Conversely, the growth of the aggregates of MoO3 and Cu2 NPs observed in the presence of RE correlated with higher dissolution rates and may reflect stronger attractive forces between NPs even in the presence of the organic ligands, or possible bridging between organic molecules.Nevertheless, the change in size distributions observed with spICP-MS are in line with the Zetasizer observations. Higher dissolution and nonaggregation of Cu-based NP have been reported for wheat plants in saturated paste extracts,as well as in wheat RE.In both studies, the influence of electrolytes 2) and organic matter content , contributed to the dissolution and nonaggregation of Cu based NPs. This is also in line with previous finding that support that organic matter in soil solution highly correlated with dissolved Cu.Since in our experiment the Cu-based NPs were in contact with low concentration of both electrolyte and organic acids, that can also explain the formation of aggregates and low dissolution rate. While the characterization of NPs in DI water is useful for understanding their general behavior, it can lead to significant misconceptions of how the NPs will actually behave in realistic conditions. Here we demonstrated that the surface charge, aggregation state, size distribution, and amount of metal ion release differed considerably depending on the composition of the aqueous medium into which the NPs are placed. In DI water, all the NPs aggregated, and that influenced the size distribution and the release of metal ions. However,equipment for vertical farming when placed in RE or soil leachate, the aggregation behavior differed substantially from that in DI water, with considerable reversal and disaggregation of all NPs in soil leachate and the CeO2 and Mn3O4 NPs in RE.

This was further confirmed by spICP-MS,which demonstrated the change in particle size distribution, even after just a few hours of exposure of the CeO2 and Mn3O4 NPs to soybean RE. While the rate of release of metal ions in different media did not vary as much for some NPs , it was very important for Cu2NPs, which would result in lower concentrations of ionic or complexed Cu in RE and soil leachate. Therefore, if the dissolution behavior in DI water was used to estimate the exposure concentration of the metal ion in a soil or hydroponic experiment, it could lead to a substantial error. These results highlight the importance of characterizing the NPs in the exposure medium to be used in subsequent plant exposure experiments, as well as for the design of better delivery mechanisms for the NPs or the active ingredients that they will release. Characterization should include extensive analyses of the main components of an agricultural setting, such as soil and exudates, in terms of the electrolytes, organic matter concentration, identification of main organic molecules in organic matter, pH, and soil cation exchange capacity. A better understanding of the role these factors play will enhance the effectiveness of NP delivery systems at the root-soil interface.Patents have operated as an invisible landscape-of-power in the built environment since the Italian Renaissance, when the world’s first patent was issued to the eminent architect Filippo Brunelleschi in 1421 for a “machine or ship” and method of transporting materials for his Duomo of Florence, establishing seminal legal and architectural precedents.Brunelleschi’s patent protected his invention of a new machine and method for transporting heavy loads by water, solving one of three major engineering problems associated with his novel dome construction processes.Although the patent’s legalese and the dome’s structure operated independently on discrete legal and structural principles, they formed together a highly interdependent and deterministic mechanism governing the form of the built environment. In this manner, the patent—western civilization’s oldest legal and institutional mechanism for incentivized innovation—has long mirrored, defined, and shaped the built environment, yet failed to represent it eidetically in a way that is commonly recalled.

In his book The New Architecture and the Bauhaus , the modernist architect and theorist Walter Gropius foretold the transformation of architecture and design through industrial process, and, true to form, he and his business partner Konrad Wachsmann secured a U.S. Patent for a “Prefabricated Building System” in 1942, applying Bauhaus principles to contemporary housing problems.Just a few years earlier, in 1938, Stanley Hart White, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, unified new steel structural principles with advances in hydroponic technology to create a vertical garden model called the “Vegetation Bearing Architectonic Structure and System.” Correlating modern landscape theory to U.S. Patent claims, White’s invention was a truly modern accomplishment in the context of academic Beaux Arts.This coevolution of patent development and the built environment can also be traced through other complex infrastructural and natural systems, such as rivers, coasts, cities, buildings, and designed landscapes.A patent is, in essence, a representation of a specific invention. U.S. patents have been accompanied by models, drawings, and textual descriptions since the Patent Act of 1790, which established American patent law and pertinent representational standards.The Patent Act states that grantees shall deliver to the Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and Attorney General “a specification in writing, containing a description, accompanied with drafts or models, and explanations and models of the thing or things, by him or them invented or discovered.” If the invention was found to be new and valuable by the cabinet secretaries and the Attorney General, the patent was granted and signed, bearing ultimately the “teste” of the President himself. In that manner, the government and inventors coevolved the technological substrate of “the arts” towards unforeseen ends.

