Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is one response to the challenges faced by agriculture due to climate change. As with other sustainability transitions, technological innovation is highlighted as ...playing a critical role, however, the adoption and diffusion of technological innovations in OECD countries is slow. The aim of this paper is to identify key socio-economic barriers, in terms of supply and demand, that inhibit the adoption and diffusion of CSA technological innovations in Europe. To achieve this aim, a theoretical framework is constructed based on a literature review of socio-economic barriers effecting adoption and diffusion. This framework is explored with data from semi-structured interviews with CSA technology providers and members of agricultural supply chains, such as farmers associations and consumer goods producers (the end-users of the technology). Data was collected on the barriers they experienced, with interviews conducted in the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Italy. This data was thematically coded and categorised to identify key barrier typologies. The results demonstrate that barriers exist on both the demand (user) and supply (technology provider) sides. The paper provides recommendations for increasing the adoption and diffusion of CSA technological innovations, as well as implications for the CSA and innovation literature.
•Socio-economic barriers are identified for CSA technological innovation adoption.•Empirical data is collected from technology developers and users.•These are mapped onto a framework developed through a literature review.•Traditional ‘supply-side’ innovation policies may be an inadequate response.
Businesses will play a key role in helping the transition towards greater sustainability. To maximise business sustainability performance, sustainability characteristics must be integrated at the ...business model level, creating business models for sustainability. Creating a business model for sustainability, or transitioning from a traditional business model, is likely to be a complicated and challenging process. Previous research has identified a range of barriers, such as low financial reward or little legislative support.
The aim of this research is to explore and identify critical success factors and barriers for the transition from traditional business models to business models for sustainability. Previous research provides indications as to the barriers faced when attempting to develop business models for sustainability, but does so using conceptual lenses that emphasise external influences and factors. We seek to explore the process of business model innovation for sustainability from a perspective that pays greater attention to internal processes and from a management perspective, building on concepts of organisational change management.
The research focuses on start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME's) in the Dutch food and beverage industry. This is an interesting empirical context, as this is a dynamic, economically significant sector in the Netherlands, and is under pressure to improve its environmental performance. Data is collected from 14 cases, using semi-structured interviews, and is then analysed to identify a range of critical success factors and barriers. We find that collaboration, a clear narrative and vision, continual innovation, a sustainable foundation, profitability, and serendipitous external events are all critical success factors for the transition to business models for sustainability. Barriers include external events, principle-agent issues as well as a lack of support from wider actors and systems. The results highlight that businesses wishing to develop a business model for sustainability must make sustainability the key principle upon which the firm is founded. Continual development and improvement is required in addition to the support of a range of different actor's external to the firm, such as suppliers, customers, and government.
While the benefits of including local communities in multi-stakeholder initiatives have been acknowledged, their successful involvement remains a challenging process. Research has shown that large ...business interests are regularly over-represented and that local communities remain marginalized in the process. Additionally, little is known about how procedural fairness and inclusion can be managed and maintained during multi-stakeholder initiatives. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate how marginalized stakeholders, and local communities in particular, can be successfully involved during the course of a multi-stakeholder initiative. An action research approach was adopted where the first author collaborated with a social housing association on an initiative to involve the local community in the design and implementation of circular economy approaches in a low-income neighbourhood. This study contributes to the multi-stakeholder initiative literature by showing that the successful involvement of marginalized stakeholders requires the initiators to continuously manage a balance between uncertainty–certainty, disagreement–agreement and consensus- and domination-based management strategies. Furthermore, our study highlights that factors which are regularly treated as challenges, including uncertainty and disagreement, can actually play a beneficial role in multi-stakeholder initiatives, emphasizing the need to take a temporally sensitive approach. This study also contributes to the circular economy literature by showing how communities can play a bigger role than merely being consumers, leading to the inclusion of a socially oriented perspective which has not been recognized in the previous literature.
Climate change threatens agricultural production and the food security of developing countries in complex ways that demand environmentally friendly innovations. Climate-smart agriculture provides a ...response to climate change whilst enhancing livelihood of farmers. Climate-smart agricultural technological innovations at farm level have the potential to address climate-related challenges. However, inadequate adoption of these technologies remains a problem. This paper identifies available climate-smart agricultural technological innovations in South Africa and explores their characteristics and context of use using an exploratory research approach. An overview of climate change risks and variability in South Africa and a framework to classify the technological innovations is established based on a literature review. Interviews with expert stakeholders are used to characterise and collect information on available technologies. Results indicate that Conservation Agriculture, Rainwater Harvesting and Seed Varieties that are Drought Tolerant and Early Maturing may be the most suited technologies for climate-smart agriculture in South Africa, particularly for smallholder farmers. However, high initial investment costs, additional labour requirements and management intensity associated with conservation agriculture and rainwater harvesting may pose problems within the South African context. Drought Tolerant and Early Maturing Seed Varieties were noted as less costly and less management intensive, creating better prospects for adoption. This study serves as an initial assessment through the exploration of the available climate-smart agricultural technologies in South Africa. This is essential given that the agricultural sector is faced with the dilemma of responding to climate change related challenges whilst increasing the productivity of farmers.
