BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
G. J. S. Govett and M. H. Govett (eds.). World Mineral Supplies: Assessment and Perspectives
Grossling, B., Window on Oil - A Survey of World Petroleum Resources , Financial Times Limited, London
V. I. Visoskiy, N. A. Kalinin, Yr. Ya. Kuznetsov, M. Sh. Modilevskiy (eds.), Oil and Gas Resources in Capitalistic and Developing countries     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article:
Water Chlorination: Environmental Impact and Health Effects, R. L. Jolley, et al. (Editors).
Sewerage and Sewage Treatment, L. Escritt (Edited and Revised by W. D. Haworth)
Stabilisation, Disinfection and Odour Control in Sewage Sludge Treatment (An Annotated Bibliography Covering the Period 1950–1983), A. M. Bruce and E. S. Connor (Editors).
The New Nationalism and the Use of Common Spaces, Jonathan I. Charney (Editor).
Principles of Water Quality, Thomas D. Waite.
A Modular Three-Dimensional Finite-Difference Groundwater Flow Model, Michael G. McDonald and Arlen W. Harbaugh.
Renewable Resources Management: Applications of Remote Sensing, P. A. Murtha and R. A. Harding (Editors).
Groundwater Transport: Handbook of Mathematical Models, J. Javendal, C. Doughty and C. F. Tsang.
Natural Resources and the Environment, Paul R. Portney (Editor).
Coping With Droughts, V. Yevjevich, L. da Cunha (Editor).
A Citizen's Guide to River Conservation, R. Diamant, J. G. Eugster and C. J. Duerksen.     

Other Books And Publications Received

Integrated Transboundary Water Management in Theory and Practice, G.D. Gooch and P. Stalnacke (Editors)
Water Gas Treatment for Resource Recovery, P.N.L. Lens et al.
Water Resources in Jordan: Evolving Policies for Development, the Environment, and Conflict Resolution, M.J. Haddadin (Editor).
Groundwater Hydraulics and Pollutant Transport , R.J. Charbeneau.     

Influence of static magnetic fields on nerve regeneration in vitro

Our research involves determining how non-invasive electric and magnetic fields influence neuronal growth in vitro. In previous studies we have shown that pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) as well as direct current (DC) alone stimulate neurite outgrowth from dorsal root ganglion explants [Sisken et al. 1984; Sisken et al. (Restor Neurol Neurosci 1:303–309, 1990); Greenebaum et al. (Bioelectromagnetics 17:293–302, 1996)]. A maximum response was obtained when nerve growth factor (NGF) was also present in the medium. The results of our experiments using static magnetic fields of different strengths are presented below and indicate that fields of high magnetic strength (450–900 gauss) with added NGF stimulate neurite outgrowth comparable to the response obtained with PEMF plus NGF.     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Legal reference and source book ENERGY AND RESOURCES LAW '92: Proceedings of the International Bar Association's Section on Energy and Natural Resources Law's 10th Advanced Seminar on Petroleum, Minerals, Energy and Resources Law held in Washington DC: Graham and Trotman Diverse and international RENEWABLE ENERGY: Technology and the Environment, Proceedings of the 2nd World Renewable Energy Congress, Reading, UK, 13-18 September 1992: A.A.M. Sayigh A stimulating read WATER RESOURCES IN THE ARID REALM: Clive Agnew and Ewan Anderson Whatever happened to PV? SOLAR PUMPING: An Introduction and Update on the Technology, Performance, Costs and Economics: Roy Barlow, Bernard McNelis and Anthony Derrick Renewable energy for rural development MICRO-HYDRO DESIGN MANUAL: A Guide to Small-Scale Water Power Schemes: Adam Harvey et al Incentives for good behaviour ECONOMIC POLICY TOWARDS THE ENVIRONMENT: Dieter Helm     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article:
Leachate from Hazardous Wastes Sites, P. N. Cheremisinoff and K. A. Gigliello.
Water Quality: Characteristics, Modeling, Modification, G. Tchobanoglous and E. D. Schroeder.
Contaminant Removal from Public Water Systems, Daniel C. Houck, et al
Electroplating Wastewater Pollution Control Technology: Pollution Technology Review 115, George C. Cushnie, Jr.
Groundwater Management: The Use of Numerical Models, Paul van der Heijde, et al.
Interest Group Interaction and Groundwater Policy Formation in the Southwest, Zachery A. Smith.
Special Water Districts: Challenge for the Future, James N. Corbridge, Jr. (Editor)
Optimum Use of Water Resources, N. A. de Ridder and A. Erez.
Principles of Soil Conservation and Water Management, H. R. Arakeri and R. Donahue.
Facets of Hydrology II, John C. Rodda (Editor)
Water Quality and Its Control, James C. Lamb.
Groundwater Treatment Technology, Evan K. Nyer.
Ground Water in Hard Rocks, I. Larsson (Chairman) et al.
Treatise on Environmental Law, F. P. Grad.
Open-Channel Hydraulics, Richard H. French.
Cypress Swamps, K. C. Ewel and H. T. Odum     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this articles:
Environmental Quality and Water Development , edited by Charles R. Goldman, James McEvoy, Ill, and Peter J. Rickerson.
Nutrients in Natural Waters , edited by Herbert E. Allen and James R. Kranier.
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 4 , edited by Richard F. Johnson, et al.
Water Quality: Management and Pollution Control Problems, Progress in Water Technology , Vol. 3, edited by S. H. Jenkins.
Sedimentary Structures of Ephemeral Streams , by M. Dane Picard and Lee R. High, Jr.     

