Reinvigorating the sustainable development research agenda: the role of the sustainable development goals (SDG)

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) contain a set of 17 measures to foster sustainable development across many areas. It offers a good opportunity to reinvigorate sustainable development research for two main reasons. First, it comprises many areas of SD research, which have become mainstream thanks to the UN SDGs. Second, the fact that the UN and its member countries have committed to attaining SDGs by 2030 has added a sense of urgency to the need to perform quality research on SD on the one hand, and reiterates the need to use the results of this research on the other. Even though the basic concept of sustainability goes back many centuries, it has only recently appeared on the international political agenda. This is partly due to an awakening of the fact that the human ecological pressure on the planet is still much larger than what nature can renew or compensate for. Based on this state of affairs, this paper presents an outline of the process leading to the agreement on the UN SDGs, and looks at some of the ecological aspects as a result of continued pressure of human activities on natural resources. Furthermore, a set of research needs is proposed – also based holistically on updated research trends – discussing the degree of urgency of some measures and explaining why the UN SDGs need to be accorded greater priority in international sustainable development research efforts.     

Dynamics of the head of gravity currents

The present work experimentally investigates the dynamics of unsteady gravity currents produced by lock-release of a saline mixture into a fresh water tank. Seven different experimental runs were performed by varying the density of the saline mixture in the lock and the bed roughness. Experiments were conducted in a Perspex flume, of horizontal bed and rectangular cross section, and recorded with a CCD camera. An image analysis technique was applied to visualize and characterize the current allowing thus the understanding of its general dynamics and, more specifically, of the current head dynamics. The temporal evolution of both head length and mass shows repeated stretching and breaking cycles: during the stretching phase, the head length and mass grow until reaching a limit, then the head becomes unstable and breaks. In the instants of break, the head aspect ratio shows a limit of 0.2 and the mass of the head is of the order of the initial mass in the lock. The average period of the herein called breaking events is seen to increase with bed roughness and the spatial periodicity of these events is seen to be approximately constant between runs. The rate of growth of the mass at the head is taken as a measure to assess entrainment and it is observed to occur at all stages of the current development. Entrainment rate at the head decreases in time suggesting this as a phenomenon ruled by local buoyancy and the similarity between runs shows independence from the initial reduced gravity and bed roughness.     

Substitution of urea–formaldehyde by renewable phenolic compound for environmentally appropriate production of particleboards

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In recent years, research has been conducted in search of alternative adhesives that are less harmful to human health and the environment. Cardanol...