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With increasing evidence of global warming, the pressure is building to limit greenhouse gas emission from many human activities including dairy production systems. In this context, the present study was conducted to estimate the carbon footprint (CF) of cattle milk produced in the Hisar district of Haryana, India. The data about feeding practices, crops grown, manure management systems, etc. was collected through personal interviews with cattle-rearing rural male farmers chosen through multistep random sampling. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was adopted to estimate carbon footprint, with the system boundary being “Cradle to farm gate.” The latest methodologies prescribed by the IPCC were used to estimate GHG emissions using the tier-2 approach. The current study has presented a detailed and recent GHG inventory from smallholder cattle farms at the village level. On the basis of the inventory analysis, a simplified life cycle-based analysis is used in order to quantify the carbon footprint of fat- and protein-corrected milk (FPCM). The carbon footprint of cattle milk was estimated at 2.13 kg CO2-eq/kilogram FPCM. Enteric fermentation was the most potent contributor to GHG, contributing around 35.5% of the total emissions, followed by manure management (13.8%) and soil management (8.2%). Further studies to accurately estimate carbon footprint are advocated besides suggesting ways to reduce GHG emissions and using efficient production technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widely used stainless steels and their deformed variants are anticorrosive in ambient conditions due to passivation layers composed of chromium oxides. Conventionally, corrosion and erosion of the steels are attributed to the breakdown of such layers but seldomly to the origin that depends on surface heterogeneity at the microscopic level. In this work, the nanometer-scaled chemical heterogeneity at the surface unveiled via spectro-microscopy and chemometric analysis unexpectedly dominates the breakdown and corrosion behavior of the cold-rolled Ce-modified 2507 super-duplex stainless steels (SDSS) over its hot-deformed counterpart. Though relatively uniformly covered by a native Cr2O3 layer revealed by X-ray photoemission electron microscopy, the cold-rolled SDSS behaved poorly in passivity because of locally distributed Fe3+ rich nano-islands over the Fe/Cr oxide layer. This atomic-level knowledge provides a deep understanding of corrosion of stainless steel and is expected to benefit corrosion controls of similar high-alloyed metals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intriguing spherical conformation of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) embedded with CdS nanocrystals in CdS-PVP nanocomposites grown via facile chemical bath deposition is probed using simultaneous Raman and AFM mapping. Observance of isolated or coagulated PVP spheres embedded with CdS nanocrystals at room temperature (RT) due to polymer collapse or clouding, respectively, is attributed to relative variation in Cd+/PVP concentration in the bath. With an additional external stimulus of temperature (70 °C) and subsequent growth at RT in the same chemical bath, observed only isolated and dimer PVP spheres are ascribed to opening (high temperature) and reformation (RT) of PVP spheres with dominating collapse mechanism of polymer. Formation of dimer PVP sphere due to lock and key binding mechanism is facilitated by the temperature. Transformation of RT grown mixed-phase structure to purely hexagonal phase further confirming the change in conformation of CdS-PVP nanocomposites on the application of an external stimulus. Stronger resonance Raman scattering for CdS nanocrystals embedded in the isolated PVP spheres is attributed to strain-related band gap tuning. The understanding developed of the application of the external stimulus leading to change in polymer conformation can be gainfully used in macromolecular actuators and biomedical field as delivery systems. Application of an external stimulus of temperature and subsequent growth at room temperature led to formation of only isolated and dimer PVP spheres embedded with CdS nanocrystals, wherein formation of dimer PVP spheres happen due to lock and key binding mechanism between two isolated PVP spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]