Search Results (17)

The article aims to analyze the contemporary forms of territorial dispossession that stem from the energy transition, especially those related to free trade corridors and green grabbing in the context of Latin America. To do this, we describe the reconfigurations of contemporary capitalism for territorializing capital in the geopolitical context of Latin America. At the same time, we argue how the territories of Latin America became strategically relevant for the expanded reproduction of capital in contemporary times. We also shed light on the centrality of free trade agreements and the corridors of extractivist dispossession as a turning point in the expansion—relating to the spectrum of hegemonic and imperialist domination of capital—of legal state frameworks for regulating and justifying full access to the neo-extractivist exploitation of Global South territories. Finally, we show that the “energy transition” supports green grabbing—that is, a new model not just of land grabbing, but rather of comprehensive territorial grabbing, since it means the expropriation of subterranean, maritime, wind, solar, and land territory. Full article

Using eye-tracking technology, the proposed study investigates how customers visually evaluate apples varieties and apple defects and how these evaluations affect their purchasing decisions. Three aspects were examined in this study: apple variety, defect severity, and cultural background. Idared, Golden Delicious Yellow, and Golden Delicious Green apple varieties with increasing degrees of bruising were shown to Chinese and Hungarian participants. The findings show that apple variety had no significant effect on gaze patterns, whereas cultural background had a considerable impact on visual attention measures. The most important element in grabbing and retaining customer attention was the severity of the defect, which was measured by area. The “Threshold of Rejection”, which characterizes consumer tolerance for Apple defects, is introduced in the study. Furthermore, a polynomial regression model was created to predict the probability of repurchasing an apple depending on its visual quality (level of bruising). These results provide useful information for marketing plans, quality assurance, and comprehending customer behavior in the fresh produce sector. Full article

Leaf chlorophyll content is a key indicator of plant physiological status in viticulture; therefore, regular evaluation to obtain data for nutrient supply and canopy management is of vital importance. The measurement of pigmentation is most frequently carried out with hand-held instruments, destructive off-site spectrophotometry, or remote sensing. Moreover, smartphone-based applications also ensure a promising way to collect colorimetric information that could correlate with pigmentation. In this study, four grapevine genotypes were investigated using smartphone-based RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and CIE-L*a*b* colorimetry and a portable chlorophyll meter. The objective of this study was to evaluate the correlation between leaf chlorophyll concentration and RGB- or CIE-L*a*b*-based color indices. A further aim was to find an appropriate model for discriminating between the genotypes by leaf coloration. For these purposes, fully developed leaves of ‘Chardonnay’, ‘Sauvignon blanc’, and ‘Pinot noir’ clones 666 and 777 were investigated with the Color Grab smartphone application to obtain RGB and CIE-L*a*b* values. Using these color values, chroma, hue, and a further 31 color indices were calculated. Chlorophyll concentrations were determined using an Apogee MC100 device, and the values were correlated with color values and color indices. The results showed that the chlorophyll concentration and color indices significantly differed between the genotypes. According to the results, certain color indices show a different direction in their relationship with leaf pigmentation for different grapevine genotypes. The same index showed a positive correlation for the leaf chlorophyll concentration for one variety and a negative correlation for another, which raises the possibility that the relationship is genotype-specific and not uniform within species. In light of this result, further study of the species specificity of the commonly used vegetation indices is warranted. Support Vector Machine (SVM) analysis of the samples based on color properties showed a 71.63% classification accuracy, proving that coloration is an important ampelographic feature for the identification and assessment of true-to-typeness. Full article

Wild edible fruits from the forest have often been regarded as poverty food; however, there has been a notable shift in recent years as these wild edible fruits have gained increasing recognition for their significance in global food security, especially in agricultural societies such as Senegal. This paper contributes to the debate on how the forest plays a role in diets and nutrition security using the example of wild fruit (Baobab) found in the Boundou Region in Senegal. The livelihood strategies of people in this region have been subject to external influences, such as climate shock and restrictions enforced as the area became a protected area in 2009. These external influences have resulted in the loss of pasture use and the prohibition of hunting. Restriction of access to these previous commons (pasture, wildlife) diminishes the resilience of the local population. However, a new alternative of seasonal usage of wild fruit, specifically baobab, for commercial purposes has emerged as everybody in the community has unrestricted access to collecting these wild edible fruits within the protected area, which is uncommon in other protected areas. The commodification and commercialization of these wild fruits bring essential cash income to many households, thereby improving food security. Full article

