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The Apollo missions and other adventures in space
This volume briefly covers some of the highlights of manned space exploration.
Book
Evaluating the Use of a Carbon Footprint Calculator: Communicating Impacts of Consumption at Household Level and Exploring Mitigation Options
Summary Through an increasingly globalized supply chain, local consumption of goods and services has impacts around the world. The carbon footprint can be used to link local consumption to global greenhouse gas emissions. This study describes the development and use of REAP Petite, a household-level footprint calculator. We describe how the tool integrates geodemographic information with user-inputted data; allows users to compare their footprint with others in their community; and presents them with targeted pledges to help them reduce their impact. Such tools can help individuals to see the impact their consumption has on emissions and help promote alternative behaviors. Based on the lessons learned during tool development and through using the tool with individuals in the UK and Sweden, we make recommendations for the development of new footprinting tools for use in the public domain. We highlight the benefits of using bottom-up methods for calculating footprints; recommend that designers consider future-proofing their tools; discuss the trade-off between complexity and usability; and recommend that designers consider going \"beyond carbon\" to increase the appeal of tools to a wider audience. We also highlight the importance of providing opportunity for users to compare their footprints with those of others and of monitoring and evaluating user engagement with the tool.
Journal Article
شرق وغرب : السلطة والحرية والمستقبل /
هذا الكتاب ليس مذكرات أو سيرة ذاتية لكاتبه، كريس باتن آخر حاكم بريطاني لهونج كونج، إنما هو قراءة لأكثر التجارب تشويقا وغنى للكاتب، وأكثر الفترات أهمية في تاريخ آخر المستعمرات البريطانية؛ بهدف استخلاص الدروس والعبر العامة منها لقد قدمت السنوات الخمس الحرجة التي قضاها الكاتب حاكما لهونج كونج قبل انتقال السيادة عليها إلى الصين عام 1997، فرصة فريدة لرؤية ما كان يحدث في آسيا، وفي الصين تحديدا. وقد استفاد الكاتب من تلك الفرصة في فهم كثير من القضايا المهمة وفضائل النمور الآسيوية وقيمها، وأسباب انهيار اقتصاداتها، ومستقبلها. كما سعى إلى وضع عدد من الفرضيات المغايرة حول آسيا، وحول تطبيق السياسة الاقتصادية، وحول عناصر الحكم الجيد ومكوناته، وحول العلاقة بين الحرية السياسية والتحرر الاقتصادي.
Book
Global patterns of offshore wind variability
Using the 40‐year hourly gridded ERA5 reanalysis, we study the offshore patterns of wind variability using the probability density function (PDF) and the power spectral density (PSD). To summarize wind variability, we compute the Weibull parameters from the PDF and the PSD for six spectral bands: interannual, annual, multimonth, storm, diurnal, and semidiurnal. We characterize the storm spectral peak using a Gaussian function in log10 frequency space. These parameters are plotted along two pole‐to‐pole transects through the Atlantic Ocean at 25°W and the Pacific Ocean at 170°W longitude and at 16 current and proposed offshore wind sites. We test the idea that coastal and open‐ocean wind statistics may be described by a single set of meridional profiles. In mid‐latitudes, the storm band variance exceeding 20 m2 s−2 dominates. The Weibull shape parameter is close to k=2. The storm interval varies from 4 to 7 days depending on location. In the Northern Hemisphere only, the annual variance is significant, exceeding 3 m2 s−2. In the equatorial region, we find steadier winds with small storm variance less than 3 m2 s−2. The Weibull shape parameter is k=4 or greater, suggesting the possibility of a high capacity factor there. The storm interval can exceed 15 days. The equatorial zone has an annual wind variance reaching 2 m2 s−2, comparable to the storm variance. In the tropical Pacific, we find interannual variance associated with El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Semidiurnal variance is detected in the tropics from the atmospheric tide.
