生态城市的基本理念与规划原理和方法

生态城市是当今国内外众多城市发展的新追求,而以何理念和规划方式促进其健康发展是亟待研究和解决的重要问题。本文从系统学角度探讨了生态城市的基本理念与目标要求,提出了生态城市建设规划所须遵循的基本原理;利用系统生态学方法论,构建了生态城市建设规划模拟模型;进而,形成了生态城市建设规划的内容、过程和方法综合集成体系,较好地解决了生态城市或区域综合协同发展的科学规划问题。     

Resilience as Discourse

Resilience as a frame is increasingly appearing in grant funding, news stories, academic journals, and organization missions. Across these sites, resilience is positioned as an ability to cope, characterized by bouncing back, regaining control, and reducing vulnerability to change. How did resilience come to be understood in these terms? What are the problems with resilience's frames and the practices that produce them? How might we become resilient differently? Using a Foucaultian archaeology, I examine sites and practices that produce resilience as discourse. I analyze resilience's origins in biophysical sciences, systems perspectives that define ways of knowing, visual models that constrain the emergence of new ideas, and persistent dialectics that narrowly order relationships within the world. I propose changes in the discourse for more affective and ecological modes of becoming resilient.     

Amoebae as sources of hypersensitivity pneumonitis

Pulmonary hypersensitivity has been associated with inhalation of many diverse occupational and environmental airborne agents. Of biological materials, spores of thermophilic actinomycetes have been recognized frequently as causative agents of the disease. Amoebae have rarely been associated with inhalation hypersensitivity. However, recent isolation of several species of amoebae from heated humidification systems in homes and factories has prompted concern for the role of amoebae in hypersensitivity pneumonitis. In this study, an animal model was employed to investigate hypersensitivity to nonpathogenic Naegleria gruberi. Guinea pigs were sensitized by injection of axenic as well as nonaxenic N. gruberi emulsified in Freund's complete adjuvant. Animals were evaluated for three distinguishing characteristics of hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Delayed-onset skin reactivity was apparent in all animals upon intradermal challenge with N. gruberi antigen. Test sites on animals sensitized with axenic N. gruberi developed extensive rashes lasting 96 h. Antibodies were detected in experimental animals. However, antibodies in animals sensitized with nonaxenic N. gruberi were directed mainly toward the bacteria Enterobacter aerogenes, which was used as the feeder culture. This finding points out the importance of using axenic cultures of amoebae. Bronchial provocation challenge was employed to investigate pulmonary hypersensitivity. Animals sensitized with axenic N. gruberi displayed delayed-onset respiratory responses beginning 6 h post challenge. The study indicates that attention should be given to nonpathogenic free living amoebae as causative agents of hypersensitivity pneumonitis.     

Environmental Communication as Nexus

This essay examines zoos as a site of struggle in the construction of meanings and memories of human–nature relations. Modern zoos are symbols of imperial power and celebrations of the domination of nature. The grafting of “tropic worlds” onto these monuments of modernity renders the meaning of zoos more ambiguous, reflecting discursive struggles over the meaning of nature, questions about the wisdom of development and progress, recognition of the need for conservation and preservation, and nostalgia for a nature that has been lost. Through a close textual reading of “The Rainforest” at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, this essay explores the simulation of nature in zoos and “tropic worlds” in North American cities. These hyperreal spaces contain an extraordinary amount of the history and politics of the culture that constructs them for fascination, edification, conservation, commodification, and salvation. At stake in these simulated natures is not only the constructions of nature as spectacle and animals as commodities, but also the use of knowledge to maintain certain forms of domination and the “writing” of industrial culture's historical memory of nature and human–nature relations.     

Environmental Communication as a Discipline of Crisis

This essay interprets Cox's keynote as a call for environmental communication to reorient itself as a form of ideological criticism and identifies the potential pitfalls of heeding that call. First, the author revisits key arguments surrounding the practice of ideological criticism in Communication Studies and articulates their relevance to discussions about the mission and purpose of environmental communication. Second, he suggests that an uncritical embrace of the rationale for a “crisis discipline” may perpetuate problematic assumptions about communication, both as a social practice and as a scholarly discipline. Third, he argues that such problems may be sidestepped by making environmental crisis itself a central concept and object of environmental communication inquiry, such that environmental communication does not merely respond to crisis but becomes a discipline of and about crisis. A focus on the dynamics of crisis, the author concludes, entails a persistent concern with judgment in its political, scholarly, and pedagogical contexts.     

