Isaac (Sakis) A. Meir, Desert Architecture & Urban Planning, Dept. Structural Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, BGU

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On people, buildings and the energy between them: Are buildings killing us?

 

People in industrialized countries spend over 90% of their lives indoors. Outdoors is not our natural environment anymore as we have evolved into building animals. Thus the Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) affects our comfort (thermal, visual, psychological), our wellbeing, our health, our productivity, achievements, and happiness. Yet most of our buildings fail to provide for any of these needs. On the contrary, they harm us in many different ways. They are poorly designed and detailed and cause us to use auxiliary energy to condition them, even in temperate climates, which, in turn, affects negatively the outdoors, too. They are built and finished with materials emitting harmful gases (off gassing), particles, and radiation. They are poorly ventilated and trap indoor and outdoor pollutants, pathogens and allergens, and induce fungal growth. This talk will bring forth data from a large number of Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) studies, surveys and research projects from Israel and abroad, will illustrate the above claims and propose some elementary remedies which architects and engineers, as well as any building user, should know, yet most of us ignore.

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Shlomit Lir, Ph.D., Ben Gurion Research Institute for the study of Israel & Zionism, Midreshet Ben Gurion; Shusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

 

The Vicious Circle – How Wikipedia as a Seemingly Open-to-all Website Reproduces Women's Exclusion

 

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia where individuals voluntarily participate through mechanisms of self-governance. From its starting days, the website carried an empowering ethos as a user-generated content website, based on collaborative work, which produces a vast knowledge base. However, despite this ethos, the project suffers from clear gender-bias. The fact that there is little change through the years despite various attempts to narrow the gender-gap enhances the importance in asking the question of how can an open to all online architecture with no official gatekeepers reproduce an offline phenomenon of women’s exclusion. This research examines why women who initially declared they are interested in editing in Wikipedia eventually decide not to do so, and why women who started to edit almost conclusively stopped after a short while.

 

Based on a mixed evaluation method and two rounds of interviews, the data analysis reveals two main categories: pre-editing barriers that consists of: negative reputation, lack of recognition, anonymity, and fear of being erased, and post-editing barriers that consists of: experiences of rejection, sense of alienation, lack of time and of profit, and a limiting approach to knowledge. The research exposes “a vicious circle” that consists of five layers, contributing alone and together to the exclusion in the platform: notorious reputation, fear, anonymity, alienation, and rejection. The research suggests that in order for more women to join Wikipedia there is a need of “a virtuous circle” that consists of anonymity, connection to Social Media, inclusionist policy, soft deletion, and red flagging harassments. 

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Dr. Brice Auvet, Haifa

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Facing water modernities in Crau, France: the trajectory of water infrastructures

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Hydraulic infrastructures are not a purely physical element taming the materiality of water. They are socially produced and their uses are transformed within a fabric of socio-spatial relationships pieced together by various tangible elements. I will discuss history and sociology of science and technology with the analysis of power exercise to study concrete processes of modernization on hydraulic infrastructures. This is based on archival work, interviews, and observations conducted in Crau, in the south of France, between 2013 and 2017. Drawing on historical and contemporary sources makes it possible to identify the continuities and discontinuities in the manners to govern water over the last two centuries. Crau is usually described as an arid plain, conquered by irrigation deviating water from the Durance since 1554. In the 1970s, hydraulic infrastructures were built to generate an abundance of water for the post-war reconstruction of France by replacing “complex” and “obsolete” water systems. These same infrastructures are now at the center of management apparatuses tackling water scarcity. Most actors have fueled linear historiography of progress. However, the long term study of specific techno-scientific knowledge and methods to govern water highlight the heterogeneous network of actors and objects that interact to modernize water. By exploring the transformation and re-appropriation of hydraulic infrastructure, I analyze how the different manners to modernize water redefined knowledge, infrastructures, roles and practices towards the mastership of water in Crau from a concrete perspective.

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Prof. Gideon Oron, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sde-Boker

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Nano-Technology for Wastewater Management: Irrigation with Reclaimed Effluent

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Nanotechnology applications can be used for filtering low-quality waters, allowing under given conditions, the removal of salts and other micropollutants from these waters. A long-term field experiment, implementing nanotechnology in the form of UltraFiltration (UF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) for salt removal from treated wastewater, was conducted with secondary effluents, aiming to prove the sustainability of agricultural production using irrigation with treated wastewater. Six outdoor field treatments, each under four replications, were conducted for examining the salt accumulation effects on the soil and the crops. The field experiments proved that crop development is correlated with the water quality as achieved from the wastewater filtration capability of the hybrid nanotechnology system. The key goal was to maintain sustainable food production, despite the low quality of the waters. Of the six treatment methods tested, irrigation with RO-treated effluent produced the best results in terms of its effect on soil salinity and crop yield. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that this process is not only costly, but it also removes all organic matter content from the irrigation water, requiring the addition of fertilizers to the effluent.

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Gabriella Möller, Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Tamar Keasar, Department of Biology and Environment, University of Haifa; Michal Segoli, Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 

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Dominant parasitoids respond differently to weed management practices in vineyards in Israel

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Maintaining natural vegetation within crop fields to support natural enemies is one strategy of conservation biological control. Natural vegetation may provide shelter and alternative prey for natural enemies, increasing their abundance and enhancing pest control. Farming practices aimed to manage non-crop vegetation may thus indirectly affect natural enemies. Our study compared the effects of two such practices on the parasitoid communities in vineyards in northern Israel.

