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.
In the European Commission, there is a clear interest in improving the energy and environmental conditions of the building sector, and to reduce the impact of this sector in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. That interest is materialized in funding several research and demonstration projects that go in this direction. One of these projects is iNSPiRe.
Last month it was held in Brussels the final meeting of iNSPiRe, bittersweet moment, because on one hand we were assuming the farewell of many colleagues of the 24 partners involved in the project and on the other hand meant a great satisfaction because finally, after 4 years of hard work, we were collecting the results coming from many conferences, many meetings and countless reports.
The iNSPiRe project is aligned with the ambitious European directive on energy performance in buildings which aims to achieve the reduction of energy consumption in buildings both in the residential sector and the tertiary sector. In this demonstrative project in addition to defining a process of renovation of buildings to reduce their energy consumption, they have been also developed highly efficient and innovative technological kits, with the aim of putting them on the market as future upgrades to the systems currently used in buildings renovation projects of the construction industry. In this way the building demo-sites have acted as the best testing bench for these kits. Different kits have been developed as a solution for multiple systems as kits for energy distribution or kits for envelopes and facades with innovative solutions for energy storage and energy generation systems.
As mentioned, all technological solutions developed within the iNSPiRe project have been installed on two demonstrators. One of them is located in Madrid, Spain, and the other in the German city of Ludwigsburg and both buildings belong to the residential sector. Both the data obtained from monitored buildings and the simulation data will be used for the creation of a common database that will serve professionals in engineering and architecture, as well as local authorities to inform them of the most efficient and cost-effective resources in a deep renovation of buildings.
Within CARTIF in this project we have been responsible for the tasks of monitoring, follow-up and analysis of the indicators that allow the verification of the optimum performance of the installed solutions and verify that the tenants reach comfort conditions. The first objective covered was the definition and design of a monitoring system that would allow the assessment of energy savings and to know the performance of the buildings before and after the renovation and rehabilitation process. In addition, CARTIF developed a surveillance software that show us when one of the solutions is not working properly, a situation the software interprets through the information collected from multiple sensors installed in the demo-sites. CARTIF’s work has always been closely linked to the business partners developers of technology kits one, as our role has also been to inform them of the correct performance and efficiency of their developments.
To carry out the evaluation of energy savings, both demo-sites have been monitored for two years in two periods, one year before refurbishment and one year afterwards, with the aim of identifying their behavior before and after and obtain a base line for comparison. For this task four groups of indicators were defined: comfort, electrical consumption, heating demand and finally emissions. Apart from those, economic indicators have been also defined but due to the timings on the kits installation, this indicator has not been already studied.
Regarding the results, although we have not been able to make a savings analysis, we have made a comparative study of the performance of the buildings in the two monitoring periods. Once the data from all kits are available it will be possible to make more in-depth valuations.
In the Energy Area of CARTIF we are committed to help transforming our living environments into more sustainable and energy efficient ones, and our work and outcomes of the iNSPiRe project will impact in this direction.
Before introduce our vision of interoperability of social-health system, it is needed to understand that interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. As organizations incorporate applications / different computer systems, they generate what is known as “islands” of information, which end up generating gaps in services as well as inefficiency bags. Interoperability is the design and construction of bridges between the islands of information.
The Social-Health system in Spain, as well in Europe, consists on a large number of organizations, public and private entities: healthcare systems, social agencies, patient associations, services companies, nursing home, etc. Each of these organizations provides the services we need to develop our lives and those of our loved ones, in a comfortable way taking into account parameters of quality and efficiency.
One doubt that often arises in meetings with different partners is the real need to develop an interoperability framework for the social-health system. The intuitive answer to this approach is like building roads, tunnels and bridges, without prior planning. Does anyone find reasonable such approach?
However, in general, when organizations develop strategic plans for information technology (IT) tend to look inward, focusing mainly on achieving their own goals (an apparently optimal island). Further progress in this direction certainly hinders the 360º approach (continuity in health and social services). The challenge is to go beyond the internal problems and look outside. It needs to take advantage of the information generated by all organizations, so that, they can share and use the data, to generate new knowledge.
So we must begin to understand and to harmonize the needs of users and organizations from a scientific and technical systematic view. Once the doubt of working on a strategic framework of interoperability is clarified, the following question emerges: why is it necessary to base a local or regional strategy on international standards? Why is it not possible to make a local or an ad-hoc approach?
One possible approach to this question is associated with the sustainability of the work and to take advantage of an accumulation of knowledge (not reinventing the wheel). Therefore, in order to advance into a strategy of interoperability between of social and health information systems, it is critical to be based on international interoperability standards. These standards are promoted by Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) with the need to work actively through scientific and technical committees that contributes to the necessary evolution of standards forums.
Thanks to the experience of CARTIF, participating in different SDOs, as well as in the Cluster SIVI (Cluster of Innovative Solutions for Independent Living) and the EIP AHA (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing), we conclude that a strategy to develop a framework of interoperability in social-health system, could open the door to cooperation between organizations in different fields, who want to be an active part of the social and health services. The beneficiaries of this cooperation are all users of the system (all of us!!), because it could be optimized and rationalized the use of resources, something that is extremely important to ensure the sustainability of the social-health system. On the other hand, this would increase the transparency and competitiveness of technology to develop new solutions that can be extended in a simpler way. Finally, we are convinced that the approach of advancing within a framework of interoperability in the social-health system will help develop new products in emerging technology SMEs. Solutions that succeeding locally, will be able to scale their solutions to a global market in a simpler way.
