A pilot study of homeworking: WorkHouse (30)

Workhouse aims to improve technology-based homeworking, through an understanding of working patterns, interactions with architecture and furniture. A log record of participants working environments, their hours of work, and their posture. The 10 participants revealed a range of working patterns (6:30 to midnight); choice of rooms, even with a dedicated study available. There are some issues to be resolved with the logs: recording of working hours, posture, and the need to make further decisions about the data required

Tapping the Educational Potential of Facebook: Leveraging Social Capital and Knowledge

Facebook is a frequently used Computer Mediated Environment (CME) for college and university students to build social connections and develop as members of their institutions. Facebook functions as a purposed network of identities and deposited self-expression, and is a similar concept to a yearbook, where users can place photos of themselves, their hobbies, interests, movies and music. The value for employing CMEs as a tool for academic purposes is widely accepted. However, whether a social networking site such as Facebook can be used for educational objectives, remains largely unexplored as a research question. This paper discusses studies conducted at the University of Auckland and Manchester Metropolitan University, and explores how students use Facebook, and how it impacts on their social and academic lives. Using theories of social capital, we explore some potential educational uses of Facebook

Billions in Misspent EU Agricultural Subsidies Could Support the Sustainable Development Goals

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the guiding policy for agriculture and the largest single budget item in the European Union (EU). Agriculture is essential to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but the CAP's contribution to do so is uncertain. We analyzed the distribution of (sic)59.4 billion of 2015 CAP payments and show that current CAP spending exacerbates income inequality within agriculture, while little funding supports climate-friendly and biodiverse farming regions. More than (sic)24 billion of 2015 CAP direct payments went to regions where average farm incomes are already above the EU median income. A further (sic)2.5 billion in rural development payments went to primarily urban areas. Effective monitoring indicators are also missing. We recommend redirecting and better monitoring CAP payments toward achieving the environmental, sustainability, and rural development goals stated in the CAP's new objectives, which would support the SDGs, the European Green Deal, and green COVID-19 recovery

Uptake and Effects of Nanoparticles in Fish

Nanotechnology is a rapidly growing industry of global economic importance, with new technologies exploiting the novel characteristics of materials manufactured at the nanoscale being developed for use within the biomedical, electronic, energy production and environmental sectors. The unusual properties of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) that make them useful in such applications have led to concerns regarding their potential impact on the environment. The aquatic environment is particularly at risk of exposure to ENPs, yet, there is currently little known about their behaviour in aquatic systems, their capacity to be taken up by aquatic organisms or their potential toxic effects. The studies that were conducted during this work sought to investigate the ecotoxicology of a range of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles using fish as a vertebrate model. In order to gain a better understanding of the uptake and effects of ENMs in fish, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were exposed to nanoparticulate (34 nm) and bulk (>100 nm) titanium dioxide particles via the water column (500 and 5000 µg L-1), and to titanium dioxide nanoparticles via the diet (0.1 and 1 mg g-1 food) and via intravenous injection (1.3 mg kg-1 body weight). Uptake of titanium dioxide into the tissues of trout after waterborne and dietary exposure was found to be very low, suggesting limited bioavailability of the nanoparticles to the fish, although small amounts of uptake of titanium dioxide across the gill epithelial membrane were observed using coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering. Intravenously injected titanium dioxide accumulated and was retained in the kidneys for up to 21 days, but no adverse effect on kidney function was detected. Silver nanoparticles are already in widespread use in a variety of consumer products such as wound dressings, food containers, sock fabrics and paints, principally for their antimicrobial activity. Despite its growing commercialisation, there is little known about the environmental effects of the use of nanoparticulate silver in these products. In order to investigate these potential effects, rainbow trout were also exposed to 10 nm, 35 nm and bulk (0.6-1.6 µm) silver particles via the water column at concentration of 10 and 100 µg L-1. Uptake of silver in the gills and liver of trout occurred, with smaller nanoparticles showing a greater propensity for association with gill tissue, but with no significant differences in uptake between particles of different sizes in the liver. No increases in lipid peroxidation were detected in gills, liver or blood plasma of trout, however, expression of cyp1a2 was significantly up-regulated in exposures to 10 nm silver particles in the gill, suggesting an increase in oxidative metabolism. In an attempt to develop an effective high through-put in vitro screening assay for ENMs, the suitability of isolated rainbow trout primary hepatocytes was examined as a potential model for in vitro screening of a range of toxicological endpoints in response to nanoparticles and for studying uptake of nanoparticles into cells. The hepatocytes retained a good level of functionality after culturing as evidenced by vitellogenin production in response to the synthetic oestrogen, 17β-oestradiol. The cultured hepatocytes, however, showed limited responses on exposure to titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, cerium oxide and silver nanoparticles for lipid peroxidation and glutathione-s-transferase activity assays. Furthermore, the hepatocytes were unresponsive to the induction of these biological responses in the positive controls, suggesting they are not a good model for investigating the potential toxic effects of ENMs in terms of these endpoints. Uptake of the nanoparticles into the cells, however, was demonstrated by coherent anti-stokes Raman spectroscopy, indicating that this in vitro assay may provide a useful model for studying uptake of ENPs into cells. The studies conducted in this thesis contribute the science base regarding the bioavailability of ENPs in aquatic media as well as highlighting the importance of characterisation of ENPs in understanding their behaviour, uptake and effects in aquatic systems and in fish.NERC and The Environment Agenc

