I had planned to continue talking about Green Manufacturing initiatives, but I have decided to write a new post with a different but complementary approach to sustainable manufacturing.
Before the Flood is a 2016 documentary film about climate change firstly screened on 30th October 2016 on the National Geographic Channel. Directed by Fisher Stevens and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film was produced by a collaboration between Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.
The film shows DiCaprio visiting various regions of the globe during 3 years exploring the impact of man-made global warming. Along with Leonardo DiCaprio, the documentary includes interviews with Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Sunita Narain, Elon Musk, and Johan Rockström. I strongly encourage everybody to watch this film. It is widely available and free of charge on various platforms like the National Geographic Channel in Youtube
I have been fortunate to work on the demonstrative REEMAIN project during the last three years. In this project, among other multiple activities, three demo factories (biscuits, iron foundry and denim fabrics) are voluntarily –and supported by European funds- taking several initiatives in order to increase their efficiency in terms of energy and material resources consumption.
Even in subsidised scenarios like REEMAIN, it is not easy to achieve the required modifications in the manufacturing processes and installations in order to merely reduce the corresponding environmental impact, especially if the modifications affect the expected profits. Therefore, although some proposed measures should not affect the factory profitability, they are still perceived by the Managers as unnecessary risk or uncertainty elements.
Why should any company turn its production and operative systems upside down to fight against climate change? What happens with those companies whose products or production processes are inherently polluting?
Simply encouraging companies to include among their main objectives the fight against climate change is a good idea, or at least is better than doing nothing, but it is clearly not enough. The process will not be fast enough. The change must be externally boosted, and it is our responsibility as citizens-voters-consumers to assure it. One possible booster is the politician power through the adoption of new more restrictive legislation like the banning of coal use in the European cities. The other booster might be the consumers awareness and consequent rejection of those products and services associated with a high environmental impact. For example, the campaigns against the use of palm oil.
This film of DiCaprio is naturally more oriented towards the American public. Hence, it takes some time to explain the USA politician system and the economic relationships established between politicians and big hydrocarbons companies. Because of it, currently in the 2016 America Congress and Senate there is an important percentage of representatives that directly deny the climate change. In Europe, our politic representatives fortunately, no longer have doubts about the climate change. However, it seems like if the possible negative effects over the economy were slowing the development of new regulations that restrict or directly ban the most polluting products and processes. A practical example of this issue is the EC authorities management of the “Dieselgate” scandal.
The movie ends –this is not a spoiler, since the important idea of this film is spread through the whole movie- with a clear message: It is up to all of us to stop the climate change. It can be achieved using two tools: our consumer habits and our vote.
Consume differently. Reflecting on what we buy, what we eat and how we get our power, might make a first step.
Vote for leaders who will fight climate change, will make the second step. Leaders that will end fossil fuel subsidies and exploitation, invest in renewables and support a price on carbon.
I absolutely agree with both proposals. However, I would add that in addition to consumers and voters we are also citizens, hence, we must try to communicate and convince the rest of the citizens about the importance of stopping the climate change. This post is my first grain of sand.
I tell you a real situation: Some years ago, I was chatting with a friend, when she looked at me very serious and said: I am not be able to lose weight! My doctor says that vegetables fattens me and the worst thing is that I love it! In that moment, those words seemed so absurd that I stayed quiet. Today, almost 20 years later, I have understood that my friend (a clear visionary) was speaking about genomic nutrition o personalized nutrition.
As we know, in the studies of dietary intervention, the results are the average value of all individual who have participated in the study. But, what would we find out if the results would be analyzed individually? In some people, a change in dietwouldn´t feel any effect (hypo-responders), others would feel a medium effect (normo-responders) and others would feel an effect greater than expected (hyper-responders).
During the last decades, we have passed from believing that diet produces the same effect in all individuals to accept that changes in diet are partly caused by the inter-individual differences in the human genome.