九华山旅游竞争力提升研究

九华山是我国以佛教为主要特色兼有自然山岳风光的国家级重点风景名胜区。近几年来,九华山旅游业发展迅速,在资源、生态、区位和宗教旅游方面具有一定的旅游竞争优势,但在市场营销、旅游形象、基础设施、服务质量、景区景点开发等方面仍存在不少问题。要提升九华山旅游竞争力,就必须打造品牌形象、提高知名度、改善基础设施、加强人才培养、创新旅游项目和整合旅游资源等。     

Bioremediation of soils contaminated with explosives

The large-scale industrial production and processing of munitions such as 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) over the past 100 years led to the disposal of wastes containing explosives and nitrated organic by-products into the environment. In the US, the Army alone has estimated that over 1.2 million tons of soil have been contaminated with explosives, and the impact of explosives contamination in other countries is of similar magnitude. In recent years, growing concern about the health and ecological threats posed by man-made chemicals have led to studies of the toxicology of explosives, which have identified toxic and mutagenic effects of the common military explosives and their transformation products (Bruns-Nagel et al., 1999a; Fuchs et al., 2001; Homma-Takeda et al., 2002; Honeycutt et al., 1996; Rosenblatt et al., 1991; Spanggord et al., 1982; Tan et al., 1992 and Won et al., 1976). Because the cleanup of areas contaminated by explosives is now mandated because of public health concerns, considerable effort has been invested in finding economical remediation technologies. Biological treatment processes are often considered, since these are usually the least expensive means of destroying organic pollution. This review examines the most important groups of chemicals that must be treated at sites contaminated by explosives processing, the chemical and biological transformations they undergo, and commercial processes developed to exploit these transformations for treatment of contaminated soil. We critically examine about 150 papers on the topic, including approximately 60 published within the past 5 years.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Economics in Zimbabwe : DEVELOPMENT DYNAMICS: THEORIES AND LESSONS FROM ZIMBABWE by Mthuli Ncube
US minerals and metals : COMPETITIVENESS OF THE US MINERALS AND METALS INDUSTRY Report by the National Research Council
Economic value of natural resources : ECONOMIC VALUATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: ISSUES, THEORY AND APPLICATIONS edited by Rebecca L. Johnson
Global climate protection : GREENHOUSE WARMING: NEGOTIATING A GLOBAL REGIME by Jessica T. Mathews et al     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Fuelwood problems and solutions : THE FUELWOOD TRAP: A STUDY OF THE SADCC REGION by Barry Munslow, Yemi Katarere, Adriaan Ferf and Phil O'Keefe
Money markets : INTERNATIONAL BANKING: Innovations and New Policies edited by Zuhayr Mikdashi
Metal pricing policies : PRICING OF METALS by Margaret E. Slade
CERI's oil view : STABILITY WITHIN UNCERTAINTY: Evolution of the World Oil Market by Anthony E. Reinsert et al     

