Factors influencing voting by the united states congress on the national energy act

A myriad of factors, both economic and political, influenced the voting by members of the United States Congress on the 1978 National Energy Act. Determinant factors considered in our analysis included the percentage of residents in the Congressman's district residing in the central city or on farms; the percentage of residents who belong to labor unions; the average level of education of the residents; oil, coal, and natural gas production in the state relative to total domestic production. The results, determined by means of logit analysis, indicate that the impact on low-income energy consumers, the effect on overall employment, the impact on farmers, and the benefits to energy interests, as well as ideology and the subjective perception that the need exists to do something about the energy situation in the United States, were all important explanatory factors.The author is an economist with the United States Department of Energy. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the policies of the Department of Energy or the views of other Department of Energy staff members.     

WATER SUPPLY AS A LIMITING FACTOR IN WESTERN ENERGY DEVELOPMENT1

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the consumptive water needs of the various energy conversion processes including oil shale retorting, coal gasification and liquefaction, electric power generation, and slurry pipelines. Projected energy development water needs in the upper Colorado River and Upper Missouri River basins are compared with projected agricultural needs and water available. The comparative cost and values of water to energy and agricultural development are discussed to emphasize this as well as the political and social factors entering into the picture.     

Air quality assessment along Dhanbad - Jharia road

Road ambient air pollution status along Dhanbad – Jharia road isstudied and presented in this article. The selection of this areais made considering the importance of the road in Dhanbad district and the nature of activities taking place along the road, which reflect that the portion of road upto Dhansar can be considered as having commercial areas on both sides and that from Dhansar to Jharia as having industrial areas on both sides.For the assessment of the ambient air quality along the road monitoring is done at the following five locations: Indian Schoolof Mines (ISM), main gate; Bankmore; Dhansar police check post; Dhansar opencast project agent office and a residential house beside the Rajapur opencast project. The location of ISM, maingate is specially chosen as this represents a commercial shoppingcomplexes and the situation can be compared with that at Bankmore. Monitoring of ambient air quality is done following thestandard procedure prescribed in IS: 5182. In addition the concentration of lead, zinc, copper, iron, manganese, cadmium metals in SPM is also monitored. The ambient air quality is monitored in the months of September and November 1999, respectively, to represent monsoon and winter seasons. The SPM concentration observed at all the five locations in the winterseason is more than the permissible limits for commercial andindustrial areas. However, in the monsoon season, the SPM concentration is higher than the permissible limit at the twocommercial locations, i.e., ISM gate and Bankmore, while it isless than the prescribed limit for industrial areas at the remaining three locations. At the ISM gate and Bankmore the SPM generation is mainly by vehicular traffic while at other three locations it was in addition due to mining and other activities.     

Liver glutathione content and glutathione‐dependent enzymes of two species of freshwater fish as bioindicators of chemical pollution

Abstract

Glutathione content and glutahione‐dependent enzymes were measured in the liver of two fish species, gudgeon (Gobio gobio) and roach (Rutilus arcasii), from the river Bernesga (Spain) caught downstream and upstream of the waste site of several chemical industries. Animals from contaminated sites display a reduced glutathione concentration and a tendency to the decrease of glutathione S‐transferase activity. Glutathione peroxidase activity was significantly elevated only in the liver of Gobio gobio and glutathione reductase activity in that of Rutilus arcasii. Our data indicate that the glutathione system constitutes a sensitive biochemical indicator of chemical pollution. Relative changes of glutathione and glutathione‐dependent enzymes in both fish species suggest a different susceptibility to toxins.     

Dynamic of functional microbial groups during mesophilic composting of agro-industrial wastes and free-living (N2)-fixing bacteria application

Although several reports are available concerning the composition and dynamics of the microflora during the composting of municipal solid wastes, little is known about the microbial diversity during the composting of agro-industrial refuse. For this reason, the first parts of this study included the quantification of microbial generic groups and of the main functional groups of C and N cycle during composting of agro-industrial refuse. After a generalized decrease observed during the initial phases, a new bacterial growth was observed in the final phase of the process. Ammonifiers and (N₂)-fixing aerobic groups predominated outside of the piles whereas, nitrate-reducing group increased inside the piles during the first 23 days of composting. Ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB), showed an opposite trend of growth since ammonia oxidation decreased with the increase of the nitrite oxidation activity. Pectinolytics, amylolytics and aerobic cellulolytic were present in greater quantities and showed an upward trend in both the internal and external part of the heaps.Several free-living (N₂)-fixing bacteria were molecularly identify as belonging especially to uncommon genera of nitrogen-fixing bacteria as Stenotrophomonas, Xanthomonas, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, Alcaligenes, Achromobacter and Caulobacter. They were investigated for their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen to employ as improvers of quality of compost. Some strains of Azotobacter chrococcum and Azotobacter salinestris were also tested. When different diazotrophic bacterial species were added in compost, the increase of total N ranged from 16% to 27% depending on the selected microbial strain being used. Such microorganisms may be used alone or in mixtures to provide an allocation of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria in soil.     