Journal Article
انتحار الغرب
تناول الكتاب أنه منذ مئة سنة كان معظم الغربيين يشعرون بالاعتزاز الهائل والثقة الكبيرة بحضارتهم. وكان الغربيون يعرفون ما الذي تمثله حضارتهم وترمز له، وكانوا يؤمنون بها، أما اليوم فإن ذلك المعنى قد تلاشى في هذا الكتاب المثير للجدل، يحدد ريتشارد كوك وكريس سميث ستة أعمدة رئيسة للحضارة الغربية وهي : المسيحية، والتفاؤل، والعلم، والنمو الاقتصادي، والليبرالية، والفردية، ويبين المؤلفان كيف أن هذه الأفكار قد عانت طوال قرن من هجوم مستمر من الداخل وكيف أنها لم تبق بعد ذلك ملهمة للغرب أو موحدة له، وهو ما يجعل الانجراف نحو الانتحار الجماعي يبدو حتميا.
Book
Choosing fit-for-purpose biodiversity impact indicators for agriculture in the Brazilian Cerrado ecoregion
Understanding and acting on biodiversity loss requires robust tools linking biodiversity impacts to land use change, the biggest threat to terrestrial biodiversity. Here we estimate agriculture’s impact on the Brazilian Cerrado’s biodiversity using three approaches—countryside Species-Area Relationship, Species Threat Abatement and Restoration and Species Habitat Index. By using same input data, we show how indicator scope and design affects impact assessments and resulting decision-support. All indicators show agriculture expansion’s increasing pressure on biodiversity. Results suggest that metrics are complementary, providing distinctly different insight into biodiversity change drivers and impacts. Meaningful applications of biodiversity indicators therefore require compatibility between focal questions and indicator choice regarding temporal, spatial, and ecological perspectives on impact and drivers. Backward-looking analyses focused on historical land use change and accountability are best served by the countryside-Species Area Relationship and the Species Habitat Index. Forward-looking analyses of impact risk hotspots and global extinctions mitigation are best served by the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration.
Land use change has important impacts on biodiversity. Here, the authors calculate agriculture’s impact on the Brazilian Cerrado’s diversity with three methods, finding consistent magnitude of impacts and complementary insights among approaches, and using these findings to make recommendations for their application.
Journal Article
Separate games : African American sport behind the walls of segregation
The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the twentieth century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the twelve essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these \"separate games\" provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination.
Book
Impacts of climate change on global food trade networks
Countries' reliance on global food trade networks implies that regionally different climate change impacts on crop yields will be transmitted across borders. This redistribution constitutes a significant challenge for climate adaptation planning and may affect how countries engage in cooperative action. This paper investigates the long-term (2070–2099) potential impacts of climate change on global food trade networks of three key crops: wheat, rice and maize. We propose a simple network model to project how climate change impacts on crop yields may be translated into changes in trade. Combining trade and climate impact data, our analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we use network community detection to analyse how the concentration of global production in present-day trade communities may become disrupted with climate change impacts. Second, we study how countries may change their network position following climate change impacts. Third, we study the total climate-induced change in production plus import within trade communities. Results indicate that the stability of food trade network structures compared to today differs between crops, and that countries' maize trade is least stable under climate change impacts. Results also project that threats to global food security may depend on production change in a few major global producers, and whether trade communities can balance production and import loss in some vulnerable countries. Overall, our model contributes a baseline analysis of cross-border climate impacts on food trade networks.
Journal Article
Using supply chain data to monitor zero deforestation commitments: an assessment of progress in the Brazilian soy sector
Zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs) are voluntary initiatives where companies or countries pledge to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. These commitments offer much promise for sustainable commodity production, but are undermined by a lack of transparency about their coverage and impacts. Here, using state-of-the-art supply chain data, we introduce an approach to evaluate the impact of ZDCs, linking traders and international markets to commodity-associated deforestation in the sub-national jurisdictions from which they source. We focus on the Brazilian soy sector, where we find that ZDC coverage is increasing, but under-represents the Cerrado biome where most soy-associated deforestation currently takes place. Though soy-associated deforestation declined in the Amazon after the introduction of the Soy Moratorium, we observe no change in the exposure of companies or countries adopting ZDCs to soy-associated deforestation in the Cerrado. We further assess the formulation and implementation of these ZDCs and identify several systematic weaknesses that must be addressed to increase the likelihood that they achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation in future. As the 2020 deadline for several of these commitments approaches, our approach can provide independent monitoring of progress toward the goal of ending commodity-associated deforestation.
Journal Article