•We explore the adoption of climate-smart technological innovations in South Africa.•We focus on adoption of technological innovations in the small-holder context.•Available and promoted climate-smart technological innovations are characterised.•Factors such as investment costs and management intensity limit adoption.•Drought tolerant and early maturing seed varieties faced fewest adoption barriers.
Sustainable entrepreneurs are key actors in sustainability transitions; they develop needed innovations, create markets, and pressure incumbents. While socio-technical transitions literature is well ...developed, questions remain in terms of (1) the different roles that sustainable entrepreneurs can play in sustainable transitions, and (2) how best to empower these roles. To explore these challenges, we review literature and construct a framework combining the multilevel perspective and entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective. We apply this framework to the context of climate-smart agriculture in (Western and Central) Europe. By analysing semi-structured interview data (n = 27) we find that sustainable entrepreneurs are constrained by ineffective policy, resistant users, as well as novel alignment issues within the supply chain. We focus on the role of sustainable entrepreneurs as coordinators of action rather than developers of technological innovation within transition contexts characterised by low landscape pressures, large unmotivated incumbent firms, low consumer awareness and demand, and unincentivized users (farmers).
In epidemiologic studies of health effects of air pollution, measurements or models are used to estimate exposure. Exposure estimates have errors that propagate to effect estimates in ...exposure-response models. We critically evaluate how types of exposure measurement error influenced bias and precision of effect estimates to understand conditions affecting interpretation of exposure-response models for epidemiologic studies of exposure to PM
, NO
, and SO
. We reviewed available literature on exposure measurement error for time-series and long-term exposure epidemiology studies. For time-series studies, time-activity error (daily exposure concentration did not account for variation in exposure due to time-activity during a day) and nonambient (indoor) sources negatively biased the effect estimates and increased standard error, so uncertainty grew with increasing bias while underestimating the true health effect in these studies. Spatial error (deviation between true exposure concentration at an individual's location and concentration at a receptor) was ascribed to negatively biased effect estimates in most cases. Positive bias occurred for spatially variable pollutants when the variance of error correlated with the exposure estimate. For long-term exposure studies, most spatial errors did not bias the effect estimate. For both time-series and long-term exposure studies reviewed, large uncertainties were observed when exposure concentration was modeled with low spatial and temporal resolution for a spatially variable pollutant.
Health effects associated with air pollution are typically evaluated using a single pollutant approach, yet people are exposed to mixtures consisting of multiple pollutants that may have independent ...or combined effects on human health. Development of exposure metrics that represent the multipollutant environment is important to understand the impact of ambient air pollution on human health.
We reviewed existing multipollutant exposure metrics to evaluate how they can be applied to understand associations between air pollution and health effects.
We conducted a literature search using both targeted search terms and a relational search in Web of Science and PubMed in April and December 2013. We focused on exposure metrics that are constructed from ambient pollutant concentrations and can be broadly applied to evaluate air pollution health effects.
Multipollutant exposure metrics were identified in 57 eligible studies. Metrics reviewed can be categorized into broad pollutant grouping paradigms based on: 1) source emissions and atmospheric processes or 2) common health outcomes.
When comparing metrics, it is apparent that no universal exposure metric exists; each type of metric addresses different research questions and provides unique information on human health effects. Key limitations of these metrics include the balance between complexity and simplicity as well as the lack of an existing “gold standard” for multipollutant health effects and exposure.
Future work on characterizing multipollutant exposure error and joint effects will inform development of improved multipollutant metrics to advance air pollution health effects research and human health risk assessment.
•Multipollutant exposure metrics in air pollution health studies were evaluated.•Metrics reviewed are broadly related to source emission or health outcome.•The type of metric used in a health study depends on the goals of the study.•Future work on multipollutant interactions and exposure error is important.
Nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) is a “redox”-active nanomaterial used in the remediation of contaminated groundwater. To assess the effect of “aging” and surface modification on its potential ...neurotoxicity, cultured rodent microglia (BV2) and neurons (N27) were exposed to fresh nZVI, “aged” (>11 months) nZVI, magnetite, and polyaspartate surface-modified (SM) nZVI. Increases in various measures of oxidative stress indicated that BV2 microglia responded to these materials in the following rank order: nZVI > “aged” nZVI > magnetite = SM nZVI. Fresh nZVI produced morphological evidence of mitochondrial swelling and apoptosis. In N27 neurons, ATP levels were reduced in the following rank order: nZVI > SM-nZVI >“aged” nZVI = magnetite. Ultrastructurally, nZVI produced a perinuclear floccular material and cytoplasmic granularity. Both SM-nZVI produced intracellular deposits of nanosize particles in the N27. The physicochemical properties of each material, measured under exposure conditions, indicated that all had electronegative zeta potentials. The iron content of nZVI (∼35%) and SM-nZVI (∼25%) indicated high “redox” activity while that of “aged” and magnetite was neglibile. Sedimentation and agglomeration occurred in the following rank order: nZV > “aged” nZVI > magnetite ≫ SM-nZVI. Correlating these properties with toxicity indicated that partial or complete oxidation of nZVI reduced its “redox” activity, agglomeration, sedimentation rate, and toxicity to mammalian cells. Surface modification decreased nZVI toxicity by reducing sedimentation which limited particle exposure to the cells.
RNA therapeutics have had a tremendous impact on medicine, recently exemplified by the rapid development and deployment of mRNA vaccines to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, RNA-targeting ...drugs have been developed for diseases with significant unmet medical needs through selective mRNA knockdown or modulation of pre-mRNA splicing. Recently, RNA editing, particularly antisense RNA-guided adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR)-based programmable A-to-I editing, has emerged as a powerful tool to manipulate RNA to enable correction of disease-causing mutations and modulate gene expression and protein function. Beyond correcting pathogenic mutations, the technology is particularly well suited for therapeutic applications that require a transient pharmacodynamic effect, such as the treatment of acute pain, obesity, viral infection, and inflammation, where it would be undesirable to introduce permanent alterations to the genome. Furthermore, transient modulation of protein function, such as altering the active sites of enzymes or the interface of protein-protein interactions, opens the door to therapeutic avenues ranging from regenerative medicine to oncology. These emerging RNA-editing-based toolsets are poised to broadly impact biotechnology and therapeutic applications. Here, we review the emerging field of therapeutic RNA editing, highlight recent laboratory advancements, and discuss the key challenges on the path to clinical development.
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ADAR-based RNA editing has emerged as a powerful tool to engineer RNAs, enable correction of disease-causing mutations, and modulate protein functions. We review the emerging field of therapeutic RNA editing, highlight recent laboratory advancements, and discuss the key challenges on the path to clinical development.
Therapy with anti-PD-L1 immune check-point inhibitors is approved for several cancers, including advanced urothelial carcinomas. PD-L1 prevalence estimates vary widely in bladder cancer, and lack of ...correlation between expression and clinical outcomes and immunotherapy response may be attributed to methodological differences of the immunohistochemical reagents and procedures. We characterized PD-L1 expression in 235 urothelial carcinomas including 79 matched pairs of primary and metastatic cancers using a panel of four PD-L1 immunoassays in comparison with RNAscope assay using PD-L1-specific probe (CD274). The antibody panel included three FDA-approved clones (22C3 for pembrolizumab, 28.8 for nivolumab, SP142 for atezolizumab), and a commonly used clone E1L3N. Manual scoring of tissue microarrays was performed in each of 235 tumors (624 tissue cores) and compared to an automated image analysis. Expression of PD-L1 in tumor cells by ≥1 marker was detected in 41/142 (28.9%) primary tumors, 13/77 (16.9%) lymph nodes, and 2/16 (12.5%) distant metastases. In positive cases, high PD-L1 expression (>50% cells) was detected in 34.1% primary and 46.7% metastases. Concordant PD-L1 expression status was present in 71/79 (89.9%) cases of matched primary and metastatic urothelial carcinomas. PD-L1 sensitivity ranked from highest to lowest as follows: RNAscope, clone 28.8, 22C3, E1L3N, and SP142. Pairwise concordance correlation coefficients between the four antibodies in 624 tissue cores ranged from 0.76 to 0.9 for tumor cells and from 0.30 to 0.85 for immune cells. RNA and protein expression levels showed moderate to high agreement (0.72-0.87). Intra-tumor expression heterogeneity was low for both protein and RNA assays (interclass correlation coefficients: 0.86-0.94). Manual scores were highly concordant with automated Aperio scores (0.94-0.97). A significant subset of 56/235 (23.8%) urothelial carcinomas stained positive for PD-L1 with high concordance between all four antibodies and RNA ISH assay. Despite some heterogeneity in staining, the overall results are highly concordant suggesting diagnostic equivalence of tested assays.
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