Soil Fertility Transitions in the Context of Industrialization, 1750–2000

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Dino Güldner ◽  
Laura Larsen ◽  
Geoff Cunfer

Abstract Fertile soils are essential for human health and nutrition and formed the foundation of human economies for millennia. Soils deserve close attention from environmental and economic historians and sustainability scientists. Most soil history literature addresses failure: misuse of soil, uncontrolled erosion, and the resulting collapse of past civilizations. More important, however, and of urgent interest for our present and future prosperity, are the mundane ways that historical farm communities sustained soil health, even while cultivating the same land for centuries. This article explains five strategies by which European and North American farmers accessed, recycled, replenished, and sustained soil fertility over 250 years. By evaluating inputs, extractions, transfers, and annual balances of potassium, phosphorus, and, especially, nitrogen, it models historical soil management in a variety of agroecosystems in various geographical settings and through time. This biophysical environmental history, based on socioecological metabolism methods borrowed from sustainability science, reveals ongoing adaptation to shifting social and environmental contexts. As industrialization, global trade, and population accelerated, farmers adjusted their soil fertility strategies to keep up with new pressures and opportunities. Each solution to existing soil fertility constraints created new obstacles and bottlenecks. Through the past quarter millennium, farm sustainability meant constant readjustment to new circumstances. As farmers innovated crop choices and rotations, corralled livestock, adopted new technologies, deployed novel energy sources, and expanded into new lands, they increased food productivity to feed growing world population and supply expanding markets, while maintaining the supply of soil nutrients necessary to fertilize next year’s crop.

Author(s):  
Jacqueline Rowarth

We live in interesting times. The words above used to be associated with a Chinese curse but now "interesting times" are simply life as we know it. The past 12 months in global agriculture have encompassed rapidly changing commodity prices, floods, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, the emissions trading scheme discussions, statements about water quality and debates on alternative product and farm ownerships. Resilience is increasingly the call, at the same time as farmers are being urged to increase productivity by adopting new technologies whilst living within increasingly stringent regulations. A remarkable number of reports containing implications for agriculture have been released over the last few months addressing the same issues from different perspectives. Bringing them together indicates a role for New Zealand agriculture beyond that of increasingly efficient food productivity - also known as Business As Usual (BAU). The challenge, as always, is how to achieve that role.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 2008
Author(s):  
Jinsha Liu ◽  
Priyanka Pandya ◽  
Sepideh Afshar

Around 77 new oncology drugs were approved by the FDA in the past five years; however, most cancers remain untreated. Small molecules and antibodies are dominant therapeutic modalities in oncology. Antibody-drug conjugates, bispecific antibodies, peptides, cell, and gene-therapies are emerging to address the unmet patient need. Advancement in the discovery and development platforms, identification of novel targets, and emergence of new technologies have greatly expanded the treatment options for patients. Here, we provide an overview of various therapeutic modalities and the current treatment options in oncology, and an in-depth discussion of the therapeutics in the preclinical stage for the treatment of breast cancer, lung cancer, and multiple myeloma.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Edith Brown Weiss

Today, it is evident that we are part of a planetary trust. Conserving our planet represents a public good, global as well as local. The threats to future generations resulting from human activities make applying the normative framework of a planetary trust even more urgent than in the past decades. Initially, the planetary trust focused primarily on threats to the natural system of our human environment such as pollution and natural resource degradation, and on threats to cultural heritage. Now, we face a higher threat of nuclear war, cyber wars, and threats from gene drivers that can cause inheritable changes to genes, potential threats from other new technologies such as artificial intelligence, and possible pandemics. In this context, it is proposed that in the kaleidoscopic world, we must engage all the actors to cooperate with the shared goal of caring for and maintaining planet Earth in trust for present and future generations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Andrés López ◽  
David Checa Cruz

The industry has a relevant spatial and socioeconomic importance in most of the Spanish cities and nowadays is one of the main urban economic activities. However, in many situations, and despite recent advances in the past two decades, industrial heritage is a value that is still not sufficiently widespread in society. The factories, their activity, and their historical evolution are often disconnected and isolated from the daily life of the cities, being quite an unknown aspect for most of the citizens. This contribution presents the result of various experiences of knowledge transmission on the heritage value of industry, through the use of games and storytelling technique as an educational tool and the combination of different technologies (3D modelling, videomapping, virtual reality) as useful tools to spread the explanation of this phenomenon.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nam-Hee Kim ◽  
Ichiro Kawachi

AbstractThere have been marked improvements in oral health in Korea during the past 10 years, including chewing ability. We sought to disentangle age, period, and cohort effects in chewing ability between 2007 and 2018. We analyzed data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The main variable was chewing difficulty, which was assessed among participants aged 20 years and older. APC analysis revealed three trends in chewing difficulty: (1) there was an increase in chewing difficulty starting at around 60 years of age (age effect), (2) there was a steady decrease in chewing difficulty during the observation period (period effect), and (3) chewing ability improved with each successive generation born after 1951 (cohort effect). Regarding recent improvements in chewing ability, cohort effects were somewhat more important than period effects.


