Climate-smart irrigation and responsible innovation in South Asia: A systematic mapping.

This review systematically traces the context and evolution of climate-smart irrigation (CSI) in four South Asian countries-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. CSI technologies and practices strive to address two main objectives: (1) sustainably enhance agricultural/water productivity and rural farm incomes to build community and farm-level resilience to climate change and (2) enable adaptation/mitigation to climate change across different scales through irrigation technologies and water resources management. These innovations also pose various social and environmental challenges. This review extracts findings from existing literature related to potential societal and environmental benefits and risks associated with CSI and outlines opportunities for responsible innovation to elaborate robust and democratic roles of CSI technology and engender equitable technological change. We identify three drivers (climate variability and GHG mitigation, cost savings and support structure, and water conservation and management) and five barriers (financial support, high initial cost, inadequate practice-based research, lack of knowledge and/or access, and structures of power).

Controlled trial evaluation of exposure duration to negative air ions for the treatment of seasonal affective disorder.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of 30 or 60min of daily exposure to high-density or to zero-density (placebo condition) negative air ions over 18 days on the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in 40 participants under controlled laboratory conditions. Exposure to high-density negative air ions was superior to zero-density negative air ions in alleviating depression and the atypical symptoms of SAD. Also, more subjects in the high-density negative air ions groups met two different clinical response criteria than did those in the zero-density groups. Within the high density treatment group, both the short and long daily exposure reduced SAD symptoms. Exposure to negative air ions produced no negative side effects, and no ozone was produced by the ion generators. In both the high-density negative air ions and zero-density negative air ions groups, a significant placebo effect was found for most clinical measures. Finally, for the high-density negative air ion groups, subjects with a morningness chronotype responded better to treatment with high-density negative air ions than did those with an eveningness chronotype.