Open workshops as sites of innovative socio-economic practices: approaching urban post-growth by assemblage theory

ABSTRACT

Current debates on knowledge-based and creative locational development have come to deal with small urban places of novelty that formerly remained unnoticed. A plethora of new forms of producing and working recently emerged in unplanned and uncoordinated ways, bearing odd names such as FabLabs, Open Worklabs, RealLabs, Open Design Cities, Techshops, Repair Cafés, and more (Smith, A., M. Fressoli, D. Abrol, E. Arond, and A. Ely. 2017. Grassroots Innovation Movements. London: Routledge). Political initiatives have been taken by surprise; at the same time, standard epistemic tools of the social sciences and economics have been rendered unfit. More concise analytical reconstructions are needed to adequately capture the variety and complexity of these “labs”, their heterogeneous causation, their contingent proceedings, their surplus of latency, their peculiar power relations and their local embeddings. Urban social contexts have a strong triggering function as they help to re-configure older, and create new, combinations of heterogeneous social and economic agency. Meanwhile strong elements of grassroots innovation (Smith et al. 2017) have informed the formation of various models of alternative work and production. Taking the phenotype of open workshops as a revealing example, we take assemblage theory to describe the constitutive features of these new types of self-organised work, and the associated places of innovation. A fresh gaze on the complexity and open-endedness of socio-material formations may help to better understand the nature of emerging post-growth economies.     

A new apparatus to enhance the rate of gas hydrate formation: Application to capture of carbon dioxide

A new apparatus employing a modular, mechanically agitated gas-inducing crystallizer is used to demonstrate the capture of CO₂ via hydrate crystallization. The crystallizer enhances the contact of hydrate forming gases with water and thus the rate of hydrate crystallization increases. Flue gas (CO₂/N₂) and fuel gas (CO₂/H₂) mixtures were used to represent post- and precombustion capture. A comparison between the rates of hydrate formation in different crystallizers is presented by defining a metric called the normalized rate of hydrate formation. The gas uptake and the separation efficiency for the fuel and flue gas mixtures were found to be greater compared to the results obtained in a smaller scale stirred tank reactor (Kumar et al., 2009c, Linga et al., 2008). The gas uptake and CO₂ recovery for flue gas mixture in the presence of THF obtained in this work was higher than that reported in the literature with tetra-n-butyl ammonium bromide and tetra-n-butyl ammonium fluoride (Fan et al., 2009, Li et al., 2009). Although hydrate crystallization is able to capture CO₂, the power required for mechanical agitation was found to be very significant. If the hydrate process is to be used industrially then hydrate crystallization must be carried out without mechanical agitation.     