Patent law places no restriction on what may be invented or what might be deemed useful or valuable among the arts, opening up a world of possibilities limited only by the ingenuity of the citizenry and the representational standards of the patent, which today is global, territorial, nanoscale, atmospheric, and even astronomical in reach . Most patents related to landscapes, rivers, cities, regions, coastlines, and other complex environmental systems are intentionally site-less, distancing intellectual property claims from any specific locations. Patents of this sort typically use diagrammatic or typological drawings to disclose inventions and protect the widest possible scope of intellectual property claims while maintaining ambiguity as to where the patent might be applied . Those drawings cover a range of design thinking and processes— describing workflows, evaluative methods, detailed material configurations, gadgets of one kind or another, and a dizzying array of objects—ultimately representing the environment as a series of typological conditions, tectonic assemblages, data sets, and operations often contingent on specific spatial or physical conditions yet, in essence, without specific sites. The siteless quality of environmental patent documents does not diminish their potential impact on large-scale complex systems. Consider, for example, the design and construction of Eads’ Jetties at the South Pass of the Mississippi River, near Fort Jackson, a patented system realized between 1875 and 1879 and credited with saving the Port of New Orleans by sustaining commercial activities along the Mississippi . James Buchannan Eads and his business partner James Andrews prototyped and tested their jetty system at full scale for four years before receiving their fee for the maintenance of a navigable channel at the mouth of the Mississippi,vertical farming systems radically altering the fluvial geomorphology and ecology at the Head of Passes.The patent granted to Eads and Andrews was designed to suit the unique conditions at the Heads of Passes, yet the document itself makes no mention of this specific location, referencing only environmental conditions common to deltaic landscapes and a method of construction. We know of the patent’s use through Eads’ petitions to Congress and detailed histories of the jetties, but the patent itself makes no reference to a known geographical location. Eads’ patent may be siteless, but its imprint on a specific landscape is bound to the fabric of culture and remains legible today in the morphology of the Mississippi River.The anomaly of site-specificity in patents weaves a distinct narrative through geographies of the American landscape dating back to the earliest days of the Patent Office. In this nascent area of environmental innovation studies, I propose Thomas Paine as the first person to submit site-specific works to the patent office, though we may never know for sure about that precedence as most of the earliest American patents were destroyed in a fire in 1836.

Paine never built a steel bridge in America, contrary to what was suggested in correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. He did, however, propose bridges in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania a short time after his book Common Sense helped catalyze the American Revolution. Models of Paine’s designs for bridges spanning the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers were exhibited in France and England prior to being sent to the U.S. Patent Office for dissemination and safekeeping, establishing the earliest known precedent for site-specific works curated by the patent office.Although the models mentioned in Paine’s writings were probably destroyed in one of several conflagrations of the Patent Office, we can reflect on the confounding intersection of intellectual property and place, or real property, and trace a lineage to the environmental challenges of today. Paine’s submission of bridge models to the U.S. Patent Office was not an isolated instance of site specificity within the annals of patent history. In fact, many site-specific works have been premised on intellectual property of one sort or another. These proposals range in scale and scope from design patents that protect the form and appearance of specific buildings, such as architect Wallace Harrison’s patent for models of the Trylon and Perisphere and Apple Inc.’s patent for its store on Fifth Avenue in New York City , to utility patents for systems that aim to reconfigure the function and performance of cities, regions, and ecosystems. Speaking generally, the siteless quality of patents has obscured an intimate relationship between known places and specific technologies. One may easily miss the relationship between patent and place when surveying millions of documents, which at first glance appear as a treasure trove of things—gadgets, machines, and objects—but not of the environment as a whole, a place, or any known geography. Cartographic forms of representation within patent documents quickly reorient the mind to the potential intersections of intellectual property and environment through the familiar imagery of maps . Although patent cartographies usually lack the scale and graticule of conventional mapping, known locations are sometimes clearly demarcated with labels and identifiable boundaries. Not only can those places be recalled, known, or visited in the real world; they are also sites of technological innovation. As representations, the maps range in specificity from systems diagrams that situate an invention within a known location to detailed bathymetries that show the resultant geomorphology of a specific intervention. Examples include proposals for the removal of ice from New York Harbor and the East River, a passive dredge system for Galveston Bay, a hydroelectric plant for Niagara Falls that preserves scenery and produces power, and even current infrastructure/ecology hybrids designed to reinforce and cultivate mangrove ecosystems in Florida and around the world.What is the relationship between patent cartographies and known geographical locations? Site specificity within patents raises important questions about the extents and jurisdiction of patent law, in addition to challenging commonly accepted models for innovation in complex environmental systems. Take, for example, the life work of Lewis M. Haupt , a professor of civil engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and, before that, a patent examiner at the USPTO.Haupt’s theories on the “Physical Phenomena of Harbor Entrances” earned him a Magellanic Premium award from the American Philosophical Society in 1887, and, on the same day that he accepted that award, he was granted a U.S. Patent for a “Dike or Breakwater,” which linked his design theories to known environmental conditions and specific locations.Following in the footsteps of Eads and others advancing American infrastructure through public/private partnerships, the “Reaction Breakwater,” as Haupt’s invention was popularly known, was to be prototyped at Aransas Pass, Texas, by the Reaction Breakwater Company using the specification of his patent . After a revision to the contract, however, the Federal Government ultimately awarded the bid for construction to another company, which intended to build the breakwater per Haupt’s specifications. During this process, Haupt’s patent was assigned to the U.S.