Organic Food and Agriculture - Ethics

Organic food is produced without the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Four further exclusions in organic production are: genetically modified organisms (GMOs), irradiation, prophylactic antibiotics, and engineered nanoparticles. These six exclusions differentiate organic agriculture from chemical agriculture. Agriculture and food harvesting and production date back millennia, and until about a century ago that history is de facto organic. The Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of novel production strategies. Agriculture was not immune to new views of industrialization and reductionism. Advances in chemistry enabled some implementation of such views. Early in the diffusion of chemical farming practices, the Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner (1865–1924) called for a differentiated agriculture free of these new synthetic chemical inputs. The terminology, theory, and practices of biodynamic agriculture evolved (in the 1920s and 1930s) from Steiner’s Agriculture Course of 1924. It was a guided evolution, coordinated by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer (1899–1961) in Switzerland. The UK agriculturist, Lord Northbourne (1896–1982), invited Pfeiffer to lead a conference on biodynamics at his farm in Kent (in 1939). The following year Northbourne published his manifesto of organic farming, “Look to the Land.” In that book, he coined the term “organic farming” and wrote of a contest of “organic versus chemical farming”.The ideas and ideals of organic farming quickly proliferated internationally off the back of Northbourne’s 1940 book. Organic farming is now practiced in at least 179 countries, accounts for 50.9 million agricultural hectares, and a market value of US$ 81.6 billion (€75 billion)

Noise diffraction patterns eliminated in coherent optical systems

Lens rotation technique of noise diffraction pattern elimination spreads diffracted energy, normally concentrated over small area of image, over much larger annular area. Technique advantages include simplified lens selecting process, reduced clean room requirements, and low cost equipment requirements

Elimination of coherent noise in a coherent light imaging system

Optical imaging systems using coherent light introduce objectionable noise into the output image plane. Dust and bubbles on and in lenses cause most of the noise in the output image. This noise usually appears as bull's-eye diffraction patterns in the image. By rotating the lens about the optical axis these diffraction patterns can be essentially eliminated. The technique does not destroy the spatial coherence of the light and permits spatial filtering of the input plane

Prospects of pulsed amperometric detection in flow-based analytical systems: a review

Electrochemical (EC) detection techniques in flow-based analytical systems such as flow injection analysis (FIA), capillary electrophoresis (CE), and liquid chromatography (LC) have attracted continuous interest over the last three decades, leading to significant advances in EC detection of a wide range of analytes in the liquid phase. In this context, the unique advantages of pulsed amperometric detection (PAD) in terms of high sensitivity and selectivity, and electrode cleaning through the application of pulsed potential for noble metal electrodes (e.g. Au, Pt), have established PAD as an important detection technique for a variety of electrochemically active compounds. PAD is especially valuable for analytes not detectable by ultraviolet (UV) photometric detection, such as organic aliphatic compounds and carbohydrates, especially when used with miniaturised capillary and chip-based separation methods. These applications have been accomplished through advances in PAD potential waveform design, as well as through the incorporation of nanomaterials (NMs) employed as microelectrodes in PAD. PAD allows on-line pulsed potential cleaning and coupling with capillary or standard separation techniques. The NMs are largely employed in microelectrodes to speed up mass and electron transfer between electrode surfaces and to perform as reactants in EC analysis. These advances in PAD have improved the sensitive and selective EC detection of analytes, especially in biological samples with complex sample matrices, and detection of electro-inactive compounds such as aliphatic organic compounds (i.e., formic acid, acetic acid, maleic acids, and β-cyclodextrin complexes). This review addresses the fundamentals of PAD, the role of pulsed sequences in AD, the utilization of different EC detectors for PAD, technological advancements in PAD waveforms, utilisation of microelectrodes in PAD techniques, advances in the use of NMs in PAD, the applications of PAD, and prospects for EC detection, with emphasis on PAD in flow-based systems

Adsorption and desorption of methylene blue on porous carbon monoliths and nanocrystalline cellulose

The dynamic batch adsorption of methylene blue (MB), a widely used and toxic dye, onto nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) and crushed powder of carbon monolith (CM) was investigated using the pseudo-first- and -second-order kinetics. CM outperformed NCC with a maximum capacity of 127 mg/g compared to 101 mg/g for NCC. The Langmuir isotherm model was applicable for describing the binding data for MB on CM and NCC, indicating the homogeneous surface of these two materials. The Gibbs free energy of −15.22 kJ/mol estimated for CM unravelled the spontaneous nature of this adsorbent for MB, appreciably faster than the use of NCC (−4.47 kJ/mol). Both pH and temperature exhibited only a modest effect on the adsorption of MB onto CM. The desorption of MB from CM using acetonitrile was very effective with more than 94 % of MB desorbed from CM within 10 min to allow the reusability of this porous carbon material. In contrast, acetonitrile was less effective than ethanol in desorbing MB from NCC. The two solvents were incapable of completely desorbing MB on commercial granular coal-derived activated carbon