Irrigation efficiency and water-policy implications for river basin resilience

Rising demand for food, fiber, and biofuels drives expanding irrigation withdrawals from surface water and groundwater. Irrigation efficiency and water savings have become watchwords in response to climate-induced hydrological variability, increasing freshwater demand for other uses including ecosystem water needs, and low economic productivity of irrigation compared to most other uses. We identify three classes of unintended consequences, presented here as paradoxes. Ever-tighter cycling of water has been shown to increase resource use, an example of the <i>efficiency paradox</i>. In the absence of effective policy to constrain irrigated-area expansion using "saved water", efficiency can aggravate scarcity, deteriorate resource quality, and impair river basin resilience through loss of flexibility and redundancy. Water scarcity and salinity effects in the lower reaches of basins (symptomatic of the <i>scale paradox</i>) may partly be offset over the short-term through groundwater pumping or increasing surface water storage capacity. However, declining ecological flows and increasing salinity have important implications for riparian and estuarine ecosystems and for non-irrigation human uses of water including urban supply and energy generation, examples of the <i>sectoral paradox</i>. This paper briefly considers three regional contexts with broadly similar climatic and water-resource conditions – central Chile, southwestern US, and south-central Spain – where irrigation efficiency directly influences basin resilience. The comparison leads to more generic insights on water policy in relation to irrigation efficiency and emerging or overdue needs for environmental protection

Interpreting participatory Fuzzy Cognitive Maps as complex networks in the social-ecological systems of the Amazonian forests.

EGU General Assembly 2015

Evaluating animal-based foods and plant-based alternatives using multi-criteria and SWOT analyses

Open Access Article; Published online: 29 Oct 2020Global diets have transitioned in recent decades with animal and processed products increasing. Promoting a reversal in these trends towards plant-based diets could reduce the environmental impacts of food systems and reduce the prevalence of non-communicable diseases and malnutrition. In Spain, a reference point for the Mediterranean diet (predominantly plant-source based), plant-based alternatives to traditional animal-based products are receiving increased attention. However, limited focus has been given to the opinions of stakeholder groups on the potential of these novel products. We evaluate the opinions of stakeholders within the Spanish agri-food sector, using multicriteria and SWOT analyses, on traditional and novel food products. Stakeholders involved in the supply chain of food products (producers, processors, and distributors) were critical of novel plant-based foods, highlighting problems with their taste, processing technology, and high prices. These results contrast with the perspectives of policymakers, researchers, environmental NGOs, and consumers who see novel products more positively - healthier, more sustainable, and highly profitable. These results illustrate the more traditional mindset seen in Spanish production systems, contrasting with the rapidly shifting tastes and demands of consumers and the potential legislative orientation of policymakers. This study calls for improved understanding and collaboration between stakeholders to better manage complex choices that affect the future of food systems during their needed transformation

HF spectrum activity prediction model based on HMM for cognitive radio applications

Although most of the research on Cognitive Radio is focused on communication bands above the HF upper limit (30 MHz), Cognitive Radio principles can also be applied to HF communications to make use of the extremely scarce spectrum more efficiently. In this work we consider legacy users as primary users since these users transmit without resorting to any smart procedure, and our stations using the HFDVL (HF Data+Voice Link) architecture as secondary users. Our goal is to enhance an efficient use of the HF band by detecting the presence of uncoordinated primary users and avoiding collisions with them while transmitting in different HF channels using our broad-band HF transceiver. A model of the primary user activity dynamics in the HF band is developed in this work to make short-term predictions of the sojourn time of a primary user in the band and avoid collisions. It is based on Hidden Markov Models (HMM) which are a powerful tool for modelling stochastic random processes and are trained with real measurements of the 14 MHz band. By using the proposed HMM based model, the prediction model achieves an average 10.3% prediction error rate with one minute-long channel knowledge but it can be reduced when this knowledge is extended: with the previous 8 min knowledge, an average 5.8% prediction error rate is achieved. These results suggest that the resulting activity model for the HF band could actually be used to predict primary users activity and included in a future HF cognitive radio based station

Examining the sustainability and development challenge in agricultural-forest frontiers of the Amazon Basin through the eyes of locals

Open Access JournalThe Amazon basin is the world’s largest rainforest and the most biologically diverse place on Earth. Despite the critical importance of this region, Amazon forests continue inexorably to be degraded and deforested for various reasons, mainly a consequence of agricultural expansion. The development of novel policy strategies that provide balanced solutions, associating economic growth and environmental protection, is still challenging, largely because the perspective of those most affected- local stakeholders- is often ignored. Participatory Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) was implemented to examinestakeholder perceptions towards the sustainable development of two agricultural-forest frontier areas in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon. A series of development scenarios and a climate change scenario were explored and applied to stakeholder derived FCM. Stakeholders in both regions perceived landscapes of socio-economic impoverishment and environmental degradation driven by governmental and institutional deficiencies. Under such abject conditions, governance and well-integrated social and technological strategies offered socio-economic development, environmental conservation, and resilience to climatic changes. The results suggest the benefits of a new type of thinking for development strategies in the Amazon basin, and that continued application of traditional development policies reduce the resilience of the Amazon to climate change, whilst limiting socio-economic development and environmental conservation

Wavelet analysis of epileptic spikes

Interictal spikes and sharp waves in human EEG are characteristic signatures of epilepsy. These potentials originate as a result of synchronous, pathological discharge of many neurons. The reliable detection of such potentials has been the long standing problem in EEG analysis, especially after long-term monitoring became common in investigation of epileptic patients. The traditional definition of a spike is based on its amplitude, duration, sharpness, and emergence from its background. However, spike detection systems built solely around this definition are not reliable due to the presence of numerous transients and artifacts. We use wavelet transform to analyze the properties of EEG manifestations of epilepsy. We demonstrate that the behavior of wavelet transform of epileptic spikes across scales can constitute the foundation of a relatively simple yet effective detection algorithm.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A pharmacogenetic intervention for the improvement of the safety profile of antipsychotic treatments

Antipsychotic drugs fail to achieve adequate response in 30-50% of treated patients and about 50% of them develop severe and lasting side effects. Treatment failure results in poorer prognosis with devastating repercussions for the patients, carers and broader society. Our study evaluated the clinical benefits of a pharmacogenetic intervention for the personalisation of antipsychotic treatment. Pharmacogenetic information in key CYP polymorphisms was used to adjust clinical doses in a group of patients who started or switched treatment with antipsychotic drugs (PharmG+, N = 123), and their results were compared with those of a group of patients treated following existing clinical guides (PharmG−, N = 167). There was no evidence of significant differences in side effects between the two arms. Although patients who had their antipsychotic dose adjusted according to CYPs polymorphisms (PharmG+) had a bigger reduction in side effects than those treated as usual (PharmG−), the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05 for all comparisons). However, PharmG+ patients treated with CYP2D6 substrates that were carriers of CYP2D6 UMs or PMs variants showed a significantly higher improvement in global, psychic and other UKU side effects than PharmG− patients (p = 0.02, p = 0.05 and p = 0.01, respectively). PharmG+ clozapine treated patients with CYP1A2 or CYP2C19 UM and PMs variants also showed higher reductions in UKU scores than PharmG− clozapine patients in general. However, those differences were not statistically significant. Pharmacogenetic interventions may improve the safety of antipsychotic treatments by reducing associated side effects. This intervention may be particularly useful when considering treatment with antipsychotics with one major metabolic pathway, and therefore more susceptible to be affected by functional variants of CYP enzymes