In this paper, a mask region-based convolutional neural network (Mask R-CNN) is used to improve the performance of machine vision in the challenging task of detecting peduncles and fruits of green sweet peppers (Capsicum annuum L.) in greenhouses. One of the most complicated stages of the sweet pepper harvesting process is to achieve a precise cut of the peduncle or stem because this type of specialty crop cannot be grabbed and pulled by the fruit since the integrity and value of the product are compromised. Therefore, accurate peduncle detection becomes vital for the autonomous harvesting of sweet peppers. ResNet-101 combined with the feature pyramid network (FPN) architecture (ResNet-101 + FPN) is adopted as the backbone network for feature extraction and object representation enhancement at multiple scales. Mask images of fruits and peduncles are generated, focused on green sweet pepper, which is the most complex color variety due to its resemblance to the background. In addition to bounding boxes, Mask R-CNN provides binary masks as a result of instance segmentation, which would help improve the localization process in 3D space, the next phase of the autonomous harvesting process of sweet peppers, since it isolates the pixels belonging to the object and demarcates its boundaries. The prediction results of 1148 fruits on 100 test images showed a precision rate of 84.53%. The prediction results of 265 peduncles showed a precision rate of 71.78%. The mean average precision rate with an intersection over union at 50 percent (mAP@IoU=50) for model-wide instance segmentation was 72.64%. The average detection time for sweet pepper fruit and peduncle using high-resolution images was 1.18 s. The experimental results show that the proposed implementation manages to segment the peduncle and fruit of the green sweet pepper in real-time in an unmodified production environment under occlusion, overlap, and light variation conditions with effectiveness not previously reported for simultaneous 2D detection models of peduncles and fruits of green sweet pepper. Full article

The military’s ongoing efforts to protect the environment are clearly visible. The aim of this study is to bridge an empirical gap, i.e., there is no mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between green orientation and employee job performance in the Sri Lanka military context. Employee engagement is the employee’s head, heart and hand involvement in their job as well as their organization. Employee job performance is a main consequence of employee engagement. Because of this consequence, employee engagement has grabbed attention in both the business context and the military context. This quantitative study was achieved through objectives, namely, to identify the impact of green orientation on employee engagement, to identify the impact of employee engagement on employee job performance, and to identify the mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between green orientation and employee job performance. The unit of analysis is individual, i.e., officers in the Sri Lanka Navy. The sample size is 243. A cross-sectional study was done in a non-contrived environment with minimum researcher interference. Findings of this study suggest the direct relationship of green orientation and employee engagement, as well as the mediation effect of employee engagement on this relationship. Full article

Improving the inclusiveness of urban green spaces and enabling various groups to equally enjoy their benefits is the basis of sustainable urban development. Urban park design generally starts from a gender-neutral perspective, ignoring differences in needs related to gender, particularly women’s sensitivity to the environment. This study focused on visual perception and explored gender differences and proposed causes of visual-behavior differences while viewing landscapes. We used photo data from Mizumoto Park in Tokyo and recruited 16 master’s students living nearby to participate in an eye-tracking experiment. The results indicate that men and women have different eye-movement patterns and that elemental ratios affect eye movement behavior more among women than men. Moreover, this study found that men gaze longer at trees and more briefly at shrubs, flowers, and artificial elements than women. Attention-grabbing paths/grounds had a negative effect on the aesthetic evaluation of the scene among women but not men. Based on these findings, suggestions for optimizing women’s experiences at the visual level are proposed for aspects of vegetation density, visual focus, and road design. This study informs park design and improvement with the premise that gender alters the perception of these environments. Full article

In this paper we hypothesize that the practices that prevailed during the pandemic period in relation to the right to parks were related to traditional urban discriminatory policies that need to be changed. We also argue that, in some cases, the residents themselves treated the parks as common living spaces by protecting them from neoliberal grabbing policies that deprive residents of greenery and infringe on the right to the city and to nature. With this in mind, we proceeded with research on the city of Athens. We investigated two urban green parks, the first was “Lofos Philopappou”, which is one of the most important parks in the city, as it is one of the largest green spaces in the city center and includes some of the most important ancient monuments. The second park was “Antonis Tritsis”, which is the largest park in Athens Metropolitan Area and one of the few high green spaces in the western suburbs. In the framework of this study, we investigated the attitudes and the actions of visitors and groups regarding these parks, the urban social movements, and local struggles and initiatives that are active in the public green parks, together with participation through the commons. We also investigated management policies and attempts to privatize them. The research methods that were used were participant observation in the studied parks, semi-structured interviews with people or groups that used the public urban green parks on a regular basis, noting the narratives they produced, and questionnaires given to visitors who actively used the urban parks. In conclusion, policies implemented within public parks were found to prevent the integration of public green spaces in the daily lives of residents and the active participation of residents in decisions concerning the green extensions of their neighborhoods. In this way, a part of society is deprived of the ability to maintain continuous contact with nature and green parks. Full article

