Plant blindness and the implications for plant conservation

Plant conservation initiatives lag behind and receive considerably less funding than animal conservation projects. We explored a potential reason for this bias: a tendency among humans to neither notice nor value plants in the environment. Experimental research and surveys have demonstrated higher preference for, superior recall of, and better visual detection of animals compared with plants. This bias has been attributed to perceptual factors such as lack of motion by plants and the tendency of plants to visually blend together but also to cultural factors such as a greater focus on animals in formal biological education. In contrast, ethnographic research reveals that many social groups have strong bonds with plants, including nonhierarchical kinship relationships. We argue that plant blindness is common, but not inevitable. If immersed in a plant‐affiliated culture, the individual will experience language and practices that enhance capacity to detect, recall, and value plants, something less likely to occur in zoocentric societies. Therefore, conservation programs can contribute to reducing this bias. We considered strategies that might reduce this bias and encourage plant conservation behavior. Psychological research demonstrates that people are more likely to support conservation of species that have human‐like characteristics and that support for conservation can be increased by encouraging people to practice empathy and anthropomorphism of nonhuman species. We argue that support for plant conservation may be garnered through strategies that promote identification and empathy with plants.     

Bourdieu,environmental NGOs,and Australian climate politics

Environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Australia have struggled to generate and sustain public concern about climate change. If debates about climate policy can be viewed as sites of contestation between competing actors, Australia’s environmental NGOs have found it difficult to compete against countervailing forces that have sought to shape public attitudes to climate action and the contours of policy responses. While to a significant degree this reflects the power of those forces and the sentiments of the government of the day, there is also a case to be made that some of Australia’s most prominent environmental NGOs have appeared wedded to strategies inconsistent with building or sustaining public support for action or guiding policy responses. How have Australia’s largest environmental NGOs engaged climate politics, and why has this engagement taken that form? Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology provides unique insight for coming to terms with the multifaceted nature of the constraints, opportunities, and drivers of political action, from the context of climate politics to the forces behind Australian NGOs’ engagement with that politics, and the limits of that engagement. Bourdieu’s work also suggests possible avenues for more effective forms of political communication on climate change in the Australian context.     

The role of digital data entry in participatory environmental monitoring

Many argue that monitoring conducted exclusively by scientists is insufficient to address ongoing environmental challenges. One solution entails the use of mobile digital devices in participatory monitoring (PM) programs. But how digital data entry affects programs with varying levels of stakeholder participation, from nonscientists collecting field data to nonscientists administering every step of a monitoring program, remains unclear. We reviewed the successes, in terms of management interventions and sustainability, of 107 monitoring programs described in the literature (hereafter programs) and compared these with case studies from our PM experiences in Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, and Vietnam (hereafter cases). Our literature review showed that participatory programs were less likely to use digital devices, and 2 of our 3 more participatory cases were also slow to adopt digital data entry. Programs that were participatory and used digital devices were more likely to report management actions, which was consistent with cases in Ethiopia, Greenland, and Australia. Programs engaging volunteers were more frequently reported as ongoing, but those involving digital data entry were less often sustained when data collectors were volunteers. For the Vietnamese and Canadian cases, sustainability was undermined by a mismatch in stakeholder objectives. In the Ghanaian case, complex field protocols diminished monitoring sustainability. Innovative technologies attract interest, but the foundation of effective participatory adaptive monitoring depends more on collaboratively defined questions, objectives, conceptual models, and monitoring approaches. When this foundation is built through effective partnerships, digital data entry can enable the collection of more data of higher quality. Without this foundation, or when implemented ineffectively or unnecessarily, digital data entry can be an additional expense that distracts from core monitoring objectives and undermines project sustainability. The appropriate role of digital data entry in PM likely depends more on the context in which it is used and less on the technology itself.     

