The need for electrical energy storage technologies (EEST) in a future energy system, based on volatile renewable energy sources is widely accepted. The still open question is which technology should be used, in particular in such applications where the implementation of different storage technologies would be possible. In this study, eight different EEST were analysed. The comparative life cycle assessment focused on the storage of electrical excess energy from a renewable energy power plant. The considered EEST ...

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in West African countries is developing rapidly in response to population growth and changing consumer preferences. Furthermore, UPA offers opportunities to secure income and social integration for the urban poor. However, little is known about household (HH) income security effects of the ongoing shift in UPA land use from crops that do not rely on insect pollinators for fruit development (e.g., sorghum and millet) to pollinator-dependent crops. In our study we developed a ...

Alkali-metal phosphanides can be embedded into a [3]ferrocenophane scaffold giving rise to bicyclic ferrocenophanes [MFe(C5H4PtBu)2P] (M = Li, Na, K). Coordination of the alkali-metal ions takes place via the terminal phosphorus atoms adopting a puckered P3M four-membered ring. All compounds were characterized via single-crystal X-ray diffraction and multinuclear NMR spectroscopy (1H, 31P, 7Li), whereas 13C NMR data could only be recorded for the Li derivative, owing to the limited solubility of its heavier congeners ...

C42H48FeNi2OP2, orthorhombic, Pbca (no. 61), a = 9.4551(4) Å, b = 19.7133(9) Å, c = 39.693(2) Å, V = 7398.4(6) Å3, Z = 8, Rgt(F) = 0.0598, wRref(F2) = 0.1481, T = 100(2) K.

Background: Understanding the evolution and development of morphological traits of the last common bilaterian ancestor is a major goal of the evo-devo discipline. The reconstruction of this “urbilaterian” is mainly based on comparative studies of common molecular patterning mechanisms in recent model organisms. The NK homeobox genes are key players in many of these molecular pathways, including processes regulating mesoderm, heart and neural development. Shared features seen in the expression patterns of NK genes ...

Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) is a dioecious, wind-pollinated shrub growing in Eurasia including the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan territory). Contrary to the situation in other countries, in Pakistan this species is heavily underutilized. Moreover, a striking diversity of berry colors and shapes in Pakistan raises the question: which varieties might be more suitable for different national and international markets? Therefore, both morphological and genetic diversity of sea buckthorn ...

3D point cloud analysis of imagery collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been shown to be a valuable tool for estimation of crop phenotypic traits, such as plant height, in several species. Spatial information about these phenotypic traits can be used to derive information about other important crop characteristics, like fresh biomass yield, which could not be derived directly from the point clouds. Previous approaches have often only considered single date measurements using a single point cloud derived ...

Modeling the hydrologic responses to future changes of climate is important for improving adaptive water management. In the present application to the Zarrine River Basin (ZRB), with the major reach being the main inflow source of Lake Urmia (LU), firstly future daily temperatures and precipitation are predicted using two statistical downscaling methods: the classical statistical downscaling model (SDSM), augmented by a trend-preserving bias correction, and a two-step updated quantile mapping (QM) method. The general ...

Competing natural resources usage that leads to dramatic land use changes can threaten the balance of a social-ecological system. When this is the case, communities are directly exposed to the negative consequences of those land use changes. The Mashavera River Basin is considered one of the hotspots of environmental pollution in Georgia. This is of importance for public health because the food production from this basin meets a substantial proportion of the country’s food demand. The farmers’ perception of the water ...

Ecologically sound natural resources management is still the backbone of rural livelihoods in many regions of the world. The Altai-Dzungarian region between China and Mongolia constitutes an ideal site to study how political, economic, infrastructural, and cultural differences affect rural livelihoods. Structured semi-quantitative interviews were conducted with 483 households on both sides to characterise their current livelihood strategies and assess the importance of the various activities for the households’ current ...