Author(s):  
Nidhi Rajesh Mavani ◽  
Jarinah Mohd Ali ◽  
Suhaili Othman ◽  
M. A. Hussain ◽  
Haslaniza Hashim ◽  
...  

AbstractArtificial intelligence (AI) has embodied the recent technology in the food industry over the past few decades due to the rising of food demands in line with the increasing of the world population. The capability of the said intelligent systems in various tasks such as food quality determination, control tools, classification of food, and prediction purposes has intensified their demand in the food industry. Therefore, this paper reviews those diverse applications in comparing their advantages, limitations, and formulations as a guideline for selecting the most appropriate methods in enhancing future AI- and food industry–related developments. Furthermore, the integration of this system with other devices such as electronic nose, electronic tongue, computer vision system, and near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) is also emphasized, all of which will benefit both the industry players and consumers.


1977 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Cloudsley-Thompson

The term ‘ecodisaster’ may be defined as ‘a global catastrophe of the human species’. Any ecodisasters occurring in the near future will, almost certainly, be caused, directly or indirectly, by the present overpopulation of the world, accompanied by unwise and irresponsible disregard of environmental deterioration.The suggestion is made here that Man's first and, it is to be hoped, last, ecodisaster may already have begun. Although not dramatic, it is taking the form of a steady decline in the standard of living nearly everywhere, coupled with massive pollution, and widespread malnutrition in the under-developed countries of the world. It will persist until world population eventually becomes adjusted to environmental resources.It is ironical that control of the pests and diseases which have inflicted so much misery on mankind in the past, should have helped to engender the present population explosion with all the hunger and privation that accompany it in the under-developed regions of the world.


2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (888) ◽  
pp. 1455-1479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Dubois ◽  
Katharine Marshall ◽  
Siobhan Sparkes McNamara

AbstractThe field of humanitarian action is far from static, and the ICRC has worked over the years to evolve and respond to changing needs and changing circumstances. The past several decades have seen a proliferation of humanitarian actors, protracted, complex conflicts, and the rapid rise of new technologies that have significantly impacted how humanitarian work is done. The ICRC has been continually challenged to adapt in this changing environment, and its core work of supporting separated families – through restoration of family links and through support to the families of the missing – provides insight into ways that it has met this challenge and areas in which it may still seek to improve.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-124

A growing and aging world population and the increasing strain on nature's ecosystems are among the major challenges facing humanity. As a global leader in health and nutrition, Bayer is able to play a key role in devising solutions to tackle these challenges. Guided by its purpose "Science for a better life," it delivers breakthrough innovations in health care and agriculture. It contributes to a world in which diseases are not only treated but effectively prevented or cured, in which people can take better care of their own health needs, and in which enough agriculture products are produced while respecting the planet's natural resources. That is because at Bayer, it is believed that growth and sustainability should go hand in hand. In short, they are working to make their vision "Health for all, hunger for none" a reality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-82
Author(s):  
G.T. Balakayeva ◽  
◽  
D.K. Darkenbayev ◽  
M. Turdaliyev ◽  
◽  
...  

The growth rate of these enterprises has increased significantly in the last decade. Research has shown that over the past two decades, the amount of data has increased approximately tenfold every two years - this exceeded Moore's Law, which doubles the power of processors. About thirty thousand gigabytes of data are accumulated every second, and their processing requires an increase in the efficiency of data processing. Uploading videos, photos and letters from users on social networks leads to the accumulation of a large amount of data, including unstructured ones. This leads to the need for enterprises to work with big data of different formats, which must be prepared in a certain way for further work in order to obtain the results of modeling and calculations. In connection with the above, the research carried out in the article on processing and storing large data of an enterprise, developing a model and algorithms, as well as using new technologies is relevant. Undoubtedly, every year the information flows of enterprises will increase and in this regard, it is important to solve the issues of storing and processing large amounts of data. The relevance of the article is due to the growing digitalization, the increasing transition to professional activities online in many areas of modern society. The article provides a detailed analysis and research of these new technologies.


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