Economic Underdevelopment And Sustainable Development In The World:Conditioning Factors,Problems And Opportunities

This paper deals with the various factors that condition underdevelopment in the world. It suggests some alternatives and points out the potential opportunities that both the developed and the underdeveloped world will have in the coming years to change the gloomy prospects that we see today. The present paper outlines the trends in historical priorities in development, changing as they pass from economic development to social development to ecological conservation – the three pillars of Sustainable Development.The paper analyses the importance of geography, a very relevant and often neglected conditioning factor. Also, it analyses the role of socio-economic conditioning factors like political immaturity, demographics, land ownership and external debt.Furthermore, the current opportunities for economic take-off are presented, from cash surpluses to low interest rates, from natural resource management to tourism or migration, from the Information Revolution to liberalisation of agricultural markets. Current obstacles are also analysed. The paper, on the basis of current facts and figures, reaches the conclusion that there is a structural need for sustained development aid for most poor countries, but it must be distributed in a more rational way.Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Spatiotemporal dynamics of forest-tundra communities in the polar urals

The spatiotemporal dynamics of forest-tundra communities in the 20th century have been studied in the timberline ecotone of the Polar Urals. Maps reflecting the distribution of different types of forest-tundra communities have been made, and data on the morphological and age structure of tree stands have been obtained for three time sections (the mid-1910s, 1960s, and 2000s). They show that open and closed forests have markedly expanded due to natural afforestation of the tundra and increase in the density and productivity of existing forest stands. The unidirectional pattern of plant community transition (from the tundra to closed forests) and meteorological data provide evidence that this transition has been conditioned by climate warming and increasing humidity recorded during the past 90 years.Translated from Ekologiya, No. 2, 2005, pp. 83–90.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Shiyatov, Terentev, Fomin.     

Some Lessons Learned from Public Health on the Process of Adaptation

Lessons learned from more than 150 years of public health research and intervention can provide insights to guide public health professionals and institutions as they design and implement specific strategies, policies, and measures to increase resilience to climate variability and change. This paper identifies both some modifications to public health systems that may enhance adaptive capacity, and lessons drawn from the history of managing environmental and other threats in the public health sector that may have relevance for other sectors as they design approaches to increase their adaptive capacity to more effectively cope with climate variability and change. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent official US EPA policy.     

Fingerprinting Global Climate Change and Forest Management Within Rhizosphere Carbon and Nutrient Cycling Processes

As one of the two Principal Subject Editors for ESPR Subject Area 1 'Terrestrial Ecology and Biology / Soil and Sediments: Toxicology-related Subjects' (see pp 287-293), the senior author and his colleague, Dr Chen, present an example of sub-category 4 'Environmental studies of pesticides, air pollution, and management strategies for forestry and plant ecosystems'. Thereby, they inform the ESPR community about the new Australian research project concerning the fingerprints of global climate change (GCC) and forest management on rhizosphere carbon and nutrient cycling and, subsequently, present an overview on the GCC and forest management fingerprints.     

Risk factors associated with truck-involved fatal crash severity: Analyzing their impact for different groups of truck drivers

Introduction: Fatal crashes that include at least one fatality of an occupant within 30 days of the crash cause large numbers of injured persons and property losses, especially when a truck is involved. Method: To better understand the underlying effects of truck-driver-related characteristics in fatal crashes, a five-year (from 2012 to 2016) dataset from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) was used for analysis. Based on demographic attributes, driving violation behavior, crash histories, and conviction records of truck drivers, a latent class clustering analysis was applied to classify truck drivers into three groups, namely, ‘‘middle-aged and elderly drivers with low risk of driving violations and high historical crash records,” ‘‘drivers with high risk of driving violations and high historical crash records,” and ‘‘middle-aged drivers with no driving violations and conviction records.” Next, equivalent fatalities were used to scale fatal crash severities into three levels. Subsequently, a partial proportional odds (PPO) model for each driver group was developed to identify the risk factors associated with the crash severity. Results' Conclusions: The model estimation results showed that the risk factors, as well as their impacts on different driver groups, were different. Adverse weather conditions, rural areas, curved alignments, tractor-trailer units, heavier weights and various collision manners were significantly associated with the crash severities in all driver groups, whereas driving violation behaviors such as driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, fatigue, or carelessness were significantly associated with the high-risk group only, and fewer risk factors and minor marginal effects were identified for the low-risk groups. Practical Applications: Corresponding countermeasures for specific truck driver groups are proposed. And drivers with high risk of driving violations and high historical crash records should be more concerned.     