Soils, science, and the English realist novel: 1840-1872

This thesis is about soils in mid-nineteenth-century literary realism and science. For novelists and scientists of the period, soils offered access to truthful knowledge of the world. This is my primary argument. In novels by Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, soil description situates studies of lived experience in a material world that is empirically verifiable as it is dirtied and imperfect. In the same years, chemists were developing new methods of analysis and experimentation to explore soils as never before; Justus von Liebig’s organic chemistry promised to reveal the constituent minerals of soils and how these were assimilated by plants. As chemistry reduced soils from vital and unknowable spaces to a quantifiable set of nutrients, isolating the world’s fertility for agricultural production, the novels I read resisted this productionist ethos, especially as it extended from soil to people. Yet while realist novels offered alternative investigations of soils, granting them agency and tracing the exploitative networks by which earthly fertility was being assimilated into a rapacious economics, realist narrative also remained committed to a providential patterning of soil as resource. Chemists and novelists alike saw a material world to be networked into a liberal capitalism in order to extract wealth or, read more favourably, improve human wellbeing. So as Brontë, Gaskell, Dickens, and Eliot expose the socioecological violences of a burgeoning world economy, they also perpetrate and extend these violences on lands and peoples beyond the bounds of realism’s provincial focus; this tension emerges as a fracture in realist form between open economic and ecological networks and the need for narrative closure. My thesis thus unearths a shared interest in soils across literature and science of the period, augmenting the established conception of a psychological realism by revealing a novel form examining matter as well as mind

A harmonized and spatially explicit dataset from 16 million payments from the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy for 2015

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the largest budget item in the European Union, but varied data reporting hampers holistic analysis. Here we have assembled the first dataset to our knowledge to report individual CAP payments by standardized CAP funding measures and geolocation. We created this dataset by translating, geolocating to the county or province (NUTS3) level, and consistently harmonizing payment measures for over 16 million payments from 2015, originally reported by EU member states and compiled by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. This dataset and code allow in-depth analysis of over V60 billion in public spending by purpose and location for the first time, which enables both individual payment tracing and analysis by aggregation. These data are representative of the distribution of annual CAP payments from 2014 to 2020 and are of interest to researchers, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and journalists for evaluating the distribution and impacts of CAP spending

A harmonized country-level dataset to support the global stocktake regarding loss and damage from climate change

Under the Paris Agreement, parties should undertake a global stocktake of progress toward meeting the goals of the agreement and tackling climate change. The first global stocktake will be undertaken in 2023, and an assessment of loss and damage from climate change is an important part of the process. Loss and damage refer to the impacts of climate change felt when mitigation and adaptation efforts are inadequate or absent. Much data, including metrics and indicators relevant for loss and damage, are held in existing global databases, but these are disparate and cannot easily be combined and compared to support the global stocktake. We combine relevant primary data sources to provide a harmonized country-level global dataset containing relevant indicators of recorded losses and damages from climate-related events; exposure to climate-related events; country vulnerability and adaptation readiness; scientific studies of climate change attribution; financial support for climate adaptation; and contextual governance conditions. The indicators are standardized against country population and GDP where relevant. We describe original data sources, processing steps, and an overview of key indicators in the dataset. We also compare the assembled data to existing global risk databases; namely, the INFORM risk index and the World Risk Index. This comparison, provided in the Supporting Information, shows a large amount of redundancy among vulnerability and governance indicators, and we suggest that creators of new databases and risk indices be clear about data limitations and the gaps that specific indices attempt to fill in the global data landscape. We recommend the standard use of ISO codes in future databases of this nature, as well as clear metadata regarding how overseas territories are treated relative to their sovereign state, and information on dissolution and creation of states over time