And that is precisely what we have lived in projects about “health food” developed in CARTIF. If we look back, we have more than 20 years designing functional foods and even collaborating in intervention studies in humans with the objective of verifying its effectiveness.
The project CENIT HIGEA (2007-2010) was undoubtedly the most important in the design of food with beneficial effects on health. In this project we feel ourselves as Dr. Brand on “interstellar: we were missing variables to solve optimally our trials of intervention.” We had not contemplated that the response to food varies depending on the specific characteristics of each person!
In fact, in a trial of intervention realized in HIGEA, we got that the consumption of a bar enriched in Omega-3 only produced an improvement in the lipid profile and the inflammatory pattern in men but not in women who participated in the study.
With these antecedents, in the year 2014 we began to work in the Project PRIMICIA. As its name suggests, for the first time, we get ingredients and healthy food (cookies, juices, jams, and pasta) bearing in mind the genetic profile of the population. It is necessary to mention that although the advances in the knowledge and technologies developed about of the human genome have been spectacular during the last years, the nutritional genomic is still a recent discipline and there is some confusion.
The project PRIMICIA is just the beginning in the industrial development of effective foodto improve the health of people in a personalized way. I propose complete the famous phrase “You are what you eat” saying: “You are what you eat because this determines which genes are expressed” and as I also have the gene “mother”, I would add: “so be careful!”
Food security of two-thirds of the world s’ population depends on the availability and use of fertilizers. In the transition from a fossil reserve-based to a bio-based economy, it has become a critical challenge to close nutrient cycles and move to a more effective and sustainable resource management, both from an economical and an environmental perspective.
Mineral fertilizers production require significant amounts of fossil energy. Hence, the dependency of agriculture on fossil reserve-based mineral fertilizers (especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) must be regarded as a very serious threat to future human food security. On the other hand, estimates of phosphorus reserves expect that depletion will occur within 100 to 300 year, taking into account the current trends on population growth and demand for nutrients. But impacts on the economy are expected to occur much sooner than the time of depletion, because resource scarcity will drive in advance to higher product prices.
At the same time, the agricultural demand for mineral fertilizers is continuously growing, due to a variety of factors, such as the increasing world population, the rising meat consumption, and the cultivation of energy crops. In this sense, the FAO has reported a five-fold increase in fertilizer consumption between 1960 and 2015 and this organization projects a continued increase in the coming years. The tension between offer and demand will continue pushing up the prices for nutrient resources.
Despite these circumstances, large amounts of nutrients are dispersed in the environment every day, in a controlled or uncontrolled way, through the disposal of waste streams. In addition, the intensification of animal production and the resulting manure excesses, combined with a limited availability of arable land for the disposal of waste (manure, sludge, etc.) and the excessive use of chemical mineral fertilizers, has led to surplus fertilization and nutrient accumulation in many soils worldwide. These facts have frequently caused environmental pollution.
As a consequence, it is clear that a new global effort is needed to draw a new scenario where improved nutrient use efficiency and, at the same time, reduced nutrient losses provide the bases for a greener economy to produce more food and energy while reducing environmental impact.
Four are the key points when dealing with nutrients recycling according the scientific community:
– The sustainability of our world depends fundamentally on nutrients. In order to feed 7 billion people, humans have more than doubled global land-based cycling of N and P. – The world’s N and P cycles are now out of balance, causing major environmental, health and economic problems that have received far too little attention. – Insufficient access to nutrients still limits food production and contributes to land degradation in some parts of the world, while finite P reserves represent a potential risk for future global food security, pointing to the need for their prudent use. – Unless action is taken, increases in population and per capita consumption of energy and animal products will exacerbate nutrient losses, pollution levels and land degradation, further threatening the quality of our water, air and soils, affecting climate and biodiversity.
