Reducing Uncertainty in Life Cycle Assessment of Livestock Production Systems

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly applied to livestock production systems to estimate their environmental footprints, but the degree of uncertainties associated with these values is known to be generally high. This thesis explores novel methods of LCA modelling to reduce uncertainty associated with environmental footprints of meat production systems, with the view to contribute to objective and transparent debates about the role of livestock in global food security. Three innovative approaches are proposed in this thesis. First, as information on individual animals is often unavailable, livestock data are often aggregated at the time of inventory analysis. To investigate the level of bias caused by this aggregation, Chapter 3 uses primary data collected at the North Wyke Farm Platform in Southwest England and calculates emission intensities for individual animals and their intra-farm distributions, providing a step towards deriving optimal animal selection strategies based on livestock LCA. Second, the severity of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is known to vary spatially and temporally, yet available LCA frameworks often fail to sufficiently consider these differences due to data constraints. To evaluate the degree of avoidable uncertainties attributable to this practice, Chapter 4 conducts an original field experiment to derive site-specific nitrous oxide emission factors, which are subsequently used in Chapter 5 to compare LCA results derived under these localised values and generic alternatives intended for the widest possible users. Finally, while LCA results are typically communicated in the form of environmental burdens per output of mass, it is gradually becoming recognised that product quality also needs to be accounted for to truly understand the value of each farming system to society. Using data from seven livestock production systems encompassing cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, Chapter 6 develops new methods to incorporate nutritional values of meat products into livestock LCA

The place of the university in Scottish history

But whilst our method of arrangement has been chronological, the essay as a whole is less a historical one, than a philosophical one on the abstract question. As Montalembert in a chapter on the English Schools in his famous "L'Avenir Politique de l'Angleterre" dealt more with their influence on the national life than with their inner history so here we have discussed not so much the internal affairs of the Northern Universities as the wider theme of their influence and place in Scottish history.Finally, it may be noted that the nature of this essay is, of course, eclectic, as such an inquiry must necessarily be. "Facts" says a. writer, "are the common property of all who will seek them"; but we would here claim originality both in the choice of them and the treatment of the inferences they suggest, as well as in the method and style of their narration.With these brief prefatory remarks then, this essay is sent forth as an effort which the writer, although intensely conscious of great diffidence inthe handling of so intricate and complex a subject, yet hopes may realize, at least in some slightness, the purpose and intention of the Lord Rector's Essay

Searching for Prosociality in Qualitative Data: Comparing Manual, Closed-Vocabulary, and Open-Vocabulary Methods

Although most people present themselves as possessing prosocial traits, people differ in the extent to which they actually act prosocially in everyday life. Qualitative data that were not ostensibly collected to measure prosociality might contain information about prosocial dispositions that is not distorted by self–presentation concerns. This paper seeks to characterise charitable donors from qualitative data. We compared a manual approach of extracting predictors from participants’ self–described personal strivings to two automated approaches: A summation of words predefined as prosocial and a support vector machine classifier. Although variables extracted by the support vector machine predicted donation behaviour well in the training sample ( N = 984), virtually, no variables from any method significantly predicted donations in a holdout sample ( N = 496). Raters’ attempts to predict donations to charity based on reading participants’ personal strivings were also unsuccessful. However, raters’ predictions were associated with past charitable involvement. In sum, predictors derived from personal strivings did not robustly explain variation in charitable behaviour, but personal strivings may nevertheless contain some information about trait prosociality. The sparseness of personal strivings data, rather than the irrelevance of open–ended text or individual differences in goal pursuit, likely explains their limited value in predicting prosocial behaviour. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psycholog

Antenatal self-hypnosis for labour and childbirth: A pilot study

Publisher's copy made available with the permission of the publisher © Australian Society of AnaesthetistsIn our institution we have used antenatal training in self-hypnosis for over three years as a tool to provide relaxation, anxiolysis and analgesia for women in labour. To assess the effects of hypnotherapy, we prospectively collected data related to the use of hypnosis in preparation for childbirth, and compared the birth outcomes of women experiencing antenatal hypnosis with parity and gestational age matched controls. Methods: Prospective data about women taught self-hypnosis in preparation for childbirth were collected between August 2002 and August 2004. Birth outcome data of women using hypnosis were compared with routinely collected retrospective data from parity and gestational age matched women delivering after 37 weeks gestation during 2003. Results: Seventy-seven antenatal women consecutively taught self-hypnosis in preparation for childbirth were compared with 3,249 parity and gestational age matched controls. Of the women taught antenatal self-hypnosis, nulliparous parturients used fewer epidurals: 36% (18/50) compared with 53% (765/1436) of controls (RR 0.68 [95% CI 0.47-0.98]); and required less augmentation: 18% (9/50) vs 36% (523/1436) (RR 0.48 [95%CI 0.27-0.90]). Conclusions: Our clinical findings are consistent with recent meta-analyses showing beneficial outcomes associated with the use of hypnosis in childbirth. Adequately powered, randomized trials are required to further elucidate the effects of hypnosis preparation for childbirth.A. M. Cyna, M. I. Andrew, G. L. McAuliff

