Global Food Security Under Climate-Water-Energy Nexus

During the last few decades, the global agricultural production has risen and technology enhancement is still contributing to yield growth. However, population growth, water and energy crisis, and extreme weather, climate change, etc. threaten the global food security. The focus of this study is to advance the understanding of the associations between crops productivity and large scale and local scale climatic variables, climate change, technology enhancement and assessing food-water-energy nexus to enhance global food security in a sustainable manner considering current available resources. As decision-makers try to improve food security, it is important to identify the impact of technology enhancement and major climatic patterns that impact crop yields, quantify and predict their impacts and find the trade strategies to minimize current and potential food shortages. Annually crop yields of the global countries are impacted by climatic variables deferentially in magnitude and sign. Some of these climate variables triggers simultaneous impacts on crops that can cause synergistic crops variability and volatility across the globe. Considering these climatic patterns as well as other factors such as population distribution, available freshwater, cropland and energy resources, a global optimization model can enhance global food security through maximizing crop production. In this study we use historical records of crops yield, production, cropland area, international crops trade data, a broad range of climatic and non-climatic data, energy and freshwater resources. We implement data mining, statistical analysis, predictive and optimization modeling tools to shed light on the food security topic. This study will be performed at the global scale to the extent that data coverage allows. A global exploration of food security provides a broader understanding of this issue, and depending on the implemented methodology, may inform us about space-time interconnections of the desired variables. Diagnosing potential predictability of global crop yields in the near term is of utmost importance for ensuring food supply and preventing socio-economic consequences. While agricultural influence of climate is well-established, a detailed account of the characteristics of synergistic multi-national variability and world-wide volatility of crop yields, whereby many countries undergo harmonizing influences of climate to thwart or facilitate crops productivity, remains largely unexplored. History indicates that such synchronous volatility-led crop yields losses can leave major ramification for global price and food security. Previous studies suggest that a substantial proportion of global yields depends on local climate and larger-scale ocean atmospheric patterns. It is however unclear whether synergistic variability and volatility (major departure from the normal) of multi-national crop yields can be potentially predicted by larger-scale climate drivers. Using observed data of yields and climate variability from 1961-2013, we diagnose that yields of 5 staple crops, namely maize, rice, sorghum, soybean and wheat vary synergistically across key producing nations and can also be concurrently volatile, as a function of shared larger-scale climate drivers. We use a statistical approach called Robust Principal Component Analysis, to decouple and quantify the leading modes of global yield variability. Sea surface temperature anomalies, multiple atmospheric and oceanic indices, air temperature anomalies and Palmer Drought Severity Index are used to study the association between yields variability/volatility and climate. Results show that large-scale climate, especially El Niño-Southern Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation are strongly correlated with persistent and anomalous yield variability. The impact of local climate variability in both concurrent and lag phases vary among different countries. In addition to extreme wet conditions across sorghum croplands in South America, extensive significant hot or drought patterns are recognized across maize croplands of South America and south of Asia, rice harvesting regions of Oceania and south of Asia and sorghum and soybean growing regions of North America, south and southeast of Asia. Results show that warmer-than-normal winter time sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacific Ocean exerts the most dominating influence on global rice and sorghum yield volatility. In addition, extreme soybean and maize volatility are associated with mutual climatic teleconnection patterns. We diagnose that wheat yields can be concurrently volatile, as a function of shared larger-scale climate drivers. Results also demonstrate that world-wide wheat yield volatility has become more common in the current most decades, associating with warmer northern Pacific and Atlantic oceans, negative North Atlantic Oscillation, negative Scandinavian Pattern, and positive Southern Annular Mode, leading mostly to global wheat supply shortage. We found out not only do the same crops in many countries co-vary significantly, but different crops co-vary in a same/different manner. Then we present a predictive model of the changes in the crop yields and how they relate to different large-scale and regional climate and climate change variables and technology in a unified framework. A new Bayesian multilevel model for yield prediction at the country level is developed and demonstrated. The structural relationships between average yield and climate attributes as well as trends are estimated simultaneously. All countries are modeled in a single multilevel model with partial pooling to automatically group and reduce estimation uncertainties. El Niño- Southern Oscillation, Palmer Drought Severity Index, geopotential height anomalies, historical carbon dioxide concentration and country-based time series of Gross Domestic Product per capita -as an approximation of technology measurement- are used as predictors to estimate annual agricultural crop yields for each country from 1961 to 2013. We found out these variables can explain the variability in historical crop yields for most of the countries and the model performs well under out-of sample verifications. While some countries were not generally affected by climatic factors, Palmer Drought Severity Index and geopotential height anomalies acted both positively and negatively in different regions for crop yields in many countries. In the next step we assess approaches to maximize total production of barley, maize, rice, sorghum, soybean and wheat across the global countries. The model is tested based on the current available freshwater resources and croplands area as well as a energy constraint. The results show that total production of these crops in many countries can be increased substantially. This analysis will provide the essential scientific motivation at the national and global scale to discover feasible regions and different crop choices that can support the sustainable area expansion and crop production enhancement. The results of this research try to improve three pillars of food security namely availability, access, and stability. Our work tries to enhance the knowledge of global food security field, which is of relevance to policy initiatives, decision makers, water and energy managers, government and non-government organizations such as United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations, stakeholders, insurance companies and scientists with similar interests to ours