Rising vulnerability of the urban green infrastructure (UGI) is grabbing global attention, for which inclusive urban landscape and greening policies (ULGP) and frameworks are crucial to support green growth. As such, this research intends to explore the local community’s perspective to assemble sustainable UGI indicators for vital taxonomy of the urban green space (UGS) elements, aiming to develop a multi-functional and sustainable UGI-indicator-based framework that is eco-friendly and supports green-resilient cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, Pakistan. An in-depth household survey was executed in three KP districts: Charsadda, Peshawar, and Mardan, placing self-administered 192 questionnaires while covering themes around climate change adaptation, urban resilience, and UGI. Relative importance index (RII) and the interquartile range (IQR) methods were set up for data analysis that revealed excellent reliability (α > 0.88) and internal consistency. The results confirmed community-based UGI indicators with a focus on promoting green-energy-saving strategies as e-imp (level 9, RII = 0.915), while other (ten) UGI indicators as important (RII = 0.811–0.894) and (eleven) as moderately important (RII = 0.738–0.792). These UGI indicators were found to be enhanced by UGS elements (RII ≥ 0.70). These findings provide a foundation for urban policy change and the development of a sustainable UGI framework to build an eco-regional paradigm for greener growth. Full article

This paper aims to describe the design strategy adopted in Rome to support and enhance sustainable mobility. It is a strategy aimed at promoting new green infrastructures for urban accessibility, daily sports practice and social inclusion in a historic city, stratified and not very inclined to change. Therefore, the dissemination of this experience is useful for planning a sustainable future for heritage cities that ensures an appropriate and equitable balance between conservation and development. Sustainable mobility is now considered one of the most important challenges for metropolitan areas and large conurbations. In these terms, Rome is a weak city. The city’s great bicycle ring route (GRAB), an integral part of the Extraordinary Tourism Mobility Plan 2017-22, is a key infrastructure for increasing more sustainable and healthier modes of travel, even on a local scale. The GRAB project, whose complex infrastructure provides multiple services, differs from a simple cycle path network. Its complexity refers to an ability to attract different types of users in different types of urban contexts—historical settings, monuments, newer neighborhoods and areas of contemporary urbanization. The project results can be measured first in relation to its progress (already funded, in the executive planning phase, with the approval of the first construction sites expected by 2022). A second important result is the participation of institutional bodies and citizens’ associations, which will oversee the construction and maintenance work as well as infuse into the project a constant vitality, in a true civic ecology perspective. Third, the results are important for enhancing metropolitan area accessibility and the environmental and social re-activation of the areas crossed, achieved directly and through the project’s realization. The GRAB strategy belongs to the new generation of landscape projects that have radically changed the priorities and hierarchies of intervention in the contexts of contemporary urbanization. These projects are based on the ecological analysis of the context but are located close to the fluctuating dynamics of contemporary metropolises and the problems of exclusion and marginality—both spatial and social—linked to the very rapid ecological, economic and demographic transformations. Full article

Jute is the golden fiber of Bangladesh, but its production is declining due to the involvement of higher production and processing costs, where a major portion of the cost is needed for fiber extraction. Labor unavailability and increasing labor cost have led to higher jute fiber production cost. To address these issues, this study looks at the development of a power-operated and cost-effective fiber extraction machine aiming at reducing the production cost. The study was conducted at the Rangpur regional office premises of Practical Action in Bangladesh, and the developed machine was branded as “Aashkol”, which had the following major parts: a feeding tray, a primary extraction roller, a secondary extraction roller, grabbing rollers, fiber collection stand, base frame, protection cover, and a spring-loaded tray under the primary extraction roller. The Aashkol can extract green ribbon from the jute stem, but jute sticks were broken down into smaller pieces (3–6 cm). The performance evaluation of the machine was conducted using different types of jute (Deshi, Kenaf, and Tossa) and compared with another jute extraction machine (KP model, introduced by Karupannya Rangpur Ltd.). The Aashkol-based extraction and improved retting systems were also evaluated and compared with traditional jute extraction systems. The jute stem input capacity (4.99 t h⁻¹) of the Aashkol was 47.6% higher than the KP model (3.38 t h⁻¹). Compared with the traditional system, across jute types, the Aashkol produced a 9% higher fiber yield and saved 46% retting time. Overall, the Aashkol reduced 90% of the labor requirement and saved 11.6 USD t⁻¹ in jute fiber extraction and retting than the traditional method. Full article