Assessing catchment scale water quality of agri-food systems and the scope for reducing unintended consequences using spatial life cycle assessment (LCA)

Life cycle assessment is a multidisciplinary framework usually deployed to appraise the sustainability of various product or service supply-chains. Over recent decades, its use in the agri-food sector has risen sharply, and alongside this, a wide range of methodological advances have been generated. Spatial-life cycle assessment, defined in the current document as the interpretation of life cycle assessment results within a geographical nature, has not gone unexplored entirely, yet its rise as a sub-method of life cycle assessment has been rather slow relative to other avenues of research (e.g., including the nutritional sciences within life cycle assessment). With this relative methodological stagnation as a motivating factor, our paper combines a process-based model, the Catchment Systems Model, with various life cycle impact assessments (ReCiPe, Centre for Environmental Studies and Environmental Product Declaration) to propose a simple, yet effective, approach for visualising the technically feasible efficacy of various on-farm intervention strategies. As water quality was the primary focus of this study, interventions reducing acidification and eutrophication potentials of both arable and livestock farm types in the Southeast of England were considered. The study site is an area with a marked range of agricultural practices in terms of intensity. All impacts to acidification potential and eutrophication potential are reported using a functional unit of 1 ha. Percentage changes relative to baseline farm types, i.e., those without any interventions, arising from various mitigation strategies, are mapped using geographical information systems. This approach demonstrates visually how a spatially-orientated life cycle assessment could provide regional-specific information for farmers and policymakers to guide the restoration of certain waterbodies. A combination of multiple mitigation strategies was found to generate the greatest reductions in pollutant losses to water, but in terms of individual interventions, optimising farm-based machinery (acidification potential) and fertiliser application strategies (eutrophication potential) were found to have notable benefits

Levelling foods for priority micronutrient value can provide more meaningful environmental footprint comparisons

A growing literature in Life Cycle Assessment seeks to better inform consumers, food policymakers, food supply chain actors, and other relevant stakeholders about how individual foods contribute to sustainable diets. One major challenge involves accurately capturing potential trade-offs between nutritional provision and environmental impacts associated with food production. In response, food system sustainability literature has turned increasingly to nutritional Life Cycle Assessment, which assesses the environmental footprints of different foods while accounting for nutritional value. Here we provide examples that show how environmental footprints based on a priority micronutrient-focused functional unit can provide nutritionally meaningful insights about the complexities involved in sustainable food systems. We reinforce the idea that there are limitations in using single-value nutrition-environment scores to inform food guidance, as they do not adequately capture the complex multi-dimensionality and variation involved in healthy and sustainable food systems. In our discussion we highlight the need for future agri-food sustainability assessments to pay attention to regional nutritional and environmental variation within and between commodities, and to better interpret trade-offs involved in food substitutions

Exercises for improving quick perception grades I, II, III.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University N.B.: Page 242 is misnumbered. No content is missing from thesis

CV20017

This report provides the main results and findings of the fifteenth annual underwater television survey on the ‘Smalls grounds’ ICES assessment area; Functional Unit 22. The survey was multi-disciplinary in nature collecting UWTV and other ecosystem data. A total of 40 UWTV stations were surveyed successfully (high quality image data), carried out over an isometric grid at 4.5nmi or 8.3km intervals. The precision, with a CV of 8%, was well below the upper limit of 20% recommended by SGNEPS (ICES, 2012). The 2020 abundance estimate was 33% lower than in 2019 and at 750 million is below the MSY Btrigger reference point (990 million). Using the 2020 estimate of abundance and updated stock data implies catch in 2021 that correspond to the F ranges in the EU multi annual plan for Western Waters are between 1238 and 1560 tonnes (assuming that discard rates and fishery selection patterns do not change from the average of 2017–2019). One species of sea pens was recorded as present at the stations surveyed: Virgularia mirabilis. Trawl marks were observed at 48% of the stations surveyed