Book reviews

Making Cities Work: the role of local government in the urban environment. Richard Gilbert, Don Stevenson, Herbert Girardet &; Richard Stren, 1996, London, Earthscan, 203pp. ISBN 1 85383 354 1, £13.95 pbk

Environmental Policy in an International Context, Vols 1–3: Perspectives, Conflicts and Prospects. P. Glasbergen &; A. Blowers (Series Eds) London, Arnold

Rhetoric and Reality in Environmental Policy. M. Wintle &; R. Reeve (Eds), 1994, Aldershot, Avebury Studies in Green Research, 154 pp. ISBN 1 85628 927 3

FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. G. Roberston et al. (Eds) 1996, London, Routledge, ISBN 0415 070139, £40.00 hbk

Environmental Policy with Political Integration: the European Union and the United States. New horizons in environmental economics. John B. Braden, Henk Folmer &; Thomas S. Ulen (Eds), 1996, Cheltenham, Elgar Publishing, 477 pp. ISBN 1 85898 217 0     

Reducing Livestock Effects on Public Lands in the Western United States as the Climate Changes: A Reply to Svejcar et al

Svejcar et al. (Environ Manage, 2014) offered several perspectives regarding Beschta et al. (Environ Manage 51:474–491, 2013)—a publication that addressed the interacting ecological effects of climate change and domestic, wild, and feral ungulates on public lands in the western United States (US)—by largely focusing on three livestock grazing issues: (1) legacy versus current day impacts; (2) grazing as a fire reduction tool; and (3) the complexity of grazing. Regarding these issues, we indicate that (1) legacy effects to western ecosystems were indeed significant and contemporary livestock use on public lands generally maintains or exacerbates many of those effects; (2) livestock grazing has been a major factor affecting fire frequency, fire severity, and ecosystem trajectories in the western US for over a century; and (3) the removal or reduction of grazing impacts in these altered ecosystems is the most effective means of initiating ecological recovery. Svejcar et al. (Environ Manage, 2014) offer no evidence that livestock use is consistent with the timely recovery of grazing-degraded uplands, riparian areas, or stream systems. We thus conclude that public-land ecosystems can best persist or cope with a changing climate by significantly reducing ungulate grazing and related impacts.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews in this Articles:
Design and Planning of Engineering Systems, by Dale D. Meredith et al .
Design of Small Dams, Bureau of Reclamation
Water Science and Technology, by T.H.Y. Tebbutt     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
The Great Lakes Water Wars, Peter Annin.
Water Management in Arid and Semi–Arid Regions, P. Koundouri et al.
Tribal Water Rights: Essays in Contemporary Law, Policy, and Economics, J.E. Thorson, S. Britton, and B.G. Colby (Editors).
The Atlas of Climate Change, K. Dow and T.E. Downing.     

Comment: Investor demand and spot commodity prices

Tilton et al. claim in their article “Investor demand and spot commodity prices” to show that “investor demand can be pushing up a commodity's price even when investor stocks are falling.” In the present comment, it is argued that in both the cases described by Tilton et al., investors are supplying the market, putting physical material into it, rather than adding to demand. Thus, the reasoning by Tilton et al. is not concerned with the phenomenon referred to in the traditional theory, where, in the absence of changes in demand and supply fundamentals, prices rise as a result of increased investor demand for futures contracts.     

Reply: Investor demand and spot commodity prices

In a recent article (Tilton, Humphreys, and Radetzki, 2011), Tilton et al. argue that even when investor stocks are declining an increase in investor demand can cause a commodity's price to rise. They contend that this conclusion, which is based on two hypothetical examples, is both contrary to conventional wisdom and counter-intuitive. In my comment on the article (Olle Östensson, 2011), I challenged this finding. In a reply to my article, Tilton et al. maintain that their original finding is valid: investor demand can be driving commodity prices higher even when stocks are falling. In my present reply, I contend that their argument with respect to the first example confuses the actions of a minority of investors with those of all investors and is well accommodated within the framework of traditional theory. I further argue that their second example rests on an assumption regarding investor behavior that is unproven and that in any case falls outside the framework of analysis of futures markets.     

杭州市环保系统人才发展现状与对策

对杭州市环保系统的人才总量、学历结构、专业结构、职称结构和年龄结构等方面作了较详细的分析;针对杭州市环保系统存在的人才总量不足、结构分布不合理和高层次人才匮乏等问题,提出了引进高层次人才、加强教育培训、壮大基层队伍等对策。