Radon diffusion in an anhydrous andesitic melt: a finite difference solution

Radon-222 diffusion in an anhydrous andesitic melt was investigated. The melts were glass discs formed artificially from melted volcanic materials. Solutions of the relevant diffusion equations were done by the explicit finite difference method. Results were compared to analytical solutions reported in the literature and good agreement was found. We have shown that the explicit finite difference method is effective and accurate for solving equations that describe ²²²Rn diffusion in andesitic melts, which is especially important when arbitrary initial and boundary conditions are required.     

Gender differences in driver's license theory test scores in the Netherlands

INTRODUCTION: Gender differences were investigated in a sample of persons (N=34,755) who completed the driver's license theory test in the Netherlands. RESULTS: Contrary to recent findings from Sweden, no gender differences were found. IMPACT OF INDUSTRY: The present study signifies the importance of standardization in driver testing.     

Differences in urban and rural accident characteristics and medical service utilization for traffic fatalities in less-motorized societies

Introduction

Fatalities from traffic accidents in less-motorized societies are an important global issue. We aimed to characterize the geographic differences of fatalities in such societies to facilitate the development of targeted interventions.

Method

This study linked police reports, hospital data, and vital registration data from Taiwan with special reference to accident factors in pre-hospital deaths and medical care in hospital deaths.

Results

A higher percentage of pre-hospital deaths were observed following rural as compared to urban traffic accidents. The deaths due to rural accidents can be attributed to lower use of restraints (i.e., helmets or seat belts), lower percentage of motorcyclists, and more highway accidents. A higher percentage of victims in rural accidents were transported to distant medical centers rather than to local hospitals.

Conclusion

Specific interventions, such as intelligent emergency medical systems, campaigns for helmets and seat belt usage, enforcement of helmets and seat belt use, and speed control measures should be targeted to rural areas.

Impact on industry

Cooperation between the vehicle industry and emergency medical providers in rural traffic accident rescue teams may decrease the numbers of deaths in these regions.     

海啸波近岸共振响应的数值模拟及分析

应用有限差分方法求解非线性浅水长波方程,建立了海啸波产生和传播的二维数值模型;对太平洋地震引起的夏威夷群岛海啸波进行模拟,并将模拟结果和测站实测值进行比较,验证了模型的正确性。利用快速傅里叶变换对数值模拟结果进行谱分析,得到整个计算区域的能量谱分布,并给出了发生能量聚集的位置及相应的谱峰周期。讨论了海啸波传播到近岸时可能产生的共振响应现象,发现海啸波和近岸的共振响应不仅与近岸复杂地形有关,还与海啸波传播到近岸时的波浪入射方向有关。     

气密性高等级生物安全实验室的负压控制

提出漏风量换气次数的概念,并以此作为评价气流控制阀是否适用于生物安全实验室压差控制的指标;提出引入附加漏风量的气密性生物安全实验室压差控制策略。进行对比实验,研究实验室在无人为漏风量与引入人为漏风量这两种情况下启动、微扰动、关门等工况下实验室的压差波动情况,其结果显示在引入人为漏风量情况下实验间压差波动范围减小、稳定速度加快。从而说明引入附加漏风量的压差控制策略在气密性生物安全实验室的压差控制方面具有重要的实际应用价值。     

工业化水平区域差异与中国能源消费

在对30个省区工业化水平进行了聚类分析的基础上，描述了工业化水平的区域差异。通过对中国煤炭、石油两类非可再生能源的消费在区域工业增长中的判别分析，探讨了区域工业化水平对能源消费水平的影响。这种影响以工业能源密度为动因，促成了区域工业化水平与能源消费总量水平的一致性和差异性。研究结果表明：工业能源密度的降低和能源效率的改进有利于工业化水平提高。     

东西方文化分别对汉、英语语言的影响

文化是一个社会全部物质文明和精神文明的总和，是具有较强民族性的东西。一方面，语言既是文化的一部分，又是文化的载体；另一方面，文化对语言的发展又起着重要的制约作用。东西方文化在哲学观念、历史背景、生活环境、生活习俗等方面的不同分别影响着汉语和英语的形成、发展及应用，并使得它们在长期的使用中逐渐形成自己的特色。     

National minerals policies and stakeholder participation for broad-based development in the southern African development community (SADC)

This paper explains how the well-accepted concept of improved stakeholder participation during mineral policy development leads to a national mineral policy that accommodates the diverging views and interests that allows wide acceptance of decisions, enhancing the success of implementation and, ultimately, national benefits. This process is based on lessons learnt during the South African experience and has been successfully applied in the development of the Namibian and Malawian national minerals policies. An effective policy in the SADC will engineer the delicate balance between poverty reduction and an internationally competitive minerals sector. This balance enhances the possibility of long-term economic growth and development in the SADC region. The overriding advantage of this strategy is that it generates ‘home-grown’ policy instruments and implementation of mineral law with which stakeholders can identify. This process presents a new challenge to traditional policy formulation strategies in emerging economies and the bottom-up approach, linked to wide political support, allows the potential realisation of national objectives.     

Regional intergovernmental institutions: Participation benefits and costs

Evaluators frequently cite the absence of effective participation by constituent governments and the need for consensus or even unanimity prior to action as the causes of poor performance by regional resource management institutions. Major governments either will not join the regional institution, will not participate even if legally members, or will exercise a veto over many important management projects.This paper examines the variables that may cause these problems and provides an improved understanding of why rational political actors would act in ways that inhibit the efficient management of resources. Among the principal variables determining participation are expected benefits of collective decisions, perceived losses of autonomy and representation, the number and homogeneity of other participants, decision costs, and the decision rule used to determine actions. Analysis of these factors suggests why consensus and unanimity decision rules are frequently chosen and why participation is usually limited.     

Global-scale vs. regional-scale scenario assumptions: implications for estimating future water withdrawals in the Elbe River basin

In this paper, we explore how scenarios of future water withdrawals in a river basin are influenced by scale-dependent quantifications of the driving forces for two global-scale storylines. Either global-scale information or region-specific information is used to do the quantifications. In addition, we analyze the impact of including or not some restricted regional-scale information in the employed water use model. To develop scenarios of water withdrawals in the German part of the Elbe River basin, we applied the modules for domestic, thermoelectric power and manufacturing water use of the global water model WaterGAP, using scale-dependent driving forces scenarios and other scale-dependent model input. In the global-scale quantitative interpretations of the storylines of the IPCC SRES scenarios A1 and B2, all major driving forces of water withdrawals in the basin—population, thermoelectric power production and industrial gross domestic product—show vigorous increases between 2000 and 2025, while from the regional perspective, smaller increases but mostly decreases appear to be plausible. These discrepancies are partly due to the fact that for the global-scale interpretations only the historic developments until 1990 were taken into account, and not until 2000 as in the regional case. The resulting scenarios of sectoral water withdrawals in 2025 differ strongly between the two scale-dependent interpretations of the storylines, with the global one leading to much higher absolute water withdrawals and much lower withdrawal decreases between 2000 and 2025. Therefore, for regional assessments of water withdrawals, we recommend to embed the scenario analysis in global-scale storylines by performing regional-scale quantifications of the global qualitative driving forces scenarios, based on a limited amount of region-specific information.