 

We selected vineyards of similar age, grape variety, and insecticide application, but with different weed management (“herbicide”, repeatedly spraying herbicide throughout the vineyard vs. “ground cover,” trimming the herbaceous vegetation that grows between the vine rows after the flowering season). We suction-sampled arthropods and compared parasitoid abundance and diversity between management during the 2016-2017 grape-growing seasons.

 

We collected 24,985 arthropods, 2943 of which were parasitoids. The interaction between management and season significantly affected the parasitoids’ total abundance (p<0.001); parasitoids were more abundant in the “ground cover” plots before trimming but became more abundant in the “herbicide” plots towards the end of the season. Likely, the different responses of the dominant parasitoids to management explain this pattern; Lymaenon litoralis, an early- season leafhopper parasitoid was more abundant in “ground cover” plots, while the late-season Lepidoptera parasitoid Telenomus sp. was more abundant in the “herbicide” plots. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of the ground cover management on parasitoid abundance is highly species-specific, thus providing partial evidence of its beneficial effects on parasitoid wasps in Israeli vineyards. This knowledge can contribute to improving management decisions in vineyards.

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Daniella Möller, Marco Ferrante, and Michal Segoli, Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

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The Impact of terrestrial oil pollution on arthropods associated with Acacia trees in Evrona Nature Reserve, Israel

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Humanity is highly dependent on oil as energy supply, and the increasing demand results in increasing risks of oil pollution. Most terrestrial oil spills occur in deserts, which may take centuries to recover from anthropogenic disturbances without restoration measures. Yet, the impacts of oil pollution on deserts are rarely studied.

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We had the unique opportunity to evaluate the short and long-term effects of oil pollution in Evrona Nature Reserve, where two oil spills occurred in 1975 and 2014. We suction-sampled arthropods from Acacia trees in one site affected by the 1975 spill and two sites affected by the 2014 spill (“1975”, “North-2014”, and “South-2014” sites). Parasitoid wasps, a group that has been used as a bioindicator of arthropod diversity, were identified to species/morphospecies, and their abundance and community composition were compared between oil-polluted and non-polluted trees.

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Overall, we found no significant differences between parasitoid community composition in oil-polluted vs. non-polluted trees. Arthropod and parasitoid abundances in the North-2014 site did not differ during 2016 or 2017. In the South-2014 site, non-polluted trees had significantly higher abundances than oil-polluted trees in 2016, but the difference was no longer significant in 2017. In the 1975 site, abundances were higher in oil-polluted trees during 2016 and 2017, but significantly only in the latter. Our results showed that oil pollution can have strong, negative short-term effects on arthropod and parasitoid abundances, but that the community may already recover 3 years after the oil spill.

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Anton Fennec, Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani center. Postharvest and food sciences, Department of postharvest science. Carmit Ziv laboratory.

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Food loss and fungal tolerance to extreme environments

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Increasing human population size along with its corresponding higher demands for resources and activities related to climate change creates many challenges for society. Food insecurity is one of these challenges and a cause for concern. However, from the process of production to eventual consumption, over 30% of food is lost with over 24% of the food loss occurring during post-harvest stages. The most efficient method for food preservation is cold storage, yet despite its efficiency, some microorganisms are cold tolerant and still cause food spoilage. Furthermore, the extensive use of cold storage introduces a new microclimate element for microorganisms. Alternaria sp. is a well-known mold that causes great agricultural damage and also poses a human health hazard. Although there are many studies regarding the role of Alternaria as an agricultural pest and as an allergen, one of its key features is often overlooked: it’s ability to survive in extreme environments. Alternaria is found in highly variable environments, ranging from the Antarctic permafrost to tropical regions. In nature, Alternaria grows very slowly and encounters competition by other microorganisms. With the extensive use of cold storage, Alternaria harbors an advantage over cold-sensitive microorganisms. Under cold conditions, this mold is able to grow and infect fresh fruits and vegetables while producing mycotoxins. Thus, the best solution for food preservation also brings out some of nature’s more interesting adaptations. The mechanism that allows Alternaria to grow in such variable conditions is not completely clear. Thus, understanding the mechanisms that allow fungi to grow in such extreme variability in environments may help develop new approaches to minimize food loss.

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Yonas Zeslase Belete, Department of Desalination and Water Treatment, Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

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Characterization and utilization of hydrothermal carbonization aqueous phase as a nutrient source for microalgal growth

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Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a thermochemical conversion technique which is becoming a convenient method to convert wet-biomass into a carbon-enriched solid (hydrochar) and aqueous phase. The aqueous phase produced during HTC is typically considered an environmental burden. Here we show that this complex phase can be an alternative nutrient source for microalgal cultivation, which in turn treats this phase to a level that enables its discharge or reuse. The hydrochar and aqueous phase were optimized in terms of char energy and nutrient concentration, respectively. Then the aqueous phase was used as a nutrient solution for microalgal growth. High growth rates for Coelastrella sp. and Chlorella sp., similar to control growth rates were observed under standardized indoor conditions. The nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were reduced by >90% and the dissolved organic carbon by 80% after 6 days of cultivation, resulting in water suitable for reuse or disposal. This study supports the high potential of microalgae in a circular bio-economy to valorize wet bio-waste streams from various treatment methods.

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