Recycling energy and materials through re-connecting crop and livestock production becomes indispensable for attaining agricultural sustainability in all the senses, not only in the environmental sense. It is time to reconnect nutrient flows between crops production and livestock sectors. To do so, it is needed to invest in agro-industrial processes, which can contribute in the upcycling of mineral nutrients from organic flows towards mineral fertilizer. This approach calls for the further development of a third (after crop and animal production) agro-industrial pillar to be developed in addition to and support of the two existing main pillars of agricultural activity, namely agro-residue processing and upcycling.
Note: this text is part of a contribution of the author to the book “Science, Technology and Innovation for Meeting Sustainable Development Goals” to be published in 2017 by the Colorado State University.
You can think that the design of differentiable technology for menand technology for woman is not necessary. But, really specific wearables for women exist, especially for health topics. The others wearables, despite not being specific for woman, have a feminine designed due to some fashionable aspects.
I am going to mention several of these devices. Some of them are at the market, but others ones not yet, because they are pending of financing (almost always by crowdfunding), in order to going on with its development and coming out to the market. However, results are real for all them.
WEARABLES FOR WOMEN’S HEALTH
In relation with health topics, we find a big variety of devices focused on biological questions, such as control menstrual cycle or maternity and pregnancy aspects. For example:
– Leaf, a popular jewel due to its design, is developed to make fertility tracking. To keep track of monthly cycles. The technological advantages are its autonomy (six months) and capacity (dates for 14 days can be recorded without the connection to an app) – YONO Fertility Friend. This device is introduced in the ear and collects basal temperature overnight. Through an intelligent system, predicts and reports fertil days’ information. – The ReliefBan bracelet serves to avoid the morning sickness in pregnancy period. The operating philosophy is as of acupuncture. It consists of two electrodes that distract the nervous system through electrical impulses. The brain is distracted and the pain is blocked. – Milk sense is placed at breast, before and after feeding during lactation period. It uses alveoli changes for determinate the milk quantity that the baby needs.
WEARABLES FOR WOMEN BECAUSE OF ITS DESIGN
They are device that do not have a concrete function for women but the design is for them. Some examples
– Ombra works as every sportive device. The main difference is that its sensors are integrated in the brassiere. – Swarosvki offer us the Lumo Lift. It is a brooch with a sensor, which alerts us when our back position is not correct. – At the frontier, we have the Firs Sign forks. The pin detects possible assaults. It has a sudden movement detector. Immediately, it connects to the camera of our smartphone and alert to emergency services. Smartphone provides them the localization, also. – In addition, there are intelligent devices for solar protection, such as bracelets, towels, bikinis with UVA sensor, etc. These sensors, via RFIDs, send alerts to smartphone, depending on every skin type.
FASHION WEARABLES
Talking about decorative or fashion aspects, we have a big offer of wearables. It is said that the bet of important trademarks (such as Swarosky or L’Oreal) allows us to intuit that the fashion-technology fusion will have an important market of the near future.
Inside this group we have jewels with same or similar functions as the smartwatch:
– The Ringly ring is synchronized with smartphone for warning to alerts and calls through colour and vibrations. – The Hungary ring Omate, presented in gold, silver or precious stones. – The TagoArc bracelet is characterized by having an electronical ink covering. An associated app allows us to select the design of bracelet and change them when you want.
If we talk about fashion complements, taking out jewels, we have a wonderful offer from the more practice devices, (such as intelligent handbags that allow to charge phone), to the most ostentatious.
I want to highlight the experiments that Ezara and Tuba Cintel are designed, with Intel enterprise; the “dress of butterflies”. This dress remembers the fiction models of Katniss Everden at “The Hunger Games”
Extrusion technology allows to improve the nutricional, sensorial and fuctional properties of food. Find out what we are doing in CARTIF with pulses, in the International Year of Pulses, in this videoblog of our colleague Belén Blanco.
What is the use of 3D digitalization of infraestructures? Inspecting coatings, detecting cracks, inventorying and sensorization of tunnels and other structures. In the following video, we explain you what we do in CARTIF:
David Olmedo and José Llamas, researchers of CARTIF.
