Renewables (Second Edition): A Review of Sustainable Energy Supply Options

Renewables (Second Edition): A Review of Sustainable Energy Supply Options
Author: David Elliott
Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2019-10-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780750323055

This comprehensive review provides a detailed insight into renewable energy options, their current state of development and how they can provide an environmentally sustainable energy future. This second edition is extensively revised and includes the latest advances in the field.

Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030

Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-04-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309473926

For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).

Handbook of Biomaterial Properties

Handbook of Biomaterial Properties
Author: William Murphy
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2016-06-11
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1493933051

This book provides tabular and text data relating to normal and diseased tissue materials and materials used in medical devices. Comprehensive and practical for students, researchers, engineers, and practicing physicians who use implants, this book considers the materials aspects of both implantable materials and natural tissues and fluids. Examples of materials and topics covered include titanium, elastomers, degradable biomaterials, composites, scaffold materials for tissue engineering, dental implants, sterilization effects on material properties, metallic alloys, and much more. Each chapter author considers the intrinsic and interactive properties of biomaterials, as well as their appropriate applications and historical contexts. Now in an updated second edition, this book also contains two new chapters on the cornea and on vocal folds, as well as updated insights, data, and citations for several chapters.

Iron Nutrition in Soils and Plants

Iron Nutrition in Soils and Plants
Author: Javier Abadía
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401105030

Iron is a major constituent of the earth crust. However, under alkaline conditions commonly found in arid and semi-arid environments iron becomes unavailable to plants. When plants are affected by a shortage of iron their leaves become yellow (chlorotic), and both plant growth and crop yield are reduced. The roots of plants affected by iron deficiency may develop a series of responses directed to improve iron uptake, such as increased proton excretion and iron reduction capabilities or excretion of iron chela tors called siderophores. Iron deficiency affects major crops worldwide, including some of major economic importance such as fruit trees and others. Correction of iron deficiency is usually implemented through costly application of synthetic chelates. Since these correction methods are very expensive, the competitivity of farmers is often reduced and iron deficiency may become a limiting factor for the maintenance, introduction or expansion of some crops. In spite of the many years devoted to the study of iron deficiency, the knowledge of iron deficiency in soils and plants is still fragmentary in many aspects. We have only incomplete information on the processes at the molecular level that make some plant species and cultivars unable to take and utilize iron from the soil, whereas other plants grow satisfactorily under the same conditions.

Microbial Production

Microbial Production
Author: Hideharu Anazawa
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 4431546073

Microbial production: From genome design to cell surface engineering affords a comprehensive review of novel technology and approaches being implemented for manufacturing microorganisms, written by specialists in both academia and industry. This book is divided into three sections: the first includes technology for improvement of fermentation strains and many supporting technologies and information; the second examines novel technology useful for analysis of cell activities, analyzing gene function, and designing genomes of producer strains; and finally, a discussion of the practical application of the techniques and success case studies in many fields of bio-production, such as microbiological production, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, foods and cosmetics.

Protein Phosphatases and Stress Management in Plants

Protein Phosphatases and Stress Management in Plants
Author: Girdhar K. Pandey
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2020-09-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030487334

The regulation of the phosphorylation/dephosphorylation process, resulting in “cellular switches” that monitor normal plant physiology, growth and development, has immense potential in crop systems. With much of the information in the nascent stages, coming largely from Arabidopsis and rice particularly, the use of cell biology, genetic screens, biochemical approaches aided by an omics approach should help unravel the detail functional information available about signaling pathways in plants. The regulation could be exploited to develop crop varieties better equipped to handle changing environments and enhance agricultural productivity. In the post-genomic era, one of the major challenges is investigation and understanding of multiple genes and gene families regulating a particular physiological and developmental aspect of plant life cycle. One of the important physiological processes is regulation of stress response, which leads to adaptation or adjustment in response to adverse stimuli. With the holistic understanding of the signaling pathways involving phosphatases, one gene family or multiple genes or gene families, plant biologist can lay a foundation for designing and generating future crops, which can withstand the higher degree of environmental stresses. Especially abiotic stresses, which are the major cause of crop loss throughout the world without losing crop yield and productivity. This book incorporates the contributions from leading plant biologists in the field of stress-mediated dephosphorylation by phosphatases as an important task to elucidate the aspects of stress signaling by functional genomic approaches.

Endocrinology and Diabetes

Endocrinology and Diabetes
Author: Ramzi Ajjan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2015-03-26
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1447127897

This book provides case studies accompanied by questions and commentaries for the specialist registrar in diabetes and endocrinology, to assist with problem-based learning during their training. The case studies range from the everyday to the rare and complicated, presenting a strong foundation for the specialist trainee to prepare them for their qualifying exams and, more importantly, for their future clinical consultations.

Microbial Interventions in Agriculture and Environment

Microbial Interventions in Agriculture and Environment
Author: Dhananjaya Pratap Singh
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2019-11-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 981138391X

Microbial communities and their functions play a crucial role in the management of ecological, environmental and agricultural health on the Earth. Microorganisms are the key identified players for plant growth promotion, plant immunization, disease suppression, induced resistance and tolerance against stresses as the indicative parameters of improved crop productivity and sustainable soil health. Beneficial belowground microbial interactions with the rhizosphere help plants mitigate drought and salinity stresses and alleviate water stresses under the unfavorable environmental conditions in the native soils. Microorganisms that are inhabitants of such environmental conditions have potential solutions for them. There are potential microbial communities that can degrade xenobiotic compounds, pesticides and toxic industrial chemicals and help remediate even heavy metals, and thus they find enormous applications in environmental remediation. Microbes have developed intrinsic metabolic capabilities with specific metabolic networks while inhabiting under specific conditions for many generations and, so play a crucial role. The book Microbial Interventions in Agriculture and Environment is an effort to compile and present a great volume of authentic, high-quality, socially-viable, practical and implementable research and technological work on microbial implications. The whole content of the volume covers protocols, methodologies, applications, interactions, role and impact of research and development aspects on microbial interventions and technological outcomes in prospects of agricultural and environmental domain including crop production, plan-soil health management, food & nutrition, nutrient recycling, land reclamation, clean water systems and agro-waste management, biodegradation & bioremediation, biomass to bioenergy, sanitation and rural livelihood security. The covered topics and sub-topics of the microbial domain have high implications for the targeted and wide readership of researchers, students, faculty and scientists working on these areas along with the agri-activists, policymakers, environmentalists, advisors etc. in the Government, industries and non-government level for reference and knowledge generation.