) gases showed that the fuel cell performance in the activation and the ohmic regions are almost similar comparing conventional electrodes to Pt-Pd anode electrodes However, conventional electrodes give a better performance in the ohmic region comparing to Pt-Co cathode. It is worth mentioning that these catalysts are less expensive compared to the commercial catalysts if only the platinum contents were considered. (C) 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

GELİBOLU YARIMADASI’NIN KUZEYBATI KIYILARINDA ARAZİKULLANIMININ UZAKTAN ALGILAMA İLE İNCELENMESİ

Gelibolu Yarımadası’nın kuzeybatıkesiminde, Güneyli Köyü ve çevresinde yaklaşık 9.7 km uzunluğundaki kıyı şeridi ve gerisindeki kıyıbölgesinde, 1980’li yılların başından itibaren başlayan turizm faaliyetleri, arazi kullanımında önemli değişimlere yol açmıştır. Gelibolu-İstanbul karayolunun batısında kalan kıyıkesiminde genişbir alanda gözlenen hızlıyapılaşmanın yarattığıbu değişim farklıtarihlere ait hava fotoğrafları, topoğrafya haritalarıve uydu görüntülerinin Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemleri CBS ortamında değerlendirilmesi ile ortaya konmuştur. Elde edilen bulgular ikincil konutların 2.2 km2lik bir sahada yayıldığınıgöstermektedir. Diğer taraftan son 30 yılıaşkın sürede ikincil konut sayısındaki artışla birlikte tarım ve orman alanlarının % 10’luk bir daralmaya maruz kalmıştır

Parthenogenetic activation of bovine oocytes using bovine and murine phospholipase C zeta

Background - During natural fertilization, sperm fusion with the oocyte induces long lasting intracellular calcium oscillations which in turn are responsible for oocyte activation. PLCZ1 has been identified as the factor that the sperm delivers into the egg to induce such a response. We tested the hypothesis that PLCZ1 cRNA injection can be used to activate bovine oocytes. Results - Mouse and bovine PLCZ1 cRNAs were injected into matured bovine oocytes at different concentrations. Within the concentrations tested, mouse PLCZ1 injection activated bovine oocytes at a maximum rate when the pipette concentration of cRNA ranged from 0.25 to 1 μg/μL, while bovine PLCZ1 was optimal at 0.1 μg/μL. At their most effective concentrations, PLCZ1 induced parthenogenetic development at rates similar to those observed using other activation stimuli such as Ionomycin/CHX and Ionomycin/DMAP. Injection of mouse and bovine PLCZ1 cRNA induced dose-dependent sperm-like calcium oscillations whose frequency increased over time. Injection of bovine and mouse PLCZ1 cRNA also induced IP3R-1 degradation, although bovine PLCZ1 cRNA evoked greater receptor degradation than its mouse counterpart. Conclusion - Injection of PLCZ1 cRNA efficiently activated bovine oocytes by inducing a sperm-like calcium oscillatory pattern. Importantly, the high rate of aneuploidy encountered in parthenogenetic embryos activated by certain chemical means was not observed in PLCZ1 activated embryos

Non-Gravitating Scalars and Spacetime Compactification

We discuss role of partially gravitating scalar fields, scalar fields whose energy-momentum tensors vanish for a subset of dimensions, in dynamical compactification of a given set of dimensions. We show that the resulting spacetime exhibits a factorizable geometry consisting of usual four-dimensional spacetime with full Poincare invariance times a manifold of extra dimensions whose size and shape are determined by the scalar field dynamics. Depending on the strength of its coupling to the curvature scalar, the vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the scalar field may or may not vanish. When its VEV is zero the higher dimensional spacetime is completely flat and there is no compactification effect at all. On the other hand, when its VEV is nonzero the extra dimensions get spontaneously compactified. The compactification process is such that a bulk cosmological constant is utilized for curving the extra dimensions.Comment: 18 pp, 1 fi

Upregulation of virulence genes promotes Vibrio cholerae biofilm hyperinfectivity

