9,211 research outputs found
Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems as foundation for sustainable agriculture – Critical reviews of environmental assessment tools, key findings and questions from a course process
With increasing demands on limited resources worldwide, there is a growing interest in sustainable patterns of utilisation and production. Ecological agriculture is a response to these concerns.
To assess progress and compliance, standard and comprehensive measures of resource requirements, impacts and agro-ecological health are needed. Assessment tools should also be rapid, standardized, userfriendly, meaningful to public policy and applicable to management. Fully considering these requirements confounds the development of integrated methods.
Currently, there are many methodologies for monitoring performance, each with its own foundations, assumptions, goals, and outcomes, dependent upon agency agenda or academic orientation. Clearly, a concept of sustainability must address biophysical, ecological, economic, and sociocultural foundations.
Assessment indicators and criteria, however, are generally limited, lacking integration, and at times in conflict with one another. A result is that certification criteria, indicators, and assessment methods are not based on a consistent, underlying conceptual framework and often lack a management focus.
Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems, including self-organisation, renewal, embeddedness, emergence and commensurate response provide foundation for sustainability assessments and may be appropriate focal points for critical thinking in an evaluation of current methods and standards. A systems framework may also help facilitate a comprehensive approach and promote a context for meaningful discourse. Without holistic accounts, sustainable progress remains an illdefined concept and an elusive goal.
Our intent, in the work with this report, was to use systems ecology as a pedagogic basis for learning and discussion to:
- Articulate general and common characteristics of living systems.
- Identify principles, properties and patterns inherent in natural ecosystems.
- Use these findings as foci in a dialogue about attributes of sustainability to:
a. develop a model for communicating scientific rationale.
b. critically evaluate environmental assessment tools for application in land-use.
c. propose appropriate criteria for a comprehensive assessment and expanded definition of ecological land use
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Beyond viral suppression: the quality of life of people living with HIV in Sweden
Sweden has one of the best HIV treatment outcomes in the world and an estimated 95% of all diagnosed people living with HIV are virally suppressed, but the quality of life (QoL) is understudied. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between variables within sociodemographic, behavioural, clinical, psychological, sexual life, social support and personal resource component and the QoL of people living with HIV in Sweden. Data were derived from a cross-sectional, nation-wide survey completed by 15% (n = 1096) of all people living with HIV and collected at 15 infectious disease clinics and 2 needle exchange sites during 2014. Ordinal univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between potential contributors and QoL. Respondents reported high QoL: 63% rated their QoL 7 or higher on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. QoL was independent of gender, age, mode of HIV transmission and country of origin. Lower QoL was associated with recent homelessness, hazardous alcohol consumption, comorbidities, treatment side-effects, HIV-related physical symptoms, hopelessness, negative self-image, sexual dissatisfaction, and negative changes in sex life after HIV. The QoL of people living with HIV in Sweden was high overall, but still significantly influenced by HIV
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High Concordance between Self-Reported Adherence, Treatment Outcome and Satisfaction with Care Using a Nine-Item Health Questionnaire in InfCareHIV
Background
In this cross-sectional study we present an integrated analysis of a self-reported Health Questionnaire and socio-demographic and treatment outcome data from the national Swedish HIV cohort, InfCareHIV.
Objectives
To evaluate the Health Questionnaire and identify the main determinants of adherence.
Methods
A total of 2,846 patients answered a nine-item disease-specific Health Questionnaire between 2012 and 2014, corresponding to 44% of all active patients in the national InfCareHIV cohort. The questionnaire assessed patient related outcome measures (PROMs) regarding health and antiretroviral treatment (ART) and patient related experience measures (PREMs) regarding involvement in care and satisfaction with the care provider.
Result
We found the Health Questionnaire to be valid and reliable when used in ordinary clinical practice. There was a high concordance between self-reported adherence to ART in the past seven days and treatment outcome, with 94% of patients who reported optimal adherence having a viral load <50 copies/ml. The main determinants of optimal adherence were heterosexual transmission path, being born in Sweden, being male, not reporting experience of ART side effects and being fully satisfied with care.
