The performance of a plug-flow automated aerobic digester used with the compost of the Biodegradable Organic Waste (BOW) from a typical family at its generation rhythm was evaluated. During a 13 month assessment, 179.7 kg of BOW were treated and 106.7 kg of compost were obtained with a C:N ratio of 12 and an average concentration of N of about 2.72%. Additional tests enabled to assess the gener...

Atmospheric volatile organic compound (VOC) oxidationmechanisms under pristine (rural/remote) and urban (anthropogenically-influenced) conditions follow distinct pathways due to large differences in nitrogen oxide (NOx) concentrations. These two pathways lead to products that have different chemical and physical properties and reactivity. Under pristine conditions, isoprene hydroxy hydroperoxid...

Clean fresh water is essential to our life. Unfortunately, in our consumer-based economy, a large amounts of wastewater having been generated by industrial plants. Wastewaters produced in many industrial plants often contain organic compounds which are toxic and not amenable to direct biological treatment. These wastewaters must be treated in order to meet the specifications for discharge or fo...

The concentrations of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN; NO2−–N, NH3–N, and NO3−–N), PO43−–P, dissolved oxygen (DO), chemical oxygen demand (COD), five-day biological oxygen demand (BOD5), oil, Si, and seven heavy metals (Hg, Cr, Cu, As, Zn, Pb, and Cd) in seawater from the Dongzhaigang National Mangrove Nature Reserve of China in 2013 were determined. Except for the concentrations of the COD, ...

Organic food markets in developed countries have been rapidly expanding in recent years. Though expected health benefits are a major motive for buying organic food (OF), the health effects of consuming OF are uncertain. This study uses survey data from Germany, 2007, to explore the causal relationship between OF consumption and self-rated health status. While it finds strong and statistically s...

Coffee agroecosystems are critical to the success of conservation efforts in Latin America because of their ecological and economic importance. Coffee certification programs may offer one way to protect biodiversity and maintain farmer livelihoods. Established coffee certification programs fall into three distinct, but not mutually exclusive categories: organic, fair trade, and shade. The resul...

In this paper, we estimate the costs and benefits of implementing the proposed National Organic Program for laying hens compared with alternatives. For the regulatory proposals under option 2, the regulatory cost will be zero because most producers are already in compliance with the proposed regulation. The anticipated benefits of this regulation will be zero as well, because the current market...

Biochar is known to have a number of positive effects on plant ecophysiology. However, limited research has been carried out to date on the effects and mechanisms of biochar on plant ecophysiology under abiotic stresses, especially responses to cold. In this study, we report on a series of experiments on rice seedlings treated with different concentrations of biochar leacheates (between 0 and 1...

We present a new elemental analysis (EA) technique for organic species (CHNO) that allows fast on-line analysis (10 s) and reduces the required sample size to approximately 1 ng, approximately 6 orders of magnitude less than standard techniques. The composition of the analyzed samples is approximated by the average elemental composition of the ions from high-resolution electron ionization (EI) ...

This paper considers the consumer's changing definition of quality in relation to meat and the current development of Quality Assurance (QA) schemes to ensure that certain quality standards are met. The key ingredients of QA schemes are food safety, animal welfare and sensory aspects (meat quality) although the latter is not a major feature of many schemes at present. For each of these componen...