The prospects of zero-packaging grocery stores to improve the social and environmental impacts of the food supply chain

Increasing consumer awareness of the environmental and social externalities of food supply chains in developed countries instigates the opening of grocery stores that renounce the use of disposable plastic packaging for their entire product range. The opportunities these novel stores offer in moving to an alternative, more sustainable retail system are currently not well understood. Semi-structured interviews with representatives of seven stores across Europe and six food supply chain experts were conducted in order to address this gap. Findings suggest that these stores may induce more resource-efficient behaviour in suppliers and consumers due to the reduction of packaging and food waste. Social benefits range from the support of small, regional farmers, to higher transparency along the supply chain and better informed consumers. However, these benefits come at the expense of consumer convenience due to slower shopping operations and limited product variety. A wider adoption of zero packaging will require influencing consumer behaviour, convincing suppliers to change their packaging practices, and solving the dependency of food logistics on packaging. In order to achieve wide-ranging, significant environmental and social benefits, zero-packaging stores will ultimately have to offer service levels that are comparable to conventional supermarkets. Potential pathways illustrating how zero-packaging could overcome current market limitations are presented

Quantitative characteristics of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) semen throughout the reproductive season

The aim of this study was to determine changes in quantitative characteristics of the rainbow trout semen throughout the reproductive season. Semen samples were collected from October to May from broodstock males (n = 12) kept under natural photoperiod regime and semen volume, density, motility, duration of motility, spermatocrit and pH parameters were investigated. In October, one of the 12 brooders (8.3%) were spermiating, increasing to 12 (100%) in December and dropping to 3 (25%) in May. Semen volume significantly increased in January and February. The total volume of expressible semen was maximal in January, increasing from a mean value of 1.7 ml to 20.9 ml. The spermatozoa density showed an increasing trend from October to January, with mean values ranging between 1.4 and 10.3 x 109 sperm/ml. The spermatocrit did not vary with the sampling date. The semen samples collected in November showed the lowest motility of spermatozoa (40%). But the percentage of motile spermatozoa collected from January to May showed more than 80% motility. The duration of motility for the monitoring period ranged between 58.0 and 375.6 sec. In conclusion, the highest quality semen was collected during the medial part of the reproductive season.Bu çalışmanın amacı üreme mevsimi boyunca gökkuşağı alabalığı spermasının nicel özelliklerindeki değişimleri belirlemektir. Sperma örnekleri doğal fotoperiyot altında tutulan damızlıklardan (n = 12) ekim kasım ayları arasında toplandı. Sperma miktarı ve pH, sperma yoğunluğu ve motilite, motil kalma süresi, spermatokrit belirlendi. Ekimde 12 damızlıktan bir tanesi (%8.3) sperm verirken, aralık ayında sperm veren birey sayısı 12’ye (%100) yükseldi ve mayıs ayında 3 (%3) bireye düştü. Sperma miktarı ocak ve şubat aylarında önemli ölçüde arttı. Sağılabilen sperma miktarı, 1.7 ml’den 20.9 ml’ye yükselerek, ocak ayında en yüksek düzeye çıktı. Ekimde 1.4 x 109 sperm/ml olan spermatozoa yoğunluğu ocak ayında 10.3 x 109 sperm/ml olarak saptandı. Spermatokrit değerleri örnekleme zamanına bağlı olarak değişim göstermedi. En düşük motilite kasımdaki örneklerde, ocak ve mayıs arasında toplanan örneklerde ise %80’den yüskek motilite saptandı. Motil kalma süresi, üreme mevsimi boyunca, 58.0 ve 375.6 s arasında değişti. Sonuç olarak, yüksek kalitede sperma üreme mevsimi ortasında toplandı

The antimicrobial capacity of embalming solutions: a comparative study

Aims: Infectious health risks are associated with handling human cadavers and to decrease such risks, cadavers are embalmed using different chemicals. The aim of this study is to quantify the amount of microorganisms present in different regions of human cadavers before embalming, after embalming and over a period of eight months. Methods and Results: Human cadavers were embalmed using Thiel, formalin, Genelyn and the Imperial College London soft-preservation (ICL-SP) solution with two cadavers per technique. Sterile swabs were used to collect samples from different regions. Samples were collected every two months. All cadavers had a high number of microbial colonies before embalming. While no colonies were detected on formalin and Genelyn embalmed cadavers post embalming, the number of colonies decreased significantly in Thiel embalmed cadavers and nearly stayed the same in ICL-SP embalmed cadavers. Conclusions: Formalin embalmed cadavers showed the strongest disinfecting abilities followed by Thiel embalmed cadavers, then Genelyn embalmed cadavers and finally by ICL-SP cadavers. Significance and Impact of Study: This study highlights how under researched this area is and the evident variation in the antimicrobial abilities of different embalming solutions on the cadaver as a whole and within different regions of the same cadaver

Vision-Depth Landmarks and Inertial Fusion for Navigation in Degraded Visual Environments

This paper proposes a method for tight fusion of visual, depth and inertial data in order to extend robotic capabilities for navigation in GPS-denied, poorly illuminated, and texture-less environments. Visual and depth information are fused at the feature detection and descriptor extraction levels to augment one sensing modality with the other. These multimodal features are then further integrated with inertial sensor cues using an extended Kalman filter to estimate the robot pose, sensor bias terms, and landmark positions simultaneously as part of the filter state. As demonstrated through a set of hand-held and Micro Aerial Vehicle experiments, the proposed algorithm is shown to perform reliably in challenging visually-degraded environments using RGB-D information from a lightweight and low-cost sensor and data from an IMU.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, Published in International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC) 201

Long-term precipitation in Southwestern Europe reveals no clear trend attributable to anthropogenic forcing

We present a long-term assessment of precipitation trends in Southwestern Europe (1850-2018) using data from multiple sources, including observations, gridded datasets and global climate model experiments. Contrary to previous investigations based on shorter records, we demonstrate, using new long-term, quality controlled precipitation series, the lack of statistically significant long-term decreasing trends in precipitation for the region. Rather, significant trends were mostly found for shorter periods, highlighting the prevalence of interdecadal and interannual variability at these time-scales. Global climate model outputs from three CMIP experiments are evaluated for periods concurrent with observations. Both the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ensembles show precipitation decline, with only CMIP6 showing agreement with long term trends in observations. However, for both CMIP3 and CMIP5 large interannual and internal variability among ensemble members makes it difficult to identify a trend that is statistically different from observations. Across both observations and models, our results make it difficult to associate any declining trends in precipitation in Southwestern Europe to anthropogenic forcing at this stage