Metabolic fate of the 14C-labeled herbicide clodinafop-propargyl in soil

The metabolic fate of ¹⁴C-phenyl-labeled herbicide clodinafop-propargyl (CfP) was studied for 28 days in lab assays using a soil from Germany (A_p horizon, silt loam, and cambisol). Mineralization amounted to 12.40% of applied ¹⁴C after 28 days showing a distinct lag phase until day 7 of incubation. Portions of radioactivity extractable by means of 0.01 M CaCl₂ solution (bioavailable fraction) decreased rapidly and were 4.41% after 28 days. Even immediately after application, only 57.31% were extracted with the aqueous solvent. Subsequent extraction using accelerated solvent extraction (ASE; acetonitrile/water 4:1, v/v) released 39.91% of applied ¹⁴C with day 0 and 26.16% with day 28 of incubation from the samples. Non-extractable portions of radioactivity thus, increased with time amounting to 11.99% (day 0) and 65.00% (day 28). A remarkable increase was observed between 14 and 28 days correlating with the distinct increase of mineralization. No correlation was found throughout incubation with general microbial activity as determined by DMSO reduction. Analysis of the CaCl₂ and ASE extracts by radio-TLC, radio-HPLC and GC/MS revealed that CfP was rapidly cleaved to free acid clodinafop (Cf), which was further (bio-) transformed; DT₅₀ values (based on radio-TLC detection of the parent compound) were far below 1 day (CfP) and about 7 days (Cf). TLC analysis pointed to 2-(4-hydroxyphenoxy)-propionic acid as further metabolite. Due to fractionation of non-extractable residues, most of the ¹⁴C was associated with fulvic and humic acids, portions in humin fractions and non-humics were moderate and low, respectively. Using a special strategy, which included pre-incubation of the soil with CfP and then mineralization of ¹⁴C-CfP as criterion, a microorganism was isolated from the soil examined. The microorganism grew using CfP as sole carbon source with concomitant evolution of ¹⁴CO₂. The bacterium was characterized by growth on commonly used carbon sources and by 16S rDNA sequence analysis. The sequence exhibited high similarity with that of Rhodococcus wratislaviensis (99.56%; DSM 44107, NCIMB 13082).     

Rehabilitation of a lowland river: Reconciling flood defence with habitat diversity and geomorphological sustainability

Geomorphologically appropriate rehabilitation measures were proposed to enhance the in-stream environment of the lowland River Idle, north Nottinghamshire, UK. However, the River Idle has multi-functional management requirements including those of flood defence so environmental enhancement must be pursued without significantly increasing the flood risk. Hydraulic testing of rehabilitation proposals is complicated because of the stringent assumptions about flow and morphology in ‘traditional’ hydraulic models. While new generation two- and three-dimension hydraulic models may overcome some of these problems, they are extremely data intensive, require advanced modelling capabilities and are, therefore, very expensive to apply. Also, they do not yet predict morphology-flow interactions adequately. As an alternative, several simple hydraulic models were applied to test the rehabilitation proposals, based on a fitness-for-purpose criterion.BENDFLOW was applied to fine tune the optimal siting of measures and to estimate the additional near-bank scour generated by proposed bend re-profiling. HMODEL2 and the FCFA method were used to test the impact on local channel conveyance capacities and HECRAS was applied to simulate the impact of the proposals on regional flood defence. Indicative results from the testing suggested a maximum increase in near-bank scour of 0·15 m in re-profiled bends, a loss of approximately 10% in flood conveyance locally due to deflector installation or reed and tree planting, and a 0·12 m increase in flood stage within the reach for a 15 year flood. The modelling results were acceptable to the management authority as an indication of an acceptable compromise between flood defence and conservation interests, and construction of the measures followed in 1996. It is clearly that it will require the results of post-project monitoring to indicate whether compromises made to the rehabilitation initiatives in order to satisfy flood defence requirements have unduly reduced their environmental enhancement potential but, for assessing the proposed methods, the models are recommended for use other lowland river environments.     

基于社会网络分析的江西各地市公路行业碳排放的关联与分异特征研究

针对各地公路碳排放的空间差异与关联特征，制定合理的低碳策略，实现各地协同碳减排，是行业可持续发展的热点问题。以江西省为研究对象，采用空间自相关、社会网络分析和引力模型等分析11地市公路行业碳排放的空间差异与关联，识别社会网络的结构特征及其演变趋势，明确不同地市在网络中的地位和作用，结果显示：（1）公路货运是公路行业碳排放的最主要来源；（2）江西省公路行业碳排放整体上呈现空间随机分布，不存在全局的空间聚集性，且局部空间聚集特征不断变化；（3）公路行业碳排放网络逐渐从南昌、新余双中心结构演变为南昌为主的单中心结构，网络的协同作用整体呈减弱趋势，核心地市对外围地市的影响力和带动作用不足。