Lactate is a metabolite biomarker of tissue oxygenation and it can be used in medicine to evaluate a pathology or in sport activities to evaluate physical performance. Lactate level assessment is also important for food industry. This acid is found in food and beverages and the concentration level can be correlated with the freshness, stability and quality of several products. In this work, we present a smartphone-based enzymatic biosensor utilizing the unique colorimetric properties of the poly(aniline-co-anthranilic acid) (p(ANI-co-AA)) composite film coupled with lactate oxidase–horseradish peroxidase (LOx–HRP) enzymes. The enzymes are immobilized on the composite polymer film by adsorption and they catalyze a reversible redox color change of the host polymer from green to blue in the presence of l-lactate as the substrate. A smartphone was applied as color detector, for image acquisition and data handling. The free-of-charge Color Grab® application for Android OS was used to enable an easy and clear display of the sensor’s response, indicating remarkable changes in the optical features. The results were confirmed by spectrophotometric measurements. The developed colorimetric enzymatic biosensors were studied and optimized in relation to different experimental parameters. Moreover, the colorimetric enzymatic biosensor was applied to real matrices analysis. It has been shown by these studies that the colorimetric biosensors are promising as quick and simple tests for handheld analysis in various fields. Full article

Understanding how dopamine (DA) encodes behavior depends on technologies that can reliably monitor DA release in freely-behaving animals. Recently, red and green genetically encoded sensors for DA (dLight, GRAB-DA) were developed and now provide the ability to track release dynamics at a subsecond resolution, with submicromolar affinity and high molecular specificity. Combined with rapid developments in in vivo imaging, these sensors have the potential to transform the field of DA sensing and DA-based drug discovery. When implementing these tools in the laboratory, it is important to consider there is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ sensor. Sensor properties, most importantly their affinity and dynamic range, must be carefully chosen to match local DA levels. Molecular specificity, sensor kinetics, spectral properties, brightness, sensor scaffold and pharmacology can further influence sensor choice depending on the experimental question. In this review, we use DA as an example; we briefly summarize old and new techniques to monitor DA release, including DA biosensors. We then outline a map of DA heterogeneity across the brain and provide a guide for optimal sensor choice and implementation based on local DA levels and other experimental parameters. Altogether this review should act as a tool to guide DA sensor choice for end-users. Full article

Land acquisition often involves power and displacement and can be carried out on a large scale. There are many forms of land acquisition, including for environmental and conservation purposes as well as for production activities. While green grabbing has joined land grabbing as an environmental justice issue of concern, it is not necessarily the case that all green land acquisition is large scale, done by powerful outsiders, or leads to displacement and exclusion. The outcomes of green land acquisition are dependent on the mechanisms used, the adequacy of resettlement and/or compensation, and the social and environmental context in which it happens. We discuss the outcomes of community-led land acquisition for conservation purposes in Costa Rica. We considered a special case of green land acquisition done by local civil society to defend the forest and water resources of the Juan Castro Blanco National Water Park in Costa Rica. We used the literature on green grabbing, social ecological systems, and social innovation to discuss local environmental governance and regional sustainable development. This paper makes a fresh contribution to environmental planning and environmental governance by bringing in aspects of green land acquisition that have not been previously explored. Full article

Neoliberal conservation has recently become a topic of academic research and a method of practice within the context of globalization. Less attention has been given to how neoliberal conservation has been practiced at the urban scale. This paper draws on the concept of ‘urban-growth-oriented green grabbing’ to capture the multidimensionality of the reasoning and process of ecological conservation in an urban growth context. It focuses on two ecological spatial protection plans for the DaPeng Peninsula in the city of Shenzhen, China. Through empirical investigation, this article traces the political economy of these plans and draws out the insights they offer regarding theories of urban environmentalism. The empirical results show that the ecological conservation plans are best understood as ‘green grabbing’ that has been achieved by land transfer and spatial interest redistribution. Conceptually, the paper provides further evidence of the process of neoliberal conservation within the urban context. Full article