可持续性与生命科学产业

生物技术是1980年代和1990年代初作为推动一场新农业革命的技术而提出来的.若干家大型化学公司作为“生命科学”公司的再发明旨在探讨这种新知识和寄希望于正在展开的遗传学革命.这种范例转变在某些地区、尤其北美已经开始展开,但在其它地区、尤其欧洲似乎弄得十分糟糕.如同在它之前的几个产业一样,生命科学产业已经无法把利害攸关者的关注充分融入其战略性决策中.这一失败,加上其它因素例如对法规部门和多国公司的日益不信任,意味着这项新技术是在日益充满敌意的环境中推出的.     

LNG trench dispersion modeling using computational fluid dynamics

Quantifying the size of flammable vapor cloud hazards associated with an accidental release of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) into a spill containment system supported by narrow drainage trenches has posed a modeling challenge since the inception of the LNG industry. Early attempts to treat the vapors evolving from the trenches included using line-source Gaussian models, and the use of the DEGADIS model by modeling “segmented” trench elements and adding the contributions from each trench segment at a specified downwind distance. These approaches often are only reasonable for a select set of conditions (e.g., winds perpendicular to the trench) and have no ability to simulate many of the conditions that might result in a larger potential impact (e.g., winds blowing parallel to the trench).     

Retrofit NO x Control Options

Modifications to the combustion process have been the basis for NO_x control on new coal-fired power plants to meet federal New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) Promulgated in 1971 and revised in 1978. In the event that retrofit NO_x control is required on pre-NSPS plants, low-NO_x combustion will likely be the least cost approach, if such controls can be successfully applied to the wide diversity of these older utility boiler designs now in operation. A series of retrofit low-NOx combustion demonstrations supported by EPRI and electric utility companies are intended to establish the technical and economic feasibility of this approach.     

The environment and technical education in the united kingdom

Summary In showing that substantially more than three-quarters of the population of England and Wales at some stage in their career receive education or training in the further education sector, the author advocates the case for environmental education to be extensively developed at this educational level. An expanded programme in technical and allied colleges should contain elements of environmental education for nearly all technicians as well as specialist full-time training schemes for persons such as environmental monitoring technicians.Dr John F. Potter has been Hon. Secretary of the Institution of Environmental Sciences (UK) over the last five years. He is Editor of that Institution's News Sheet and Proceedings as well as being one of the General Editors of the IES/Wiley Environment Monograph Series. Trained as a geologist at the Universities of Manchester and London, he is currently Principal of Farnborough College of Technology, Hampshire, UK, where he has overall responsibility for a large number of educational programmes, many of which are concerned with the development of skills required by technicians and technologists.     

Book reviews

The Economics of Art and Culture: An American Perspective

James Heilbrun & Charles M. Gray

New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 378 pp., £14.95 pb

Building Cities that Work

Edmund Fowler

Montreal & Kingston, McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1992, 315 pp.

Interactive Decision Making: The Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

Liping Fang, Keith W. Hipel & D. Marc Kilgour

New York, Wiley, 1993, 221 pp., £49.50

The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory

Andrew Dobson & Paul Lucardie (Eds)

London, Routledge, 1993, 240 pp. + xv, £37.50

Urban Transport in Asia: An Operational Agenda for the 1990s, World Bank

Technical Paper No. 224

Peter Midgley

Washington, DC, The World Bank, 1994, 98 pp.

Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application, 2nd edition

Zev Naveh & Arthur Lieberman

New York, Springer‐Verlag, £34.50