Managing New PV Plant Connection to Available Grids to Stay within Standard Limits with a Case Study

PV plants are increasing all over the world and they are becoming a distinct part of electric grids. Due to abundance of solar irradiation and almost constant amount of it in certain geographical latitudes, selection of proper capacity of PV plants depends mostly on available places for the site. In this paper, important measures for safe connection of a PV plant in terms of voltage requirements are addressed and several guidelines are introduced for this purpose. In addition, simulation results are included to prove some of the mentioned suggestions. A general algorithm is finally proposed to show the directions for safe connection of PV plants

Patient absconding from emergency department and its financial burden: a study in a large public hospital, Tehran

Background and Aims: Patient absconding is a major health issue with economic, social, and health costs and consequences. The present study aimed to investigate the absconding rate from a emergency department and its financial burden in a public hospital in Tehran, IRAN.Materials and Methods: This retrospective and descriptive study was carried out in the emergency department of a large public and teaching hospital in Tehran. Data were collected using the absconded patient records from 23 September 2013 to 22 September 2014. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.Concerns about medical ethics, including patient’s confidentiality and hospital name were observed at all stages of study.Results: The results of this study indicate that 774 patients had left the hospital without permission or a notice to staff, so the absconding rate in this study was about 2.4 percent. Young, male, married and uninsured patients were more absconded. Average billing per absconded patient was 1,449,738 Iranian Rials (IRR). The hospital was consequently incurred financial losses amounted to 1,122,097,212 IRR as a result of patientabsconding.Conclusion: In order to preventing and reducing the abscond rate, the following strategies are recommended: the identification of high-risk patients for further care, regular monitoring of emergency departments, good communication and interaction with the patient and his family, introducing the discharge against medical advice (DAMA) policy to patients, accurate recording of patient information to reduce the risk of abscond oraccess to him/her after the absconding.Key words: Patient Absconding, Emergency Department, Retrospective Study*Correspondin

EIDA: An Energy-Intrusion aware Data Aggregation Technique for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy consumption is considered as a critical issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Batteries of sensor nodes have limited power supply which in turn limits services and applications that can be supported by them. An efcient solution to improve energy consumption and even trafc in WSNs is Data Aggregation (DA) that can reduce the number of transmissions. Two main challenges for DA are: (i) most DA techniques need network clustering. Clustering itself is a time and energy consuming procedure. (ii) DA techniques often do not have ability to detect intrusions. Studying to design a new DA technique without using clustering and with ability of nding intrusion is valuable. This paper proposes an energy-intrusion aware DA Technique (named EIDA) that does not need clustering. EIDA is designed to support on demand requests of mobile sinks in WSNs. It uses learning automata for aggregating data and a simple and effective algorithm for intrusion detection. Finally, we simulat