A summary and synthesis of procedural regulations and standards—Informing a procedures writer's guide

Well-written procedures are an integral part of any industrial organization for safe operation, managing risks, and continuous improvement. Regulatory bodies around the world require industries to have current, accurate, and appropriate procedures for most processes. Although the importance of procedures is recognized by all industries in general, significant incidents still occur due to procedural breakdowns. Some of the procedural breakdowns come from obvious problems such as the procedure not being available or the procedure being wrong. However, some incidents have occurred when correct procedures were available and the operator used those procedures. In these instances, the reason workers do not follow procedures correctly may be attributable the procedure being presented or designed in a manner that does not sufficiently communicate the information in a manner that is easily and quickly understood. This indicates that procedure writers may need more guidance on how to write and design procedures so they accomplish this. To effectively manage risk, procedures need to be technically correct (and regulatory compliant) and usable. As part of this, the current work is focused on developing a systematic approach to a procedure writer's guide that includes a regulatory compliant component. The work presented here consists of an effort to identify procedure-writing practices necessary to ensure regulatory compliance by summarizing a large sample of regulations and standards from several industries. The regulations and standards were organized to reflect common ideas and the implications in terms of human factors needs for procedure design were identified. This information will be used as part of the development of a writer's guide that accounts for human factors (HF) that includes explanations of HF implications and empirical support for each of the guidelines. The novelty of the method and information presented here is in the idea of leveraging the cumulative information available regarding procedures in regulations and standards. Incorporating this information into a procedure's writers guide in this manner may not only facilitate procedure being regulatory compliant for facilities in different geographies of the world, but could also support their being written with considerations for human performance.     

A taxonomy of performance influencing factors for human reliability analysis of emergency tasks

This paper introduces the process for, and the result of, the selection of performance influencing factors (PIFs) for the use in human reliability analysis (HRA) of emergency tasks in nuclear power plants. The approach taken in this study largely consists of three steps. First, a full-set PIF system is constructed from the collection and review of existing PIF taxonomies. Secondly, PIF candidates are selected from the full-set PIF system, considering the major characteristics of emergency situations and the basic criteria of PIF for use in HRA. Finally, a set of PIFs is established by structuring representative PIFs and their detailed subitems from the candidates. As a result, a set of PIFs comprised of the 11 representative PIFs and 39 subitems was developed.     

Joint analysis of process and operator performance in chemical process operational safety

Independent studies of case histories by the Health and Safety Commission in the UK and by a Honeywell led industrial consortium world-wide showed that human errors represent the major cause of failure in process plant operation. In contrast to this discovery the majority of previous studies on computer aided systems for fault detection and diagnosis has focused on the process side. This paper presents a methodology, which can involve human factors into the development of systems for automatic identification and diagnosis of abnormal operations and develops methods and techniques that can be used to simultaneously capture, characterise and assess the performance of operators as well as of the process. A joint process–operator simulation platform is developed which is used as a test-bed for carrying out the study. The process part is a simulator, which simulates in high fidelity the dynamic behaviour of the process that is subject to the influence of various disturbances and operators’ interventions. The operator module is developed as a real-time expert system, which emulates operator’s behaviour in interpretation of received signals, and planning and execution of decisions. The interaction between the two modules is managed through an interaction module, which handles the real-time exchange of data using Dynamic Data Exchange. The interaction module also contains the toolkits for analysing the dynamic behaviour of the joint process–operator system. The method and system are illustrated using a simulated case study.     

全新世青藏高原东部西南季风的演变

本研究报道一组新的西南季风代用指标,即泥炭中单一种属植物———木里苔草残体纤维素和泥炭混合植物残体纤维素的δ13C时间序列,所记录的青藏高原东部全新世气候变化。两记录表明,该区全新世的下限年龄约11200aBP(14C年龄约9900aBP);从约11200aBP起该区迅速进入湿暖的全新世阶段,季风活动迅速增强;在约10800～5500aBP期间,季风总体保持在强盛状态,但其间有4次突然减弱,气候变干冷;约从5500aBP起季风活动在波动中逐渐减弱,其中有4次减弱最明显。所有这8次气候的突然变化都与北大西洋浮冰事件一一对应。这种密切的相关关系表明,西南季风强度的波动可能是对全球变化,特别是对海洋热盐环流引起的地球南北方气候波动的所谓"跷跷板效应"的响应。     

Fenton试剂在处理难降解有机废水中的应用

介绍了Ferton试剂的作用机理,探讨了不同外界因素对该技术处理效果的影响,对该试剂在实际中的应用进行阐述。并提出Fenton试剂的研究方向。