The potential of microalgae as renewable energy feedstock for biofuel production is well recognized in developing countries and it is a large source of biomass for capturing CO2 on non-arable lands. In the current studies photobioreactor with 2 L capacity was used and operated with generator exhaust gases for algal CO2 sequestration. The reactor operated on generator exhaust gases with CO2 rang...

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) have been introduced as part of European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy and are now an important part of this. A methodological approach to analyse the policy effects of AES is outlined, in which we distinguish between performance effects (on agricultural practices) and outcome effects (environmental impact). The performance effects are further approach...

We examined how butterfly species richness is affected by human impact and elevation, and how species ranges are distributed along the elevational gradient (200-2700 m) in the Isère Department (French Alps). A total of 35,724 butterfly observations gathered in summer (May-September) between 1995 and 2015 were analyzed. The number of estimated species per 100-m elevational band was fitted to the...

Water resources and land use are closely linked with each other and with regional climate, assembling a very complex system. The understanding of the interconnecting relations involved in this system is an essential step for elaborating public policies that can effectively lead to the sustainable use of water resources. In this study, an integrated modelling framework was assembled in order to ...

Face clustering is a task to partition facial images into disjoint clusters. In this paper, we investigate a specific problem of face clustering in videos. Unlike traditional face clustering problem with a given collection of images from multiple sources, our task deals with set of face tracks with information about frame ID. Thus, we can exploit two kinds of prior knowledge about the temporal ...

Gameplay in real-time strategy games seems somehow to be confined to a de facto standard where economical micromanagement is equally important as combat strategy, if not more important. To enable stronger combat-oriented gameplay without sacrificing other key aspects of the genre, we propose an automated system for scheduling unit training, which we believe may allow the exploration of new para...

The options for increasing food production by at least 70% over the next four decades so as to keep pace with a rapidly increasing human population are bedeviled by erratic climatic conditions, depleted arable lands, dwindling water resources and by the significant environmental and health costs for increasing the use of agrochemicals. Enhanced productivities through “smart” crop varieties that...

The combined total annual yield of six major crops (maize, rice, wheat, cassava, soybean, and potato; Solanum tuberosum L.) amounts to 3.1 billion tons. In recent years, staple crops have begun to be used as substitutes for fossil fuel and feedstocks. The diversion of crop products to fuels and industrial feedstocks has become a concern in many countries because of competition for arable lands ...

Approximately 30% of the world's total land area and over 50% of the world's potential arable lands are acidic. Furthermore, the acidity of the soils is gradually increasing as a result of the environmental problems including some farming practices and acid rain. At mildly acidic or neutral soils, aluminium (Al) occurs primarily as insoluble deposits and is essentially biologically inactive. Ho...

Manure treatment has become an issue of concern in many farms in order to adequate their productions to the requirements of available arable lands. Such processing should be considered in the framework of a nutrient management planning (NMP) designed under local conditionals and considering cultivable soils as the end-users. In this context, decision on individual or collective scale should not...