Vibrio cholerae remains a major global health threat, disproportionately impacting parts of the world without adequate infrastructure and sanitation resources. In aquatic environments, V. cholerae exists both as planktonic cells and as biofilms, which are held together by an extracellular matrix. V. cholerae biofilms have been shown to be hyperinfective, but the mechanism of hyperinfectivity is unclear. Here we show that biofilm-grown cells, irrespective of the surfaces on which they are formed, are able to markedly outcompete planktonic-grown cells in the infant mouse. Using an imaging technique designed to render intestinal tissue optically transparent and preserve the spatial integrity of infected intestines, we reveal and compare three-dimensional V. cholerae colonization patterns of planktonic-grown and biofilm-grown cells. Quantitative image analyses show that V. cholerae colonizes mainly the medial portion of the small intestine and that both the abundance and localization patterns of biofilm-grown cells differ from that of planktonic-grown cells. In vitro biofilm-grown cells activate expression of the virulence cascade, including the toxin coregulated pilus (TCP), and are able to acquire the cholera toxin-carrying CTXФ phage. Overall, virulence factor gene expression is also higher in vivo when infected with biofilm-grown cells, and modulation of their regulation is sufficient to cause the biofilm hyperinfectivity phenotype. Together, these results indicate that the altered biogeography of biofilm-grown cells and their enhanced production of virulence factors in the intestine underpin the biofilm hyperinfectivity phenotype

Verticalization of bacterial biofilms

Biofilms are communities of bacteria adhered to surfaces. Recently, biofilms of rod-shaped bacteria were observed at single-cell resolution and shown to develop from a disordered, two-dimensional layer of founder cells into a three-dimensional structure with a vertically-aligned core. Here, we elucidate the physical mechanism underpinning this transition using a combination of agent-based and continuum modeling. We find that verticalization proceeds through a series of localized mechanical instabilities on the cellular scale. For short cells, these instabilities are primarily triggered by cell division, whereas long cells are more likely to be peeled off the surface by nearby vertical cells, creating an "inverse domino effect". The interplay between cell growth and cell verticalization gives rise to an exotic mechanical state in which the effective surface pressure becomes constant throughout the growing core of the biofilm surface layer. This dynamical isobaricity determines the expansion speed of a biofilm cluster and thereby governs how cells access the third dimension. In particular, theory predicts that a longer average cell length yields more rapidly expanding, flatter biofilms. We experimentally show that such changes in biofilm development occur by exploiting chemicals that modulate cell length.Comment: Main text 10 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary Information 35 pages, 15 figure

Cellular Levels and Binding of c-di-GMP Control Subcellular Localization and Activity of the Vibrio cholerae Transcriptional Regulator VpsT

The second messenger, cyclic diguanylate (c-di-GMP), regulates diverse cellular processes in bacteria. C-di-GMP is produced by diguanylate cyclases (DGCs), degraded by phosphodiesterases (PDEs), and receptors couple c-di-GMP production to cellular responses. In many bacteria, including Vibrio cholerae, multiple DGCs and PDEs contribute to c-di-GMP signaling, and it is currently unclear whether the compartmentalization of c-di-GMP signaling components is required to mediate c-di-GMP signal transduction. In this study we show that the transcriptional regulator, VpsT, requires c-di-GMP binding for subcellular localization and activity. Only the additive deletion of five DGCs markedly decreases the localization of VpsT, while single deletions of each DGC do not impact VpsT localization. Moreover, mutations in residues required for c-di-GMP binding, c-di-GMP-stabilized dimerization and DNA binding of VpsT abrogate wild type localization and activity. VpsT does not co-localize or interact with DGCs suggesting that c-di-GMP from these DGCs diffuses to VpsT, supporting a model in which c-di-GMP acts at a distance. Furthermore, VpsT localization in a heterologous host, Escherichia coli, requires a catalytically active DGC and is enhanced by the presence of VpsT-target sequences. Our data show that c-di-GMP signaling can be executed through an additive cellular c-di-GMP level from multiple DGCs affecting the localization and activity of a c-di-GMP receptor and furthers our understanding of the mechanisms of second messenger signaling

Digitally enabled health service for the integrated management of hypertension: A participatory user-centred design process

This article describes a user-centred approach taken by a group of five procurers to set specifications for the procurement of value-based research and development services for IT-sup-ported integrated hypertension management. The approach considered the unmet needs of patients and health systems of the involved regions. The procurers established a framework for requirements and a solution design consisting of nine building blocks, divided into three domains: service delivery, devices and integration, and health care organisation. The approach included the development of questionnaires, capturing patients’ and professionals’ views on possible system functionalities, and a template collecting information about the organisation of healthcare, professionals involved and existing IT systems at the procurers’ premises. A total of 28 patients diagnosed with hypertension and 26 professionals were interviewed. The interviewees identified 98 functional requirements, grouped in the nine building blocks. A total of nine use cases and their corresponding process models were defined by the procurers’ working group. As result, a digitally enabled integrated approach to hypertension has been designed to allow citizens to learn how to prevent the development of hypertension and lead a healthy lifestyle, and to receive comprehensive, individualised treatment in close collaboration with healthcare professionals