Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies for Agronomic Crops

Climate change is a serious threat to agriculture and food security. Extreme weather conditions and changing patterns of precipitation lead to a decrease in the crop productivity. High temperatures and uncertain rainfall decrease the grain yield of crops by reducing the length of growing period. Future projections show that temperature would be increased by 2.5°C up to 2050. The projected rise in temperature would cause the high frequent and prolong heat waves that can decline the crop production. The rise in temperature results in huge reduction in yield of agronomic crops. Sustaining the crop production under changing climate is a key challenge. Therefore, adaptation measures are required to reduce the climate vulnerabilities. The adverse effect of climate change can be mitigated by developing heat tolerant cultivars and some modification in current production technologies. The development of adaptation strategies in context of changing climate provides the useful information for the stakeholders such as researchers, academia, and farmers in mitigating the negative effects of climate change

Improved charge transfer through the minimal addition of Pb as a sintering aid to TiO2-based low-temperature dye sensitised solar cell

The poor interparticle connectivity between the nanoparticles architecture of photoanode due to insufficient sintering temperature has been an issue for developing flexible dye sensitised solar cell (DSSC). This issue has led flexible DSSC to yield low conversion efficiency. This research aims to implement lead (Pb) as sintering aid to improve the interparticle connection of the photoanode by using the concept of liquid phase sintering. With low melting point of Pb (327.5 °C), necks were formed at the titanium dioxide (TiO2)–Pb interface that improved the connection and lowered the electronic resistance even at low sintering temperature of 150–250 °C. Morphological studies showed the formation of these necks, while phase analysis indicated the more desirable TiO2 anatase phase was present. Specimens containing 5 wt% Pb in the TiO2 matrix showed the highest efficiency value of 8.73% at 250 °C, which is even higher compared to their high-temperature (450 °C) counterpart by 12.21%. This is due to surface fusion of Pb at a lower temperature, leading to enhanced interparticle contact and reduction in recombination reactions. Further increase in Pb did not improve the conversion efficiency which can be due to high charge trapping sites and layer cracking due to high amounts of Pb in TiO2 matrix

Recent advancements and challenges in flexible low temperature dye sensitised solar cells

Dye sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) have been in extensive development in recent years in the field of solar energy due to its cost-effectiveness, ease in fabrication, flexibility, and being able to be transparent and coloured as well. Two broad categories of DSSCs based on their fabrication temperature are (1) high-temperature DSSCs and (2) low-temperature DSSCs. Although the low-temperature DSSCs (sintered at less than 150 °C) can be flexible and printed on a plastic roll, however, their power conversion efficiency (PCE) is way less compared to their high-temperature counterpart. Research is underway to improve the PCE of low-temperature DSSCs and modules to optimum levels. In this review, an attempt has been made to evaluate different materials and fabrication methods for improved performance of flexible low-temperature DSSCs while also comparing them with the usual rigid high temperature device. Another objective of this study is to critically discuss the progress being made in flexible module development. This review paper would be able to provide comprehensive summary of the recent developments of flexible low-temperature dye sensitised solar cells and modules for reference and also serve as guide for further research in this area

Averaging Aggregation Operators with Interval Pythagorean Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers and Their Application to Group Decision Making

Pythagorean fuzzy number is a new tool for uncertainty and vagueness. It is a generalization of fuzzy numbers and intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. The paper deals with interval-valued Pythagorean trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. In this paper we introduce interval-valued Pythagorean trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and some operation on IVPTFN. We also define different types of operators for aggregating interval-valued Pythagorean trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. We present interval-valued Pythagorean trapezoidal fuzzy weighted averaging (IVPTFWA) operator, interval-valued Pythagorean trapezoidal fuzzy ordered weighted averaging (IVPTFOWA) operator and interval valued Pythagorean trapezoidal fuzzy hybrid averaging (IVPTFHA) operator. Finally we develope a general algorithm for group decision making problem.&nbsp

Interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy geometric aggregation operators and their application to group decision making problem

There are many aggregation operators have been defined up to date, but in this work, we define the interval valued Pythagorean fuzzy weighted geometric (IPFWG) operator, the interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy ordered weighted geometric (IPFOWG) operator, and the interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy hybrid geometric operator. We also discuss some properties and give some examples also to develop these operators. At the last we apply the interval-valued IPFWG operator and the interval-valued IPFOWG operator to multiple attribute decision-making problem under the interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy information

Geant4-based comprehensive study of the absorbed fraction for electrons and gamma-photons using various geometrical models and biological tissues

The Geant4-based comprehensive model has been developed to predict absorbed fraction values for both electrons and gamma photons in spherical, ellipsoidal, and cylindrical geometries. Simulations have been carried out for water, ICRP soft-, brain-, lung-, and ICRU bone tissue for electrons in 0.1 MeV-4 MeV and g-photons in the 0.02 MeV-2.75 MeV energy range. Consistent with experimental observations, the Geant4-simulated values of absorbed fractions show a decreasing trend with an increase in radiation energy. Compared with NIST XCOM and ICRU data, the Geant4-based simulated values of the absorbed fraction remain within a 4.2% and 1.6% deviation, respectively. For electrons and g-photons, the relative difference between the Geant4-based comprehensive model predictions and those of Stabin and Konijnenberg's re-evaluation remains within a 6.8% and 7.4% range, respectively. Ellipsoidal and cylindrical models show 4.9% and 10.1% higher respective values of absorbed dose fractions relative to the spherical model. Target volume dependence of the absorbed fraction values has been found to follow a logical behavior for electrons and Belehradek's equation for g-photons. Gamma-ray absorbed fraction values have been found to be sensitive to the material composition of targets, especially at low energies, while for elections, they remain insensitive to them

Modelling climate change impacts and adaptation strategies for sunflower in Pakistan

International audienceIssues such as climate change, food security, water scarcity and environmental sustainability have all 18 become major global challenges. As a consequence, increasing crop productivity has become an 19 important aspect in improving resource use efficiency. Crop models are increasingly being used as 20 tools for supporting strategic and tactical decision-making in support of yield forecasting under 21 varying agroclimate and socio economic conditions. The use of simulation tools can also support 22 adaptation strategies to limit the adverse impacts of climate change. In this paper we report on a field 23 study carried out to assess the impacts of climate change on grain yield in sunflower under arid, semi arid 24 and sub humid conditions in the Punjab region, Pakistan. Experimental field data obtained between 2008 25 and 2009was used for model parameterization and application. The study focused on the impacts of 26 incremental temperature change on sunflower production. The modeling suggests that grain yield 27 could reduce by up to 15% by the 2020s with an average increase in temperature of +1oC and by up to 28 25% if temperatures increased by up to 2oC for the 2050s, respectively