Conclusion
The nine-item Health Questionnaire can identify patients at risk of treatment failure, those in need of clinical assessment of adverse events and those with impaired physical health
Oscillator Strengths and Damping Constants for Atomic Lines in the J and H Bands
We have built a line list in the near-infrared J and H bands (1.00-1.34,
1.49-1.80 um) by gathering a series of laboratory and computed line lists.
Oscillator strengths and damping constants were computed or obtained by fitting
the solar spectrum.
The line list presented in this paper is, to our knowledge, the most complete
one now available, and supersedes previous lists.Comment: Accepted, Astrophysical Journal Supplement, tentatively scheduled for
the Sep. 1999 Vol. 124 #1 issue. Text and tables also available at
http://www.iagusp.usp.br/~jorge
Second Harmonic Coherent Driving of a Spin Qubit in a Si/SiGe Quantum Dot
We demonstrate coherent driving of a single electron spin using second
harmonic excitation in a Si/SiGe quantum dot. Our estimates suggest that the
anharmonic dot confining potential combined with a gradient in the transverse
magnetic field dominates the second harmonic response. As expected, the Rabi
frequency depends quadratically on the driving amplitude and the periodicity
with respect to the phase of the drive is twice that of the fundamental
harmonic. The maximum Rabi frequency observed for the second harmonic is just a
factor of two lower than that achieved for the first harmonic when driving at
the same power. Combined with the lower demands on microwave circuitry when
operating at half the qubit frequency, these observations indicate that second
harmonic driving can be a useful technique for future quantum computation
architectures.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure
Irrigated lands assessment for water management: Technique test
A procedure for estimating irrigated land using full frame LANDSAT imagery was demonstrated. Relatively inexpensive interpretation of multidate LANDSAT photographic enlargements was used to produce a map of irrigated land in California. The LANDSAT and ground maps were then linked by regression equations to enable precise estimation of irrigated land area by county, basin, and statewide. Land irrigated at least once in California in 1979 was estimated to be 9.86 million acres, with an expected error of less than 1.75% at the 99% level of confidence. To achieve the same level of error with a ground-only sample would have required 3 to 5 times as many ground sample units statewide. A procedure for relatively inexpensive computer classification of LANDSAT digital data to irrigated land categories was also developed. This procedure is based on ratios of MSS band 7 and 5, and gave good results for several counties in the Central Valley
Electronic band structure and carrier effective mass in calcium aluminates
First-principles electronic band structure investigations of five compounds
of the CaO-Al2O3 family, 3CaO.Al2O3, 12CaO.7Al2O3, CaO.Al2O3, CaO.2Al2O3 and
CaO.6Al2O3, as well as CaO and alpha-, theta- and kappa-Al2O3 are performed. We
find that the conduction band in the complex oxides is formed from the oxygen
antibonding p-states and, although the band gap in Al2O3 is almost twice larger
than in CaO, the s-states of both cations. Such a hybrid nature of the
conduction band leads to isotropic electron effective masses which are nearly
the same for all compounds investigated. This insensitivity of the effective
mass to variations in the composition and structure suggests that upon a proper
degenerate doping, both amorphous and crystalline phases of the materials will
possess mobile extra electrons
A programmable two-qubit quantum processor in silicon
With qubit measurement and control fidelities above the threshold of
fault-tolerance, much attention is moving towards the daunting task of scaling
up the number of physical qubits to the large numbers needed for fault tolerant
quantum computing. Here, quantum dot based spin qubits may offer significant
advantages due to their potential for high densities, all-electrical operation,
and integration onto an industrial platform. In this system, the
initialisation, readout, single- and two-qubit gates have been demonstrated in
various qubit representations. However, as seen with other small scale quantum
computer demonstrations, combining these elements leads to new challenges
involving qubit crosstalk, state leakage, calibration, and control hardware
which provide invaluable insight towards scaling up. Here we address these
challenges and demonstrate a programmable two-qubit quantum processor in
silicon by performing both the Deutsch-Josza and the Grover search algorithms.
In addition, we characterise the entanglement in our processor through quantum
state tomography of Bell states measuring state fidelities between 85-89% and
concurrences between 73-80%. These results pave the way for larger scale
quantum computers using spins confined to quantum dots
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