At home and abroad: An empirical analysis of innovation and diffusion in energy technologies

This paper contributes to the induced innovation literature by extending the analysis of supply and demand determinants of innovation in energy technologies to account for international knowledge flows and spillovers. We select a sample of 38 innovating countries and study how knowledge related to energy-efficient and environmentally friendly technologies flows across geographical and technological space. We demonstrate that higher geographical and technological distances are associated with lower probabilities of knowledge flow. Next, we use previous estimates to construct internal and external knowledge stocks for a panel of 17 countries. We then present an econometric analysis of the supply and demand determinants of innovation accounting for international knowledge spillovers. Our results confirm the role of demand-pull effects, proxied by energy prices, and of technological opportunity, proxied by the knowledge stocks. Our results show that spillovers between countries have a significant positive impact on further innovation in energy-efficient and environmentally friendly technologies.     

燃煤电厂烟塔合一排烟风洞试验与数值模拟对比分析

近年来,燃煤电厂烟塔合一烟气排烟对近距离环境影响的不确定性,使其在国内的推广过程受到一定限制。准确判断烟塔合一排烟的环境影响,对于我国现有燃煤电厂烟气污染物的排放有着巨大的工程价值和明显的现实意义。利用国家环境保护某重点实验室中风洞试验平台,对燃煤电厂烟塔合一烟气污染物在近距离的扩散和传输行为,进行物理风洞试验以及数值模拟计算,并进行对比分析。结果表明:德国Austal2000模式的浓度预测并不精确;数值风洞也有其差异性,而物理风洞的结果在很大程度上符合现有的理论及国内工程实际。     

铝合金-丁腈橡胶航空带垫卡箍典型环境损伤研究

目的研究典型环境对丁腈橡胶-铝合金带垫卡箍的损伤效应。方法通过模拟铝合金-丁腈橡胶航空带垫卡箍使用时的装配结构和应力状态,应用GJB 150A—2009中的湿热和太阳辐射两种典型老化环境,采用宏观形貌观察、卡箍保持力测试和橡胶衬垫拉伸性能测试方法,结合扫描电子显微镜和傅里叶红外光谱技术,分析带垫卡箍的性能劣化过程。结果带垫卡箍在湿热和太阳辐射环境中老化50 d后,卡箍橡胶衬垫表面出现大量微孔缺陷,拉伸性能大幅降低,导致卡箍保持力分别下降了35%和51%。结论带垫卡箍在模拟装配状态下进行湿热和太阳辐射环境暴露实验,卡箍橡胶衬垫内部结构由致密逐渐变得疏松,部分碳碳双键发生氧化交联反应,并在一定程度上提高了聚合物的交联密度,材料硬度提高,回弹性能减弱,橡胶衬垫对芯轴的包裹能力降低,导致卡箍保持力性能降低。     

兰州市公共交通的生态足迹测算研究

以兰州市公共交通(分为公交车和出租车两种)为研究对象,运用生态足迹法,测算2010年-2014年兰州市客运交通生态足迹,并计算兰州市公共交通的生态效率和生态足迹强度.结果表明:公共交通生态足迹年均占比为7.41%;公共交通生态足迹和客运量呈同步增长态势,公共交通生态足迹年均增长1.71%;在影响公共交通生态足迹的因素中,公交车和出租车的化石能源足迹年均占比分别为76.06%和62.32%;就生态效率而言,公交车生态效率是出租车生态效率的6.24倍.     

基于微信公众平台的空气质量显示系统的设计与实现研究

空气质量的好坏直接影响着人类的出行和健康,创建便于查询的空气质量显示系统,可以使人们简单直观的了解当日的空气质量指数(AQI).随着互联网的迅猛发展,"微信"逐渐成了人们日常通信的重要工具.本系统利用物联网技术与微信公众平台相结合,提出了空气质量显示系统的设计与实现方案,来建设空气质量显示系统.该系统可从各个区内监测点得到空气质量指数数据,进而将每日各个时段的空气质量指数(AQI)以动态图的方式直观清晰的展示给用户,为人们的出行带来了方便.     

环境影响评价公众意见调查的真实性评价探讨

公众参与在环境影响评价中扮演着重要的角色,认真做好公众意见调查工作,可以促进环境影响评价工作公正、公开、公平地发展。虽然在建设项目环境影响评价工作中,公众参与起到了一定的积极作用,但是在公众参与的实际过程中,还是遇到了许多具体问题,本文对环境影响评价工作中公众意见调查的结果应如何评估,提出意见和建议。