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Foster Kaplan posted an update 6 months ago
Agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions account for 14% of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities, and the carbon footprint (CF) of agricultural production, which can help to propose positive measures to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is a general method for assessing the impact of agricultural practices on the external environment. This article calculated the carbon footprint (CF) of rice production and compared the differences between the double-and single-cropping rice regions, which is rarely mentioned in previous literature. Some interesting information was shown. For example, the internal structure of rice production carbon footprint (CF) is prominent. (a) In terms of time evolution, CF of agricultural materials showed an increasing trend year by year, while CF of rice planting remained basically stable. (b) In terms of regional differences, whether single-cropping rice regions or double-cropping rice regions, CF of agricultural materials did not show the previous increasing trend after 2011, especially after 2015. This may be greatly affected by the policy such as the abolishing of the China agricultural tax in 2006. These studies can help us to reveal how agricultural policies and different rice cropping patterns affect each region.Associations between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and the risk of adverse birth outcomes may be confounded. We aimed to clarify the associations of ETS before and during pregnancy with the risk of adverse birth outcomes and determine whether the associations were modified by key potential confounders. A total of 7147 non-smoking mothers from the Tongji Maternal and Child Health Cohort (TMCHC) in Wuhan, China, were included in the final analyses. ETS status was self-reported by pregnant women at their first antenatal care visit before 16 gestational weeks. Information on birth outcomes was extracted from delivery records. Poisson regression was used to identify the association between ETS before and during pregnancy and the risk of adverse birth outcomes. Exposures to ETS before and during pregnancy were reported by 645 (9.0%) and 464 (6.5%) mothers, respectively. Compared with no ETS, continued ETS during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of preterm birth (PTB) (RR 1.55, 95% CI 1.07, 2.25) after adjustment for potential confounders. The association remained consistent in medically indicated PTB and late PTB. The risk of PTB associated with continued ETS during pregnancy was significantly increased in mothers more educated (P for interaction less then 0.05). However, the increased risk of low birth weight (LBW) or small for gestational age (SGA) births by ETS during pregnancy was not observed. Exposure to ETS during pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of PTB, but not LBW or SGA births in a Chinese birth cohort.Pomegranate crop is affected by several insect pests and requires usage of a large number of pesticides, but the information on their behavior in pomegranate tissues is limited. SP-2577 A study was conducted to assess the behavior of acetamiprid, azoxystrobin, pyraclostrobin, and lambda-cyhalothrin in pomegranate fruits and leaves. The QuEChERS analytical method and LC-MS/MS and GC-MS were used for quantification of the analytes. The LOD (limit of detection) of acetamiprid, azoxystrobin, and pyraclostrobin was 0.0015 mg kg-1 and lambda-cyhalothrin was 0.003 mg kg-1. The respective LOQ (limit of quantification) was 0.005 and 0.01 mg kg-1. The dissipation of the analytes best fitted into first-order rate kinetics and the half-lives of the chemicals in pomegranate fruits were 9.2-13 days and in the leaves were 13.5-17 days. In the pomegranate aril, the residue levels of acetamiprid, lambda-cyhalothrin, and pyraclostrobin were always less then LOQ of these chemicals. Azoxystrobin was detected in pomegranate aril, and its residue was highest at 0.04 mg kg-1 on the 10th day and reached less then LOQ by the 25th day. The pre-harvest interval (PHI) required for acetamiprid, azoxystrobin, pyraclostrobin, and lambda-cyhalothrin at standard-dose treatment was 50, 58, 44, and 40 days, respectively. From double-dose treatment, the PHIs were 70, 75, 58, and 54 days, respectively. The pesticides used in this study were more persistent in the pomegranate leaves compared to the fruits. The outcome of this study can be incorporated into production of pomegranate fruits safe for consumption and to meet the domestic and export quality control requirements.The COVID-19 pandemic not only has created a global health crisis but also has dramatic effects on the environment. To fight the spread of Coronavirus, governments imposed social distancing policies, which caused negative and positive impacts on the environment. Victoria, the second-most populated state in Australia, was hit by two waves of COVID-19. During the second wave of the pandemic, Victoria, especially Melbourne, experienced one of the most stringent and longest lockdowns globally. In this study, the changes in mobility trends, traffic, air pollution, noise pollution, and waste generation during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in Victoria are evaluated and compared. It was observed that the pandemic had both positive and negative impacts on the environment. During the second wave of the pandemic in Victoria, the mobility trends of public transport hubs, retail and recreation venues, and workplaces experienced a significant drop in movements at respective values of 85%, 83%, and 76% compared to the period of 5 weeks from 3 January to 6 February 2020. PM2.5 levels were lower by 23% at Alphington and 24% at Footscray from 16 March to 1 May 2020 compared with the average PM2.5 levels in the past 4 years. It was estimated that the respective daily generations of used face masks during the first wave and second wave of the pandemic in Victoria were approximately 104 and 160 tons.One of the major challenges of the supply chain managers is to select the best suppliers among all possible ones for their business. Although the research on the supplier selection with regards to green, sustainability or resiliency criteria has been contributed by many papers, simultaneous consideration of these criteria in a fuzzy environment is rarely studied. Hence, this study proposes a fuzzy decision framework to investigate the sustainable-resilient supplier selection problem for a real case study of palm oil industry in Malaysia. Firstly, the resilient-based sustainable criteria are localized for the suppliers’ performance evaluation in palm oil industry of Malaysia. Accordingly, 30 criteria in three different aspects (i.e. general, sustainable and resilient) are determined by statistical tests. Moreover, a hyper-hybrid model with the use of FDEMATEL (fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory), FBWM (fuzzy best worst method), FANP (fuzzy analytical network process) and FIS (fuzzy inference system), simultaneously is developed to employ their merits in an efficient way.