2,524 research outputs found
Ethical issues involving long-term land leases: a soil sciences perspective
As populations grow and arable land becomes increasingly scarce, large-scale long- term land leases are signed at a growing rate. Countries and investors with large amounts of financial resources and a strong agricultural industry seek long-term land leases for agricultural exploitation or investment purposes. Leaders of financially poorer countries often advertise such deals as a fast way to attract foreign capital. Much has been said about the short-term social costs these types of leases involve, however, less has been said about the normative dimension of their long-term environmental impact. We therefore will focus on the likely impact such deals have for soil conservation, by (1) briefly introducing the basics of long-term leasing arrangements by comparing land leases to the renting of buildings, (2) explaining from a soil sciences perspective the difficulties in assessing the current value of an estate and in calculating the damages of soil erosion and degradation, and (3) show how difficult it is to incentivize the conservation of soil quality when one cannot sufficiently and cost-effectively valorize existing environmental capital and eventual future damages. Attempting to oblige tenants through contracts to invest in sustainable stewardship has limited potential when liability payments do not reflect true costs and are hard to enforce
Hurricane MarĂa: An Agroecological Turning Point for Puerto Rico?
When Hurricane MarĂa tore through Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, it left 17 dead, 11,000 seeking shelter, and the islandâs 3.4 million people without power, water, or fresh food supplies.i It also ripped off the democratic veneer of the USâ âcommonwealth,â revealing the structural vulnerability of an island that has been colonized for over half a millennium. Disasters tend to unmask both unsustainable practices and inequitable relations of power. But they can also unleash the power of solidarity and self-governance as communitiesâabandoned by their governments and preyed upon by disaster capitalistsâcome together in unexpected ways. In the aftermath of Puerto Ricoâs worst social, economic and environmental catastrophe, the Puerto Rican food sovereignty movement is using agroecology to reconstruct the islandâs beleaguered food system
Fluctuation diamagnetism around the superconducting transition in a cuprate crystal with a reduced Meissner fraction
The magnetization around the superconducting transition was measured in a
TlPbSrCaCuO crystal affected by a considerable
reduction (55%) of its effective superconducting volume fraction but
still with a relatively sharp low-field Meissner transition, a behaviour that
may be attributed to the presence of structural inhomogeneities. By taking into
account these inhomogeneities just through the Meissner fraction, the observed
diamagnetism may still be explained, consistently above and below the
superconducting transition, in terms of the conventional Ginzburg-Landau
approach with fluctuations of Cooper pairs and vortices.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Anomalous precursor diamagnetism at low reduced magnetic fields and the role of Tc inhomogeneities in the superconductors Pb55In45 and underdoped La1.9Sr0.1CuO4
The magnetic field dependence of the magnetization was measured above the
superconducting transition in a high-Tc underdoped cuprate La1.9Sr0.1CuO4 and
in a low-Tc alloy (Pb55In45). Near the superconducting transition [typically
for (T-Tc)/Tc<0.05] and under low applied magnetic field amplitudes [typically
for H/Hc2(0)<0.01, where Hc2(0) is the corresponding upper critical field
extrapolated to T=0 K] the magnetization of both samples presents a diamagnetic
contribution much larger than the one predicted by the Gaussian Ginzburg-Landau
(GGL) approach for superconducting fluctuations. These anomalies have been
already observed in cuprate compounds by various groups and attributed to
intrinsic effects associated with the own nature of these high-Tc
superconductors. However, we will see here that our results in both high and
low-Tc superconductors may be explained quantitatively, and consistently with
the GGL behavior observed at higher fields, by just taking into account the
presence in the samples of an uniform distribution of Tc inhomogeneities. These
Tc inhomogeneities, which may be in turn associated with stoichiometric
inhomogeneities, were estimated from independent measurements of the
temperature dependence of the field-cooled magnetic susceptibility under low
applied magnetic fields.Comment: 25 pages, including 6 figures and 1 table. Typos corrected. Compacte
Diamagnetism around the Meissner transition in a homogeneous cuprate single crystal
The in-plane diamagnetism around the Meissner transition was measured in a
TlBaCaCuO single crystal of high chemical and structural
quality, which minimizes the inhomogeneity and disorder rounding effects on the
magnetization. When analyzed quantitatively and consistently above and below
the transition in terms of the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) approach with fluctuations
of Cooper pairs and vortices, these data provide a further confirmation that
the observed Meissner transition is a conventional GL superconducting
transition in a homogeneous layered superconductor.Comment: 5 pages, including 3 figure
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