The study of potassium ferrate application efficiency for advanced treatment of sewage

زمینه و هدف: طیف وسیعی از منعقد کننده‌ها، اکسیدان‌ها و گندزداها در تصفیه آب و فاضلاب استفاده می‌شوند. یون فرات به عنوان یک اکسیدان قوی بالاترین پتانسیل اکسیداسیون-احیاء را بین همه اکسیدان‌ها و گندزداها در تصفیه آب و فاضلاب داراست. یون فرات (شش ظرفیتی) در آب به یون هیدروکسید فریک احیا می‌شود و می‌تواند در یک فرآیند چند منظوره به عنوان منعقد کننده، اکسیدان و گندزدا مورد استفاده قرار گیرد. هدف از این مطالعه بررسی فرآیند تصفیه پیشرفته پساب فاضلاب شهری با استفاده از فرات پتاسیم بود. روش بررسی: در این مطالعه نیمه تجربی تصفیه پیشرفته فاضلاب شهری توسط فرات‌پتاسیم در مقیاس آزمایشگاهی روی پساب فاضلاب گندزدایی نشده با تعیین اثر متغیرهای pH و غلظت بر میزان حذف کدورت، ترکیبات ارگانی آب (COD) و فسفر مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. به منظور تعیین کارایی گندزدایی فرات پتاسیم نیز اثر سه متغیر زمان تماس، غلظت فرات و pH روی فرآیند گندزدایی با استفاده از شاخص (MPN (Most Probable Number مشخص شد. یافته‌ها: بهترین راندمان حذف ترکیبات ارگانی آب و کدورت با استفاده از فرات‌پتاسیم در شرایط بهینه (5=pH و غلظت mg/L10) به ترتیب 65 و 90 بود. pH و غلظت بهینه فرات ‌پتاسیم در حذف فسفر نیز 5=pH و غلظت mg/L 12 بود که موجب حذف 72 درصدی فسفر شد. بهترین شرایط کاربرد فرات پتاسیم به عنوان گندزدا در غلظت mg/L 4 و زمان تماس های 25 دقیقه و 6=pH بود. نتیجه گیری: فرات ‌پتاسیم به عنوان یک ماده شیمیایی مؤثر اکسید کننده، گندزدا و منعقد کننده می ‌تواند در تصفیه انواع پساب های شهری و صنعتی مورد استفاده قرار گیرد و با این کار دسترسی به چند هدف در یک فرآیند را میسر گرداند

Sulfonated Magnetic Nanocomposite Based on Reactive PGMA-MAn Copolymer@Fe 3

Chelating magnetic nanocomposites have been considered as suitable materials for removal of heavy metal ions for water treatment. In this work poly(glycidyl methacrylate-maleic anhydride) copolymer (PGMA-MAn) is modified with 4-aminobenzenesulfonic acid (ABSAc) and subsequently the product reacted with modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles and 1,2-ethanedithiol (EDT) in the presence of ultrasonic irradiation for preparation of tridimensional chelating magnetic nanocomposite. Synthesized magnetic nanocomposite was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), elemental mapping analysis (EMA), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). The adsorption behavior of Cu(II) ions was investigated by synthesized nanocomposite in various parameters such as pH, contact time, metal ion concentration, and adsorbent dosage. The equilibrium distribution coefficient (kd) was determined and the findings prove that the kd value is approximately high in the case of all selected metal ions. The synthesized nanocomposite exhibited good tendency for removing Cu(II) ions from aqueous solutions even at an acidic pH