Gear oil formulation designed to meet bio-preferred criteria as well as give high performance

A bio-based gear oil was developed from soybean oil (SBO). The SBO was first thermally polymerised and then mixed with additives and diluents. The effect of pour point depressants, co-base oils, antioxidants and anti-wear additives is reported. Lubricity, viscosity index and oxidation stability of the final formulation of the bio-based gear oil are compared with commercially available gear oils. The final formulation of bio-based gear oil gives test results: viscosity index 165, four-ball wear scar 0.375 mm. These numbers are comparable to or better than the commercially available gear oils tested for comparison. The oxidation onset temperature of the bio-based gear oil, 220°C, is lower than the evaluated commercial products, but still at an acceptable range for gear oil.     

Natural radioactivity of granites used as building materials

Sixteen kinds of different granites, used as building materials, imported to Greece mainly from Spain and Brazil, were sampled and their natural radioactivity was measured by gamma-ray spectrometry. The activity concentrations of (238)U, (226)Ra, (232)Th and (40)K of granites are presented and compared to those of other building materials as well as other granite types used all over the world. In order to assess the radiological impact from the granites investigated, the absorbed and the effective doses were determined. Although the annual effective dose is higher than the limit of 1mSvy(-1) for some studied granites, they could be used safely as building materials, considering that their contribution in most of the house constructions is very low. An attempt to correlate the relatively high level of natural radioactivity, shown by some of the granites, with their constituent radioactive minerals and their chemical composition, was also made.     

生态效率是循环经济的合适测度

发展循环经济已经成为我国未来国民经济和社会发展的重要战略之一，但是循环经济发展的度量问题还有待进一步研究。本文首先论述循环率并非循环经济的科学测度，然后在阐明循环经济的本质是提高稀缺性自然资本的生产率的基础上．指出循环经济的发展可以用生态效率指标来度量。最后评述了Seiji Hashimoto和Yuichi Moriguchi建议的描述社会物质代谢的六个指标。并根据这些指标在确定政策目标时应该具备的标准和计算这些指标存在的问题，提出基于DMI、DPO和GDP的生态效率指标可以作为循环经济发展的科学度量指标。     

Media Representations of Water Issues as Health Risks

ABSTRACT

Water is a critical natural resource for sustaining human life. Media representations are a factor in the formation of public risk perceptions and could influence water conservation and health promotion behaviors. The objective of this research is to identify how newspaper media in four Western U.S. states frame the public health risks associated with water resources. Researchers conducted a content analysis of 326 newspaper articles from eight major newspapers focusing on water resource issues published during a three-year period between January 2012 and December 2014. Results indicate that health risks associated with water are seldom mentioned, and that the risks most frequently covered with regard to water resources are those with direct and immediate impacts to area residents. Findings suggest that media coverage may not be consistent with the nature of health impacts associated with water, which often are long-term.     

Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply

Human population growth has typically been seen as the primary causative factor of other ecologically destructive phenomena. Current human disease epidemics are explored as a function of population size. That human population growth is itself a phenomenon with clearly identifiable ecological/biological causes has been overlooked. Here, human population growth is discussed as being subject to the same dynamic processes as the population growth of other species. Contrary to the widely held belief that food production must be increased to feed the growing population, experimental and correlational data indicate that human population growth varies as a function of food availability. By increasing food production for humans, at the expense of other species, the biologically determined effect has been, and continues to be, an increase in the human population. Understanding the relationship between food increases and population increases is proposed as a necessary first step in addressing this global problem. Resistance to this perspective is briefly discussed in terms of cultural bias in science.     

Potential of largemouth bass as vectors of 137Cs dispersal

We conducted a radio telemetry study on the movements of potentially contaminated largemouth bass between Steel Creek, a restricted access (137)Cs contaminated stream on the Savannah River Site (located in South Carolina, USA), and the publicly accessible Savannah River. Largemouth bass were relatively mobile in lower Steel Creek and the portion of the Savannah River near Steel Creek, and there was considerable movement between these two habitats. Largemouth bass had home ranges of about 500 linear meters of shoreline in the Savannah River but sometimes moved long distances. Such movements occurred primarily during the spawning season, largely upstream, and increased when water levels were changing or elevated. However, approximately 90% of the largemouth bass observations were within 10 km of Steel Creek. The total quantity of (137)Cs transported into the Savannah River by largemouth bass was much less than transported by water and suspended sediments discharged from Steel Creek. We conclude that largemouth bass from the Savannah River Site are unlikely to be responsible for long distance dispersal of substantial radiological contamination in the Savannah River.     

