Intermediate Agricultural Machines Energy Efficiency: The Example of Harvesting and Threshing

The article compares fifteen different methods used to harvest and thresh wheat, from traditional manual solutions, to animal traction machines to modern combine harvesters. For each methodology, individual productivity in terms of field area worked in a unit of time by each individual operator, and specific productivity, in terms of field area worked per unit of energy are calculated. These parameters are related to the power available for each operator involved in the process, whether deriving from their muscles, animal prime mover or heat engine. The analysis shows that increasing individual power increases productivity, although with a reduced gradient at high powers. On the other hand, low power solutions are up to ten times more energy efficient, confirming that intermediate technologies can be an appropriate solution with a view to sustainability

Demanding stories: television coverage of sustainability, climate change and material demand

This paper explores the past, present and future role of broadcasting, above all via the medium of television, in shaping how societies talk, think about and act on climate change and sustainability issues. The paper explores these broad themes via a focus on the important but relatively neglected issue of material demand and opportunities for its reduction. It takes the outputs and decision-making of one of the world’s most influential broadcasters, the BBC, as its primary focus. The paper considers these themes in terms of stories, touching on some of the broader societal frames of understanding into which they can be grouped. Media decision-makers and producers from a range of genres frequently return to the centrality of ‘story’ in the development, commissioning and production of an idea. With reference to specific examples of programming, and drawing on interviews with media practitioners, the paper considers the challenges of generating broadcast stories that can inspire engagement in issues around climate change, and specifically material demand. The concluding section proposes actions and approaches that might help to establish material demand reduction as a prominent way of thinking about climate change and environmental issues more widely. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Material demand reduction’

Just Enough: An Introduction

The concept of ‘enough’ is highly polysemous and in its diverse invocations is always already value-laden and political. The introduction traces current articulations of ‘enough’ and argues that these need to be placed within a historical and comparative context that highlights the often hidden multiplicity of its cultural and political resonance. ‘Enough’ is often malleable and changing in relation to new desires, technologies or values. Drawing on the chapters in this volume, the concept of ‘enough’ is suggested to be more complex than quantitative measures can resolve. These various case studies also prompt critical thought about the politics of sufficiency more broadly and which pose important questions for sustainability proponents

Dilemmas of Development and The Reconstruction of Fashion

Sustainable development by its nature appears elusive. It seems the more we try to capture and pin it down the more it moves away from us leading us into murkier waters and all manner of contradictions. No more is this felt than in the fashion industry where we are presented with a number of oppositions. The fashion cycle renders styles obsolete before they have worn out generating waste and over-consumptive practices. But it can also bring into the fore practices that have resonance to sustainable development in terms of their location, orientation and consideration for the environment. As studies emerge considering the detrimental environmental impacts of the manufacture and consumption of new clothes, second-hand clothes have become a focus for research endeavours considering how they can be reincorporated into the fashion system and have resonance to an ever ‘fashion’ hungry consumer. This chapter discusses methods for the processing of second-hand clothes into fashionable items and, by drawing on the wealth of ‘waste’ materials through reselling, restyling and remanufacturing, argues that ways of re-appropriating them into a more environmentally focused fashion industry is possible and necessary. It sets out as it hypothesis that the global fashion system has value in its transformative powers but that damaging and exploitative forces are still preventing it from being a force for good. This is due to the nature of the items being produced, the way they are manufactured and how they are ultimately consumed and disposed of

A Single Acidic Residue Can Guide Binding Site Selection but Does Not Govern QacR Cationic-Drug Affinity

Structures of the multidrug-binding repressor protein QacR with monovalent and bivalent cationic drugs revealed that the carboxylate side-chains of E90 and E120 were proximal to the positively charged nitrogens of the ligands ethidium, malachite green and rhodamine 6G, and therefore may contribute to drug neutralization and binding affinity. Here, we report structural, biochemical and in vivo effects of substituting these glutamate residues. Unexpectedly, substitutions had little impact on ligand affinity or in vivo induction capabilities. Structures of QacR(E90Q) and QacR(E120Q) with ethidium or malachite green took similar global conformations that differed significantly from all previously described QacR-drug complexes but still prohibited binding to cognate DNA. Strikingly, the QacR(E90Q)-rhodamine 6G complex revealed two mutually exclusive rhodamine 6G binding sites. Despite multiple structural changes, all drug binding was essentially isoenergetic. Thus, these data strongly suggest that rather than contributing significantly to ligand binding affinity, the role of acidic residues lining the QacR multidrug-binding pocket is primarily to attract and guide cationic drugs to the “best available” positions within the pocket that elicit QacR induction