Brucella Antibody Levels in Preschool Children in the North East of Iran

Background: Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease of humans and animals that has affected worldwide. Iran is one of the endemic areas infected with brucellosis. Early diagnosis of this disease may protect the affected children from disabilities and mortalities. This study aimed to evaluate the Brucella antibody levels in preschool children of the Shahroud city in Iran.Methods: This cross-sectional study evaluated 850 participants, in particular, school children from the Shahroud city. General information was collected by interviewing the children’s parents. Moreover, a 5 ml of blood sample was collected from all the children. The samples were studies using standard tube agglutination test (Wright) and 2-Mercaptoethanol. Thereafter, IgG and IgM levels were determined by the ELISA method.Results: A total of 850 children were enrolled, of which 51.2% were boys and 48.8% were girls, with a mean age of 5.17±1.55 years. Of the all children evaluated, 839 (97.5%) children had a titer <1/80 and 21 children (2.5%) had a titer ≥1/80. A significant difference was observed between the antibody titers in terms of gender (P=0.012), whereas no significant association was found among antibody titers with other variables such as age, history of nonpasteurized foods, exposure to animals, history of brucellosis disease, and parental occupation.Conclusions: The antibody titer for suspected brucellosis in preschool children of Shahroud was very low. According to the results of our study, in particular, in the endemic areas, a Wright’s titer of 1/80 in suspected cases for brucellosis can be considered as a diagnostic titer

Brucella Antibody Levels in Preschool Children in the North East of Iran

Background: Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease of humans and animals that has affected worldwide. Iran is one of the endemic areas infected with brucellosis. Early diagnosis of this disease may protect the affected children from disabilities and mortalities. This study aimed to evaluate the Brucella antibody levels in preschool children of the Shahroud city in Iran.Methods: This cross-sectional study evaluated 850 participants, in particular, school children from the Shahroud city. General information was collected by interviewing the children’s parents. Moreover, a 5 ml of blood sample was collected from all the children. The samples were studies using standard tube agglutination test (Wright) and 2-Mercaptoethanol. Thereafter, IgG and IgM levels were determined by the ELISA method.Results: A total of 850 children were enrolled, of which 51.2% were boys and 48.8% were girls, with a mean age of 5.17±1.55 years. Of the all children evaluated, 839 (97.5%) children had a titer <1/80 and 21 children (2.5%) had a titer ≥1/80. A significant difference was observed between the antibody titers in terms of gender (P=0.012), whereas no significant association was found among antibody titers with other variables such as age, history of nonpasteurized foods, exposure to animals, history of brucellosis disease, and parental occupation.Conclusions: The antibody titer for suspected brucellosis in preschool children of Shahroud was very low. According to the results of our study, in particular, in the endemic areas, a Wright’s titer of 1/80 in suspected cases for brucellosis can be considered as a diagnostic titer

An Unusual Presentation of Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis With CLN6 Mutation

Background: Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCL) is a rare progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by more than 530 mutations of at least 13 different genes (CLN 1-14). NCL is a part of the lysosomal disease characterized by the presence of neuronal and extraneural autofluorescent lipopigment accumulations that leads to motor and mental deterioration, developmental regression, seizure, vision loss, and premature death. NCL is classified into four main groups based on the different clinical manifestations and age of presentation. In this study, we aimed to report an unusual presentation of NCL with CLN6 mutation without retina involvement. Case Presentation: We reported a 10-year-old boy with mixed types of seizures, developmental delay, cognitive problems, unsteady gait, and speech disorders. Although after a thorough assessment, CLN6 mutation was diagnosed, he had all symptoms of this mutation, except the visual impairment. Conclusion: According to recent NCL case reports from Asia, full familiarity with its presentation by pediatricians and neurologists is obligatory. Children with developmental regression or refractory seizures, who also have visual or other neurological symptoms such as ataxia and other cerebellar symptoms, even at older ages, should be evaluated for NCL. Attention to ophthalmological examinations and neurological signs and confirming the diagnosis by biopsy or genetic analysis is desirable to prevent missed diagnosis