Lolium perenne as a biomonitor of atmospheric levels of fluoride

The aim of the present study was to develop a standardised protocol for the use of Lolium perenne cultures to biomonitor the surroundings of an aluminium smelter. Five ecological stations, which corresponded to air quality network monitoring sites pertaining to the smelter, were selected for study. Cultures of L. perenne (one at each site) were exposed for approximately 28 days, at different times between August 1999 and October 2000. At the end of the exposure periods, the fluoride concentrations in the cultures were determined. The concentrations of fluoride determined in the L. perenne cultures varied from 4.32 microg g(-1) to 912.22 microg g(-1) and followed a similar trend to concentrations of atmospheric fluoride. However, a wider range of fluoride concentration was observed in the L. perenne cultures than in the air surrounding the smelter. The background levels of fluoride in L. perenne cultures were also calculated, thereby allowing classification of fluoride air pollution in the area under study.     

Environment as the Stage for Economic Actors

The relative importance of economics and environment in debate may soon be reversed due to the influence of three fac- tors. Firstly, in the global economy it is hard to hide the unwanted products of economic processes. Secondly, huge advances in sci- ence will reduce the imperfect knowledge of markets, making some monitoring and analyzing tools show the design of sensible and equitable livelihood in communities, which is more important than the motivation of maximising profits for some individuals or firms. Thirdly, China, as the last major player on the planet to take on economic growth, comes from traditions fundamentally differ- ent from those economies that have experienced the Industrial Revolution previously. Its challenges with sustainability and en- vironmental conservation predate Western economics by millennia, and it is implementing policies domestically and starting to work on the world stage that acknowledges that the surroundings are the host for any economic and socio-political system.     

Green Composites as Panacea? Socio-Economic Aspects of Green Materials

Much academic research and industrial development explores new ways to create greener and environmentally friendlier chemicals and materials for a variety of applications. A significant part of this work focuses on the development, processing and manufacturing, recycling and disposal of green plastics, adhesives, polymer composites, blends and many other industrial products from renewable resources. Natural fibres offer the potential to deliver greater added value, sustainability, renewability and lower costs especially in the automotive industry. Further research involves the fibre crop production. The ever-increasing volume of scientific literature refers with enthusiasm to the potential of natural fibres in technological, economic and ecological terms. This enthusiasm tends to also expand to the areas of human life and socio-economic development for the fibre crop growers and their communities. However, there is very little debate or evidence to support statements about the assumed advantages for the affected population in rural areas. We argue that despite the predicted new boom in the demand of natural fibres, it is unlikely that this will represent a real improvement in the quality of life of crop fibre growers and their communities. This paper examines the experience of Mexico as a case study and argues that only through consistent political will and co-operation between governments, industry, scientists, consumer groups and local communities, as well as a suitable economic strategy such as local subsidies, a truly sustainable economic development, social equity and improved environmental quality will be achieved for tens of thousands of natural fibre growers.     

Soil as a factor of vegetation regeneration in natural pastures

Data are presented that show the significance of the humus state of chernozem soils, their amphiphilic (hydrophobic-hydrophilic) components, and related physical properties (density, structural condition, and water permeability) for regeneration of natural vegetation and restoration of its species com-position in pasture ecosystems.     

Macrozoobenthos as an indicator of the ecological state of mountain watercourses

Structural characteristics of benthic macroinvertebrate communities in mountain watercourses of different sizes have been studied in the Upper Ob basin. It has been found that species richness, diversity of zoobenthos, and most biotic indices in the background areas increase in the series from the smallest watercourses to large rivers. On the contrary, the values of the above parameters in areas polluted with mercury has proved to decrease, thereby indicating a significant transformation of the benthic communities. Approaches are proposed to select reference indices for assessing the ecological state of watercourses in the basin with regard to the size of the river, the structure of benthic communities, and variability of biotic indices along the background cross sections.     

Lead content in roadside vegetation as indicators of atmospheric pollution

Leaves of six plant species from 31 different locations in Ibadan, Nigeria, were analysed for their lead content. The lead concentrations found ranged between 12 and 32 μg/g, 50 m or more away from the roadside, between 47 and 115 μg/g in the residential low traffic density areas, 5 m from the roadside, and between 165 and 312 μg/g in the commercial high traffic density roadsides, 5 m away from the roadside.