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"Brownell, Richard"
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Fair Trade – The Future of Vanilla?
Fair Trade Certified vanilla has seen limited growth since it was added to the Fair Trade portfolio more than a decade ago. Fair Trade would help to offset the commodity cycles by preventing the price of Fair Trade Certified Vanilla beans to fall to a level that would cause farmers to abandon their vines. Vanilla is uniquely and ideally suited for Fair Trade. Virtually all vanilla grown throughout the world is grown by independent farmers in rural, sometimes even remote villages in developing countries. While the potential benefits of Fair Trade Vanilla are far reaching, there are still issues to be resolved in order to realize this potential. The issues are: the price differential compared to conventional vanilla; vanilla quality is not well correlated with cost of production; limited availability; ensuring that farmers are really paid the FT price; consumer acceptance. The chapter discusses these issues in detail.
Book Chapter
Bioremediation of MTBE: a review from a practical perspective
The addition of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) to gasoline has resulted in public uncertainty regarding the continued reliance on biological processes for gasoline remediation. Despite this concern, researchers have shown that MTBE can be effectively degraded in the laboratory under aerobic conditions using pure and mixed cultures with half-lives ranging from 0.04 to 29 days. Ex-situ aerobic fixed-film and aerobic suspended growth bioreactor studies have demonstrated decreases in MTBE concentrations of 83% and 96% with hydraulic residence times of 0.3 hrs and 3 days, respectively. In microcosm and field studies, aerobic biodegradation half-lives range from 2 to 693 days. These half-lives have been shown to decrease with increasing dissolved oxygen concentrations and, in some cases, with the addition of exogenous MTBE-degraders. MTBE concentrations have also been observed to decrease under anaerobic conditions; however, these rates are not as well defined. Several detailed field case studies describing the use of ex-situ reactors, natural attenuation, and bioaugmentation are presented in this paper and demonstrate the potential for successful remediation of MTBE-contaminated aquifers. In conclusion, a substantial amount of literature is available which demonstrates that the in-situ biodegradation of MTBE is contingent on achieving aerobic conditions in the contaminated aquifer.
Journal Article
Going Electric
Sprague had hoped to work with the famous inventor on electric motors for rail and other applications, but Edison had eyes only for his incandescent lighting system, which he believed would change life more fundamentally than would electric trains. The first successful conversion of rail from steam to electric took place in 1893, when the Kentucky and Indiana Bridge Company electrified its Daisy Line, a five-mile light rail service that since 1886 had been shuttling commuters between New Albany, Ind., and Louisville, Ky. The firm designed and built a locomotive for B&O powerful enough to muscle a 500-ton passenger train at 35 miles per hour or a 1,200-ton, 30-car freight train at 15 miles per hour up a 0.8 percent grade. GENERAL ELECTRIC'S LUNGE at electric dominance drew a challenge from George Westinghouse, inventor of the railroad airbrake and founder of Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
Magazine Article
Killing Apollo
In the years preceding, the program stirred bitter conflict among politicians, scientists, and the public, with skeptics arguing that the Moon race was a costly gimmick of scant scientific value that diverted attention and funding from genuine concerns. [...]as Armstrong and Aldrin were hopping around on the lunar surface, President Richard Nixon was looking for ways to replace Apollo with more economical, less ambitious space projects. Continuing NASA's proclivity for naming its programs after mythological figures, Apollo-the Greek and Roman god of the sun-was developed by NASA's Manned Lunar Working Group as a follow-up to Mercury. [...]Congress and much of the nation embraced the idea. Besides global prestige, Project Apollo offered enhanced national security, advances in technology, science, engineering, and economic stimulus.
Magazine Article
Atoms for Peace, Explosively
Project Plowshare imagined using nuclear weapons as infrastructure-building tools OverblownThe 1962 Sedan test left a crater a quarter-mile across and showered multiple states with radioactive fallout. Frederick Reines Sedan was an exercise meant to advance Project Plowshare, a Cold War-era effort to employ nuclear weapons for infrastructure projects. Nuclear tests routinely produced unacceptably high levels of fallout, and the subsequent appearance in drinking water, milk, meat, and produce of strontium-90, cesium-137, and other cancer-causing radioactive elements had generated a movement demanding a worldwide ban on airborne nuclear tests. AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss approved a plan to use nuclear weapons to create an American harbor in a way that would protect people and wildlife, meet data collection requirements, and deliver long-term practical value.
Magazine Article