Towards a global sustainable development agenda built on social–ecological resilience

Non-technical summary. The United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) articulate societal aspirations for people and our planet. Many scientists have criticised the SDGs and some have suggested that a better understanding of the complex interactions between society and the environment should underpin the next global development agenda. We further this discussion through the theory of social–ecological resilience, which emphasises the ability of systems to absorb, adapt, and transform in the face of change. We determine the strengths of the current SDGs, which should form a basis for the next agenda, and identify key gaps that should be filled. Technical summary. The United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) are past their halfway point and the next global development agenda will soon need to be developed. While laudable, the SDGs have received strong criticism from many, and scholars have proposed that adopting complex adaptive or social–ecological system approaches would increase the effectiveness of the agenda. Here we dive deeper into these discussions to explore how the theory of social–ecological resilience could serve as a strong foundation for the next global sustainable development agenda. We identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current SDGs by determining which of the 169 targets address each of 43 factors affecting social–ecological resilience that we have compiled from the literature. The SDGs with the strongest connections to social–ecological resilience are the environment-focus goals (SDGs 2, 6, 13, 14, 15), which are also the goals consistently under-prioritised in the implementation of the current agenda. In terms of the 43 factors affecting social–ecological resilience, the SDG strengths lie in their communication, inclusive decision making, financial support, regulatory incentives, economic diversity, and transparency in governance and law. On the contrary, ecological factors of resilience are seriously lacking in the SDGs, particularly with regards to scale, crossscale interactions, and non-stationarity. Social media summary. The post-2030 agenda should build on strengths of SDGs 2, 6, 13, 14, 15, and fill gaps in scale, variability, and feedbacks

Upgrading Lignocellulosic Products to Drop-In Biofuels via Dehydrogenative Cross-Coupling and Hydrodeoxygenation Sequence

Life-cycle analysis (LCA) allows the scientific community to identify the sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of novel routes to produce renewable fuels. Herein, we integrate LCA into our investigations of a new route to produce drop-in diesel/jet fuel by combining furfural, obtained from the catalytic dehydration of lignocellulosic pentose sugars, with alcohols that can be derived from a variety of bio- or petroleum-based feedstocks. As a key innovation, we developed recyclable transition-metal-free hydrotalcite catalysts to promote the dehydrogenative cross-coupling reaction of furfural and alcohols to give high molecular weight adducts via a transfer hydrogenation- aldol condensation pathway. Subsequent hydrodeoxygenation of adducts over Pt/NbOPO4 yields alkanes. Implemented in a Brazilian sugarcane biorefinery such a process could result in a 53-79% reduction in life-cycle GHG emissions relative to conventional petroleum fuels and provide a sustainable source of low carbon diesel/jet fuel

Adaptive Governance of River Deltas Under Accelerating Environmental Change

Many deltas are increasingly threatened by environmental change, including climate change-induced sea-level rise, land subsidence and reduced sediment delivery. Dealing with these challenges is a pressing necessity because deltas are home to many people and are important centres for economic and agricultural development. Successfully adapting to climate change requires a social-ecological system (SES) perspective, emphasising that social and ecological components of deltas are intertwined. Various modes of governance have been suggested to deal with uncertainty associated with environmental change in SESs, such as adaptive governance. Adaptive governance underlines the need for governance systems to be flexible enough to adapt to variable degrees of uncertainty in SESs. In this paper, we analyse the Dutch Delta Programme (DDP) and the Mekong Delta Plan (MDP) to explore their strengths and limitations relating to nine principles for adaptive governance proposed by DeCaro and others. We evaluate the suitability of this framework for the Rhine and Mekong deltas and contribute to the current understanding of delta governance in light of climate change. Most of the principles outlined by DeCaro and others are present in the DDP and MDP. However, adaptive governance is context dependent. The Rhine and Mekong deltas display different obstacles to adaptive governance, some of which are not sufficiently emphasised in this academic adaptive governance framework. Instead of relying on one framework as a blueprint for adaptive governance, using principles from different frameworks depending on the case may be the best approach for addressing environmental challenges in deltas